Page 7 of Muted Voices (Broken Ashes #1)
Neith
F uck. That was not what I thought was going to happen tonight, and actually looking back over the evening, I have no idea what the fuck I was thinking, letting them walk me home. There is no way that I would usually let three men walk me home, let alone supernatural men.
But that’s the thing: I never once felt threatened. I felt completely safe, which is actually a new concept to me or at least a forgotten concept; it’s been a long time since I’ve actually felt safe in the presence of other people. It’s a feeling that I don’t want to think about too closely. They do get bonus points though, because they let me walk away and didn’t follow me, even though I must have piqued their interest with my weird behavior and the fact that I got scratched by a shifter and I am completely normal, not writhing in pain like I should be.
“Betty, do I have a fucking story for you,” I say as I grab my shotgun from by the door.
Before I can tell her anything though, my phone rings; my phone never rings. I don’t really have friends. Okay, maybe I have two or three, but they wouldn’t ring me this late, which means it can only be one person. I pull my phone out of my pocket and then curse, contemplating whether I want to answer it. It’s my other job, and it can only mean one thing, but answering it means I’m not getting any sleep any time soon, and I’m tired. However, it does mean that I can get out of town, and by the time I come back, the guys will be long gone and will have hopefully forgotten about my weirdness.
A spear of sadness goes through me at the thought, and instead of it making me want to stay, it actually makes me realise I need to leave even more. They have some weird hold over me and my vagina; she doesn’t make smart decisions when there's a hot man involved, and this time there are three, so there’s no fucking hope of her not getting me in trouble.
With the decision made, I stride toward the kitchen to stuff my face with as much food as possible, not knowing when I can eat again since they don’t like providing me with things like food. Once I have a mouth full, I answer my phone.
“Neith, we have a job for you. The car will be there in ten minutes, and the file will be in the car,” my handler says and then promptly hangs up.
“Lovely chat dickhead,” I comment before I quickly put together a sandwich and take the stairs two at a time to get my kit and change.
The waitress attire is definitely not suitable for whatever job I’m about to do, plus getting blood out of it would be a fucking nightmare.
Trust me, I know. I’ve made that mistake before.
I will never understand why they always call me so late and give me little time to get ready. It's probably some sort of dickish power move on their part because they’re all incredibly misogynistic, and they can’t fathom that a human woman would have such a great record for closing cases and that I must be supernatural and, therefore, the enemy.
Considering they’re supposed to protect everyone and do it without discrimination, they’re pretty fucking shit at it.
I shake my head to rid myself of my thoughts. I really don’t have time to get into why they piss me off so fucking much; I need to make sure I’ve got everything I need with me because, as usual, my handler has given me no information on the length of the job.
As I throw stuff into my bag, including guns and knives, I think that I could probably quit; I know most people would since they treat me so shit, but the thing is that I actually really like doing this job. I like that I do it better than those assholes, even though I’ll admit that it may be because I have a weird advantage. Plus, although the pay isn’t exactly great, it does top me up nicely and means that I can keep a roof over my head and food in my belly. Oh, and make the repairs to my wall when I shoot it.
So I’ll stay.
I strip out of my uniform as quickly as possible, pulling on some black jeans that are thicker than the average pair. I think that they were originally meant for people who ride motorbikes, but they work to protect my legs quite well. I also pull on a black tank that shows off a few of my tattoos, a tight black hoody, and then I pull out my trusty black leather jacket and put it on the bed ready to put on before I go. Leather is always a good idea when there’s a chance you’re going to be fighting people with weapons, and I’m definitely going to be fighting people with weapons.
I’m never given cases that aren’t deadly.
I add guns and knives everywhere, pretty much, and braid my hair into a quick French braid to keep it out of my face and out of my way.
I finish my outfit off with my thick-soled black biker boots, the comfiest fucking boots I own, and then grab my bag, swing it over my shoulder as I grab Betty as well; I never go anywhere without her, even though she’s not the subtlest of weapons.
As I’m walking down the stairs, hoping that I’ve remembered everything, my phone goes off, and I pull out to see a message from my handler: the cars here. I have told them in the past that I’ve got no neighbors to piss off, so they could just honk, but I was stared at until I felt like it was the most stupid suggestion that had ever been made in the history of the human race.
