by X, Alice
“Shit,” Ava said through gritted teeth. “I forgot to cover our tracks.”
“Terry, I think it’s pretty recent too,” the voice called. “But it could be nothing.”
“It’s always something,” another deeper voice answered back. “So many of them think that staying out of the towns and cities will let them pass under the radar. Start the search.”
Ava and Lillian exchanged panicked glances, both more than aware of the fact that the witch hunters were a hair’s breadth away.
“Hey, Terry, I think they went this way.”
Lillian drew in her breath. She looked at Ava and mouthed ‘run’ with wide eyes. The two of them sprinted into the woods. Ava was conscious of how heavy her backpack was. But she couldn’t set it down now, her new identity, her fake passport, they were all in there.
“After them,” the deep voice commanded thick with exertion.
Ava willed herself to move faster, but she was starting to feel a pain in her side that she knew was not a good sign. She could feel her mother just behind her. She prayed that their stamina would hold.
“Stop running — now,” someone behind them screamed. “Stop running now, or we will shoot!”
“Keep… running,” Lillian panted from behind her.
Ava nodded and pushed herself further, ignoring the burn in her side. And then the air was filled with the chilling blast of a gunshot. The sound rang through the forest like an echo and landed at Ava’s feet. She dropped to the ground, breathing heavily. Quickly she gave herself a body check to make sure the bullet hadn’t hit her. Then she turned around to check on her mother.
“Shit, Terry, shit man.…”
“MUM!” Ava screamed as she turned around and crawled forward on her hands and knees. Lillian lay convulsing on the muddy forest floor with blood pouring out of the gunshot wound in her side. She was losing a lot of blood. “No, no, no, no, no….” Ava repeated in desperation as she pushed the palm of her hands onto the wound to try and stop the bleeding.
“You dumb ass,” the deep-voiced Terry said.
“I was aiming for her legs.”
“Mum,” Ava said through sobs. “Mum? Can you hear me?”
“Keep running….” Lillian said weakly. The color was rapidly draining out of her face.
“Help her,” Ava said staring up at the two men who were standing in front of her. Terry was large and well built; he had dark hair, dark eyes, a non-existent upper lip and no eyebrows. To his right was the second witch hunter. He was slight and skinny with large yellow-brown eyes and a face full of pimples. He looked no older than Ava was herself. “Please… help her.”
“She’s too far gone,” Terry replied coldly. “We won’t be able to do anything.”
Ava was engulfed by rage. Accessing her magic instinctively, she stretched out her hand in an attempt to send both Terry and the boy flying across the forest. She waved her hand violently but nothing happened. It was only then that she remembered.
“That won’t work on us, witch,” Terry said harshly. “We’re protected from your spells. Cuff her, Vince, and let’s take her in.”
“No, she’s still alive,” Ava said desperately. “You can still save her.”
“Why would we want to?” Terry asked her calmly. “She’s a witch.”
“She’s not… she’s not!” Ava repeated as she watched the life drain out of her mother. “She’s human…. Please… she’s human.”
“Terry, oh, God, Terry… she’s human. I shot a human.”
“Shut it,” Terry barked. “She ran.”
Ava blocked them out. She curled herself over her mother, knowing that she only had seconds before they ripped her away and took her into the lion’s den. She whispered into her mother’s ear. She wasn’t sure what she said or what promises she made. She just wanted her mother to hear her voice.
“This is no time to be a gentleman, Vince,” Terry yelled impatiently. “Take her.”
Ava held her mother tighter.
“TAKE HER!”
Ava felt rough hands on either side of her as she was forced away from her mother and into a standing position. She swayed in place, aware that if she wasn’t being held up, she would fall. She stayed still, numb to the bone, as Vince cuffed her and proceeded to push her through the forest with Terry at their backs.
Ava didn’t look back. She knew if she did, her mother’s lifeless body would forever haunt her.
She pushed every image and thought out of her head. It was the only way she could survive now. She pushed it all out of her mind. All that remained were her father’s last words to her. She repeated them over and over again like a mantra. She repeated them until they became a prayer.
Chapter 7
Ava gasped in her sleep and woke all at once with her eyes wide open and her heart thundering against her chest. She had been having a nightmare, but for a moment there, it had felt like a memory. Ava got up and went to the sink at one corner of her cell. She splashed water onto her face and then got back into bed. She had managed to get several hours of uninterrupted sleep before the nightmare had reared its ugly head.
Her bed was warm, but she still shivered. Uncertainty wrapped itself around her like a steel hug, turning the air cold. It took a moment before she realized that she no longer felt so alone. She sat up a little straighter, surprised by that. Her heart rate slowed to a normal pace, and she relaxed again.
Thomas appeared at the same time he always did. His face was harsh steel when he opened the door, but it softened immediately after it was closed.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning,” Ava mumbled back taking care to avoid his eyes.
