Sample Sunday ~ Spellbound by Fire excerpt ~ Chapter 3

Spellbound by Fire, chapter 3 excerpt

Janey closed her eyes and shook her head. She had gotten little, if any sleep, lying awake with fright tingeing her like purple ink creeping into dusky skies, her thoughts racing from wistfully recurrent visions of her nightmare to the worry about what Azrael would do next. But Janey kept her head up stubbornly and wandered into town as if it were any regular day, knowing vicious words would stir as soon as she was seen.

She's a tramp, lets men walk all over her, then plays the victim. Her aunt is a crazy old witch, who knows what that girl has been taught; probably to hate all men and make them out to be arrogant woman haters. They're both nutty.

Janey had spent her lifetime hearing the harsh rumours about her and Olivia. There once was a time when she would take them seriously though as she had gotten older she could only marvel at the stupidity.

"Sometimes it's just easier to let go and move on," Olivia would tell her sometimes, "people only criticize what they don't know, and that's where they get off thinking it's OK to hurt someone else. To them, the pain they don't see doesn't exist. It is false and it is living a lie, but it's a lie they seem content with. Just remember, they're ones missing out on the wonderful person you are, not them. They'll believe what they want to believe."

Janey waved a hand in front of her face as dust clouds billowed up around her. She kept to herself as she wandered by run-down shops with their dusty, old windows. Janey recognized most of the grinning owners who waved from the windows and doors. The faces she saw were ones she had known for her whole life. Some she liked to see and others she avoided. Signs creaked like wavering shadows eclipsing the masked sun above her. Tia Justace was a small town, the people struggling through hard times, scrounging for money and surviving simply on basics. Some families were better off than others and some simply acted like it. It could be a desolate place to live, yet Olivia would always be quick to remind Janey just how badly the Black Guards infested other areas of Nevermore. They were lucky so far that the witch hunts in these parts were fairly mild though Janey knew that could change at any moment. That's what scared her the most.

Gregory Wolfram, Azrael's father, made his living off witch hunting as the prime Black Guard figure in the area. The Black Guards were the witch hunters haunting Nevermore; a political group that had started up years ago in vengeance against witches, though through the years that had progressed to discrimination against women in general. Janey didn't know much about them politically; just as the domineering threat they were, like the black cloaked figures in her nightmare, their evil cackles and grotesque faces. They were terrors, and all Janey could do was hope she would never be one to discover just how horrifying they really were.

She was lost in her thoughts as she walked down the street alone when someone suddenly yanked her by the arm and threw her to the hard ground.

Janey fell to the dust, coughing as dirt filled her chest. "What the…" she glanced up and her heart began beating frantically to see Azrael standing over her.

His dark eyes were flashing with that dominating anger she had seen many times before when she had done something wrong by his measure. Her stomach was in fanatical butterflies as she scrambled to her feet.

But she wouldn't let it show, not to him. "What in the world do you want, Azrael?" She wiped the dirt from her dress with her hands.

His face was red as the crimson sun in the sinking dusk skies, his hair in its wavy perfections atop his head. Janey felt that old anger rise to her trembling breath.

"How dare you humiliate me the way you did last night! That was completely uncalled for!" he said.

Janey felt that old wound struck, like another knife straight through where he had struck it so many times before. "What?" She was outraged. She almost couldn't believe what he had just said, though she knew she shouldn't have been surprised.

Azrael clenched his hands inconspicuously at his sides. "You know what I mean, Janey. You had no right to do what you did last night. Poor Nadine was in tears after you left."

"Excuse me? Uncalled for? What was cheating on me? What was beating me? What was everything you ever did to me in the last six months? None of that was bloody well uncalled for? You're just a stupid bastard who thinks he by his stupid self can control whatever he wants! And of course, Nadine gets what she wants again. How long will it be until she discovers the monster you really are?" It didn't take Janey long to explode into rage anymore. She could feel the people stopping to stare, whispers hushed as the breeze blew around them. For a moment, it was the only sound as she stared him down darkly with all the rage of a catastrophic sky grumbling and ecstatically crackling.

Azrael said not another word but brutally backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the dirt like a helpless ragdoll. "You little bitch. Don't think a woman can ever out-show a man. We control your life, remember that; trampy lowlife witch. You all deserve to be burned alive, you and that crazy aunt of yours."

She could hear the hiding voices around her and Azrael of those who stopped to watch the conflict as she stayed down on the ground for a moment, collecting herself and holding her breath. She looked up to Azrael, seething in anger. Slowly, Janey stood up to face him again. He wasn't going to keep her down.

"Yeah, and you're the useless rich boy who thinks he's all that. Why, you'll be the same useless kind of parent your father was. Your dad kills women for a living." she wasn't letting him get the best of her. He had done it too many times before. Azrael smiled that disgusting smile, slowly spreading across his face in the traces of the witch hunters from her nightmare.

