Where Loyalty Lies Read online

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  “Faine.”

  At the sound of my name I looked up. Simon Clark was sitting next to me on the front steps of one of the neighbour’s houses. It was where I’d collapsed when I’d finally got Mary into the safety of the neighbour’s house. After that I must have gone into shock because I had no recollection of what had happened between then and now. I hadn’t even seen Simon arrive. He was a police officer, well known in this town for his handsome young face and his fair attitude. He was giving me a patient look and I got the impression he’d been calling my name for some time. I blinked a few times and tried to focus my attention on him.

  “Faine, can you hear me?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  I thought I would burst into tears but there was nothing, just enveloping numbness that made me feel heavy. I fidgeted just to see if I was able to control my body and found that, at some point, someone had draped a blanket over me.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Simon said again.

  “Yes.” My voice sounded croaky and my throat felt raw after so much screaming, but the seriousness of the situation came back to me and I cleared my throat and tried again. “He tried to kill us.”

  Simon looked confused. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. He was there in her room and he tried to kill us...” I trailed off, aware that I was repeating myself. Get a grip Faine. “I heard a noise and, when I went to see if Mary was okay, there was a man there. I tried to stop him and he chased me and then he tried to kill me but someone else came and stopped him.”

  Simon frowned and cast a look around; there was nobody close to us but he lowered his voice anyway. “Are you sure that’s what happened, Faine? How did the fire start?”

  I stared at him for a long time. “Fire? What fire?”

  “The house was on fire. It was put out before it could spread, so it’s just the kitchen that’s been really damaged. There aren’t any bodies there.” He cast another look around and then spoke in a whisper. “Mary’s ranting about you being the devil and the blood on her fingernails looks pretty consistent with the scratches on your face.”

  I raised a hand and felt a series of scratches down one side of my face. Realisation dawned on me and I knew what people were thinking. Simon tried a few more times to ask me questions but I shut down and, after a time, he seemed to realise it. I watched as he walked over to a small group of policemen. He didn’t tell them my story, just that I was in shock and needed time to calm down. I couldn’t blame him, after all who would believe my story? I’d even left out the crazy part about the fangs and the black eyes and he still didn’t believe me.

  One of the policemen had left the flashing lights on his patrol car on, and the blue lights seemed to have drawn everyone in the street out of their homes.

  My attention was drawn to a group of gossiping women, all huddled together. I focused on them to find out how much they knew.

  “I heard Mary found her trying to burn all the Bibles and the fire got out of control,” one woman said.

  I scoffed. They lived for gossip and that was the best they could come up with? A Bible-burning sinner? But then another woman spoke and it made me freeze.

  “No, I heard she flipped out and tried to burn the house down while Mary was sleeping. That’s how she got the scratches; she was trying to stop Mary from escaping.”

  That was met with gasps and a few of them turned to look at me. I stared at the ground.

  Of course. Murder was much more interesting than an accident and who better to blame than the slightly odd girl who’d been left on Mary’s doorstep as a baby? The girl who, despite having lived here for all of her eighteen years and despite her attempts to keep her head down, never did quite fit in.

  I’d have dismissed it as the poisonous gossip it was, but I noticed that the police officers were all giving me similar looks. I tuned into their conversation and, to my disgust, found that it was along similar lines. They wanted to take me in for questioning. Only Simon didn’t join in with them. He was giving me an odd look and I realised that he knew I could hear them, despite the fact that they were fifty feet away.

  I stared back at the ground beneath my feet. I had no idea what Mary would say but I knew that, whatever she did say, it wasn’t going to offer me any hope. She’d seen those men, she’d seen that they had the same strange abilities as me, she’d heard what they’d said I was. Did she believe them? Did I believe them?

  Questions buzzed around my head. There was nobody I could talk to, nobody I could ask for help. I was on my own with nobody to stand up for me. My nightgown was covered in blood, some of it was from my own cuts but I knew that some of it would be that evil man’s. If the police sent it off to be tested, it would come back and prove me right and Mary wrong. But what was the point? I could give them the gown now and prove that someone else had been there, but I was certain that Mary wouldn’t be coming anywhere near me from now on, and definitely wouldn’t be allowing me to live with her again. In a village the size of this one, everyone would have heard the gossip within the next day or two, so there was no chance of anyone else letting me stay with them. And, even if I did stay until the test results came back, people would still choose to hate me.

  There was nothing here for me anymore. No, that wasn’t true. There was a man here who’d tried to kill me. I didn’t know what had happened to him. Had he escaped or had he died? There was also the one who’d saved my life. In any other situation, I’d have thought he was my hero but the truth was that he was just as scary as the first guy. I had no idea why either of them had come here and I had no idea if they’d come back, but I wasn’t going to find out.

  It was time for me to disappear.

  Three Years Later

  Chapter 1

  I woke with a start, just like I always did when I overslept. I jumped out of bed scowling at my alarm clock for not having woken me up but, if I was honest, I did have a hazy memory of it going off at six and me beating it into silence.

