The world still seemed to be in such a state of disarray.
And, yet, the countryside always seemed so fresh and pure. The air even tasted cleaner. The grass grew greener under the warm light, taller, too. Wild grasses swayed and seemed to wave across the open fields. Clouds were gathering in the distance, threatening yet another spring rain.
Even the horses felt refreshed from the long ride out amid the sea of grasses and grain. They nickered and pranced through the fields, taking light steps with every long stride. The pair trotted and danced over the soft, mellow grass, crunching them down with massive hooves. Mairi reached down and stroked the neck of her mount, letting the leather reins slip through her fingers as she did. The girl stroked her mare's chestnut fur, gleaming red under the afternoon light; the horse nickered, seemingly in thanks, before reaching out to snatch up a mouthful of thistle.
"Easy, Lassie. You'll have your fill later." Mairi gave the mare a playfully light slap on her shoulders.
Merric brought his own, dun steed up beside Mairi. "We're almost there." He extended an arm, pointing to the hillside. "It should be just beyond that hill."
"That's what you always say."
The man chuckled. "Always, dear sister."
Mairi fell silent, squeezing her legs firmly around the mare's girth and sitting deeply on the horse's bare back. The chestnut responded quickly by stepping up into a gliding trot, crossing the ground with an even pace. It was as smooth as butter, like riding on a cushion of air. The mare was beautifully built, long and lanky, with a wonderfully sweet looking face. She had a deep girth, but not too deep, just enough to give her good lungs. This animal was a keeper, a broodmare of wonderful quality. It was nice to have good friends in positions of power.
Still, such favors as the present of an excellent steed could not go unrewarded. Mairi hated the thought of having to act for the others, but she needed to. The girl took the reins in her right hand, bridging them over. With her left, Mairi checked the bandage on her arm, tightening the bindings and feeling the blood ebb out, squeezed out of the wound.
"Mairi!"
The girl couldn't stop her brother from catching up with her, but he passed her. His dun had already broken into a swift, flying gallop.
The girl glanced over her shoulder, to the hills behind them. Black clouds boiled and roiled up from somewhere beyond the mists. Smoke. The fields and the lands were burning, scorched by an unseen fire. They polluted the wind with the acrid sent of death and flame.
Merric grabbed the reins sharply, jerking them back fiercely. His dun balked, but swung around in a tight circle.
"MAIRI! COME ON!"
The girl seemed frozen in place, holding Lassie there, staring in the distance. The chestnut spooked, whinnying and dancing about, Mairi kept her there, gazing at the top of the hills in the distance. Even as Merric watched, they came. Hunters. Their horses poured over the hill, a wave of soldiers and armed hunters.
They had come, hunting her, hunting Mairi.
"MAIRI!"
Still, she did not turn. Mairi just gaped as the waves of men came after her. They had just run from them, just found safety in the lost and forgotten lands of the moors and open fields. Afterall, no one could be found out in the wilderness. And, still, they had found Mairi and Merric.
Merric kicked at his horse's ribcage, sending the dun lunging through the air, tearing at the wind with his hooves and rushing to Mairi.
"This can't be…" the girl whispered.
"IT IS!"
Merric snatched a hold of one of Mairi's reins, pulling at it and dragging her horse around, slapping the chestnut's flanks with a hard, audible smack. The mare burst ahead, leaping into action and into a flying gallop, soaring across the ground and the grasses. Merric whirled his dun around.
Horse hooves thundered behind them.
"They've found us!" the girl cried out, the wind whistling in her ears.
Merric spat. "Filthy sons of dogs."
And arrow screamed through the air, falling just before the chesnut. Mairi's mount shied, slamming to the right and running around the arrow as if it were a deadly viper. The girl was nearly tossed from Lassie's back as the mare danced around the thing.
"They're going to kill us!" Mairi shouted.
"No. We're so close, now."
xxxx
He rested.
Nycole kept a close vigil over Amon. The hunter had been beaten near to death by Solomon, tortured in the cruelest of ways. The empathy almost loathed touching him, but she had to. The girl had been at his side ever since they left Rome and the burnt out ruins of their old lives, tending to him with every waking moment.
Yes, for that was what the Vatican had become, Nycole realized. It represented everything that was them, the witches' lives as human beings. When they allowed the Vatican to fall to cinders, they allowed the houses of their souls to fall. No longer could any of those witches consider themselves to be part of the human world. They fell from that world and back, into the realm they were forced to. That dark realm housed their fate, their curious destiny, sealed in the hands of the Oracle, Kathain.
Amon stirred; Nycole jumped. The former hunter had been unconscious since the flight from Rome. His body had been beaten so brutally that the man had been out the entire trip. For Amon, that was a mixed blessing, keeping him from the pain and exquisite agony. The injured man murmured something and settled back to slumber. The empathy rose from her chair by the bed. She took a rag and soaked it in water before wiping the sweat from Amon's forehead.
His eyes opened. "Ny…"
"Shhh…. You need to rest," the empathy whispered in a hushed, soothing voice.
Amon tried to rise, but searing fire rose up in his lungs, sending him falling back, into a squishy sea of blankets and pillows. Although Amon only fell an inch or less, his body screamed in agony from the concussion. He gasped at the burning sensation, pulling the blankets from off of him, ignoring the aching in his arms. The hunter surveyed himself. The witches had cut away his shirt, taping his cracked ribs, stitched up his cuts and gashes, bandaged his wounds, and splinted the man's lower left arm. He couldn't even begin to imagine how his arm had been broken.
