by Martha Woods
“If you’re trying to get on my good side you could at least take the binds off, my fingers have been cramped for the last twenty minutes.”
“Sorry, but that’s out of the question.” That damn smile again. “I know what you are Amy, I’ve done my research. I know that you were part of a small-scale operation that killed a lot of hunters only a few months ago, you all but leveled the entire building with those powers of yours that you are still getting used to. I want to build trust between us, but I’m not so foolish as to let an incredibly powerful witch freely use her magic in front of me.”
“Fair enough,” I said, I had been planning on popping his head the first chance I got, so that was understandable at least. “Anything else you need to tell me before you send me marching off into the forest?”
“Only that I hope that you are just as careful as you promised you would be to your two… lovers I’m assuming. I am not the only wolf that you have to worry about, at least I am not insulting you by wearing the skin of a sheep.”
His warning that there were spies other than Anthony was definitely running through my head, not many other things that I could be thinking of after all of this. If he had managed to get someone so easily to where I was without tripping any sort of alarm or even suspicion until it was already far too late, who was to say that he hadn’t gotten someone in a very sensitive place already? For all I know he could have people in the alliance working for him, how am I supposed to know for sure? Of course I have Alexis’ workers doing what they can, but will they really be able to weed out everyone who is a traitor, if there even actually are any other traitors?
I don’t know, but I have a feeling that by the time the week is done I will have an answer.
“Clark, you wanted me?” The werewolf that he’d called over stood at attention, a tall, very pretty woman that you would be forgiven for thinking was a model of some kind who had lost her way. She wasn’t as outwardly built of stone as Christine was, but you could tell that the muscle underneath her skin was made of marble, thin scars lining her knuckles and along her neck, visual evidence of a life spent fighting.
“I want you to take our guest back into the city, she is no longer in need of our company and her people are very anxious to have her back. I’ve been assured that you will not be harmed in any way when you return her, but be careful nonetheless.”
“I understand,” She said, reaching out to me with her hand, “Can you walk?”
“If you help me to my feet, then yes I can.”
Looping her arm underneath my shoulders, she pulled me up and onto my feet without so much as a breath, bracing me and making sure that I didn’t fall over into the dirt as soon as I could get myself under control.
“Alright then, let’s get going,” She said, “It’s been a very long night for all of us, I think we could all do with a rest.”
“Finally, someone I can agree with,” I said, glancing at Clark as I passed by, “I’m not going to give the shifters over but… I hope that we can work out some way to resolve our differences.”
“As much as I doubt we will, I do as well.” Clark placed his hand on my shoulder, patting twice in what I suppose was meant to be a comforting gesture before turning and heading for his tent. “Don’t try and lead anyone back here either, we’ll be gone in the morning.”
I had the sense to wait until myself and my guide were out of range of the camp before I decided to raise my voice again, unsure before of how much I could push my luck before he took extreme offense to me doing so. With an underling that was under orders to return me safely, I figure that there are some allowances that can be made.
“Is he always like that?” I asked, “All… weird and cryptic?”
“He can be,” She replied, eyes glowing in the dark as she guided me through the inky blackness of the forest, “It’s something that you have to get used to, but if you’re one of his people you have nothing to worry about. He has all of our interests at heart, we all know that.”
“Does he though? I don’t know...” I suppose it was time to take a chance. “He was talking before about giving me the spies that he has in the city, does that sound like looking out for all of you? What if I decided to kill them, what would all of you do then?”
“It would be your decision to make,” She said, though not without a touch of bitterness it seemed, “I wouldn’t like it, I doubt that he would either but… if that’s what it took to make sure that the rest of us were safe, I think that all of us could accept it.”
Well, someone didn’t sound brainwashed at all. I know for certain that having a friend die for nothing shouldn’t just be something that you accept, that’s the sort of thing that you potentially give your own life to prevent, not use as a bargaining chip.
“You can stop that by the way.”
“Hmm?” I asked, “Stop what?”
