To Hell & Back

The next memory started abruptly. I was staring at a wooden target that had two axes lodged in it. A third axe had sunk into the target next to the other two with a thunk moments later. I grinned, turned to my father, and said, “That’s three! Now pay up.”

Those words made me realize what memory this was. I can’t remember how old I was, but I was still pretty damn small. My father was teaching me how to throw axes and knives. I think he was running out of things to do with me that would keep me the innocent little girl he thought of me as without leaving areas he was already familiar with.

He taught me what he knew: a little hunting, fishing, and so forth, but I could tell he was holding back from really teaching me. He was just too familiar with the guns and other weapons we used. I didn’t press it because I just wanted to have fun.

“St—” my father began before I cut him off.

“No! You promised me. Three axes in a row into the target from twenty feet away without missing,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and glaring. “There they are. I want my ice cream!”

He gave a dramatic sigh, ruffled my hair, then took me to get the promised dessert from a nearby shop. When he handed it over, he said, “Eat slowly.”

“I eat as fast as I want!” I crowed defiantly.

He opened his mouth to say more but his phone buzzed. He flipped it open and cursed, “We have to go.”

“Go? Where? N— oh shit, it’s cold,” I moaned, bracing for the brain freeze that was forming.

“Of course it is cold, and stop cursing, young lady,” my father said. I stuck my tongue out at him, but he was too busy tapping away on his phone to see it. “Come, we have to go. Right now.”

I followed him as he exited the ice cream shop and briskly walked along the sidewalk.

“Father?” I asked. “Car is the other way, no?”

“Just follow,” he muttered. His abruptness was making me uneasy. When I looked up from my ice cream, he was glancing around with a near frantic look on his face.

“Da-da?” I whispered, frightened. His fear was palpable; it was almost like I could taste it. “What’s going on?”

He didn’t have time to answer. Machine gun fire roared from out of nowhere. Something in me took over, shoving me into motion faster than I could think. I dropped to the ground, covered my ears, and rolled beneath a stone bench as bullets hit the pavement around me. Cars, trucks, store fronts, they were all torn to shreds by the loudest gun I had ever heard.

I had shot many of my father’s guns while hunting or just having fun out in the country, but I had never been shot at. It was an entirely different experience; I didn’t like it. The deafening roar ended moments later, but quieter popping noises replaced it. Gunfire was coming from all sides, by the sounds of it.

“Staysa!” I heard my father call out. I followed the sound of his voice to see he was nearly twenty feet away and moving farther away. “Where are you?”

A strange, dense, dark fog seemed to permeate the area. It seemed to flicker on and off, completely disappearing and then reappearing. I realized now, sitting as I was in a deep underground lair, reliving my old memories, that it was some sort of spell I was seeing. Had I more control over my memory, I would have tried to replay it in hopes of figuring out what the spell was, but the memory carried on, oblivious to my wants.

I opened my mouth to shout at my father, to tell him where I was, but someone yanked me out from under the bench, turned me face up, and put a hand over my mouth. The man that had grabbed me turned my head to face him. He opened his mouth to say something, but I grabbed his hand, shoved a part of it between my teeth, and bit down as hard as I could. He screamed as I tasted blood.

My senses clouded over for a moment, replaced by the taste of blood. It was as if time stopped for a moment, only starting again when several loud pops sounded and the man holding me fell over, tearing his hand out of my mouth.

My father called my name, scooped me up into his arms, and ran. I looked over my father’s shoulder to see the man that had grabbed me lying on the ground. The sight of his blood pooling out onto the ground intermixed with the taste in my mouth was something I could never forget.

I was dimly aware of gunfire going off as my father moved us away from the fight. At this point, I just held on, unable to understand what was going on. My senses were sluggish, almost as if I had hit my head on something. My father eventually got us into the back seat of a car where I met my first werewolf.

“Jerod? Fine, get us the fuck out of here,” my father commanded.

“Aye, sir,” Jerod replied. “Any particu—”

“Drive, Jerod. They’re going for the children,” my father almost yelled.

My father moved to put the seatbelt around me after sitting me down, but I stopped him, saying, “Da-da… I feel weird.”

“It’s all right, we’re going to get you out of here,” he replied, smiling and brushing my cheek with his hand.

“My mouth feels funny,” I announced. It felt like my teeth and tongue had gotten bigger. “Funny taste in my mouth…”

“Baby, stop biting your tongue,” my father said. I stopped, not even realizing I had been doing it. The car stopped abruptly and my father cursed, “The fuck are you doing?”

“Following orders, sir,” Jerod replied.

I yawned, then jerked awake when a gunshot rang out in the car. A giant wolf’s face was inches from mine. My father’s foot caught the wolf in the throat and shoved, forcing it into the side of the car, away from my face. Half a dozen gunshots rang out in rapid succession and the fight was over. I can never get over how quickly fights can end. People die so fast.

