Claimed: Faction 3: The Isa Fae Collection

by Heather Hambel Curley

  I pulled on her arm, but she wrenched away from me and skittered back a few steps. “Wren. I feel them—they’re back there. By the registration building, I know it!”

  “No, Soleil, be rational.” I darted around her, blocking her path with my body. “It isn’t them. Pa would never risk the homestead to come to Vale; he never even wanted to come here before the Division. Why now?”

  She struggled against me, trying to wriggle past me and back into the smoldering shadows. “I know they’re here, Wren, please! We have to find them!”

  I heard something shuffle behind me. The atomic shadows getting closer, a building collapsing, the plane coming back for another bomb drop; it didn’t matter. We’d been here too long as it was—and it was obvious there were no survivors. Only a town inhabited by the dead. “It’s not them.”

  Her eyes grew wider. She opened her mouth to speak—

  Someone yanked me backwards; a hand squeezed my upper arm and pulled me away from my sister. In almost the same movement, I was forced to turn: spun around until I faced him.

  Soleil started screaming.

  And then I was flat on my ass, my lip and nose throbbing with white-hot pain. I hadn’t even seen him hit me. The pain radiated through my cheeks bones and to my temples; from there it seemed to seep into my brain.

  Milo, bar the door. He’ll break through; he’s at the window.

  A man: dressed in green pants and an oversized brown sweater. His upper left extremity, wrapping around his shoulder and flaring up his neck, was charred black. The side of his face was blistered and burned as well, but not to the extent of his arm It wasn’t slowing him down—the injured arm was limp, but he still barreled forward on his legs and flailed with his good side.

  Milo! The door!

  I scrambled backwards, kicking my legs up and out to try and stave him back. He was incredibly fast. A dart to the left, a lunge to the right; and then he pounced, his knees narrowly missing an impact with my chest.

  Soleil heaved a rock at him. “Get away from her!”

  It bounced off of his back; he didn’t even flinch.

  I clambered up to my feet and checked my balance, holding my hands up—palms out—at him. My vision blurred, but was back in focus after several frantic blinks. “We’re leaving. Just let us get past you.”

  He was pacing to the side. I knew he was looking for a weakness in my defense—which wouldn’t have been hard, considering I didn’t have any—and probably trying to judge my strength. He chest was heaving, sweat and blood trickling down his face.

  And then I saw it: hanging at his waist, just peeking out beneath his shirt was a tarnished pocket watch.

  My body stiffened. Heat pricked my palms, sizzling up from somewhere deep in my core. “Where the fuck did you get that watch?”

  He finally spoke, his voice brittle like his vocal cords were burned too. “I relieved a body of it. Had no use for keeping time no more.”

  The screams ended abruptly, choked off like the squeal of a tea kettle quickly removed from heat.

  “You killed them.” It wasn’t a question. I already knew.

  He grinned at me, his lips peeling back and revealing a too wide, gap toothed mouth. “Wrong place at the wrong time. She cried for her babies when I bled her.”

  I stared at him, my jaw falling slack. No.

  And he clobbered at me. He used that brief hesitation to his advantage; I crashed to the ground with a thud, banging the back of my skull off the hard packed earth.

  He squeezed his hand into my pants and into my cotton underwear, his fingers stretching and reaching to get inside me. Spitting in my face, he said, “Who will you cry for, pretty girl?”

  I pounded my hands against his shoulders. The bolt of energy that radiated from my palms was so strong, it kicked me against the ground like the kick of a high powered rifle. The man pitched backwards and collapsing on the ground in a heap almost five feet away. I heard a moan. A string of curses.

  I was on top of him in an instant. Unwrapping the red cord from around my arm, I tugged it around his throat and yanked it tight. My brain was a cacophony of sound: of my heart pounding in my chest, of my mother’s screams echoing through the chambers of my mind.

  And somewhere, around me, I could still hear my sister screaming.

