Excerpt Kawilara 1, chapter 4 #SampleSunday

Janey broke from the embrace she was sharing with Billy. “I should get going.”

“Janey…” Yearning lingered in Billy’s sweet voice.

She paused, looking back momentarily. The sun by then was just an orange silhouette eclipsing the foreign distance. Crossing her arms, she turned away, making her way up the beach and back towards Tia Justace. She always hated showing her vulnerability to anyone, especially to Billy. She didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. They had gone from passionate lovers to strangers and in that moment they were holding patches of the friendship with which they had started out. She could tell herself he only meant the best by being there but it didn’t change how much she didn’t want to trust anyone. She could tell herself he had changed; that maybe they both had changed and maybe it could have been true. She just couldn’t convince herself of it.

Wandering alone, she left behind the ocean, whispering like a spirit calling her back, though she didn’t even look over her shoulder. She knew that all she would see was Billy standing there questioningly, watching her walk away, and it was a sight that could be hard to take. She sauntered home, the dismal sensation of being lost weighing down like a vague morning mist in its heavy bearing.

As she came into Witch Elm Village, however, her heart began racing wildly, her breaths becoming shorter as she saw black robed men scurrying along the street. As she came closer, she painstakingly realized they were in front of her and Olivia’s house.

A horse drawn wagon was surrounded by men, their black cloaks rippling on the breeze, their faces cold and expressionless. She spotted Olivia standing outside, whose hazel eyes went wide when she saw Janey, and she hurried over.

“Auntie ‘Liv, what’s happening?”

Olivia grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. “Your damn ex, honey. He’s really done it this time.” She was holding her breath.

Janey could see the fear and uncertainty in her aunt’s eyes. She didn’t know what to say. Two houses down, she could see more men at the Greitzers’ house. Orson and Nancy stood outside talking to them. Nancy seemed hysterical, arms flailing in the air before she fell into her husband’s arms. Orson held her before the men pulled Nancy away from him as she screamed and cried.

Orson was holding onto her so tightly that the witch hunters had difficultly grappling her away from his arms. “You bastards can’t do this! Leave my wife alone!” He followed them as they dragged Nancy away. The desperation in her eyes pleaded with her husband to save her. “I told you guys, leave her alone! Nancy has done nothing!”

One of the witch hunters turned around and drew his sword. It let out a chilling ring as he unsheathed it.

Thrusting the shining blade of his sword against the skin on Orson’s neck, the witch hunter asserted his royally ordained authority. “You don’t have a say in the matter, old man. Your wife is a criminal. The bitch is coming with us. Say another word I slash your throat and she gets to watch you die right here.”

Nancy was pulled over to the wagon; her hands bound and threw her in the back. Orson could only stand there helplessly, the same lost look in his eyes as Mike had, a devoted husband powerless to get his wife and his love back from such horrors that were ahead of her. Orson was stuck between a sword at his neck and dying to save his wife, which would have meant leaving his kids and grandsons on their own.

Forcing her eyes away from the scene, Janey’s heart stopped, seeing the eldest of the men, grey hair and his dark eyes the coldest of anyone else’s. She recognized him, though she had only met him once.

Azrael’s father….oh, no, what have I done to us? Janey thought to herself as he began striding towards her and Olivia.

Instantly, she scowled menacingly as he stopped before them, traces of a grin slipping into his face. “You’re the no good tramp who humiliated my son, aren’t you?” His actions made it easy to see where Azrael got it.

Janey crossed her arms stubbornly and faced him down in shadowy blusters of glares.

She could feel Olivia’s eyes on her intently, pleading her not to say something stupid. “Humiliated? Like he had any right to do to me what he did!” She heard Olivia sigh behind her.

Janey grimaced. She was so mad her words were no longer controlled.

“So you’re admitting it, then. I don’t stand for that, not from some lowlife witch and her useless aunt.”

Janey bit her tongue this time, her hands clenched angrily by her side.

“I’m not admitting to a damn thing, Wolfram. He messed me around. He’s not the good boy you think he is.”

Wolfram shook his head with a grin. “Take them both, men. We’ll question them later at Warbeck.”

Janey’s heart stopped and her breath slipped from her lungs. She looked back at Olivia in sheer fright. Her aunt sighed and simply stood there, her eyes half closed in dread. Azrael had really done it. Janey bit her tongue, refraining from her rage as two men bound her hands in rope and led her to the wagon, carelessly throwing her in. Olivia came in after, quietly cussing them. With them in the wagon was Nancy, a brown curly haired woman, heavier set and her dark eyes wild with fear.

Olivia glanced over to Nancy “Are you alright?” Her face and voice were hard to read.

Of the three women, Olivia was the only one who had ever been in the Warbeck prison. Only she knew the horrors awaiting them there.

Nancy was trembling, tears fresh down her pale face. “I-I-don’t know.”

They slit your wrists, beat you and rape you, again and again as they please…and if you don’t confess, the torture just gets worse…

Janey could only close her eyes, the words lost when she thought of what was before them, the terrifying ordeals she had only heard about in stories, the ones of which even her aunt wouldn’t speak all these years later.

