Oppression (28 page)

27.

THE STILLNESS IN the room was as sharp as the blade in my hand and bound by fragile tension that could shatter at the first sign of attack. I stood, weapon in hand, ready to face my enemy, to defend my cause at any cost. I didn’t dare let my eyes veer from direct contact, and hers stayed locked on mine, but nothing in them was looking for a fight. Nevertheless, I felt the muscles in my body tense.

She stayed calm as I calculated how I could kill her, or at least stop her from getting in my way. Her posture, far too relaxed, told me she had either accepted her fate or that she felt confident she would win the struggle between us. Neither made me feel any more at ease.

“You know,” she said breaking the silence, “I never wanted this life.”

I didn’t care enough to respond. Her feelings were the last thing on my mind. I tried to stay focused on the attack that was sure to come.

“I told you,” she continued, “if they try and hide on their own, it won’t work. They’ll find her.”

Hatred seeped out of every one of my pores as I suppressed the urge to lunge forward and take her to the ground. If I wasn’t so worried about losing my precious blood, maybe I would have already done it. Instead, I only gritted my teeth and held my tongue.

“I could help you though . . .”

My heart stuttered. Had I heard her wrong? I looked for the insincerity in her face, the joke behind her words, but her expression remained strong and defiant.
Help
could mean so many things. Could she help me survive the process? I couldn’t keep the hopeful tone out of my voice.

“How?”

She nodded and smiled to herself before answering decidedly. “Be your backup.”

My chest nearly caved in at the thought, and I took a deep breath full of relief.

“Kara, I . . . are you sure?” Deep down I didn’t want to hope for something too good to be true.

“I think I am.”

“What about your family?”

“I’ve already warned them, told them to leave. They’ll be at risk, but the prophecy is the only way to really save them. They’ve had to live in fear for too many years.”

Everything seemed to fold into place just a little too well. How did I know this wasn’t some Council scheme to get me to kill myself and leave Anna and Chloe for them to murder?

“Why are you helping me?” I asked, keeping my eyes on her. “Why put you and your family in danger? I don’t mean anything to you.”

I tried to be subtle as I evaluated her sincerity, and watched her brow sink into a hateful scowl.

“I’ve been working for The Council since I was fifty-six. I never had a choice.” She looked away from me as she spoke, as if she were afraid her disloyal words might travel too far. “It’s about time someone took a stand against them.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. It was gratifying to know that we would not only be saving a life, but that it would stand for something. Still, the unsettling thought wouldn’t leave my mind. How did I know for sure this girl was on my side? All she had given me was her word, and the word of an enemy was as trustworthy as a foundation of sand. “But how do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

I could see her processing my perspective, swimming through the uncertainties that had inspired my doubt. With open access to the workings of my thoughts, there was no telling what she was looking for, but she seemed to understand my need for proof.

She exhaled decisively. “I’ll show you. Give me your hand,” she said, stepping forward with caution.

Still a little wary of her closeness, I set the knife down and reached forward, allowing her to pull my fingers back and expose the bare flesh of my palm.

“If I let you in, you’ll see more than you may be ready for, but I suppose it’s for the best. You need to see why I’d choose to defy them.” She looked at me and pressed my hand to her forehead.

I assumed I was about to experience her ability in reverse, but the transition was difficult to comprehend. Being inside her mind was like being in a dream. My thoughts were still present somewhere in the distance, but hers occupied the forefront of my consciousness. Images spilled past me in chaotic, jumbled spurts like a music video or a life-encompassing slide show set on fast-forward. Unfamiliar faces and places I’d never seen whirled about, unrecognized, and I felt for a moment as if I had amnesia.

Try and remember
, she advised.

Remember what?

Use my mind to remember what you want to know.

As I tried to decipher my own intentions amidst the collection of her thoughts, an outside image of myself popped into view, pushing everything else aside. At first, I was watching from the driver’s seat of the black Lincoln that had followed me from the city. I saw things from her eyes as she closely observed me without my knowing. In the coffee shop, at home, on many occasions when I thought I’d been alone, she had been there.

Each memory encompassed a whole range of feelings, thoughts, and emotions, none of which embodied the malice I had expected from her. Instead, she watched me with curiosity and bitter resentment for the task she had been given—to report everything she knew about me to The Council.

There was jealousy for the freedom I had, for William, and confusion as she wondered why I would die for a human, let alone one who had lived so many years. Then there was hate, not for me, but for The Council. I found myself interested in what could conjure up such hate and chose to seek out the origin of her anger.

Once I’d reached the core of the emotion, I was peering out from her twelve-year-old eyes at two loving parents and a little sister clinging to each other in overwhelming sadness as she was being ripped from their lives.

The hatred continued to blacken with each mission assigned to her. The memories became brutal and violent as they progressed. Murders, experiments, torture. She had seen unimaginable things. The flickering photos of her mind stopped to focus in on one singularly disturbing instance.

She was in someone’s apartment, and it was just turning dark out. A man stood tall and brutish, blocking my view of the woman on the couch. I knew from her recollection that this man was what they called a Hunter. She had been allocated as his lookout as she was often assigned to do, given her unique ability to access the mind. If the Hunter needed help extracting information, of course she would be required to assist, but Hunters were usually sent for one reason—to kill.

I noticed that she kept clear of the woman’s mind, opting to stay out of it, and I searched for the reason. Then it hit me, a sense of dread that nearly made my knees buckle—she didn’t want to know the fear that was to stand before a Hunter.

“Kara, go check the rooms,” the Hunter grunted.

