Her small surveillance mission completed, she returned to her chores. After digging a small pit, about a half yard across, she found enough heavy rocks scattered close to the forest’s edge to circle it and then piled twigs and kindling in the centre. Drawing on distant memory to guide her, she managed to construct a makeshift spit roast out of branches, just the way Xavian had shown her and she speared both bunnies, suspending them over the pit before setting fire to the wood beneath it.
They could’ve just cooked them on the stove, but somehow this felt nicer, closer to nature.
The twigs were dry and brittle from a lack of rain, she barely had to encourage the flames at all and as they took hold she squealed with delight at her achievement and called for the others to come see.
#
The day passed slowly, peacefully. It was the first full day of complete freedom, without the need to run or look over their shoulders, that any of them had known in a long while and it was refreshing just to do nothing but lounge around and enjoy the simple things that they had. It was almost possible to believe that they could go on like this forever, that they could stay here and be safe, remain hidden. Live out the rest of their lives without posing harm to anyone or it ever being known that they existed.
Aside from knowing that wasn’t an option, Amato had told her that the Officials wouldn’t give up so easily, Leci was nagged by the knowledge that she still had unfinished business.
When she had been imprisoned, locked away with no hope of vengeance it had driven her crazy to think that Xavian’s murderers were walking free and there was nothing she could do.
Since they had gotten out she had been walking around in something like a daze, freedom tinting her vision rose coloured, intoxicating her, leaving her dizzy and giddy and unable to concentrate on anything other than living for the moment.
She had allowed this up until now, had known that she needed it, would get herself killed all too easily if she rushed headlong into picking up her crusade where she left it. A day of rest and repose gave her ample opportunity to compose herself, order her thoughts and prepare herself for what needed to be done. She knew she would never truly be able to settle until her debt had been paid, though, realistically she had been searching unsuccessfully for a year before her incarceration and there was probably little chance she would ever find the men again; four years on they could be anywhere by now, hell, they could be dead for all she knew, still, she couldn’t just stop.
Stopping had been her only option when there had been no choice, when it had been enforced.
Stopping now would be giving up, and Alecia Walker did not give up.
She had a good feeling about the whole thing, she wanted to believe that there was some higher power at work, that events were unfolding along some pre-planned line of destiny and that she wouldn’t have been given the chance to get out and take her life back if she wasn’t going to do anything with it.
She liked this optimistic attitude, it lent hope to an otherwise devoid scenario, and she was prepared to cling to it for as long as she could.
Good things were going to happen, she just knew it.
Chapter 22
Leci lay quietly in the dark listening to Amato breathe. She had sort of hoped that he would sleep alone tonight, in the empty room, giving her the chance to slip out unseen and unheard.
She kinda liked that he’d wanted to be close to her though, she had wanted him, too, it was just that sleeping on the couch together didn’t really make this easy for her. The narrow space meant that they were pressed tightly together and he would probably feel it the minute she moved.
She felt as though she’d been waiting for hours. Bitsy and Beriael had gone to bed a long time ago but her and Amato had sat up talking about everything and nothing, laughing, joking, just hanging out. It had been nice, he enjoyed her company and she felt comfortable and safe in his, there was some kind of connection between them that made it seem like no effort at all to get along.
Although her plans for the evening relied on him falling asleep and not waking back up until she was far enough away for it not to matter, she felt no urge to rush things, was in no hurry and she drank up every moment, knowing it might be the last for some time.
Amato had stood and held a hand out to her, she took it and he pulled her to her feet, he had started to lead her towards the closed door but she resisted and he’d turned to look at her, curious.
‘I’m not sleepin’ in there. No.’
Shaking her head emphatically, she really, really did not want to spend a night in the room where they had found the body. For one thing she could still smell it, doubted that the tang of rotting flesh would ever be completely gone from there, it seemed to have permeated the walls, tainting the room irreversibly. For another... Ok, so she was worried about phantoms and shit like that, why was it so hard to believe?
She just didn’t want to push her luck against any vengeful spirits, not when she was relying on a decent and overdue patch of good fortune to make sure she got things done.
Best to just not risk it, not tempt fate.
Luckily for her, Amato had seemed to find the whole situation funny. He had laughed softly, pulled her into his arms. He had kissed her softly on the mouth and brushed the hair out of her eyes.
‘I won’t let those ghoulies hurt you Baby, but ok, another night on the couch probably won’t do my back too much damage. Ber and Bits are only bothered about the bed, not the room, we’ll switch it into there tomorrow and you and me can take the other one after that, Ok?’
Leci hadn’t trusted herself to speak. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth she’d blurt out that she wouldn’t be here tomorrow, so it didn’t matter. She had bitten her tongue and simply nodded meekly. Satisfied, Amato had lain on the couch, pulled her to him and held her close, his face in her hair, her head against his chest and she had waited for him to fall asleep, thankful that she was laying on the outer edge and not sandwiched between the sofa back and his body; that would’ve made things really difficult.
