by Mikayla Lane
They’re keeping pace with me! Quinn thought, realizing how crazy it sounded as her son began thumping excitedly in her stomach.
“I’m sorry.”
Ainsley’s voice so close behind her caused Quinn to jump and scream as she faced the girl.
“Stop scaring me!” Quinn yelled at the girl before she turned back around to look at the lights.
She sighed when she saw that they were gone and turned back to Ainsley, unwilling to trust the girl at her back.
“Leave me alone,” Quinn said, holding her stomach protectively.
“We’re not going to hurt you. I promised,” Ainsley whispered, looking upset at Quinn’s anger at her.
Quinn wouldn’t be fooled by the girl again. If she hadn’t listened to Ainsley the last time, she’d be with Chris already and on her way back to safety.
“You didn’t tell me the truth either! You used me and my son to get his father killed!” Quinn screamed, her anger and frustration making her lose her temper.
“No!” Ainsley rushed to say. “He’s going to win! He’s going to kill Satalis! Then you can be a family again when this is over!”
Quinn stomped over to Ainsley and looked down into her watery blue eyes.
“I don’t believe you. I’ll never believe you again! You lied to me!”
“I’m sorry . . .” Ainsley wiped at her tears and looked at the ground. “The Dranovians are our only chance to be free of Satalis and the terrible things he does to us.”
“How would you know that?” Quinn demanded. “And why hasn’t your neck thing or whatever exploded by now? Or Fiona’s? And how is killing Satalis going to save you from that?”
Quinn had a million more questions, but she knew there was no point in asking because she couldn’t trust what they would tell her.
“Come inside, and I’ll show you a video of the Dranovians’ last battle with Satalis, and I can answer your questions,” Fiona called out from the corner of the house.
“Yeah, right,” Quinn snorted and turned back towards the out building, wondering if the lights had gone inside it.
“She really does have video of it. I’ve seen it,” Ainsley admitted as she followed Quinn. “It’s how we know that they can beat Satalis. You should see it! They are amazing!”
Quinn shook her head at the excitement she could hear in Ainsley’s voice and stopped at the door to the car-sized building. She took a deep breath, pulled open the door, and let her shoulders slump when she saw the engineless car rusting inside.
“The portal is the only way out,” Ainsley said. “And me.”
Quinn narrowed her eyes at the girl and tried to figure out what she could mean. She was tired and really needed to pee after drinking all that tea, and she wasn’t in the mood to try and guess.
“What the hell do you mean by that?” Quinn demanded.
She debated between going back inside the house to use the bathroom or trying to squat behind the out building. She held onto the structure while she crossed her legs and pondered what to do.
“Let’s go inside so you can go to the bathroom. I don’t want to try and help you off the ground if you try to go out here,” Ainsley said as she gestured towards the house.
Quinn uncrossed her legs and considered her options as she looked at the expanse of land around her for anywhere else a car could be hiding.
“There’s no other car. We didn’t stop you from leaving the house earlier; we won’t stop you if you do it again—after you use the bathroom,” Ainsley teased, trying not to smile.
“Damn it!” Quinn muttered as she stomped back towards the house with Ainsley right on her heels.
“Down the hall and to the left,” Fiona said, not even looking up when Quinn stormed into the house.
Quinn did her best to ignore Fiona and Ainsley as she followed the directions and slammed the bathroom door behind her before running to the toilet just in time.
“Do you have to kick my kidneys when I already have to pee?” she muttered quietly to her son and received another kidney thump in response.
She quickly finished and looked at herself in the small oval mirror above the sink as she washed her hands.
A mirror, she thought. No different than a shower wall as a spirit board. If I could only get rid of them long enough to ask the beast what to do.
As if the girl could hear her thoughts, Ainsley knocked softly on the door.
“Fiona has the video ready if you want to see it.”
Quinn wanted to scream in frustration. The only thing she wanted was to get to Chris and get her son away from these people. But Ainsley seemed intent on trying to be her friend, and if the girl and a car were her only way out of there, then Quinn knew she needed to try and play nice.
