by Frankie Rose
It was surprising how fast a month could fly by when your days were filled with the endless comings and goings of strangers, the most prominent of which were Beatty and his small family. He and his brothers, Otis and Brynn, along with Beatty’s wife, Nyla, and their son, Scout, turned up one morning, scaring the life out of all of us.
Otis and Brynn were mirror images of each other, identical twins that could only be told apart by the faint, inch-long scar that ran along Brynn’s temple. They were tall and stocky and full of noise. Their presence was only dwarfed by that of Beatty himself, who gave the impression that he could have taken down a grizzly if he wanted to. The three men were all dark haired and wore scruffy facial hair that made them look much older than they truly were. They were hard men from the Third Quarter, the south. Agatha said the Third Quarter was renowned for the unparalleled fighting skills of its people. I was inclined to believe her.
Nyla on the other hand, was a slight woman who looked as though she might fall down in a stiff breeze. From the First Quarter, northern, like Agatha, she came from the Intellectuals. Her auburn hair fell to her waist like a waterfall of soft, exotic silk. Her almond-shaped eyes were quizzical, and she was remarkably quiet in comparison to the men’s bluff and bravado.
Her son was five and had the same coloring as his father, but had inherited his mother’s slim frame and gentle nature. I barely noticed his presence most of the time. When I did, it was only because I’d nearly tripped over him as he appeared from a dark corridor to flit across the hangar.
Agatha had snapped out of her melancholic haze a week after they buried Aldan. Since then she had been the epitome of optimism, so much so that it had really began to grate on my nerves. Her phone never stopped buzzing. It was as though everyone who knew Agatha and Daniel had heard the call to arms and come running. All kinds of new people appeared overnight.
Each morning revealed piles of unfamiliar bodies passed out on various roll mats in the corridors and underneath the tables. It felt like Agatha was attempting to amass an army of people simply in order to annoy me, but Tess loved it. The planning, the organizing. The only thing she wanted no part of was the fighting. That was all on me.
My sling had been off for three weeks, and my arm was as strong as it had been before. There was no getting out of it. I’d resented having to participate in a glorified self-defense class at first, but my interest picked up when we moved from defending to attacking.
Tess watched from the sidelines and smiled proudly when I managed to land a strike on Beatty, who demanded it should be he, himself, that trained me in hand to hand combat. She also pretended to look elsewhere when he managed to put me on my backside, which was more often than not.
I had tried to get Tess to go home, but she’d refused to leave Oliver. Her mom had lost the plot when Tess called and told her Oliver had surprised her with a two-week holiday. When Mrs. Kennedy told her to end their relationship and come home immediately, Tess refused point-blank. Mrs. Kennedy told her that if she wouldn’t do as she was told, she was no longer welcome in her house. It had been like that for the past month. Tess refused to call her mom, and Mrs. Kennedy refused to call her daughter; they were both as stubborn as each other. I couldn’t help but feel it was all my fault, but Tess was immoveable.
After a lot of arguing, Agatha agreed it would probably be safer for Tess if she were with us, and I was outvoted. St Jude’s had lost another promising student. As for Oliver, he was still unsure about everything Agatha told him. There was one thing he was sure about: no one was going to hurt Tess, and that definitely made him on our side. For the moment.
Aside from Beatty, who demanded my attendance to his class every day, Cliff, another of Agatha’s friends, was also helping train me. He was the first person to put a knife in my hand. He’d been showing me increasingly interesting ways to relieve an opponent of his internal organs since then.
He said I had potential, and I was quite proud at his words despite their macabre connotation. Attaining a compliment from Cliff was no easy task. He was tall and slender with a mop of curly brown hair and ice blue eyes that were as cold as his blade. He was scary as all hell. I was more than a little intimidated by him when we first met, and not a lot had changed since.
Daniel hadn’t been back to the hangar once. Every time another person walked through the doorway into the increasingly crowded space, my heart leapt in my chest, hoping that it would be him. It never was. No one had seen him or heard from him.
It took a long time after he’d disappeared before I came to the realization that now wasn’t the time to mope and feel sorry for myself. Beatty reminded me of it constantly. Now was the time to watch and learn and fight. He’d knocked me down yet again, winding me, when he began the morning’s tirade.
