As I sat in the bath for a while, my whole body ached and my brain fought to close down. The bath became slightly cooler while I began to relax and let the water seep into my soul, healing me. I checked the time and it was eight fifteen. I had been in the bathroom for over an hour.
When I turned my head to see Jenny sitting on a chair looking bored, she spotted me looking at her and shouted for her dad. Mr Stevenson came into the bathroom and told Jenny to help him get me out of the bath. I wanted to protest but I couldn’t seem to find my mouth. I started to cry and they both just laughed at me, seeing me so distressed. In the next few moments, I was dumped onto the floor and given a towel, told to dry myself and change into clothes.
I tried again to ask what clothes to wear but my mouth felt as if it had been glued shut. I started to scream in my head when I heard Nate telling me to calm down. I could hardly breathe and he told me to calm down? I wanted to scream at him as well. He told me I was screaming at him and if I didn’t calm down, I wouldn’t open my mouth. Feeling as if I was hyperventilating, after closing my eyes and concentrating on his voice, I managed to do what he said, although both his dad and Jenny smacked me on the head, telling me to move.
He told me to focus on his voice and remember how to open and close my mouth. When I had focussed on what he’d advised, he spoke again, “Look in the mirror and draw a finger across your mouth. Do this three times clockwise and four times anti-clockwise, then repeat three times.”
I had to change my clothes before I could get up and a swift punch in my back reminded me I wasn’t alone. Moving was agony; my bones were on fire and when I looked down, I saw why they were. My skin looked red raw and I could see licks of flames dancing up and down my arms.
I looked at Mr Stevenson and he smirked looking more like the demon he was. I had never seen him look so evil before. He told Jenny to leave and informed me in a whisper,
“Jasmine, if you get aren’t better by the thirtieth then that feeling of your skin burn and blood boiling will become all you feel as we kill you.” His eyes met mine in the mirror and my whole body shook at the malice in them.
I glanced down, unable to maintain eye contact with him and for a second, I experienced a moment of pure agony, worse than anything I had ever experienced. As I fell forwards, gripping the sink, it stopped. He laughed and left me alone in the bathroom where my breathing was shallow as I tried to control the memories of the pain.
I changed and dragged myself across to the mirror to do as Nate said, but I could hardly get myself into a standing position. I still felt extremely weak. I could feel Nate helping me as I sat there and finally managed to stand upright, looking at myself in the mirror. I could barely recognise the person standing there.
My hair was matted with blood and dirt, my face swollen and bruised, especially around my eyes and mouth. I stared at my reflection for a few minutes and heard Nate’s howl of rage, ringing in my ears, as he saw my reflection. I followed Nathan’s instructions as he raged and stormed inside my head, saying over and over again, “A few days, Jasmine. I will be there for you in a few days. We will have a plan. I won’t leave you there much longer. I promise.”
I dropped to my knees, hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes as I heard Nathan telling me he had to go or he’d be late for class. I knew he was lying. I could feel how sick he felt and didn’t want to think about the way I looked because it was a result of his family’s viciousness.
I managed to scramble out into the foyer when Nick walked by, accompanied by his Barbieesque girlfriend, and although they just glared at me, I could feel the hatred emanating from them in waves.
Mr Stevenson walked out of the dining room and over to me, unsealing my lips. He called Nick back to help him and they dragged me into the barn where they threw a thick sleeping bag over me. It smelled old and dusty, but I could smell Nathan’s aftershave on it, which soothed me some. I finally thought I had a few minutes to myself when Nick walked back out with a beaker of soup. He spilled some on me and laughed as I winced in pain.
He then turned to leave, but before he reached the door, he walked back with a bucket of ice-cold water, that had been catching the rainfall into the barn. He tipped it over my head. I was soaked through and shivering, but he laughed again and walked out, slamming the barn door behind him. The barn was freezing, the wind chilly, and my clothes soaking wet.
