Whispers on a Wing

Chapter Thirts Two

We were currently sitting in a car with blacked out windows, dad driving and Eric in the passenger seat with mum sat beside me, gun aimed at my chest, eyes watching me like a hawk.
"Why are you going this?" I whispered, watching as the sun rose high in the sky as the early dawn turned into morning.
"Why? Kayla, come now, you know why." She sounded almost exasperated with the whole thing, like having to track me down and kidnap me at gun point was somehow an inconvenience to her. "We can't have you roaming the streets, it's not safe for us."
I stared at her, completely dumbfounded. She believed that, she genuinely believed that having me live my life would somehow be a danger to them and the people around me, I could see it in her eyes.
"What do you think I'm going to do?" I asked, eyes wide as I tried to comprehend this latest turn of events. "Do you think I'm just going to one day loose the plot and start killing everyone?"
"We know what-" Erik started to say but before he could finish his sentence my dad leant over the conceal and elbowed him in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him making it impossible for him to finish.
"We know what you're capable of Kayla; how your reflexes are faster, how you heal quicker, how much sharper your senses are. We can't have that just wandering the earth, it'd be unsafe for us humans for a creature such as yourself to exist."
"I don't..." I went to say but trailed off as my thought process worked double time, spinning her words around in my head as I tried to compute their meaning. "How would you know that? You never even hung around long enough for us to have a conversation after my wings grew."
Something was itching at the back of my brain, an image of a memory or a dream, but for the life of me I just couldn't quite grab onto it. It was like the memory was water and I was trying to catch it with a sieve.
"We've always known you were different, ever since you were a child you could run faster than the other kids in your year. Then there was the time you'd pretty much gashed your head half open playing in the nearby woods with Tristan as a child. Any normal person would've needed to go have stitches to fix that wound, but you healed with barely a scar," she gestured to my hairline where I knew a near invisible scar sat.
"It's not normal, not human," my dad said from the drivers side and against my better judgment, even after all these years away from them and knowing what they did to me, I still felt my eyes mist over with tears at the venom in their voice.
They were my parents, they were supposed to love me unconditionally, yet they were the two people hell bent on hunting me down and ending me. Well them and Erik, who I still can't figure out why he's here.
"And how did they drag you into this?" I asked him, trying to get my mind off my parents and onto a topic that would make me mad again.
"They needed a man on the inside and I was a willing participant," he shrugged, as if the idea of spying and kidnapping a girl from his school was no big thing.
"I can't believe you'd do this," I shook my head, turning to look out the window as I watched trees race by, the blue sky and bright green leaves a stark contrast to my gloomy situation.
"Why? It's not like you and me hung out. I mean you're hot and all in that weird emo kinda way, but not hot enough for me to turn on my beliefs." I watched his face scrunch, as if the idea of being with someone like me was the worst thing he could imagine and I curled my lip slightly.
"I meant to Jake," I spat, leaning forward enough in my seat to warrant my mum saving her gun at me again to remind me to sit back and do as I'm told.
"He'll get over it," he explained. "Once I sit him down and explain everything he'll understand why it had to be this way."
"That's enough," my dad growled from next to him, shooting him the death stare that always made me cower slightly as a child.
Erik held his hands up in surrender, shooting me a smirk over his shoulder before sitting back in his seat, also doing what he was told and remaining silent.
We drove for another ten minutes, all of us in a tense silence as towns shifted into woodland roads before shifting back into towns again. Where were we going? If they planned to just kill me why didn't they get it over and done with already instead of dragging it out like this.
As if they could hear my thought we finally turned off into a dirt road, almost hidden amongst the tree line and my heart unwillingly leapt into my throat. Was this it? Were they finally going to do what they'd always promised to do and kill me?
We pulled to a stop when the dirt road ended, the path dark due to the amount of trees covered the area and my palms started to sweat.
"Get out of the car," my mum said, waving the gun at me as dad opened the door for me before wrapping his large hand around my bicep and pulling me out.
"Watch it," I grumbled as my feet got twisted underneath me. My hands were still tied firmly behind my back and it was causing my balance to be off.
"Come on," he said impatiently, pulling me back to my feet and dragging me through the woods following the smallest path you could imagine.
