Marked

Chapter 5

That night, the ancient grandfather clock struck twelve, a loud dong resonating off the walls of Sara’s Chambers. Kept awake by a mind that stubbornly refused to stop buzzing with thoughts, she sat crossing her legs by the window-ledge, the thin silky material of her nightgown fluttering in the wind.

Everyone else was probably already in a deep slumber.

With her head resting on her intertwined hands, she let out a heavy sigh. Adorning Manor Street in rows were specks of light, halos of gold lining the desolate streets. She imagined that if she had not yet found the Manor, she would have been huddling up in a dark corner, masked by the shadows of the rising buildings.

Coming to the Manor was a risk she was glad she’d taken. Searching for it all on her own hadn’t come easy, and most of her information had come from stealing, mugging, or eavesdropping. For instance, she’d been in California when she’d had a run-in with several Legions.

Although she was outnumbered, after a long fight, she’d outsmarted them, accurately predicted their advances, and killed all but one of them. With a bloodied split lip and a vicious knife to match, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, viciously spitting the metallic substance out. In a desperate attempt, she’d stood over her attacker menacingly as he lay motionless on the floor, all the strength and life sapped out of him. She released years of pent-up frustration, loneliness and anger on him, torturing him slowly, sawing jagged lines onto his joints, and pressing patterns onto his skin with the sharp end of the knife, a trail of red liquid oozing out in its wake.

Finally, digging the knife centimeter by centimeter into his skin, below which his heart drummed rapidly, she’d repeatedly pressed for details on the location of the only Manor in America—the one her parents had told her to go to, before their death. When her parents lay dying on the floor of their kitchen, just like the Legion in front of her at that instant, she hadn’t been given any other clues, just the last words, “Go to the Manor.”

As the Legion begged for his life with his last breath, he’d caved and told her what she wanted to hear.

“Manor Street in North Columbia,” he’d said weakly.

And instead of fulfilling the promise she’d never made in the first place, she raised the knife high, plunging it deep into the depths of his heart mercilessly, watching wide-eyed as his anguished scream pierced the dead silence of the night.

It was his last words that sent chills up her spine.

With the very last bit of his remaining energy, he’d looked at her, his eyes anguished and haunting, hissing, “Beware. For no matter where you are, Lemuel will find—and kill—every last one of your kind.”

Her heart pounding in shock, Sara leapt to her feet and fled, horrified.

Two weeks later, she arrived at Manor Street, not knowing which house to go to. Going there was a heavy risk in itself, for that Legion could very well have led her to the Lokaryth, or any other place where the Legions resided. She would be putting herself in danger.

But spying a certain house in the distance, she had felt that something was right about that particular mansion, and she’d let her feet lead her there; enraptured by the welcoming glow that differentiated it from other houses. It was almost as if it were… home.

And by golly was she right—she’d found the Manor at long last.

All that thinking had exhausted her. Sara needed a drink of water to soothe her parched throat. After closing the curtains, she exited the room, traipsing down the hallway.

A soft tinkering sound stopped her mid-step. Cocking her head to the side to listen, she realized that it was coming from the room beside hers, a few steps further down. The door was half ajar. Having forgotten whose room it was, she pushed open the door curiously, wincing when an ear-splitting creak was heard.