“So, one more thing, Lysa, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, if I can help,” she said with tears and mascara running down her face.
“Some of us have been in here a while. I just hit three weeks yesterday, and well… we don’t know what’s happening out there. But I heard the guards talking. They said something about some little girls and the President issuing an order?”
“Ohhh… you don’t know?” The look she gave me was a telltale sign that there was something big happening on the outside that we had no idea about.
“Lysa?”
“It was awful,” she lowered her head, looking into her lap. “They found these little girls – three sisters – in Washington. Well, they found their bodies.”
I gasped, even though my gut had told me it was something like this. I nodded for her to continue.
“When they found their bodies, they ruled that cause of death had to be something supernatural.”
“And that was when the President…?”
“Yeah,” she continued. “That was when the President issued an order that all paranormal beings would be detained until justice was served. They are rounding us up like cattle out there, preparing us for slaughter.”
“But what about the treaty?”
“The treaty was only valid when paranormals followed the human laws. If any ever crossed it, then the President has the right to void it.” Hmm, she was right, but there was never any reason to believe it would happen like this. If a paranormal broke the law, then you had ONE paranormal who broke the law. Why should be all be punished? Humans were not treated the same way.
“They want justice,” she said, likely knowing precisely what thoughts were going through my head.
“Justice? Sure, whoever did this should be punished. But, we didn’t all kill those little girls…”
“No, we didn’t kill those little girls, but they’ll take any excuse to lock us away.” She took a deep breath, leaned back and closed her eyes. “I’m tired.”
“Yes, of course. You should rest. Nothing much happens around here but I will show you the ropes tomorrow. For now, sleep.” I gestured at her raggedy cot. “I wish I could make it more comfortable for you, but this is all we got.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled in a sleepy tone before fading away.
I sat up for hours thinking about all that she had said. This filled in a lot of the holes for me, but it still didn’t make sense. The treaty signed after the Great War said that paranormals would gain citizenship and be treated the same as human citizens. We had agreed to follow the human laws, of course, and to be punished the same as humans if we broke those laws.
If a paranormal really did murder those little girls, then the law should state they find the killer and give them a fair trial in a court of law, then serve the punishment. Instead, it was a modern-day witch hunt. But why?
There had to be more to it. What happened to those girls was awful – I didn’t deny that – but I sensed something deeper was motivating this new action against magical beings. It’s not like I could do anything about it in here anyway… this was just more reason I needed to get out soon.
Chapter Seven
There was one more person I needed to make my plan come together. We kept missing each other at rec time and her cell was down too far from mine for me to get her attention without alerting all the other women in our block, which was not a very good idea.
It was true that we were not going to dig out of here with a plastic spoon from the cafeteria, but I had another plan. I just needed to talk to Vontessa first, and then I could get Kallisto on board and we’d be ready to take action. On Day 21 of my stay in Oblivion, I had my chance. Seeing Vontessa alone in the rec yard, hiding in the shade as she often did on particularly sunny days, I made my way to her and told her I was planning a breakout.
“I want you to come with us, but I need your help,” I begged.
“You’re gonna do what?” she laughed right in my face and didn’t even try to hide her incredulous feelings on the matter.
“Vontessa, I know full well that you are not a woman who likes to be told what to do, especially by a bunch of sweaty old men. We really need your help, so it would mean a lot to me if you considered it.”
She leaned in close – so close that I could smell her breath, a combination of earthy tones and mint – and whispered as she looked me so deep in the eyes that it felt like she was peering into my soul, “How much would it mean to you?”
“It would mean everything.” I matched her serious tone and eye stare and did not waver.
“Well,” she said, backing up and chuckling. “In that case, I’m in! What do you need me to do?”
This is where it was going to get good. We needed Vontessa to use her seductress abilities to distract the guards so that we could gain access to the guard tower. That’s where they kept the guns that put those devices in us that dampen our powers. I was pretty sure if we got one of them, it would have a feature to remove the device, too.
“I can be very, very persuasive with the right motivation,” she drawled, winking at me. I didn’t doubt she could be, which is why I needed her. Even with her abilities taken away, there were some things that just stick – it’s instinct. Not to mention the fact that vampires lived very, very long lives. Vontessa had been at this for a long time. They may be blocking her magic, but there were some things a woman didn’t need magic for.
Not only that, but vampires were immortal. Even with that thing in her arm, Vontessa couldn’t die. Of course, I didn’t want her to suffer or experience pain, but if they did catch on to what she was trying to do, they couldn’t kill her. All of the pieces to the puzzle were coming together.
I had logged the schedule every day in my head. Even without clocks, I was able to pinpoint when the guards come in for their morning shifts, when they bring us breakfast, when they change shifts mid-day, when they take us to the rec yard, then bring us lunch, then leave again until dinner. By my observations, they kept a very low staff count at night. It made sense, as we were all locked in cages; there wasn’t really anything to do to keep watch.