She had waited for a long time even after she knew he was no longer awake, wanted to give him time to enter a nice, deep state of sleep, she hoped it would make him less likely to be disturbed when she moved away from him.
But she couldn’t wait any longer.
Lifting his arm gingerly, she freed herself from his embrace, holding her breath nervously and expecting him to sit up and ask her what she was doing at any moment.
Released from the pinning weight of him she eased herself backwards slowly, sliding one leg out from under the blanket and onto the floor she half rolled, half slid to the floor in a very ungraceful manner and with a soft bump.
She lay still, holding her breath.
If he woke up now she could always just claim she’d rolled off in her sleep, feign dazedness. A small part of her wished that he would, pictured her climbing back in, snuggling up to him and forgetting the whole silly idea. She pushed those thoughts away, crushing them unsympathetically.
After she had lain on the floor an extra few minutes, listening to him breath and fairly certain she hadn’t disturbed him, she forced herself into action again, perturbed by the fact that she seemed to be losing her bottle now that crunch time had come.
Leci stood, used a beam of intruding moonlight to locate her shoes and slipped them on quickly, grabbing her baseball cap from the table and tugging that down onto her head aswell. She was glad that she had decided not to undress for bed, it saved time. She moved quickly to the largest window and placed her hands on the ledge, ready to jump out.
Something caused her to pause and despite having told herself she wasn’t going to get all emotional she couldn’t help glancing back longingly at him. She hoped desperately that she would be able to come back here someday, that when she did, he wouldn’t hate her, wouldn’t have forgotten her.
Chastising herself for the moment of weakness, she turned back to the window, but as she prepared once more to leave the cabin her
eyes fell to the jacket, his jacket, slung over the back of one of the wooden seats.
She told herself that she was being practical, she would need it out there.
Of course she wasn’t taking it just because it was his, just because she thought she could smell him on it, just because she would convince herself that the inside still held his warmth...
Of course not.
That would’ve been silly.
She shrugged into the jacket quickly, stroking the soft leather, ignoring the fact that it was far too big for her, and the knowledge that somewhere along the line she could’ve quite easily stolen a more well fitting one.
She wanted this one.
Ok.
She had procrastinated too long.
She had wasted too much time trying to say a silent goodbye to someone who would never know that she had felt so torn about leaving him.
Suppressing a heavy sigh, she returned to the window ledge and this time vaulted the empty space without hesitation. It had seemed like a better idea than bothering with the door, which might potentially betray her with a squeak or a rasp, or a bang if a breeze decided to stir up and catch it at just the wrong time...
Lowering herself as quietly as she could down to the ground, Leci paused again, waiting to see if she could hear anything from inside the cabin. The night felt silent, even the woodland creatures seemed to have ceased their nocturnal noisemaking; no owl hooted, no crickets chirruped and no wild dogs howled at the moon. She put this down to good fortune and prayed it would last.
Skirting around the side of the small building, she made her way to where the horses were still tethered to a tree.
Since they had arrived Bitsy had tended to the animals carefully but in an unspoken agreement between the four of them, the beasts had not been unburdened of their tack. If something happened and they needed to get out of this place quickly, it was always better to be ready than to need to take an extra twenty minutes preparing the horses. Alecia was immensely grateful for this; pleased that the level of wariness instilled in the escapees had led them to take measures that would later save her time.
She had excused herself earlier in the day and snook out a bag of supplies, mostly food. She’d considered taking the torch but had decided against it. She was perfectly capable of providing her own light if it came down to it, and she didn’t want to be taking things that they may need. She had also left the small knife behind, telling herself that she didn’t need it, she could look after herself just fine without it and wanting to leave them as armed as possible. Besides, if she needed anything like that later on, she could find something useful somewhere; it wasn’t as though she had great moral reservations about stealing. She was taking only the basics to get her through a day or two and after that she expected to have found what she was looking for.
A nice, busy town.
She didn’t think too much about what she intended to do once she found one; that was the one part of her plan that worried her the most, and the only part of it she really doubted she would be able to see through. She was relying on her survival instinct to kick in and allow her to do things she would never normally have considered doing.
Thinking about it wouldn’t help.
Shrugging the backpack over her shoulders, ignoring the pain when the strap rubbed sorely against her bite wound, she took one last look back at the cabin. It was almost as if she were hoping to see someone come running out to try to stop her. She shook her head, trying to shake away the niggling desire to turn around and go back, to just drop the whole thing.
She couldn’t understand why this was so hard.
She barely knew these people.
Amato had been responsible for her imprisonment in the first place, Beriael disliked and resented her for the things she had done to him, and Bitsy was essentially a stranger.
