“Judas! Show your face, you coward!”

She had been half-running, half-walking for five minutes now, but she was certain Judas had tricked her into getting lost in the woods. She hadn’t heard a single sound since she became surrounded by the oak and maple trees. Not even a single bird or squirrel made a chirp, which meant they had fled and left her alone with a crazed lunatic.

“Give me my cat back, dammit!”

Bushes rustled, sticks broke, a large animal growled. Ana turned to the sound, her face pale as she had a sudden feeling of deja vu. Monster…forest…have I been here before?

She saw the yellow eyes before she saw what it was.

She threw herself to the ground as the animal lunged with a fierce growl. Ana screamed as it crashed into the honeysuckle bush behind her. She scrambled to her feet and took a good look at the animal that tried to attack her.

It was a panther, with a black shiny coat and a long, thin tail. It scrambled out of the bush and began to stalk around her, it’s teeth barred.

What did my father say about panthers while we’re out camping? Don’t run, don’t crouch, give it space—wait…hang on. There are no panthers in Mississippi. Not once has she seen a panther in the twenty-two years she’s lived here. What the hell is going on?

She looked closer at the big cat, and for just a fraction of a second, she saw it flicker. It stopped trying to lunge at her, but it wasn’t running away either. Panthers don’t attack unless provoked, but…this wasn’t a really panther. It was an illusion.

Just then, the panther flickered from sight, a bundle of flowers left in it’s place. Confused, Ana walked over to the bundle and picked it up. I don’t understand…

“Neat trick, huh? Perks of being the son of Crocell the Demon. Illusion, manipulation…” Judas stepped out from behind a tree, and Ana tensed. “Things your father can’t even imagine doing. What did he give you, by the way? Shit location spells?”

She pulled her shoulders back. “Does it matter? At least he made an attempt to be in my life, unlike yours.”

His eyes narrowed. He raised his right hand close to his chest, palm facing the sky. Ana watched as blue lines of mageia twirled around his wrist, and began to prepare her own spell. “Don’t try to assume anything about my father. You barely know anything about your own.”

Ana pulled up the amber shield just before his blaze of lighting could hit her. The shock of the blaze hitting her caused her to stumble back, but she grounded her feet and prepared for the next blow. Judas circled around her, inspecting the shield with anger.

“Did your father teach you that? You know why?” He reached behind his back and threw another blaze of lightning toward her. She managed to hold her place, but the shield was already beginning to crack. This was nothing like the soft energy blasts Marchosias used when they trained, Judas was putting all of his anger into his spells. “He knows it hurts him more than it hurts you! He wants you dead, but he want him to suffer more!”

Ana cried out as a bolt caught her off guard, veering to the right and forcing her to move the shield too fast. The veins in her wrist screamed in protest, not used to such fast and sudden movement. She tried to breath through the pain as she faced Judas again, gritting her teeth. “Tell me…tell me who it is then.”

He smiled, spreading his hands out, letting the blue swirls flow from his hands and onto the ground like thick fog. “You want to know about the incident, or who you’re hurting by using that simple spell. You can’t have both. Who’s the greedy one now?”

He disappeared from sight and Ana didn’t have time to react before she felt a sharp blow to her shoulder. The shield faded as she fell to the ground, her cheek hitting solid ground. The world seemed to stop as she laid on the ground, her only view being the oak tree in front of her. She numbly turned onto her back, and caught movement of somebody approaching her. She was in a similar situation, only a few days ago. Deacon over her, arms caught, legs pinned, trapped. Trapped.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

She scrambled away from him, heart beating and breath quick. He continued walking to her, and she kicked out with her feet. She missed with the first kick, but her right foot landed on his knee with a dull, metallic thud. It sent a dull pain up her leg, but it seemed to deal more to Judas. His face went pale, and he crumpled to the ground. The humming stopped, something Ana had gotten used to since Judas had first appeared. At first, he just laid there and gasped for breath, his fingers digging into the dirt under him. Ana crawled away from him and stood on her legs, reaching under her shirt and taking out her second pistol. I’m sorry, Beau.

She aimed it at his head, and he looked straight at her. Her finger was on the trigger, put she didn’t pull it. She wanted to. What was stopping her?

“Remember that time—” He gasped for breath, “Remember that time we stole a bottle of tequila from Junie Marston’s house party and took it into the woods, just us?”

“Stop.” She didn’t know what he was doing, but it was hurting her head. She remembered Junie Marston. She was a volleyball player who hosted parties at her parent’s summer cabin, but…Judas wasn’t there, was he? She remembered the parties, but why couldn’t she remember what happened during them?

