Hi!
Choices have consequences. It's a very simple statement, but - I think - so very fitting for this chapter, I had to start there. Right or wrong, or maybe somewhere in between. Where is Anna? And where do you think is she headed?
Lara
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Chapter 14
Stinging pain. A hard slap on my cheek. Then another. The voices came to me like abstract noises from a distant, half-forgotten dream.
"I need you awake for the portal. Come on, Anna, or are you gonna sit here until the rest of the Circle shows up?" The Raven said.
Slowly, I made the connection, understanding like a soft yawn in the morning â the stretching, the first twist of muscle and bone. My vision was fuzzy around the edges, a faint flashlight you have to shake as you make your way through a dark, unfamiliar house.
Pain. My hand felt like it was on fire. I hissed, blinked, chased away shadows with light.
The smile was the same, but the Raven's face was dust-streaked, looked eerily white and ashen. There was blood on his cheek. Someone grabbed me underneath my arms, lifted me into a semi-upright position.
Nausea made my stomach twist in a churning, downright wrong way. The world moved, a blend of dream and nightmare. My vision tainted, might as well have been part of a subconscious delirium. Showing me what might be, not what was real. Above all the flaring heat in my hand and the pain.
I tried to see more, but couldn't seem to see past the plumes of smoke.
Smoke.
I blinked. Signs of motion, or rather commotion: trampling feet, angry voices shouting orders, and then the Raven's hand was on my upper arm. I whimpered. What was wrong with my hand? The popping sound of portals opening like the flap flap of soft wings in the night.
The pull of the in-between sucked me in, made me lose my mental equilibrium. I was too shocked by what happened to prepare myself for it. Instants before the portal opened, before that first jerk of the in-between knifed into my mind, part of the smoke lifted, driven up and dispersed by a fierce gust of wind. Details, bits and pieces of vision aligned. All of a sudden they made sense in their unity. What I saw made the blood in my veins turn to ice.
The building's right wing was reduced to ashes, hands of fire reaching for a dark, vengeful sky. That was not the worst. The worst wasn't even me having a front seat to the spectacle, or the stinging pain in my hand. The worst was that one glimpse of a human form on the floor. It wasn't the only one.
The Inri Brotherhood just openly attacked and stormed a building and I was implicitly part of it. Not only that. Far worse. The Inri Brotherhood killed people this night and I was not only part of it, I was the one who even made it possible. That made me a murderer.
* * *
Darkness around me. Silence, except for the occasional swish of soft leather from outside. No matter which hideout, no matter how sordid a place, the rogues were always on their guard. Even in the dead of night. If I concentrated hard enough I could track their movements in second sight.
My hand was bandaged. They used a clean cloth. I overheard them while I was still half unconscious. Someone said it looked like second degree burns.
My magic came back after one and a half days. One and a half days of wondering whether my magic would come back at all. For a while I would have accepted it as punishment â an act of redemption I would welcome with open arms.
I turned, exhaled in a deep shuddering breath â one in a series of sounds that kept me tethered to what remained of my composure. Sleep wouldn't come.
For weeks I kept telling myself I was doing the right thing, and I believed in it. But no matter how often I tried to talk myself down off the ledge of what was and had always been a lousy plan, there was still hope to turn this to my advantage. Use the knowledge I gained to trap the Raven. Maybe become some sort of hero or martyr that saved the city.
Whatever illusions I had, they were gone. No words could nullify what happened, what I did. Losing my naivety came at a big price. I thought this was about taking what the rogues wanted and getting away as fast as possible â a grab and go case by the book. I was wrong.
The Inri Brotherhood attacked and killed people after I set of the null bomb. No matter if I made the killing blows or not, there was blood on my hands. Nothing I did could wash it away. No acts of redemption could erase the memory of limp bodies and blood.
They were people like me and Maria. I sucked in a breath, felt the stinging, salty moisture return in my eyes. Just like with Maria.
My fault. Mine alone.
I was not going to forget. I was not going to pretend.
I turned again. The make-shift bed was uncomfortable, made me feel every bone in my body. The backlash of the null-bombs had hurt me in more than one way, drained me physically to the point of not being able to walk on my own.
However, the real battle I was facing was not a physical one, it was an internal struggle. In dreams that turned to nightmares I saw the faces of unknown people, wondering, always wondering. And that endless, silent outcry.
