Page 8 of Muted Voices (Broken Ashes #1)

I hear footsteps approach, and yet another voice I recognise chimes into the conversation that they’re having around my dead body.

I am dead, or well, I was. I’m in a kind of in-between state at the moment, which I don’t fully understand and don’t try to. If a specialist were to examine me now, they would declare me dead. Not in the I can lower my heartbeat and take shallow breaths like some military are trained to do, although that would make it more explainable. No, I am dead—no heartbeat, no breathing, and injuries that no one could survive.

Dead, dead, deady, dead, dead.

Whoops, that one kind of got away from me; I remind myself that I need to tune in and listen to what is going on around me because not only is it evident because the darkness has suspended me as it has, but also because what they have said so far is truly disturbing and a sign that something massive is going on. Conspiracy and mass murder, corruption in the human police force, that kind of fucking huge.

“We’ll just send a few vamps or shifters his way. He can’t be too mad then.” Rebecca adds.

Those words prove it.

“True. It’s a shame about Frankie, though,” Tom replies.

“A necessary evil to make sure that Neith was killed. You know that this order came from way up high.” Richard says callously.

Great, so someone high up in the force ordered me to be killed and wanted it done badly enough that they didn’t care who they killed alongside me. I feel bad for the driver now, even though he was a douche.

“All of them wanted her gone. I don’t know what she fucking did, but it's her own fault she’s dead right now,” Tom replies.

“They were probably fed up with her perfect success rate too. I mean, it’s impossible, no wonder he was interested in her. He’ll be disappointed to know that she’s human after all,” Rebecca practically spits.

“Alright, what do we do with them now?” Tom asks, seeming to want to get everyone back on track.

“Roll them into the woods; the blood and the smell will draw in the animals that live there, and hopefully, a bear will finish them off, no evidence,” Richard replies.

“Sounds good to me,” Rebecca sounds entirely unconcerned about the morality of what they’re about to do.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, because of the Darkness still clinging to me, I don’t have to remind myself not to make a noise when they start to roughly drag my corpse, and that’s what they think I am, across the rough asphalt and then unceremoniously shove me down a bank that has me rolling until I hit a rock at the bottom. I can fucking feel that though, and it hurts, not as much as being blown up, but pretty fucking badly.

I hear a thump next to me, and I know that they’ve done the same to my poor driver, who was a douche but didn’t deserve to die, and especially not in the way that he did.

As their voices fade, I hear Richard say, “The recovery truck to grab the shell of the car should be here soon, and so should the forensic team to get rid of any lingering evidence. Not that anyone is worried about that all the way out here.”

I so shouldn’t have fallen asleep, although my instincts didn’t tell me otherwise. Maybe they’re on the fritz.

The darkness still doesn’t retreat, and I know why. It won’t until I’m completely safe, and I’m not going to be safe until everyone has gone. So I lay there dead and unmoving while I listen to the noise that they’re all making, and I feel grateful that it is most likely scaring away anything that may want to eat us.

Oh, my fuck Betty.

She better be fucking okay, or not only am I going to kill all the fuckers involved in my death, but I’m also going to torture them, my poor Betty.

Finally, everything falls quiet, and the darkness retreats. I take a deep breath, letting out a groan as everything that was left over from the blast to show that I was really dead heals. What doesn’t heal is the wounds I’ve gotten since being suspended, so all the cuts and scrapes and bruises from rolling down the hill.

I open my eyes to the darkened tree canopy above me and then get my thoughts in order. First things first, I need to check that all of my limbs work the way they should, and I breathe out a sigh of relief when they all do what I ask them to. The next most important task on my list is Betty. I need to find my safety blanket shotgun. With that established, I pop up to sit and almost let out an almighty fucking scream; literally inches away from my face is a big fucking bear, who looks just as fucking shocked as I am, but far too fucking close for my liking.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the mangled remains of the driver, and I thank my lucky fucking stars that the bear decided to eat him first.

Of course, the darkness that was clinging to me might have something to do with it. You know, one of these days, I really should look into these weird happenings again and see if I can find any new information on why they happen.

A snarl of hot breath flits across my face, and I harshly remind my inner ramblings that we’re about to die again and now is not a good time to be writing a to-do list.

