Chapter 18
I was flying, soaring through the hot, dry air. I couldn’t breathe and I was dizzy; not feelings I had ever associated with flying. When I suddenly dropped hard on the ground, I gasped, blinked.
I had fallen on my back, on the sand, and I was staring at the wide blue sky. It was early morning, judging by the lightening of the sky to my right. With a groan, I rolled onto my stomach, before painstakingly pushing myself to my hands and knees. I looked up.
Scott was a few feet away, lying on his stomach, his face mashed into the sand. He was panting, gasping for breath. I crawled to him and shoved at his shoulder none too gently. “Wake up, Scott!” I shoved again.
I remembered that Riley told me Drainers were dead tired after draining and Scott had done that most of the night. He’d kept a steady flow of draining of me, then zapped Silas and me. Jaw clenched, I concentrated hard, very nearly busting a brain cell, as I called for some water. The same tap as before materialised in the sand to my right and I cupped my hands beneath, let the water pool in them before throwing the cold water in Scott’s face.
He gasped and surged to his hands and knees. “What was that for?” he yelled. I cupped my hands again, and once more threw the water in his face. He brought up his arm to protect himself –too late- and sat back on his heels. “Shanna! Stop it!”
“You deserve that and more, you miserable traitor! How could you do that to me! How could you, Scott! I trusted you!”
“No, Shanna, you didn’t.” he said quietly. “You liked me and you wanted to trust me but I never felt your complete faith in me.” With trembling hands, Scott leaned forward and drew water in his hands before bringing it to his mouth. He did it twice more before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His gaze was intense, questioning.
I felt a surge of anger at his words but I couldn’t deny them. From the moment I’d seen the way Gaspar looked at Scott, I’d had my doubts. “You’re right,” I admitted. “But not completely. I really felt a kinship with you since we were both in a similar situation. I like your sense of humour and I am forever grateful that you saved my life twice.”
Scott grimaced. “I got you into the situation.”
“Yes and no. You really lost your memory?”
He nodded.
“Well, without your knowing, yes you got me there but it was also my fault. I wrote about you, remember? And I acted on what I’d written.”
“Why is that, you suppose? I mean, that you wrote about me.”
I shrugged and with a finger, I flicked the tap shut. “You and my parents are the only people I’ve ever written about. Besides the characters in my books, of course.”
I looked up and met his gaze. The sun was rising, bathing us both in its warm glow and I took this as a good omen. The new day was starting as were new beginnings. Did he realise what I’d just admitted? That the only people I wrote about were the members of my family?
“So what now?” I asked.
“Now we run away as fast and far as we can.”
Scratch that thought about new beginnings.
“What?”
He rose, slapped the sand from his jeans. “You heard me, we have to go. Now.” He pointed in the opposite direction of the sun.
I rose slowly, settled my hands on my hips and said, “No way, we’re going that way.” I gestured with my chin in the direction of the sun where I knew the village was.
Scott sighed and reached for my wrist. I slapped his hand away and took a step back. “Shanna, we don’t have time for this; we have to go now.”
“Then go your way and I’ll go mine.”
I shouldn’t have turned my back on him. He grabbed my shoulders, spun me around and caught my flailing arms. He began tugging me forward, his hand an iron manacle around my right wrist.
“Scott, stop! We have to go back to the Inn!”
“No, we have to get away from it as far as possible!”
“But why?” I cried out in exasperation.
“Because Silas will be after us both!”
“What? You killed him!”
With every step he took pulling my arm, I tugged back, fought his every step, tried to retreat. Every inch was further from my parents and from Riley. I couldn’t afford to lose even a single millimetre to Scott. Why couldn’t he understand that?
Finally, he stopped, turned to me but didn’t release my arm. “No, Shanna, I didn’t. You cried out when you tripped and I dropped my f- . . . Silas to catch you.” His voice caught at his adoptive father’s name. “I didn’t finish the draining,” he said, his voice low.
“You’re kidding right?” my voice was hollow, devoid of any emotion. “You’re just telling me a very bad joke, right?”
“I’m afraid not.”
I screeched and wrenched my arm from his fingers. I made a desperate dash toward the sun but Scott caught up to me again, spun me around. In one swift move, I turned and shoved at him.
He shoved me back. “What’s wrong with you? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“As opposed to letting them get butchered, is that your master plan?” I yelled with another shove.
“He disappeared! He left before I was even out the door.” He shoved back.
If I was being level-headed, I would realise that we were acting like children, shoving each other in the middle of the desert, screaming at the top of our heads. I didn’t know if this was how siblings acted, but I was far from level-headed.
I shoved. “So he can be anywhere right now?”
“Yes! That’s why we have to run!”
“Scott, do you really think he’ll come after us when he has our parents under hand?”
“They are your parents; I have no parents!” His voice was fierce, his eyes were narrowed. “They abandoned me.”
“No they didn’t. You heard them; you were kidnapped.” My chest was heaving. My body knew it was tired, it had suffered so much in the past hours but my brain refused to let it shut down. There was so much at stake and it all boiled down to convincing the man before me, Scott, my brother, my friend, to help me.
“My father denies it.”
“Your father? Oh, you mean that sorry excuse for a human being who murdered hundreds of RM’s?”
“I murdered them, Shanna! I did it!”
He screamed his rage and his pain. The sound was that of a wounded animal, one that knew its end was near. Fists clenched, face upturned, Scott dropped to his knees. The scream seemed endless and his voice was hoarse.
