Abomination (The Path to Redempton Book 1)

by Kimbra Swain

  “You should have adjusted your protections,” he said quietly.

  “They should not have called you crazy,” I said.

  “My dear, lest you forget, I am crazy,” he replied.

  “No sir, you are brilliant and a genius. Besides, I think it added to the demonstration,” I smirked.

  He turned to look at me, and from the pupil to the sclera, his eyes turned black. “Dead men have no money to give to our research, and they were there on my request. I’ll have you remember, Miss Vaughn, that I have a reputation to keep. You keep your petty ideals out of my life’s work. If you ever do that again, I will make you mine.”

  I shivered and moved away from him. I saw the driver look back at us. The driver was his. Mwenye had found a way to pull the life out of a human just to the point where they would still live, but all of their life force would be consumed by him. They were no better than zombie slaves. I’m not even sure what you’d call them. And he owned them and commanded their bodies through their souls inside him. It corrupted him with each life he took, but it also made him extremely powerful. I saw him idly twisting the snake ring on his finger. The ring was an exquisitely carved black metal. The eyes of the snake were blood red and sparkling. With just a few words, he could rip my soul out of me, and that would be the beginning of a whole new torture the like of which I had never known.

  “Yes sir, of course,” I said submitting to his authority over me, “I apologize. It will never happen again.”

  “See that it doesn’t,” he said coolly. “Now come over here, and make me a happy man.” I cringed. There were days I loved him. But there were days when he had exerted power, and he hungered for more. Using power like the protection spell sucked the energy out of me. I could not feed off the power of other people like he did, or at least I hadn’t tried yet. If he used it like he did today, he thrived. Right now, power consumed him. His soul was the darkest I knew, and I loved it. I crawled over to him, and pulled my skirt up around my waist. He smiled with his obsidian eyes. His dark brown hands slid up my legs. I could feel the coolness of the ring slide along my skin. I straddled him, and did my best to make him happy.

  My ribs were on fire. The pain exclaimed what a monumentally bad idea this had turned out to be. I felt the copper taste rise in my mouth, and I spat blood onto the mat.

  “I know you did not just spit blood on my mat!” Mr. Duarte yelled. I felt him hovering over me. His breath was hot against my cheek. “Get up, and go again.”

  Wearily, I rose to my feet and took the defensive first stance he had just showed me. I leaned forward on my toes waiting for my opponent's next move. My opponent was a beefy man who was much larger than me. I was above average height at 5’9 but this joker was 6’3 at least and had a good 100 lbs. on me. He was fast and skilled. His face showed no emotion. He beat the crap out a woman, and he showed no remorse. It was the way we taught all men. And women for that matter. No emotion. No remorse. If a confrontation on the streets ever got to a physical fight, you could not afford to have a heart or compassion. Mr. Duarte remained close to the fight. His presence was intimidating if I let it be.

  If I were being completely honest, I could squash this oversized bug in a moment, but that wasn’t the game I played. I had taken a spot in the new class of trainees as some street kid orphan who had no clue how to fight or protect herself. I don’t know whose brilliant idea that it was to get beat to hell on a daily basis. Oh, yes, that was my brilliant, stupid, idiotic idea.

  The man took several offensive strikes at me, and I defended each one of them in turn. But he sped up his steps as Duarte urged him on, and I let myself get tangled up in my own footwork only to catch another cross against my chin and hit the mat hard. The room spun and went dark. I faintly heard him yell, “Get up, Rachel!”

  I woke up alone on the mat in the dark. They didn’t even help me to the infirmary this time. Usually I woke up there. I hoisted myself up. Trying to play the part of the poor, injured girl even though my bruises had already started to heal, and my head cleared, I wobbled toward the door. I scanned the room in the darkness, and a shadow against the far wall caught my eye.

  “Don’t leave until you’ve cleaned your blood off my mat,” he said.

  I bowed my head in respect to him as he approached me. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Rachel. Get better. Your life depends upon it,” he said as he walked up to me as if he had more to say. His presence loomed over me for a moment, then he brushed past me and walked to the door. The slightest touch sent a shiver down my body.

  I walked over to the light switches and turned on the lights. There were several splats of blood where I had laid. One of them smeared. I realized my cheek was covered in blood from where my face rested on the mat. I grabbed some supplies from the closet and began to clean the mess. There was a much easier way to do this, but I had my grandfather bind my magic before entering the school. I didn’t want to give myself a way out. I knew he would be close by and watching if I ever needed it released. I wanted to be on equal footing with the students. Even in the mundane task of cleaning a floor, I couldn’t use my magic. The lights flicked on behind the two-sided glass revealing my grandfather with a grave look on his face. I nodded to him in reassurance. He flicked the light back off. Magic was like blood to me. It’s been a part of me since birth. It flowed through me influencing every move and decision I made. I struggled without it now. Thankfully a long life of experience helped me through this experiment. Most wielders don’t come into their talents until puberty, but mine had been there from the first moment I could remember. I was different than most wielders because of that early manifestation of power. Perhaps caused by some diluted form of grandfather’s blood flowing through my bloodline. Perhaps one of my unknown parents had bestowed the gift upon me. None of those things I knew for sure. All I knew is that it filled me. It consumed my very being, and I was extremely good at wielding it.

