Chapter 20 – Clawdia
CHAPTER 20
CLAWDIA
L ord. What am I going to do? Maybe if I don’t move, she won’t find me.
But I knew it wasn’t to be. After scouring the basket and finding nothing but crusty socks, she lifted her head to search the rest of the room with suspicious eyes. “Clawdia,” she called in a singsong voice and my blood seemed to turn to ice in my veins.
“I know you’re here. I can feel it. If you come out now, I’ll do you the mercy of seeing your soul pair before Fafnir kills you.”
I didn’t move.
“I’m impressed you’ve gotten so far,” she mused as she walked in slow circles around the room, her eyes darting all around for signs of me. “You were always the most pathetic cat when you were Winnie’s familiar. Maybe because Winnie was just as pathetic. If your souls are attached, it makes sense that you take on her traits.”
You wouldn’t know. You could never summon a familiar of your own. You are the pathetic one.
I knew she was trying to get a rise out of me, but it wouldn’t work. Disparaging Winnie was an excellent way to anger me and remind me of Mary’s crime against her, but not enough for me to out myself.
And then a voice boomed in my head, “Clawdia. Where are you?”
“Baelen?” I was overjoyed at the sound of his voice, but confused about how he could suddenly contact me.
“Yes, my sunlight. I’m here at the compound. Charlie is watching from the screens.” Relief made my body sag for a moment. I wasn’t alone anymore. Help was here and saving Zaide was more possible now. “Tell me where you are and he will find and direct me to you.”
“Find Zaide first. I haven’t got to him yet, but I know he’s really hurt.”
He hesitated at hearing my news but ultimately decided, “I will come to you and by then, Charlie will have found Zaide and we can go together.”
“Don’t come here. I’m a little busy right now.” I told him firmly as I watched Mary systematically check the drum of each washing machine and each dryer, as though I would be hiding in the wet clothes.
“Busy doing what?” He asked sharply, probably feeling the underlying note of fear that belied my easy words.
“I’m with Mary in the laundry room.”
“Mary?” he hissed. “I’m on my way. Keep hidden. But if you cannot, then do as you must to stay alive.”
After checking all the machines, Mary did another slow walk around the room and her gaze fixed on the vent.
“She’d better not have-” I heard her mutter to herself as she bent down to check the vent. She swiped a finger through the lines of dust and I half hoped that she, too, would squeeze herself into the vent so I could trap her in there and escape.
But I had no such luck. She put the vent cover back on the wall, then turned suddenly in my direction and her eyes met mine. A slow smirk creeped over her face and I froze like a deer in headlights.
Oh god.
“I knew it. I knew you were here.” Her smile was manic.
I couldn’t fight her as a cat. I couldn’t defend myself at all, so I turned human and stood proudly in front of her, my arms crossed in front of my chest, and my bottom half still hidden by the cabinet.
“You’re very clever, Mary,” I replied dryly, concealing my fear and anxiety from her. “You discovered me. Bravo.”
“Bravo indeed, because now you are here, I can hand you over to Fafnir.” She tossed me a large man’s t-shirt from the dirty hamper. “Put this on before I take you to the cells. If I drag a naked girl along the corridor, there will be a riot and neither of us wants that.”
I put it on, because I didn’t want to stand naked in front of her. It didn’t help me look unintimidated. And even though the smell was enough to make me gag, I did feel better when the bottom seam brushed my knees.
“I’m not just going to follow you to my doom,” I told her.
“I don’t need you to follow.” She laughed. “I have magic that can force you into a cell along with your titan, and you can both die a horrible death so I can finally get what I’ve been working for.”
“A dragon. I heard,” I raised a condescending eyebrow, a little more confident, since she hadn’t immediately attacked me. “But so cliche. I hoped that the woman who murdered my witch, her lover, might have something more ambitious to aim for, but no. You just want to fly. You know there are planes now. They sail across the sky, taking humans to new places.”
“Who are you?” She shook her head, a bewildered smile on her face. “The Clawdia I knew wouldn’t have dared to speak to me this way.”
“Wouldn’t I? You couldn’t hear my thoughts as Winnie could, but believe me, I had some choice things to say about you,” I sneered.
Mary picked at some lint from a clean shirt on the airing rack. “Ah, Winnie. She was a terrible witch, but I miss her.”
“You don’t get to say that,” I growled and all the pain, anger, and questions I had came spilling out. “She was an amazing person. She was everything to me, like my sister, and you took her from me. You can’t miss her when you’re the reason she’s gone. Why? How could you do that to someone who loved you?”
“She was a loser.” Mary shrugged, as though the answer should have been obvious. She looked at me with dead eyes as she said, “I couldn’t have her dragging me down anymore and I found a better use for her. I’m a winner.”
