The Celtic Hunt

Chapter 1 - Haunted Memories

I thought I could live in peace. Australia seemed like the perfect place to hide. But boy was I wrong. I had always known that they would come for me, but I didn't think it would happen so soon. I have been running all my life from the people hunting me. My parents don't know where I came from, nor who I am. Not even I know who I am. All I remember is that I was taken from my family when I was 6 years old after having been given a CT scan. They were held at gun point, yelling at my kidnappers, I don't know what, as I was dragged out the door and on to the street. A black, shiny car was waiting outside. They were dragging me towards it. It had happened so fast I had forgotten to scream. Then I screamed. The person dragging me dropped my arm and keeled over, howling in pain. I kept screaming until i heard only my high pitched screeching. Then I stopped and looked around me gasping and folding in on myself at the sight. The person who had been dragging me had no head. It had exploded and I could feel his blood trickling through my hair and onto my neck. The car that had been waiting to take me away from my family was about 500 metres away, embedded in the ground and the buildings around me were just ... nothing. Just a pile of rubble. I stood up and looked around me. "Momma? Dadda?" I called out through the ruin in an Irish accent. No answer. "Mom...!" I cry before stopping short, having heard a rumble through the debris. I listened harder and realised that it was a truck engine. Picturing the car that could've taken me away from this place to who knows where, I hid behind an overturned skip bin that was to my right. As I tried to quieten my breathing, I heard the truck stop and people getting out. I heard the snap of a bullet pushing itself into place. It echoed through the wreckage that had just before, been a live city filled with life. Now ... It is a place for the ghosts to haunt. And I caused it.

I smother a sob, listening to the footsteps of the gun man, steadily walking across the crater like gravel road that had imprinted where I was before I had destroyed this city. Dust was hovering in the air and it was falling on my nose. I felt a sneeze coming up. I tried to smother it but it is too late. "ACHOOOOOOOO!!!!" As my sneeze reached the gunners ears I wished that I could fly away and never come back. I wimper, not just because they were coming for me, but because my back bones were breaking, growing, ripping through my flesh and then cracking into place. Shivers run up and down my arms as I feel things sticking into my back like needles. After 5 seconds more of this ticklish pain, it stops and I look behind me, feeling something between me and the bin as I was sitting against. I gasp. Feathers are covering long, pieces of skin that are sticking out of my back! I have wings!

"Hello pet." I spin around and see a man with a scar down his face and long, black, spiky hair. His bulging muscles are holding a rifle ... That is pointing straight at me. "Come with us quietly and we will not harm you. If not ... you'll come with us either way even if your harmed or not." He says harshly, a sneer forming on his face. I shiver and look down at his feet that are standing on my black, newly grown wing. A lightbulb appears above my head but I do not change my expression for if I do, my plan wouldn't work. I lift my foot up to connect with his nutts and he keels down growling in pain, dropping his gun. "Why you ...!" He starts to say something rude but I swiftly pull my wing up from underneath him and he falls on his ass. I start to run, but I stumble over my wings. It's probably best that I fly. Good thing that I had lived in the country and watched Eagles soaring over head as I ran with them. I start running again except I lift my wings to the sides. I am about to flap my wings when I hear gunshot and feel a stabbing pain through my thigh. Just before I faint, I think desperately, "Help! Fly me away!" When I woke up I was lying in bed at an orphanage, my wings gone. I would've thought it was a dream if I hadn't felt the bullet moving around in my thigh every time I moved. I had easily found a family at the orphanage because I was a cute, strong girl (or so it said on my record. I think I'm ugly) and now here I am, in Perth, hoping for a way to be free from my hunted destiny. I don't think I'll ever be free.