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“Girls!” Sister Brie’s voice came from where I had stood mere moments before, the toll the cancer was taking on her evident in how weak her voice had become. “Girls, it's time to come back now!”
Sister Brie had found us. She always found us. She’d get us back to the keep without anyone noticing.
Ness opened her eyes, the bright emerald pools edged with tiny crystalline tears. The paler of her skin faded, giving way to the opalescent shine she always carried. She smiled at me before sitting up.
Across the clearing Sister Brie stood, her long black wimple billowing out from her like a cloak. She remained poised there, unnaturally still as the first stroke of lightning pierced the ground near her feet. Silver flashed across the clearing, and before I could clear my vision Sister Brie had fallen.
Had she been struck?
No, that wasn’t possible. She was still there, she was kneeling. Reaching for me.
I picked up the long black skirt of my uniform and ran despite my polished mary jane shoes being designed more for appearance than function.
“What’s wrong?” I cried, throwing myself into Sister Brie’s arms just as I had as a child. But the strong arms I had come to love didn’t circle me. They remained hanging, lying lifeless against her sides.
“Sister Brie?” I pressed.
Tears glistened in her eyes as blood pooled at the edge of her mouth. Her normally vibrant turquoise eyes faded as she fell forward into me. I leaned back, rolling her with me until she lay on her back, her unfocused eyes taking in their last views of the heavens above.
“Sister Brie?” my voice squeaked as I fought back the sobs that threatened to spill from my chest. I gripped her arms and shook her roughly, the white band that held her wimple in place pulling back revealing her unusual black hair that overlay red undertones.
“She’s gone, Ryn,” Ness replied softly, placing a hand on my shoulder. I shook my head back and forth, pulling Sister Brie further up into my arms. I may have only been twelve, but I was strong enough to cradle her delicate frame, riddled with the cancer that had taken her life.
“She can’t be gone.”
“She’s gone.”
I couldn’t look at Ness, the tears that clouded my vision too prevalent to allow me to see her. I simply wept as the growls overhead ended.
Finally, when all the tears were spent, I raised my head, looking out in the distance before me. The sky had brightened, warmth leaching back into the grounds. The heavy shroud of death that had clung to the air seeped away as I noticed a man standing there, black suit neatly clinging to his frame. I knew this man, with his copper eyes and half grins just for me. I reached for his memory, but as I did pain split my forehead and blackness came up to claim me.
???
Marik
With some reluctance the alpha had taken us back to some rusted shack a quarter mile down the road from the cabin we’d first arrived at. The property was clearly his own, a collection of scattered parts and wasted materials that would have made Warrick’s year haphazardly around the single long room. But despite it being more an advertisement for tetanus shots than a home, Zane assured me this is where my Thief would be most comfortable when she awoke. It took all the last vestiges of my control not to allow my demon to rip the head from his body given the possessive tone to his words, but we had bigger proverbial fish to fry at that moment. At least the mongrel had agreed to stay outside during this little soiree down someone else’s memory lane.
Felix remained propped against the mobile home door, his relaxed posture belying none of the lethality beneath his eyes. He was in full on protector mode, acknowledging the risk I was about to take by merging my psyche with Aeryn’s. I risked infection to myself while leaving my physical form vulnerable to outside attack. This was not something I was comfortable with, and I would have given my left nipple to have been back in Sanctuarium at that moment. But we didn’t have time for that, my Thief’s heartbeats slowing with every wasted moment.
Merging my psyche with the very periphery of hers had not been as difficult as I had expected, her shields all but crumbled beneath the onslaught of the venom raging war within her mind. I had been unwilling to dive deeper by fully merging myself with her, cognoscente of the risk of the venom spreading to me.
I had been prepared to see a superficial vision. I hadn’t been prepared for the sheer agony that had poured into me as the memory played out like an old film reel. It was an eerie sensation, as if watching the progression of film through the past century: first black and white with little more than background noise before slowly adding the senses - color seeping into the world as sounds became more and more clear.
The scene had felt unnatural, almost contrived. The thunder had been too loud, too close for the lack of storm overhead. And the way she moved; it was as if she had simply appeared next to her friend.
The one thing that had felt real was the anguish at the end. Clearly the woman who had died had meant something to her. That had been just too real to have been contrived. But everything else - even the sounds had been too perfect, too carefully crafted to match the somberness of the memory itself.
“What happened?” Felix asked as I leaned back and away from my Thief.
I explained the scene to Felix, carefully giving him every detail I could; the only other noise in the room was the sound of his absent minded scratching of the scruff on his face.
Just as I finished the phone in my pocket began to ring; the sounds of Technologic by Daft Punk breaking the room's somber mood. Another joke of Felix’s that said exactly who the caller was.
“Warrick,” I said, lifting the phone to my ear.
“The woman wants to talk to you.”
“I’m busy.”
