Redemption (The Alexa Montgomery Saga)

by H. D. Gordon

  Tommy’s fingers wrapped around my wrists gently and pulled my hands from my face. I shut my eyes and was too much a coward to open them. I guessed this was the price of having held it in the whole time. I should have known that I was not as strong as my sister, that I could not bear the pain and just keep on trucking without breaking down. In my entire life I had only ever seen Alexa cry a handful of times. I, on the other hand, had cried more times than I could count.

  Tommy’s voice, softer and gentler than I had ever heard it. “Death isn’t necessarily the end.” Silence. Then, in a whisper, “Sometimes I think that maybe it’s really the beginning.”

  And then something warm and soft pressed against my lips, hesitant and light. When I opened my eyes, Tommy’s blue eyes were regarding me carefully, and I realized belatedly that he had kissed me. I found that I couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, and though fallen tears were still wet on my face, no new ones were following their footsteps. My lips parted, but all that came out was bated breath.

  Tommy tilted his head. I nodded, not sure at all what I was agreeing to, if anything. And when his mouth met mine once more my eyes slipped closed again, and a sense of warmth like I had never known settled over me. My hand reached up slipped around Tommy’s neck on its own accord, pulling him close to me. My head seemed to be spinning with unasked questions, like how I had come to be in the position and why I was so scared it would be taken away. These things didn’t seem to matter, though. All that mattered right then was that the hurt was less. Still there, maybe always would be, but less.

  Tommy’s hands remained at his sides, but his warm, hard body was pressed up against mine closely, sending heat through the thin fabric of our shirts. Unwanted, ashamedly unwanted, Daniel popped into my mind like a mangled jack springing out of a buried box. I’m not sure how he sensed it, as I was sure I had given no outward indications of my thoughts, but Tommy pulled back from me, his mouth leaving mine slowly, with what seemed like great effort.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw that his were still closed, and a look that was almost painful had come over his handsome face. I sighed heavily, half relieved and half disappointed that he didn’t seem willing to take this any further.

  Eyes still closed, Tommy whispered, “Sleep now, weary soul. I’ll catch the dreams for you, I promise.”

  And eventually, I did as I was told.

  And amazingly, Tommy did as he had promised.

  Lines in the sand

  Most of them had never been directly comforted with it, but they knew it well enough. It was the invisible line in the sand that separated them; put them on one side, or the other. Some of them were immune to it, but most were not. Some of them beat their chests at the idea of war, happily upholding the King’s orders, no matter what they may be. But for those on the other side of it, on the side that was always underscored with a silent, beating fear, the fear of what might happen next, the story was different entirely.

  For the vast majority, those who were not trained fighters, and even some that were, fear had fallen over them like a storm in the dead of night, darkening the skies of their souls with a dirty super cell of warring winds. And what choice did they have, but to follow orders?

  The territory known as Sun City had been first on the list printed on the Summons. This morning they were all to gather at the Council Building to “pledge allegiance” to the King. If they did not, death had been promised to follow. The thing that would save a good number of them was not their whole-hearted belief in the righteousness of their King, but rather the magic he had been so long distributing to them through blood and food to keep them unaware about the things that went on behind the curtains. Many of them did not have neither the mental power nor a strong enough desire to peer behind those curtains.

  But some of them did. And they were herded into Sun City’s Council Building that morning afraid, but so mercifully unknowing that this was to be their last morning on this earth. It was better that they didn’t.

  Sun City was the second smallest of the Five Cities, its residents–not counting the some four thousand of them hidden in the slave village just beyond the city’s border—totaled only ten thousand in all. By midday, that number would be sliced down to two-thirds. By nightfall, just over half of them would remain.

  “Examples must be made, gentlemen,” King William had told his Warriors the night before. “War lays on the horizon, and examples must be made.”

  And they would.

  The sun was a blessing that morning, as it was every morning that it chose to make an appearance. The people, scared though they were, tried to take comfort in its presence as they followed the purple stone paths that served the city. They seemed to be huddling together unconsciously, walking side by side, hand in hand. Perhaps some of them still had that small survival instinct that false civility had tried so hard to beat out of them. Perhaps as a whole they knew that whatever happened next would send a chain of dreadful, if maybe necessary, events into action, beginning with their sacrifice.

  They stood on the lawn of the Council Building in a great mass. The stone structure loomed over them, and the mural of the silver sun painted onto its highest point seemed to leer down at them like a dead eye. Mothers clutched their children at their sides and the men tried their darnedest not to show their fear. But they could taste it. It seemed to have burned their lungs and left a sour taste in their mouths.

  One by one, they were led into the building. And as the day ticked onward, it was becoming more and more obvious that many of them were not coming back out.

  Whispers began to run through the crowd, questions about what was awaiting them on the inside of the Council Building. Many wondered, but did not speak aloud, if it was too late to run. But it took only a look over at the edges of the crowd, where the King’s Warriors stood like a black, barbed fence, to know that escape was no longer an option, if it ever was at all.

  It was a blessing that the stone walls were there to keep them from the happenings on the inside of the Building. They would find out soon enough.