  He was trying to buck against me, struggling to knock me off his back or off balance enough so I’d loosen my grip. His voice was garbled. The cord was cutting off his airway, but not fast enough—but then how long did it take to strangle someone? Would he just pass out or would he die?

  I didn’t actually care. With one hand, I twisted the cord around his throat to tighten the pressure. I slid upward on his back, planting myself between his shoulders, and then leaned my weight in the opposite direction. It pulled on his throat; he gurgled.

  “No, Wren, stop! Don’t do this!”

  My brain didn’t even process what she was saying—all I could hear, all I could see in my mind’s eye was my mother, facedown on the floor; violated and beaten. Blood was everywhere. Pa was the first to die…

  I stretched my arm out behind me and used a pulse of energy to pin his legs down. Seconds bled into minutes and, as I felt strength bleeding out of his body, he went limp. Motionless, but still living.

  “Okay, stop it. Stop it!”

  I couldn’t tell anymore if it was Soleil or my conscience shrieking in my eye. Maybe it was both. I couldn’t stop, though, I didn’t want to—he’d killed my parents. In this world, this godforsaken, terminal rock we were trapped on because Death rejected us—they were all I had. My parents and Soleil: I didn’t claim to love them, but I never wanted to see them die.

  I unwound the cord from his neck and let him fall flat to the ground. Kicking him over onto his back, I yanked the pocket watch free from his trousers and tossed it to Soleil. “Now you’ll understand.”

  “Is he dead?”

  I pressed my fingers to his throat. Blood still pulsed through the artery just beneath his flesh, the major lifeline of blood to his mortal body. “Not yet.”

  Her face crumpled and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. She pressed the pocket watch to her chest. “Pa would never let anyone take this from him.”

  “Nope.” I leaned over and pulled the knife from the hidden sheath in my boot. “What were their lives worth? Some cornmeal? An old silver plated pocket watch?”

  “Wren. What are you doing?”

  “What has to be done.” Stooping down to the unconscious man, I sliced his throat just at the point where the artery was closest to the skin. Blood spurted out; it sprayed me in the face and throat.

  I turned around and threw up.

  We stood in silence for several moments, well after the blood stopped flowing from his neck and the tremors that wracked my body eased into occasional shivers. It was the closest I’d been to death. If I’d been a second slower or if he’d hadn’t been injured…well…that would have been that.

  I took the time to wrap the cord back around my forearm and wrist. I said, “We’re not going home, Soleil.”

  But my sister remained silent.

  Eight

  I could hear them in the woods: survivors, other groups of people just like us who had somehow managed to escape the carnage and destruction when the bombs hit. I wasn’t interested in making friends or finding a group to join. As far as I was concerned, we needed to find somewhere as far away from Vale, Distant, and the homestead as possible. Maybe there was safety elsewhere. Maybe we could get past Regent’s Block or to the outskirts of the destruction and find…I wasn’t sure what. Freedom?

  Soleil hadn’t spoken since the incident in Vale. That was fine by me. It gave me more time to think, more time to try and figure out what the hell we should do and what direction we needed to go.

  For awhile, it made sense to stay off the main roads and avoid any kind of human interaction. After hours had passed and the sun was well through its descent on the horizon, I started to question that original pla
n. I had no idea where we were. Fuck, for all I knew we’d been walking in circles and Vale was only a quarter mile behind us.

  I said, “We should try and find some water and get a shelter or something together. It’s going to get cold soon.”

  She still had the pocket watch pressed to her chest. “You’re right.”

  “Oh.” I’d expected her to argue. “We should be worried about radiation.”

  She seemed to think about it, craning her neck up and looking at the surrounding trees. “They say it’s in the wind, but for now we’re okay. Once it hits the wind we really can’t escape it.”

  “I guess not.” I dropped to my knees and pressed my hands to the ground. It was my only other ‘gift’ aside from telekinesis and light conjuring: I could find water anywhere. Maybe it was some kind of balance in case I sparked fire in the wrong place—find the water, extinguish the blaze, don’t burn the house down—but when we’d fled our homes, Pa showed me three spots on his hand drawn map for the homestead. I just had to find the one with on onsite spring.

