✖The Worst Kind of Wonderful✖
"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."
-Jim Morrison
Chapter Seventeen~
Running. All I knew was running. All I could process in that moment was fighting through an untamed forest and searching. Searching for someone I had no way of finding from a place I was completely unfamiliar with. The trees were a dark canopy that cut out any hope of moonlight and stars mocked me in their fleeting glory as clouds rolled in. I was being chased but something in me refused to hurt my attacker. There was a resistance in me; a tie I refused to let snap.
Arrows shot out above, painted black and raining down like shards of the dark around me. A restlessness clung to every part of the vision, even trees shaking violently at the scene before them. There was betrayal, potent and thick in the air that sunk into my lungs and made it painful to take in air. Then in that second of impossible hate, I saw it.
Off in the distance the unmistakable sight of life was visible. It was familiar, glowing like a beacon of hope that was destined to give me every answer I longed for. I didn't stop until rough dirt and uneven rock disappeared into a grassy hill which would dissolve into a cobblestone path littered with civilians who looked at me in my distress with fear. I was to be feared, I understood that. I was a danger to everyone. Nearly everyone, a voice corrected me and I realized that these thoughts were not my own.
I came to the startlingly unreal realization that I had lost those who who had been chasing me through the forest. Observing the town suddenly I knew what this was. I had been here before. This was the town where Zak and I had had our date.
~~~~
I woke with a start, fingers gripping the blankets around me, eyes blinded by new morning light. Anna was on the floor beside me, still in the mountain of quilts she formed the day before while I lay cold on the floor. I might have laughed at how very Annabelle the situation was if my brain wasn't working to process the nightmare, jaw clenched in frustration. There was something particularly terrifying about the film in my head, and it wasn't just its lucidity.
It was as though I were living someone else's reality and as I woke up and my mind came from it's blurry state into focus I realized that it may have been just that. Xander. My wolf stirred in me at the thought. Something in my very blood screamed that he was in danger but I had no way of knowing.
"Why is morning a thing?" Anna groaned squinting her eyes and shoving her face beneath the covers before letting out an exhausted groan.
"We probably shouldn't have stayed up so late." I responded, rubbing my eyes and trying to escape the uneasy feeling in my gut.
"Thank goodness Doctor Alvi confirmed the stress theory or we would have gotten a lot less sleep."
"Seriously," I laughed at the ridiculousness of the day before. We had evaded my parents' suspicions by a wisp of a breath. "I have a feeling the doctor knows more about the situation than she's letting on."
"Let's hope not," Belles replied, appalled at the thought. "This secret's pretty much at max capacity for how many people know and if Elisabeth Alvi knows and is as dedicated to the council as she seems, we're screwed."
"You mean Xander and I are screwed." I pointed out, trying to distance her from the situation.
"We've talked about this. I'm not letting you become the badass heroine of this movie without me by your side, mooching off the limelight!"
"You're bizarre," I laughed, shaking my head and coming into a sitting position. I took a long breath and began to wake up, stretching my arms and releasing a string of popping sounds from my back.
"Ew, don't crack your back you know it freaks me out." Annabelle poked her head out from the dark and gave me a dirty look.
"Main reason why I do it." I smiled at her and got to my feet, head spinning at the sudden movement. "Now get up lazy bones." She gave no response and made no attempt at getting up. Entirely silent save the soft puffs of air that left her lungs as she tried to sink back into sleep.
"You were going to take me somewhere today." I reminded, causing her head to pop up like a groundhog in a whirl of sudden emotion.
"Today's the day?" She breathed, nervous.
"Today's the day," I confirmed, fighting off my own flurry of unsettled discomfort.
~*~
I found myself somewhere I had, not too long ago, thought of as the epitome beautiful. But now as I stared up at the crawling vines and perfectly displaced stones all I could see were the stains of a memory, cold and cutting. The meeting hall towered over us, its shadow closing off the sun's warmth. The sound of birds in the trees was silenced; the only audible thing a sharp wind's rasp as it tore through the atmosphere around the building.
"Is it me or has this place gotten more..." I paused trying to find the right word.
"Ominous?" Anna suggested. I responded with a distracted nod, sizing up the place with timid eyes. "That's what happens to the outside when you face the reality of what goes on inside."
"The Council?" I tried to confirm, suddenly growing anxious about what else Annabelle might know about the meeting hall.
"Them too." She breathed before gripping onto my sleeve and tugging me into the place.
