Post by Emily on Oct 27, 2015 0:37:39 GMT -8
CAST: Hannah Fein (scalesenpointe@aol.com)
SUMMARY: Written in November of 2014, shortly after Hannah’s return from her first (involuntary) trip into the catacombs under St. Brigid’s, where she met some super unpleasant new demon friends who thought her blood would be just the thing they needed to fuck some shit up. (Thanks, Christian. Jeeze.) I got bored with Hannah laying around in a hospital bed all day and asked Gypsy for a story cue. She gave me a scavenger hunt. This is what my head did with it. If you’re an observant little reader, you might recognize a few minor details that eventually became the backbone for Shepherd University and Veiled Threats: London.
TW:
She grimaced as they burnt themselves into her short-term memory in rapid-fire succession. It was like someone had frozen her in place, aimed a bright projector light into her right eye, then fed the frames through in fast forward and walked away without any further explanation or instruction. Hannah stumbled backward when the light suddenly went dark, leaving her with a head full of images, brightly colored spots and questions that didn’t make much sense.
“What the…?” A quick, well-trained leg extended backward to correct her postural imbalance. As her disorientation cleared, she paused to make a quick assessment of her surroundings.
It was summertime in rural California. The year was 2000. A barefoot toddler with copper curls ran past her, white and pink strawberry print dress trailing in her wake.
“Hannah!” called a little boy with blonde hair and striking blue eyes. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old. There was a startling, familiar rasp in his voice as he ran past her, too. “Hannah Rose, catch him!”
Innocent laughter rang out as the two children disappeared into rows of deep, purple wine grapes. They were followed by a third; male, brown hair, unamused.
Something in her pushed her forward. Hannah Rose, catch him! She didn’t know what she was chasing, but childlike glee welled up in her chest and begged for release. Her first steps into the maze of vines quickly became a free and mirthful sprint. Shades of blue, pink, purple, green and brown blurred together in her peripheral vision until, finally, Hannah found them. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
“Gideon, no!” the toddler wept. The boy had his pocket knife drawn and was poised to cut an ear off of a small, brown field rabbit. “Don’t hurt him!” Tears rolled down her cherubic face. “I caught him, don’t hurt him!”
“We have to prove that you caught him,” the boy insisted. “Either we take his ear or we take all of him.” The toddler continued her woeful wail as the boy made a few notches in the wriggling creature’s flesh and cartilage, spilling its blood into the vines. He held it as still as he could and lowered his voice. “Quick, do it quick! Stop crying and do it or they’ll catch us!”
The toddler’s wail quieted into a sniffle. Her nose scrunched itself up as she concentrated on the Earth beneath her bare feet and took a deep breath. Waves of white energy began to climb her short, chubby legs in spirals. It continued upward, funneling into a whirlpool of power in her chest, then took a sharp turn downward at each of her shoulders and collected in puddles in the palms of her dirty hands.
“Like we practiced!” he whispered. “Before he bleeds any more! Hurry, they’re coming!”
An adult female’s voice called out to the children. “Hannah! Jude! Gideon! Time is up!”
Those dirty hands shot out to cradle the field rabbit’s head. It stopped wriggling and fell into peaceful stillness for a moment as her intent washed through it. The field rabbit perked up and took off running as soon as she let go of it, narrowly escaping a much more traumatic fate.
A woman with long, mousy brown hair appeared behind the children. She cast a foreboding silhouette in the afternoon sun. “And how did we do?” she cooed.
The boy held up the rabbit’s severed ear. “She caught him! I toldja she could do it,” he beamed, reaching out with a bloody hand to tousle the toddler’s hair.
“Excellent!” the woman exclaimed, reaching down for the toddler and scooping her up into arms that tried to be motherly, but weren’t. The toddler watched the boy grow smaller and smaller as the woman put distance between them, hazel eyes helpless to do much else. “Andrew; we’ll need baseline samples. Hannah has learned a new skill. We have a new hunter in the family.”
