Voila, chapter two... Oh, and Happy Halloween, guys!
xxx
Amelia kept her eyes open as she led the women quickly through the forest. When she was sure they were far enough in front of Sara, she put out one hand out to stop the others.
"Stay here," she said. "Wait for my daughter. She'll take you the rest of the way."
"I thought-"
She silenced the speaker with a glare. "Stay low. Keep quiet."
Then she was moving, not heading exactly back the way she came, but going slightly to the side. She mustn't run into her daughter, she just couldn't.
"Go to hell!"
Amelia didn't blame Sara for those words. Far from it, she could easily understand hating your own mother enough to say something like that. Judging by Sara's uneasy demeanour after that argument, she had been ashamed of herself. Not that she should be. Amelia was the one who had every reason to be ashamed of herself. Every time Sara started on a rant like that, Amelia egged her on. Trying desperately to get her daughter to snap, to back out, to quit.
She was going to hell. But she wasn't going to drag her daughter with her.
It hadn't taken much to kick the argument off. Just an offhand comment from a nine-year old Sara. Something about trying harder, not letting the family down. Something about a poltergeist.
"I told you, no more!" Amelia yelled, eyes flashing dangerously. "I said she wasn't to be involved!"
All her life, Amelia had never asked her mother for anything. Not one thing, not when her father was training her, not when her father died. Not until Sara was born and growing up. Even then all she'd wanted was for her little girl, her little Sara, sleeping peacefully upstairs, to be left alone. To be allowed to stay away from the demons. To be human.
Apparently even that simple wish was futile.
Jean Lucian stared her daughter down, completely unrepentant. "She is a Lucian. She was born involved."
"She is not your pathetic soldier. She is my daughter and I will not let her get caught up in a life designed to kill her."
"Oh, she's your daughter, is she? Strange. You spend more time in America with men you despise than with her."
"Because she is not part of this. She is a child and you will treat her as such."
"Don't worry, Amelia. I give her a treat when she faces her demons."
"Wasn't what you did to me enough? You really want to put Sara through the same thing?"
"Put her through what? The necessary preparations to keep her alive?"
"Listen to me! I am her mother and I am telling you, if you don't stop ramming this life down her throat, I will stop you myself!"
"You would threaten your own mother?"
"I think I've spent enough time hunting to know a monster when one looks straight at me."
Including when she looked in the mirror. Sometimes, Amelia had the idea that Sara disliked her so much because she could see what Amelia really was. She could see in Amelia what she would become, just as Amelia had looked in horror at Jean all those years ago. But was Amelia any better? She recognised her mother as a monster, recognised herself as a monster, but didn't manage to do a damn thing to keep Sara away. Sara was just too damn stubborn. Amelia's weak protests about the danger, the death, the isolation of their work hadn't been enough to make her daughter walk away from her cursed birthright.
The truth might have been enough. If only Amelia had been brave enough to say it.
But she couldn't. Amelia had never told her mother the truth, couldn't bear to put Jean Lucian through the loss of another family member. In much the same way, she'd never managed to tell Sara either. Sara, for all her sharp words, dirty looks and outright contention, loved her mother with a fierce intensity. Her very presence in the real world attested to that. Hell, her first ever hunt had been a desperate attempt to save her mother's life. And Amelia couldn't lose that.
Amelia moved quickly and quietly to one side, flattening herself against a tree, as she heard her daughter approaching. Sara had moved faster than Amelia had anticipated and that thought created a stab of pain even through the pride. Sara wasn't meant to be here. Not in Minnesota, not fighting monsters, not apparently comforting a woman pregnant with a demon's child.
Maybe Amelia's father hadn't known what he'd been doing to his daughter, but Amelia had known what she was doing to Sara. And that made her worse than any demon. Not that she hadn't tried to stop Sara following her on the path to hell, not that she hadn't tried time and time again to forcibly remove Sara from this life. But somehow, it had never quite been enough.
Most normal five years old learnt nursery rhymes. Amelia never would get used to her daughter proudly chanting protective spells in the way other kids recited their times-tables or Mary had a little lamb. She'd done the same as a child, of course. It was the Lucian way of raising a child, complete with emotional repression and, later, bitterness.