  The fact that I only ever wore jeans and tops made it easy for me to conjure up an outfit without too much fumbling. Then, in a fantastic show of multi-tasking, I brushed my teeth, pinned back my hair, applied minimal make-up and located both of my black boots which had somehow ended up on opposite sides of the room.

  Eight minutes after my eyes had opened, I was out of my front door and pretty pleased with myself; I’d shaved a whole minute off my best time.

  The weather was gloomy and threatening rain. It was the sort of weather that most people hated but I always found it promising. There was nothing better than a full-on thunder storm. Dark grey clouds filling up the sky was a sure sign that one was coming.

  If I ran to work at full speed I’d get there twice as fast but it would attract too much attention, so instead I set off at a casual half-jog, half-run. I arrived only slightly out of breath and fifteen minutes late. Through the glass window at the front of the café, I could see Lisa behind the counter taking orders from the customers who wanted their fry-ups before starting their working days.

  Lisa looked exactly like a cafe manager should look; slightly too large to be called “curvy” and with a worn-down attitude that made her civil but not overly friendly. Her mousy brown hair was, as always, pulled back in a ponytail and, despite it being only quarter past seven in the morning, her white apron already had black smudges on it.

  A frown and slight puckering of her lips was the only acknowledgement she gave of my lateness. I put on my own white apron and set about filling plates and delivering them to tables. The smells of sausage, eggs and bacon filled my nose and made my stomach lurch. Any other time of day, I’d be longing to join the customers and dig in, but I could never eat before nine.

  For a couple of hours we were rushed off our feet until ten when we slowed to a steady trickle that would take us up to lunch when we’d be busy again.

  When I had time between cooking food, serving c
ustomers, washing up and wiping tables, I found other duties to fill my time, hoping that doing jobs that weren’t technically mine would make up for my being late. Again.

  That was the trouble with doing two jobs; I was always so tired that I was constantly running late. I worked at the cafe from seven until three and then I went home and crashed for a couple of hours so that I could go to my second job at a pub from six until midnight. Both jobs paid the minimum wage so it would have made more sense for me to find a normal nine-to-five job with decent pay, but it was impossible to get one of those that paid cash-in-hand and didn’t need a contract.

  Just before lunch I ran out of things to do and I leant up against the counter, trying to rest my feet before the rush.

  “You’ll do yourself in, if you keep burning the candle at both ends,” Lisa said from where she was perched on a stool behind the till. She gave me a studying look from over the top of her romance novel.

  I smiled. I never told Lisa that the reason I was always so knackered was because I had two jobs. For some reason, I thought she would be less tolerant of my lateness if she knew it was because I was working elsewhere rather than going out partying like twenty-one year-olds were supposed to do.

  “If I don’t do it now, I never will,” I said. Lisa gave a non-committal shrug and went back to her steamy fantasy.

  “Another stable boy?” I asked, studying the shirtless blonde guy straddling a bale of straw on the front cover of Lisa’s book. The look on his face said, “Sitting in this position shows off all my muscles and don’t I just know it”.

  “Actually he’s the only son of the wealthy Baron Von Smythe in South Carolina and he’s fallen in love with the eldest daughter of one of the local fishermen who’s struggling to feed his family because the Baron’s shipping business is over-running the dockyard.”

  I looked at the girl on the front cover and snorted, “Well, that explains why she can only afford to cover herself with a scrap of cloth.”

  Lisa studied the cover for a few seconds before shrugging again. “If I had a body like that, then I’d be tempted to only wear a scrap of cloth myself.”

  An image of an almost naked Lisa, draped over the lap of the wealthy Baron Boy, threatened to invade my mind and I quickly changed the topic before I couldn’t look her in the eyes without blushing.

  “I don’t know why you read that crap. I mean, surely it gets boring reading what’s essentially just the same plot-line over and over again, just with different people? Boy meets girl from a different class, they fall in love despite knowing that it’s against society’s rules and then, when said society does find out and do what they can to tear the couple apart, it just pushes the couple closer together because they know that, as long as they have each other, that’s all they need in life.”

  “They aren’t all like that,” Lisa insisted. “Besides, the characters are good.”

  “Oh please, I bet the males are all strong, tough guys on the outside but, around the love of their life, they open up and share all their thoughts and feelings. And I bet the females are all doe-eyed and innocent and just idolise the man that they love.”

  “Actually, that’s not true; Savannah just told her father that she doesn’t care about his demands and that she’ll live her life how she wants to, with or without his blessing,” Lisa stated, a slight huffiness to her tone.

  I couldn’t help but let out a sarcastic chuckle. “Yeah, I bet Savannah’s gonna be a real hell-raiser.”

  A sharp look from Lisa told me that I was very close to crossing the line from friendly banter into insulting my boss.

  “Ah look, that table needs clearing,” I said, hurrying away before Lisa remembered that the back-up grill could use a good clean.

  As I cleared the plates and wiped down the table, I contemplated for the millionth time why Lisa’s reading choices always seemed to irritate me so much. I liked to tell myself that it was because the books promoted such stereotypical characters, that in a modern society like ours we should want more open-mindedness. But, if I was honest, it was because I always felt like any book or film that contained that image of true, perfect love was a real “up yours” at me. They basically pointed out that two people from almost any background could fall in love, conquer all obstacles and spend their lives together. I didn’t care that they were fictional; I hated it being made to sound so simple when I could never get it right.