Hannah watched the scene from her often repressed childhood with increasing horror. The blonde boy, suddenly aware of and able to see her, looked up at her with an unspoken plea on his face. He offered her the rabbit’s severed ear from where he sat in the dirt. She began to back away slowly.
The image of a bloody check mark suspended itself in the air before her.
Bewildered and wide-eyed, she ran. She ran away from the children, out of the grape fields and into the neighboring woods, where light filtered down through lacy, new foliage to the forest bed. Her pulse was quick with confusion. What had she just seen? She didn’t remember that. A glance back over her shoulder at the grape fields offered her no comfort, so she trudged forward. Eventually, the woods gave way to the campus streets of St. Brigid’s.
It was summer in England. The year was 2014. Gideon was at the desk in his dorm room, hunched over a leather-bound volume that he didn’t seem to want anyone to know he was poring through and taking notes on. He'd already hidden Jude in Amsterdam. Now he had to secure Hannah.
Her heart leapt at the sight of Gideon. He was just as she remembered him – almost. There was something weary in his face that Hannah couldn’t remember ever having noticed, before. Something haunted. He was unkempt; his eyes were dull and tired. She shook her hand in front of him, unsure as to whether he was the ghost or she was. He didn’t respond. It looked like it was her.
What was that book he was so immersed in? She moved around Gideon to see if she could get a peek at its spine.
Its title was all but worn off by age. The only thing she could make out was a symbol comprised of a swarm of ward knots. It kind of looked like a flower.
The image of a gilded check mark appeared in the air before her.
Gideon’s head fell into his hands. “No,” he begged silence. “No, no. Hannah…” his voice broke. Hannah didn’t have time to wonder what he meant by any of it. He was up and pulling on a hooded sweatshirt before she could see the content on the page he’d been reading. It was blue.
Just like the one he’d been wearing the day he…
Hannah took off after Gideon like lightning after thunder. “No!” she cried, but he couldn’t hear her. “Don’t go!” She tried to yank on one of his arms to get his attention. Her touch shimmered right through him, completely unnoticed.
He was headed for a nearby bus stop.
“Gideon, please,” Hannah whispered, tears beginning to water down her vision. She was helpless to stop it. “Please, don’t go. I don’t know what to do without you.”
Watching would have been too hard on her. She knew what was coming, next; or at least she thought she did. A shadow caught her eye as she was turning to put her back to it. Then another one did. Then a third.
How could they have known what Gideon had been up to? Her slow turn around was reversed. Surprise further widened her hazel eyes.
“Fight,” Gideon growled, staring straight at her. No; through her, almost as if he was sure his message would get to her, somehow, at some point, though in the moment the words left his mouth she wasn’t there to hear them. “You know how. Unlock it.”
She felt dizzy. Some part of her had known that it hadn’t been an accident for quite some time. Dragons don’t get hit by busses and crumple like falling souffle. He could have shifted. He could have lived. He chose not to.
Not five seconds later, Gideon was gone in a thud that made her stomach turn violently, having stepped in front of a bus and forfeited his life rather than give up what he knew about his sister to the shadowy figures that were closing in on him.
Their initial target in pieces in the street, the shadowy figures began to approach Hannah with curiosity.
Emotion clouded her judgment. She hesitated.
One of the shadowy figures grabbed her left wrist, twisting it so that the tender part of her forearm lay exposed to its view. It seemed shocked by the scar that extended six inches up from her wrist, along the major vein, there, and lowered its hood. The woman with long, brown hair who had carried the toddler off into the grape fields so many years ago stood there, staring at her with aged green eyes. “Andrew,” the woman hissed, recoiling and dropping Hannah’s arm like it burnt her to hold it. “She’s been ruined! We should never have let them out of our sight!”
A taller figure drew in close. It looked like he meant to hug Hannah, but instead, a strong, work-worn arm curled around her delicate throat, and he stepped behind her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured into the curve of her ear, jerking her chin upward in the crook of his elbow and cutting off her air supply.
