by Martha Woods
Much as she didn't like doing so, she knew she had to stop soon, if only so that she wasn't risking passing out at the wheel and rolling into a ditch. After everything else she had survived she refused to let that be the way that she died. She pulled up behind a gas station, making sure her car wasn't visible from the road just in case one of her former comrades passed by and thought that it would belong to her, as low as the chances were on something like that happening.
Besides, it would probably be to her advantage if she was in a position to follow her hunters, rather than stay one step ahead of them. It would help her to lose their trail faster if she could see where they were already looking, she would just have to pick her moments wisely. But that was something she could worry about after she recharged, letting her eyes fall closed as soon as she found possibly the one patch of shade in thirty square miles.
She had no idea just how valuable that few hours of sleep would be over the next day.
* * *
One bonus to stopping for an extra few hours was that night had already started to fall by the time she got on the move again, the stars out and twinkling across an undisturbed sky the entire way towards the next town. It had been so long since she had just gone out and watched the stars, lay down with someone special and point out what the constellations meant, how far away they were. Some of them might not even exist anymore, and they would never know for thousands of years.
She scowled when she realized the last time had been with her sister, the result of needing to be near someone that hadn't been fighting for the last few days. Laura had elected to stay home with Christian for that job, no doubt planning the next step in whatever evil they had thought of appropriate to dedicate to their departed son. Claire had knocked on her door, still ragged and sweaty from fighting off a group of werewolves but desperate just to see her again.
Laura had closed the notebook that she had been writing in, excusing herself from Christian's presence who nodded and looked on with eyes that even then had been looking at Claire's body. She had grabbed her hand and led her up to the roof of the safe house, laying down a blanket and just... Sitting there, letting Claire lean her head on her lap and massaging the tension out of her shoulders.
"I don't know if I can keep doing this," She'd told Laura, letting what had then only been a facade of toughness drop for the first time in months, letting bitter tears fall down onto the concrete where they melted away.
Laura had held her through the shakes, the sobs and groans as she told her that they had lost three people to teeth and claws that seemed to come out of nowhere. "You can do this Claire, I believe in you," She said, holding her face between her hands. "Do you hear me? You are so strong, and so brave, and I believe that you can do whatever you need to do to survive. No one is going to get the better of you, that much I know."
"Guess you were right Laura." Claire squeezed the wheel, knuckles white. "I'm stronger and braver than you ever were, because I wasn't weak enough to use my dead nephew as an excuse for evil. Maybe you should have taken a lesson from what you saw in me."
The lights of the next town were shining in the distance, but all she could feel was anger at the betrayal she had suffered at the hands of those she thought she could trust. She threw open the glove box, sighing gratefully when she saw the previous owner of the car was a smoker. "About time something went my way."
She leaned across, about to pull the pack out when the windshield exploded, a jagged hole tearing itself in the glass as a bullet slammed its way through and found a home in her shoulder. Claire screamed out in pain, barely keeping herself from swerving off the road while she tried to zigzag to avoid his shots. Considering the size of the hole that she could see through, he was using a rifle of some kind, and was a pretty good shot too given that the only reason her heart hadn't disintegrated was that she had moved at the last moment.
Evasive driving was a challenge when she only had complete control of one of her arms, and it didn't come as a surprise when she over corrected once she entered the town, passing between two buildings and trying to turn out of the path of the slugs still burying themselves into the panels of her car. The tires locked up, spinning her out of control and sending her headlong into a wall, the force of the impact lifting the back wheels off the ground and sending her lunging forward, the seat belt the only thing keeping her from having her brains coating the destroyed bricks.
She hacked and wheezed, struggling with the belt before she resorted to just cutting through it. The door almost fell off when she pushed it open, Claire collapsing to the ground and taking cover behind the engine block. She kept her ears trained for any sound of movement, picking up on the panicked stomps of people inside the building around them after the shots had woken them up. Somewhere in all that chaos she heard him, boots crunching on glass while he advanced on her, no more than fifty feet away from the sound of it.
She checked that her pistol was loaded, keeping the other secured in her waistband and looping the medical kit over her shoulders, which given the fact that she couldn't fully feel her left arm she was going to need it desperately soon. Breathing hard to steel herself, she saw the door to hotel no more than twenty feet away from her and knew that it was her only hope of living through this. Waiting until she heard his feet thirty feet away, she stood up as fast as she could, barely seeing him before she started unloading her weapon at him, the hunter forced to dive to the side behind a row of cars to avoid her shots. She sprinted towards the door, not pausing her shots the entire way before she threw her shoulder against the wood, sending the door halfway off its hinges and startling the clerk behind it.
"Don't shoot please!" He threw his hands up, cowering behind his desk. "There's money in the back, just don't hurt us!"
"Calm the hell down." She gestured back at the door with her pistol. "There's a man with a gun out there, keep your head down and don't watch where I'm going."