“Where was your block, Your Highness?” he asked, bawdy and mocking. I slumped back on the ground, already exhausted. He towered over me and tutted with a familiar disappointment. “If an Immundus came at you, then you may as well skip the embarrassing fumble and just lay down for him, too. Let him slit your throat and have done with it.” The deep rumble of his voice rebounded around the hangar, and I cringed. Everyone would be hearing how hopeless I was again today.
“I did block.”
“You blocked my blow with your stomach, then, Highness. That’s not a very smart fighting tactic.” He laughed, deep and low, and a few stifled titters emanated from the small group that had gathered to watch my ineptitude. I wished this lesson would go quicker so I could fight with Cliff instead. At least he didn’t find it quite so funny when I ended up on the floor.
“Do you need a break, Highness?”
“No. And stop calling me Highness.”
Beatty stooped into a low bow with a look of mischief on his face. “As it pleases you, Highness”
I growled, pulling myself up from the ground with a graceless heave, and cut him a dirty look. The nickname had come out of nowhere. It grated, and the more I allowed Beatty to see that, the more he used it.
“Well, Highness, if looks could kill then we would be in business!” He roared with laughter. I rolled my eyes when I noticed Tess on the sidelines, trying to cover a smirk. She shrugged apologetically when she realized she had been caught, and I huffed, turning my attention back to Beatty.
He was too busy winking and pretending to scowl ferociously at his friends to notice me as I lunged forward and planted my foot behind him, locking my hip against his massive frame. I twisted my body around so that he moved with me. To my surprise, I actually managed to pivot the great man off his feet, and suddenly he was falling backwards. He landed with a ground shaking crash on the mat. Everyone went silent. Beatty lay on his back, blinking rapid-fire. I panicked, awaiting his wrath. Instead he laughed.
“My compliments, Highness. Didn’t think you had it in you.”
I sighed with relief and accepted the hand he held up for assistance, but was of absolutely no use when I tried to heave him up. This only made him laugh even harder. I gave up and let him roll on the floor, red faced, with tears streaming down his face. I looked to Tess for help but saw that Agatha and Oliver had joined her and they were watching the scene play out for themselves. Oliver’s eyes danced with mirth, but Agatha remained stony-faced.
She was the one who suggested I learn to fight, even though she knew Daniel wouldn’t like it, and it appeared that we weren’t taking the lesson seriously enough for her liking. I reddened and dropped the smile playing on my own lips as I made my way over to them.
“Enjoying your lesson?” Agatha asked.
“Sorry, Agatha. I am paying attention, I swear. Beatty says I’m improving every day.”
Agatha nodded distractedly, her eyes flicking towards the man, who had now risen to his feet.
“Don’t worry. I’m pretty confident I could handle myself against an Immundus.”
“You think so?” she asked. “An Immundus is nothing more than a foot soldier, but they’re well-trained foot soldiers who have
years of combat training. I don’t mean to be unkind, Farley, but I would be very surprised if you could beat one. That’s not really the issue, though, because there’s never just one of them. There’d be four or five at least.”
I blanched at her words, knowing she was right. I was kidding myself if I thought I was ready. Agatha’s expression softened a little.
“I’m not trying to scare you. Just prepare you. Maybe this is the wrong thing to do. No amount of training is going to help you if we ever manage to get in front of your father or the other Immortals.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. Elliott was bad enough in a dream. He probably wasn’t any more accommodating in real life. Oliver bristled at the mention of him, and I wondered whether he was curious about our father at all. He cleared his throat and shifted uneasily behind Agatha before breaking his silence.
“What am I going to be doing when World War Three is going down? I know how to fight. I could help.”
Tess was already shaking her head when Agatha shut him down. “You’re the biggest bargaining chip we’ve ever had. We have to keep you somewhere safe. If anything goes wrong, then we can protect you. Have you hidden. If they capture you, then they will make you do what they want.”
Tess looked relieved, but Oliver? He wasn’t happy at all. The argument clearly wasn’t over.
“Your Highness!” Beatty bellowed from the crash mat where I had left him. “Shall I take your absence as an admission of defeat?”
I scowled and turned from the others. I had to show Agatha that I was capable. Beatty laughed as I charged at him, and then we were dancing again.