It could barely be called a path, more a deer trail as the grass parted, leading us deep into the woods.
My skin and tights caught on brambles and twigs and they dragged me where they wanted, not seeming to care that my skin was getting all cut up with my lack of protection, but there was no way I was going to comment on it. I knew they wouldn't care so why bother wasting my breath?
I heard the other two of my little kidnap party hiking close behind me and every now and then felt the telling pressure of a gun pressed firmly against my neck, but I tried to ignore it as best I could.
Now that I was standing and walking I could feel the single belt I had wrapped around my wings, tight as the buckle bit into my skin, but if I could somehow remove it then maybe I could get out of here. They hadn't tied my wings down further, believing the restraint of the belt plus my hands tied tight behind my back up to my elbows would be enough, but if I could loosed that belt even a little I could get out of here.
I sucked in as much as I could, thankful that the loose top I had on covered the buckle and my plan from prying eyes, and felt the leather shift ever so slightly down my torso. If I could get it to slip down just a little bit further, I could try and wiggle my wings free from their confines. But not yet though, I had to many eyes on me, I had to wait until just the right moment, when they thought I was completely caught and there was no where for me to go.
We trudged through the undergrowth as we made our way through the woods, twigs snapping as we went, making me realise there'd be no one around for miles. No way would they walk through and approach an area with this little stealth if they weren't worried about someone finding us.
I thought I heard the odd noise in the distance, leaves rustling and the occasional snap, but it could've just been deer running from away from our approach.
"How far are we going?" I grumbled, trying not to wince as another bramble stem tried to tangle itself into the ruined fabric of my tights.
"Just keep walking," my mum sighed from behind me, almost sounding as if she was bored with how her morning had turned out.
"I'm trying, but dad keeps pulling me off balance," I huffed as I stumbled yet again on a loose tree root.
"I am not your father," he suddenly growled, pulling me to a stop so he could get up in my face. His hazel eyes, which had always seemed so warm as a child, burned with a type of ice that made a shiver run down my spine. "I am not your father, nor will I ever be your father, the sooner you get that into your head the better."
I stared up at him wide eyes, his large frame blocking out what remained of the little light that made it through the tree canopy. A dark shadow crossed over his face as he stared me down and for the first time I actually believed what he was saying. They genuinely believed that they were no longer my parents. They were disowning me all because of something I couldn't control.
A new type of pain entered my chest as he gripped my arm tight and started pulling me along the path again. It wasn't the pain of betrayal or the knowledge that they were planning to kill me, I knew you could have a complicated relationship between love and hate. You could hate what a person had become but still love the memory you had of them, you could love the idea of a person but hate the reality of them. Looking into his eyes though, I could see no love there, no remorse or shred of defeat as he stared down at me.
He was ready to kill me, without holding a single speck of love for the daughter he once had, and held no remorse for doing it.
Tears filled my eyes for what felt like the millionth time but again I forced them down. If they weren't my parents and I wasn't their daughter then fine, I wasn't going to hold myself back once I got freed. I wasn't going to fight, fight as hard as I had to, until I was free from them.
I wasn't sure where Alice was, I half expected her to be at our destination, grinning over at me as she watched my parents who were no longer my parents put a knife in my back, but when we finally made it out of the trees it was into an empty field. Maybe she couldn't handle the sight of the blood, of what she'd done to be by betraying me. Or maybe she just cared so little about what happened she couldn't even be bothered to show.
I blinked at the bright morning light, blinded by it for a few seconds after being in such a dark environment.
When my eyes had finally adjusted I looked around and took in the small field. It wasn't much, it looked more like a garden than a field, and it took me all of two seconds to figure out this was where they'd been staying. There was a small Shepard's hut in the back left corner of the field, almost hidden by carefully placed trees, but now I knew what to look for I could see evidence of their lives all around me.
The ground swept clean of loose twigs and fallen trees, clearly having been used to build fires. There was also a clear absence of animals, having been scared off by constant movement.
They were so close to my home. How did they manage to set this all up and get over to America in the small time they had from when Alice found me? The timeline didn't quite add up. Maybe she knew where I was before she saw me and only went to that lacrosse game acting surprised when she saw me.
