Niala 8

When I got back to the group, they updated me on the plan. They gave me an easy role; I just had to walk in the front door and find the guy, all while pretending to be anyone but me. My aura worked the best this way.

The less I thought about myself, and the less I wanted to be noticed, the less anyone thought about me. I wish my aura came sooner all those years ago. But, unfortunately, it arrived a month too late on the edge of my own terror. I got mine at four years old, shortly after being stuffed into a small cage.

Unlike fire, the auras came early. It told people a lot about who you’d be as a person when you grew up. It starts with a burst, a complete showing, then it slowly ebbs in with prickles at your senses. They called mine a ‘fuck off’ aura. While common to have auras that pushed people away, only damaged kids seemed to get these auras. Though, I never thought of myself as ‘damaged.’ I thought of myself as cautious. It manifested under my worst stress, and it contributed to the condition in which they found me. My captors forgot about me every time they neared my cage. As a result, I grew dehydrated and starved. When Kiromir told people my story sometimes, he always neglected that part, the trays of food dropped near my cage, the bruises on my shoulders from trying to reach through my bars for food that lay just a few feet out of my reach. I remember it.

The thoughts of those days invaded my mind when I focused too hard on raising my aura. I cleared the memories away, though the pain of them always lingered.

We banded together; groups of three linked arms as we bowed our heads. Then, like in prayer, we thought about where we wanted to go, and light carried us away in a flash. Magic strong enough to do more than traveling by the rough light rarely happened among Wanderers. Somewhere in the depths of our minds circled the idea of a place and a desire to leave. I’d had it explained to me like paper, where I stood on one corner, and someone else stood on another, and we just needed to ‘bend the page’ with our minds. The flash of energy that we created flashed visible light. I always had trouble with it. The mana and magic came easily enough for me to participate by lending to others. But, the act of channeling it to the magic always faltered.

I opened my eyes and let my senses climb. The light came in just a flash, and already my group immediately started separating. The reek of trash surrounded me, and when I moved my feet, the wet and sticky sensations of something padded my step. I didn’t want to look down, but I did. I immediately regretted it. Retching, I looked at my partners in this mission—Lizer and Krell. They were running the grid just like Thanus and Dimal would be. Kiromir always kept those two with him. Kiromir made Thanus his second in command many years ago. Dimal came as sort of a ‘package deal’ with him.

I don’t know why I thought I would be okay with what we were going into. I knew there would be girls there, trafficked women as well. The similarity between their situation and my own didn’t occur to me. I never did get over what happened to me. I still had nightmares that made me wake screaming. I think that’s one reason why they put Gaffriel’s room near to mine. He’d broken the lock on my door twice, barging in to tell me everything would be okay. Those were the moments that I liked Gaff the most.

I walked nonchalantly with the boys at my sides. I exuded my aura of forgetfulness, what they called oblivion, while holding onto their shirt tails. I had to keep in contact with them to keep them focused on not getting caught in it. Unfortunately, people found it easy to get caught in my aura. Three-abreast, clinging to one another, we made our way through a winding network of alleyways and construction sites to make it to the dimly lit face of a half-renovated hotel. We waited beyond the shadows. My aura had an effective radius, and anyone watching those cameras would definitely be outside of it.

Lizer left first, slipping away from me at a sprint. Over the years, he had grown somewhat used to my aura and knew how to focus and keep himself aware. Krell never got to be around me that much when I raised my aura, and being newer to the job, found it difficult. He was a few years older than me, dark-haired, brown-eyed, full of smiles, and heavily pierced. He smiled at me in that playful way that boys did girls. I could barely hold a conversation with him. He liked country music and wore a grunge black wrinkled leather cowboy hat, so that should have said all that there needed to be told about our compatibility.

Though, maybe a little cowboy never killed anyone?

Gross, Niala. Gross.

After our clash last week, though, I doubted he’d be coming back for seconds.

