Angels Born of Hell and Fire

[Chapter Seven]

Savannah walked at a fast pace, so I matched her long stride with my own. Walking fast was never a problem of mine. Running on the other hand...

We walked from the dining room, down the hallway that I remembered from the day before that lead to Adam’s office. We passed it as we walked, I didn’t even glance at it. I knew Adam wasn’t in there. It’s a weird thing to be tied to another person, much less two. If I had wanted all I would have to do is think of either of them and I would know where they were. Well... at least the general direction sense I didn’t know the layout of the house yet.

Savannah didn’t even glace at me to make sure I was keeping up. We wove through more hallways than I could count, passed more people dressed in all black than I would have cared to. They all stared at me as we passed their eyes practically bugging out of their faces. I could feel emotions off of them, as I had been able to feel from Peter. I didn’t understand it but as they passed, and their eyes would look at me, I knew what they felt. Most of the time it was surprise, sometimes it was fear. One girl had taken one look at me and darted off down the hall like she had seen a ghost.

I knew my face had to be red as a tomato the entire time. The temptation to smooth a hand over my hair, or tug at the hem of my shirt was too much to resist. I fidgeted like a middle schooler on the first day of class. Did I look weird or something? Was there some sort of sign on my head screaming I was obviously a freak of some nature?

“Are you always so twitchy?” Savannah’s harsh voice made me cringe. Her dark eyes watched me out of their corners. At my reaction she snorted.

“You act like a mouse.”

A small spurt of annoyance weaved through my anxiety.

“I’m sorry I’m not exactly comfortable around people I’ve never met who stare at me like I’m a demon,” I snapped.

Savannah stopped walking. Oh shit.

Her dark eyes narrowed dangerously as she stared down at me.

“I’m- I’m sorry it’s just… I don’t really know what’s going on everything is happening so fast and-“

“Enough,” she barked and I bit my tongue, literally. “You would be better off getting rid of that mouse-ish personality now, or you won’t last 2 minutes here.”

“Maybe I don’t want to make it here… I don’t even want to be here.” I mumbled, hugging my arms to myself.

To my surprise Savannah snorted.

“That’s what everyone says in the beginning, it’s usually my job to break it out of them.”

I looked up at her, my eyes going wide as I realized she was being honest.

She looked me up and down.

“How is it possible that this puny weakling of a girl is the almighty General everyone has been preaching about,” she muttered, probably more to herself.

Puny? Weakling? My teeth clenched in anger. Sure I wasn’t the most athletic person in the world but wasn’t that going too far?

“I’m not puny.” I had meant to match her biting tone, but I ended up sounding whiney.

“Do you know why those people looked at you like that?” Savannah asked.

“Obviously not,” I hissed between my teeth.

“It’s because you look like Master Adam.”

I felt sick, my precious breakfast threatening to come up through my chapped lips. Here was yet another person, telling me I looked like him. The person I wanted to deny having any affiliation with, the person who had brought all this madness upon me, was now imbedding himself so far into my life I couldn’t even look at myself in a mirror.

“I guess it’s really true that you’re his daughter,” Savannah’s words, spoken with such contempt, broke me to pieces.

“I am not his daughter!” I screamed at her. “I would never be related to something so vile and horrible as that man!”

I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. No matter how many times people said it, no matter how I may look on the outside I still wasn’t his daughter. I would never consent to give him such a disgusting title as ‘Father’, no matter what he did.

There was no warning before the back of Savannah’s hand smacked against my cheek. Pain painted fuzzy dots in front of my eyes. I was so stunned, so surprised to be hit for the first time in my life, I couldn’t even gasp in surprise. Savannah grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me up until my face was inches from hers.

“I don’t care who Master Adam may think you are, but never will I hear you say such rude things about him ever again,” she growled. “You don’t deserve the title he’s given you.” She tossed me roughly to the floor.

“Now get up.”

I looked up at her, my cheek on fire, and gritted my teeth. For a moment I thought recklessly what would happen if I refused.

‘You probably don’t wish to know that.’ I flinched as Adam’s voice cracked like a whip through my head.