  Wielders go by all sorts of names. Mages, witches, wizards, and druids were of the light variety. The darker wielders usually went with warlocks, sorcerers and various -mancers. I never seemed to identify with any of them. They were all governed by a group of stuck up pricks who called themselves The Conjurer’s Association. And for the most part if you had any sort of magic, they knew you and made sure that you knew them. Within this elite group was an even more elusive entity called the Fraternity of Magic. The FOMs were Master Wizards. Most had been around for ages, and in none of that time did they ever feel the need to lower themselves to humanity’s standards save one, Jasper Samara, who taught me to harness the inherent power in me. They had their own set of laws, and expected the rest of the magic world to follow them.

  Thankfully, I fell under my grandfather’s authority which made me virtually untouchable to them. My activities with The Agency were noble, and although I didn’t give a second thought to the TCA or the FOMs, I tried to work within their expectations as to not cause any friction between them and The Agency. In fact, The Agency employed a great number of wielders of different sorts. All of us followed the rules that they established to keep the attention away from ourselves and our activities, and the TCA out of our daily operations.

  I finished cleaning the floor, and made sure I left no blood behind. Leaving blood with open access could cause problems for me if it fell into the wrong hands, but here in the training center everything was greatly controlled. I didn’t worry too much about that sort of thing here. I replaced all the cleaning supplies, turned off the lights and slowly made my way back to the sleeping quarters.

  It was a typical barracks. Bunk beds to sleep in, and trunks to hold personal items. The rooms were not segregated by gender. So, most of the time I saw far more of my fellow students than I wanted to, but generally I kept to myself and kept my eyes down. I didn’t want to make friends. That was not my purpose here. I grabbed a clean set of clothes from my trunk and headed to the showers.

  Each shower head had its own stall,
but it didn’t have a curtain or privacy from the traffic in the restrooms. I hated this part more than anything. I undressed and turned the water on. I tuned out all the sounds around me, and focused on getting cleaned up as quickly as possible. My thoughts drifted back to my shower at home with its massive space and multiple shower heads. I missed home badly.

  “Hey, you are alive,” a female voice behind me said. I only grunted in response. “Aw, come on Rachel. At least he didn’t kick you out of the program.”

  “He probably will soon enough. By the way, thanks for leaving me in there knocked out and bleeding,” I replied. I hated the way we did things, especially in regards to getting kicked out of the program. When you were kicked out, we dropped you back out on the streets to fend for yourself. It highly motivated the students, but over the years I’d seen so many people wash out and later read their obituaries. I would read some small blurb of the homeless teenager that overdosed on drugs or got killed in a gang fight. I wanted to change that among other things.

  I turned off the water and turned to face Samantha Taylor, my bunk mate. She slept on the top bunk, except when she shared a bunk with one of the guys. She was a wiry 5’7. Her dark hair was cut to her chin and straight. We had picked her up in Seattle from a homeless shelter. She’d been in trouble for prostitution and theft. She did what she could to survive on the streets after running away from her home. The best I could tell her parents weren’t bad people. No abuse or any such thing. She was just a rebellious teen. Once she had decided to go back home it was too late. Her parents were killed in a car accident. Tragedy filled the stories of my fellow classmates and their life experiences. I had my own stories, but they seemed far removed from the fresh hell most of these kids were living.

  “He wouldn't let us help you.” She handed me the towel and a look of concern crossed her face, “You are really bruised up this time. Rachel, I hate seeing you go through this. Maybe if you talk to him, he can find a way to get you out of the program and do something else around here. Surely they need kitchen help or cleaning people.”

  I waved my hands at her and said, “No, no. I either do this or I wash out. I will get it. I promise. I think I did better today.” I knew that I hadn’t.

  “Rach, you got knocked out. That’s not better”

  “He’s ten times bigger than me,” I protested.

  “Yeah, well on the streets you will find guys bigger than Travis, and they won’t go easy on you.”

  “You think he went easy on me?” I said.

  “Yes. Well, he tried, but Mr. Duarte kept urging him on. Finally, instead of getting his own ass kicked, I suppose he decided it was better to finish you off.”

  “It was a mercy knockout?”

  “Something like that.”

  I frowned. Perhaps I’d played this weakling deal up too much. I’d have to start slowly showing that I was somewhat competent just to finish my mission here. But things were getting more and more complicated. I had gone into it to see how Tadeas Duarte taught on a first-hand basis. I didn’t want to be his star pupil. I wanted to be the one that would wash out. I wanted to see how he would react, because in every single class he had, there was rarely a wash out. I could tell he became progressively frustrated with me. I showed him all the proper respect. However, my intentional lack of performance gave him no hope that I would progress beyond his class. He had handled it very well so far. He even instructed me sometimes one on one. He had tried inspiring hope. He had tried threats. He searched for the right way to get me to do just enough so that he could pass me. Because at The Agency, we gave our instructors not only the praise for producing the canvas crews that we needed to put on the streets, but we also held them responsible for taking the washouts back out to the streets. We expected it to be an agonizing ride to drop someone out on the streets with nothing. It wasn’t blame for letting a student fail. Rather it was a test of their own fortitude and emotional state. If an instructor started to exhibit no remorse for losing students, we removed them from the training center. We wanted our instructors to be brutal and forceful. However, a lack of emotions indicated that the instructor had grown immune and disconnected from the very lives that we were trying to save. We found these instructors other positions within The Agency. He hadn’t had a washout in years until me. It bothered him greatly. I could tell every time he looked at me. And today was the first time, as he yelled in my ear that I had heard a bit of desperation in his voice. It pained me to put him through it, but I needed to know if he was exactly what I looked for going forward with my plan for the future of The Agency.