In the centre of the grassy area was a ring of stones, all sitting snugly next to each other and each carrying a symbol in an almost brown shade that could be nothing other than old dried blood.
My stomach rolled as I tried not to think about who's blood it was. There was so much of it smeared onto each stone there was no was the person it came from hadn't suffered from some symptoms of blood loss.
"Come on," Erik said, sounding almost excited as he took my other arm and pulled me towards the circle of bloody stones. "I've always wanted to see this," he grinned, but I think he was talking more to himself than to anyone else.
What did he want to see? What was going on right now?
All of a sudden I was unceremoniously shoved into the ring, my feet just catching up with me as I managed to step over the stones and not trip up on them and land face first into the dirt.
My three captures spread out around me, each standing on the outer side of the stones, and joined hands.
I span in a circle, taking in each of their expressions as they stared me down in silence.
Erik looked almost giddy as she watched me, like a cat playing with a caught mouse before he finally decided to do something. Dad looked determined, his eyes staring me down as he watched for any signs of me trying to escape. Mum looked... wary, her gaze shifting first to her left and then to her right as she tried to keep an eye on her surroundings as much as possible.
Maybe there was hope for me yet, maybe there was someone close by that I could gain the attention of if I yelled loud enough.
I took in a lung full of air, ignoring the bite if the belt as it dug tighter into my skin, and was just about to release a scream my three captures started chanting in a weird dialect. They were all talking in a low tone, sounding almost like a hum, and for some reason my ability to move somehow left me as the scent of cinnamon hung faintly in the air.
How was that possible? Why could I not move, why could I not scream?
The chanting intensified, growing louder with every word, and I watched as the three people surrounding me lost focus in their eyes as they stared unseeing up into the sky. Their bodies were ridged and I stared at the three of the wide eyed as they continued to chant. Was this magic? But that wasn't possible, magic wasn't real... was it?
Suddenly the chanting stopped and I watched through eyes than no longer felt like my own as they slowly released their hands and took a step back.
Finally my body started to feel like my own again, my limbs sluggishly coming back to life after feeling like they'd been in a deep sleep. I tried to take a step forward, not liking being in the ring of stones after what it had done to me, but every time I tried to take a step out the ring I couldn't. It was like there was some kind of wall in the way, stopping me from walking out and escaping. How was that possible?
"The binding spell is complete," my mum told the group as she pulled her jeans up to reveal a holster holding a large knife. "Now the sacrifice can begin."
Sacrifice? I thought they were just planning to kill me because they hated the fact that I had wings, but why would they be performing all this magic on me if that was the case?
"What the hell is happening here?" I tried to yell, but my voice lacked volume as my body tried to relearn how to work after whatever magic crap they'd just used on me.
They ignored me, of course, and instead proceeded to gather in a group in front of me, each holding out their palm in offering.
With a swift slice from the knife my mum held she cut a line into first her own palm and then into the palm of my father, each balling their hands into a tight fist to drop their blood onto the stones surrounding me. If that was the blood soaking them how many of these weird sacrifices had they done?
"What're you doing?" I asked, my voice slowly regaining its volume.
"Cursing your kind of course," Erik said in a duh tone but shut up when he received a death glare from my parents.
"Cursing you so that if anyone like you ever reappear in our world they will be struck down before their wings even have time to manifest," dad said, dripping his blood onto each stone as he walked around the ring, mum following suit behind him.
"But why?" Surely this type of hate couldn't come from just them hating the fact that I have wings, surely. "And how did Alice get in contact with you anyway? Have you been tailing me this whole time and just happened to find her and ask her about me?"
Erik suddenly laughed, loud enough to spook a nearby flock of birds out of the trees and I turned to stare at him. "You still think Alice is the one that did all this? For a smart girl you really aren't so smart," he grinned.
I frowned and looked between the three of them, all looking thoroughly amused at my cluelessness.
"Come now dear, did you honestly think a seventeen year old girl could've pulled all this off?" She laughed and my stomach dropped.
Alice was... innocent?

Eeek! Did you see that coming? Seriously loving writing this book, hope you guys are enjoying reading it <3