But leaving them behind still hurt and she had no idea why.
Leci bit down hard on her lower lip, drawing blood but giving her focus, stopping her from becoming too distracted. The longer she stood here hovering in indecision the more chance it would be discovered that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be and if that happened, if anyone did stop her, she would know, would take it as a sign and would return without argument, accepting that she just wasn’t meant to finish her duty to Xavian.
Leci climbed up into the saddle and took the reins, setting the horse moving slowly, quietly away. She made a point of looking anywhere other than at the cabin. She glanced up at the moon, almost full and so beautiful, a dazzling silver coin that hung, suspended in a sea of indigo velvet speckled with a hundred twinkling eyes, watching over her.
When she was some distance from the others and felt it was safe to make a little noise she kicked the animal into a canter, but dared not go any faster for fear that the animal might trip. The moonlight lit the way fairly well but the forest was dense and thick with overgrown roots and fallen branches that all seemed to be reaching out like hungry demons trying to snatch at ankles, wanting to take the horse down and leave Leci crushed beneath it. She shivered; knowing that her mind was playing tricks on her didn’t help to make it any less of a scary thought, knowing that she had a long night ahead of her with only herself for company made it somehow so much worse. She had always thought of solitude as her friend but was slowly coming to realise that when you had nothing to compare something to you accepted it purely because you didn’t know there was any better option.
Chapter 23
Amato rolled over in his sleep and hit the floor with a bang; the impact woke him up fairly quickly.
‘Ow! Fuck!’
He sat up on the floor, rubbing his elbow where it had connected with the hardwood floor and scowling bad temperedly. He didn’t like mornings at the best of times but this wasn’t exactly what he would call a nice way to be woken up.
No, he could definitely think of better things to get him going on a morning; waking up with Leci’s mouth around his nice hard cock seemed like a damn good idea.
Amato groaned and closed his eyes, feeling himself stiffening just thinking about her tongue and lips...
Where was she?
He opened his eyes and pushed himself to his feet, looking around the cabin. It was still early but there was enough light to see by. The red hue of dawn cast a warm glow over the place, the birds had started their fucking noisy ass chorus outside, and he knew he would never get back to sleep.
It didn’t matter, once he found Leci he knew they could find some interesting ways to pass the time together.
Where the hell was she?
The room was deserted. He was pretty sure the Clones were still sleeping. Maybe she’d gone outside for a piss or something.
Maybe.
Amato frowned.
Something didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t put his finger on what, he just had a sneaking suspicion that his girl had done something silly.
‘Leci?’
Not too loudly, don’t want to wake the others, no point getting anyone all worried over nothing if all she’d done was go for a walk or something.
But he didn’t think that was what she’d done.
A heavy feeling in the pit of stomach grew with each second, he felt sick as he ran through the possibilities in his mind.
She could have gone out for a walk or some air, maybe she’d woken and couldn’t get back to sleep, and, not wanting to disturb him, had gone outside to be alone or something.
Maybe, but it didn’t feel right.
He pictured stealthy Officials tracking them, creeping in during the night and taking her back, taking her back to that place, that waking nightmare, her living hell. It was a bad thought but again, it didn’t seem to fit. If Officials were responsible for her absence he was fairly certain he wouldn’t be alive to have discovered it. They would have killed him where he lay, the Clones too.
He moved quietly to the door of their bedroom, listened with his ear to the wood but heard nothing and so he edged it open a crack, sl
owly, carefully. Placing his eye to the opening, he could see an arm hanging over the edge of the bed, palm upwards facing the ceiling. His heart skipped a beat, he couldn’t see if the arm belonged to someone who was still breathing, or if he was looking at a corpse.
He pushed the door open further until he could see Bitsy’s face. As he watched her she muttered something in her sleep and turned over, pulling the errant arm back under the blankets and out of sight.
Amato breathed a sigh of relief and shut the door.
That left one option.
‘Fuck.’
He ran, pushing the door aside franticly and leaving the cabin. He almost tripped over his own feet but regained his balance as he rounded the corner and saw the horses.
No.
Horse.
Only one of them, stood there alone.
‘SHIT!’
His yell startled a flock of nearby birds that rose from their roosts indignantly, cawing their chastisement and causing the treetops to shake and quiver as they took to the sky in search of more peaceful quarters.
Amato raced back into the cabin, being quiet was no longer of any importance at all. He flung open the bedroom door. It banged loudly against the wall and bounced back but he was already across the threshold and stood at the foot of the bed.
Morgan sat bolt upright, the blanket fell from her shoulders as she did, pooling in her lap and leaving her naked from the waist up. Normally Amato would have taken the time to appreciate the view but right now he had other things on his mind.
Beriael had also sat up fast and was pointing a pistol squarely at him, squinting the sleep from his eyes, he looked confused and half out of it, but ready to kill.
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