Natalia’s P. O. V

After Kaesha quite literally set Hailey on a safer path, the drive went a lot smoother.

Hailey still sang at the top of her lungs, swerving slightly once in a while, and Kaesha still looked supremely uncomfortable, fidgeting and tinkering with a sculpture she’d conjured from her dorm room. I kept myself busy with doing my best to complete the summary on the Packs, Alliances and Rogues book I’d read the previous night, but was having a little trouble due to the sudden jerks the car made under Hailey’s increasingly restless command.

Then she opened her mouth, but not to sing again, “I’m bored…”

Kaesha and I raised our heads to look at her. “I can see that.” We replied simultaneously.

She was silent again for a while the spoke up again, “I wanna do something!”

“You mean something other than murdering our ears?” Kaesha quipped, looking back down at her sculpture.

“Hey! I’ll have you know that I won a sparkly pink ribbon for my singing in the third grade.”

Kaesha snickered while I raised a brow.

“Okay, fine! So my singing isn’t the best… but you should be grateful it’s me and not Keily.”

We shared a look and shuddered.

“Who’s Keily?”

We looked back at her for a few seconds, only to whip back around when the heavy horn of a lorry blared straight at us. And it was right in our path… or we were in its.

We screamed.

Kaesha and I grabbed onto the nearest stable object as Hailey tried to wrestle the wheel under control. A horn blared. We managed to get out of its way but the world still spun.

Nauseous.

A railing zoomed towards Hailey’s side and rammed the car. The universe rocked. White exploded. I was shoved backwards, pressed violently into my seat. The car somersaulted, flipping and flipping and flipping and… I lost count.

Dizzy.

I heard Kaesha chant as Hailey continued screaming with her apparently bottomless lungs. I struggled to breathe, white taking the place air should have been. We sailed through the sky, a blur of blue, green and grey visible outside my window.

It stopped.

Disorientation gripped me as I tried to rationalise which way was up. Chilling silence reigned. Then Kaesha groaned behind me.

“Ava?! Hailey?! Are you guys okay?! Answer me!”

“Alive…” Hailey croaked, voice hoarse and gravelly, “Ari?”

I wrestled enough air down to wheeze a weak, “Kay…”

Kaesha muttered a word and the white faded, the air bag deflating. Beside me, Hailey’s did the same. I slumped forward as far as the seat belt welded against my chest would allow, trying to make up for my oxygen depravity. My vision still swam.

Kaesha said another word and the seatbelt ripped down the middle, allowing me to properly breathe.

“I thought… you don’t chant…” I said once my vision cleared.

“My mind is a mess,” Kaesha said after a while, “if I don’t use the stupid words right now, my magic won’t focus.”

“Cool.” Hailey commented, lacking her usual enthusiasm.

Suddenly, we were descending. Gently but still going down. Till now, I hadn’t noticed that the car seemed to be hovering above ground level.

“What’s happening?!” Panic crept into Hailey’s tone as she looked at me.

“I don’t know.” I turned slightly so that Kaesha was visible through my peripheral, “Kaesha? You were chanting earlier, right?”

She shook her head, “It isn’t me. I only casted protection spells on the three of us. This isn’t even magic.”

‘The guards.’ Candy reminded me.

Syrens had special abilities, not magic, ‘Shit, what do I tell them?’

‘I don’t know but you need to think of something fast.’

The car bounced slightly, touching the ground. Kaesha and Hailey scrambled outside and I followed in suit. We moved to the rear side of the car, tense and ready for a fight.

A boy, a bit older than Kaesha, stood, panting with his hands on his knees. Sweat drops beaded his forehead as his hard brown eyes glared tersely at us. His clothes, too tight, stretched over his deep brown skin and muscles that spoke of years of manual labour. Overall, he didn’t seem suspicious, save for one detail: he smelled like a Rogue.

“Who’re-” Hailey started, then stopped as I held a hand up.

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“Hail, be ready to attack or run. Kaesha, ready an attack and a defence spell.” I instructed lowly. Thankfully, neither questioned me.

“You’re welcome, by the way.” He snapped, standing straight, then focused his glare on me, “What’s a newbie Rogue doing in a car with a witch and a human?”

“Who’re you calling a Rogue, Rogue?” I bit back.

He sniffed the air, “Could’ve fooled me with that smell.”

“I’m a Lone Wolf. There’s a difference.”

He didn’t relax, “Explains why you don’t smell like death… yet.”

“Neither do you, it seems.” There was blood in the air but he didn’t seem to have that stench of decay that followed notorious Rogues. The more Pack Werewolves they killed, the worse the stench.

He bent into a fighting stance, his arms tenser than necessary, “Might not stay that way.”

My eyes narrowed, and Hailey and Kaesha stiffened beside me, “Is that a threat?”

“Only if you are.”

“What is he talking about?” Hailey questioned.

He scoffed, “I see the human’s in the dark.”

Hailey bared her teeth, canines lengthening, “I’m not human.”

“So it seems.”