What had my life become? I couldn’t imagine how I would survive a few more days of this. I crawled into the sleeping bag, shivering so badly that it felt like convulsions that hurt my aching body more than I thought was possible. I was still in pain all over, but eventually I drifted off to sleep.
The beaker of soup was leak-proof and I kept it beside me for extra warmth. When I awoke with the sound of the door banging open, I felt groggy and unsure of where I was. I looked down at the flask and felt so hungry my head spun. Waiting on eggshells to see who had come in, no one was there. I scrambled into a sitting position and took a mouthful of soup, gagging at the coldness of it, but thankful that it was filling and not freezing cold.
Somehow I imagined that Nate around me, but I knew that it was impossible. I took another drink of soup as Nate spoke. I gagged on my soup and jumped again, wincing as the movement pulled on the parts of me that were in agony.
“Jas, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I had to take an enchantment off that soup or you would submit to my family’s orders. Forgive me.” I began to ask him why he did something so risky, but he cut me off. His answer shocked me to the core. “I couldn’t let you submit to my family. They would ask you about us, about me, and it would end up with us both being killed.”
“I don’t understand, Nathan,” I answered in my head, whispering just in case anyone was listening in.
“You would tell them whatever they wanted to know, and they would have killed you before coming for me.”
I fell asleep again, wishing I could have seen Nate when he was there. I missed him so much; having him hold me for a second would have made the torture in that moment much more bearable.
I was in that state between waking and sleeping when the barn door slammed open once again. I didn’t have the energy to open my eyes, but could feel a presence there. I tried to force my eyes open; lying like that made me feel very vulnerable when I a hit caught my back, right between my shoulder blades. Still struggling to sit and open my eyes, the hits kept coming and some sharp claws cut at my eyebrow. Suddenly from the other side of the barn, I heard a yell. When I finally managed to open my eyes, no one was there.
I glanced over to see Nick and Leanne looking silently at me as if I was insane. I could feel the blood flowing from a cut above my eye and my hands were scratched. Even when Mr Stevenson appeared at the door and looked in askance, Nick categorically denied knowing what happened. “When we walked in the door, she was writhing about on the floor and struggling to get up.” I said nothing, feeling numb. It seemed as though I was being beaten by not only the family, but by invisible creatures as well.
This was getting ridiculous. Mr Stevenson walked over to me and asked me what happened, but I had no idea. When I told him that, he just gave me a look filled with rage and I knew what would happen next, except it didn’t.
He just walked away from me and it had me wondering again how such a beautiful man could be so inherently evil. I still found it hard to believe, as I looked at his green eyes that crinkled at the corners, so much like his sons, and it caused me a pang as I realised just how much I missed Nate.
Watching him walk out the door, he stopped just outside, saying something to Nick that I didn’t quite hear, but I got the gist of it when Nick walked in and placed a stool on the floor by the door of my barn.
I just looked at him as he growled at me. Leanne walked in, sat on his knee, and kissed him, which was not something I wanted to see. I crawled into my sleeping bag and blocked out the noise from three feet away.
Normally I would have found this difficult, but I needed to
tell Nate what had happened. Tentatively, I reached out to him and said hi. He didn’t answer straight away so I started to run through that day’s events in my head. It became more difficult to block out the noises from beside me as I heard the stool being thrown away as they moved onto the floor.
I could hear unzipping and fast breathing, but I concentrated on my own dilemmas and ignored Nick and Leanne’s astounding lack of ethics and morals. The smell in the barn changed from the normal small of decay and wet hay to the unmistakable smell of sex. The wind howled and suddenly Nate spoke to me, making it even easier to drown the other sounds out.
“Hey baby,” his voice crooned softly in my ear.
I told him about my day, “Well hi,” I answered him softly and I began explaining what had been going on. “I was attacked this morning, but there was no one there.”
He interrupted me, startling me.“Jas, I know and I know how you feel. I miss you so much and I can’t wait to get you out of there and back into my arms where you belong. God, this is so hard. I miss holding you, kissing you and knowing you’re safe.”
