Claimed: Faction 3: The Isa Fae Collection

by Heather Hambel Curley

  Nothing.

  Drawing in a deep breath, I held the air in my lungs and slowly counted backwards from ten. Solatium. Solace, calm. Everything was fine.

  Mortem.

  My brain switched on. The calm I’d eased myself into shattered and my vision turned white, flicked with spinning, twisting shades of blue and green. A vision: a sight I could see as clearly as if I’d opened my eyes. A room; the walls painted deep blue and the floorboards rich brown wood. I could smell the blood fused between the planks of wood. I could hear screams, muffled by the thick walls and doors bolted closed.

  A chair. Articulated; the head rest moved independently from the legs or arms and so on. Instruments were neatly lined up on silver platters resting on top of mahogany tables and pedestals. Tanks with large gauges, an industrial wheel with a large tube leading to the chair, a vivisected woman mounted on the wall.

  A figure in the chair.

  She was slumped over, her greasy black hair obscuring her face, her thin figure shrouded in a white, linen shift dress. Her body was still, but in the silence of the room, I could hear her breathing: the rasp and wheeze, the rattle in her chest from fluid trapped in her lungs.

  And then she looked up. I was looking into my own face.

  Mortem. Death.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and yanked my fingers out of the ground. Every cell in my body was alive, my fingers burned from the rush of energy to my hands. “Jesus.”

  Soleil stepped forward, adjusting her stance like she was blocking me. She hissed, “Pull it back, Wren. Don’t let them see.”

  My brain was muddled. I could still see my eyes, the way I’d stared like my sight was long gone. Empty eyes. Empty soul. “What?”

  “Do you want them to know what we are?” Her voice sounded more panicked, but she was keeping her tone low. “Calm down.”

  I looked down at my hands. Swirling blue energy hovered above my palms, cut only by what seemed like a black nucleus fading in and out. As soon as I focused on the light, it jumped to attention. It was waiting for my instruction.

  “Sorry.” I balled my hands into fists, sealing off the energy. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You can be coy and clever with him all day, but your charm isn’t going to save us.” Her lower lip quivered and she dropped to her knees, furiously rubbing her nose. “I’m sorry, I was harsh. I just through maybe we should keep our powers a secret. For now.”

  God, that old nervous tic. She’d done it since she was a child and it was the way my parents always could tell when she was fibbing: she’d rub her nose raw. I didn’t even want to dwell on it or tell her I was secretly proud that she’d been bold enough to chastise me. There wasn’t time for that. “I completely agree. Let’s keep it between us, for now—maybe for always. I don’t want them to threaten us or try and take advantage of us because we’re different.”

  “But we’re not.”

  “Soleil.” I groaned and again knelt over the ground. This time, I pressed my palms to the crumbling crust of dirt. “You’re almost eighteen. Or you are, look, you need to do some growing up within the next few minutes. I know that Pa and Mom always called these gifts. The Coven tried to guide us and hone our skills to make us the strongest, most powerful witches they could.”

  I adjusted my legs under me and quickly glanced over my shoulder. Avi was standing just out of the shadows, his gaze fixed on me. Great. “But that life is dead. Our powers are a curse and can be used against us. Just remember that.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  Leaning my weight forward on my hands, I breathed in the smell of earth. It tingled my nose, more so because of the emptiness and dust than any magical element. I curled my fingers like I was clawing at the ground—just enough to press a little harder.

  I waited.

  From the trailers, I heard Avi’s voice. He said, “I could have told you that it’s impossible to find water out here. Everything dried up and died when the Division split everything. It’s not here.”

  Bastard. He was wrong…I just couldn’t tell him that.

  Energy, no stronger than this kiss of cat’s whiskers when they rub against ankles, pulsed against my fingers. It was out there. It heard me calling.

  I scrambled to my feet and pointed north. “This way. Bring a sledge hammer.”

  He looked quizzical, but complied.

