Ava's Revenge

by Teyla Branton

  I was doomed. Maybe by taking revenge, I’d made a pact with the devil himself.

  I sensed Simon then. I felt the flames as they spread up his clothes in a deceptively gentle rush before sinking in and biting deep. I experienced his suffering, his regret—not regret that he’d hurt me, but regret that he hadn’t done a better job of killing me.

  I was burning—consumed by fire. No, he was burning. The flames hadn’t yet reached the nursery, but in my misery, I’d forgotten we were connected, that I would feel his terror and anguish as if they were my own.

  Greedy fire. Horrific agony. So much torture I didn’t think I’d live long enough to feel actual flames on my own skin. I brought my hands to my head, clamping down, pushing him away.

  All at once the agony stopped and I was aware of my surroundings again, though I knew he wasn’t yet dead. I still had an awareness of the glow that signaled his life, but I’d somehow separated myself from his pain.

  I clung to my tin more tightly. Shattering glass echoed throughout the house. The glass Simon had been so proud of when he’d had it put in before any of the neighbors.

  Smoke curled into the room, quickly becoming huge billows of gray. I began coughing. I could already feel the heat from the fire. For the first time since laying my baby in her grave, I was scared. Scared to feel the flames again. The agony.

  Shame filled me. I couldn’t even die right.

  Clutching the tin, I scrambled to my feet and ran for the window.

  I FELL OUTSIDE, CUTTING MYSELF on the broken glass. Then I rolled away, my lungs gasping for breath. I made it as far as the dirt road in front of the house, and there I stood numbly, watching the house burn . . . and burn . . . and burn. Smoke gathered in a cloud, visible in the summer evening.

  I was a coward. I’d been able to avenge my daughter’s death, and the babies before her, but I hadn’t been able to join her. Even now, I trembled as I thought about the flames eating my flesh.

  A movement from the edge of my vision startled me. At first I thought it was Simon, somehow freed from the potion’s spell and rising like a phoenix from the fire, but two faces came into sight from around the side of the house, a man and a woman.

  The man saw me and began to run in my direction. I cringed away from him as he reached out, but he let his arm drop without touching me.

  “Are you all right?” he asked in an accent that sounded both lyrical and familiar.

  My eyes flew up to meet those of the most handsome man I’d ever seen. His face was cleanly shaven, his blond hair slightly long but neat, and his well-built figure was set off by stylish clothing like the kind I’d only seen from afar at Mrs. Adamson’s. He looked upset, but I knew his anger wasn’t directed at me.

  “Are you all right?” he repeated.

  I shook my head, unable to speak. He reached for me again, but I stumbled away from him.

  “Stop. You’re scaring her.” The woman was somehow on my other side, though I hadn’t seen her move, and she was breathtakingly beautiful. Her thick mass of brown hair was artfully pinned on top of her head, her face was delicate but not at all pale, her dark eyelashes were the longest I’d ever seen. Uncaring of her own fine apparel, she enfolded me with her arms. “You’re Ava, aren’t you?” When I nodded, she continued, her accent matching that of the man. “Good. Then we have come in time.”

  It’s proper English, I thought. Not like the language spoken by the new farmer and his family, but the educated kind.

  “Come. It’s not safe here,” the woman continued. “We’re too close to the house. It’ll all burn before the neighbors get enough water to help.”

  That’s right. The neighbors would see the smoke. Simon was disagreeable enough that they wouldn’t be quick to check on his property, but they would eventually come. I felt more than a little satisfaction knowing they would be too late to save Simon.

  “Hurry now,” the woman urged, propelling me several feet. She was strong for her slight stature.

  I found my voice. “You don’t understand. I killed him. I started the fire.” When they didn’t react, I added, “On purpose.” It felt good to let it out. Let them deliver me to the lawmen. I would take my punishment, welcome it even. Especially if it stopped this horrible longing for Hannah. The numbness had faded, and I didn’t want to feel any more pain.

  The man gazed at me, compassion radiating from his very blue eyes. “He was an awful man. We both know that.”

  Something clicked inside me. He knows! Somehow the man knew what Simon had been.