“Fine,” was all Quinn managed to say before she quickly dried her hands.
She pulled open the door and wasn’t too surprised to see Ainsley on the other side grinning up at her.
“Come on, you have to see this,” Ainsley said as she started running down the hall and into the kitchen.
Quinn wasn’t in any rush to see Fiona again and took her time going down the hall. She looked in a partially opened door on her right and saw a girl’s room. There were twin canopy beds covered in pink and mint colored lace.
All the furniture was white and it looked as if someone had taken very good care of the room. There wasn’t a speck of dust in it, and the bed on the right looked like it had been slept in recently and hurriedly made.
“Are you coming?” Ainsley asked as she peeked her head around the corner.
“Yeah,” Quinn muttered, not the least bit happy about still being there.
She headed down the hallway, went into the kitchen, and remained standing as Ainsley and Fiona sat at the table in front of a laptop.
“This is the only surviving footage of the last time the Dranovians and Satalis battled,” Fiona said as she logged into the computer.
Quinn wasn’t close enough to see the password Fiona used, though it didn’t matter since she knew of no one to contact who could help her.
“It’ll be easy for you to spot Chris! He’s always right in front of the danger,” Ainsley sounded impressed.
Fiona pulled out a chair beside her and gestured Quinn to it, but Quinn ignored her and kept her gaze on the computer. Fiona shrugged and hit the play button.
Quinn was a little surprised when she saw a large group of mostly men and a few women before she gasped in surprise at the power they unleashed around them.
“There’s Chris!” Ainsley said unnecessarily as Quinn moved closer to watch the video the moment she spotted him on the screen.
“That’s Satalis,” Fiona pointed out the man that Chris and the others were attacking.
“What are they doing?” Quinn asked as she sunk into the chair Fiona had pulled out earlier.
She was visually overwhelmed and completely baffled by the weapons they were using. It looked like a hodge-podge of ancient weapons that glowed, some kind of lasers, as well as guns and knives. It looked like fireworks were going off around the room it was so bright.
“Kind of like us hybrids, the Dranovians seem to have different abilities,” Ainsley explained. “Christopher the baby, and obviously his dad, control lightning and electricity. If I were to guess, this one uses whips of energy, this one blades of energy . . .”
Ainsley pointed out the people on the screen and the strange abilities the girl believed them to have, and Quinn’s mind was overwhelmed.
“Wait, wait!” Quinn said, interrupting the girl. “Whips? The glowing things that he’s wielding are whips of energy? And the spinning blades too? How can they do that?”
Quinn watched the tape and could see the weapons Ainsley had pointed out but couldn’t believe they were made of nothing more than energy.
Ainsley shrugged, never taking her eyes off of the video.
“Each hybrid can manifest their abilities in different ways. Watch what happens when the girl turns on Satalis
and attacks him,” Ainsley said almost breathlessly.
Quinn began to watch the tape, unable to believe she wasn’t watching a comic book movie unfolding before her. The blasts of light she now knew were their weapons lit up the room like a rave as Chris and who she assumed were the family members he rarely spoke of battled Satalis.
So that’s the bastard that kidnapped me to steal my son, Quinn thought angrily.
She sat on the edge of her seat as she silently cheered on Chris and his team. Suddenly, the dark shield surrounding Satalis began to weaken from the assault, and the tape went blank.
“What the hell! Turn it back on!” Quinn said as she glared at Fiona, thinking the woman turned it off somehow.
“That’s all we have of it,” Fiona said as she hit a few buttons on the laptop and set it back at the beginning of the video. “They beat Satalis down so badly he’s spent all this time in hiding trying to recoup his losses and lick his wounds. If Satalis hadn’t escaped them that day, he’d be dead right now, and you would have never been here.”
“Did you see Moira?” Ainsley asked while Fiona threw her an angry glare.
