Shadows Of The Past

Chapter Five

I wake up to quiet footsteps, followed by a hand covering my mouth. Not this again, I think.

"It's me," whispers Dahlia. Why does she always wake me up by covering my mouth? Just once, I would like to not feel a sense of impending doom after sleeping. "Be as quiet as possible. We need to leave."

I groggily blink up at her in question while trying to gain my whereabouts. Right after the little weird magic trick in the alley, we went to the inn and went to bed.

"This is becoming an unfortunate routine," I mutter as I slip out of bed and tug on the overlay of my dress and boots. I quickly lace up the front of the dress while finding my cape.

"Shhh, they're right outside," Dahlia snaps. It was then that I noticed the commotion happening outside. I rush to the window and see chaos.

"Find her and kill the wolf with her!" screams a female voice, but all I can see are giant men stomping around, busting down doors, and searching the buildings. Fires burn in the streets, casting shadows and doom.

"Are they after us?" I question.

"There's witches out there and you're not allowed to exist outside their control if you're one of them. So I think it is safe to assume it's us they are after," Dahlia says as she finishes packing our belongings in the rucksacks.

"But I'm not a witch," I deny, even though we were both in that alley.

Dahlia stops before me and gently places her hands on my shoulders. "Look, after waking up with the whole no memory thing, you might be clinging to any sense of normalcy. But what you did in that alleyway was anything but normal. There's obviously a lot more to you than we thought." When we hear a particularly close bang, Dahlia says, "Now, can we get out of here?" I nod, and she makes her way to the window on the other side of the room, which looks down into an alley. Great, another alleyway.

"I'll jump down first, and then you follow, okay?" Dahlia asks.

"If we don't break our necks," I mutter.

"I can make a second-story drop no problem; it's you I'm going to have to catch. Climb onto the overhang and drop from there." Dahlia doesn't wait for me to say anything before she unlatches the window, drops our rucksacks out the window, and jumps out.

My heart starts to beat faster as I look down at the alley below to vaguely see her shape in the firelight. She made it. Now, all that's left is for me to climb out. Slowly, I stretched my right foot out onto the ledge and slid it down. Slowly, I lowered my body until my feet found the overhang.

But as they start to find purchase on the stone, voices are heard outside the door to our room as someone tries to open it. Terror at being caught fills me, and my already sweaty hands slip on the windowsill, and I land roughly on the overhang. I claw for anything to try to stop my falling body as I roll off the overhang and...into Dahlia's arms.

"Thank...you," I breathe.

"I told you to be quiet," she says with a shake of her head as she grips my hand and tries to drag me towards where the alley leads into the woods. But we both freeze and hide behind a wooden crate as three men and a woman walk in front of the entrance facing the street.

"Do you smell something?" the woman asks. I can only see her silhouette, but something about her is familiar.

One of the men walks closer to us, and I hold my breath. "I can't smell anything over the scent of smoke." The man must be a werewolf.

"Get back to searching. We can't have an unsanctioned witch running around. The Queen Witch will hate it if I have to report back that we couldn't find her," she threatens as she walks away. The woman must be a witch.