She felt a blush creeping onto her cheeks. She tried desperately to keep her face impassive and nonchalant, but she was not sure it was working. All at once the memory of their last meeting jumped to the forefront of her mind, it seemed to fill the space between them. She was aware of the fact that Thomas had not sat down yet. He stood before her, looking uncertain, his blue eyes were bright and filled with competing emotions. A sudden fear gripped Ava.
“Did you change your mind?” she asked bluntly.
He looked startled. “What do you mean?”
“Did you change your mind about helping me get out of here?” Ava asked desperately.
“Of course not,” he said affronted. “I made you a promise.”
Ava gave a sigh of relief. “Oh,” she said. “I just thought….”
Thomas raised his eyebrows and waited for her to finish her sentence, but Ava trailed off feeling self-conscious again. He didn’t push her. Instead, he finally took his seat in the chair opposite her bed. Ava could almost hear the unspoken conversation that sat between them. It was making her ears hurt.
“Ava?” Thomas broke the palpable silence. His voice was soft but it resonated through the room like an echo.
“Yes?”
“We should… talk,” he said finally.
Ava took a deep internal breath as she forced herself to meet his eyes. “Yes, we should.”
For some reason, Ava found it hard to read his expression. It was as though her doubts were clouding out her powers of observation and making her second-guess everything.
“The last time we spoke….”
“Yes?”
“I made you a promise.”
Ava nodded.
“And then… we… we were together,” he said, his voice stayed even and carefully controlled.
Ava copied his tone. “We were.”
“I just… I don’t want….” He stopped talking abruptly as his eyes clouded over.
“Just tell me Thomas,” Ava said impatiently, fearing that his feelings were not the same.
He stood up and paced slowly as though to steady himself. “I don’t want this to be some kind of trade.”
Ava raised her eyebrows in confusion. “What do you mean by ‘Some kind of trade'?”
“I made the decision to help you,” Thomas said with more confidenc
e in his voice. “And, I don’t expect anything in return. I just … I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything.”
Ava cringed slightly as he spoke, as she slowly understood his meaning. “Thomas….”
“I just wanted to make that clear.”
“I wanted to be with you,” Ava interrupted him. “Because you were the only person who was kind to me, and because you treated me like a person and not some freak. Make no mistake, Thomas; I didn’t want you because you could set me free. I wanted you because… I just couldn’t help it.”
He listened to her expressionlessly, and, somehow, that gave her the confidence to keep going. When she finished, his eyes seemed to burn brighter. For a moment Ava thought he was going to sit back down and that would be the end of it.
Instead, he took one long stride, and he was at her bed. He reached down and wrapped one arm around her waist as he pulled her up towards him. She saw a quick flash of burning blue before his lips were crushing hers, and her head was spinning.
This kiss was not soft or uncertain. It was forceful and insistent. Ava wrapped her arms around Thomas and returned the kiss.
When they finally broke apart, Ava was short of breath and her lips felt almost bruised. He gazed into her eyes, as though to make sure they were both still on the same page. Then he kissed her again. It was only a soft touch, but Ava understood. It was the confirmation of his promise.
Chapter 8
That night, Ava dreamed about being with Thomas. She had been so overwhelmed and unprepared for the strong feelings they shared. She had not immediately recognized how loaded it had been. There had been a conversation passing between them like a secret. They were from two completely different worlds, they held different beliefs and different priorities, and their lives would take different paths. Her kiss had been a question, and his kiss had been the reply. It was the great unspoken conversation between them. Those feelings had to be put aside, because they had no place in their separate futures.
“I’m doing everything I can,” Thomas said in a business-like way when he came to her cell the next day. He made no mention of their kisses, or the fact that they had crossed a line that probably should have been left alone. “But, this will take time.”
“I understand,” Ava replied.
“We have another two weeks before your course of injections will be complete,” Thomas told her. “Which means….”
“I’ll be ready to be Cleansed,” Ava finished for him.
Thomas nodded. “Which means we have less than two weeks to get you out of here.”
“Is that possible?”
Thomas looked uncertain. “I’m working on it.”
“What happened to the two men they brought in?” Ava asked abruptly.
“They’re both in holding rooms down the hall,” Thomas replied.
Ava cringed internally.
“I think your best chance to escape will be the day before your Cleansing has been scheduled,” Thomas went on, oblivious to Ava’s tangled thoughts.
“The day before?” Ava repeated incredulously. “That’s really… risky.”
“This area is too heavily watched,” Thomas replied. “There is no way I can walk out of here with you without arousing suspicion. There is no reason for you to leave this cell. But just before Cleansing, every witch is taken into the medical lab where their bloodstream is checked to make sure they’re ready to be Cleansed. That will be our only opportunity.”
“What is the serum even for?” Ava asked trying to control the disgust in her voice. “I mean… what is its purpose?”
“It separates the magical genes from the normal ones,” Thomas replied. “So that when it comes time for Cleansing, the process is easier — less painful.”
“I see,” Ava said through gritted teeth, trying to remain detached. “What happens when we’re inside the medical lab? Won’t there be guards there too?”
“Doctors and lab technicians mostly, and they’re not fighters.”