“Nice bear,” I mutter as I try to inch away ever so fucking slowly.

He lets me move, but his eyes are glued to me, and I think it's more playing with me than actually letting me escape. I mean, do bears play with their food? Is that something I should know? As I move inch by excruciating inch, I try to scan my surroundings for some kind of weapon because I have nothing on me, which means before I came back, some fucker took my weapons. I’m scuttling backward, my eyes searching as well as trying to watch the bear and my heart beating like a drum in my ears, which I’m sure isn’t helping my situation.

Bears can sense fear, right?

Does that really matter now? I’m reasonably confident that I won’t give a shit about the answer if I’m fucking dead.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a familiar shape lying in the forest floor debris.

Betty.

My dear, sweet Betty, she’s okay, and she’s going to save my life again. Of course, I have to reach her, and judging from the bone-grinding growl that just escaped the bear, I’m running out of fucking time, I’m going to have to move quickly really fucking quickly, and I know that isn’t a good idea around bears, but honestly I think he’s going to eat me regardless, so as he rears up, ready maul me I move, launching myself backward trying to use all of my strength as I push up to my feet.

This obviously angers him, and he swipes out with one of his giant paws that only just misses me as I barely manage to stay on my feet. Tripping over and landing on my ass now would be a death sentence, and I’ve already died once tonight; I don’t want to do it again. Especially since I have never died in such quick succession before, and I don’t know if it would end up being a real death.

I do what they tell you never to do when faced with a predator, and I turn my back, racing to where I saw Betty, the pounding of the bear's feet chasing behind me, making the ground rumble, although that could be his hungry growls. Still running, I scoop Betty up, turn around, and take aim.

I instinctively know that he’s right fucking behind me. The good news is he’s an easier target; the bad news is that it means he’s super fucking close to me. I pull the trigger on Betty just as the bear strikes out. I move backward but not quick enough, and I feel the bear's claws tear through the skin of my hip.

Motherfucker that hurts.

I have no time to dwell on it though, as I pull Betty’s trigger again. The first one slows him down, but the second one ends his life, and the forest floor rumbles as he hits it.

“Thanks, Betty. I know I can always count on you.” I say breathlessly as I let her drop to my side, the shooty end pointing downward as I lean on it.

I force my eyes to look at the wound on my hip, and there are three gaping claw marks, blood soaking my tattered shirt. Great, I really should go to the hospital for that, but if I turn up anywhere, I’m going to be flagged, and they’ll come for me again, and considering that they were sure I was dead, it’s going to raise some questions, and I feel like I’ll end up in the hands of whoever he is, that they kept mentioning.

I can’t even go home. They know where I live, and I bet they’ll have people watching the place as well. They clearly want me dead, and they don’t care who gets in the way.

I don’t know where to go, not only to make sure I’m not killed again but also because there is some serious corruption going on, and supernaturals are being abducted and given to someone who can’t be up to anything good. I can’t just ignore that, and I can’t just make it about me because it’s not. It’s about something so much more than me and the fact that they killed me, but who can I go to?

SID would be the best option; this is the sort of thing that they deal with, but they will be hesitant to believe me not only because I’m a human but also because as soon as they search me in their system, they’re going to find out who I worked for and that I’m dead, that search will also flag up on the HID database and I’m going to be hunted, and knowing them, most likely accused of faking my own death and killing the driver.

I really can’t stay here any longer, but I need my bag, it’s got a few snacks in it, and whenever I come back, I need food, a lot of food. I’m not talking about a decent-sized dinner; I mean, a diner big enough for a growing shifter and about four of them. If I don’t get it, then I become really weak and almost delirious; I’m not really sure what would happen past that point because I’ve always managed to find something. It’s even more important that I manage to find my bag and the food because I’m pretty severely injured, and that means any energy reserves are already working hard to deal with that.

Pushing the pain to the back of my mind, I lift Betty up onto my shoulder and move toward the steep bank. The sky is just beginning to lighten, and I need to get out of here before the sun comes up. When I manage to get to the road, it’s clear that they’ve done a proper HID cover up, there is absolutely no sign that anything has happened, and unless someone walks into the woods in this specific spot in the next couple of days, I doubt there will be any evidence at all, animals having eaten the rest of the driver and most likely picked the bear apart too.

