Page 3 of Revenge of the Forgotten

A therapist once told her it was her brain trauma-blocking.

The bartender never cut her off. Vega didn’t care how she was supposed to get home or if she even went home… Here we are again. Her thoughts started to run together. Gonna be just me, myself, and I. Again.

Her inner demons flooded her mind, stirring up another wave of nausea. Vega felt like she was seeing herself outside of her body, floating above in a haze as she reached across the bar to the new shot. Her stomach twirled at the sensation, and as much as she tried to push away the feeling, it sunk its talons in, taking hold.

Ringlet curls bounced in her vision before she blacked out entirely.

Lightning struck, and wind whipped around her. Her stomach lurched, the feeling of falling seizing her body while visions clouded her perception.

The out-of-body experience didn’t let up. It only intensified when Vega realized what she was seeing. She and three others were circling a fire, their palms crusted with blood from matching cuts. Her voice rang over the crackle of the large flame.

“We fight for our realm, for our lands. We fight for our people and for those who can no longer fight for themselves. We fight together.”

The girl with the pretty curls reached out and squeezed her hand. “Together.”

The two men in the group looked at one another, the tallest nodding his head with a surety Vega had never seen before. “And we fight until our dying breaths.”

For one split second, her eyes locked with his, and Vega felt like the world stopped. Those eyes. She knew those onyx eyes. The spinning feeling in her stomach shrank, and with a gasp, Vega was back in the Chicago bar.

Somehow, she was still sitting upright on the barstool. Vega turned to look around the bar, her black-painted fingernails digging into the bar top for support. Her knuckles were white from the grip she held as she hoped not to fall off of the stool and embarrass herself.

No one in the bar seemed fazed. At the billiard table, a man with peppered hair reracked the balls on the table, smoke spiraling above his head from the lit cigarette between his lips. The bar was as it was before she slipped into her mind.

What the fuck was that?

The bartender came over, noticing the shift in Vega’s mood. “You okay?” Her dark eyebrow raised, almost touching her hairline.

“Fine. Where’s your bathroom?” Vega spoke, her voice quivering. The woman pointed to the other end of the cramped room. The scrape of her stool against the floor caused looks from the other patrons, finally taking notice of the new face in their midst. Vega speed-walked to the bathroom and flung the door open with a bang.

A full-length mirror sat in the corner. Vega’s long, dark brown hair was down, billowing around her shoulders in loose curls. The eyes staring back at her in the mirror were ice-colored. Her skin was as white as a piece of paper, and sweat glistened along her brow.

She braced herself against the wall, hands on either side of the mirror. “Jesus Christ.” She’d stopped believing in God a long time ago. “Get yourself together.”

Vega once had dreams like this that would keep her up at night—of herself in a life she couldn’t remember, with people and places that weren’t like anything she’d ever seen. It had taken years of therapy after opening up to Chase about them to realize it was just her mind playing tricks with her, trying to fill in the gaps she’d forced herself to forget from a childhood of trauma.

A woman in a biker jacket walked into the bathroom, and Vega shoved herself off the wall as swiftly as she could—no one needed to see her talking to herself. The woman stared at her before she slipped into a stall. Vega turned the sink water on cold and splashed her face.

Do not break down now.

The phrase had become a motto for Vega over the years. Anytime something happened where she felt like she might spiral out of control, she reminded herself that no one was going to pick her up if she crumbled.

If she closed her eyes and focused, she could hear the words floating through the air, as if they’d come from someone else and not her.

Vega turned the water off, dried her face with a scratchy paper towel, and toddled back to her seat at the bar. She smiled at the bartender when the woman looked her way, realizing that it seemed more like a grimace as she caught her reflection in the bottles across the bar.

Can’t you be normal for one fucking minute?

Vega hung her head in her hands as the door chimed with a new arrival. Someone sat down on the empty stool next to her—as if there weren’t plenty of empty seats elsewhere.

The voice next to her was melodic and smooth. “Can I get two of whatever she’s been drinking?”

Vega never understood the saying “a voice smooth as butter” until now.

She locked gazes with the woman sitting beside her. Vega’s stomach did that free fall thing again, and she steadied herself against the bar’s edge for the second time tonight to keep from falling off the stool.

Vega knew that face, had seen those spiral curls too many times to count.

The muted smile on the girl’s face was relaxed, and her shoulders dipped in relief as she took a large breath.

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