When Sara wandered off, hopefully to do something sort of normal like climb a tree or something, Amelia remained at the kitchen table, still in her travel-rumbled clothes, idly glancing through the notes Jean had made over the past six months. Pronunciation, improving. Curiosity, possibly excessive. Obedience, acceptable. It read like a twisted school report, without any allowances made for the fact that Sara was five. A fairly mature five, but five nonetheless. But this was just meant to tell Amelia how Sara was being prepared for training as an exorcist. It was really only a matter of time before Jean put her foot down and insisted Amelia took Sara to America to battle demons.
"She's coming along well," Jean said, watching Sara through the kitchen window. "A little too timid, but she'll outgrow that."
"She's only five and you already want her to grow out of things."
"Never too young to start work."
Amelia wondered if her mother had always been like this or if it was just the effect that marrying a Lucian had on you. She picked up the notes, shuffling them back into a tidy pile.
"Never too young to stop, either."
Jean turned around, startled. "What?"
"I want you to stop training Sara." Amelia didn't look at her mother, but reshuffled the notes instead. One phrase caught her eye – 'Too easily frightened'. "She won't be an exorcist."
"I know she's not very promising at the moment, but-"
"I don't care if she can make Beelzebub himself dance to her tune."
"Amelia, what happened to you?"
"Nothing," she replied sharply. "I've decided that Sara won't be trained. That's all. Is that clear, mother?" she asked when Jean didn't respond.
Her mother was looking at her like she was crazy. But Amelia got a lot of that and didn't pay it any attention as she followed her daughter into the garden. Maybe she'd teach Sara the words to Mary had a little lamb while she was at it.
Her first attempt to get Sara out of this life hadn't worked. Jean had continued to teach Sara while Amelia was in America. By the time Jean died and Amelia had the perfect opportunity to keep Sara out once and for all, Sara was just too old. Too old to forget, too old to give up. Just old enough to be riled at being told to stop. Maybe if Amelia had made it clearer to Sara what would happen to her...
But it might not happen. Her own father had never mentioned it. Nor did any of the Lucian Diaries. Maybe it was just Amelia. Maybe Sara would get away with it.
Maybe Sara wouldn't be a monster.
The Hunter who'd slit her father's throat had left the body for the remaining Lucians to bury. Amelia never did find out who had killed her father or why, but her mother had told her that Hunters hated the exorcists for doing God's work and part of her had believed that. Ten years later, part of her still believed that. Part of her, however, the part that enjoyed working with Maxwell and Pastor Jim, thought that maybe it hadn't been a Hunter at all. Just a killer.
Not that she was in any position to take the moral high ground.
Amelia Lucian hunched her shoulders against the bitter wind and looked down at her father's grave. Oliver Lucian, 1943-1976. And God Will Come Again in Glory. Amelia always came her first when she visited England. Before seeing her mother or daughter, she went to visit her dead father. And that was fairly weird even for a Lucian.
Oliver had believed. Not just as Amelia did, in Jesus and God and salvation, although he had held those things close as well. He had believed in the exorcisms. Believed he was making a difference. He had taught her so carefully, so thoroughly, but he'd never warned her about this. This thing, this abnormality.
The important thing about being an exorcist was to maintain a clear divide between you and what you fought. Amelia knew that as well as her own name. When you performed an exorcism, there was a moment when the demon wasn't in contact with the host, but with the exorcist. When the soul and demon collided. At the moment, any slip of concentration could result in the exorcist becoming the host. Amelia knew that as well.
What she didn't know was why she was suddenly remembering demons' memories.
The first time she'd woken in a cold sweat from a dream of mindless slaughter in which she wasn't the prey but the slaughterer, Amelia had written it off as her warped mind sorting out a kink or two and that was that. But the dreams didn't stop. Romans, an African tribe, an Elizabethan player, she was them all and none of them. She killed them all, felt herself end lives, take hosts, even be exorcised.
And it terrified her.
Memories dictated who a person was. How Amelia reacted to a situation depended on her experiences, on her knowledge. What would happen if the memories became too numerous? What if they overruled who Amelia really was?
He should've told her.
He should've warned her.