She struggled against his unforgiving grip, sending useless elbows backward into his torso. How could she fight? What could she do? What was she supposed to unlock? Her assailant’s heartbeat echoed in her ears as everything started to go dark.
The image of a beating heart lit up the darkness in her head, struck through with a green check mark that glowed like a traffic signal.
One last attempt to escape won her the ability to face Andrew Fein, gasping for breath. He scrambled to regain control of her, grabbing a hand full of her copper hair and yanking cruelly.
A blood-curdling scream ripped its way up from her very core, sending him stumbling with the force behind its sound waves.
The base of the palm of her left hand made contact with him, just below the sternum, and she pushed up with all of the strength she could muster. It was meant to be a shove, but as the tips of her fingers met with flesh exposed by a tear in the fabric of his shirt, something else happened. Angry, white-hot energy danced and crackled underneath them.
The pupils of her eyes abandoned their human facade on impulse. Suddenly, she was a whirlwind, alive with barely controlled rage. Hannah pulled her hand back, looking at it with wonder, memorizing every line in it and silently asking herself how any of this could have come to pass. Then she sunk it back into the chest belonging the man she considered responsible for Gideon’s death. Horror settled in on his face.
Her mouth, normally so reserved and so careful about what it betrayed, had taken on a triumphant sneer.
“Come for me, then, if you’re coming,” she laughed, near madness with exhaustion. “I know what you are, now.”
The woman with the long, brown hair and the third shadowy figure rushed forward to try to contain Hannah. It was too late.
She woke up standing on the hospital bed she’d been sleeping in, poised to fend off attackers, chest heaving and face red with her effort to hold back furious tears. Purple ligature marks decorated her throat. A pillow lay burnt and shredded on the floor.
Unstable energy had gathered in the palms of her hands, aimed at nightmares that were slowly dissipating into the light of day. Hannah eased off of trembling dual triggers and dropped to her knees. Her shoulders slumped forward with the weight of several worlds.
It had been weeks since she’d been rescued from the catacombs. It had been weeks since she’d slept through the night.
SUMMARY: Written in November of 2014, shortly after Hannah’s return from her first (involuntary) trip into the catacombs under St. Brigid’s, where she met some super unpleasant new demon friends who thought her blood would be just the thing they needed to fuck some shit up. (Thanks, Christian. Jeeze.) I got bored with Hannah laying around in a hospital bed all day and asked Gypsy for a story cue. She gave me a scavenger hunt. This is what my head did with it. If you’re an observant little reader, you might recognize a few minor details that eventually became the backbone for Shepherd University and Veiled Threats: London.
TW:
She grimaced as they burnt themselves into her short-term memory in rapid-fire succession. It was like someone had frozen her in place, aimed a bright projector light into her right eye, then fed the frames through in fast forward and walked away without any further explanation or instruction. Hannah stumbled backward when the light suddenly went dark, leaving her with a head full of images, brightly colored spots and questions that didn’t make much sense.
“What the…?” A quick, well-trained leg extended backward to correct her postural imbalance. As her disorientation cleared, she paused to make a quick assessment of her surroundings.
It was summertime in rural California. The year was 2000. A barefoot toddler with copper curls ran past her, white and pink strawberry print dress trailing in her wake.
“Hannah!” called a little boy with blonde hair and striking blue eyes. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old. There was a startling, familiar rasp in his voice as he ran past her, too. “Hannah Rose, catch him!”
Innocent laughter rang out as the two children disappeared into rows of deep, purple wine grapes. They were followed by a third; male, brown hair, unamused.
Something in her pushed her forward. Hannah Rose, catch him! She didn’t know what she was chasing, but childlike glee welled up in her chest and begged for release. Her first steps into the maze of vines quickly became a free and mirthful sprint. Shades of blue, pink, purple, green and brown blurred together in her peripheral vision until, finally, Hannah found them. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
“Gideon, no!” the toddler wept. The boy had his pocket knife drawn and was poised to cut an ear off of a small, brown field rabbit. “Don’t hurt him!” Tears rolled down her cherubic face. “I caught him, don’t hurt him!”