Krell concentrated, his dark eyes focusing as he watched Lizer slip away into the shadows and make haste to find electrical lines to tap into. He waited for a signal or some sign with his fires to know that the cameras were nonoperational. We waited for nearly twenty minutes, quiet as mice and deadly as vipers.

Every so often, a patrol sauntered by—humans in paramilitary garb. They looked so well put together in comparison to ourselves. Kiromir had talked about getting us armor or uniforms at one point or another, but getting that much armor made to accommodate wings would have made many people suspicious. In times like this, it made me jealous. One of the other flocks, the Sentinels, they had the custom armor. Kiromir didn’t like it, said it made us a target.

In minutes, a break in the patrol opened up. The usual two guards didn’t come by in their sweep. We pushed free of the shadows, and I buckled down on my aura. Lizer had his orders, and getting him back when my aura went up proved to be dangerous in the past. For the sake of ease, we split and hid as our duties were done. The more nonchalant I acted, the better it worked. The less we did out of the ordinary, the less likely we were to tip our hand.

Krell kept glancing over at me and reached for my hand. I usually kept hold of his shirt or something on him, but he squeezed my fingers with reassurance. Despite his arrogance and cocky ways, Krell kept an eye out for me like a big brother. Maybe he knew I grew nervous before I did, but his searching eyes weren’t full of pity or warning. Instead, they were rife with caution.

The first guards after the gap came by, a patrol as they walked at an even pace. Their faces turned to one another, dark visors obscuring their field of vision. Their reserved body posture and jumpy glances set alarm bells off in my mind. Did they know their cameras were out? Krell and I locked knowing gazes. His sleek, pierced brows dipped into a concerned scowl.

They knew.

“There goes that plan,” I kept my tone even, calm and low. Krell tensed beside me, his sharp muscles twisting as his hand clenched tighter to mine. We’d all been shot a few times, save for him. It stopped bothering me after a point. Though, it hurt for sure. Kiromir shot me twice before he allowed me out on a mission. It made me flinch and hesitate less to know I wouldn’t die from it. If Krell didn’t get shot on this mission, I’d do it myself when we got home, right in his damned ikris. His aura of panic spiked for a moment. So I squeezed his hand to break the hold. Krell’s aura always made the hairs on my skin rise. I didn’t panic easily, but his aura was strong and had a better area of effect than my own.

We closed in on the door at a casual stride. Nonchalance and discretion worked well with slow, light steps. I could see lurching moments of realization in a guard or two as they passed, but it floated away just as effortlessly as it came, an afterthought. Our casual pace and the lack of reaction from the guards might keep the camera monitors less suspicious. We walked through the front doors just as smoothly as if we belonged there. No alarms sounded.

“Nice.” Krell’s voice came in a sharp hissing whisper.

That’s right, keep on being impressed, cowboy.

As if sensing my smug thoughts, his grin turned crooked, and he squeezed my hand again.

The floors were uncarpeted plywood with spots of dried gum and glues. Occasionally a strip of tacks remained, and the walls were in a state of repapering or painting. The dichotomy of things put questions in my mind. The squared filagree ceiling tiles above were half missing. Rolls of carpet, padding, and tools littered the floors. In every appearance, it seemed like an old hotel set up for renovation. But subtle details hinted at it being staged. The tools in the halls didn’t match the tasks near them. The rolled-up carpet padding didn’t belong in industrial hallways. I didn’t think industrial carpet even had padding. I narrowed my gaze at the doors in the unfinished hallways as we went.

We wound our way through halls, rooms, floors, and stairs. I never trusted elevators, no way to see who laid in wait at the end. Kiromir taught me that, and it stuck. We wound our way up to the seventh floor to find my target. My job, while arguably the easiest, involved finding and eliminating our intended target. William was mine to take. The auction they had scheduled wasn’t due to start for another half hour. Everyone would be there already, gathering. Finally, we heard voices intermittently muttered amid far worse sounds. From the screams and silenced shouts, Kiromir and his team were starting the party right on time. Krell grinned and bit over one of his lip piercings. I could hear his teeth clicking on it. He winked at me when he caught me staring.