I spend about ten minutes looking for my bag and becoming increasingly worried that it got destroyed in the blast, but I vaguely remember still having a grip on it as I flew from the car, and I really hope I did. Just as I’m about to give up, the sun rising even more in the sky and panicking me, my intuition kicks in, and that uncanny gift I have for being able to find almost anything that I set my mind to so long as it’s decided to work blinks online. Without thinking too much about it, I walk to the other side of the road and to the treeline, walking a few feet in and finding my bag immediately.

Thank fuck, I only have a few snacks in there and not anything that’s really substantial enough, but it’s going to have to do. I pull out some jerky and a granola bar, stuffing the granola bar in my mouth as I tear my spare shirt into strips, and gritting my teeth, I start to tie it around my waist and hip, covering the wound, the last thing I need is an infection. Fortunately, the shirt I’m wearing, in fact, my whole outfit, is black, and the blood from the wound and the various scrapes I got are somewhat obscured. They’re at least less obvious than they would be on a light-coloured shirt.

I can’t see myself, but I must look fucking awful, so I rummage around in my bag again and pull out an oversized plaid shirt and pull it on. I usually have some wet wipes in here, but I remember I took them out, and they’re in my front room. So, even though the shirt can cover up the worst of my appearance unless someone were to look really closely at me, my face is still covered in dirt and blood from the scrapes; I can at least explain them away fairly easily by saying that I tripped while hiking.

This is as good as it’s going to get, so ignoring the painful tug in my side from the bear claw injury, I pull on my bag and tighten the straps. Since I still don’t know what I’m going to do, I just start walking so that I can get as far away from this site as possible.

As I walk, and the sky lightens, I try to think about where I could go and how I can lay low but still help the supernaturals that are being kidnapped and clearly used for something by the humans in the HID or someone higher up who's using them for their own purposes.

Come on now, you know exactly who you need to go to, my bitchy inner voice mutters to me, and I swear even the muted voices start to stir a bit more at the thought, almost like they’re in agreement.

Of course, I know my inner voice is right. I mean, it is me after all, the voice is me. I need to go to Evander; I know he’s a part of a team for the SID, and if anyone is going to believe me and not report me to anyone, it would be him, or at least I hope it would be.

It's not like we left it on good terms; he got into the supernatural academy with ease, like I always knew he would, and I didn’t. I still would’ve stayed in contact with him. He’s my best friend, the only person that I’ve really been able to be myself around, and he’s saved me in more ways than he even knows, but like most things, after he got accepted, life got incredibly complicated for me, I ended up in some incredibly dangerous situations, and it was better if my darkness didn’t taint his promising life.

So I kept an eye from a distance but steered clear, and no one knows of my connection to him. Which in this situation especially works in my favor a great deal. As far as the HID are concerned, I lived on the streets, and I ran with some fucked up people. They don’t know about anything before that, just that I was an orphan, and when I aged out of the system, I ended up in some trouble that put me on their radar.

The plan is a good one, and the fact that the voices agree means it’s most likely a good idea. The problem is I have no idea where I am, and like I’ve mentioned before, my knack for finding things is temperamental at best, so I have no idea how to find him. I can't risk finding a town because the HID will have their tech people searching all the cameras around this location for me, just in case, because they’re paranoid and someone clearly thinks I’m supernatural.

I’m obviously something; humans don’t just die and then come back, not like I do and not with as much finality as I do either, but all of the mandatory tests that are extensive and not great fun came back that I was human, both when I was eighteen and in the years since when they tested me at the HID far more often than anyone else got tested purely because of my case success rate.

Suddenly, a blaring ping of intuition shocks the shit out of me, and I realise exactly where Evander is and how to get to him.

There are just a couple of issues with that information: I’m walking in the wrong direction because, of course, I fucking am, and I spin around so I’m facing the right way and start walking again. The next issue is that from the information I have suddenly pinging around in my brain, he’s pretty far away. I can’t get a car unless I find one completely abandoned, but even then, it wouldn’t be smart because someone will report it stolen, and then it will be traced to wherever Evander is, and consequently me, I can’t risk that. Which means I’m going to have to walk it.