New Fiction

[k_a_webb]

For those of you who are new to my access list when I'm not looking after dogs I write and the majority of my work can be seen at www.kajoneswriting.co.uk. I crowdfund, so there are stories that are available for sponsorship, you can adopt characters or rent settings, and I'm open to people creating characters or setting for my worlds, as well as fanfic. My dream has always been to earn a living from writing and crowdfunding still seems to be the best way to do that, even though it's a slow process, and I thought I'd post some of my newer stories here to see if I could get some more readers (and commenters).

“The only way you’re going is if you take her with you.” The shake of Oscar’s head told me what his answer was and I felt the same way, but I knew there was no negotiation. “It’s a time to put your feelings aside and use logic. You simply don’t have the skills to survive if you go alone and as you’re my only son…”

I’m my father’s third daughter, which makes me expendable, and that was why I was sitting there listening to the argument between father and son. For the last thirty minutes it had been going round in circles, so I was beginning to get a little fed up. There were better things I could be doing with my time but I knew my duties. Eventually Oscar would accept. Otherwise he’d be trapped in a place he was beginning to hate and that to him was worse than being stuck with me for a year or more. Wonder how I know all this? Well, this all happened nearly six years ago, and the relationship between us, as relationships are prone to, changed.

At the time, sitting there in that study, I was, at best, indifferent to the man I was meant to be travelling with. Occasionally Oscar managed to irritate me so much I began to think it was possible to hate him, but in a strange way I couldn’t help understanding him. I’d been brought in to guide him, because I’d been travelling the worlds for over a decade, and he didn’t like feeling as though he couldn’t cope with what might happen. Fortunately I knew that I hadn’t been asked to guide him because he was incapable of going alone. No, I was sitting there due to my experience with the doors, with the way they worked and how suddenly things could change on you.

The last thing anyone wanted was for their travelling child to find themselves on one of the lost worlds with no way back. I remember staring at Oscar, wondering if he realised exactly why they were having an argument about his decision to travel the worlds, and wishing he would accept that his father was simply worried about him. Unlike some people, no names mentioned, he actually cared about all of his children equally, even if they were just sons. For other fathers it was easier to accept the truth - sons were as expendable as third daughters. He could hope for a good marriage, someone who would give him important daughters, but on our world he was only good for selling to the highest bidder, and travelling would make him a better catch.

Unfortunately I knew why my father had been so happy for me to guide the only son of the Baroness of the West March. He was hoping for a good marriage for me, one that would mean I’d be in line to inherit from both my mother and mother-in-law, even though I was just the expendable third daughter who’d been left on a different world when I was six to see if I’d manage to make myself useful. It took me eight years to return, but by then I’d seen a lot of the Web and I knew that as soon as I’d earned enough I was gone. The man who professed to be my father wasn’t going to be able to use me for anything.

 

It was late, much later than I’d normally be walking home, but things had taken longer than I thought they would. After trying on what felt like hundreds of dresses, drinking a couple more glasses of wine than was usual for a Monday afternoon, and having a long chat with my helpers (my mum, my younger sister, and my best friend), time had flown by, and instead of heading home at four in the afternoon, which would have been quite late enough as the days got shorter, it was seven in the evening. While I was walking I was watching the sun set and hoping that I’d be home before too many vampires woke up.

Shivering, from the unexpected cold of the day rather than the fear of vampires, I pulled my coat tighter around myself. I thought about getting my phone out and ringing the man who’d be waiting for me, but it was better for me to focus on what was happening around me. Once I put the phone to my ear I wouldn’t be paying any attention to whether there might be a vampire around and that would be a mistake. Everyone knew that the auction vampires looked for weaknesses that made someone easy to grab. I was not going to be that person - I knew all too well what happened to anyone who was used by one of those bastards.

A noise made me turn to check that someone wasn’t following me, although it probably wasn’t even really a noise. I just thought I heard something because I was letting myself think about things I really shouldn’t have been thinking about. When I turned to face the direction I was walking in I was just in time to stop myself from walking into someone. Someone who I then stared at for much longer than I should, very tempted to touch him to see if he really was standing in front of me, before I found my voice.

“Aidan?”

“Hey, gorgeous.”

“You died.”