Quinn noticed the interaction and immediately became curious.
“Who’s Moira?” Quinn saw Ainsley look away while Fiona sighed.
“She’s my twin sister. Satalis has her,” Fiona said as she hit the play button again, effectively ending anymore questions.
This time Quinn watched every part of the video, not just staring at Chris, although she had to force her gaze from him several times throughout it.
“This one disappears,” Quinn whispered as she pointed at the bald, black man.
“You’re right!” Ainsley agreed. “I hadn’t noticed that before!”
Quinn watched the buttons Fiona pushed on the laptop as she set it up to play again and sat even closer to the screen so she could study each Dranovian and what their ability appeared to be. She wasn’t sure how many times she’d watched the video, but Fiona had gotten up and made more tea once and was now looking around the kitchen to make dinner.
Quinn looked over at Ainsley who had sat beside her the whole time and stared raptly at the screen as if she was a fan of the Dranovians. It made Quinn more curious about what was going on.
Why the hell would they fear the Dranovians if they appeared so impressed by them? she wondered.
“We don’t want the Dranovians harmed,” Fiona said, surprising Quinn. “We wish we could kill Satalis ourselves, but the thing in our neck prevents us from doing it. He’d kill us before we could even get close.”
Fiona turned sad eyes to Quinn.
“It’s been tried many times before,” she added.
Quinn was starving, and it bothered her to see Fiona putting together dinner on her own, so she stood to help.
Fiona blushed when Quinn saw the items on the counter.
“I’m sorry. We don’t have much here. I don’t get to be here very often, and what food I have has to keep really well,” Fiona muttered the excuse.
Quinn grinned at everything and couldn’t believe their bounty. She’d spent her entire life so poor that she learned really early on to make creative meals with what little she had.
“This is a feast,” Quinn said confidently while Fiona and Ainsley grimaced at the offerings.
Quinn handed the box of powdered milk to Ainsley.
“Make at least a half-gallon of that,” she ordered the girl before she slid several cans in front of her. “Can opener?”
Fiona handed Quinn a can opener, trying to figure out what she planned on making with the items.
“We need a baking dish,” Quinn said next, and Fiona went to get one from the cabinet.
The women worked together, and 45 minutes later they were sitting down to a biscuit-topped casserole made with potted meat, vegetables, and cream soup.
“I normally hate the potted meat, but I have to admit, it’s not that bad like this,” Ainsley admitted as she shoveled another spoonful in her mouth.
“It’s like a pot pie. Very clever. I’ll have to remember it,” Fiona admitted.
“I survived mostly on the basics and variations of them,” Quinn said, remembering how many times she’d eaten the exact same thing at home.
“Was your life hard?” Ainsley asked, sounding sad for Quinn.
Quinn laughed and took a sip of her glass of milk.
“No, it wasn’t. There were parts that sucked really bad, but mostly it just took some extra work to get where I wanted to be, and I was almost there. I was supposed to graduate next week,” Quinn said and tried not to let the tears fall that suddenly filled her eyes.
“When Satalis is dead, you can go back there and live your life again,” Ainsley promised.
“Satalis will be here tomorrow, and the battle will begin. You should be home in time to make your graduation,” Fiona added, her expression unreadable as she stood and began clearing the empty dishes.
“What if they don’t kill him? What if he runs away again?” Quinn asked, wondering if Fiona had a backup plan.
“Then Ainsley and I will join the others in hiding and do our best to protect them while they heal,” Fiona said it as though it would be paradise.
“What about the thing in your neck? Won’t it explode?” Quinn was still confused over what was keeping them with Satalis if the man was so evil.
“We have a human friend,” Fiona explained. “She’s a doctor, and she can take them out of us without Satalis knowing.”
“Only if you’re not around him though,” Ainsley added with a dramatic sigh. “We have to wait to get ours removed until we leave here, or he’ll know it’s a setup.”
“What do you mean? How would he know?” Quinn asked.