“Da-da?” I whispered in terror. He opened the door and gently extracted me from the car. I watched the wolf turn into a naked, blood-soaked human. My father shot him eight more times in the chest and head before we left. “Da-da!”

“Staysa, we have to go, right now. I don’t have time to explain what is going on, just hold on long enough for me to get you to safety, okay?” he pleaded. “Can you follow along, or do I need to carry you?”

“I-I… I’ll follow,” I told him. I swallowed my fear, steadied my voice, and said, “Let’s go, Father.”

“That’s my girl,” he said, kissing my forehead.

We made our way across the city on foot, avoiding all contact. My feet and legs grew tired, but I kept going. I don’t remember the rest of the trip across the city, but it had been morning when we started and it was night by the time we arrived at our destination, the international airport. I tried to pay attention to what was happening around me, but the taste of blood in my mouth and the sight of dead men were stuck in my head, clouding my mind.

I discovered later that I had been hit with an amnesic charm in the middle of that day. Why, who, or how, I have no idea, but the symptoms are unmistakeable. The chase across town has been slowly coming back to me over the years; hopefully I will recall everything at some point down the road.

Renae, Sasha’s mother, met us at the airport with Sasha and two packed suitcases. Renae looked frantic until she saw me, whereupon she picked me up in a big hug and said, “Oh thank you, God, it wasn’t all for naught. Are you al— Dear God, Jeza, her face… Come here, let me clean you up.”

Renae cleaned my face with disinfectant wipes from her purse while my father got our tickets squared away. They didn’t answer any of my questions, instead they rushed us through the airport. Half an hour later, we, minus Renae who stayed behind for some reason, were heading to Canada.

On board the plane, my father went to the bathroom when the seatbelt sign went off. Sasha tugged on my sleeve right after he got up. After making sure he was gone down the aisle of the plane, she took her seatbelt off and crawled onto my lap, facing me. She looked exhausted and irritated.

“Are you okay?” she murmured, groggily rubbing her eyes.

“Uh-huh. You?” I asked, putting my arms around her waist. I hugged my best friend tightly and she returned it.

“No. I’m so tired… Mom woke me up at three in the morning! Can you believe it? We were driving around until like, an hour ago, waiting for this stupid plane,” she whispered to me, her lips next to my ear.

“I’m sorry it took so long. I’m glad we’re together, though,” I told her, meaning it.

“Me too,” she said. “Where we going?”

“Canada,” I replied.

“What’s a Canada?” she murmured, not sounding interested. She began running her hands through my hair as she said, “I love it when you grow your hair out like this. You shouldn’t cut it anymore…”

“Canada is a country, Sasha,” I told her, exasperated. I knew she should know what it was, since we were in the same geography class. “For God’s sake, Sasha…”

“Whatever, no need to bring him into it…” she muttered, yawning.

She yawned again and looked around. She put a finger to my lips, took my face in her hands, and tilted it away before leaning close. I was going to ask what she was doing, but I felt her tongue flick out and trail from my jaw line to my temple. She licked around my mouth and chin a few times before sitting back to inspect my face.

“There, all clean,” she informed me. “Yummy! What was that? It tasted and smelled good.”

“I don’t know. You’re weird,” I told her, wiping at where she had licked me.

“Nu-uh!” she said, grinning.

“Ya-huh!” I said, grinning back. “But it’s okay, I still love you.”

She hugged me, relaxing into me for a moment before she leaned back and whispered, “Do you? Love me? Even if…”

“Of course,” I whispered, reassuring her. “I don’t care how weird you are.”

She stared into my eyes until my father got back into his seat, whereupon she shifted, sitting sideways in my lap. She fell asleep with her head on my shoulder and my arm clutched to her chest.

After a few minutes, I looked up at my father and whispered, “Da-da?”

“What’s on your mind, kiddo?” he whispered back, leaning over towards me.

“You shot the man that grabbed me,” I whispered.

After a moment, he nodded and said, “Yes, but don’t—”

“I won’t tell anyone… That’s not what I want,” I said.

“All right, what do you want?” he asked warily.

“Da-da, I don’t want to need your help like that again,” I told him. When he didn’t respond, I added, “I want you to teach me to be like you; I want to be able to fight. I know you know how; you killed those men… I want you to teach me how you did that.”

“You’re sure?” he asked. “It won’t be easy… You’re small, always will be. You’re a girl, so you’ll always have that disadvantage in a fight.”

“Why does being a girl matter?” I asked, confused.

He laughed and said, “Guys are naturally bigger, meaner, and… we’re just better fit to fight. Girls are better at other things.”

“Like what?” I asked, frowning.

“What girls… What women are really good at, I can’t teach you,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why not?” I asked, getting frustrated.

He laughed and said, “Because I’m not a woman.”

Oh, that makes sense, I realized.

I rested my cheek on Sasha’s head for a moment, enjoying the softness of her hair, before I asked, “But you can teach me to do some guy things, right?”