‘Behave Chaos…’

‘And if I don’t?’ My fear had given away to defiance, as if that would somehow make it better. I really was a fool.

Adam didn’t say anything in response, but a sudden chill was falling upon my limbs, my throat tightened like there was an invisible hand gripping it. I stumbled to my feet, hands clutching at my throat, as if to peel the hands that were not there away. My heart lurched in my chest, the sound painfully loud as my lungs struggled for air. I was tugged up onto my toes, the grips on my boots barely clinging to the carpet beneath them.

‘Now behave.’

The hand at my throat released and I gulped in air, feeding my starving body with oxygen. My shoulders hunched as coughs crumpled my body; I shook weakly, trying to stop the horrid sound that burst from my mouth. The sound of my hacking echoed down the long hallway.

Savannah had watched this whole thing with dark eyes, not in the least bit phased by what must have been a strange spectacle.

“Daughter indeed…” was all she said.

Once finally managing to coax my lungs into accepting oxygen again I looked at her with petrified eyes. What the hell had just happened?

She sighed.

“You really don’t belong here do you? What in the world is he thinking…? Come on, let’s at least get to the training room.”

This time I followed her dutifully, not even an ounce of protest in my entire being.

“We won’t go through the main hall for today… you would probably just pass out me,” she said and I couldn’t even muster up the will to be insulted, I was frozen, nothing was allowed to move right down to my soul. Any second now, I knew I was going to break down. My brain would function again and panic would engulf everything I was. I was being held together by the thin strands of denial, my being unaccepting of what had just happened. This wouldn’t last, I knew. Savannah would probably smack me again for showing such weakness once I caved.

She lead me into a small locker room, rummaged around in a closet until she found my sizes, and assigned me a locker with strict instruction that workout clothes were to be washed twice weekly and that she wasn’t responsible if I forget and start smelling bad. I took the instructions numbly, nodding in the appropriate places. What was going on? Why was I here?
We changed in silence. The outfit looked something like karate attire, loose, light weight pants, a tunic rather than a shirt that fell to mid-thigh, a belt to clench it tight. The belts were the same color as the rest though, a simple--but dull--black. Marie hadn’t been kidding when she said Adam liked black. The color suited him.

Savannah led me over to a mat that reminded me of my P.E. classes and told me to do some stretches. She soon found out that along with having no knowledge at how to fight I apparently don’t even know how to stretch properly. With thinning patience, she carefully showed me how, often stopping me, tuning an arm or a leg in an awkward — and normally painful — way. After she was done twisting me up like a pretzel she moved on to seeing how I would do in an attack.

“Attack?” I stared at her, not understanding the meaning behind this word. I was supposed to attack her?

I thought about how I had been attacked now three times, in as many days, twice by my so called ‘father’. I breathed in deeply, just to make sure I still could.

"Adam told me you fought your kidnapper; just pretend that I am him." Savannah said impatiently.

I didn’t bother as to wonder how Adam knew that I had hit the pudgy man, only accepted that the kidnapper had probably warned him after we were safely purchased.

I stared at the girl in front of me, trying to imagine her as a short, hairy man with balding hair and evil eyes. It wasn’t working to well. How was I supposed to attack her? The only times I had ever struck out at another person was in self-defense? Better yet, why should I even bother? Why was I doing this? Why was I agreeing so readily?

Because I didn’t want it to happen again. I didn’t want to experience that unbelievable pressure restricting over my air passages. I had to ‘Behave’. I took another deep breath, this time to try and steady myself. Since when had I become such a cry baby?

“Ready?” Savannah raised her fist and I wanted to say that no, I wasn’t in fact ready, but then she was moving and I didn’t have time to think. She feinted to the left before coming in at the right with her fist. Somehow I managed to dodge that first attack but failed to see the second fist coming in from my blind side. Pain exploded in my jaw, erasing everything from my mind. I went down hard, blinking at the tears that stung my eyes. I saw her sift her weight and I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the way my head was spinning from the impact of her knuckles.