  Nobody spoke as we hiked deeper into the wasteland. Soleil scampered right next to me, like she was auditioning to be my shadow, and we were flanked by both Avi and Tone. Peter said he couldn’t make the trek and Lyta…Lyta didn’t look convinced it was actually worth the effort.

  I’d stop every hundred yards or so, just to press my palms to the ground and make sure we were still headed in the right direction. The water’s cry was there, it was waiting for us, but it was blocked—almost like a wall or building or dam was holding it back. That sounded about right. If we were going to find water, it would be my luck that it would be held back by a colossal dam.

  I cursed under my breath.

  Avi chuckled. “Well, Little Bird, you don’t sound as confident as before. Maybe you set the stakes too high? Backed the wrong horse. Tone, isn’t that a mid-century colloquialism?”

  Tone didn’t answer.

  I said, “The water is out there. I know it. And, also, my name is Wren. Not Little Bird.”

  “I’m partial to Little Bird.”

  “Is Avi short for something?”

  “Pretty sure that isn’t any of your business.” He fell silent for several moments, to the point I thought the conversation was over. But then, he said, “It’s Hebrew. It means, my father.”

  “That’s very nice, thank you for sharing.”

  He quickened his pace, struggling to catch up with me. “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “Pretty sure that isn’t any of my business.” I glanced at him; maybe that kind of retort was inappropriate. “I’m guessing at some point in the past, those trailers had water hookup? This seems like a pretty shitty place to build a trailer park and just…make due, so to speak.”

  Avi shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’re not, like, indigenous to the trailer park. We all ended up here, from various places and different, horrific experiences. The water was gone when we got here.”

  “So were all the people.” Tone finally spoke. He’d matched his pace to mine; with his long legs, it was probably harder to hold back than to catch up. “Avi and I were there first. Based on what was left in the trailers, I’d say everyone had left at least three months earlier.”

  “Tables set, rotted food just sitting out.” Avi unfastened the leather tie from around his hair and shook it loose. After running his hands through the thick waves, he rebound it at the nape of his neck. “It was like someone had walked in to every building and told people just to get up and leave. Clothes are still in the drawers. Laundry was still in washing machines. Whatever happened here hit them fast.”

  Soleil coughed lightly. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her rubbing her nose. “Did you find any bodies?”

  “Not one.”

  “Just like what we found in Distant.” I leaned over and trailed my fingers over the ground. “Everything left behind like people just stepped out of the room.”

  Avi said, “Is that some kind of clue?”

  I glanced at him. He looked perplexed; the honesty in his voice was clear. He was genuinely curious. “It’s not a mystery, is it? I mean, we know why the left. They were the smart ones.”

  “Yeah,” Tone’s spoke before Avi could. “But they’ve disappeared off the face of the planet. There isn’t a soul for a hundred miles.”

  I made a noncommittal noise in my throat. That kind of estimate was rank with bullshit. “If you say so.”

  “No, he’s right.” Avi quickened his pace and stopped directly in front of me, blocking my path to a rock face. “I came from Coal Hollow, south of here. Tone came from the west, by the coast, and Lyta and Peter someh
ow got here from the north. You two came from the east. When was the last time you saw someone?”

  I shrugged and exchanged a glance with my sister. “I don’t know, it seemed like we avoided survivors the entire time we walked. There were more people near Vale.”

  Avi nodded. “Because Vale was hit last.”

  I pushed past him, pressing my hands to the uneven, linear strata in the rock in front of us. “So, you’re saving that all the major cities have been wiped out? Bombed like Vale and Distant?”

  “I’m saying a lot of people are gone.”

  “Fair enough, but where do you think they went?” I caught myself staring into his dark eyes too long; looking away, I focused on the cliff and ran my hands downward. I could feel the energy pulsing, matching it’s cadence to the resurgence of pain in my temple. “Out here in the desert, yeah, maybe not a huge population to hide. But we lived in the city—or at least we did once. That’s a lot of people to make disappear.”

  “The population peaked three years ago.” Soleil’s words rushed out like she had no control over them at all. “It was actually in a decline when the Division happened.”