“The winner of what, Mary? From what I can see, you have lost half your family, you’ve lost your freedom. Fafnir has thrown you to wolves who won’t hesitate to kill you when they tire of you, and you are a traitor to your people. You are sad and pathetic and I’m glad Winnie’s dead because if she knew what you were really like, what you were really about, she would have been mortified. She loved you. Truly. You were, and are a bully. A selfish, cruel, and nasty bitch who never deserved the affection she had for you and you destroyed her. You are a monster. And if you think you are going to escape punishment for the murder of my witch, for torturing Zaide and for taking Savida’s fire, then you are sorely mistaken.”
I was shaking, my hands clenched as righteous rage consumed me.
“Who’s going to punish me? You?” She threw her head back and laughed in the crazed way only a villain would.
A snarl curled my lips as a flame of fury burned brighter inside me. All thoughts of kindness, morality, forgiveness left my mind as though they had never been there. A red mist of pure anger clouded my eyes and flashes of Mary, all the wrongs she’d committed, a word in my mind.
She doesn’t deserve forgiveness. She doesn’t deserve kindness. The moral thing to do would be to make sure she could never hurt anyone again. So she can no longer aid Fafnir. She needs to die.
“Yes, me.”
I charged toward her while her head was thrown back in a laugh and she didn’t see me before I tackled her. We fell to the floor, Mary smashing her head against the tiles. I punched her. I’d never thrown a punch before in my life and from the throbbing in my thumb and knuckles, I probably didn’t do it right. But Mary let out a pained moan and desperately tried to unseat me from her chest.
Her wiggling was for nothing, though. I had her arms pinned beneath my legs and her legs waved wildly, trying to reach me, but I remained heavy like stone and stared down at her smugly. She tried to whisper a spell. I could feel the stir of magic in the few syllables she managed to whisper before I slammed my hand over her mouth.
“No. You aren’t going to win this one because you are too arrogant to truly know your opponent. It’s embarrassing.”
She screamed against my hand and tried to form words beneath my firm grip. Magic stirred again, and I looked around for something to gag her with. If her lips were separated, then she couldn’t speak. But my distraction caused me to lean too far back and her legs heaved up, wrapped around my waist. I hit the ground hard and tried to disentangle myself from her and scoot away, but as she got to her knees, she got a better grip on me.
Words like bullets poured from her mouth and magic ripped at me again, this time pinning me to the floor with my mouth shut. The tables had well and truly turned.
And this time, there would be no punishment from my men to go home to. Mary had killed before and would happily do so again. My situation wasn’t just a risk, it was dire. I let my anger overtake me again, and I rushed to avenge my witch, but couldn’t do it. I failed her. And I failed my men.
My eyes welled with tears I couldn’t let fall as Mary smiled cruelly down at me. “I always win.”
Her hand wrapped around my neck, squeezing so tightly I could feel the strength of each finger as they blocked my airways and blood supply. I wasn’t surprised she decided to kill me with her bare hands. It was clear she’d taken a liking to killing.
But in that moment, suffocating on air as I did the first time she attempted to kill me, I remembered I wasn’t powerless anymore. I had the power from my soul pair, the strength from my soul mate and witch. I wasn’t alone and I can take away what I can give.
I focused on her threads and as I suspected, they were green, healthy and twirling around her like a cute grass snake, but I didn’t want health. I wanted poison. I wanted the green grass snake to turn large, heavy and red, to wrap around her like a boa constrictor and take the air from her lungs as she tried to take mine. And the threads, as I hoped they would, responded to my wishes.
Her grip on my neck weakened as her thread turned from green to orange to red in three blinks, and I gasped for air. She coughed and her hand touched her heart like she couldn’t understand why she suddenly felt so unwell, releasing me from her hold altogether. I didn’t immediately move. I caught my breath and watched as she panted with wide, frightened eyes over me, but I was not sympathetic.
In my red haze of fury and fear, I felt inhuman, my morals tossed aside. I pushed her away and scooted back to watch her fall and writhe on the floor. She clutched at her chest and clawed at her throat, until she stopped moving and with the sound of her hand falling limp against the floor, the red mist fell away like a drop curtain revealing the gory picture and mind came back to itself.
“Oh.” I moaned. Nausea rising in my throat, I gagged as tremors shook my whole body. “Oh, no. What have I done? Mary.” I crawled over and shook her. She didn’t move. I shook her again.
I didn’t want to check her pulse; I didn’t want to check her threads; I didn’t want to know that I’d taken a life.
The door opened behind me with a squeak, but I didn’t turn, I couldn’t. My mind clouded as I stared at the lifeless eyes of my former witch’s lover.
Someone hissed my name and then I was wrapped in someone’s arms. Not someone’s. Baelen’s. I could smell the iron and wood scent of him and I immediately turned into it, burying my head in his chest.
You killed her. You killed her.
But maybe I didn’t. Maybe she’s asleep. Maybe if someone finds her, they will be able to save her.
I couldn’t get my mind to stop spinning and my breathing seemed to get faster and faster without my permission until they were shallow and I felt like I couldn’t keep up, like my breaths couldn’t penetrate deep enough in my chest, like I was turning to stone from the inside out and the air just moved around it.
