Blood, Fangs, and Psychopaths

Chapter 15

We were given an SUV, if you could even call it that tank an SUV. A large black thing with tinted windows and a tracking device below the hood, or so we were told in great detail by on of the guards. We had been told that if we failed, if we decided to run, that the others would pay for our transgressions, it was William's favourite game to play. He had something that held Morgana, something she loved, or he would never have risked sending the two of us out together. We have been driving for hours, silence just hangs between the two of us, turning the air putrid and sickeningly thick. 

"Have you ever killed someone Aj?" She looks over at me, her eyes searching my soul like some moral searchlight. Her question came out of nowhere and her voice had scared me more than what she said, I had never heard someone so young speak so seriously. But I guess the two of us didn't have the most normal lives, and she wasn't so much younger than me than I had thought that first day. " Someone you didn't want to kill, but what you are made you do it?" Her second question sends chills down my spine, memories of the poor guards that William made me hunt vivid in my mind.

"I have and I'm not proud of it." I rub my neck again and she leans forward on the seat, her eyes saddening abruptly. 

"I wanted out of there so badly, but now I'm out and I have nowhere to go, no one to run to for help. He made me kill my mother Aj. I've been in there since I was five, I don't know the outside world or I would have escaped years ago, he uses my lack of understanding against me to keep me prisoner." Her confession shocks me, some part of me had told me she was a killer but not in my wildest dreams could I have foretold the extent to which William influenced his so-called pets. But something else holds her sorrow, William was playing with the poor girl's emotions and had been for a long time.

"Your mother?" I blink slowly, trying hard not to offend her with my utter shock mixed with curiosity. Her eyes are overcast, shadowed by the things she has seen during her dark life in the dungeons.

"He found a stronger witch, a witch that could overpower my mother, so he no longer needed her. He knew I was still young, that I wouldn't be able to control the powers that my father had cursed me with. He tied my mother to a chair and started screaming and throwing insults at me, the things he said and showed me that day drove me over the edge. I lashed out, electrocuted every living thing in that cell, my mother and three guards lost their lives that day. I will never forget the sound that echoed through the cell, the silence that followed. That was five years ago, in these five years I trained and I worked. I honed my powers like no one my age should have been able to, or so William always told his friends when he thought I couldn't hear. I know you have no reason to trust me AJ, but we have to get out or every single one of us will die in that godforsaken place." I could not imagine the horrors the young girl had faced, but I knew one thing, I would help her escape, no matter how much it would take from me and the others.

"We will figure it out. William wants us to find Annabella and Ronan, and that is exactly what we're going to do. We are going to find them and tell them everything the two of us know, and hopefully, between the two of them and all their friends, we'll be able to break the others out. I will be able to end this horror story forever." I can feel the sigh of relief shudder through her small body, a calming breeze seems to ripple through the car and I smile weakly as we speed down the highway towards Narrow Falls. I had no idea that the compound was located so far from everything and anything, we had been driving for three hours already and yet we were miles away from our destination. Morgana had been dozing most of the trip and I had been considering our biggest problem, the tracking device supposedly beneath the hood of the car. I refused to lead William and his psychotic army right to their doorstep, yet I had no idea how we would deal with it.

"We find a new car, and I fry this one to a crisp so that they think we crashed it or worse. Although I still strongly believe that there is no tracking device, he's too arrogant to think we'll disobey." I jump at her voice, my heart pounding in my throat. I had been talking aloud and I hadn't even noticed.

"I thought you were asleep!" I rub my face slowly and glance at her slowly, a sly smile on her face and her eyes sparkling with electricity.

"Well, I was until you started muttering like a nutjob." She smirks and stretches slowly and lazily. "I think we need to find a new car. If we wreck this one they won't be able to track us, but if I fry the bug it will send them an error code, saying the car had overheated and wrecked the bug. It'll be days before William realizes that we ditched his death trap." She grins at her own plan and I nod slowly, the girl was a genius.

"How do you know so much about electronics?" I glance at her as we continue to speed towards the next small town sprawled out beside the highway. Her eyes go dark, her face shutting down, blank like a singed sheet of paper, pain lingering on the edges. 

"Markus and I use to spend a lot of time together. He would teach me about all the small gadgets and gizmos that he was forced to make for William. He was always kind to me, he made it easier to be chained up down there." She stares at her hands as she speaks, but I do not need to see her eyes to know how she feels. "When the new wolf was brought in before they found you, Markus went crazy. He couldn't stand the howling and the pain that echoed through the cell block as they mutilated his kin. I was banned from seeing him, he was sedated on a daily basis, he became a ghost of the guy I knew before. I don't know if the old Markus will ever come back." A small hiccup escapes her lips as she shudders through her own words and I feel tears stinging my eyes violently as I blink to keep the road in focus before me. The love in her voice is evident, she cared deeply about the young werewolf.

"I know how you feel." I sigh softly, my knuckles white on the steering wheel as I pull into the town, there had to be a car here somewhere. "I felt the same way this morning." With that silence envelopes us once more as we search the streets for a car that is unattended, I'm not a great supporter of auto theft but we needed to figure this out.

"There." Morgana points to a small car, an inconspicuous silver with dust settling on the windows and roof as if it hadn't moved in a while. "Doesn't look like anyone will be missing this for a while." She shrugs as she hops out of the SUV as I park in the lot across from the car and I follow her. She carefully lays her hands on the car and I watch her nervously, what on earth was she trying to do? Pop. The locks on the doors release and she tugs the back one open and tosses our bags inside as I stare at her in disbelief.

"What?" She turns and smirks at my dumbfounded expression as I continue to stare at her. "I can control pretty much anything that is controlled with electricity, that's why my cell has no electricity, why my door locks with old-fashioned deadbolts." She smirks and walks back over to the SUV and I watch in horrified amazement as she sets her hands on the hood and bright blue electricity sparks and flares from her arms and the hood in unison. I was way out of my league with this girl.

"Done?" I ask as she slides into the small car beside me. I have no idea how to hotwire a car, but something told me that that wasn't going to be a problem for Sparky the human lightning rod beside me.

"There was no bug, I would have felt it when I fried the system. Now I just gotta start this little ole thing up." She grins and sets her hands on the dashboard and the engine gurgles and sputters in response. I had to forcefully shut my mouth before swallowing something in my amazement.

"You are something else." I smirk as we pull back out onto the highway, hopefully the police wouldn't be on our tail too soon. We just needed to get into the woods around Narrow Falls, we could walk to the mansion from there.

"I know." She smirks and we speed away, the day passing above us as miles pass beneath us, we'd be there soon enough and strategies would require every ounce of our energy.

As dusk falls I pull the car off the road between the trees and we sling our backpacks onto our backs, all we had left to our names were things we were forced to take by William. It was just getting dark when we stumble into the gravel drive in front of the mansion, I had doubted my ability to find my way back to the place. I had never been so relieved before in my life, there are lights burning in the windows, tears stinging my eyes and blurring my vision. They were here.