“Neither am I,” Ava pointed out.
Thomas ignored that. “I’ll be your guard on that day, which means I’ll be carrying a gun. The doctor in charge will ask you to sit down before she runs the tests. It will be my job to strap you into the chair.”
Ava was starting to see where this was going.
“Let me guess,” she said. “I manage to take the gun from you.”
Thomas nodded. “Be convincing.”
Ava raised her hands in frustration. “I may get a hold of your gun, but I still won’t be able to waltz out of this labyrinth. I’ll be surrounded before I can blink. They’ll shoot me down or knock me out, and I’ll be right back where I started.”
“That is true,” Thomas nodded.
“Please tell me there’s more to this plan?”
Thomas cracked the ghost of a smile. “Once you have my gun,” he went on, “grab the doctor.”
“I… grab the doctor?” Ava asked in confusion, and then it dawned on her. “She’s my ticket out of here, isn’t she?”
“She is.”
“Okay,” Ava said trying to keep up. “I have another question.”
“Shoot.”
“Is this doctor really so important that holding her hostage is going to get me out of here?”
“She is,” Thomas said again.
“Why?”
“You’ve probably heard of her,” Thomas said. “Her name is Rozan Talbot.”
Ava drew in her breath. “No.”
Thomas nodded. “That’s why she’s so important.”
“She’s the one who invented the Cleansing process and the serum,” Ava said almost to herself.
Thomas nodded. “She was also the one who discovered and perfected these little metal deflectors.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out the metal pendant that nullified Ava’s magic. “Without these, we would have lost this war a long time ago.”
“That’s interesting,” Ava said.
“What is?”
“The fact that you just used the term ‘we’ and yet you’re helping me escape,” Ava pointed out.
Thomas looked down. “I’m still on their side.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s who I am,” Thomas replied.
“No, it’s not,” Ava insisted. “If it were, you and I wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Thomas was taking pains to avoid her eyes. “The only reason you and I are having this conversation in the first place is because I am incompetent and weak.”
Ava flinched at the aggression in his tone. “How…?”
“I’m usually good at this,” Thomas said slowly. “I get around the witches I’m put in charge of. I talk to them until they feel comfortable around me. I gain their trust so that the entire process flows smoothly, but still, I never let myself get involved. No matter how friendly I may be with them, I never get too close. But this time….”
“But this time?” Ava prompted him.
“This time I broke my own rules,” Thomas said bitterly. “You stopped being just another witch. You became a person; a person I have feelings for. I care about you, Ava. Now that I see you that way, I can’t let you go through it.”
“Every witch who has come through these walls was also a person, a human being who was stripped of choice,” Ava said fiercely. “I’m no different from any one of them. If I am a person to you, then they should be too.”
Thomas’s eyes snapped up to meet her own. “You’re asking too much from me.”
Ava shook her head. “I think you know already that what you’re doing here is wrong. You’re just frightened of something.”
Thomas dropped his gaze again.
“Is it your father?”
“My father is a good man,” Thomas said immediately, his tone hardening.
Ava reminded herself to tread carefully. “I think you may be confusing a good father with a good man.”
Thomas was breathing heavily, but when he spoke his voice was even and sof
t. “We were abandoned by our mother. He did the best he could for us.”
Ava thought of her own father. She recalled the day he had found Harry doodling an image of the Akkadian Society emblem on the back of one of his journals. Gregory had taken one look at the plain triangle that represented the rebel witch group, and he had made Harry rip out the page and burn it.
“Don’t let yourself be drawn into other men’s pointless battles,” he had told Harry gently. “This is a war between two egos, and your support will not mean a thing to whatever side you choose.”
“He included two young boys in a war that didn’t concern them,” Ava said quietly. “He put your safety at risk.”
She saw the stubborn set of Thomas’s jaw. “Stop talking about him,” he said furiously. “You don’t know him.”
Ava fell silent. She knew she had gone too far and yet, a part of her wanted to go still further. Thomas seemed unable to sit still. He rose suddenly and started pacing frantically until the fury on his face had ebbed and his hands had stopped shaking.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said at last.
Thomas closed his eyes. “I made you a promise, so I’m going to keep it,” he said as he tilted his face towards her. “But make no mistake — I am a witch hunter.”
Ava looked at him sadly. “And, I am a witch.”
Chapter 9
“God, what is that sound?” Ava asked in irritation.
Overhead the ceiling was filled with the sound of sharp bangs. It had been going on for half the night without pause.
“They’re reinforcing the burnt metal in the foundation walls,” Thomas replied.
“When will they stop?”
“A few hours.”
Ava groaned. It answered the question of why she couldn’t perform magic anywhere within headquarters. The whole facility was reinforced in the spell blocking system that Rozan Talbot had discovered nearly seventeen years ago.
“How often do you do this?”
“Once a year,” Thomas replied.
“Lucky me,” Ava said bitterly.
“What was that?” Thomas asked raising his voice so that he could be heard over the metal screeches.