The noises beside me got louder, I scrunched up my eyes and my thoughts must have shown what was happening beside me because Nate started speaking again, disgust colouring his tone, “he’s actually having sex while you’re there? Oh my god, that’s sickening, but we need to talk about the thing that attacked you okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered, “but I don’t remember much.”
“How about I just ask you questions and you answer them with as much detail as you can remember?” His voice was soft, gentle and soothed my soul. Tears stung my eyes as I thought about the previous few days and how bad things had gotten.
“Jas, I need you to focus, please? What happened when you were attacked?”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through my mouth as I thought about the attack. “I was half asleep and the barn door flew open, but I didn’t bother opening my eyes. I thought it was one of your family, come to torture me some more.”
“Did it have fists or claws? Do you have any cuts or scratches on you? Did it have really sharp nails?”
As I answered his questions, my head spun; he fired them at me like bullets, not giving me time to look at my arms, hands, and face to see if I had any new wounds. “Slow down Nate. I don’t know if it had claws or fists, but I have a cut on my eye? It did have sharp nails though, I remember that much.”
“Okay, do you feel sick or dizzy? Does your head hurt?” His tone was gentle and I reached out and touched my cheek, feeling the sticky wetness that told me the cut on my eye was still bleeding. My stomach rolled and I lay back down slowly,
“Yeah I feel sick and dizzy, but my eye is still bleeding. Nathan what did this to me?”
“I don’t know baby, but I will find out. Why don’t you try going to sleep?”
I didn’t want to move; I could still hear the unmistakable sound of sex beside me. The howling of the wind got louder and the tree in the barn creaked and scraped on the wooden roof, making me jump. It sounded like claws dragging along the wooden roof. The noise terrified me, but Nathans voice soothed me as he spoke softly to me, “Sweetheart, you’re completely safe. Nick’s there and as much as he’s a total dick, he’ll protect you. He has too, so go to sleep and get better.”
“Okay. And Nate, I love you.”
“Yeah, you too babe. Sweet dreams.”
I relaxed and allowed myself to fall asleep. I knew by the light of dawn that I’d slept through another night and when I looked out of my sleeping bag, I saw Nick looking at me defiantly. He looked exhausted, with bags under his eyes. My eyes moved to the figure beside him and I noticed Mr Stevenson looking down on me as if I was a piece of dirt stuck to his shoe.
The drip, drip, drip of the water from the roof landed softly beside me and I was stunned at how well I could hear. I didn’t say anything to either of them, but my heart leapt for joy at the thought that in one day’s time, I would be out of there and with Nate.
Mr Stevenson looked at me and came right down to my level. As I still struggled to get up, he handed me a new flask of something hot. He asked me where the other one was and without thinking about it or meaning to do it, I transferred the contents from yesterday’s flask into that day’s and vice versa. He took the flask away and I had no idea what I had done until Nate’s voice sounded in my head, asking me how I had managed that.
I heard him as if he stood right beside me, but I instinctively knew he couldn’t be. Jumping a little as an almighty roar sounded, I crouched down into a ball, looking around painfully. I couldn’t see clearly, my head buzzed, my skin burning, and I shivered with the freezing cold wind blowing into the barn, but still I was alive and getting out of there within a few days if all went according to plan.
At two in the morning, I awoke again. I knew I shouldn’t be alone but I felt as though I was being watched by eyes I couldn’t see in the darkness. I reached for my lantern when a hand shot out of the darkness and just as I was about to scream bloody murder, the hand clamped over my mouth and a voice that made my heart leap hissed in my ear, “It’s me, Jas. Shush.” I exhaled in relief, but I still wanted to cry. It was so hard not to cry out as he held me tightly until I fell asleep again.
“Why are you here? It’s so dangerous.”