For my plan to work best, we’d want to escape at night, after the day shift guards had left. With fewer guards on the grounds, we wouldn’t have as many to fight. And if we were able to get those things out of our arms and get our powers back, we could easily take these human guards down.
All that was left was to get the implants out of our arms, choose the night we were going to spring ourselves, and then carry out our plan. As much as I wished I could spring the whole prison, I wasn’t sure that was going to be possible, or practical, so I also needed to be clear on who was coming with us. Once I was on the outside, I could work to get everyone else released.
It was not longer about guilt or innocence here – every person locked inside Oblivion Penitentiary was here without due process. No arrest, no trial, no opportunity to defend themselves… it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t legal, and I fully intended to do something about it.
***
Two days after talking to Vontessa and learning more about the outside from Lysa, I finally had my shot to talk to the long-haired man from the other side. Agent Jones was the one who brought us out today, so I sent Vontessa to keep him occupied with some casual flirting while I made way to speak to my help on the men’s side.
Once Vontessa had Jones fully engrossed in conversation, I walked by the fencing that separated our side from theirs, trying not to make it obvious that we were talking. He walked in the other direction, and each time we crossed paths, we spoke.
“Name’s Kane.”
“I’m Cale”.
“You worked for the guard?”
“In another life, yes. It was a long time ago.” I explained.
“Doesn’t matter how long ago, you never forget that training.”
I nodded. “Well yes, that’s true. How long you been out for?”
“Ahhh, you pegged me too, huh?” he said
with a smile. “It’s been about six years,” he admitted. “Me and a couple of my boys got picked up same time in here.”
“Your boys?”
“Wolves. We’re from the same pack. It was like they knew us or something. We were being really careful, too, but they honed right in on us like they had insider information.”
“Maybe they did…”
After what Lysa had told me, I had a suspicion they might have targeted us from a list. As for Kane and his boys… Werewolves? Of course, they were wolves! That made so much sense. Now that I knew, I could work that into our escape plan. They were some of the strongest shifters around, and that would definitely come in handy.
“Okay, I’ll give you the signal when we’re good to go on our side.”
“You got it. We’ll be waiting,” he said. Then I continued walking this time, and he made a couple more laps up and down the fencing so it wouldn’t look too suspicious.
“The signal” was something we also learned in our training as members of The Guard, an old secret organization of protectors. We were, essentially, bodyguards for the supernatural. Because of my position there, I was required to know about every logged paranormal or supernatural being on the earth.
We had to learn what they were, what their powers were, how they worked, their weaknesses, and their motivations. It was the only true way to keep them safe.
As we were being led back into our cell block, I fell in line behind Kallisto. Taking care to keep my voice low, I whispered to her. “Kallisto, I’ve worked it out. I need you with me on this. And I promise you, I have covered every angle, every potential screw-up, and I am positive this plan will work. We can get out of here.”
“Prove to me this plan will work and you have my full support,” she replied.
A huge smile spread across my face as I felt my excitement growing. I knew she meant every word of it. That’s precisely why I had taken such great care to get the plan perfect before even telling her about it. We were busting out of here!
Chapter Eight
Kane had assured me he and his boys would help with the plan to escape. With her powers restored, Kallisto was a literal bear. Okay, so we weren’t going to break out of here with brute force alone. We needed a plan that used our brains as well. This is where I could shine.
All I needed was a team that could work together and my powers back. That is precisely what we were going to do. I had the team, now we were going to get those powers.
Since I had made contact with the men’s side and I knew Kane was working on their side, we would have support. And everyone would have to work together to pull this off. This was like safety and rescue missions I had done back with the Guard many times. I knew Kane would also know exactly what to do and I trusted him to involve anyone he trusted from his side to assist us.
It was difficult, since we couldn’t safely communicate with one another in here, lest the prison guards find out our plan, but it was still doable. And once I got this stupid implant out, I had telepathy, which would make communication a lot easier!
***
“There’s another way I might be able to help, once we get on the outside,” Vontessa replied in that slow, drawling, sexy way she often spoke.
“Oh yeah? Well, you have my attention.”
“Mmmm, nice. So, out there in the real world, I’m an attorney. And I just so happen to specialize in civil rights cases. You think that might be helpful to you?” She batted her eyelashes at me then, knowing fill well that was going to be helpful.
“Oh, my Gods, yes! I’ve been documenting everything’s that happened here, in my head of course,” I said.
“Me too.” She grinned and winked, adding, “This just means we’re going to have to connect for dinner when we get out of here.”
Maybe she was just trying to rope me into a dinner date but honestly, if we got out of here with her help, I would be more than happy to have a date with a pretty girl. And if she was a civil rights lawyer, I couldn’t believe my good fortune of making friends in here. We were going to need her to bring this place down for good.