  I wrapped the towel around me and walked into the cold concrete barracks toward our bunk, “Look Sam,” I turned to face her as she followed me, “I will do better tomorrow. You will see. I know I can do this.”

  “Yeah sure, Rach,” she replied with the utmost lack of confidence, “You should eat, but I warn you, those bruises aren’t pretty.”

  “Hoodie it is,” I replied.

  “Good idea,” she said as she turned to follow Travis and some of the others from our class out the door. They were heading to the cafeteria to eat. We had no more sessions that day and most of the students would eat, then use the rest of the evening to sleep. Some watched television or played video games in the social room. Some found other more nocturnal activities to pass the time.

  I planned to go eat, then head back to one of the dark training rooms to gather my thoughts and go through my forms. I took that private time to center myself. To focus on my goals for this endeavor and work through potential issues. I put on a navy hoodie, grey sweat pants and tied my blonde hair up into a ponytail. My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten much since I started this farce 3 months ago. The typical class was 6 months, depending on the needs of the canvas crews. The food here wasn’t that great. Cafeteria style offerings. I usually hit the salad bar, but occasionally went for some pasta for the carbs. Today I needed protein. I had to heal up. Normally I did this magically, but now I relied solely on the healing qualities of my not completely human body. By the time I got to the cafeteria it bustled with many students. We had 4 to 6 classes going at any time, and most at different stages of the process. Each class could have anywhere from 12 to 20 students depending on who and how many recruits we could gather up. We didn’t rank them or try to put them in certain groups. We never told them where they stood until they got their assignments or got their ride back out to the streets. I grabbed a burger with bacon and cheese and a plate of fries. My starving stomach growled with pleasure at the smells. The beating had taken a lot out of me, and I needed to refuel. This whole mundane living was ridiculous. I chuckled at my conceited self, and sat alone at table close to the side door. There were several entrances to the cafeteria, but I always instinctively positioned myself close to a door. Fights were known to break out, and I wanted no part of that sort of thing. However, if you started a fight anywhere except on the mats, you automatically washed out. Therefore, the Agency required all the instructors to eat with the students to enforce the rules. Well, not eat with them per se, we were all in the same room. The instructors all ate at one table, and we all knew the unwritten rule not to sit at that table. I kept my head down and methodically ate my burger and fries. I tried not to go to fast, but I was anxious to get out of the room. I needed start planning my next moves. Then, a dark shadow covered my plate, and someone sat down with a tray across from me. I looked up to meet the dark green eyes of Tadeas Duarte. I stopped chewing the mouthful of burger I had just bit off and stared at him. I must have looked displeased, because he immediately started explaining himself.

  “Miss Bennett, I don’t mean to disturb you outside of class, but I feel compelled to talk to you about today’s session.”

  I finished chewing my burger. And picked up a fry and started twirling it in ketchup. I didn’t want to appear too interested in what he was saying. But I was very interested. The instructors hardly ever spoke to the students outside the training rooms. It was outside hi
s comfort zone, as well as everyone else’s in the room. More than a few people took notice of him sitting across from me.

  “Would you please stop that, and look at me for a minute? Let me have my say. Then I will be on my way, and not bother you again,” he pushed. There was an urgency in his voice, but also care and concern.

  “Okay,” I responded and dropped the fry, folded my hands under my chin and looked him in the eye giving him my full attention, but making it clear to him I could care less.

  “I have tried every way I know how to keep you from washing out. I’ve tried all sorts of approaches and none of it works. You do understand what happens when someone washes out right?” he paused and looked at me. I didn’t respond. I just continued to watch him. He pushed his tray of food to the side and put his elbows on the table to use his hands while he talked. It was one of his more endearing characteristics. I don’t think he could carry on any sentence without hand movement. I could tell it that he practiced not doing it while in class, but he could hardly stand stoic and talk to all of us. He clasped his hands in front of his forehead leaned toward me in frustration and continued, “I want everyone to succeed, but it seems like you for whatever reason have no desire to complete the program. Please tell me why that is, and if that’s the case, I will stop wasting my time trying to help you.”

  I looked down. I was here playing games with him, and he invested his time and energy in trying to help me succeed. I felt ashamed. As a general rule, my admiration and respect for an instructor who excelled in his field, drove me not to fail him or lose his regard. This time, though, it was part of the game I played. I remember my own magical training. I excelled mostly in part because I never wanted to let my master down. “I do want to complete the program,” I muttered.