  “He killed my baby,” the words came tumbling from my mouth and more: the lost babies, the numerous times he’d forced himself on me, waking in the woods, burying Hannah, the potion. “I don’t care what they do to me. I deserve it. Just when it’s over, can you bury me with my baby?”

  Tears came to the woman’s eyes. “I’m sorry we were so late,” she said, her voice like soothing music. “So sorry. We had no idea of course. We’ve not seen you since you were a child.” The woman looked hardly older than I did, so I found that difficult to believe, but I was in too much pain to really care.

  “I’m going to see my baby now,” I said, glancing beyond the fire in the direction of the tree and the grave.

  “Now is not the time,” the woman insisted. To the man, she added, “There will be questions if we don’t get her out of here before they come.” She motioned toward the horizon where already we could see dust above the road that signaled our neighbors’ approach.

  I glanced between the strangers. Something was odd here. Even the glow surrounding them was dimmer than with most people, closer to the aura of the animals. And I couldn’t feel the customary jumble of emotions that emanated from most people. It was as if they were . . . blocking. The thought startled me. Why would I think that? They were sympathetic, I felt that much—or maybe I only saw it in their faces.

  The man’s hand touched my shoulder. “Please, come with us. We have been looking for you these past weeks. We want to help.”

  For a startling moment, I could see into his soul. Feel him as if he were a part of me. It went far deeper than the emotions I’d experienced even from Simon. Not only did the man want to help, he wanted me. Not as a man wanted a woman, but as a father wanted his child. “Who are you?” I whispered.

  “I’m Wymon Tilmock, and this is my wife, Eva. We’re . . . you might say we’re distant relatives on your mother’s side. In fact, your name, Ava, is a variation of Eva’s.”

  Eva smiled, looking more beautiful than ever. “Please, will you come with us? We’ll explain everything. You need to trust us.”

  I nodded and let them lead me to a wagon I hadn’t noticed before. Halfway there, my legs gave out and Wymon picked me up, cradling me like an infant. My mind felt wild with grief, but somehow, this close to him, I could more easily bear the burden because I felt as if he shared my grief. He laid me in the back of their wagon and pulled a blanket over me despite the warmth of the evening. The woman sat beside me instead of up with her husband. As she gave me a drink of water, I knew without her saying anything that she planned to hide me with the blanket when we passed our neighbors. I was too tired to protest.

  They were wrong about the neighbors coming to help so soon—I’d been wrong. The cloud was nothing more than Cuthbert Mander and his lawless gang, coming to clean up on our misfortune. Eva pulled the blanket over my face just as I glimpsed the five men atop their horses, spreading out to surround the wagon.

  We rolled to a stop, and I knew five muskets were pointed in our direction.

  “What we got here? Cuthbert asked. His voice was close, so he must have dismounted. The blanket was ripped off me, and I stared up into Cuthbert’s lean face, his long dark hair hanging in lank cords to his shoulders.

  “She’s been hurt,” Eva said, lifting my arm where I’d been cut going out the window. The bleeding had already ceased, but red smeared the length of my arm.

  Cuthbert’s eyes fixed on me as they always did when I’
d had the misfortune of seeing him at public gatherings. I couldn’t help thinking of the suspicious deaths that littered his trail.

  “Get out,” Cuthbert ordered.

  “Please,” Eva said. “We need to get her to a doctor.”

  “Sorry,” Cuthbert said with a smile that clearly said he wasn’t sorry at all. “We can’t let you go warning people about the fire. Not until we’re done taking what we want. We need traveling funds.”

  “You are welcome to anything you find,” Wymon said. “We won’t stop you.”

  Cuthbert snorted. “Yeah, I’ll make sure of that.” He motioned and one of his men tossed him some rope. I clutched the tin from my cedar chest, surprised that it was somehow still in my hands.

  Wymon pulled a satchel of coins from inside his vest. “Here’s more than you’ll ever need. Just let us go.”