“Absolutely!”
“We can go over our notes together and I can begin to put together a case,” she added.
“Sounds like a plan!”
“It’s a date,” she grinned, before walking on. They were yelling at us to line back up to come inside again.
Later that day, I spoke quietly to Kallisto across the hall. She had amazing hearing (it was a nymph thing), which made it much easier to share this kind of news with her.
Kallisto could hardly believe it when I told her the news. “Wait, the vampire is an attorney?”
I nodded, giggling to myself.
“Why am I not surprised,” Kallisto muttered, an amused look on her face. There was a lawyer joke in there somewhere, but I was thankful she kept it to herself.
Lysa knew something was up from the energy and mood around the cell the past few days, but she was smart enough to know not to ask. When you were in a place like this, you kept to your own business and let others keep to theirs.
Tonight though, she made a move. “Take me with you,” she whispered after the guards had left for the last time after dinner.
“Excuse me? Take you where?” I pretended not to know what she was talking about.
“I want to escape with you guys. I have value I can bring to the group. I’ll help you escape and then you never have to see me again, if you don’t want to.”
I looked her up and down, knowing it was dangerous to trust her, but weighing the risk. What if she was a mole? But my intuition told me otherwise. I had learned over the years to trust my gut, and so far, it had never steered me wrong.
“What value do you bring?” I asked, genuinely curious about how she might play into my escape plan. I didn’t even bother to ask how she knew about it. My guess was, she had intuitive powers too, or she was just making a lucky guess. It hardly mattered now.
She leaned in close and whispered quietly, “I’m a witch.”
“Oh, well, that could be helpful,” I replied with a smile. I had known a lot of witches in my time and with her magic unleashed, she was going to be a very big asset to our team. “You’re in!”
***
It was almost time. Today was Phase 1 of our plan. Before we could move into full escape mode, we had to get our powers back. That meant getting one of those implant guns so Vixxie could work her goblin magic on it.
Today, Agent Jones was on duty and we knew Vontessa could successfully distract him, as she had practiced a few times before today, including that time that I spoke to Kane. He was in the guard box today and we knew they kept one of those guns in there. We’d been watching, and there was always a spare inside the guard box.
Vontessa would distract him, while Feylinn (the smallest of us) would slip in and grab it, bringing it back to me and Kallisto. Lysa knew a few tricks that were not dampened by these things in our arms, so she was going to give us a little extra cover to slip by.
“It’s a spell,” she explained. “But it doesn’t use traditional paranormal magic, so it won’t be affected. There are only a few things I can pull off without any tools in here, but a cloaking spell is one of them.”
And she pulled it off quite well. It would only last about five minutes, but five minutes was all we needed. We got in, we grabbed the gun, and we got out.
Quickly, we brought it to Vixxie, who stuffed it under her mattress and put her raggedy blanket over top of it. She would work on it later in the night, when all the guards had left for the evening. Then we all ran back out to the rec yard before the cloaking spell wore off and no one was the wiser. Vontessa was still chatting up Jones and he never even noticed we weren’t there.
This was why studying their schedule was so important. Now we knew when they left and when they came back, and it was very, very rare that they ever came in here between those hours. In fact, the only time they had ever done so was when they had a new inmate, and now th
at our cell block was full, there was no logical reason they would bring a new inmate in here.
That evening, our nerves were on edge. We all secretly hoped that Vixxie would be able to make that gun work to take these things out of our arms, or at least, to disable them so they were no longer blocking our abilities. But we couldn’t do much except wait. Even if we tried to ask her about it, we would just let on to the other women in the cell block that something was going on.
There were about 20 of us to a block, and while everyone here seemed friendly enough, I knew all too well that when that many people are involved in a secret plan, it stops being a secret. The fewer who knew, the better.
It was early in the morning, around 2 a.m. when we found out Vixxie had done it. She slipped into our cells, one by one, while the other women were sleeping, and deactivated the implants in our arms with the gun.
We wanted to scream and shout and celebrate, but we had to stick to the plan. No one could know we had our powers back yet. We wouldn’t be able to break out the guys on the other side if we blew our cover too soon. We knew that the night guards took a “lunch” break at 4 a.m. They left two guards outside our corridor while the others left to eat. It was always quiet at this time of the early morning, with the inmates sleeping.
This is when we would move and free the men.
Can everybody hear me? I asked in my head, to the other women. All they had to do was think their answers in reply with the intention that I was allowed to hear, and I would be able to hear them.
It was an old Elven trick. My mother had taught me when I was very little. It wasn’t reading minds, as someone people mistakenly believed. It actually didn’t work unless the other person consented to it. The elves were big on consent and friendly use of magic only. At least, my people were. It was our way.
A chorus of responses told me that my powers were working again, and we were all set for action.
Breakout Page 6