“He has a device that tells him where each of the explosive trackers are. Since we moved our people right before the Dranovians struck, we were able to get them all to the doctor and have the discs removed before Satalis set them off,” Fiona said as she stood and began cleaning up.
“In order to bring Satalis here, Fiona and I are keeping ours in so he still sees those blips on his screen and thinks all is well here,” Ainsley added with a grin. “We’re bait so the others can get away.”
“What?” Quinn yelled, looking angrily at Fiona. “Why the hell would you put a child in danger?”
“He’d know if I was gone. Satalis thinks I’m special like Christopher, and he’ll never let me go,” Ainsley whispered, her head hung low.
Fiona dried her hands on a towel and came over and hugged Ainsley.
“You’ll be free tomorrow. You’re going to the doctor in the morning and having yours removed before Satalis gets here,” Fiona promised, tears shining in her eyes as she held the girl.
Quinn’s mind ran with the possibilities of escaping when Ainsley went to the doctor, and she could barely contain her excitement. Ainsley’s next words crushed her hope.
“I’ll make sure I’m back in time to hide the disc here,” Ainsley hugged Fiona back and smiled up at her.
“OK, I’m sick of being confused! What the hell is going on? Tell me the damn plan; tell me something!” Quinn yelled out as she slapped her hands on the table.
“Whoa! Settle down!” Fiona said as she backed away from the table, staring transfixed at the blue light arcing around Quinn’s stomach.
“Stop that! You’re scaring us!” Ainsley demanded, stamping her foot in anger.
Quinn was stunned speechless when the lights around her abdomen stopped completely, and her son stopped moving around. She grabbed her stomach, trying to make sure her baby wasn’t hurt, and breathed a sigh of relief when he began to move a little.
“What did you do?” she demanded of Ainsley.
“I would never hurt him,” Ainsley said with a soft smile. “And he won’t hurt me either because he knows we want to help. That wasn’t him angry at us. That was you using his ability because you’re mad at us. I was telling you to stop.”
“What?” Quinn said before she went
speechless.
There’s no way I used his ability and didn’t know it! she thought as the baby thumped two times in her stomach.
Fiona laughed at Quinn’s dumbstruck expression.
“If I’d have known that would have gotten your attention I’d have told you that from the start,” Fiona teased as she finished drying the last dish. “You’re his mother; you can use his ability in order to defend the both of you. All hybrid mothers can whether they are fully human or not. We’ve seen it before.”
“Satalis hates it!” Ainsley added with a huge grin. “That’s why he avoids the pregnant ones. The babies and their abilities scare him because if he intervenes before the baby comes, most end up dead fighting him.”
“Wait,” Quinn said, confused all over again. “I thought he was damaging the beasts in the unborn children? If he’s nowhere near them, how can he do that?”
“Drugs,” Fiona said with a snort. “The same ones your son refused to eat. Those with less developed beasts aren’t able to scent the drugs and ensure they aren’t consumed. I think the only reason it didn’t work on you is because your son is a Dranovian and much more powerful than the others.”
“Why do you give them the drugs?” Quinn asked, her eyes accusing both of them of being complicit.
“We don’t!” Ainsley shot back angrily. “We keep the drugs from them as much as we can! It’s why I volunteered to give you the meals, so I could make sure the food was good to eat.”
“There are those of us who are beyond hope, who can never be saved,” Fiona added. “They are the ones Satalis puts in charge of the drugs and the mind control shit that bastard does. He doesn’t trust us, but he needs us.”
“So what exactly are you trying to do? What is happening tomorrow?” Quinn tried to smother her yawn.
She wondered why she felt so tired until she looked outside and saw that it was dark. With barely any moon, the shadows of the grasses and sheep looked ominous.
“Tomorrow,” Fiona began, “Ainsley is going through the portal to have the disc removed. I’ll be contacting Satalis to tell him your baby is ready to harvest at the estate, and when he arrives, he will meet the Dranovians instead.”