Shaking his head, Aidan smiled at me and then I could see the teeth. “I was saved. I wanted to come and see you a long time ago, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it, and…” He glanced down at my hands. “You’re getting married.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Why?”

“I love him.” The hurt that filled Aidan’s eyes made me feel guilty, until I remembered that I had, up until I nearly walked into him, believed he was dead. “It took me a long time to get over you, but in the end I did. That’s what people do when they think you’re dead.”

“Do you love him more than you loved me?”

“I’m not going to compare you. I refuse to do that, because it’s too easy to look at our relationship with rose tinted spectacles.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Our relationship was something that was right for us at the time, even though we probably shouldn’t have been together, but now… we wouldn’t still be together, because I grew up. I realised that sometimes things aren’t meant to be and we were one of those things.”

“I disagree.” The smile had faded and he was staring at me in a way that I really didn’t like. “I should have walked away from you the way my creator told me to, because he knows how easy it is to cling to human relationships, but I chose not to. I still love you the same way I did before and nothing is going to change that. Not now, not ever.”

“You don’t know that.” I sighed, remembering how I once felt like there was never going to be someone else for me. “Aidan, I did love you, but my life changed. It had to. Clinging onto the memory of what we’d once had would have destroyed my chance at having a life. If you’d have come back six months ago I might have felt differently. Now… my choice is to marry the man I love now, because he accepted that you, that us, will always be a part of me.”

“That’s nice of him.” Aidan took a step closer to me and it took all my willpower not to step back. “I wish I could walk away from you, because he obviously loves you, but I can’t. I realised that when I first heard that you were getting married. I tried to keep away, really I did, and I wanted you to be able to have the life that I always dreamed of for us, but the longer I kept away the harder it got.”

Biting hard on my lip I kept my hand where it was, even though I wanted to reach out and touch him. There were so many things I wanted to say, but I knew nothing I said was going to change the way he felt or what he was planning on doing, so I kept my mouth shut. It was easier than saying the wrong thing, because in that moment the wrong thing could easily have made things harder for both of us, and as he took another step closer to me I knew exactly what he was going to force upon me.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I just… I need you.”

I couldn’t stop myself from wiping the tear that trickled down his cheek off his face. “I understand,” I replied, even though I wanted to run from him. I didn’t want him to change me, I didn’t want him to tear me away from the life I loved, but in the end it was his choice, because I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him. No matter how many times I think back to that moment, to the things I could have done to stop it all from happening, he still ends up changing me. The only problem then is that everything is different between us when I wake up and that is something I didn’t want to happen. My choice was to let things happen as he wanted them to, in order to protect him, and yes, I realise that I’m an idiot.

 

From the time I started walking down the alley I knew I was being followed. Miles didn’t want to lose me. He’d told me that himself at the end of one of my training sessions and that was when I realised I had to leave. Running away from the Brotherhood was never going to be easy, but I planned it all out so that by the time he’d put in an application to train me personally, a thought that made me shiver, I was ready to go. That did mean leaving everything behind, especially the mobile phone I’d be given, because I knew there was a tracker in it.

The phone I pulled out of my pocket was one I’d bought. Using the only cash I’d permitted myself to take out of the account the Brotherhood had set up for me, to hold the money they paid me, and I didn’t want it, even though I needed it in order to survive. Biting hard on my lip I wondered if I was doing the right thing by ringing the number that I’d found on the inside of one of the many bathroom stalls I’d been sleeping in. It had said: ring in case of emergency. As far as I was concerned being followed by someone who wanted to take me back to the Brotherhood was an emergency. Finally I gave in to the fear I was feeling and pressed call, hoping that I was right, hoping that someone from the Unity had left that number there because they wanted to help all escapees.

“Where are you?” a male voice asked after the first ring, making me jump because I hadn’t expected anyone to answer the phone so quickly.

“Walking down an alley between West View and Gordon Street. I’ll be coming out next to the Gordon Street mail box.”

“When you exit the alley turn right and walk up Gordon Street. I have an orange car, you can’t miss it, and I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

An orange car didn’t sound like the best get away vehicle, but at least it meant I’d be able to see it easily. Instead of returning my phone to my pocket, paranoia getting the best of me, I dropped it, hoping that no one else had been able to find me. Having someone follow me was bad enough, but if Miles realised where I was I didn’t doubt he’d come after me himself. Like everyone else I’d heard stories about the Children that he chose to train with him and I didn’t want to be one of them. I hadn’t even wanted to become one of the Brotherhood, but we were dangerous, at least according to the adverts, so Mum had given me no choice. On the day I stepped into the office to sign myself up she walked away.