“Stop trying to make me doubt him, it’s not going to work. I’ve spent years with him, he rescued me from nothing and gave me a home to come back to. I’ve been walking with you for… four minutes at most?” She smirked, fang glinting in the pale moonlight filtering through the trees. “You may be an amazing woman for all I know, amazing enough for him to need a personal meeting, but I’m not going to be won over so easily.”
“You can’t really blame be for trying though huh?” Plus it sure beat walking through the forest without any music to distract me from the absolute nothingness that was out there, it was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. “Come on, you’ve got to give me something at least. Tell me about yourself, what sports you like to play, anything! I’m bored here!”
“God, it’s like I’m a kid again...” She rolled her eyes, pulling me to the side to avoid walking into a tree. “But fine, I get what it’s like to be bored. What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know… um… how about how you and him managed to cross paths in the first place? That might make me understand him a bit better than when he’s… not being so creepy.”
“Oh good, a sad story, I was wondering if you were going to ask about one of those.” Taking a deep breath, no doubt this wasn’t an easy thing to answer, something I felt bad about actually, she began, “I was recently turned, I’d been just a normal girl living my life, next thing I know I’ve been dragged out into the forest and taken into this… weird hive of werewolves. It wasn’t anything like a normal clan, I know what one of those is like from experience, this was almost like a crack den for paranormals. These people had no desires, no want to do anything other than laze around and watch everything die around them, they were just waiting to see it happen to the next thing. Which just so happened to be me.”
“Oh I’m… I’m so sorry…” I was, what other reaction could you possibly have to hearing something like that? I’m not a sociopath, I can have empathy for people who logically could be called my enemy. “You don’t have to say anything else if you don’t want to, I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Nope, you get to listen to the rest of it, that’s your punishment.” On the one hand I wasn’t fully looking forward to hearing more, but it was nice to see her smile having said that though. “They locked me up in a cage and just… sat there watching me. Didn’t try and touch me, didn’t even open the door again once they’d shut it. They just wanted to see how long I lasted. I made it about two months before I started fading away, and just before I was ready to give in and call it a life… he appears.”
“Clark?”
“Like a specter out of hell, he just walked in and killed the werewolves like it was nothing, crippled the one who had brought me there and was about to leave when he heard me struggling on the floor. He hadn’t come for me, he could have just turned around and left but… He didn’t. Clark scooped me off the floor, wrapped a coat around me and told me that everything was going to be alright, he just had to take care of a few things first.”
I know that Clark was trying to do a horrifying thing here, he’d brought me out to ask me to be complicit i
n mass murder after all, but listening to her speak about him… I could honestly see why they all had decided to follow him. In a lot of ways… he sounded kind of like a hero.
“He took me to some friends of his, a few shifters that lived away from the main group, and they made sure that I was fed and hydrated, giving me back the strength that I’d lost over those months. I didn’t realize how close I’d been to the end until I finished my first meal, it was like a put inside of me had finally been filled.”
I’m not even going to begin to pretend to understand what that was like for her, I’ve been through some things in my life that I would call traumatic but… being essentially starved to death for two whole months with no hope of rescue, that’s something that I hope that I can never understand.
“A few months went by with them, then he came back and asked if I would like to be integrated into his clan. He offered me an out if I didn’t want to be involved with any of it, I could move out east and try to build something for myself there, but being on my own was the last thing that I wanted. As soon as I was strong enough I went with him and became a part of the clan and… here we are.”
“Wow…” I said, “That’s… pretty unbelievable. I can see why you’re all so dedicated to defending him.”
“I know that what he does is messy, in some ways it might seem… evil. But what he does gave me a life again, it gave me a family, I owe him and these people so much that I could walk in and out of hell for the rest of eternity and I wouldn’t even begin to pay back the debt that I owe them.” She shrugged. “I know it might seem like a weak excuse, but he’s family. And what else can you do for family except stick by them through everything?”
The family excuse, that was a low blow. There wasn’t any shortage of things that I would do to protect everyone that I’ve come to love, I could empathize fully with her on that. Still though, I was supposed to be trying to win her over, not the other way around, especially not after one story.