“We have to prove that you caught him,” the boy insisted. “Either we take his ear or we take all of him.” The toddler continued her woeful wail as the boy made a few notches in the wriggling creature’s flesh and cartilage, spilling its blood into the vines. He held it as still as he could and lowered his voice. “Quick, do it quick! Stop crying and do it or they’ll catch us!”
The toddler’s wail quieted into a sniffle. Her nose scrunched itself up as she concentrated on the Earth beneath her bare feet and took a deep breath. Waves of white energy began to climb her short, chubby legs in spirals. It continued upward, funneling into a whirlpool of power in her chest, then took a sharp turn downward at each of her shoulders and collected in puddles in the palms of her dirty hands.
“Like we practiced!” he whispered. “Before he bleeds any more! Hurry, they’re coming!”
An adult female’s voice called out to the children. “Hannah! Jude! Gideon! Time is up!”
Those dirty hands shot out to cradle the field rabbit’s head. It stopped wriggling and fell into peaceful stillness for a moment as her intent washed through it. The field rabbit perked up and took off running as soon as she let go of it, narrowly escaping a much more traumatic fate.
A woman with long, mousy brown hair appeared behind the children. She cast a foreboding silhouette in the afternoon sun. “And how did we do?” she cooed.
The boy held up the rabbit’s severed ear. “She caught him! I toldja she could do it,” he beamed, reaching out with a bloody hand to tousle the toddler’s hair.
“Excellent!” the woman exclaimed, reaching down for the toddler and scooping her up into arms that tried to be motherly, but weren’t. The toddler watched the boy grow smaller and smaller as the woman put distance between them, hazel eyes helpless to do much else. “Andrew; we’ll need baseline samples. Hannah has learned a new skill. We have a new hunter in the family.”
Hannah watched the scene from her often repressed childhood with increasing horror. The blonde boy, suddenly aware of and able to see her, looked up at her with an unspoken plea on his face. He offered her the rabbit’s severed ear from where he sat in the dirt. She began to back away slowly.
The image of a bloody check mark suspended itself in the air before her.
Bewildered and wide-eyed, she ran. She ran away from the children, out of the grape fields and into the neighboring woods, where light filtered down through lacy, new foliage to the forest bed. Her pulse was quick with confusion. What had she just seen? She didn’t remember that. A glance back over her shoulder at the grape fields offered her no comfort, so she trudged forward. Eventually, the woods gave way to the campus streets of St. Brigid’s.
It was summer in England. The year was 2014. Gideon was at the desk in his dorm room, hunched over a leather-bound volume that he didn’t seem to want anyone to know he was poring through and taking notes on. He'd already hidden Jude in Amsterdam. Now he had to secure Hannah.
Her heart leapt at the sight of Gideon. He was just as she remembered him – almost. There was something weary in his face that Hannah couldn’t remember ever having noticed, before. Something haunted. He was unkempt; his eyes were dull and tired. She shook her hand in front of him, unsure as to whether he was the ghost or she was. He didn’t respond. It looked like it was her.
What was that book he was so immersed in? She moved around Gideon to see if she could get a peek at its spine.
Its title was all but worn off by age. The only thing she could make out was a symbol comprised of a swarm of ward knots. It kind of looked like a flower.
The image of a gilded check mark appeared in the air before her.
Gideon’s head fell into his hands. “No,” he begged silence. “No, no. Hannah…” his voice broke. Hannah didn’t have time to wonder what he meant by any of it. He was up and pulling on a hooded sweatshirt before she could see the content on the page he’d been reading. It was blue.
Just like the one he’d been wearing the day he…
Hannah took off after Gideon like lightning after thunder. “No!” she cried, but he couldn’t hear her. “Don’t go!” She tried to yank on one of his arms to get his attention. Her touch shimmered right through him, completely unnoticed.