It was as I remembered from just days before. Beautiful people flitted around the place with beautiful things surrounding them, but this time I noticed the unease in their eyes. There was a fear that they wore beneath their silk and cotton. I had just moments to process this all before Annabelle steamrolled through the place like she had every right to be there and down a hall I hadn't noticed before.
The smell of incense and ink filled the air, potent and fine as we made our way down the hall. Red wallpaper framed the vision, while wooden floors and a stark white ceiling eyed one another in the artificial light. There were no windows, only an endless line of doors labeled with names or functions. Esteemed council members' portraits sometimes appeared on the walls of rooms with doors ajar but Annabelle payed them no mind.
"Where are we going?" I whispered, the distinct feeling of being out of place emerging.
"I can't tell you yet." My best friend was never one to keep a secret but now, as we stormed through a secluded part of a place half the pack knew next to nothing about, I began to wonder if there was more that Anna was keeping from me. Was the girl who seemed an open book hiding some of her pages?
The hallway suddenly opened up into an pocket of space, a lobby of sorts, containing four doors with four engraved symbols as their only markers. Though I could not decipher their meaning Anna knew the way, selecting the door to the far left and pressing her ear it. She gestured for me to follow suit, waving her hand fervently. With cautious steps I made my way to the solid wooden barrier and pressed the side of my face against its cool surface.
"You haven't visited the boy in weeks!" A male voice, I recognized as Head Elder Atticus Hartley, spoke gruffly.
"Atticus, you know I love him but spending every hour of my life by his side only makes him restless, more eager to live on my side of the silver," Marie responded softly as if unsure of herself or unsure of the reaction Atticus would give her.
"You leave him there to live his life among the rats! That's hardly a life at all!"
"Would you rather have made the decision to order your own son's death?" She snapped, releasing all pent up rage in that one sentence.
Benjamin. My mind screamed. They were discussing Benjamin Hartley.
"I know, I know you're right." His voice was that of a broken man. There was a long pause and I wondered if that was out cue to know but Anna remained still beside me. "He continues to carve, you know."
"I thought we had taken away all ragged stones he had access to." Marie sounded worried at the prospect of whatever Atticus was speaking about.
"He uses the silver. Pressing himself against it until blood is drawn." The words were spoken successfully without emotion until suddenly, they weren't. "He uses his own blood to write that same word! Over and over he writes the same word! We give him the tools to create the art he used to love so much: he writes that word, we rip them from his fingers: he uses rock to write that word, we extract each rock: he uses blood! Blood Marie, his own blood..." He trailed off hopelessly. This wasn't the Atticus Hartley I knew, and the person he spoke of wasn't the Ben I knew. But I guessed I owned no right to the claim of truly knowing Benjamin Hartley, no one did anymore, not since his crime.
"Anna," I whispered, fragile from the words I'd just heard.
"His state is declining." She responded wearily.
"What do you mean?" I spoke quietly, conveying as much emotion as I could in the delicate situation. "How do you know-- how do you know any of this?" I was shocked and scared and desperate for an answer, any answer. At that she knocked.
Not a moment after, she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the next room. The sound of shuffling was heard through the wall as I stared at Anna, flabbergasted.
"What?" She asked defensively. "Atticus can't know we're here, that was just my way of wrapping their little heart to heart up and getting this going."
"Are we even allowed in here?"
"Well, technically, I'll never be allowed. But I mean, this is sort of your office. Not yet, obviously, but if you were initiated as Luna... Then it'd be all yours." I dared myself not to observe the room despite the curiosity that ate at me. I wasn't allowed to know this life, it wasn't mine.
A door on the opposite side of the room from what I now assumed was Marie's office slammed and Annabelle nodded triumphantly at the sound. "We're good to go." She affirmed, opening the door back up before peering out to check the hall. When she slid through the slight opening between the barely open door and its frame, I followed, watching as she closed the office door carefully and silently.
"You ready?" Annabelle asked, watching me closely.
"For what?" I tried to get any kind of information that would warn me for what was to come.
"I'll take that as a yes." She muttered before tapping her knuckles on the door again. This time, however, she remained unmoving.
"Annabelle, Mia, come right in." Marie attempted a smile, though it was unconvincing as tear stains still glazed her skin in trails.
Her office was slightly smaller than I had gathered the Luna office, but still lovely. The walls were painted a royal blue with white trim and furniture carved expertly from the wood of a cherry tree. Large open windows took up almost the entire back wall drawing in any light the forest behind let through it's massive trees and a window seat gripped the sill, littered with open books of every genre.