  So, I did.

  I could feel the reverberations of the water; it was less than a mile to the west of us. Now, just to hope it was clean. I cocked my head in the direction of the setting sun. “That way.”

  She nodded.

  We again fell into silence as we walked. I shouldn’t have cared, but I got the impression she was angry. It made sense—pure Soleil would have wanted to just leave my attacker in Vale, living, and give him some kind of aid. He was injured, she’d say, he was desperate. You shouldn’t have killed him.

  But I had. I swallowed hard. I’d killed a man; I was a murderer. He’d violated me and would have no doubt killed me and then my sister. Maybe I’d acted rationally, maybe it was the only thing I could have done. It still unsettled my soul—I could never take it back.

  I glanced at Soleil. “The night of the Division. Do you know where they all went when the covens broke?”

  She shrugged. “Back to Salem, I guess. Where it all started.”

  “No, not Salem. It didn’t start there.” I almost stopped walking. Where did this child even get her information? Salem? Jesus. “Salem is where it almost ended, for that coven anyway, but it started in Jamestown.”

  “Do you think they’d go back there?”

  “I don’t know. Damnit, I wish I’d paid more attention that night, when it all happened. We’d know where to go, who we could trust. We’d be able to put together a better plan than just, find the water and put together a shelter.”

  “No, that’s a good plan. It is.” She grabbed ahold of my arm and awkwardly patted my bicep. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Wren. You did what you had to do.”

  Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I blinked them away. “Everything has happened so fast. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to find Vaughn.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “I killed a man.”

  She didn’t say anything at first, and for so long that I almost decided that she was going to just dismiss what happened in Vale. Finally, she said, “He didn’t leave you a choice.”

  “Well,” I squatted down again, digging my fingers into the earth to feel out the water. “Maybe I should have given him one.”

  Adjusting my bearings, I shifted about three feet to the south and kept walking. He’d violated me. If I hadn’t done something, if I hadn’t reacted, he would have killed me and Soleil. When it was happening, I felt like it was the right thing to do. Now, though? I’d ended a life.

  And I couldn’t take that back.

  We found the spring after walking less than a mile through thinning forest. Soleil checked the water source and, once she deemed it clean and cast a quick purification spell—just in case—we drank our fill. The water was sweet and cold, but I didn’t feel satiated. It wasn’t quite guilt. I wasn’t quite sure what it was: maybe the numbness of shock wearing off and the pain of reality finally setting in. My parents were dead. My sister, who I neither trusted or particularly cared for, was all I had left in this world.

  I leaned back against a felled tree and drew my knees to my chest. The slight hydration to my system somewhat lessoned the pounding in my head. “We should try and gather some mushrooms or berries before it gets too dark. I have a bit of cheese, bread, and an apple. That’s it.”

  Soleil nodded lightly, almost like she was distracted. She ran her hands over the top of the spring, her fingertips rippling right over the water, and murmured, “There are plenty of lost, like us.”

  “We’re not lost, Soleil. I’m staying away from them to keep us safe. You saw what happened at Vale.” I dug through my pack and tossed her the bread and cheese. “Mortals. They started this war; the caused the Division, and you know as well as I do that it was mortals who dropped those bombs. This is their war, not ours.”

  She still didn’t look at me. “Do you remember the stories that voodoo girl, Della Rae, used to tell us? How mortals couldn’t go into the West Woods by themselves because they’d disappear?”

  I rolled my eyes and took a bite of the apple. It was warm and a little mushy, but that was still better than nothing. “She was full of shit.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” Soleil settled back and away from the water, nibbling on the wedge of cheese. “She was powerful in magic. But…I don’t know, the way she told it. It was like…she’d seen something happen.”

