Chapter Eight
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CATERINA SPENT A RESTLESS night sleeping on the couch in a stranger’s home.
Her dreams were filled with nightmares. She watched herself kill Luca over and over again.
His brief expression of intense agony haunted her even in her sleep.
She returned to the caravans to find her entire clan was gathered together.
Granny Blaze held a black box with a carving of a hawk on the lid.
She lifted the lid to display Caterina’s most prized possessions were inside it.
“You are no longer a member of our family, Caterina Blaze,” the oracle intoned.
“Your punishment for murdering one of our own is eternal banishment.”
A bottomless pit opened where the campfire had been. Caterina watched in horror as her beloved great-grandmother closed the box, then shuffled over to the pit. She dropped the container filled with jewelry, photos of her mom and other mementos into the dark hole.
Waking with a start, Caterina’s heart was hammering. She looked at her fingers, expecting to see her rings were gone. They were still there, but the dreadful feeling of being an outcast remained.
“You don’t have the sight,” she reminded herself shakily. Seeing the future was one skill she lacked, but it ran in her family. One of her ancestors long ago had seen a glimpse of what was to come. She’d changed their surname to Blaze when they’d left Europe to travel to America.
Granny Blaze had known Caterina was special even before she’d been born. “Our clan is named after you, dear one,” she’d told her when her pyrokinesis had manifested eleven years ago. “You have a great destiny, Caterina,” she’d said solemnly. “And your destiny lies in the stars.”
“So far, my destiny sucks,” the cambion complained, feeling wretched as she went about her morning routine.
Used to staying up late and getting up at mid-morning, it felt strange to be up at dawn. She had a long way to travel, so she raided the cupboards and pantry for food before leaving.
The weather was getting cooler the further north she travelled.
Caterina didn’t feel the heat or cold as much as her family and friends, but she wished she’d brought some warmer clothes with her.
“What if I end up in Canada?” she asked sourly as she began to run.
Their clan usually avoided the colder climates, since the roads could be so treacherous for their vehicles.
Glad her hiking boots were worn in, Caterina’s backpacks and duffle bags banged against her as she kept up a steady pace. The cans of food rattled around and bottles of water sloshed noisily. Anyone with enhanced hearing would detect her coming from half a mile away.
“Only aliens and other cambions like me have enhanced senses,” she figured. “If there are any other cambions,” she mused. Granny Blaze hadn’t mentioned that other evil aliens had sired more of her kind, but she guessed it was possible.
She became lost in a fantasy of meeting other people with abilities like hers.
A herd of deer lifted their heads from grazing in a field to stare at her as she ran past them.
Caterina had seen plenty of wildlife before, but the plague had killed a lot of them.
It was good to see some animals were still thriving.
Although he was still far in the distance, she felt drawn to the alien she hadn’t even met yet. Did he know she was coming to meet him? Would she be a complete surprise when they met? She had no way of knowing the answers.
Caterina tried to picture what the alien would look like.
According to the Mad Prophet, the extraterrestrials were all tall and muscular.
“Exactly my type,” she joked in an effort to cheer herself up.
Luca had been tall and handsome, but he’d been too lean for her tastes.
She liked men with more bulk. “Not to mention great asses,” she added, then snickered.
It didn’t really matter what the guy looked like. Her matriarch hadn’t told her they would be a couple. She’d just said that their fates were entwined. “The most likely scenario is that the good aliens will want to use my skills to help them fight their enemies,” she figured with a grimace.
Caterina mulled over the idea of having to use her pyrokinesis to fry people to death. Luca was the first person she’d ever killed and it was tearing her apart inside. How could she use her skills to destroy people who hadn’t even done anything wrong to her?
“I’m an entertainer, not a fighter,” she said, watching the road as she ran.
Her senses detected someone ahead a short while later. Caterina glanced up to see another pileup. The sun reflected off something, then she heard a gunshot. She screamed in pain when the bullet punched through her right thigh. A man shouted in triumph, then two more hooted in glee.
Thinking fast, the cambion staggered and dropped to her knees. Her assailants were out of her reach, so she pretended to pass out and fell onto her side.
“We bagged one, boys!” the dude who’d shot her shouted as the trio converged on her.
“She’s beautiful,” another male said as they got closer.
“I hope she doesn’t die from blood loss,” the third miscreant said.
Anger had risen inside Caterina at being attacked without provocation. She let her power build up and waited until they were a few yards away. Opening her eyes, she sat up and held both hands out.
