Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 10, 2011 23:22:13 GMT -5
Chapter Twelve – Deadly Forest
with Elisa's Victim
Flashback
with Jonathan and Ariadne Rooks
Flashback
with Jonathan and Ariadne Rooks
6:30AM (9:30AM in Duxbury)
The forest was a beautiful place, but that wasn’t the reason Addison Rooks found herself there. When the news had first come that a small New England had been quarantined, Addison hadn’t thought much of it. Then, it had started to spread and people started to get scared. Before the first person died, Addison over heard her parents talking. Her mother might not have had any magical powers, but she knew magic. It was how she had met Addison’s father, a witch like his daughters.
Usually talk of magic was a rather uninteresting subject when the senior Rooks discussed it. That day, though, it had been anything but. Addison had been grabbing something out of the fridge when four words had reached her ears:
“I will die, Jonathan.”
Addison froze and looked in the direction of the den. The door was only cracked open a little, so she couldn’t see her parents inside.
“You don’t know that, Aria,” Jonathan Rooks protested.
Ariadne Rooks’ voice sounded of a mixture of sadness and amusement. “You are not even fooling yourself. This is magic bound. We all know that. And it is not harming the magical among us. You and the girls will be fine.”
“Not without you, we won’t,” Jonathan protested, again. “We need you, Aria.”
“If this does not stop,” she reminded him, “eventually it will take me, too.”
Addison had hated hearing those words. She’d gone back down the hall and up the stairs to her sister's room. That was when she’d started planning this little “vacation”. Arielle had been skeptical at first, but Addison couldn’t blame her. Addison often did things her little sister didn’t approve of. When it came to protecting their parents, though, Arielle was more than willing to work with her.
Addison had left Arielle behind in the hotel room. Seeing as they were the only guests in the hotel, the girls had decided to splurge. They had gotten the best room and ordered up all the room service they could get. Now, Addison stood in the middle of a beautiful forest. She had spent the last several days exploring all around Duxbury. So far she had found nothing. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find, but she had a feeling she would find something and that whatever it would be, it would be obvious.
The problem was, until something obvious came along, she didn’t actually have any clue where to look. She sighed and continued walking deeper into the forest. A sound caught her attention and she stopped. Looking around, she saw nothing, but it caused her to tense up. There was enough out there that Addison was on edge.
She was so busy looking ahead that she didn’t look down. Instead she almost tripped. She looked down to see what she had run into and her eyes widened as she backed away.
At her feet was a man’s bloody body. He looked like someone had carved symbols into his body. She didn’t recognize them, but she saw enough to realize this was creepy. Taking deep shaky breaths she tried to calm herself. She looked away for a moment and then forced herself to squat down and feel for pulse. She grimaced as her fingers touched the sticky blood on his neck. She held her fingers there long enough to prove he wasn’t living and then she jerked her hand away. She gulped as she back away, trying not to notice the stab wound near the man’s heart or the blood trail leading away from the body.
She wiped her fingers on the grass, trying to get rid of the blood on them. She was more or less satisfied that the blood was gone when she begun to stand. A moan caused her to freeze.
She looked around, trying to find the source of the sound. Considering she hadn’t found the source of the early sound, she wasn’t sure she was ready to admit that the sound was even real. When she heard it a second time, she turned her head to face it. She focused her eyes in the direction of the moaning.
She kept looking, straining her eyes toward the sound of the moan, until she found a leg sticking out from behind a tree. Inhaling sharply, she stood and hurried over to the tree. She found a second man just as bloody as the first. Instead of a stab wound to the chest, he had been stabbed in the stomach. And even more importantly, unlike the first man . . . this one was still breathing. She squatted down next to him.
He reached up, grabbed her wrist, and looked at her. “Don’t drink the water!”
“W-w-what?” she stammered.
“The water,” he repeated. “Don’t drink the water.” His hand grew slack and dropped.
She starred at him stunned. She grimaced, but she checked him for a pulse. It was thready and getting worse by the second, so she closed her eyes.
She focused her attention on his body. In her mind’s eye she saw his severed arteries and stomach muscles clamp themselves together. Keeping focus on this she slowly dragged him to the edge of the forest where her rented car was. She knew her power could not heal him, but as long as she stayed focused she could keep him alive until she found someone who could.
She forced herself to ignore the blood. Once she started driving she had to stop focusing on him. It was a pity she didn’t bring a chauffeur with her, though how she would have explained all of this to a chauffeur, she wasn’t sure. In that moment she wished she hadn’t gotten Sonya to quit on her. She was glad to be done with all of Sonya’s lectures, but the only way she thought she could save this man was with a whitelighter. Perhaps a call to her sister would bring Sonya here, but right now, she suspected she didn’t have time. There had been two injured men in those woods and one of them had been dead. If the person behind that was still around, she didn’t know how she could defend herself. Even she wasn’t about to break the rule about exposing magic. There were some things you just didn’t do.
“Sonya,” she whispered as she climbed into the driver’s seat. She closed her eyes and sighed. She hadn’t expected a response and she didn’t get one.