He was quiet for a moment before he said, “I can try. Just get some sleep for now. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I wanted to talk more, but I was exhausted. I leaned the seat as far back as it would go and slept the rest of the way to Canada, clutching Sasha to my chest.

My father let me have one day to rest before we started. He roused me from bed, untangled me from Sasha, threw some shoes on me, and took me outside. Sasha stayed in the house doing homework while I stood outside in the snow, preparing to defend myself from the stick my father was waving around in front of me.

His only words before we began were, “Don’t take your eyes off of it, but don’t narrow your focus down too much.”

He came at me with the stick, so I ducked to the side, bringing the hatchet I held around to deflect his stick. I winced more from the idea of failing to keep up than from the pain that came when he swatted my hand with the stick. Without a word we started again and again and again.

My one advantage over my father was that in the freezing weather I only had to wear a thin, two-piece pajama set while he was in a huge, bulky jacket to escape the cold. Of course, he was several times my size and actually knew what he was doing, so he wasn’t at much of a disadvantage.

We trained for the rest of the day, stopping only briefly to eat, drink, and talk about the lessons. They were long, grueling, painful training sessions. I loved them. My heart raced, my blood pumped, and my mind focused like no other time in my life.

I studied with Sasha when it got dark. Training in the day and studying at night became the norm for me. I learned how to use many different weapons. I practiced with knives, rifles, handguns, shotguns, swords, my bare fists, anything and everything. He taught me that even a rock I found on the ground could be a devastating weapon.

My favorite skill he taught me was stalking. He first taught me how to make a small crossbow and a tomahawk, then we trudged out into the forest to hunt for food. The slow creep towards my prey, anything from a rabbit to a moose, taught me cold precision and patience. I crept closer and closer until finally striking one quick, brutal blow.

Learning how to skin and cook an animal was the least fun thing my father taught me, but the desensitization was important. Feelings and violence don’t mix, he reminded me, as I worked the hide off of a particularly beautiful deer.

“Don’t lose your feelings, never do that, but you can’t be ruled by them when you’re confronted by violence,” he told me whenever I balked. “Understand it, let it happen, but don’t ever let it change you. If you can’t do that, you should be a housewife. There is no shame in that path, you know.”

I looked up from the dead deer, splattered in its blood, and with a smile on my face, I said, “It’s okay, Father, I rather fight. I don’t mind the killing.”

“I know,” he murmured, looking sad. I hadn’t ever realized just how depressed he looked until now. My young self certainly never picked up on it, but it was clear as day to me now.

Nearly four months of training went by before the can of worms that was the supernatural world opened with a vengeance. We watched it on the news during meals. It started as a terrorist campaign in Europe, but it quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, churches and mosques calling for a crusade against the supernatural threat.

Using the satellite television set my father had brought with him, we watched news clips of vampires with werewolf slaves fight Vatican and UN forces in Europe, while the free werewolves were hunted down and killed in America.

Witches walked into the spotlight, but they were abruptly decimated, their leadership killed in a series of assassinations. Rumors swirled that a British intelligence agency had been recruiting witches as young kids and had used their skills to lure the witch leaders into the open to kill them.

My father laughed at that and said they just monitored the natural exits of ley-lines, ley-lines being channels of magical energy that flowed around the earth. The lines could be used for transportation, as well as being useful for powering certain spells. When the witches landed for a special meeting in Dublin, they were greeted by a nest of snipers that lay in wait.

My father taking Sasha and I to Canada, which had declared itself neutral in this conflict, made a lot more sense when he revealed to me that I was a witch and she a race whose name I could never hope to pronounce or spell. Sasha was a natural born healer, able to use magic to mend wounds, just as soon as someone taught her to use her gifts, of course.

I studied magic instead of regular schoolwork most nights after that, learning about anything and everything I could. I didn’t get to practice much because my father said I needed to hide it for now, but he promised that I would get plenty of practice in the years to come. I focused mostly on learning the theory of magic while he taught me more survival skills.

The main magical skill he was able to teach me was what he called witch’s sight. Witch’s sight was the telltale sign of a witch, hence the name. It made magic come alive to my eyes, letting me see magic. It was a double-edged sword, as while it made magically enchanted objects glow strange colors so I could easily tell they were enchanted, it also made my eyes glow, allowing anyone to potentially detect what I was. I didn’t need my father to tell me why I needed to hide what I was; I had turned the TV on one night when I couldn’t sleep to see a mob lynch a witch.

When we returned home, gone for more than eight months, my father continued my training in both magic and survival after school every other night. He taught me urban survival skills, like how to lose someone in a crowd, and just generally move around a city invisibly. I learned how to pick locks, pick pockets, hot-wire cars, disable most security systems, and many other unscrupulous things.

I never once asked him how he knew the things he taught me. I was afraid of the answer.