My gaze flicked away as a sneer found its way across my lips. “Bite me.” Though, I didn’t let go of his hand.

“Maybe later.” His voice went caramel soft and sweet, teasing me.

I reminded myself to kick his ass when all this ended.

I approached the final door with dread, reaching out a single hand to twist the knob as I focused hard on my oblivion. When I opened the door, the lighting changed, and I took a moment to adjust. I kept my eyes down, slipped around the frame, and kept Krell in my sights as our hands parted. His fires lit in a tender glow over his light brown skin. Then, with a shrug of outstretched arms and a heaving breath, a heavy thrum moved through my body and radiated through the room. It made me shiver.

William stood there, shaking his head in a moment of obfuscation. My aura rolled off of him.

William, a slanted, lean thing with that ‘handsomeness’ that appeared bought and paid for, looked up at us with a confused tilt of his head. He looked shorter than he did in pictures, but then again, most humans leaned on the short side compared to us. He had a large head in the way that seemed good on cameras, but like a bobblehead in person, and at my height, I stood taller than him by a fair few inches.

He looked at me, seeing through my Aura. He threw it off with concerted effort. The look in his eyes wasn’t threat or fear. Instead, it held a glimmer of a predatory appraisal.

As he smiled directly at me, I realized he could see us, see straight through my aura. Had he not been our target for the evening, he would have been eliminated anyway. Something sick lurked behind those eyes of his and coiled predatorily. He didn’t see me, a person. That’s when I knew that his eyes didn’t see people, didn’t see women or children, he saw toys. Judging by how he ignored Krell’s presence and focused on mine, I looked a lot like a fun toy right now.

William’s breath wavered. “They really outdid themselves with you. Young, Asian, tall, and butch? You’re a unicorn.” A practiced sneer and flick of his eyebrow crossed his surgery-addled face. He probably thought that passed for charm.

I had been called worse. My body had been toned from my training. I kept my hair short and my clothes functional. I never could get the hang of makeup. Though, like most of my kind, my eyes bore dark-rimmed edges like eyeliner, a defense mechanism from the sun in flight. My height thrilled him.

It took great madness with a firm hold on the mind to circumvent one of our auras when we were trying. I’d heard about it before, but I never actually experienced someone so broken that my aura didn’t hit the mark. Even when I had been captured, it worked.

I didn’t have much time to glance around me at first, but when I did, memories came roiling back in sickening waves. Their captivity reminded me of my own.

- Niala 8

November 18th, 2003

I was four years old.

Playing in the forests near my homeland, my mother trailed through the snow with me, laughing. The sky churned with its own beautiful shade of grey, and my mother told me stories about the world before the creator split the black and white from the grey. I loved those clouds, and I loved the sheet of powdered snow that dusted the landscape in glittered crystals, black trees against its white, the grey above. I saw the beauty in creation and chaos everywhere. Dusted footprints of wild hares and the snowshoe prints of a lynx disturbed the snow in organized chaos.

My mother threw me up into the air and let me spread my wings to catch my fall. I laughed, breathless, cheeks chapped from the cold. The new sensation of gravity and lift tugging at my weak muscles felt good in an instinctual way. The sky hugged my wings far better than crawling into bed with my mother and father on a scary night. The quiet winter landscape dusted ice and frost over small creaking branches, but tiny buds threatened to blossom, even then, on every surface that surrounded us.

Through a palpable sadness that swept its way across my mother’s face, she smiled at me with all the love she could muster. Her aura teased in my mind, excitement, a perfect pair to my father’s longing. The aura they made when they were together struck a beautiful chord. As I felt her excitement bubbling within me, it made me more aware that I hadn’t seen my father in a long while. His black-tattooed arms didn’t tuck me into bed. His banded fingers didn’t tease my cheek. He didn’t call me his ‘Syr yatkat,’ his little something.

Cold eyes stared at me for a long moment in my last memory of him. Then, the blue of his eyes, far paler than my own, obscured in a mask of darkness, and he left. My mother cried a lot in those days—soft sobs as she waited for father to return.

