Nusac

Chapter 25

Faith’s POV

I feel as if my teeth are going to break, they are clenched so tight that I fear I might break my jaw. Another of Abbas’ punches to my stomach makes one of my teeth crack, I will not scream… I will not give him the satisfaction.

“Come on whore, beg me.”

I open my mouth and feel blood trickle down my chin. “I will never be broken.” I manage to gasp out, my head spinning.

“We will see about that.”

Another slap to the face is followed by him tugging at the bricks hanging from my feet. I grunt deep in my throat. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out before I do have to beg him to stop, or pass out. I fear I may get to begging before unconsciousness takes me.

I have never wanted to die before… not really… when I was a kid I thought I did. When I would get the shit beat out of me by the latest of moms alcoholic boyfriends or when the kids at school would taunt me… I thought then that I wanted to die; I even tried to take my life before but not like this. This is an all encompassing agony, mind, body and soul.

“Let’s see how stubborn you are after a long cold few days strung up here like a pig carcass.” I drop my head as low as it will go and hold back the tears, which are threatening to fall and have been for hours.

My head is still spinning but soon it is slowing, I feel my head lulling slightly. I fight to keep awake. I cannot pass out… I cannot let him win… not whilst he is watching anyway. My whole body jerks and I am brought back to full alert as the freezing cold water hits my skin.

One bucket, two, three, four… and then it stops. My whole body is so cold. The door shuts and I am alone again.

My body shivers against the cold causing me more pain. Now he is gone I let myself go completely, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this but I cannot fight it anymore. I start to cry, not sobbing… the tears just fall silently.

I have never believed in a God, not with the things I have been through and seen, how could a God exist? But I find I have nothing else to go on but my name, Faith… I guess people need faith sometimes to see them through the hard times, I never really had any… not in a God or a person, in nothing… I don’t even have it in myself.

I take a small aching breath and pray in my head. I am not sure who or what I am praying to but I do.

‘Please, whoever is out there, anyone… help me… please… I was finally happy, please don’t take it away from me so soon. I know I’ve done wrong… a lot of wrong and I probably deserve this… hell I probably deserve a lot worse but have mercy… I want to live, I want to help others… I want to spend my life helping people and being happy and doing good, I don’t want to die now… I need to live… for her…’ I break away mid sentence in my head as I hear someone enter the room.

I raise my head slightly, my shoulders ache and I find I cannot breathe again. I catch a glimpse of white hair before my head falls back down.

I feel myself lifting up, the weight hanging off my feet is gone, the pressure on my lungs has disappeared as I am freed. My body floats to the floor gently until I am lying on my side. My legs instantly move so I am in the foetal position, although this is an automatic response I am not sure if it is to relieve pain or hide what little modesty I have whilst naked.

I feel something being throw over me and a distant voice. “Faith!” The clicking of fingers in front of my eyes slightly snaps me out of my semi conscious state so I am slightly more alert.

“Get away from her!” My eyes move slowly to the source of the voice, and there I see Nam. Her hair has gone from her usual dirty blonde to an almost blinding white colour, and her eyes… they are entirely white. No pupils, no iris’, nothing… just pure white all over. How she can see me I don’t know.

Pike does as told with a scared look towards Nam. The room grows pleasantly warm, the heat seeps into my skin and seems to fill my entire body. From my stomach it spreads out slowly, a golden light emits from my skin like I am glowing. I rise up off the floor a few inches before slowly floating back down.

Once I have been placed back down on the floor I notice I feel no pain, my shoulder is fine, my knee is fine… hell everything is fine. And shit, clothes… where the hell did they come from and how did they get on me?

I push myself up onto all fours before standing. I look myself over; well what I can see… my arms are fine, my legs look good. I feel every inch of my skin that I can reach before touching the scar I will always be ashamed of on my stomach… only… I pull up my shirt and look down. There isn’t a scar.

“We must depart.” Nam announces turning to the door again. I look at Pike and he gives me an ‘I have no idea either’ kind of look. I walk a step or so behind Namine and notice another difference, she is suddenly taller than me. I look her up and down, I find the source of the height change, her feet aren’t actually making impact with the stone floor, she is floating three or four inches off the floor. Her legs remaining stationary… this is giving me the creeps.