Rolling my eyes, I head out the front door and lock up my house before I approach the black sedan parked outside my home; I pull open the backdoor and slide in. The driver starts the car immediately, and we head down my long driveway as I say a silent goodbye to my little house. It may not be much, but it's home, and I never actually know whether I’ll be coming back again.
Turning my attention to the driver, who is dressed in the usual black chauffeur hat and a black suit, “Good evening, Robbie.”
My cheerful greeting is met by silence, as per usual. They never talk to me, no matter how much I talk or try to get something out of them. I swear I nearly made one crack a smile once, but he may have just needed to fart or was thinking about murdering me; that tends to make people smile.
Of course, it could be because his name isn’t Robbie; I’m not actually sure what his name is. I just took a stab in the dark, and he looks a bit like a Robbie. I wait for a moment, but when he doesn’t reply, I sigh and pick up the case file that’s on the seat next to me. Why they can’t just email this shit to me, I don’t know. It would be a lot more efficient and save the environment, blah, blah, blah.
Deciding to ignore him like he’s ignoring me, I open the file and glance over it. It’s dangerous, as I expected, they don’t give me easy jobs, as I said before, although it would be better if I at least got danger pay. Surprise, surprise, I don’t.
It looks like I’m going in to rescue the daughter of someone high enough in the government that I don’t get to know the name of the parents, but the little girl is called Emily. Bile rises in my throat when I realise that she’s only eight and the kinds of people that have taken her are known to like that a bit too much. I hope for all their sakes that she is in perfect health because otherwise, I will castrate each and every fucking one of them.
She was taken while she was out with her nanny, and they’re looking into the possibility that the nanny was involved. That’s not my department, and although I’d like to do the investigative side, I am literally only brought in to rescue people, get stolen goods or information, or take out someone who is deemed too big of a threat to be dealt with the lawful way.
I’m disposable, it probably should bother me, but at the end of the day, I’ve had quite a long time to get used to that and to know my own self-worth, so although other people seem to think that I’m disposable, and not worth keeping around I know that’s not true. Some days, that’s harder to remember than others.
They’ve been looking for her for a week and got a tip that she’s being kept in the basement of an abandoned hospital on the outskirts of a town that’s about a four-hour drive away from my hometown. The rest of the information is relatively standard. There are around eight men in attendance and guarding her most of the time. I’m going in alone, but a team will be on standby to take her when I've cleared the building and gotten her out. As always, there will be a car to bring me home, but no medical assistance or anything like that should I need it.
The report is finished with a lovely little note saying that the big boss will be expecting my report within two hours of the job ending unless there has been a severe medical emergency, and by that, he means unless I’m in a coma because I’ve had several broken bones, and some mild internal bleeding and yet because I was conscious I was still expected to write the report or I wouldn’t get paid.
That’s another thing that no one else but me seems to have to deal with. From what I’ve learned, everyone else gets at least a week to write up a job report, and if they’ve so much as stubbed a toe, they get an extension.
If it was because I was bad at my job, then I may understand it, but I have never failed on a case. I always meet the objective, and I know that makes them suspicious they think I’m a supe, but because there’s no proof and I went through all the blood tests and everything else that they put you through when you become involved with them, and all of that pointed to me being human they’re still suspicious just because I’m good at what I do.
“And that little bit extra,” my inner voice mutters sassily.
Thankfully, she blends in with the other voices, and I can easily drown her out. The voices do come in handy in some cases. I’ll admit that there are a few things about me that aren’t normal; I don’t get turned if I’m bitten or scratched, and I can find anything or anyone if I want to, but because I can't explain how I do it and it would most likely mean that I’d end up getting implicated in the crime I don’t get to use that as much as I’d like. It can be a bit temperamental; sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I also have the voices, which offer me nothing but some comfort since they’ve been there for the whole of my life. I also have a few other things up my sleeves, but as I’ve said, I have had all manner of tests, and they test me randomly too, hoping to catch me out, I think, but they always come back negative because although I am a weird human, I am still a human.
I’ve read the file. I know what I’m walking into, well, as best as I usually do anyway, and we’re only twenty minutes into the four-hour drive. I’ve asked these drivers to put music on or fucking something when they do these drives, but they never do. They just ignore me. It’s practically torture, and I hate fucking silence. My instincts are pretty fucking amazing, and considering I don’t know when I’m going to be able to get some sleep next and I’ve had a pretty full-on day anyway, I’m going to grab some sleep now.