  Cuthbert snatched the purse from his hand. “Don’t mind if I do. Just fer that, I might let you ride away. In fact, you and your woman can go right now. But not”—he raised his musket, pointing at Wymon’s chest—“with our Mrs. High-and-Mighty Brumbaugh.” He held my gaze so I would know exactly what he meant. “You think I ain’t good enough, don’t you? Got so you won’t even say good day to a gentleman.” My ignoring Cuthbert had been because of Simon’s jealousy, of course, so maybe Simon would get his revenge on me from the grave.

  “Get her out, boys,” Cuthbert ordered “I’m going to have me a little fun.” Rough hands seized my arms, pulling me from the wagon. Eva shifted to a crouch, but she didn’t try to stop them. I hadn’t expected to live long, but facing Cuthbert like this was too much. Better to die by a bullet. My muscles bunched in preparation.

  The second my feet hit the ground, I lunged toward Cuthbert, but the hands of his goons held me tight.

  Cuthbert grinned at my desperation. “Let’s get her into the trees in case those God-fearing neighbors decide they need to overlook Simon’s uncharitable nature and do their Christian duty.” To Wymon, he added. “You got thirty seconds to make yerself scarce or I start shootin’.”

  “Aw, you really lettin’ her go too?” one of Cuthbert’s rotten-toothed accomplices thumbed at Eva. “She’s a pretty one.”

  “Shut yer trap,” Cuthbert retorted.

  Panic filled me. Wymon and Eva had no choice but to leave, if they wanted to live. They couldn’t risk their lives. Distant relatives or no, they didn’t even know me.

  The next instant everything changed. Moving so fast my eyes could barely follow, Eva leapt from the wagon, kicking two of our assailants and somehow flattening both men. Before I could take a breath, she landed on her feet and tore into a third man, whipping around to pound him in the face. Wymon was moving as well, obviously skilled though not nearly as fast as Eva. He knocked Cuthbert’s musket from his hand, and they began exchanging blows.

  “Look out!” I shouted as the fifth member of the gang brought his rifle around to aim at Wymon. I jumped, grabbing at the gun. But Eva and Wymon were already next to me, knocking the man unconscious before he could pull the trigger.

  Eva looked at Wymon. “You’ll have to take their memories. It’s better that her neighbors don’t know she’s still alive. Hurry—we are about to have more company.” She glanced out over the road where another dust cloud hovered.

  Wymon knelt down between two of the men, reaching out to touch both their faces. In seconds, he finished with the men and moved on to the third and fourth.

  I stared at Eva in fascinated horror. “Who are you? What are you?” I’d never seen a woman move like that before, much less one who looked like Eva. And a man who believed he could remove memories with a simple touch? It was unbelievable, though a part of me wished he could take away the past year of my life.

  Except that would erase Hannah, and I couldn’t let myself forget her. Not ever.

  Eva smiled, apparently unruffled by the fight or by her husband’s supposed ability. “I’m your tenth great-grandmother. I’m Unbounded—Renegade Unbounded, to be exact. And since you are not dead, apparently, so are you.”

  Part Two

  Fifty Years Later

  September 1795 - Savannah, Georgia

  Lemonade and Love

  I SMILED DOWN AT THE fresh lemonade Martha had brought on a silver tray. My fingers closed around the tall, cool glass, and I raised it, saluting Locke MacAulay, the blond-haired woman opposite me. “To your parents.”

  Locke smiled. “Yes, to my parents.”

  I sipped the sweet liquid. After my rescue fifty years ago, Eva and Wymon Tilmock had brought me here to Savannah, Georgia, where they had trained me and taught me the ways of the Unbounded, or the Unboundaried, if you wanted to be more correct. Humans whose active Unbounded gene caused them to Change and become part of a rare breed, usually between the thirtieth and thirty-first birthdays. Old injuries healed, barren women gave birth, a husband’s knife had no permanent power.

  Well, provided a future Unbounded lived long enough to Change.

  Wymon had shared my ability of sensing and had become closer than my own father, but Eva’s combat training had given me the confidence I’d desperately needed. Never again would I be a helpless victim—to anyone.