“Jas, you were crying out to me in your sleep. I couldn’t leave you here alone again, but I have to go now. When I come back tomorrow, I’ll tell you the escape plan. Then the next day, we’ll be off. Good night. I love you.” With a kiss to my forehead, he vanished as I fell into a deeper sleep than I would have thought possible.
I awoke the next morning and realised my hands were gripped onto something. I opened my palm and saw a note pressed there. As I opened it, I glanced around and saw that for once I was finally on my own.
When you go shopping today, get on the bus towards Dumfries. I will be there to meet you.
Going to the shops that morning proved difficult because Jenny accompanied me, but as we got closer, I was almost bouncing in anticipation, waiting for her to go away. Then Lucca appeared at the checkout as we entered the supermarket. Jenny walked out, leaving me. I abandoned the trolley and walked outside to the bus stop, noticing that the bus to Dumfries was just leaving. I climbed on, paid my fare, and hid in case anyone noticed I was missing. As the bus pulled away, I saw Jenny walk into the coffee shop and I sighed in relief.
The bus took forty minutes to get to Dumfries. When we arrived, I walked off the bus and into Nathan’s arms. His smile when I was in his arms was contagious and although we had never been in more danger, I finally relaxed because no matter what happened next I was with Nathan.
He stepped back, kissed my forehead and my nose, before he leaned back and growled at me. “Look at the state of you. Let’s get out of here.” He dragged me outside to his car; we got in and drove off, weaving in and out of traffic, for just under two hours. He didn’t speak the whole time and his eyes were on his rear view mirrors as we drove down towards the south. He squeezed my hand when we reached Birmingham, and smiled over at me. His smile was breathtaking, and his green eyes rested on me a moment before he pulled into a car park on the motorway.
He pulled me out and we swapped cars. He left his car, a brand new BMW sitting with the keys in the ignition as he transferred our bags to a ford focus with tinted windows. It wasn’t a new car and I wondered how he had arranged everything.
“I’m awesome, haven’t I told you that before?” he answered lightly as I dived into the other car. He started the car and began driving northwards.
“We need to drive up to Edinburgh and we are gonna hide out there for a while if that’s okay with you?” He sounded nervous and I nodded slowly at him. I didn’t trust myself to believe that this was real. I thought I was in a really good illusion or dream, but I didn’t wanna wake up from it.
Nathan hummed along with Ed Sheeran on the radio and smiled as he watched me, sitting looking out the window. We got caught in t
raffic and Nathan made me hide on the floor in the event any demons were about. He had glamoured the car so that if anyone looked in, they would see him and another girl. He knew that no magic was fool proof and a strong demon would see through it.
After five hours of driving we finally pulled off in Edinburgh and headed towards Campbell Park. We parked the car in what looked like a large boulder. The boulder closed behind us and Nathan ushered me from the car, leading me around in circles for about half an hour.
We finally arrived at what looked like a shack in the woods, invisible to mortals but made of what looked like oak with runes carved into the sides.
“I hope you’re ready, Jasmine. They are gonna come after us with everything they have.” He put his arms around me and as he did, I knew I could fight whatever they threw at us as long as he was by my side, fighting in my corner.
We approached the shack and my eyes widened, it was small with two rooms, no cooker, or bathroom or any appliances. There was a half tent set up in the second room. It was full of drafts, from different angles since there were random holes in the woodwork.
I moved around taking in the space as Nathan set up the two camp beds from the corner, placing sleeping bags over them. I also noticed a camping stove and four buckets. There were tins stacked and a few cool boxes stacked in the corner beside them, with water bottles sitting beside them.
“It’s not much,” came Nate’s voice from behind me, “but it’s safe and we’re together.” He slipped his arms around me, kissing me softly. “I’ve been setting this up for months.”
Since he didn’t have his phone, and there wasn’t any electricity anyway, we had no idea if the hunt was on for us. As night closed in, we sat beside each other holding hands, and we were both too tense to speak. When the dark became pitch black, Nate pulled out a torch and ushered me into bed.
Ignition (Escaping Demons Saga Book 2) Page 14