The hallways are deserted. The only sound is Pike’s and my boots echoing on the floor as we step along the stone floor. Namine stops before a large wooden door, I walk level with her to ask her what is the matter. Her eyes narrow as she sends out some sort of purple shockwave from her left hand which blows the door, not just off its hinges but clear through to the opposite wall in the cavernous room beyond.

As I enter the room my slayer senses go wild. There are maybe forty or fifty guys in the room and from what I can tell a large majority of them are vampires. Namine glides into the room with me and Pike on her heels.

Nobody speaks as we enter but all eyes in the room are on us. The vamps start putting on their game faces and a few of them hiss at us like pissed off cats. The men meanwhile pull out weapons. But then someone speaks. “Kill them.” The voice is low and controlled but I know who it came from, Abbas.

As the army charges us, me and Pike start backing up to the only place we are not surrounded, behind us. Namine stands her ground. “Nam! Run!” I shout running over to grab her arm. Just as I am a few inches from touching her I feel an invisible arm grab me around the waist, it isn’t painful but feels really weird. The arm pins me against the wall, around five feet off the ground, I turn my head and see Pike in the same predicament next to me.

The ground shakes slightly as the humans in the room are pinned. The vamps have stopped in their tracks and Abbas is being held in mid air, twisting and turning from struggling but even I can tell he isn’t going anywhere.

The tension in the room is all encompassing, I would shout to her but I cannot find my voice, it seems everyone else is having the same problem.

The vamps charge together, forming a circle around the witch. They make it just within a couple of feet before being thrown back, some hitting the walls, others just slamming into the floor.

“Kill her I said!” Abbas manages to shout.

Namine’s toes touch the ground, pink sparks emit from the floor into her feet… like those electricity conductor things at science museums. The energy rises up her body licking at her skin before turning into pink flames. A scowl crosses Namine’s face before her whole body is lost in the purest white light I have ever seen. I have to close my eyes against the bright piercing light

The light fades and she looks up at her accomplishment though her narrowed eyebrows, stone… every single one of them… maybe forty or so of them… all turned to stone.

As she returns to the solid ground once more she brings both her hands back in a sort of wide ‘how about a hug’ kind of motion before swinging them with all her strength to clap her hands together, the result being the statues crumbling into dust before blowing away in the newly created wind.

With her right hand Namine points at Abbas then lowers her hand, his body follows her hand before he is set free, sitting on the floor.

“Who is the pet now?” Namine asks, her voice low and menacing.

Abbas does not speak, he is shaking, awaiting what he knows he deserves.

“You shall never harm another.” Is the only other thing Namine says before she throws something that looks like a ball of green fire at Abbas, the green flame seems to be absorbed into the mans skin and even from over here I can see his skin beginning to boil and bubble. The bubbling skin looks as though it pops the green flames pushing their way out of his natural barrier. The flames seem to spread all over him. He drops to the floor screaming, rolling around trying to put out the flames. No such luck.

A minute passes and still he is screaming, not dead yet but probably close. The smell of burnt hair and cooking flesh is everywhere. Still he screams until his smoking corpse is nothing but charred bone. With another flick of her wrist Namine turns the bone to dust.

The men around the room are still pinned to the wall, the fear is evident in their eyes.

“Nam, Stop!” I manage to shout out. “You will never be able to forgive yourself!”

Weapons fly towards one empty wall then clatter to the floor, the scared men now if at all possible look even more terrified because they have no way of defending themselves.

The metal of the swords melts at Namine’s will. And then she stands, utterly still and silent. I cannot even see signs of breathing from her body.

A vampire, one who wasn’t here before enters the room through the door which we came, he sees the scene and thinks the better of being here, turning to leave he finds his escape route suddenly blocked by huge rocks held together with what looks like melted metal.

He edges around the room slowly not taking his eyes off Nam, or hers off him. Before he reaches the only other exit in the room he finds it again blocked. So now here we all are, locked in a room with no escape… for any of us. Me included.

I fall to the ground with a thud, she isn’t being so careful with me now. And I assume Pike has done the same from the groan he let out. Namine glides over to us and grabs my arm with her right hand and Pikes arm with her left hand. Her eyes flicker over the scene before her. I counted twelve men pinned to the walls with no weapons, and one vampire edging around the room.

The men fall unceremoniously much as I had a second ago onto the floor. I hear most of them begging for mercy at once before bright lights distort my vision, swirling around and around I feel as if I am on a roller coaster being pushed and shoved in all directions at once.

Then we are home.