Page 1 of Black Hand
Black Hand
1
Iwas unprepared.
I wasn’t ready for the curve ball life was about to throw at me.
Nor did I anticipate what the fates had in store for the near future.
The tiny pinpricks of light reflected through the window of the plane, the city below the metal bird stretching over the hills as far as I could see. I mushed my face closer to get a better look, but the glass fogged from my breath. My stomach dropped when we lost altitude, the winds lashing at the plane making the last fifty minutes of the flight turbulent and unsettling. If it went down, it’d solve a lot of my problems. Although …
I was unprepared for that, as well.
I wanted to live.
My heart skipped a beat when the light blinked on above my head for the seatbelt, the loud chime echoing through my head like a gong going off. The plane was made for humans, not creatures like me with super-sensitive hearing. Being anAtuawas seen as fiction in this world. They liked to call us vampires, but little did they know we were very much real, we lived among them, we manipulated their lives for our gain, and we had no remorse at all. Well, most of my kind didn’t. I, on the other hand, was cursed … or something. I cared a little too much.
I should’ve expected my reaction to get attention, but I did not. It would’ve saved me a lot of hassle if I didn’t flinch like a rookie. Too late I noticed the flight attendant beelining my way with a look of determination on her face. Her hands were swinging by her body in fast, sharp jerks as her legs scrunched her skirt above her knees from her long strides. The woman was on a mission and there was no mistaking that.
You’d think she was about to fight a crocodile to save my life.
“You doing okay there, doll?” Her brown gaze locked on my face, the expression there telling me I’d better not lie to her, and her hairstyle with not a single hair out of line said, “Don’t mess with me.”.
“I’m good, thank you.” Offering a small smile that was more a press of my lips than anything else, I stared at her chin. A bad habit I’d developed through the years so I could keep my eyes hidden. They gave away the fire scorching my insides from the anger I’d internalized for centuries. To humans they were just freaky, I guessed.
“She gets nervous when flying,” Veronica chirped from next to me, shifting in her seat and flipping her blonde ponytail over her shoulder with a delicate hand. “She’ll be fine as soon as we land.”
“We are almost there.” The Flight attendant gave me a once over as if checking for tells that I wasn’t being truthful. “Keep your seats up and put your seatbelts on. Around this time of the year, the winds don’t make it easy for those that get jittery on a flight.”
“Will do,” we both piped in with tight smiles aimed at the attendant, and I turned to look out the window again because I was done talking. I heard her footsteps slowly walking away after about a minute, and she’d probably stared at the back of my head that whole time.
“Stay alert. You’re slipping,” Veronica murmured under her breath, her words too low for anyone but me to hear her. “Snap out of it before we have the same situation we had three years ago.”
“Right.” Ignoring her jab about my trip to the cages—where I spent an entire year in darkness with barely any blood to keep me alive—I kept my eyes glued to the glass, seeing nothing, though her words did send a ping straight through my gut. My fingers trailed over the inside of my left forearm, the phantom pain reminding me of the ripped flesh that used to be there regardless of the smooth skin covering it now. The cruel voices laughing and gloating at my pain while they teared my flesh were trying to drown me, but I clenched my jaw and pushed them away. I would not dwell on that now.
Not ever.
Immortality was seen as a blessing by humans, their lives spent dreaming of having eternity to do everything they wanted. They envied creatures they read about in books, creatures like me that kept their youth and roamed through centuries. What they didn’t see was the ugly truth behind what we were. They were blind to all the suffering we went through while our physical bodies stayed the same, only memories of the pain left behind haunting our dreams.
And there wasn’t even a scar to show for it.
Only memories.
Snatching my hand away, I tightened my fist and used the sharp bite of my nails to bring me out of that dark hole filled with misery. Nothing good ever came from dwelling on the past. Yet … darting my gaze across the lights below us, I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me. I wished I was down there with them. I wished I belonged to their world instead of the hellish nightmare mine was. It was difficult to swallow the lump clogging my throat while my lashes fluttered to get rid of the burn behind my eyes. I would not cry. Looking back, I hadn’t cried for years, and I had no intention to start now. No, I had a job to do.
“You need to move,” Veronica mumbled as she turned to face me, her brown eyes full of pity. My lips pressed in a firm line of displeasure, but I couldn’t blame my friend for feeling sorry for me. I was an emotional, pathetic fool most days, and what I was sent here to do would be just another thing to add to my nightmares. “Don’t do anything stupid, Brooklyn, I beg of you. Not now.”
A lock of fire-red hair fell over my eye and I blew it up in frustration. It wasn’t like I planned to do stupid things, though the word stupid was debatable depending which perspective one used to look at things, of course. I just had issues with blindly following orders. Personally, I couldn’t say needing more information before you took someone’s life was stupid, but what did I know? According to those that ruled over my life, not much obviously.
“Bee?” Veronica squeezed my knee and brought me back to the present. “I can do it—”
“No, I got this.” I didn’t allow her to finish the sentence. She had done enough to cover for my little rebellions. I handled the cages. Veronica wouldn’t last a week.
Plus, I had a plan.
A stupid one, of course.
“Forty minutes until landing,” my friend reminded me, staring over the seat in front of her as she flattened invisible wrinkles on her pencil skirt.