  Both Wymon and Eva were gone now, their lives cut short in an ongoing battle with our enemy the Emporium just two years after the close of the Revolutionary War. Their sacrifice had prevented renewed confrontations with England, but I still desperately missed them. I had lost myself in those first years after Hannah’s death. They had brought me back from despair and taught me to live again, taught me to understand and accept the Change that made me nearly immortal with a lifespan of two thousand years.

  Now I worked with Locke, their daughter and a fellow Renegade, who was my ninth great-grandmother but more like a sister than anything else. Our current goal was to free America from the curse of slavery, even as the slave trade ramped up with the demand brought on by the invention of the cotton gin. We would succeed, but it would take time because the Emporium Unbounded had their own agenda, and the mortals’ greed had blinded them to the evils of slavery.

  Locke’s eyes lifted across the green expanse of grass where we sat at a table in the shade of a tree. It was late afternoon in September and not nearly as hot as it had been a few weeks earlier. “Looks like you have more petitioners,” she said, her voice sounding more Scottish like her late mortal husband than her English parents.

  I turned to see Samuel, our butler, his ever-calm face standing out darkly against his white suit, gliding across the expanse of lawn with a man in tow. The man walked steadily at the butler’s side, without hunching his shoulders or averting his eyes as many petitioners did. Something about the way he walked was familiar.

  A slight movement in the trees to my left registered on my senses. I knew it was Ritter Langton, who had been brought to us two decades ago, shortly after his Change, by Tenika Vasco, the second-in-command of our Renegades in New York. Tenika had been afraid Ritter’s single-minded recklessness would get him killed in their frequent encounters with the Emporium. She’d hoped Eva and Locke could train him, and that somehow along the way Wymon and I could temper the anger he harbored at the brutal murders of his mortal family. In the decade since Wymon’s death, I didn’t feel I’d made much progress.

  Ritter’s movement had been purposeful, to let me know he was there watching, just in case. I couldn’t feel his anger from this distance, but it was still there. I knew because anger had consumed me in much the same way. It made him both vicious and reckless. I was glad he was on our side.

  As I refocused on the approaching stranger, shock flooded me. When Samuel reached the table, he bowed, “A mister Gabriel Smithson to see you, Miss O’Hare.”

  I nodded, scarcely seeing Samuel’s face. I couldn’t take my eyes off the newcomer, who was hardly more than a boy of perhaps twenty. Sixty-three years melted away as if they had never been. I was seventeen and he was sixteen, holding my hand as we cried together after my father announced my upcom
ing marriage to Simon.

  No, it couldn’t be the boy who had loved me, though he looked exactly like him. I’d turned eighty-one this year, though I had physically aged only one year in the past fifty, and my Gabriel would be eighty. He was probably long dead.

  The young Gabriel’s eyes went to Locke’s deeply plunging neckline where the swell of her breasts stood out against the single roll of blond hair over her left shoulder. He looked away, his face reddening. “Please, Miss,” he said to me, “I come to ask the favor of a loan. I will pay it back. I am a hard worker. I’ll make my farm a success.”

  “The blight hit your farm?” This close, I could now detect differences from my Gabriel. The brown eyes were slightly darker, and the blond hair lighter and a bit wavy.

  He hesitated at my words, and I opened my mind, reaching out to his. Many had come to me for help in the past years, and most of them had been sincere in their claims. A few had thought to deceive me, to use my kindness to their advantage. I wouldn’t delve into all his thoughts, but this way most of his emotions were readily apparent. I would know if he lied.

  “No,” he said finally. “My father gambled our savings away and took out a loan against the farm. But he’s gone now and my grandfather will be leaving the farm to me. If I can keep it from the bank.”

  His sincerity was clear, but I focused on the brief glimpse I saw of his grandfather in his thoughts. “Who is your grandfather? Where is he from?” Ten years after my Change, I’d checked up on Gabriel from a distance, wanting to know what had happened to him. Perhaps wondering if there was room for him in my life. I’d found him still in Virginia, married with four strapping sons. I was glad he’d had a life, that he’d found a way to go on, even if I couldn’t seem to. I’d already known in my heart that there couldn’t be any future for us because I was no longer the girl who would be happy as a farmer’s wife, and he would never be anything but a farmer.