“Who are you?” I demanded.

He cocked his head, “So they didn’t tell you?”

“Who?”

“The Pack that sent you.”

Kaesha scowled, “We’re here on our own.”

He stared at Kaesha long and hard, assessing her, “Witches don’t normally work for packs.” He admitted, “But they also don’t normally ride with two Werewolves. I don’t believe you.”

He looked ready to attack and judging by how he’d stopped the Sienna mid-air and lowered it to the grass, he was a gifted Werewolf.

“We don’t care!” Hailey snapped.

His eyes glowed briefly and he flung an arm at us. The tree beside him followed the motion, branches racing to confine or impale, we never knew. Hailey dashed out of the way, leaping and running on and over them. The ones headed for Kaesha went limp, shrivelling up. I barrelled forwards, avoiding them with quick movements as I rushed at him. His breathing was heavy and more sweat glazed on his forehead.

He was tired.

With each arm movement, trees, logs and stumps moved to do his bidding. But he also grew more worn out. His gift didn’t seem to be designed for continuous usage and it showed as he huffed and puffed with even the slightest twitch.

Leaping over the last of the branches, I landed sitting on his shoulders. He yelped as I pulled our collective body weight backwards, steadying my hands on the ground before using my lower body strength so slam him down. Then I flipped so that I was sitting on his back, twisting an arm precariously behind him.

The trees stopped.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

He wheezed, “You… you know already. They hired you didn’t they?”

“Who the hell are you talking about?” Kaesha groaned.

Hailey flailed her arms, indicating all the twisted trees, “Yeah, you just attacked us for no reason!”

He was silent for a while. Then he spoke, “You mean, you don’t know?”

“No!” We yelled in sync.

“Oh… my bad…”

Hailey growled in frustration. Then moaned with pain. My head snapped up to look at her. She was clutching her arm, several shards of glass and small pieces of metal poking out of it, some even lodged in her side. Blood almost completely coated her left side.

“Hailey!” I leapt off the jerk and raced to her as she sank to the floor. The injuries looked way too deep, even a Werewolf would need a pack doctor for them.

Kaesha was by our side in seconds. I looked at her, “Can you heal her?”

“Yes. But the wound’s deep and she’ll need blood. And I’ll need to channel something to make it fast.”

“Channel me.” I grasped her hand.

She nodded, “Hailey, what’s your blood type?”

“B… negative.”

Kaesha looked at me questioningly.

“I can’t. I’m O positive. Can’t you?”

She shook her head, “AB negative.”

Panic bubbled. I couldn’t lose the one family member I liked. I could not lose my sister, “We need blood!”

“Use mine.”

I turned my head around so fast, it almost gave me whiplash. The jerk was standing slowly, rolling his shoulder I’d been twisting some seconds prior.

“I’m O negative.”

Kaesha looked questioningly at me. I nodded.

The jerk-turned-potential-saviour moved towards us. Kaesha summoned a knife and grabbed my hand. The guy moved his hands and the loose branches moved under Hailey and stretched out, forming a bed. Then he held his arms out to Kaesha.

Kaesha didn’t need to chant. She focused on Hailey and the pieces of glass and metal dislodged themselves from her. Blood flowed harder and she whimpered.

“Ari…”

I held her hand and squeezed gently, “I’m here.”

Once all the glass and metal was out, Kaesha dumped them on the grass and stabbed the guy’s arm with her knife. When she took it out, the blood flowed through the air from his fresh injury to Hailey’s. As Kaesha worked as fast as possible, the spell drew on my energy.

Once she was satisfied, she focused on Hailey and closed the wounds. Then she did the same for the guy.

“Hailey?” I squeezed her hand.

She sat up, smiling wide, “Whoo, I feel so much better! Thanks you three!” Then she frowned, “Kaesha, you have some glass shards on you. And you’re bleeding a little.”

We looked at Kaesha.

“I’m fine.”

Silence and raised brows.

She rolled her eyes, “Okay, fine.” The pieces of glass fell off her skin and clothes. Those slightly lodged in her skin were pushed out as her bumps and cuts patched themselves up.

“Happy now?”

I grinned, “Immensely.” Then, turning to Hailey, I caught her in a hug, “Thank goodness you’re alright!”

I felt her arms return it as she smiled against my hair. Too soon, awkwardness crept on me and I let her go. Nevertheless, she smiled warmly and grabbed my hand, squeezing it.

“You’ll get there.” She whispered. Then she turned and grabbed both Kaesha and the jerk in a group hug, thanking them in quick words that blurred together into barely understandable babbling.

A full minute of thanks and reassurances ensured before she released them. Using the butt of my palm, I quickly shoved the jerk backwards. He near flew into a gnarled tree of his doing, back arched and gasping at the impact.

I walked towards him, Kaesha and Hailey at my sides, surrounding him. Despite him helping us, he was still a Rogue Werewolf that had attacked us on the abandoned forest floor beneath a highway.

He stared wearily up at me and I returned the look with a glare of my own, “Start talking.”