  “The only thing in the West Woods was a railroad track that led to nowhere and a bunch of rusted out old cars. It was close enough to the borderlands that it fell away to Regents Block.” I shrugged and took another bite of apple. A worm wriggled out from the core; I plucked it out and flicked it into the dirt. “At least that’s my guess.”

  “Did you have sex with Vaughn there, too?”

  “No. My seventh grade social studies teacher was an ‘urban explorer.’ He went there that year and brought back pictures. It was just dark. The trees grew close together.”

  “Who was your seventh grade social studies teacher?”

  “Probably the same guy you had. Mr. Lower? Tall guy, scruffy goatee. He was pretty young, I mean, compared to all the other teachers. I thought he was maybe, twenty-two or something but the more I think about it, he was probably in his mid-thirties.”

  She shook her head. “I had Mr. O’Donnell, the assistant football coach. I think he also taught driver’s ed…he died before the Division. Cancer.”

  “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “We’re only a year apart.”

  “Only because you skipped the fourth grade; before that we were two years apart.” I took another bite of the apple, scraping my teeth against the core. I studied her. “The whole year? I remember O’Donnell because I had him for driver’s ed my junior year. The kids called him OD—he died?”

  “He was young, too, left behind a wife and four children. They said it was aggressive and spread fast. We had him until the last few weeks of school and then he was gone. Not dead, gone, but you know. Absent.”

  “Did he ever come back?”

  She shrugged. “I tested out of history the next year.”

  God, she was such a smart ass. I picked up a flat stone and dug a small hole in the ground next to me. Prying the apple seeds from the core, I tamped them down in the dirt ad carefully covered it back up. Satisfying. “Just out of curiosity, what were you studying when he left? Anything interesting?”

  “Not really. It was mostly local studies, with detail in the train crashes in the mid-1800s and the changes in the economy over the years. Trade.” Her expression changed, like she was just then remembering some long locked away memory. “He talked for almost a solid week about the rails in the West Woods. Where they’d originally connected and why the trains stopped. He said he had theories about why there were so many rusted vehicles near it, but he couldn’t be sure until he took a day trip out there. He said he was going to drive out with a friend to see if he was right.”

  “Did
he?”

  “I don’t know. We moved on to a discussion of the first Great War and he didn’t mention it again. Then he was gone.”

  I leaned back against the tree and stretched my legs out in front of me. We were putting together pieces of a puzzle that didn’t exist, probably out of boredom or as some kind of coping mechanism. The world was strange and full of things that didn’t make sense—as a witch, I knew that from fact—but ghosts and disappearances in the West Wood had logical explanations. Lower supposedly had a rap sheet as long as a street sign and OD got sick. It wasn’t farfetched.

  Soleil stared at me, her eyes studying my face like she was looking for some kind of reaction. “Do you think they both died because they went to the West Woods?”

  “I never said Lower was dead.”

  “He’s obviously gone.”

  “Half the world is gone now, Soleil, it’s not out of the ordinary.” I pulled my goggles off my head and shook out my hair. The pounding in my temples was back. “Maybe he just got fed up with being a teacher. It’s not for everybody. Or, maybe he decided he liked drugs better than respectable employment. Also, not exactly something curious or startling.”

  “But you said he’d gone to the West Woods. And brought back pictures?” She chewed on her bottom lip, a sure sign she was thinking hard. “Do you remember them?”

  “The pictures? Fuck, Soleil, that was like, five years ago. No.” I stopped talking and frowned. That wasn’t actually the truth, I did remember them—maybe a little too well. “I mean…the tracks were really overgrown. They hadn’t been used in twenty, thirty years? And, at one point, there was a burned out caboose sitting about ten feet off the track. Lower said we would talk about it later, but we never did.”

  My sister broke the cheese wedge in half and handed part of it to me. “Did you ever wonder why?”

  “Honestly? No.”

  She settled back again, pulling her wavy blonde hair over one shoulder and tying it back in a low, side ponytail. “Maybe you should have.”

  “It was an abandoned railroad. What more is there to say?”