  I knew the reason Lisa read those books was because she liked to dream that, one day, one of the guys from one of those books would march in here, sweep her off her feet and take her somewhere where she’d never have to see a fried egg again. Lisa’s dream was for a guy to fall madly in love with her and spend his life doting on her. My problem was the opposite. Men were crazy about me – crazy being a very appropriate word.

  About a month after my fifteenth birthday, I started to notice that men looked at me differently. It was like some invisible switch inside me had flipped and suddenly I went from being a completely average teenager to someone that boys and men of all ages started noticing when I walked into a room. Most guys just looked, but others seemed compelled to come and talk to me. To the devastation of all the popular girls at school, half the boys in our school year asked me to the end of school party, which ironically scared me enough to put me off going altogether. As much as becoming a guy-magnet overnight sounds like a great thing to happen, all it did for me was to send me into a spiral of paranoia. I was sensible enough to know that there was something very unnatural about the sudden and drastic change. It scared the hell out of me and I retreated even further into the protective shell I’d created for myself.

  Unfortunately it only got worse as I got older. Being a young teenager had been enough to keep most men at bay but the older I got, the less qualms men seemed to have about hitting on me, even if they were three times my age. It made living a normal life impossible. There was no point in me making friends because they just grew to hate me when they caught their boyfriends or dads looking at me. I couldn’t have a relationship because even if, on paper, the guy seemed perfect for me I just couldn’t get past that fact that his attraction for me didn’t seem genuine. I could never shake the feeling that they seemed almost brainwashed into liking me. On the few occasions when I'd thrown caution to the wind and decided to just try and have a normal relationship, things got sour pretty quickly. The more time I spent with a guy the more his interest would grow until it became obsession. Every boyfriend I’d had had gotten insanely jealous any time I was out of sight, even if I was just doing something like laundry. The arguments were horrendous and when it came to the point where I couldn’t bare it anymore and I would end it, things just got worse. One ex had stalked me so relentlessly that I’d had to up and move just to get away from him and another had actually threatened to shoot me. So after three attempts that had all gone so horrifically wrong, I'd decided that I'd rather spend my life alone than watch whatever messed up mojo I had in me turn another genuinely nice guy into a shadow of himself. I was so caught up in my mental tirade that, when Nicola turned up to take my place, I could hardly believe it was three already.

  Chapter 2

  The rain storm still hadn’t arrived so, on the way home, I decided to make a detour to the local shop to pick up some groceries, but after getting stuck behind the same woman and her screaming children down three aisles I gave up and bought what was in my half-filled basket. Experience had taught me that I could easily live off cereal, yoghurts, bread, Doritos and bananas until I could next be bothered to come back.

  A couple of minutes away from the door to my apartment building, the rain started to fall. It was sudden and heavy, falling in big fat droplets that splashed dramatically as they landed. I didn’t hurry and openly laughed at the chaos it seemed to cause other people walking in the street. Umbrellas went up and people who had forgotten their umbrellas used briefcases, handbags and shopping bags to shield themselves as they dashed for cover. Anyone would have thought it was acid rat
her than rain.

  I was drenched by the time I reached my building but I’d stopped dripping by the time I’d climbed the ten flights of stairs to my floor. Holding my shopping bag in one hand, I used the other to rummage in my handbag to find my door keys, but as I reached my front door I found they weren’t needed.

  My front door was open – not wide open, just an inch so that I could see the tatty cream wallpaper of the hallway. I sighed in annoyance as I pushed my way through the door, kicking it shut behind me a little harder than was necessary. Ben was here again.

  Ben was the fifteen year-old son of the lady a few doors down. Over the past four months he’d broken into my apartment five times. The first time, he’d stolen a wad of cash that I’d left on the side. It had been a whole week’s wages from Lisa. After that, I’d made sure that all my money was safely hidden. I hadn’t known it was him at first but, the second time he broke in, I’d returned just as he was coming out of my front door. I’d dragged him down the hall and banged on his door until his mother answered. It had done me no good, though, because after telling her what I’d just caught him doing and what I suspected he’d stolen from me previously, I’d got a reply of, “Well, what do you want me to do about it?” When I’d recovered from my speechlessness, I’d told her that I expected her to control her child or I’d call the police. A spanner was thrown in my threat when she’d told me to go ahead. Ben had smirked at me when I’d given him a severe threat about what exactly I’d do to him if he ever set foot in my place again. I’d never phone the police and somehow the little bugger knew it.

  I’d worked very hard not to put roots down. I didn’t have any documentation in my name. No driving licence, no passport, no bank account and no wage slips. Even my rent was kept off the record, cash-in-hand, something that my landlord was more than happy to do if I slipped him a little extra every month. I was untraceable and that’s how I wanted it to stay, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to have my name and address logged in a police computer system somewhere and ruin all my efforts just because of one idiot who had nothing better to do with his life than breaking and entering.