What were you thinking?
My fault. All of this is my fault!
If your own naivety gets you hurt or killed, it's on your head. As though the world teaches you a hard lesson you either take or fail to take. If your naivety gets others killed, the lesson might be the same, but the consequences are more far-reaching. As though the world is doing an act of final justice to you. A cruel joke you can't laugh at. A hard lesson you might not survive.
In a world that kept changing and turning like a kaleidoscopic carousel, I had finally lost the last thing that grounded me: faith in myself. I had lost almost everything I had to lose. Stripped of all my defenses, of all my faith, what would I do?
A frail person would turn his or her back on what happened, walk further down that road towards mayhem and destruction. Inflict more pain to numb his or her own. Join the Inri Brotherhood for good. An easy way out. Survive. Live.
I realized that this was the me of my past. I had lived according to this rule for years, turned my back on things I couldn't deal with. I knew no other way of living.
You are too much of a coward to take responsibility for your actions.
The words came back to me, resurfacing, memories from the night before I teleported to Italy. Alexander's words were biting, and they stung, but what I felt back then was nothing compared to the rumble of hurt I was feeling now.
You hide behind a wrong sense of justice, never looking beyond the edges of your own little world. All you do is complain and blame others for the outcome of your life.
How? Why? Why did the head vampire's words come back to me at such a time?
Was he right? Had my pledge to set things right been self-serving? Hadn't I stepped forward and dropped the null-bomb to get into the Raven's good graces and gain his trust? People died because of an action that, when it came down to it, was self-serving.
Stopping the train of thought, the memory of what Alexander said? Impossible. Frail palm against an oncoming monster truck. His next words slammed into my core, made it hard to breathe.
You do not like the surrounding parameters? Change them. You do not like the world you are living in? Reshape it.
I stilled. A frail person would turn his or her back on what happened. The old me would have turned her back, try to find a way out and run.
I closed my eyes. Warm moisture wetting my cheeks. Not this time â maybe the one time it mattered the most.
I would take the guilt, keep watching the mental cinema of memories, and do the one thing I should have done from the start: arrest the Raven and the rogue witches.
You do not like the surrounding parameters? Change them.
There were almost no cards I had left to play. Still, there was one trump I hadn't made use of yet. In his quest to use me as his secret weapon, there was one thing the Raven overlooked. When I unlocked the wards hiding the magical artifacts, I not only decoded the spells hiding them, I got a feel for the artifacts themselves.
Not only that I held one of the null bombs in my hands, I used it. The one thing the Raven overlooked was that I could relocate and hide them again.
My plan was to get my hands on them, steal all the magical artifacts and weapons he'd accumulated and either use them against him, or tip off the Circle. Only problem was that most Circle members would shoot me on sight.
I shook my head.
No matter what, I was going to stop the Inri Brotherhood for good or die trying.
* * *
The sewer system in that particular part of town was barely familiar. We'd been staying here for less than a day and usually we stayed at least three, but something â perhaps a gut feeling I'd had to develop after my recent joining of the brotherhood â told me we were going to move, soon.
I'd been with the rogues long enough to see a pattern in what once seemed an erratic jumping from one abandoned ruin to the next. The Raven chose vacated places in rundown neighborhoods all over the city. Space in and around the business quarter â those parts of New York that were frequented by the Circle and upstanding parts of society â they were avoided like the plague. You'd think that it wouldn't leave many other options. And you'd be so wrong assuming as much.
The sewer system and the tunnels beneath the city flung the door to potential hideouts wide open.
I rounded the next corner â one more, then two to the right and I'd be there. If someone passed me, all they'd see was a small misplacement of air, a jump of one particle to the other.
After my last stunt I was exhausted and drained, but not weak enough to do another concealing spell. They took my cuff and I had to do the spell without help. I was dangerously close to passing out, but I couldn't stay any longer. I had to do this now. No one was going to die, not under my watch.
My feet brought me to the end of the next corridor, passing a male rogue witch with my breath held. I ducked and entered a cavern â a concrete-filled quadrangle that served as the Raven's current bedroom, living quarters, and war room â all in one.
Rumors had it that he barely slept. Rumors said many things about the Raven.
The cavern was dark except for a dense lamp in the corner, filled with pocketfuls of dead silence and dangerous possibilities.