"Just remember what my father can do to you and your precious Aunt Olivia, you have no control over that. You never will. You women are just our tools to use as we wish."

"Oh, did Daddy teach you that? You take well after him. No wonder your Mommy ran away, she couldn't stand you." She could tell by the brief flickering in his eyes that she had struck a deep chord.

He stepped closer to her but Janey refused to back away, even if every terrified shaking nerve in her body wanted to run. She stood until he was face to face with her.

He looked deep into her mind. "You remember those words. They'll come back on you, I can guarantee that." His breath passed scathingly over her face.

"Great. You run to Daddy, like you always do. Bloody stupid coward, you'll beat me behind closed doors but can't admit to a damn thing in public." She was glad everyone around them could hear this, much as she had been the previous night.

Without another word, Azrael spun and stormed away down the street. Reeling dizzily from her anger, Janey put a hand to her cheek. It was in some pain from that blow from Azrael.

Stupid boy, I wish he'd burn alive, she thought spitefully, blood running cold in her veins. Tears slowly filled her eyes as she broke from the watching crowd. He had humiliated her once again and no matter how she tried to make a stand it seemed he would always win. Her pain was at the breaking point, fed up with not being able to trust her own intuition anymore for all the ruthless mind games he liked to play on her.

"It's your fault, you're the one who deserves this beating…you've done wrong by me again, you know I control you. You're just a useless excuse of a woman; you'll never be anything more than your aunt- a stupid slut."

This is my mistake, my stupidity…maybe I never will be nothing more…

She walked alone until she found herself down where the ocean crashed peacefully upon the golden shores, blue green glittering just as colourful as her eyes. She slowly let go of the breath weighing heavy on her chest, the anger still wrapping itself tightly around her heart. She finally collapsed to her knees in the sand, her fingers just in reach of the waves trickling up to her in soothing breaths and hisses, delicate heaves of the weight of a world that was becoming too much to bear.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this…she let her head lean back slightly, taking in the oceanic breeze across her bruised skin, and for a moment…just for a moment…it went away.

***

Janey wandered with oceanic echoes breezily diminishing the grumblings of infuriation brewing within her. Barefooted and her shoes in hand, her footprints were washed away gently in the rushing waves crawling upon the shore. Sauntering beyond the giant rocks she was alone and for just the meanwhile rumours were only words floating off somewhere in town, the stupidity was for a split second mere stupidity and nothing more.

As the sun came close to standing still in the middle of the cloudless sky, Janey began wandering until she could see that dreadful little town, one more thing that never seemed to change. She sighed, as across the distant beach she spotted someone walking towards her. Her heart paused in its beating, her first thoughts of Azrael and the dangerous potential of finding herself alone with him. She released a breath when she recognized Billy, unsure of why she was relieved to see him.

Biting her lip as he approached, she couldn't think of a thing to say. Janey could tell by those eyes that he knew already about the day's earlier incident.

Billy was concerned. "You OK, lass?"

Janey stared at the sand beneath her feet. "I guess I suppose you heard about my little episode with Azrael?"

"Yeah, I did, shortly after it happened. That's why I figured I'd find you down here. Your favourite place."

Janey couldn't help but to smile a little. "Well, you were right. It's nice being the only one down here." The moments on the beach made her calmer than she had been in days. It didn't even bother her that Billy was standing beside her. She would have much preferred his company over Azrael's.

"I can imagine. Damn it, I get two days back into town and everything blows up. It was a shocker enough that Mike and Anita split up, let alone you having problems with Azrael. He always seemed like the last kind of guy you'd want to date." Billy shook his head.

"Well, after you ran off with that tramp…I didn't know what to do. Started with just fooling around with him, guess I let it get more serious than I should have. When I tried to break it off he reminded me who his father is. I became something merely for Azrael to use. He didn't really let up until Nadine came back to town without you, said she was visiting family but she stayed. Heard what she said about you being abusive, that was why she supposedly left you. Never sounded right, you're a better man than that. I should have known she was only after Azrael. No one knew she was pregnant until about two months after she started dating him."

"I'm sorry, Jane. I had no idea what was happening here. I was off working when Nadine was making her trips back here to supposedly see her family. Stupid of me not to think she wouldn't be seeing Azrael. I had no idea you were seeing him until last night. Anita filled me in on every detail. I don't know, Jane. They got the best of both of us."