“If you weren’t with him, if you decided to go your own way and see where that took you… what would you be doing now? Was there anything that you liked to do before all of this?”
“I used to farm, for most of my life before I was turned. I think that given the chance to I would have probably gone back to that, but I have no real way of knowing honestly. It all feels like that was someone different, I don’t know if I could ever go back to it.” Smiling, somewhat hopefully, her next words were more for herself than me, “Maybe someday…”
The time had passed so easily between us that I didn’t realize it was getting lighter at first, not until we finally broke through the thick line of trees and were staring down at the city in the distance. We had about twenty minutes more of walking to go before we would get back to where I had been taken, though with her for company that time was going to go with no real hassle at all. Rule number one already broken, don’t bond with your captor.
“What about you?” She asked, sweeping a strand of hair to disguise her interest in my answers, “I’ve heard about this alliance that you’ve built, we all have, but… how did you ever make it work?”
“It wasn’t that hard surprisingly, I think everyone was just sick of the endless fighting with no end in sight. All I did was give them a banner and a name to unit under, they’ve been doing their best to work out the smaller details among themselves over the last few months.”
“Impressive,” She said, genuinely impressed, “I never would have expected the hunters of all people to go for it. They can be…”
“Absurdly stupid and selfish?” I suggested, laughing at her nod, “Trust me, they were by far the hardest to convince, we lost quite a few people when one of them decided that he didn’t want to be a part of what we were building. That was a tough time, but we managed to pull through it.”
“Clark told us about that hunter, Tristian, wasn’t it? He sounded like a real asshole whenever he spoke about running into him, and some of the werewolves and shifters that would join us sometimes would talk about him. He sounded like a fanatic.”
“He was, to the very end. I’m trying my best not to end up just like him.”
In hindsight I probably should have been worried about what anyone would say if they saw me right now, but disturbingly enough a tied-up woman walking down the street wouldn’t be the strangest thing that anyone saw this week, it probably wasn’t even the strangest thing someone had seen in the past hour. But with the factories starting to circle around us and my friends getting closer and closer with every step that we took, I couldn’t help but find myself wondering about the safety of my guide. I know that they said that they would control themselves but… well, saying it was one thing, actually doing it was another.
“When we meet up with your people I’m going to undue the binds around your hands, I’m gonna have to ask that you don’t kill me once I do that. I’d like to go back to the camp and get a night’s sleep after this.”
“Trust me, I’m just going to go home and do the same, no killing is going to be done tonight.” I flicked my head behind me, speeding up a step and moving in front of her. “Just in case though, I would stay behind me.”
A shout in the distance was all I needed to know that we were finally here, a small group gathered in the middle of the empty lot and waiting anxiously for us to approach, the restless shapes of Damon and Vincent leading the group even as they paced endlessly. I’ve never been so happy to see someone pacing.
“Damon! Vincent!” I shouted out, speeding up even further and making my guide jog to keep up with me. “I’m here! Don’t do anything stupid!”
“We’re not going to!” Damon shouted back, though I could see how tightly wound they were. One wrong move and they were going to jump right into a fight, the way that we handled all of this was going to be very important.
Stopping twenty feet from the group, which on closer inspection also contained Joseph and Christine, I looked back at my temporary guard and nodded. “Undo the binds and I’ll move forward, they’re not going to hurt you, trust me.”
“If you say so…” She said, looking nervously over at the group, “I’ve seen situations like this before, it doesn’t always work… out…”
Her hands fell limp just as she finished untying the last knot around my wrists, her skin turning pale and her lip quivering. At first I was worried that someone had done something, until I saw that she was staring directly at Damon. That normally wouldn’t be cause for concern, in fact it was a very normal thing to have happen, but that wasn’t what was bothering me about this.
What bothered me was the recognition in her eyes, and going by his wide eyes and shaking hand, he recognized her just the same.
“D-” She stammered, raising her hand to cover her open mouth, “Damon?”
That was already shocking enough, but before I could muster up any sort of response to all of this he uttered something which I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
“Claire?”
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