C17| Run and Never Look Back

"You can't stay here, Scarlet." Mary said finally breaking the somber silence. "Your mother..." she broke off looking for a polite way to tell me that my mother was a murderess self-serving bitch and that she would sooner commend me to the fires of hell than help me escape an unjust charge. 

“You have run.” She spoke softly, but with the same firm resolute tone she'd always had with me.  “Run and never look back. The mayor, pitiful as he may be right now, is a cruel vicious man. He'll never let it go." 

 

"If he finds out that your still alive.” She shuddered and rapidly shook her head. It was nice to know Mary cared for me in her own way, she was a rare breed. 

 

"You need not worry about Mayor Redford." I told her, turning to watch her as she stared at my father's corpse. If I could of, I would have found a sick sort of amusement when the thought of the mayors death crossed her mind. But practical Mary did not linger on that line of thought for long. 

 

"Better safe than sorry." She shook her head. 

 

"You will find now protection here, child. You must leave, this household and its current master are-" 

 

"I know who and what my mother is." The words falling from my lips are a truth a child should maybe never come to know. "My parents are why I am here actually." 

 

Mary turned to me, taking her sad eyes off my father's body for the first time. 

 

"That seems a foolish idea if what you told me happened today was true." She responded. "What you don't believe me." I scoff. 

 

The stern older woman shook her head at me. "Don't forget who raised you, girl." Mary glared at me, still pale as a ghost but even then, her stern voice and uncompromising presence were a sort of comfort. 

 

“You need to run.” I rolled my eyes at her.

Leaving this place, this godforesaken town and these people be they dead or alive, had always been the plan but first... revenge. Yet as I continued to watch my father sway gently through the air, there seems to be no energy left in me for vengeance. The unholy rage had quieted, left me empty and exhausted, though not physically tired more mentally weary. This too must be one of the effects of my new existence, my body had been reforged, overflowing with power and strenght unrivalled yet my mind remained the same; fickle and human. 

 

I would have to ask Evan how one was to endure centuries of immortally when the mind and heart remained human by nature. 

 

“Go and live." Mary said, pulling me from my througts. "Take some money from your father's safe and use it to find a better life. Forget all that's happened here, all the wrongs and all the bloodshed." She grasped my cold hand, the heat of her skin sending tingles across my palm. 

 

 

"Leave us all behind and go find something different for yourself out there. It'll be hard, scary even. But your smart and strong, so strong Scarlet. You've made it this far; you can be free now." 

 

"Go." 

 

I had found the strength in my legs again, moved from our small corner library to my fathers office, it too was the same, everything was the same expect for me. The world remains as it was a cold cruel and beautiful place filled with ugly people and terrifying monsters, only I had changed; left the day to become a creature of the night. 

Which is why I didn't flinch when I heard it, the cries carried in through the open window.

"Fire!"