“We drank half of it before trying to skip rocks on the lake. We were both terrible at it, of course, but it was…fun. We started talking when the bottle was mostly empty, and I told you about my family, and gave you some angsty teen rant about how fucked up we were compared to other families. You told me about your old hometown—this place. Morganwood. You said Livernville could never compare to Morganwood, and I believed you. You made it sound like a dream.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as shots and stills of things flashed through her head, one after the other, until they played a complete scene in her head. No, not just a scene. Whole, entire, memories. Memories of shared laughter, copied homework, horrible but fun karaoke, gossip behind the bleachers, getting high in the woods, and they were all with Judas, and they all happened before Ophelia. After Ophelia…it was just Ophelia. Where had Judas gone? I don’t understand. We were never friends. I always thought of him as a bad person, but…

She became emotional, a heavy weight making itself known in her chest and tears welling in her eyes. The gun shook in her hands and she lowered it, refocusing on Judas. His face had gained color, his green eyes concentrated on her.

“You didn’t take me out here to tell me about the incident,” Ana mumbled, trying to fight the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. She didn’t want to cry again, and not particularly in front of Judas. “You took me out here so I could remember…us being friends. Before Ophelia.”

He stared at her for a moment before pulling himself into a sitting position, leaning against a tree. He hadn’t moved his legs at all since she kicked him, which Ana found strange.

“You don’t understand what kind of person Ophelia was,” His voice was soft now, his anger during their brief fight a mere echo in her memory. “You didn’t know her as long as Beau and I did.”

Ana quickly shook her head at the mention of Ophelia. “No. Shut up.”

He leaned closer to her, still not moving his legs. “Two months, Ana. You were together for two. Fucking. Months. You knew her for barely longer than that! Do you think that’s long enough to truly know a person?”

She looked away from him, no longer wanting to reply. She wouldn’t let him taint Ophelia’s image in her mind. He already changed the memories of him and although she wasn’t sure how she felt about that yet, she wouldn’t let him ruin Ophelia, anybody but her.

Judas sighed and leaned back on the tree. His hands hesitated before reaching for his pant legs. One after the other, he rolled them up to his thighs. Ana walked closer to him, confused at the sight before her.

His legs were metal, or made out of something that looked metal. The knee and shin made out of a solid white material, while the thigh and calves appeared like pure, silver muscle. Judas conjured a pool of mageia into his hands and let it fall into the muscles of his legs. His legs hummed as his muscles contracted and started moving, the mageia being absorbed into the fake legs. The humming started again, like an old machine being turned on again after years of disuse. He grimaced at the process, squeezing his eyes shut until the artificial muscles stopped. That’s why he wore baggy pants all the time, Ana thought. He was hiding…those. And the hum that always seemed to follow him, it was because of…that.

He looked up, and noticed Ana watching. He set his mouth into a thin line. “Your father gave Beau his burn scars, and he took my legs. You wanna know what happened? This is what happened.” He rubbed his nose, appearing nervous for just a moment. “This…isn’t so bad, anyway. My father paid the scientists to give me these. Beau…Beau got it worse.”

“I still don’t understand,” Ana murmured, reshaping the gun back into a tattoo on her back. “Why would my father get rid of all my memories of you before the incident?”

“Because,” He slowly raised himself from the ground, stretching his legs tentatively. “That was the easiest way to paint me a monster. If all you thought of me was me being a murderous asshole, then you had no reason to question his lies.”

“Did you kill Ophelia, then?” She asked bluntly. That piece of her memory was still concrete in her mind, but she was starting to think that Marchosias had changed most of her memories. Maybe, just maybe…

Judas was silent for the longest moment, but he did not look away for her. Her headache grew as she waited for an answer, her heartbeat feeling as if it was in her throat.

“Yes. I drowned her in the river.”

Ana quickly looked way, those few words sparking a fire in her heart. The headache now pounded against her skull, letting her think of nothing but the morning when she received news about her death. They didn’t let her see the body, claiming she was too bloated and rotting that it might scare Ana, but Ophelia could never look ugly. She was always perfect and beautiful. “Of course. Why did I expect any better of you?”

“Ana…”

“What?” Ana snapped, turning to him. The perplexed look on his face confused her and simmered the angry fire in her heart. He wasn’t even looking at her either, but instead behind her, to the sky.

She looked in the same direction, peering through the trees. Smoke trailed up the sky, dark and angry tendrils pushing itself to and fro. It was a fire, a very large one, and in the direction of her house.