Hers (#1)

26| familiar

i am so sorry for the extended delay. i have had a shitty two months but i'm back now and ready to plunge in. 

The night was cold.

The site was brisk and sharp with the bite of frost and a certain danger; as if all the cosmos aligned to create a sense of eeriness and doom that cast over the curved corners of the earth. Birds slept within thick, tangled trees and silence roared around every inch of the environment.

All quiet.

All empty.

Flame rubbed her bruised fingers on the edge of her practical jeans and suppressed an audible sigh. Fuck my life and everything in it, her mind ran. Her head spun wildly and the familiar ache of nausea began to clamour at her throat. The Galdoni's steel-like hands had clamped down her skull to the leather of the backseat effectively disallowing her to see where they were going. Or more importantly, to memorize the direction.

Santiago's soft scent filled the air. Of course, she lamented internally. Of course I'm the one who gets the crazy Kraken mate. "Remove the gag." her mechanical voice rang. Flame immediately starts hacking as the cloth is stripped from her throat. "You," she orders, gesturing to the goon on her left. "Alert boss." The man nodded and lumbered off, presumably to alert Stamos that she had once again returned to a Whammy House.

Her mind whirled with memories she thought she had repressed, memories she thought the years would have soothed. She was wrong. As her watery eyes faced the steely hell her heart clenched; for the agony of a time forgotten came rushing back.

Pain. Nothing but pain.

The sting of the needles on her weathered back. The hallucinations. The blood. The gas. The shattering of every bone in her body till she lay a heap on the metal ground. The first growl. The first crawl. The first kill. The constant injections--day in, day out. The several kills. The utter nothingness that was your humanity, ebbed away by evil and insanity. Galdoni.

She hadn't shifted in nearly five decades. If worst came to worst, there was no way she would outrun former galdoni guards much less Stamos himself. Could she do it? Could she shift knowing that she could revert back to the monster she tried so hard to kill? Shaking her head, she cleared her mind of the awful thought. First, find out what he wants from you, she instructed herself. There's no use in panicking-- you know him better than most and you especially know how easily he can sense weakness.

Steeling her resolve and her heart, Flame faces her skinny mate. "What happens to you?"

Santiago raises her eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"

Flame ignored the fluttering in her stomach at the sound of the girl's voice. "I mean, you caught me. I'm all tied up, one of Stamos's first and strongest creations about to be presented to him once again." Her voice drops to a lower register and she slinks slowly towards the bobbed girl. "What do you get out of this? Besides "serving the Kraken."

Santiago's eyes glint with a certain madness and she smiles. "He'll turn me." she states simply.

I scoff and look away. "Like hell he will."

"Of course he will. He promised. It's the only reason I participate in this shit anyways."

I whip my focus back to her. "Wait," I begin, "You don't actually believe in any of this?"

She nods her head slowly as I stare in shock. "But," I stutter, "But what about all that about killing yourself if I don't help him? About being a loyal servant?"

She rolls her eyes and stares at me incredulously. "I'm not gonna kill myself just because that old bastard doesn't get what he wants! He thinks I'm jacked up on his meds half the time, you think he's that smart?"