  He lined them up in the largest room the Council Building had to offer, which was usually only used for banquets and balls. Today, no tables with buffets of food were set up, no band playing on the platform that served as a stage. The crystal chandeliers did not glitter on the jewelry of dressed-up women or sparkle off champagne glasses. Today, King William stood atop the platform, and the harsh lights above shone down on his glittering attire and the hard lines of his old face.

  He wasted no energy on an explanation, or any words at all to the terrified people. He simply sat on the platform in a plush chair, his back resting casually against it as he relaxed his body so that he could use the full stolen power of his mind to perform a mass Search. King William was weeding out traitors, and the only mercy he offered them was that he was quick about it. Very quick.

  One by one they were plucked from the group by the King’s enormous Warriors. With their all-black uniforms and hard, impassive faces, it was very much like watching death in motion. They swept through the crowds with more grace and ease than their size should have allowed, seizing men, women and children by the arms and hauling them through two rear double doors that slammed behind them with an undeniable finality.

  There were some who fought. These were ones who refused to ignore their rapidly impending demise and instead of going willingly, decided they would die fighting. Others, mostly women and children, were herded off through the double doors with pleading looks for someone to stop this; someone to please, please, stop this, defend them, just please do something, and the men among them averted their eyes. Sorry, love, no help here.

  Those that fought were killed on the spot. By the time the last groups were hauled into the room, the marble floors were slick and sick with the scarlet of spilled blood. The protests grew fewer and fewer as the day wore on.

  One woman, a Searcher who had taught a class in the elementary school, stalked over to the double doors with her head
held high, but when she got to the exit she turned and faced the crowd and shouted one word. “Cowards!”

  Some of the Wolves and Brockens in the room, men especially, cringed as though she’d slapped them across their faces. Others simply stood, unable to process what was happening. Most of them cried, and their tears fell to the floor to mix with the blood of the fallen, the blood of the brave.

  The King was clever in his doings, and by the end of the day he had suffered no causalities, no loss of a Warrior as the result of the people’s resistance. They were even weaker than he had expected them to be. It was a wonder that they couldn’t see how much they needed him. Without him, they would be easy pickings for the other races.

  The ones that passed the mass Search, the ones that remained standing and present after King William had delivered his mental rape, were sent from the room in a sort of haze, not fully able to grip the terrible gravity that was taking place in here. Their eyes were distant, glossy. But no one cried after they stepped out of the room. Whether it was because they knew that they had just narrowly escaped death, or because they were too afraid to—or both—made no difference. No one cried.

  From the ballroom they were sent into the second largest room in the Council Building, the auditorium. Waiting for them there were fire pits with burning coals glowing red at the bottom. Atop these pits, sticking out like spokes on the wheel of a black wagon, were iron rods with King William’s crest at the end of them. Here, some of the people screamed. The tips of the iron rods glowed as red as the coals at the bottom of the pits, and the people lined up one by one to be branded with them.

  By the end of day, when they were finally released to return to their homes, they were nursing the burns that would leave a scar shaped in the King’s crest on their right shoulders. But it was not the pain of the fresh brands on their arms that kept sleep away that night, but the pain of the fresh burns on their souls.

  And they were the lucky ones. Many homes sat empty that night, as they would the next day and the next. Their occupants’ bodies had been burned, but their heads had been posted on spikes at the gates to the city.

  Alexa

  “Now I need cigarette.”

  “Nonsense.”

  I lifted my head from Kayden’s chest and peered at him out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah,” I said. “No, I’m actually pretty certain it’s a necessity after what we just did. I have to have a cigarette.”

  Kayden stared down at me with eyes as golden as sunlight, and the corner of his mouth turned up the tiniest bit. It was only the slightest difference in the perpetually impassive expression he always wore–a look he reserved for only me. I held in a sigh that would have sounded a touch too girly for my ways with some admitted effort. In the midst of a dark, cold world, Kayden was a spark of warmth that I clung to greedily, and I could not find it in me to be upset with him over what he had done. It was the kind of foolish, love driven deed that I myself may have done.

  He sold his soul, Warrior, my Monster intoned flatly in my head. And we are a selfish creature, you and I. You are not angry because it comes as a relief, doesn’t it? To know that his soul will follow yours into the beyond, be there any beyond at all…comforts you.

  Yes, it comforted me, and there was no point in being ashamed in that. If I had learned one thing in this world, it was that the past was the past and there wasn’t jack-shit you could do about it. For all the magic and wonder, there were no rewind buttons on the show of life, no mulligans or do-overs. Kayden had made his decision out of love, and to spend our time together on this earth angry with him would be a middle finger to the universe, and I thought that the universe was probably already pissed off enough at me already. It had to be. How else could things have gone so terribly wrong?

  I sat up, glancing around for my clothes and sighing when I saw them scattered all about the room. “I have to go check on Nelly, anyway,” I said. “So Nelly, then cigarette. It’s the order of things. The only thing that makes sense.”

  Leaning over the side of the bed, I snatched my t-shirt off of the floor and pulled it over my head. Then I stood up. Kayden released a heavy breath. “I hate it when you do that,” he said.

  “What?”

  A pause. “Put clothes on.”