“All right,” she said, glad to escape the horrific scene that was sure to take place.

I wanted to know what would come of the faceless woman, but her eyes only provided me a view that led away from them. She turned the corner to the sound of the woman’s muffled scream, and didn’t look back.

Checking rooms was an easy task that usually provided refuge from the horrors at play. Hunters knew their victims well and picked times when they were sure to be alone. Not once in ten years as a lookout had she ever met an unexpected human, but I could feel the anticipation of what was to come, and I knew this was what she wanted me to see.

The apartment seemed completely deserted as she assumed it would be. All the lights were off, and aside from the continued agonizing moans of the poor woman, there was nothing but dead silence. Even after years of bearing witness to these sorts of atrocities, her stomach still felt like it was full of rocks. Sweat beaded across her forehead as she became sick in the toilet of the guest bathroom, the last unchecked room. I watched her retch, feeling the climax of the memory growing nearer. Then I saw it, a small bare foot, visible just outside the coverage of the shower curtain. My heart nearly stopped with hers as she digested the image. Hunters left no survivors.

Hello
, she whispered, although the words were unspoken.
I won’t hurt you, but you have to be very quiet or he’ll hear you.

As she peered around the curtain, she was taken aback. The child was so young, a little girl of only four or five. The girl recoiled slightly out of fear. Her wide eyes were a soft brown that oddly resembled the little sister of her memory, and although they were wet with tears, she stayed quiet.

The woman’s faded cries had ceased, which meant he’d be wrapping up. She didn’t have a lot of time. He’d come looking for her.

Listen
, the child’s teary eyes made her ache with sympathy.
I’ll be back for you, okay? Don’t worry.

And with that she pulled herself together to face the Hunter.

“What took you so long?” he barked as she re-entered the living room.

She put on a gruff face and stepped back into her “bad guy” role. One thing she had learned from the beginning was that in this business, there was no room for weakness, no time for tears, and no reason to be civil. The only way to survive was to be somebody you weren’t, to slip into an alternate identity that was strong enough to handle it all.

“What? You gotta get home to paint your nails or something? I was looking for money, what do you think?” Her voice came out harsh and cold.

“Find any?” But before she could answer, the man’s eyes averted. “Lookie here,” he grunted, and I felt the hairs on Kara’s neck stand up. She turned around just in time to see the bullet hit the little girl right between the eyes.

***

Anna didn’t move when I entered the room. She lay still and peaceful, for the moment, escaping the pain. A part of me began to worry as I watched her, and my stomach flinched with fear. I prayed she was still holding on. I sighed with relief as I saw the subtle staggering breath that fought with her slowly rising chest. I wasn’t too late.

I sat down beside her, taking her hand while Kara waited just outside the door. Anna’s eyes parted briefly, and her breath deepened as she began to feel my comfort. Everything would be all right.

“People don’t understand,” I confessed in a low voice. “What you mean to me will never be understood by anyone other than us, but I don’t need it to be. We know.”

I lifted myself off of her bed, and took the knife from the bedside table. There was nothing left to say really, only one last sweet intake of breath before I cut deep into my flesh. The cherry-red blood glistened with vivid pigment against my skin, painting bright crimson patterns on the surface of my hand. It dripped from my fingertips onto the dull colored carpet, each drop a hidden ruby in the sand. The pain was clouded, washed up in the pure shock of it all. It was only a side effect, an afterthought in all that mattered to me in that moment.

Come on, Elyse
, Kara coaxed gently as she stepped inside the room, and I moved my wrist to Anna’s mouth.

I felt compelled to fulfill my purpose and unafraid to follow through. Maybe I was put on earth for this one deed, this one moment, and everything else was just a collection of stepping-stones that led me here. Whatever the case, there was no going back, not now. All that was left was the mystery of what was to come of me, and the prophecy. I felt almost certain it was working as the blood left my body and flowed into her mouth. At first she tried to resist, confused by what was happening, but when she realized it was saving her, she became desperate for it, grabbing hold of my arm with wide eyes.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Kara said out loud so Anna could hear. “Give me the knife, Elyse.”

“No,” I said forcefully through the fog. “Just a little more.”

“Well, at least give me the knife.”

I heard Kara wince as she made a smaller incision on her own wrist. “Are you done, I—”

As her words cut out, I felt my body freeze. The sensation was all too familiar, and I knew we were in trouble. I stared into Anna’s terrified eyes and noticed she was frozen as well, lips still locked around my wrist.

“I told you I’d find a way to get to you,” Ryder sneered. “They can’t pin it on me if you voluntarily bleed to death.”

I couldn’t turn my head to see him, but I heard the crack of his fist against Kara’s jaw. “What a deceitful little brat you turned out to be. Was it worth it? For a human?”

Anna and I were only able to listen to her guttural moans, as another blow forced all the air out of her lungs. I hated him. My mind was screaming, desperate to make my body move, but it wouldn’t. Would he kill her? Kill Anna? I was helpless, and as more blood left my body, I was running out of time.

“There are always consequences,” Ryder bellowed. Kara’s bloody face came into view and smashed against the floor.

Then it all began to fade, and my existence came tumbling in around me like the heavy night sky, crushing me between itself and the floor of the earth. My senses grew weak and blurred together in a fog. The sound of Kara’s beating dissipated, and I was lost in a place of shock that left me unaware of what was happening around me. Time was a foreign thing. I had no concept of how long it had been. Had it taken minutes, hours, or even days for me to die? There was no way to tell.