The War Inside

Chapter 1

It was the blood that caught Thea’s attention. Dark crimson smeared across the cheek of a pale face. She crouched down over the body to get a closer look. The girl had been injured recently; the edges of a jagged gash that ran across her forehead were just starting to swell. The blood gathered in a pool over the girl’s left eyebrow and dripped downward, outlining the curve of her finely boned jaw. Thea had never seen her before. She was small, probably twelve or thirteen years old, with a crop of mud-caked hair and long eyelashes.

Thea pushed herself back up and looked around. It was dark. Really dark. Her nose wrinkled as she peered into the gloom. Where was she? Even in the dead of night, she should’ve been able to see the outlines of the other houses, but there was only a dim shaft of light illuminating her and the girl. She peered upward. Where was the light coming from?

All of a sudden, strange noises echoed out of the darkness behind her, and Thea quickly twisted to see what they were. But there was nothing. A gaping, black void. She cocked her head and listened intently, her ears straining and her heart beginning to pound. There! She heard it again. It was then that Thea realized the sounds were voices. 

Her muscles tensed as the circle of light surrounding her and the girl slowly expanded outward until the figures of two men emerged from the shadows. They were only a few yards away from her and the bloody mess of a girl at her feet. Thea could tell that the men were angry; they were yelling and pushing each other, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying. 

She took a step forward over the body of the girl. The larger man, she realized, was Darren, a brutish male who lived on the outskirts of the Valley, his shack not too far from her own place. But the other man was a stranger, like the girl. He had jet-black hair and a thin frame, but Thea could tell there was deadly strength hiding beneath those bones. She watched as the two men struggled, tugging back and forth at something between them, their corded arms straining with the effort. She willed her pupils wide, taking in as much of the dim light as possible, but the object of their brawl remained unclear.

“Hey! Over here!” she yelled and waved her arms, but neither Darren nor the stranger seemed to hear her, though they were only a couple of lengths away from her and the girl. Thea wasn’t scared of either of the men. No, it was the darkness that was starting to make her feel itchy—and the strange light overhead. She looked down and wiggled her fingers. And the way that everything seemed slightly out of focus. 

Something wasn’t right. 

Thea bent her knees and felt around in the mud until her fingers caught the edges of something hard. Perfect, this was exactly what she needed. 

She dug the medium-sized stone out of the muck. After judging its weight in the palm of her hand, Thea leaned back and flung the thing at Darren’s head, putting the full power of her body into the throw. But instead of getting his attention, the rock missile sailed right through Darren’s skull as if it were made of flesh-colored smoke! Thea gasped. The man hadn’t even so much as flinched as the rock tore through his almost skin; he just continued to wrestle his dark-haired opponent as if nothing had happened.

Thea sucked a breath in through her teeth, trying to settle the distinctly uneasy feeling that was clawing at her stomach. She glanced back down at the injured girl and jumped back in surprise. She was gone! The girl had just…disappeared. Vanished into thin air. Thea blinked and ground the palms of her hands into her eyelids. What the hell was happening to her?

And that’s when the voice spoke for the first time. 

“Keep her alive,” it whispered softly from the empty space behind Thea’s right ear.