“Niala,” She called to me as my feet touched the ground. She wanted us to play the game of hunt, what humans call ‘hide and seek.’ Her excitement drew me in with giggles, and she suddenly became serious. The joy left her eyes. I danced on the balls of my feet, dashing snow around me as my tail whipped around, looking for a direction to run. Finally, she closed her eyes and began the count. I didn’t know how to shake her aura at that time. Every shiver and metallic pang of artificial thrill drove me into near manic levels of fake glee.

“En, dra, tla,” She started counting. So, I ran as hard as my feet could carry me through the snow. First, I thought about my footprints, making sure she couldn’t see them. Then, I hopped and flitted my wings to stop my tracks in one place and landed in another. Though I couldn’t fly for long, I needed to try. So, I ran, tumbled, and giggled in quiet until I heard her counting no more.

I found a spot beneath a burdened evergreen shrub. A hollow of solitude just my size opened beneath the brush, and I waited in grinning silence. The ground glittered with frost over leaf litter, and it melted in cool radiating damp against my body heat.

I waited for her. Snickering, I thought myself the best at hiding—waiting. Thirty minutes or an hour passed, a small eternity for a child. As time went on, I fretted and squirmed. Eventually, the quiet grew into eerie emptiness. Even still, I wanted her to find me. But either my mother couldn’t find me or didn’t find me. So, I searched and couldn’t hear her, couldn’t smell her scent of fresh bread and roses.

I made my way back to our clearing, calling for her. “Dyana!” My tail whipped anxiously behind me, dusting my footprints in the snow just like my ada’re, my father, showed me with his great plumed tail. Mother didn’t have one, and nor did anyone else I knew. It made me special.

I stared at the spot where my mother had been. Was she hiding from me? I waited, just as instructed, if I became lost. You always stay still and wait for them to come to you, always. Darkness began to fall. My bare feet curled in the snow. My feet chapped pink and tender like my cheeks, but the snow didn’t hurt us.

I broke the rule, and I wandered. When night fell, and I stumbled through a glade, bloodstained snow reflected back at me through dusky light. I knew that blood meant something bad, even then. I’d seen death before. The acrid scent of mana burned surrounded me. Sniffing, I sensed something; my mother’s ice-blue fire always left a smell in the air like bitterness. A fine sheen of ashes dusted around in the rolling in the breeze. They blew over my cheeks, and I coughed.

I saw bloodstained snow.

I smelled spent mana.

Bloodstained snow.

Burning mana.

Blood, snow.

Burning.

Blood.

Ashes.

Then humans approached me. I’d never seen them before—such strange creatures. But I knew they were wrong, not my kind. My brain registered their scents as barely animal. Instinctively I backed away, raising my wings to make myself look bigger and more threatening. The same instinct kicked in as they did so, and my feathers rustled like a hiss in a way I never could replicate since. I froze as one reached out and took my hand. I represented no threat to them, and he tugged with such gentle pressure. He walked me away with strange words on his lips. At the time, I had been angry that they dared to touch me. He knew a few words of my language.

“Dyana! DYANA!” I cried. For a child, my strength outpaced most of my peers and certainly my own kind. This man, though, his grip made my hand ache. He jerked my arm.

“Nyet Dyana!” The word on his lips contained no mana—no magic. I didn’t know a language could exist without magic and filled with a strange empty hunger.

I think I knew that word, ‘nyet,’ so similar to our ‘nei.’

Then, I discovered cold that hurt, small containers, cages, and needles. There were machines and broken words of Russian. Though I don’t know how long I stayed with them, it went on long enough for them to cut into my flesh and search the insides of my ikris to see where my wings went. I began to speak their language in broken spatters in some time. Three months? Two? I couldn’t have told. Every day melded together until my aura kicked in.

In my shivering loneliness, I knew my oblivion.

I knew hate. I knew cold. I knew a plethora of things I shouldn’t have learned at that age. I welcomed hunger as my bedfellow.