The Rebels' Chronicles: The Hunt

Chapter 1

Kefalaio 1

 

I ran.

Hi. I don’t have time for a long introduction, so I’ll just start by saying that my name is Alessia, I’m fifteen, and I’m currently on the run from some creature that I’ve never seen before in my life. No, I’ve never had a last name. I was said to have been found on the doorstep of an orphanage in a golden baby carriage decorated with silver snakes when I was just a few months old. Yeah, I know. It’s crazy, right?

So, anyway, I was never really a good child. I mean, sure, I had gotten adopted by a couple of nice folks every once in a while, but, eventually, I had managed to run them off with my ADHD. It wasn’t really my fault, if that’s what you’re thinking. To be honest, I actually tried to be the perfect kid. But every foster parent I had was always the same: Boring; Uninteresting; Sucking the living light out of me.

It wasn’t really all that bad, though. For the time being of my existence in each family, I had always succeeded to add a few trophies to their household. I was great in drama, Red Cross, choir, things like that, but no matter how hard I tried, the outcome was always the same. I had to be sent back to the orphanage.

By the time I turned ten, I had stopped trying. I had been sent to a lot of child psychologist, but I’d always end up making them quit their jobs. Don’t ask me how I did it. When I turned twelve, things went downhill. I started having weird dreams about shining chariots, golden arrows and Greek warriors, and often during the day, I’d catch glimpses of weird creatures spying on me in the city: small dwarf-like people running through alleys; men who, at one moment, appeared to have the lower body parts of goats; and folks who seemed to have only one eye in the middle of their foreheads.

But those things were nothing compared to what happened to me on the night of my fifteenth birthday. I was alone by the windowsill of my room in the orphanage, the top room that faced east. I don’t know why, but I felt safe facing the east at mornings. The sun had long set, and the city of Little Italy was already in full swing, the sound of sirens and loud music drowning out any hope of silence. I was about to head off to bed, when I heard a sound by my door. My headmaster had already called ‘night’s out,’ so I was curious as to who was there.

I stayed still for a moment. From the bottom of my door, I saw a figure stop. The thing was, it didn’t look human. Instead of two smaller shadows, where feet should have been, there was a large shadow. The door slowly creaked open, and the next thing that I saw, shocked me completely. There, at my door entrance, was a red headed woman, my headmaster, except that she wasn’t completely human. From her waist down, was the body of a snake. What type of snake, I didn’t get time to wonder, because the moment I looked back up at her face, she grinned at me, showing her fangs, and I immediately lost my balance and fell out of the window.

I plummeted to my doom, be it that I was three stories in the air, but no sooner had I fallen than two arms gripped at my waist and upper back. I looked at the window, and saw the woman-like creature by my window, hissing at me in disapproval. It was then that I took into recognition that I wasn’t falling anymore. I was soaring.

“Wha-”

“Don’t fight,” a male voice, not much older than I said firmly. “If you do, I might not be able to hold you up.”

From the position that I was in, and the night’s sky, it was impossible to see anything about the guy’s figure, other than the fact that he had blond, curly hair.

“I’ll take you down as soon as we’re a safe distance away from the Lamia.”

I nodded, still stunned by the fact that a scary creature tried to eat me, and that I was in the air and not falling. The boy rested me down a while later, in Central Park.