He was headed for a nearby bus stop.
“Gideon, please,” Hannah whispered, tears beginning to water down her vision. She was helpless to stop it. “Please, don’t go. I don’t know what to do without you.”
Watching would have been too hard on her. She knew what was coming, next; or at least she thought she did. A shadow caught her eye as she was turning to put her back to it. Then another one did. Then a third.
How could they have known what Gideon had been up to? Her slow turn around was reversed. Surprise further widened her hazel eyes.
“Fight,” Gideon growled, staring straight at her. No; through her, almost as if he was sure his message would get to her, somehow, at some point, though in the moment the words left his mouth she wasn’t there to hear them. “You know how. Unlock it.”
She felt dizzy. Some part of her had known that it hadn’t been an accident for quite some time. Dragons don’t get hit by busses and crumple like falling souffle. He could have shifted. He could have lived. He chose not to.
Not five seconds later, Gideon was gone in a thud that made her stomach turn violently, having stepped in front of a bus and forfeited his life rather than give up what he knew about his sister to the shadowy figures that were closing in on him.
Their initial target in pieces in the street, the shadowy figures began to approach Hannah with curiosity.
Emotion clouded her judgment. She hesitated.
One of the shadowy figures grabbed her left wrist, twisting it so that the tender part of her forearm lay exposed to its view. It seemed shocked by the scar that extended six inches up from her wrist, along the major vein, there, and lowered its hood. The woman with long, brown hair who had carried the toddler off into the grape fields so many years ago stood there, staring at her with aged green eyes. “Andrew,” the woman hissed, recoiling and dropping Hannah’s arm like it burnt her to hold it. “She’s been ruined! We should never have let them out of our sight!”
A taller figure drew in close. It looked like he meant to hug Hannah, but instead, a strong, work-worn arm curled around her delicate throat, and he stepped behind her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured into the curve of her ear, jerking her chin upward in the crook of his elbow and cutting off her air supply.
She struggled against his unforgiving grip, sending useless elbows backward into his torso. How could she fight? What could she do? What was she supposed to unlock? Her assailant’s heartbeat echoed in her ears as everything started to go dark.
The image of a beating heart lit up the darkness in her head, struck through with a green check mark that glowed like a traffic signal.
One last attempt to escape won her the ability to face Andrew Fein, gasping for breath. He scrambled to regain control of her, grabbing a hand full of her copper hair and yanking cruelly.
A blood-curdling scream ripped its way up from her very core, sending him stumbling with the force behind its sound waves.
The base of the palm of her left hand made contact with him, just below the sternum, and she pushed up with all of the strength she could muster. It was meant to be a shove, but as the tips of her fingers met with flesh exposed by a tear in the fabric of his shirt, something else happened. Angry, white-hot energy danced and crackled underneath them.
The pupils of her eyes abandoned their human facade on impulse. Suddenly, she was a whirlwind, alive with barely controlled rage. Hannah pulled her hand back, looking at it with wonder, memorizing every line in it and silently asking herself how any of this could have come to pass. Then she sunk it back into the chest belonging the man she considered responsible for Gideon’s death. Horror settled in on his face.
Her mouth, normally so reserved and so careful about what it betrayed, had taken on a triumphant sneer.
“Come for me, then, if you’re coming,” she laughed, near madness with exhaustion. “I know what you are, now.”
The woman with the long, brown hair and the third shadowy figure rushed forward to try to contain Hannah. It was too late.
She woke up standing on the hospital bed she’d been sleeping in, poised to fend off attackers, chest heaving and face red with her effort to hold back furious tears. Purple ligature marks decorated her throat. A pillow lay burnt and shredded on the floor.
Unstable energy had gathered in the palms of her hands, aimed at nightmares that were slowly dissipating into the light of day. Hannah eased off of trembling dual triggers and dropped to her knees. Her shoulders slumped forward with the weight of several worlds.
It had been weeks since she’d been rescued from the catacombs. It had been weeks since she’d slept through the night.