Sleep threatened to take him, exhausted from the motion.
Amon tried desperately to hold his eyes open, studying the warmly tan colored room, the many quilts piled around him. The furniture seemed old and weathered, made from pine or oak, perhaps, hand crafted. The lamp even looked ancient, like some sort of relic from the early 1900s. This was a well-loved, well used room. Robin slept, curled up like a kitten in the armchair by the corner.
"She's been with you the whole time," Nycole noted for him.
Amon blinked, but he wasn't surprised. Robin was a loyal, close friend of Amon's despite the distance he tried to keep between him and everyone else in the world. Robin would never leave any of her friends so injured and hurt. The teenager needed to see him through this, needed to see Amon alive and well. No one had the heart to move her when she fell asleep the night before.
Nycole's fingertips brushed his forehead, avoiding the gashes and bruises as she peered down at him. "Sleep, Amon."
His struggled to catch a good breath, coughing horribly. His lungs struggled against him, against the very man they resided within. Something liquid stuck in his throat. Amon gagged, fighting against the offending obstruction. Nycole helped him lean over slightly, turning his head to one side. Heat flushed off of the man's body. His torment racked up the empath's arms. She watched in horror as the man hacked up something scarlet. Blood. Amon eased back and grew still, his eyes slipping shut heavily.
'Is he dying?'
Worry ebbed within Nycole. She had gone to school at one point, training to be a field nurse for the US Army. It had been only fitting since her grandfather had served. Nycole, the empath that she was, wanted nothing more than to help others. Kristo, with his own field training, could help greatly, too. She needed to go tell the others about this development and this new insight.
Nycole approached the door slowly, pausing in the doorframe. "I'll be right back."
The girl turned to leave him, but Amon called out. "No."
"You're alright. You just need to rest, to get your strength back," Nycole chided him, like a mother to her child.
"Stay."
Nycole nodded slowly, moving back to his side and taking a seat in the old, creaking chair. He needed her, needed the presence of anyone. There was guilt, lingering somewhere within Amon, the same, seething, black guilt that had resided in Kathain when Nycole first met her. He blamed himself, hated himself. Nycole didn't need to be an empath to see that; any fool with eyes could see his self-hatred. Amon languished in the thought of what could be happening to Kathain at that very moment.
"It's alright, Amon," Nycole breathed. "You couldn't have stopped them, not with everything they did to you. You did what you had to do."
"She…" he swallowed.
Nycole touched a finger to his lips, gentling avoiding the split and swollen one. "Don't speak, Amon. You need to rest and let your body heal."
He nodded.
Nycole went to return to her book, some beaten up Anne Rice novel that had been tucked away in one of the rooms, as if it were a shameful thing to be caught reading the vampire books. However, Amon spoke, staring up at the ceiling.
"Say something."
Nycole furrowed her eyebrows. She reached out to him mind, tiptoeing around his memories and finding a rather touching one. His mother, when Amon was a tiny child. She spoke to him in soft, flowing Japanese whenever he was scared of hurt. When he went to sleep at night, or while sick, Amon's mother would talk to him until the boy drifted away. If Nycole hadn't seen him in his own mind's eye, the girl wouldn't have believed that Amon could have ever been a child, running to his mother's side for love and comfort. Her awakening must had seemed like a terrible betrayal.
"Alright." Nycole closed her book and placed it on the nightstand. "What would you like me to talk about? I could pour on for hours about how stupid the American government is and how much I need a good Irish Car Bomb, but can't order one without getting into trouble at the local pub." She giggled. "I mean, this is Ireland, for chrissakes! How do you deny a woman booze in Ireland? How do you deny an IRISH woman in Ireland?"
Amon cracked a weary smile, but that quickly faded. "Kathain…" It took actual strength and effort to form the words. "She told me about the Queen."
"Which one?" the empath whispered.
"I don't…."
Nycole shushed him. "It's alright." She looked to Robin in the corner. "Y'know, she reminds me of Mab, Queen of the Fairies, but I'm sure that wasn't the queen Kathain was talking about." The empath sighed. "Alright. I bet Kathain didn't tell you about Boudica." At the look on confusion on his face, Nycole went on. "Y'know, Irish queen, 60-ish AD. Decided to open a can of whoopass on the Romans?" Amon didn't answer. "Ok… well… don't expect me to start with that once upon a time shit."
And so, Nycole began to weave her web.
xxxx
The arrows were getting closer. The hunter's aim improved as they raced through the fields. One scratched down Merric's leg, opening up a new, fresh, crimson slash. It fell to the ground, shattered beneath the driving hooves of his dun mount.
Mairi leaned forward, perching over Lassie's withers and begging for more speed. The chestnut responded swiftly, pouring out everything she had in her massive heart. Mairi's breathes came with every long, opening stride as the horse galloped down the moor. The mare clawed at the ground, tearing up the earth in massive clods, thrown up behind them. The steed bolted faster, soaring over the ground, eating up the land its self.
Mairi glanced over her shoulder at their approaching doom.
"We're not going to make it!"
xxxx
I like hurling wrenches. I am a wrench-hurling machine. I know, I know. I'm complicating things greatly, but all will make sense. Er, just take good notes on the B plot of this epic story arc.