I didn’t know how to react as I stood there before him, rubbing the goose bumps from my flesh.
Finally, he lowered his head and his raw, naked eyes met mine with such pain and anguish that I flinched. “Silas found out when I was very young that I could kill people. It started with animals, then once, I weakened a child to the point of it fainting just because I’d laid a hand on him. Silas tested me often and when I fought it, he said that I had a special gift and I needed to learn how to use it. For our protection.”
I felt the warmth of the sun on my back but it wasn’t enough to keep a chill from creeping up my spine at Scott’s words.
“I was eight years old when Silas approached me and told me he’d been threatened. He said that an RM had accused him of some treachery and was planning to murder him. He told me that if the RM succeeded in murdering him, I’d be alone in the world. We didn’t have any friends since we were constantly on the move.
“He transported me into the RM’s castle and . . . and I drained him while he slept.” A ghost of a smile appeared on Scott’s lips. “Silas must have known I couldn’t have done it if the man was awake.”
“What happened then?” I was being emotionally pulled in two directions. Part of me wanted to run to my parents, as fast as I could but the other part wanted to stay here and listen to Scott. I let the latter win because I needed his help and felt that he had to unburden his shoulders first. I just hoped he did it fast.
“I fainted. When I came to, I was in bed in the home we lived in at the time. My father had made several incisions on my body and was draining me of some blood.”
I gasped and my hand flew to my mouth. “But why?”
“Because that’s where the energy I drain bottles up. In my blood. It would make me very powerful if I kept it but that wasn’t the reason I was draining the RM’s.”
“What about the Wogs?”
Scott grimaced. “To put it simply, they are the victims’ soul. Every time I’ve drained a person, I’ve puked up this . . . ball of light. The first time, it got away because we didn’t catch it, didn’t know what to make of it. The second time, though, Silas caught it in the same vials he uses for the blood. The light banged against the glass, trying to get out but it couldn’t. After a few days, its light began to fade until we were sure it had died. Then, one morning, it became black and it began to pulse, as if it had a heartbeat. Silas removed the cap and poured out the contents. For a moment, the ball hovered above the ground, then slowly it transformed into . . . well, a Wog.”
“There are dozens of them,” I said softly.
“I know,” his voice was tight with emotion. “I know!”
“Why didn’t you leave him?”
“Where would I have gone?” he asked softly. “He was right about one thing; I only had him in the world. He raised me, brought me up to be the man I am. I was a constant disappointment to him because he thought me weak for always fighting him; for refusing to kill the RM’s mindlessly. He’d brought me up to be totally dependant of him and since we always moved, I had no where to call home. No family or friends to take me in.”
“You do now,” I said softly, my voice as gentle as the breeze.
His eyes had never left mine during the whole conversation. Not once did he try to shy away from my direct gaze. Now, as I watched, his eyes softened and slowly filled with tears. Emotion seemed to swell up in his chest for it inflated as he tried to swallow convulsively, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
Taking a leap of faith, I held out my hand to him and said, “So what do you say? Are we going to save our family?”
He studied me for a long moment before nodding decisively. When he took my hand, I realised that at some point, he had gloved his hands and I was thankful for the gesture.
We walked as fast as we could without tiring ourselves.
“You seemed as surprised as I was when your parents said I was their son.”
“Our parents,” I rectified. “And I was. I didn’t know they’d had any other children.
He laughed drily. “Well, they must not have loved me very much, then, if they were so fast to forget me.”
Gripping his arm, I forced him to stop. “Don’t ever think that,” I said quietly. “There’s a few things you need to know.”
As we picked up the pace, I told him of my lonely childhood, of my parents’ fierce protectiveness. I told him that I’d always felt there was a reason for being shut away but I had never asked them why. “Now I know. They’d lost one child, had run away from their home to lick their wounds and protect their last child.”
“Didn’t stick around long to search for me.”
“Actually, they did. I was two years old when we left Rydon. Mom says you disappeared the day of my birth.”
We were quiet after that until we arrived at the village. There were deep indentations in the sand where the Wogs had lain but they were nowhere to be seen.
“They have finally gone home,” Scott said quietly, almost reverently. “When I was younger, I used drain one every once in a while. It was such a cruel, inhuman thing to do to keep them on this earth. Those who fought it the hardest, I released them.”
“Fought it?”
“Yes, fought the form. You must have noticed how unnaturally these beasts act?”
“Yeah, actually, I did. They creep on you, instead of running and barking, and they seem to hesitate when they could be attacking.”
“My father would kick them into submission if he caught them hesitating.” He shook his head. “It amazes me that they never turned on him. My personal opinion is that this form is so unnatural, so contrary to what a soul should be that the good side of it fights the bad side.”
“But you said the light disappeared.”
“Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there anymore.”
We walked down the street, turned right at the next intersection and stopped only a few stores from the Inn.
Scott turned his head and looked down at me. “Got a plan?”
“Go in and save the day.”
“Works for me. Let’s go.”
He took my hand and guided me in. What we saw stopped us dead in our tracks: Riley, standing before our parents, blood trailing down his left temple, a single white sheet wrapped around his waist. In his right hand he held the knife that Silas must have dropped and he was slashing away at the Wogs who were approaching him and the people he was defending.
It would only take a few seconds before the Wogs understood that if they jumped him as one, he would be rapidly defeated.
I mean, uh, oh dear, now they're going to have to battle Silas some more...that's very bad. Yes, bad. *nods head convincingly*