He nodded, watching her limp past him and head up the stairs to her right, lowering his head when she glared at him. "Don't look, he'll kill you if you do."
She'd made it to the top of the stairs when she heard his screams once more, a hand clearly around his throat as he wheezed out, "She went up those stairs, just please don't hurt me!"
A gunshot echoing off the walls told her all she needed to know about how that encounter ended. Claire paused around the corner, aiming her pistol down the stairwell and firing at the first hint of skin that she saw.
"Woah!" The hunter stuck his rifle around the corner, unloading a burst of shots that tore through the wall and almost took her head off. "Now look here girl, you do not shoot at me! You hear me?"
She recognized his voice, though she couldn't remember where from exactly. Given everything else that was happening, his identity was a rather low priority. "Fuck you!" She yelled, firing another handful of shots before she turned and sprinted down the hallway, his heavy steps following not far behind.
An unfortunate hotel guest picked the wrong moment to step out of their room, Claire ducking to the left to avoid crashing into them just as her attacker fired another burst, the heavy bullets tearing through his chest and taking him down to the ground. Another shot fired behind her took the hunter in the shoulder, spinning him around and giving her another moment to run around the corner.
Unfortunately, it was the wrong corner to run around, the only thing looming in front of her a closed window.
She spun around just as the hunter ran around the corner, face red with rage and his rifle already shouldered. She had just enough time to raise her own pistol and fire, the round arcing through the air and grazing his neck, throwing his aim off enough that his target shifted from her head to the floor. Unfortunately, he didn't just fire one shot. The heavy rounds chewed up the floor and splintered the wall, one impacting with her stomach and throwing her backwards.
Clean out the window.
While she was falling through the air she remembered where she had seen him before. He was the h
unter that had told her all about what her family was really up to, who thought that she was strong enough, or weak enough, to hear the atrocities they were committing and still believe in them.
She supposed it made sense that a fanatic like that would be the one who came after her, it always helped to have someone that didn't care about civilian casualties do that sort of thing. She hit the ground shoulder first, feeling the joint pop out of place before the rest of her body slammed down, able to do nothing for a few seconds except groan in pain. She considered it a small victory that she hadn’t screamed out in pain, but if she didn’t get herself up quickly then it wouldn’t mean anything in the long run. Slowly, only able to use one of her arms, she dragged herself to her feet, taking a second to steady herself before scooping her gun up from the ground, starting her run away from the hotel.
The roar of anger made her jump to the side, a pure reflex that saved her life when the concrete where she had just been tore itself out of the ground. Looking back over her shoulder she saw the hunter standing at the smashed window, lining up his rifle to take a shot at her while still trying to keep pressure on his wound. Claire didn’t stop running, pointing her pistol in his vague direction and pulling the trigger, hoping that her shots would either hit him or force him to keep his head down. Since she made it around the corner and into the alley without another bullet tearing its way through her back, she considered it a success, as much as someone could reasonably call not getting shot a success rather than a normal day.
Her hand clutching the wound in her stomach, she kept up her pace, searching frantically for a car that she could take for her own ends. Almost stumbling on an overturned trash can, she burst out onto the street, hand pressing against the window of a sedan and leaving a bloody smear behind.
“Fuck it,” She said, wrinkling her nose at the green paint job, “I guess you’ll do.”
She shielded her eyes, slamming her pistol barrel first into the side window and shattering it, unlocking the door and letting herself in. One rip and a crossing of the wires later and the car roared to life, peeling out of the parking spot and spinning around to the outskirts of town, her head down low just in case he decided to take another shot at her.
With the way her luck had been tonight it would likely hit her square between the eyes.
Surprisingly she made it out of town without incident, the shot she had landed on the hunter evidently more severe than either of them initially thought. Her own wound was much more dire, blood oozing freely from between her fingers and staining the seat below her. Even if she bandaged up as tightly as she could, used every last item in that first aid kit to patch herself up, if she didn’t reach somewhere that could help her soon she was likely to be dead in less than two days.
And on top off that, she had to deal with the fact that her hunters were little more than an hour away from her at any time, which meant that sleep was out of the question. It was going to take nothing short of a miracle to ensure that she survived.
And once again, her luck continued to spiral down into the dirt.
* * *
Another night and another hotel room, though it definitely took some finesse to convince the clerk to allow all of them to sleep in the same room. Skylar sat with her legs crossed underneath her, Abigail cradled in her arms and Liam by her side. Leah flanked her other side, fingers wiggling in front of Abigail’s face and giggling at the infant’s amusement, little legs kicking in the air and tiny giggles echoing through the room.
“She looks just like you Skylar,” Leah said, poking Abigail’s nose lightly. “My son’s all looked like me, but they always resembled their father just a little more. I used to wonder what it would be like if I had a daughter, if she would look just like me or if her father’s genes would still win in the end.”
“Do you think you might try one day? If you find the right person to be with again?”
