Chapter 10
They must be somewhere farther north because there was very little sign of the desert of southern California. Any dry, desert brush had been replaced with trees and things far too green to exist in the heat and sweltering dryness of the desert. There was a coolness here unlike the nights spent at school. She realized she must be very far from home. Especially when she looked up and saw the plethora of stars in the sky.
There were points of light in every direction and some even formed together to create what seemed to be rivers in the darkness above. They were light, frothing places that had mists of stars and galaxies and all sorts of other things. Even if she was far from home and a little too scared out of her mind, this was gorgeous and beautiful and more than a little bit worth the stress and struggles that had brought her there.
The trees themselves seemed to whisper in the breeze all around her and the sounds of nighttime life hiding in the forest was a calm call. None of it was familiar like the things in her dorm or even that cell she’d called home over the past few weeks. But the newness here didn’t bother her. In fact, it excited her. She wanted to see more of this world, as if being kept in the dark for so long now had made her crave things that got to touch the light without condition. No one would ever imprison a tree.
She walked a bit through the forested area, touching the bark and wondering why she’d never bothered to travel this far before. Who would have thought that all it would take was a chance encounter with the wrong people and a little bit of wrongful imprisonment would lead to some self-realizations?
It was around the time that she was thinking she really needed to find out if anyone had a cell phone she could use to call her mother that a sound in the woods, distinctly not part of the quiet and calm sounds of the night, caught her attention.
It was the snap of a twig, the cliché sounds from slasher movies and thrillers that alerted someone that something was wrong. She paused. She stiffened like the proverbial deer caught in headlights. She didn’t dare even turn to look in the direction of the sound for fear of what it would mean. She kept still for follow up sounds, waiting to hear if anything even more threatening would follow.
So perhaps a nighttime hike in woods that she had never been to before wasn’t exactly the smartest choice she ever made. But she could get herself out of this situation. This wasn’t like the jail cell and waiting for help to break her out. She could actually do something about this. She was in a bit more control of her surroundings than she was before. She could do something with this.
More sounds. She strained her eyes in the darkness to try to see who or what her intruder was. She had no idea if they’d been followed out of the base because Lana had failed to give her any details and kept her completely in the dark, literally, the entire time afterwards.
And then more sounds. They were getting faster, closer together, louder. Someone ran towards her. She turned into the direction that the sounds came from, fists clenching at her side, ready to take on whatever it was.
It was something very, very familiar. It was Erik.
He slammed into her at full force, knocking her over because she still managed to keep herself as incredibly still as possible. Her legs seemed ramrod straight and her feet cemented into the ground. Until he hit her hard and knocked her to the ground with such force she felt all the air push out of her lungs. The empty vacuum left behind was uncomfortable. Then her still throbbing head smacked into the ground, rattling the teeth in her mouth.
She tasted blood. She’d bitten her cheek. She groaned.
“Alessia?” Erik coughed out. “Holy shit. They fucking—are you okay? What happened?”
“Take a breath,” Alessia said with a struggle, laughing internally at the obvious irony of that as she, herself, struggled to get a breath out without wheezing and pain. “Just, calm down for a second.”
“Did they fly you here too?”
“Fly?”
“Do you even know where the hell we are?”
Well, at least she wasn’t the most uninformed person anymore. Erik seemed wild eyed and terrified as he turned around violently and quickly, trying to find some grounding around him. Alessia kept her hands on him, trying to anchor him to something before his brain exploded or he took off in another dead sprint.
“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “But Lana is with me. Is anyone else with you?”
“Drake—he—holy crap.”
“What?” She was suddenly very worried. Was he alive? Was he hurt? Was he somewhere far away?
“Big, dragon,” Erik managed to huff out, still trying to regain his breath. “We—fuck.”
Alessia put both her hands on Erik’s shoulders and squeezed until it probably hurt but she didn’t care. She needed him to concentrate. She squeezed until he looked her in the eyes and nodded, taking a breath and slowly blinking. She felt some of the tension inside him release but she didn’t loosen her grip.
“We ran into some trouble on the way out,” Erik said. “I don’t know who is who but at least one of Lana’s guys was a double agent or some Benedict Arnold crap because he totally turned on us as soon as we got outside.”
Alessia swallowed thickly and nodded. She wondered if Lana knew. Maybe that slight complication was the reason she very nearly left Alessia behind.
“Drake got the brunt of it—”
“Brunt of what?”
He looked grim. Alessia felt her insides clench. She nodded but felt the color drain right out of her. That was enough for now and she pulled Erik along back towards the camp. Lana was still there, glaring into the fire and looked up with mild interest to see Alessia toting a shaking, worried version of Erik.
“Well, there’s one,” she said lazily and sat back to stare at the fire while tossing an acorn into it and waiting to hear it pop as it heated up and then exploded from the force.
Alessia glared as she set Erik down in a seat by the fire and moved to stand over Lana who lazily blinked and looked up at her with a smirk and mild interest.
“One of your goons betrayed us,” Alessia said.
“First of all, there is no ‘us,’” Lana said, sitting up and resting her elbows on her knees. “You’re here as a guest, not part of the crew. Second of all, I don’t have goons. I have friends. And some just happen to be less loyal than others.”
“So you knew,” Alessia said, crossing her arms.
“By the time I figured it out, there wasn’t much I could do about it, could I?” Lana shrugged. “I was in the same boat as everyone else but please, by all means, keep judging me, lady.”
Alessia shook her head and walked away. She spent the rest of the night glaring into the dark and huffing loud enough to get Lana to roll her eyes when she heard it.