Janey could see the sorrow in his eyes, a broken marriage was just one more hurt in his life. Billy was six years older than her and even at 26 years old he had endured many pains in his life. His father had run out on the family when Billy was three, leaving his mother, Milene, stranded. From what Janey knew Milene met another man a few years later named Gary McGee. She soon found her and her son in a dangerous situation afterGarybecame extremely abusive. Janey herself vaguely remembered stories, the ones that somehow stayed within the confines of her memory…

He beat her again last night, look at the bruises on her arms she's trying to hide…what her son must be learning from that man. Some women just play victims their whole lives, too bad it'll be her boy who pays the price for her mistake…if he's like any other kid he'll grow up to be the same as his father figure…you know she slits her own wrists? Look at those scars, they must be self inflicted. She's falling faster than she can be saved…some mother…if she were a more decent parent she'd get out of there…

Then there was the day tragedy struck. Milene was found dead in her home, Gary had fled and Billy was nowhere to be found. As Milene's best friend, Olivia was devastated; tears streaming down her face in both sorrow and anguish at this man who thought it OK to take a life that mattered to someone. Olivia had fallen to her knees in a weakening grief as across the street in Witch Elm Village, Milene's blood covered and beaten body was removed from the house. Her soft brown hair was a mess atop her head, her usually pretty face unrecognizable beneath the bruises and marks. Her wrists had open slices bleeding profusely onto the dirt below her limp body as she was carried.

"You know who did this! You know who did this! You'd better find the bastard!" Olivia shouted after the men who had gone to the house. One of them just shook his head.

"We don't know where he is, unless we find him there's nothing more we can do. I'm sorry."

"Oh sure you are! You don't know where this man is and you're not even going to look are you? You don't care! That woman has a little boy somewhere out there and I'll bet my last damn silver coin you'll do nothing to find him either! You're not even going to look because they don't matter to you." Olivia yelled down the street after them, crying outwardly and frantically. It must have been like chasing sanity down one more time in a life that seemed like a never ending tragedy.

"By the looks of it, ma'am, it was a suicide. As for her little boy, we have to have a clue where he is before we can go looking for him. There is no trace of him."

"It was not a suicide! I know Milene, she'd never kill herself, Billy meant too much to her! You were all the fools who wouldn't help her. She's dead because no one else would help her!" Olivia continued to scream at the men as the surrounding neighbours watched wordlessly, knowing that Milene had meant everything to that little boy that had vanished into nowhere, who would be alone from then on…

Billy didn't show up in Tia Justace again until he was a hard-hearted and troubled 18-year old. This Janey remembered. He would say nothing to Olivia of his experiences after Milene's death, telling her simply thatGaryhad killed his mother. It's all he had ever said to anyone. He spent only a brief time in Tia Justace that day. Olivia had toldNancyabout Billy reappearing in town.

"I found him at Milene's grave, the poor boy. He wouldn't say anything about what he had been through, Nancy, but damn…I don't even want to think about the horrors he's seen. I've seen what they do to those young boys in the prison…" Olivia had said, shaking her head in disbelief.

Billy let his life spiral more out of control as he began running with pirates after that. He would drift in and out of town, staying briefly to catch up with Mike, as they were best friends, and be gone again. The longest he stuck around was when he and Janey had started dating. For that year he stayed, until everything unravelled around his affair with Nadine. It was always like him to take off when things went wrong.

Yet Janey stood before him, a year and a half later, when his marriage to Nadine had fallen apart and Janey had just slipped out of an abusive relationship with Azrael. They found themselves in similar positions, with life once again rearranging itself into disassembled pieces all around them.

"Yeah, they sure did." Janey said. "They made us look like idiots."

"Definitely." Billy bit his lip as if he didn't know what to say.

They stood in silence for a few moments while only the ocean had breaths of anything to say at all.

Billy still let his glances sneak over to Janey as she stared out across the waters, gloomily as the shifting colours merging and drifting. Everything just seemed to crash through in one sudden moment, the break up, the witch hunter threat, and the fight with her best friend. She could let the rumours fly back in the town but didn't ease the real complications any less. They still didn't go away. Janey knew they would keep coming back just as predictably as the moon sauntered out into his dark domain every night, just as he would fade and let the sun peek over the horizon every morning. Janey shook her head.

"Aw, Janey," Billy said, letting it fall gently on his lips and into the air. It sounded so sweet.

Janey restrained a smile smile. "Yeah?"

"I hate seeing you this way," Billy said with his arms crossed and a pondering expression on his face.

Janey shrugged. "I'll be OK, I guess." Her sadness and anger sat upon her chest like a heavy weight unreleased. There wasn't a lot holding it back.

"Janey," Billy said her name again.

She wished silently that he would stop saying it like that. He held out an arm for her in a welcoming embrace. In a moment of weakness Janey let him put his arms around her, finding herself against his warm chest, her arms around his neck and open tears on her face. His shirt smelled sweetly familiar with salt water and sweat. At that moment, he was like that safe place when no other was there.

His breath blew softly across her hair. "I'm here if you need me, OK? No matter what happens, love. I'm here."

Copyright 2011 Lavinia Thompson

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