Leah chuckled, placing her hand on Skylar’s cheek. “My dear I’m too old to be worrying about something like that now. I’ve got so many other people to take care of now, another baby would be far too much to handle. No, it’s much better for me that you have the child and I get to have all the fun times without the stress.”
“Well, I’m glad that I can be of some help to you.” Skylar shoved her away, laughing, “Maybe you should put that on her birthday card, ‘Dear Abigail, thanks for being a source of stress relief, love Grandma.’”
“Oh god, don’t say Grandma...” Leah placed her head in her hand, groaning to herself, “I’m getting used to being older slowly, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.”
“Have you considered it a badge of honor?”
“It’s a badge of seniority, that’s the opposite of what I want right now.”
Liam leaned over, kissing his mother’s cheek and chuckling, “You still look great for your age Mom, you don’t have to worry about anything thinking that you look like Methuselah anytime soon.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Liam, I swear…”
“Everyone, can we please have your attention?” All eyes turned to the front of the room, Cassandra standing tall with her arms behind her back. “Thank you, Leila and myself have been discussing some things regarding our pasts, and we’ve decided that it is very important that we inform all of you as well.”
Murmuring went through the group gathered before them, Leila looking over each of them before she focused on her daughter, eyes wide with interest in what she could have to say. Leila wasn’t sure how Skylar would react to the reveal of what she had done in her past, not sure if anything would ever wash that blood off her hands. She figured there were only two ways this would end, with Skylar either embracing her or shunning her, and she was getting tired fast of the wait.
“Alright, let’s get this over with then. The faster this is over with the better.” Leila leaned back against the wall, arms crossed and her head held low. Reciting what she had done was one thing, looking her daughter in the eye while she did it was another.
“A good many years ago, Leila and myself crossed paths. Initially this meeting was of no particular significance to us, but time and hindsight have revealed to us that it is so much more than we ever could have thought.” Cassandra sighed, turning back to Leila. “Do you want me to speak for you or would you prefer to tell them yourselves?”
“I’m the one that did it, it’s only fair that I’m the one that has to talk about it.” She stepped forward, fingers tapping along her biceps in her nervousness. She took a deep breath, steeling her nerves and forcing herself to look up at everyone gathered, still looking at her with a mix of interest and suspicion. “A long time ago, after I’d had Skylar and I’d had my temporary fill of the mob life, I decided that the best thing for someone like me to do was travel. You know, see the sights, clear my head, try and convince myself that I wasn’t irreparably damned for the things I’d done.”
Cayden huffed a small laugh, a small smile crossing his face. “I think I can relate to something like that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Wonderful. Anyway, the first few places I went held nothing resembling answers to what I needed, often it just led to more violence that was rather swiftly ended and only resulted in another ruined jacket.” Her eyes went distant, her gaze shifting away from them and into the depths of memory. “But then I found it, a place that I had been looking for my entire journey, a tiny little village in South America that doesn’t even have a name. Out on the coast, through miles and miles of thick jungle, you’d only reach it and survive the journey if you knew exactly where to go.”
“Did you?” Farah leaned forward, finding herself utterly engrossed in the story.
Leila nodded. “I did, for whatever reason that I still cannot imagine, those nearby decided to trust me with the location. All I had to do was walk through the forest for three days with only two bottles of water, almost getting lost along the way but I eventually made it there.” She smiled, the expression touched with happiness and
melancholy alike. “It was nice there, peaceful. They took me in and started to teach me other ways I could live my life, I made it hard on them of course, I was never able to drop my attitude, but the few months that I spent there were some of the best I’ve ever had.”
The others could sense that the story didn’t have a happy ending, they were just wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. Michael inclined his head, asking softly, “What happened to them?”
Leila let out a deep sigh, finally turning away from them. “They’re dead. I killed them all.”
Skylar’s eyes widened in shock, but before she could ask any questions Cassandra raised her hand. “I know all of you must have questions, but before any of you jump to any conclusions it is very important that you hear the rest.”
Slowly, they settled down, the tension in the room so thick they were almost choking on it. Once she was satisfied that they were sufficiently calm, she continued, “I had a brother when I was growing up, smart, gifted like me but… Different. No one really wanted to draw attention to it but he was quite obviously not an ordinary child. It was a long time before I realized why.”
She held her hand out, conjuring a flame that flickered in her palm. “Imagine someone who possessed incredible power, the ability to disintegrate a human body with a snap of their fingers, to hold people under their thrall as though it were child’s play. Now imagine that this person viewed everyone else as no more than a specimen, something that they can use and throw away in the pursuit of their experiments into finding the limit of their power.” She closed her eyes, bowing her head. “That was my brother.”
Ignoring their looks of shock, she frowned, hand squeezing into a fist. “No one ever realized but ever since he was fourteen he had been doing those experiments, grabbing animals out of the forest and seeing how he could control them, putting them through all manner of things until they were just another tool that he could control with his mind. Eventually he moved onto people, and that was something I could not abide.”