Nancy interrupted her own sobs. “What…what are we going to do, Olivia? I have kids and a family to care for…I…” Her eyes were flickering with terror.

Janey could see her mind racing incoherently.

Olivia bit her lip before speaking again but Janey knew it was taking all her aunt had to hold herself together. “Listen to me, you two. We’re gonna get out of this. But you have to stick with me. Where we’re about to go, what we’re about to go through, it isn’t nice. They call it torture for a reason. I don’t know if I’ll make it through another bout with these guys, but I’ll damn well try.” The colour slowly drained from her cheeks, the most sickening, palest colour Janey had ever seen on a person.

“Auntie ‘Liv, I’m so sorry. I-” She shook her head with her whole body trembling uncontrollably.

Olivia looked over at her sadly. “It’s OK, Jane. Mistakes are mistakes, we all make them. Nobody told you about Azrael. I should have. I wasn’t thinking about the consequences if it got ugly. I sure didn’t expect you to. I’ll make sure you get out of this, baby girl, I promise. You’re the last one I’ll let them hurt. I can’t stop them completely, but I’ll do my best.”

Something told Janey her aunt already had something planned, but she couldn’t say what.

***

Each minute closer Janey was more sickened with tension and trepidation. The four men accompanying them on the few days’ travel to the prison were quiet for the most part, one of them occasionally making a wisecrack about women while drinking beer or whiskey. Apprehension sat tensely among the three women, silencing them for most of the trip.

Janey felt horror drench every bone in her body disgustingly blood-like as they approached their fateful destination. The stone-grey walls were like glowers of grave anger intensified by the very thought that there was no telling what was happening beyond there. Janey would sneak glances over to her aunt, whose eyes grew duller as they got closer and the terrors that waited for them, the oncoming madness of unheard screams like dark swirls of ominous clouds.

All of her mistakes sagged upon her chest as the wagon slipped through the forbidding iron gates, spine-chilling in their fearful domination reaching like demons towards the skies.

What destroyed one love destroyed the next too. Billy had been the best she ever had in spite of his flaws and recklessness. His drinking was a habit he wouldn’t break, no matter the nights on end she spent with him, talking him out of another suicidal episode. The scars on his arms were self-inflicted, Janey had watched him when he’d let that blade precariously slice his own skin, as if bleeding and feeling the pain made him somehow human again. She would take the knife from his hands and hold him when he cried, a wrecked soul for whom she felt such unrelenting love. He had needed her; that much she knew. She kept telling herself that he had loved her, even if Nadine and a bottle tore them apart. They had their times when it was just apparent, his beautiful smile that seemed to melt the rest of the world into another time and place. But through it all, Janey knew that as reckless and destructive he was to himself, he would never think about hurting her.

Then there was the day it all ended. She remembered watching Billy walk away after the big fight exploded in her house. He had told her that he had been cheating with Nadine, that he felt he loved her and wanted to be with her.

“It’s over, Jane, I’ve done enough,” he said. She never did understand what that was supposed to mean. She sat crying on the kitchen floor until Olivia got home from work. Her aunt held her as Janey told her what happened, all the time helplessly wondering, for all she had tried to do for him, was it pointless in the end? Had she just been his temporary one, to ward off his demons only for a while? Did she matter at all?

“Oh, girly, it’s alright,” Olivia had said softly, cradling Janey like a child in her arms, “some boys are like that, honey. He just left the best thing he had ever had, he’ll learn it the hard way; just you watch.”

She tried to drink it all from memory instead of watching, spiteful at Billy for throwing away everything they had. Somewhere between the bottle and a beautiful smile, was the one night stand with Azrael that she let progress into the cycle that let him use her, again and again. He’d beat her, rape her, and in the end she still had to do whatever he pleased for the lurking threat of worse damage he could have done. It was damage she couldn’t will away even if she wanted to, and it was with a slowly nearing madness she knew that she never would…

There were too many regrets haunting her as the men yanked her from the wagon and pushed her, Olivia and Nancy through the doors of the prison, relentless weights that crashed when she knew she had finally gone too far, the moment she realized she was in too deep to save herself.

The desolation behind the doors revealed the terrifying ruination of lives captured by the Black Guards. The unfeeling darkness within hid the beasts from the rest of the world, lying low in the shadowy depths while outside, life went on even as hers stood still. Janey caught a glimpse of a tapestry hanging beside them as they came in. It was an image of a witch burning at a stake, the orange and morbid crimson flames savagely consuming her body, just like in her nightmare. Only a Black Guard could have depicted this woman as emotionless, nothing in her face but grave death, as if she felt nothing being burned. Janey somehow knew it had been painted that way on purpose.

The pain was real, the torture truly barbaric, and women really were burned alive; not just stories…I guess I’m about to find out just how bad it really is…

Legend of Kawilara, Part 1: Fire is available on:

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Paperback on Amazon $15: http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Kawilara-Part-Fire-Volume/dp/1478195142/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1343585097&sr=8-2&keywords=Kawilara