  This made me laugh, and I sat back down on the bed beside him and bent over so that I could kiss the nearly healed scar on the right side of his chest, where he had taken a bullet for me back at Dangeon. That hadn’t been so long ago, but he had been drinking from me, and it was now just a pink and white star-shaped scar. As strange as it was, I thought that the scar was beautiful, that it made him more beautiful just by being there. Maybe it was the Warrior side of me that was honored to have his love for me etched into the very skin of his body that made me love it so. But then again, I’ve always liked scars. With the number of them I’d incurred just growing up, I kind of had to. I had more scars than I could count, and the painful stories that accompanied them.

  I got up again and found my pants, anxious every moment that my sister was out of my sight now that Kayden was no longer…occupying me. “Well,” I said. “I can’t be running around kicking ass naked. Nobody would take me seriously.”

  Kayden sat up and grabbed his shorts from the floor. “Oh, I think you’d be surprised how seriously they would take you.” He found his shirt and pulled it on over his head. “But then I would have to cut all of their eyes out for looking at you.”

  I smirked at him. “No, Kayden.”

  “No, what?”

  “That’s not a crazy thing to say at all.”

  Kayden chuckled at this, and after we’d slipped on our shoes we went down the hall to Tommy’s room. I knocked on it gently, looking over at Kayden. Panic filled me suddenly, as I realized I could hear no voices coming from the inside. Kayden put his hand on the small of my back, where my Gladius was always tucked. The sword felt very much like a body part to me now, as I never went anywhere without it.

  That’s because you’ve been forced to live by it, Warrior, as surely as you will die by it.

  I rolled my eyes a little as I waited, my foot unconsciously tapping the floor anxiously. “There’s no need for that talk now, thank you very much. I’ve got enough on my mind without your morbid input.”

  The door to Tommy’s room swung open and I released a heavy breath. Tommy stood there squinting and blinking his eyes. They widened a little when they saw me, and he glanced over his shoulder. More panic struck me like a jab to the solar plexus. “Tommy, is Nelly here?” I asked, nearly tripping over my words in my haste to get them out.

  Tommy ran a hand through his hair and nodded. “Yeah, she’s sleeping,” he said.

  I pushed Tommy aside and stepped into the room, needing to see with my own eyes that Nelly was safe before I could relax. She was just as Tommy had said, fast asleep under the covers of his bed. My head tilted as I saw that she was on one side of it, with the covers on the other half drawn back as if someone had just vacated the other side. I spun around and raised my eyebrows at Tommy.

  “What?” he asked casually, though I noticed that a little color bloomed on his cheeks. “Nothing happened. She was tired. I was tired. We slept.”

  I glanced over at Kayden, who was leaning in the doorway in that relaxed way he had that belied his readiness to spring into action at any moment. His golden arms were crossed over his chest and a small smile played behind his eyes. “Um hmm,” I said, looking back over at Tommy. “Do I have to tell that I will cut your heart out if anything goes wrong?”

  Tommy’s old smirk found his lips. “Uh, no, mighty Sun Warrior. I’m pretty sure that part’s a given.”

  I nodded. “Good. I guess you can…go back to sleep then.” I put my hand on Tommy’s shoulder, and he lifted it to his mouth and gave it a light kiss. “Watch over her, okay Tommy?”

  Tommy smiled now. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I went over to the door where Kayden was waiting for me. “Mission accomplished. Now, how about that cigar
ette?”

  Kayden tossed his arm over my shoulder and shook his head. Closing the door to the room, he said, “Good luck, Tommy.” Tommy’s answering chuckle was drowned out as we stepped out into the hallway.

  I looked up at Kayden. “Good luck? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Kayden gave me an innocent look. “Nothing at all,” he said.

  I gave him a light jab in the side, and he laughed. “You’re abusive.”

  “Umm hmm,” I said. “To say the least.”

  Kayden laughed at this, and together we walked down the dimly lit hallway, the only light offered from the tiny glittering stars placed into the walls. When Kayden pushed open the door that led to the outside of the cottage, the real stars overhead blinked in the night sky as though we had awakened them. I stepped off of the path that the door led out to and into the small garden that flanked it. A few Pixies fluttered around, floating from flower to flower, trailing light behind them like tiny comets. I took a seat on a carved wooden bench that sat beside the house, and Kayden sat down next to me.

  Retrieving a cigarette and lighter from my pocket, I set flame to it and inhaled deeply. The smoke felt pleasantly poisonous in my lungs. I rested my head on Kayden’s shoulder at stared out at the night. “Kayden, what do you think happens when we die?”

  Now who’s being morbid?

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Kayden was quiet for so long that I lifted my head to look at him, wondering if maybe he hadn’t heard me. But his golden eyes met mine and I saw that he had. I waited. Finally, he released a long sigh. “I don’t know, Alexa” he said, and his soft Scottish accent gave me goose bumps the way it always did when he said my real name. “But I don’t think it matters either way.”

  I sat back and thought about this for a time, and as always, Kayden was more than happy to let silence hang between us. He had always been a man of few words, and this answer was so much like him that it didn’t surprise me in the least. Also, the more I thought about it, the more I thought he was probably right.