"Annabelle, I'm not sure if this is a good idea anymore." Marie spoke, looking out into the trees instead of at us. "He's gotten worse."
"Excuse me if this sounds disrespectful, but you know this is Ben's only shot." Anna shot back hopefully.
"I don't-"
"Please." Anna pressed.
Marie sighed, looking exhausted under the weight of her son's condition. "I'm trusting you girls- or I suppose you've been pushed into womanhood now by circumstance," she laughed humorlessly before continuing her thought. "I'm trusted you both with everything."
"I understand that." Annabelle looked sincere and though I longed to speak out something held me back. I'd know soon enough.
Marie stared at us both, locking eyes as if searching our very souls. Without a word she turned and began walking toward her desk with rejuvenated purpose, retrieving a set of outrageously mismatched keys. Some seemed entirely new gleaming bright in the natural light that filled the room, others appeared centuries old, stained by dirt and rust and pure matte age.
"I'm giving you one of two things," Marie broke the oxygen sucking silence. "These are either the keys to my son's freedom, or warrant to his execution."
~*~
The stairs were the steepest I'd ever seen, rugged and old and made of soot stained stone. The air was toxic, the kind so stale that it clings to your lungs and makes breathing nearly impossible.
After receiving the keys from Marie we exited with a sense of responsibility. Somehow, someway, the fate of a lost cause had fallen into my hands. Annabelle found a door sealed by a strip of fake wallpaper behind an oil painting and climbed through without hesitation. Secrecy is the only constant in the meeting house my mind mocked.
"Is this the jail?" I asked, horrified at what little I had seen of the place. The walls were slicked with grime that further hid the already barely visible walls in the firelight of mismatched candles and lanterns that hung haphazardly above.
"This pack doesn't take crime lightly, especially not the kind Ben committed." Was the only explanation granted for the monstrosity I saw around me. A muffled sound began as quiet and as heart wrenching as a child crying from a next door neighbor's house, but as we continued it grew. Screams, crazed and pained came from the place below and I felt my heart begin to ache.
This was not right. This was not humane. We were supposed to be a civilized species, but instead we left our fallen brothers and sisters in a pit of broken, toxic, disgrace. Suddenly I began to think the hunters had a point. Maybe we were creatures of hate and sickness.
"Stay strong Mia." Annabelle whispered with such strength I felt like crumbling. There was a time, not too long ago, when I was the strong one. Where had that gone? "Each one of them has committed an unforgivable crime."
"But am I one of them?" I asked. There was no response for her to give. "Or am I worse?" I choked as we passed cell after cell of broken bruised people, trapped behind a wall of silver, "because I know this place, I've seen the hurt it brings the families of those trapped, and yet I selfishly, knowing all the risk, have yet to change my mind about further betraying my pack."
"What would be selfish, is breaking the other half of your soul for your own fear." Annabelle retorted, deadly and painfully serious. I had no time to respond before we reached a large metal door with only a barred slit as a window. The entire thing was silver with the exception of the handle. "Here goes everything." She breathed, and in we went.
Suddenly everything and nothing made sense. A broken, unrecognizable man lay in a heap of destruction, eyes wide open and fingers shaking. Benjamin Hartley, the boy who was once so alive and full of fight had been taken down. A strangled sob left Annabelle's lips. "It's never been this bad before." She muttered helplessly stepping until her back pressed against the silver door behind, only the cloth of her clothing protecting her from its burn.
The conversation that the head elders, Benjamin's parents, had been having suddenly came to mind as I noticed the room behind the silver bars between us. The word mate. In coal, in black paint, in white engraved ridges, in blood both fresh and dried. The word mate covered every inch of his cell and my heart broke.
"W-what happened to you Benjamin Hartley?" I expected no response, but instead he rose to his feet with strength I had no longer believed he possessed and walked in slow, menacing steps toward me.
"Where is she?" His voice was rough as if he hadn't used it in a long while or he had used it far too much and recklessly.
"Who? Where is who?"
"You know who!" He exploded, forcing me to step back in complete shock and fear. "They tell me she's dead." His words had suddenly become soft. "But I can feel her, I can feel her every time my heart beats. That's why I'm alive. She's why I'm alive. Every time my heart beats I can feel her. You know too! I know you know! You know she's alive, you feel it too!"
"Who?" I screamed, matching the desperation in his tone.
"Your sister! Mia it's your sister! My mate- my soul. Lacy Cassidy!" Silence. "Lacy."