Surprise trickled over to me; she hadn’t expected me to get back up. She hid it well though, and immediately launched into another attack. She shot out short jabs aimed for my torso and I had to back up several steps just to get away from them. I lasted about 2 seconds before a fist seeming made out of iron slammed into my abdominal. Spittle flew my mouth as I gagged, falling to my knees. My body was screaming at me to lie down, to curl into a ball and pray for the pain to go away. My breath sounded like sobs even in my own ears, labored and heavy, was I crying? I felt like I should be. Somehow, I managed to stand.

Savannah’s dark eyes held no emotion.

“Keep your hands up, don’t just let them flop around like dead fish,” she barked.

I tore my arms from where they had wrapped about my aching abdominal and held them up in the way she had shown me.

I had to behave.

She charged again, spinning around to send a kick flying at my head. I blocked it with my forearm, but the impact was enough to send me off my feet, once more collapsing on the floor. The texture of the blue mats pressed against my stinging cheek. The plastic like material was cold and comforting against the injury. My bones ached from the jarring fall on the hard mats. Whoever thought they were better to fall on than the floor was sorely mistaken.

Moving was horrible in every way. I stood, lifting my left hand but my right one, the one I had managed to block Savannah’s powerful blow with, hung from my shoulder limp and unresponsive. My head felt light from pain, the room tilting back and forth dangerously.
Savannah’s blurry face was drawn in a frown. I wished she’d stop moving back and forth in such a nauseating way, my stomach was already threatening to reject the small amount of food I had ingested.

“Hurry and heal,” she said tartly.

“What?”

Her bare feet moved towards me, smacking against blue mats, and I panicked, wondering how I was possibly going to dodge the attack that was surely forthright.

She grabbed my chin in her hand and yanked it to the side, then released me with a snort.

"The mark on your jaw is almost already gone. You’ll be fine in a few minutes," though her voice was neutral I felt her unease as she said it.

I reached up with my left hand gently prodding my cheek. It still hurt, but was it as bad as when she had first hit me? I had no way of knowing, so many other parts of me were also screaming in pain.

She walked over to a little mini-fridge that sat on the counter and pulled out a water bottle. She tossed one to me, which I very nearly dropped. Me and flying objects...

She made a little annoyed sound when she saw my fumble with it and rolled her eyes.

Sensing that I was allowed, I fell to the floor, no longer able to hold myself upright. I didn’t even have the strength to take a drink of water.

"You know, you’re my superior." she said and I couldn’t stop the rude noise I made.

"According to Adam,"

"But not to you?" she asked and I turned my head to look up at her.

"No, not to me."

She snorted and looked away.

"Then you’re even more of a fool than I thought."

"Why? Didn’t you say earlier I didn’t belong here? That’s something we can both agree on at least" I said sarcastically, finding the strength to sit up.

"Because only a fool would doubt a rank given to them, if Adam didn’t think you could do it then he wouldn’t have given it to you. It doesn’t matter what I think, his opinion out ranks my own."

I shook my head.

"I don’t know what Adam thinks, and I’m not sure I want to, but it’s painfully clear to me that I can’t lead an army. I don’t even want to if that even matters.”

“It doesn’t,” she stated, “You know, very few of us that actually wanted to be here.”

This surprised me.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged.

“We were all picked up at one time or another, and dragged in here like you. I never wanted to be here, but you don’t see me sniveling on the floor crying about it.”

“How can you be so accepting of it all?” I asked mystified.

Savannah shrugged again, looking at the clock.

“It won’t make sense to you.”

“Try me.”

“Have you ever felt like you were supposed to be somewhere? I don’t remember much of my life before I was brought here, but it wasn’t that great. Most of the people here never belonged out there, in that world. At least here Master Adam gives us a purpose.”

“But what about your family?” I protested, my heart squeezing at the thought of my own family, back at home, probably worried sick.

Savannah laughed, the last possible response I would have expected.

“He really hasn’t told you anything has he. Our families don’t miss us.”

“What do you mean?” How could their families not miss them? Of course they did.

She looked at me a little sadly, like she hated to be the one to tell me what everyone else already seemed to know.

“Because they don’t remember us anymore, once we end up here, our families completely forget about us, like we never existed.”

{End: Chapter Seven}