I put the partition up because the thought of being watched while I sleep creeps me out, and then hold Betty to my chest, cuddling her like a normal person would cuddle a teddy. Technically, I should put her as far away from me as possible, just in case I have one of those dreams where I wake up shooting again. Knowing my luck, I’ll end up shooting the driver, and then I’ll have to go on the run for shooting an HID agent, and I really can’t be fucked with any of that.
Having said all of that, she’s like my security blanket, and I don’t want to put her down. I trust that my internal alarm will wake me up when we get to our destination since people waking me up never go well for the person waking me, and I settle down to sleep. It always fascinates me that in this kind of situation, I have an internal alarm clock that wakes me up, but I usually won't wake up for shit. It’s like my body somehow knows when I’m safe, and it can be lazy, and when there’s a potential threat present, and I need to be able to wake up at the drop of a hat.
**********
My internal alarm clock wakes me as I expected, but I am left slightly disoriented from whatever the fuck I was dreaming about before I woke up. I can feel that the car is still moving, which means there’s a threat and before I’ve even opened my eyes the familiar sound of Betty getting ready to be fired sounds throughout the silent car.
“What the fuck!” the driver exclaims, which is the first thing I’ve heard him or any of them say ever, and I’ve been working for them for years now.
I pop up into a sitting position in the middle of the car, Betty still clutched in my hands, and I’m about to mock him, that he’s the only one that has done this when I see what made him curse.
Well fuck. We’re on some backroads, densely packed forest on either side of us, and we’re approaching a roadblock. From what I can make out in the darkness, several black cars similar to the one I’m traveling in are blocking the road, and my alarm bells go off immediately, especially when a silhouetted figure lifts what looks suspiciously like a bazooka and points it at the car.
This is going to hurt.
“Fuck,” the guy curses again as he starts to slow down. It's not the most brilliant move, but honestly, he can't go forward.
I see the flash of the bazooka, and the next thing I know, pain blasts through me as I fly through the air, catapulted straight from the car and yet still somehow holding onto Betty. I land on the floor with a sickening crunch as I feel several of my bones break, and something goes very wrong; blood bubbles up my throat, and I know that something vital has been pierced. Finally, the darkness pulls at me like an old friend, and I willingly go as all my pain fades away.
**********
The darkness is familiar and comforting, and I am aware that it shouldn’t be because that’s just a testament to how many times I’ve come here. One of these days, I’m not going to be able to find my way out of the floaty darkness that I have affectionately called, Friend. That’s its name because that’s what it feels like to me.
The voices seem to echo more here, still there, but somehow more content like they too, consider this place home. Speaking or rather, I guess thinking of the voices, I find it interesting that they didn’t warn me of this impending catastrophe; it seems that the voice the other night really was a one-off. I shouldn’t be surprised; they have never warned me before, and as I said, it happens often enough.
Just as I expected, I start to feel that tug in the middle of my chest, and I know that I’m about to be pulled back. I just wonder what I’m going to be pulled back to.
**********
Pain.
Not as much as there should be; in fact, it mostly seems to be reserved for my exposed areas like my face, hands, and one of my feet because apparently, somewhere in that traumatizing ordeal, I’ve lost my shoe.
The darkness still clings to me, and with it, I get the overwhelming knowledge that I need to remain still and not breathe. You’d think this would be a problem, but in this state, when the darkness still clings to me with warning, it’s not. Again, this is something that I know I should question, but at the same time, it’s saved my life, in a sense, so many times that I don’t see the need to question it.
The best way I can explain it is that while my consciousness is back in my body, the rest of me is still safely cocooned in the darkness, and so is my ability to breathe.
“She’s dead,” a voice that I know is one of the agents from the HID states.
Now, are they here for rescue? I could have been out for hours, and I’m never really sure until I come back properly.
“You sound surprised,” another voice I recognise as Tom replies, “She was blown up by a bazooka and launched over a hundred feet from the car.”
“I was sure she was a Supe, so was he. He’s going to be mad as fucking hell that he doesn’t have something new to play with.” the voice I now recognise as Richard replies.