“Aww, she’s going to beg for her life,” the shooter said mockingly.
“You couldn’t be more wrong about that,” the cambion said grimly, then magic burst from her palms. Flames roared to life and engulfed the trio. Screaming in agony, they dropped to the ground, but they didn’t have time to try to roll to put out the fire.
Wincing at the smell of burnt hair and roasted meat, Caterina rose to her feet. She felt sickened by what she’d just done, but she knew they would have tormented her horribly if they’d captured her. With a wave of her hand, she extinguished the flames.
“It was them or me,” she said guiltily, then grabbed the gear she’d dropped.
She limped around the charred corpses and crossed to a fallen log.
The bullet had gone straight through her thigh, but it had nicked the bone.
Caterina breathed through her nose, taking in long, deep breaths until the worst of the pain abated.
As always, her injury was healing quickly.
Cleaning the blood off her leg with water and tissues, the cambion wished she had a first aid kit.
The best she could do was rip up a t-shirt and tie it around her leg to stem the bleeding.
She buried the trash in a shallow hole since she didn’t want any predators to follow her.
Roasting people to death was bad enough without adding unnecessary animal fatalities to her list.
Her stomach continued to churn as she began to trudge down the road.
She refused to let her tears fall. If it was her destiny to become a ruthless killer, then she needed to reconcile herself to it now.
The kindness her great-grandmother had cherished was doomed if it was her fate to become an executioner.
Caterina faintly heard shouts of help coming from a house ahead. Three women were inside and were pleading to be rescued.
“I bet a billion bucks those men captured them,” Caterina predicted. She picked up her pace, since her leg was healing so fast. Angling onto the driveway, the cambion remained alert for trouble this time. She couldn’t see or sense any other men lying in wait.
The front door was locked, so she tried the back door. It was bolted shut when she tried to ram her shoulder against it. “Screw this,” she muttered and used a rock to smash a window. Making sure she got all of the glass out of the way, she left her gear outside and climbed inside.
Shrill screams came from below the house.
The prisoners probably thought the house was under attack.
Caterina found the door to the basement and flicked on the light switch.
Nothing happened, so she searched the living room.
A camping lantern sat on the coffee table.
Switching it on, she blinked at the brightness and returned to the stairs.
“It’s okay!” she called out over the screams. “I’m here to help!”
“Be careful!” one of the females cried out. “Three men are keeping us locked up in here! They could come back at any moment!”
“They’re dead,” Caterina said, then swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I killed them,” she added, moving close enough for them to hear her without needing to raise her voice.
“Good,” another woman said in grim satisfaction. “You’ll need to find the keys to our doors,” she said.
The basement was extensive. Rooms had been crudely constructed on either side of a long hallway. Caterina looked around and saw some keys hanging from a rack next to the light switch. They were numbered and she sensed the first two cells on the left and the first one on the right were occupied.
She grabbed the keys, then walked over to the doors.
One of the women had a black soul, so Caterina unlocked her door first. The cell was tiny and had a single mattress on the floor.
A bucket was in one corner and needed to be emptied.
“Thank you so much,” the female gushed. Dressed in dirty clothes, her hair was matted and her skin was grimy.
About Caterina’s age, she was far too skinny.
“How can I ever repay you?” the female asked, then lurched forward to hug her rescuer.
Caterina saw the screwdriver the woman was holding just in time to avoid being wounded.
She shoved her back before the now snarling captive could stab her with it.
Undeterred, the female lunged at her again.
The cambion dropped the lamp and caught her wrist. Easily overpowering the shorter woman, she put her hand on her chest and fried her heart.
It was the quickest way she could take someone out.
Smoke wafted from the prisoner’s mouth and nostrils as Caterina let her fall.
She shakily picked up the lamp and keys she’d dropped, then locked the door when she stepped into the hallway.
She had no idea why the female had tried to kill her when she’d just wanted to set her free.
It would have been dangerous for the victim to try to take her captors down with just a screwdriver.
Maybe she’d always been a murderer and had been compelled to attack someone she thought was vulnerable.
“What happened to her?” one of the women with gray souls asked when the cambion let them out of their cells, gesturing at the room where the other captive was.
“I think she had a heart attack,” Caterina lied. “You’re free now. I suggest looting as much food as you can from this house, then getting the hell away from here.”
“Can we go with you?” the other female asked in a hopeful tone.
Caterina shook her head. “I’m heading towards danger,” she said. “Death will follow me wherever I go now.” With that warning, she turned and walked away.