But what if he hadn't because this hadn't happened to him?
The more exorcisms Amelia did, the stronger the memories got. What would happen to her a year down the line, ten years?
What would happen to Sara?
What was Amelia doing to Sara?
Well, no more. No damn more.
It just hadn't worked. Sara sometimes said that this life was in her blood and maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn't enough for Amelia to try and get her mother to back off, to try and leave Sara in England. Maybe Sara was... destined to this. Designed for this. Her fate had been sealed the moment she had been conceived.
Amelia didn't want to lead her daughter in to hell. But she already had. Sara was going to fall. Just like her mother. Just like every other Lucian since the first exorcism. Even if the others hadn't absorbed something of the demon, they were all monsters. Amelia had suspected that long before she'd had her daughter. But when Jean Lucian had started talking about continuing the family, Amelia just went along with it. She'd brought her daughter into this world. She couldn't take Sara out of this world.
But maybe she could knock Sara off the road to hell.
Amelia wasn't the greatest Hunter, but she'd had one or two hairy moments during exorcisms and she knew when she was being followed. Her daughter didn't give up. And maybe that was the problem. Amelia increased her pace slightly, glancing at her watch. She had to time this just right.
As the cabin came back into view, Amelia stooped, taking her rifle in one hand, and wedged the weapon into a hole amongst the roots of one tree, the gun angling upwards. Then she walked forward, out from under the cover of the trees, out towards the cabin.
The hairs of the back of her neck rose, just like they always did when monsters were around. Amelia didn't have the same psychic strength as her mother, but she had enough. The incubuses were back home, and from the sounds, they were pissed. Amelia smiled. She could live with that. Not that that was her intention, though.
When she heard the thud of a body hitting the ground, the faint grunt of pain, Amelia didn't look round but sped up slightly more again. She was almost there. She didn't look round when Sara screamed for her either. The screams of her daughter mixed with the cries of the monsters and Amelia felt her stomach tighten. She was an exorcist, after all. She knew the value of omens.
Don't follow me. Sara, please don't follow me, Amelia pleaded silently as she reached the cabin's door. For the first time, Sara did exactly as she was told.
Amelia smiled at the demons clustered in the wooden building, hearing her daughter cry out one last time.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked them casually.
And then the world went away.
xxx
Blue Earth, Minnesota,
20th September, 2002
As a Hunter, Dean was more than used to the idea that sleeping in a bed was more a bonus that a necessity. He'd slept on sofas, in the Impala, even on one notable occasion halfway up a tree. His current location wasn't as bad as the latter, but it was far from perfect. But that was what you got for sleeping on a pew, he supposed.
Sitting up and attempting to stretch the stiffness out of his back, Dean glanced quickly around the church, only to spot Pastor Jim standing by the pulpit.
"Uh... good morning?" he said, fully expecting an earful for not waking Jim and getting to sleep in a proper bed.
"Why is it that the only time I see you in a church, you're asleep?" Jim asked with a faint grin.
"Divine peace?" Dean offered. "Any sign of my dad yet?"
"He called last night, said he'd be here around lunch time. It seems the demon is a little more stubborn that John had anticipated."
Dean jumped guiltily as his phone rang, destroying the peaceful atmosphere. Pastor Jim rolled his eyes slightly as Dean quickly silenced the mobile.
"Yeah?" he said.
"Dean, have you heard from Sara?" came Will Atwood's voice.
"Will? No, not for a week or two." Dean stood up, tensing. "Why? What's happened?"
"She went on a hunt with her mom, something about a succubus. They went out to deal with the demon last night and now Sara's not answering her phone."
"Where was she?"
"This place called Birchdale. It's in northern Minnesota. We're in Texas, we can't get there soon enough."
"I'm at Pastor Jim's. I call you when I find her." Dean hung up and turned to Jim. "How far away is Birchdale?"
"Eight hours. Maybe a little less the way you drive. What's wrong?"
"Sara's missing. Her mom as well."
"Heaven forbid," Jim murmured.
"Tell Dad I'll call him," Dean called, already hurrying out of the church.
Jim watched helplessly from the door as the Impala shot down the road, heading North.
xxx
Next chapter will be up on the third. Please review!