It seemed to take much less time to reach the end of the alley than I thought it would and turning left down Gordon Street made me feel uneasy, because I knew I wasn’t safe. All I wanted to do was run, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I forced myself to keep walking, as though I didn’t know someone was behind me, as though everything was normal, or as normal as it could be if you were on the run from the Brotherhood. The orange car appeared what felt like hours later and when it stopped beside me I got into the passenger side. When I looked at the clock on the dashboard, the driver pulling away at speed, I found out that the hours had been less than five minutes, and I knew I could easily have gone from the frying pan to the fire.

Strangely, the first thing I noticed was quite how good looking the driver was. Mentally I berated myself. The man could be kidnapping me, because I’d been stupid enough to ring a number I’d found, and yet there I was staring at him in a way I remember once staring at Miles. Back then I hadn’t heard the stories about him, so it had been nice to feel some normality creeping into my life. Glancing at me the driver smiled, our eyes meeting for a moment, before he turned his attention back to the road.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said. “I’ll take you to the closest Unity safe house and there the Brotherhood won’t be able to find you. I know because I was in the same position you were once. I found the number of my driver in the phone box I was searching for coins and it wasn’t until I was being followed that I called it, although by then I’d been on the streets for three months. Apparently that’s an accomplishment. No one else in any of the Unity safe houses has been on the run for that long - the Brotherhood normally find them long before that, but I had an advantage. I can turn myself invisible for short periods of time, so that gave me a chance to disappear every time they found me, until that last time. I hadn’t eaten for over a week and I knew if I burnt my energy to become invisible I probably wouldn’t be able to survive, so I rang the number, hoping that it was someone who was going to help, and it was.”

For a long time I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. Did I congratulate him for being on the run from the Brotherhood for that long? I’d only been running for a week, but then I doubted he’d been one of Miles’ favourites. Did I ask him questions about the safe house? Personally I wouldn’t answer them, just in case, because he had no way of knowing if I was truly seeking sanctuary or if I was just trying to get behind the wards to learn all the secrets of Unity.

 

The last thing I remember before falling asleep, or possibly passing out, was how badly my entire body ached. Like everyone else I’d had the injection. All the actors had gone first, waving for the cameras, somehow managing to act normal when they came out, as though everything was fine even though they must have all felt as bad as I did. The director had followed, because people knew him too, and it was important that they saw someone they felt they knew going in for the injection. It would do good things for the fear some of the newspapers had been spreading, about how the injection hadn’t been properly tested.

I’d gone in not long after the director, because I was going to be needed. Of course then I didn’t know that the actors were faking their smiles and thought everything was going to be fine, the way the World Government kept assuring everyone it would be, but then I actually had the injection. At first it was fine. Then I stood up. I’m not sure what was worse - the wave of dizziness that almost had me falling over or the pain in the arm that the needle had gone into. Like all the actors I simply smiled and carried on, because I had no other option. Everyone who’d gone in before me was in need of help, so I helped them, even though all I wanted to do was curl up on my bed, give in to the pain that didn’t seem to fade, and hope that everything would be better in the morning.

As I fell onto my bed at midnight, long after everyone else had, I couldn’t help thinking I’d made a huge mistake. When I checked my phone I knew I had. The battery had been newly charged the night of the injection, just in case anyone needed me in the night, and that meant I still had one bar left three days later, but no missed calls. I knew then that something was very wrong. People called me at all times of the day and night, because I’d been hired by the hotel to be there if anyone needed anything, and they’d all come to trust me. Even though all I wanted to do was find out what the hell had happened I knew I had to take things easy.

My last meal had been three days ago. There was nothing edible in the mini bar, but there was some orange juice, and I should get something inside me no matter how badly thinking about food or drink made me feel. Slowly I slipped off of my bed, glad I hadn’t bothered with the covers or had the energy to take my shoes off. Fortunately the dizziness had mostly faded, replaced by the horrible feeling of having low blood sugar, so I forced myself over to the mini bar to get the orange juice, because I knew I needed to start checking on the people who hadn’t rung me. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the newspapers had been right.