Villainous

Chapter 1 | Hellas

"Get up, girl." The busted up toe of an old leather boot slams into my side. I moan half-coherently, rolling over and pulling my skinny legs into my torso. My face burns when the boot hits it. I lean back on my elbows and push myself up. I can smell the old sweat that sunk into my plain black sweats and white t-shirt with the cut off sleeves.

"I'm up, Casing, I'm up." He grunts like a pig and backs off to let me brush off my knees. Casing runs the group home I live in, have lived in for the past few years. I could get kicked out if I really wanted to, but then I'd have to chance some place worse. And no matter Sunshine Child's faults, it's one of the better ones. It's nowhere near living up to its name, but you get clothes and food and a sort of safe place, and in an under-budgeted town with too many homeless kids, it's no less than a miracle.

I shove my hair— deep brown with bleached ends— out of my face. I did the choppy pixie cut myself about two weeks ago, because I was tired of Casing pulling on it to wake me up, but now it's all in my face because I couldn't risk going any closer to my scalp with the pocket knife. "We got new kids coming today?" Casing smiles at me. A yes, then. Casing loves terrorizing the new kids. Says it makes them more obedient. And as the senior child here, I get to help. How lucky I must be.

"A whole shipload are coming in from the place." My knees go unsteady at that, but I keep myself from falling. A whole shipload usually means ten or twenty, but if it's coming from the place, there'll be forty or fifty new kids living here today. No one knows exactly where the place is, but we know it's got lots of kids, even more than we do. More business for Casing. Less housing for me. A shock of fear pulses through me.

I widen my eyes, which in hindsight doesn't work very well, because I've got flickers of silver in my eyes and it scares Casing. He says I have devil's eyes. He says good people don't have silver eyes. He's a blinking idiot if he hasn't yet figured out I'm far from good people.

Good people don't steal, good people don't kill, good people aren't Destined to destroy the whole world. Destined. I have a great destiny, whispers a past voice. As always, I shut it up real quick. Part because I haven't got the time to listen to the voices circling my brain like vultures over a highway. Part because I'm scared to near-death of the part of me that thinks destroying the world is a great destiny.

I blink quickly to shake the thoughts from my mind, but it doesn't work. So I tilt my head a fraction to the side and focus on Casing. He rubs a greasy hand through his greasy hair as he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. The wooden planks that make up the floor creak underneath what can be no less than three hundred pounds. "Er... the kids... the kids will be here soon. Leave by noon. Nothing personal, girl. Business is business."

He doesn't say it explicitly, that I have to shove all the essentials into a bag and hightail it out of this place before they get here. He doesn't have to say it. The message comes through loud and clear. A red haze flashes over my vision. I clench and unclench my fists. I grit my teeth. Not now, Hellas Fury, I tell myself. Not now. I am in control.

"I'll be out within the hour." Somehow, I keep my voice steady. If it shook even the slightest, I'd lose control lose control lose control. I'd memorized the signs of it years ago. I looked up. Casing had walked out. I didn't know quite how it was that I missed something as loud as Casing's footsteps, but I had. I miss things when I'm taking control sometimes.