  I stared at her—I could feel Tone and Avi doing the same. I said, “Thanks, Soleil. Educational.”

  Avi leaned against the rocks next to me, crossing his arms over his chest. “How did you survive the Division?”

  “We survived because my father was a conspiracy theorist who dragged us out into the woods and made us live off of the land for a year.” I glanced at my sister; she nodded, a movement so small that it could easily be missed by the others. “Farming and hunting and dragging water from the river. All that shit.”

  Tone responded first. “You talk about your father in the past tense.”

  “He was murdered. Recently.” My hand felt like it was about to be ripped apart. I pounded my fist to the rock. “Right here. There’s a spring behind this cliff, probably from those mountains further to the north. Hit here and you’ll never thirst again.”

  Avi smiled, reaching out and tucking a loose strand of my hair behind. “I hope so; for your sake, Little Bird.”

  I swallowed hard. I knew I was right—I just didn’t like passive threats.

  As Tone lined the sledge hammer with the cliff face, Soleil and I backed up considerably. My sister’s face was calm, stoic almost. I wasn’t sure if she was flat because she had no actual concern I was wrong…or, if maybe she just didn’t feel anything anymore. I could attest to that. My body, my soul, was drained. The peace of death almost seemed like it would be a relief.

  Almost.

  Tone swung; the hammer slammed into the rock. Nothing.

  I switched my gaze to Avi. He was just as stone faced as my sister; I couldn’t actually tell if he was confident that I was right or was just waiting to attack. Energy prickled over my fingertips. I had to be ready.

  Avi, don’t leave me.

  The second impact of the sledgehammer and the echo through my brain made me jump, panic radiating over my body like I’d stuck in finger in a socket. The hell? No one seemed to notice that I was literally on the edge of…whatever. A breakdown, maybe? God, now I was hearing things. I was seeing images in my brain and voices that never spoke seemed like they were talking right to me. Impossible.

  And disturbing. I knew disorders of the brain ran in my mother’s family; those tortured by things only they could see and hear. Maybe it was some kind of unevolved power. More likely, it was a curse—either way, I wasn’t interested in drawing any more attention to us. We were probably already walking a very, very fine line.

  I twisted the red cord around my wrist until my fingers started to go numb. Keep it together, Wren.

  Tone struck hammer again; this time, the blow cracked the surface. Loose rock showered to the ground and with it, drops of water. It became a trickle, then a stream.

  “You did it!” Avi grabbed my shoulders in some kind of strange, half hug, and then snatched the hammer out of Tone’s hands. “Fresh water. Tone, my friend, drink up!”

  I slid my eyes sideways, glancing at Soleil. With minimal movement, she lifted her fingertips upward and closer her eyes.

  She then shook her head.

  Well, good. I guess. The water wasn’t radioactive or poisoned and we lived to suffer another day.

  The men were slurping the water from the rock face, their faces and chests soaked from the flow. Avi saw me watching and smiled broadly. “So, my Little Bird was right.”

  “You would have caught on pretty quickly if I’d been making it up.”

  He laughed and reached out, catching hold of my wrist and pulling me into the stream of water.

  I gasped. It was freezing, fresh and cool from the interior core of the mountain. The drops trickled down the front of my corset and blurred my vision. I hadn’t felt so alive in weeks. Maybe even the entire year since the Division.

  “You’re one of us now, Little Bird. You and your sister.” Avi exchanged a look with Tone.

  He nodded. “No doubt.”

  “One of you?” I raised my eyebrow, quickly leaning over and taking a drink of water. It went straight to my soul. “What, you have some kind of club name or something? Like a team?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Avi grinned. “We have to have something that unites us, right? I mean, what else do we have except each other?”

  “You have some pretty sweet trailers.”

  Tone clasped my shoulders and grinned. “And water. Now we have water!”

  “We’re The Living.” Avi took a half-step forward and brushed wet strands of hair from my forehead. “And that’s what separates us from everything else out here.”