I was barely aware that Baelen was calling my name. I could feel him stroking my body, but it was like it was happening to someone else. Tears blinded me and my body felt tingly, like I had pins and needles stabbing me all over. I couldn’t breathe and my hands clawed at Baelen’s shirt, asking for the help that I couldn’t voice.
Suddenly, his fangs were in my neck and although I couldn’t feel any less happy, the sharp shock of pleasure jolted me back into my body. I could hear him when he pulled back, blood dripping from his lips and he said, “You’re all right. You’re safe. You did what you had to.”
My breathing settled as he held me, stroked me and whispered reassurances. I didn’t look at the witch.
“Baelen. I think she’s dead.” I shook my head when he opened his mouth to confirm or deny. “I don’t want to know. I can’t know right now. If I know, I won’t be able to save Zaide, and all of this will be for nothing.”
His red eyes swirled with emotion as he stared at me, assessing, before saying, “All right. Let’s go.”
I didn’t ask him how he was here, I just held tightly to his hand like I was daring the world to part us right now, and thanked God he was here. We stood just as the door slammed open and Jack charged in.
I opened my mouth to talk to him, but Baelen pulled me against his chest, backed us against the wall and covered my mouth. In my mind, he whispered, “stay silent.”
“He can see us.”
“We are invisible.”
“But I know him. He’s on my side. He can help.”
“He might not be on your side knowing you killed Mary.”
I didn’t think of that. So I did as he said and watched as Jack exclaimed and cursed as he checked Mary for a pulse. Then he scanned the floors and saw the phone I left behind the cabinet. He stopped the recording and then skimmed through it. “Fuck,” he yelled, clutching the phone in his hands as the leaders he trusted repeated all I told him. He checked his watch, cursed again and then ran out of the room.
He dropped his hand from my mouth and nodded. “We need to go. I know where Zaide is.”
“You do? How?” I asked, gripping him again as he pulled us toward the door and out to the corridor.
“I have Charlie’s voice in my ear and he is giving me directions,” he whispered.
I could barely see where we were going. My eyes were still blurry with tears and my body shook with the restrained emotions, but I trusted Baelen to guide us. We stayed completely silent as hunters milled around the corridor. There seemed to be less than earlier and I wondered what the time was, if some were already in the courtyard waiting for the meeting.
When we opened a black door into a dark room with stairs descending toward a thick metal door at the bottom, I wiped my eyes with one hand, gripped Baelen with the other, and prepared myself to hold back more emotion when I saw Zaide. I didn’t know the state he would be in, but Mary suggested it was bad. As we pushed through the door to a room with a large cell, I gasped.
He wasn’t there. Zaide was gone.
“Where is he?” My voice was hysterical as I looked around the cell, as though Zaide was simply hiding behind the rustic-looking hospital bed. But no, the large metal cuffs, which were attached to the thick bars of the cell, were open and blood sprinkled across the concrete and metal. I held back a whimper and turned to Baelen accusingly. “I thought you knew where he was?”
It wasn’t fair for me to blame him, but I would apologize later. I just need to find Zaide, leave and forget this ever happened.
“He should be here. He was. I can smell him. It’s his blood.” He looked just as bewildered and upset as I felt, which eased my anger slightly.
But if he was supposed to be here, why isn’t he? Where is he now? Worry stirred in my gut as I considered the possibility that Zaide had been moved for the meeting.
Baelen pressed a button on the earpiece and said, “Charlie, he’s not here.”
He was silent for too long, and I bounced impatiently at his side before asking, “What’s he saying?”
“He’s telling us to go into the corridor and stay hidden until he’s found him again.” Baelen grimaced. He wasn’t used to taking orders and Charlie’s demands were clearly not what he would have done himself. But as he’d said before, we are a team, we work together.
There wasn’t a clock in the room, but I knew it had to be about midday. “The meeting is about to start,” I said. “I really should find Michael before Fafnir eats him. Maybe he knows where Zaide has gone.”
“I’m sorry, but saving the hunter is not important. We need to concentrate on Zaide,” Baelen replied, and his thumb brushed my hand in calming gentle strokes.
I opened my mouth to argue when the door slammed open and a furious Jack stormed into the room. Baelen pulled me against his chest, hugging me tightly and I wriggled in his arms to try to face Jack. It’s not the time to cuddle Baelen.
“You’re just going to let him die, then?” Jack demanded. His eyes roamed around us but didn’t seem to meet my gaze. Baelen must have made us invisible again. “I know you’re here and we don’t have time for this. You need to get Michael out of here. If you can get him out of here, then I’ll help you find your titan.”
“Where is Michael now?” I asked before Baelen could stop me. He tensed against me and I avoided his angry red gaze.
Jack replied quickly, “He’s hiding in the infirmary at the moment, but they are looking for him. We need to hurry.”