The Immortal Series Book 2

Eva’s dead. They’ve killed her, just like the rest. They never let us see anything, but they always make sure that we know.

It was Molly that found her clothes in a neat pile out by the shed.

Her chore for the day was raking leaves, and we’ve all been at this long enough to know to look for the clothes, because that’s where they leave them. They want us to find them as a warning.

We find bodies occasionally, just enough to keep us convinced that they are actually dying, but the bodies are all staged to look like accidents.

We know they’re not.

The Daughters do it to make us behave. Mother gets so angry when we don’t behave, and this is how we’re kept in line.

If you break the rules, you get taken to her, and so far nobody has ever come back. Mother doesn’t like it when we misbehave.

I don’t remember being anywhere else than here. They call it Home, and I’ve never had another name for it. It’s the same with the others; there’s just blackness in our memories before we wake up here.

We have knowledge of things like reading and writing, but nothing specific about who we are or where we came from.

As far as I know, I’ve only ever been here, because I don’t have a lump of blackness. I only remember this. I’ve only ever been who I am now. Maybe that’s why I’ve lived to be one of the oldest.

I don’t have any reason to escape. No blackness to fight away, just this pathetic life in this cursed place.

I’m standing in one of the bathrooms, running cold water over the back of my hands. I do this to calm myself down.

I’ve tried to use it as a training mechanism, trying to convince myself that it works, that I can be calm if I just keep running the water and let my problems wash away down the drain.

Looking up into the mirror, I can tell it still doesn’t have any effect on me. My large, gray eyes are ringed with shadow, and a twitching in the left gives away my fear.

The gleaming white tiles around me mock my disheveled appearance. I ran in here from the girls’ sleeping quarters, where I’d been found by Molly.

I’m not crying yet. I’m not sure if I will, not for Eva anyway. It seems cold, but once you see so many of your friends die, you start to feel numb.

I barely see any life in my eyes these days. I’m just tired and numb. She’s the first one this month, but we’re only nine days into it, so it’s not saying much.

It’s not their fault. Behaving isn’t as easy as it seems.

They starve us of magic here. Something leeches it from us, so if there are times when you find an anomaly or get hit with a power surge, people can’t control themselves.

They say it’s like coming up for air after being underwater for too long. You can’t help but gulp it in. And for that, for a natural reaction, you get punished.

It’s easier for me because magic doesn’t affect me like the others. Whatever species I am, and I have no idea what, nothing kick-starts whatever is inside of me.

I think I might be human, but there would be no reason to keep me here in that case. They don’t need humans.

I finally turn the cold tap off and lay my hands on the edge of the sink. They’re shaking slightly, but I ignore it and focus on taking measured breaths.

After a few, a bit of color returns to my pale cheeks. I brush my super short sandy hair off my forehead and roll my shoulders.

Don’t let them see you sweat, girl; they like the fear. That was the advice given to me when I was seven years old by a sprite who disappeared two days later.

He never let this place beat him down, and they killed him for it.

I take another disappointed look in the mirror, taking in my regulation gray sweater, although it’s too big and the sleeves too long, and my black cotton pants long since lost their hems.

I barely pass uniform inspections, but it’ll have to do. It’s not like they’ll give me anything new.

I nod to my reflection in an effort to seem more confident than I really am. I walk over to the metal door and pull it open. I stifle a shriek as I find myself face-to-face with a Daughter.

Well, not quite face-to-face, as I’m much shorter than her. After all these years, you would think I’d be used to them appearing like this, but it never quite goes away.

She stands there in her gray robes that fall to the floor. All the Daughters wear the same things, ominous robes with ominous hoods and metal masks over the top half of their faces.

They shouldn’t be able to see, but they can. Or at least they can sense us in some way.

Only the nose and mouth are visible, and I can tell from the mottled black and green skin that this is the one we call Seven.

She leans in toward me, and I force myself not to back away. Her metallic brow comes within inches of mine, and I can smell old meat on her breath.

“Remy,” she whispers at me, “we were looking for you.”

I try to look straight at where her eyes should be, but I find myself staring at the ground instead.

“You found me, Daughter. Is there someplace else I should be?” My voice sounds meek and reedy, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

A gloved hand reaches up and presses two wiry fingers to my forehead. “Mother sees potential in you, Remy. You have behaved for so long. Mother watches you.”

I flinch away from her, still staring at the floor.

She removes her fingers, and her next whisper sounds somewhat smug. “Mother watches, and so do we. And we wonder, child. We wonder when you will break.”

I say nothing, but a spike of fear and anger rolls through me. I don’t want to die. I keep repeating that to myself. I don’t want to die. I don’t. When I look up, she’s gone.

I blink a few times and then leave the bathroom, stepping out into the concrete corridor, painted beige with no adornments or carpet. Home is more like a compound than a school.

It looks like the prison it is, most of the time. At the end of each corridor is a portrait of Mother in various heroic poses, a beautiful, dark-haired woman with whom I associate fear and death.

I look away from the portraits I pass and don’t look at the metallic doors. They’re all helpfully labeled, but I haven’t needed help with them since I was six years old.

They teach us here like we’re at boarding school, a concept I learned about from one of the thousands of books they make me read.

I ignore all the classrooms and head to the stone staircase in the corner. It only goes about halfway up to the next floor before it stops abruptly, but I learned how to climb around it years ago.

The stone wall is pockmarked enough to create handholds.

Once on the second floor, I stop to take a quick look, like I always do. The walls are still scorched black. Some of the wall was blasted into nothing, and some lies melted.

It was a kid here that did it, when his internal fire was released. It was before I came, and people are still guessing about what he was. Most people believe he was a dragon, but I don’t think so.

I don’t know what he was—and there are so many types of magical species out there—but I always imagined that dragons wouldn’t look human.

From the stories, Steven was a small, quiet boy, but one that managed to burn so hot he melted stone.

I pick my usual path through and go into the third room, where the far corner isn’t as scorched as the rest of the building. I knew he’d be here, just like he knew I’d find him.

He sits huddled into the corner, trying to make his long, lanky frame as small as possible. His head is on his knees, and I can see the sobs racking his body.

This is where Mark and I first met. He was ten years old when they brought him to Home, the dark-haired boy with the scarred wrists and no memory.

My first memories were of this place, but Mark has a whole ten years that he has lost, and it affected him more than most. He had to relearn how to talk, read, and generally survive.

The other boys said he had night terrors so bad he had to be tied down when the lights went out.

They sleep on the other side of the compound, so we couldn’t hear, but the boys say the screams ripped the night apart.

This was always my place, but I found him here once. He doesn’t remember it, and I don’t like to talk about it, but it was only four years ago.

I know he gets flashes of it sometimes, of holding a sharp piece of glass to his own wrist, of muttering in a language neither of us seemed to know, but he never asks more than that.

The night terrors stopped after that moment, which confused the Daughters, and he never had another episode like it.

Until maybe today.

I sit myself on the floor, near him but giving him space. His square glasses are lying on the floor, discarded by him.

He finally looks up at me, his dark eyes reddened and his hair sticking up at all angles.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” He’s talking about Eva. I nod, and he lets out a deep groan, clawing at his cheeks with his fingers. “Have the stories started?”

I shrug. I’ve only seen Molly so far, but the stories always start. There are fifty-eight of us here at the moment, and we all talk.

“They’ll talk.” Mark’s eyes spill over with tears again. “And they should. It’s my fault, Remy. I killed her.”