  Eleven

  They gave us a trailer of our own, a narrow little building with a bedroom on each end and a lineup of the kitchen/dining room/living room in the center. Each bedroom had its own connected bathroom, but would have been really nice if we’d had water hookup. A quick and curious turn of the faucet handle resulted in no water flow—just a very angry, very dry, pneumatic wheeze.

  I turned the faucet off.

  The interior of the trailer was pleasant enough, with lavender drapes and a tidy brown couch in the living room, and a dining room table covered in a blue plastic table cloth. Clothes were neatly folded and stacked on top of the dryer. The liquid dish soap bottle was draped in a knitted brown dress, affixed with a white plastic button.

  I half expected the people to walk back in the door at any minute. It was like they’d stepped out, just to grab the newspaper or the mail; maybe say hello to the neighbors. Logically, I knew they were gone…but it didn’t feel right to be in their house.

  Soleil didn’t seem bothered by it. She perched on the edge of the bed she’d claimed, flipping through a three-ring photo album. “They seem happy.”

  “That’s a little intrusive, don’t you think?”

  “They aren’t coming back.”

  “You don’t know that.” I pried my boots off and flexed my ankles from side to side. My feet felt bruised and swollen; worse yet, they smelled like rotted meat. I wrinkled my nose. “We don’t know for sure people are dead. They’re missing. They could have just gone to some kind of safety shelter until the radiation threat passed; it’s not completely out of the question.”

  She pursed her lips together and cocked her eyebrows up like she wasn’t convinced. “What about Vaughn?”

  I peeled off my socks, draping them across my boots in an effort to air them out. “The truck was gone. I’d like to think that he made it out, maybe they heard some kind of warning and fled for shelter.”

  She made some kind of weird, light grunting noise and flipped the album page. “That’s cute.”

  Cute? The fuck was her problem? “Well…I mean, granted, it’s nice to always stay positive in this situation. I’m guessing you’ve made some kind of other determination on what happened to everyone?”

  “Not really. I just don’t believe that people left on their own accord, that’s all.” Her voice was sof
t, almost dreamy sounding. It was like this wasn’t something she was actually living, but just watching pass by her face like a movie plot. “These pictures make me feel like these women were happy. Sisters, I think, probably widows. It looks like their children visited them a lot and they were enjoying life. They were enjoying time together.”

  “Great. That’s what we all should do.”

  “So, then why leave?”

  I huffed into my hair, slapping a damp sock against my boots. “Well, I mean, you left without giving it a hell of a lot thought. You just tagged along…for what again? To spy on me? To watch me fuck Vaughn? How’s that shit feel now?”

  She eased the page over, her eyes flicked across the pictures. “I’d probably be dead now if I hadn’t followed you.”

  “Sometimes we only get one chance, Soleil, there aren’t do overs.” I shrugged. “This trailer park, the shit in Vale; fuck, even Vaughn. Who knows what went through their heads at the last moment. Maybe they thought they didn’t have a choice.”

  He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I can’t be okay, unless I know you’re okay.”

  I ground my fist into my forehead, trying to chew back the surge of bile in my stomach. The voice that echoed in my brain was real; it was like a record on loop or a CD on repeat. My mind accepted it, my body remembered it. But I had no recollection of it happening.

  “Wren.”

  I looked up at my sister. Her brow was furrowed down in a frown, her perfect curls and clear blue eyes almost mocking. “What? How many ways are you going to tell me I’m wrong? I realize this is all a game to you, but you need to grow up for once. This shit is real—we aren’t just hiding in the woods anymore. We’re the lost: the living damned.”

  “No, we’re more. We’re gifted.”

  “We’re cursed.”

  “You only say that because you’re still mad Papa loved me more.” Her mouth snapped shut as soon as the words tumbled out. I could see the flush in her cheeks, the subtle embarrassment outweighed by her typical “oh well” attitude.

  I scrambled to my feet, leaving my boots and socks where they were, and edged to the door. “Even though he’s dead, you still want to parade around the fact you were the favored child?”