Demon's Bane

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

_____________________

Jana on the edge of the bed and watched as long shadows licked up and down the walls like black flames.  She was in Persephone’s room again, wearing a pair of borrowed pajamas that she also knew to be Persephone’s.  She also knew that the other girl was not too happy about having to give up her room to a weird, dirty stranger.

            But Mabel had insisted, and Jana was quickly learning that Mabel usually got her way.  With her children, at least.

            It felt strange being at the mercy of two different sets of strangers within two days.

            She mourned the loss of the kick-ass independence that had helped her to survive for so long on her own.

 Damn girl, she thought sadly.  You’re losing your touch. 

            First Stark and now Mabel.  The growing list made her head ache, and she cradled it gingerly within her hands.

            She felt weak and exhausted and her muscles ached from being constantly on edge.  But, even now, she didn’t dare let her guard down.

            A part of her admitted, that the tension almost had nothing to do with Mabel and her strange family…more than it had to do with fear.

            Fear that if she allowed herself to relax—even to go to sleep—all of her memories of Data would play through her mind in a tortuous game.

            Everything had been a lie—all those years on the run with the old man seemed as insubstantial as snowflakes.

            His name had been a lie.

            His family—or lack of one—had been an even bigger lie.

            And her whole entire life seemed to be the most pathetic lie of all.

            Jana felt the back of her throat go tight, and this time she allowed the tears to fall.  Angrily they lashed down her cheeks like rivers and she didn’t even have the strength to wipe them away.

            The great Data Samuels—her hero since…forever, was nothing more than a fraud.  For some reason he’d dragged her along for the ride and she almost felt like the lost little puppy Sharon had accused her of being.

            ‘Data always had his secrets,’ Bast had said.  Well, Jana had never considered that the old man had kept so many from her.

            Why?  She glared through the darkness.  Why even come back for me at all?

            She accepted Sharon’s story; in her heart, she knew it was true. 

            The old man had left her with Mabel for two whole years.  Then one day, he’d come back taken her with him and erased the memories.

            Painfully, she remembered being little and asking Data why she didn’t have a mommy and Daddy like the other kids.

            ‘That’s a sad tale, darlin,’ he would grumble on a sigh. ‘I don’t like tellin’ sad tales.’

She had learned fast that bringing up the past to Data would get you nowhere.

            She’d always assumed that the old man had found her, abandoned during one of his travels.  Sometimes, he would hint to that conclusion.  ‘I’m all you got, kiddo,’ he would remark every now and again on a tired sigh.