Silver, p.1
Silver, page 1
SILVER
by Yara Gharios
Episode 3
Lovers & Friends
“Silver” – Episode 3 “Lovers & Friends”
By Yara Gharios
Copyright 2023 Yara Gharios
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Timeline Chart
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Bonus Episode
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Titles
Sneak Peek
TIMELINE CHART
Day of capture
|
(1 year)
|
Day of escape
|
(7 years)
|
Now
CONTENT WARNING
This novella contains elements of sensitive
subjects and/or themes, such as:
Suicidal thoughts
Violence using fantasy magic
Toxic/abusive relationships
Gaslighting
Sexual and emotional abuse
CHAPTER ONE
Eight Years Ago
day of capture
Shiloh’s throat burned to the point of nausea. Her head felt like she’d been placed on an ever-looping rollercoaster and made to ride it round and round for hours.
If it weren’t for the fear coursing through her, she would have been disoriented, but as it were, she knew exactly where she was—or rather, what situation she was in.
What she didn’t know was who was talking to her.
“Hey, are you doing okay over there?” a girl called out. “Can you hear me?”
It was a struggle placing the voice. She didn’t sound like Grace, though Shiloh was mostly basing her assumption on the fact that the redhead wouldn’t show concern like that. Whatever Grace was, whatever sinister thing she wanted from Shiloh, she already had her trapped. There would be no point in pretending to care about her well-being, unless she was playing some sick game.
“Come on, girlie, open your eyes,” the mystery girl urged her desperately. “We don’t have much time before she gets back.”
Due to the nausea, Shiloh struggled to pull herself upright and slowly blinked. A face finally came into focus. The dark complexion and thick head of brown hair immediately confirmed that she wasn’t Shiloh’s kidnapper. The fact that this girl—or rather woman, since she seemed about a decade older than Shiloh—had her arms tied behind her back further confirmed that theory.
“What—?” Shiloh groaned. “Who are you? Where’s Grace?”
“I’m Shauna,” she hastily replied. “Grace is outside. Now listen. We have to be quick. I’m gonna turn around so you can untie me, and then I’ll do the same for you, okay?”
At that point, Shiloh finally noticed that she was in the same car she’d been in before Grace chloroformed her. Except now she was in the backseat with Shauna, and her wrists were tied in front of her. She didn’t have time to wonder why the two of them were restrained so differently—and sloppily—because that was when she noticed there was someone else in the car…
… someone with red hair.
Shiloh recoiled so violently, she hit her head on the roof of the car.
“Whoa, hey, it’s okay, it’s fine,” Shauna rushed to reassure her. “She’s like us, don’t worry. But she’s still passed out, and we can’t help her while we’re all tied up, okay?”
Shiloh’s heart kept racing. Her head hurt like crazy as she stared at the girl in the front seat. Upon closer inspection, she realized that the hair was a darker shade of red than Grace’s. That might have calmed her down, if not for the blood running down the side of the other girl’s neck.
Were those… puncture wounds?
“Hey, girlie, what’s your name?” Shauna had turned her back and was now staring at her over her shoulder.
“I-I’m Shiloh.”
“Can I call you Shi?” she asked patiently.
“Uh, sure.”
“Great! Can you please get me out of these, Shi? I can’t do the same for you until I’m free.”
Shaking her head, Shiloh forced herself to focus. “Right, sorry. Um… it’s a zip lock.”
“It’s okay, I know how to get out of them. There’s a bunch of pins in my hair. Take one out, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
As Shauna talked her through the process of breaking out of zip locks, Shiloh tried to steady her weak and shaky fingers. She slipped a few times on the first try and cried out in frustration.
“It’s okay, you got this,” Shauna encouraged. “Just take a deep breath and try again.”
Focusing on the other girl’s voice and words, Shiloh centered her emotions before trying again. On the third attempt, the strap finally came loose.
“Great job! Your turn now.”
Shiloh wondered how Shauna could stay so calm, but given how quickly she freed Shiloh’s wrists, perhaps she wasn’t wholly unfamiliar with this type of situation.
“Okay, now, you be the lookout while I take care of her,” Shauna said, gesturing to the girl in the front seat.
That was when the obvious thought finally came to Shiloh. “Wait, why don’t we just call the police?”
“Grace threw away anything valuable we had on. Just keep an eye on her over there”—she pointed to the window on her left side—“and tell me when she makes a move.”
Then, she promptly jumped over the gap in between the two front seats, leaving Shiloh room to take her place and stare out the window. They were on the side of a deserted road. It was nighttime outside, but Shiloh could see Grace’s form in the faint light of a cell phone, pacing about fifty feet away from the car. She was holding the phone out in front of her and was either arguing with the device itself or whoever she was on call with.
“Shit,” Shauna suddenly hissed.
Shiloh barely heard it because Grace was now putting the phone back in her pocket.
“She’s coming back,” she hastily said. “We have to hurry.”
“Take this.”
She turned just as Shauna shoved into her palm what she assumed to be a triangle warning sign, folded and tucked away into a rectangular case which rattled in her hand. Meanwhile, Shauna herself had found a wrench somewhere in the car and was now holding it tightly in her fist.
“First chance we get, we whack her over the head then take her keys and drive off,” Shauna said. “She’s a small girl... we can take her.”
Shiloh recalled the moment she lost consciousness. She’d thought the same thing about Grace, yet the redhead had somehow pinned her down and overpowered her with inhuman strength.
But when she opened her mouth to say so, a figure suddenly appeared in the passenger side window. Before Shauna could turn around, the door was yanked open, and she instinctively flung her wrench in the direction of whoever was behind her. By the looks of the kid, he couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen, which made it all the more surprising that he didn’t budge when the wrench bounced off his stomach. He glanced down at himself and smirked smugly at Shauna.
“Tickles,” he jeered. Then he grabbed her wrists and roughly pulled her out of the car.
Heart in her throat, Shiloh tried to jump to Shauna’s defense, but something yanked her from behind before she could move. Grace was back, dragging her out of the car with both arms. Shiloh swung the red case in her hand wildly around without ever hitting her mark, her heart hammering away in her chest.
“Let go of me!” she shouted. “No! Let me go! Help! Somebody help!”
The words went utterly unanswered, which brought her panic up to desperate levels. Nothing she tried to do to free herself of Grace’s vice-like grip had any effect whatsoever. Her makeshift weapon slipped out of her hand after a few swings. Planting her feet did nothing to slow the redhead down, and whenever she tripped, the latter simply dragged her along in whatever state she was in. One of her shoes was now missing, and her legs were scraped everywhere from all the times she fell.
“Get your hands off me, you little shit!” Shauna shouted.
Obviously, she was adopting a more offensive—though equally useless—approach. The boy was either unfazed by the hits he was taking or pushing Shauna’s hands away before the wrench touched his face.
“Did you leave this thing around on purpose?”
Grace shrugged and grinned at him. “It’s more fun when they fight back.”
He snickered and then gestured with his head toward the car. “And the other one? How’d do you mess that one up so bad?”
She put her head down in embarrassment. “I got hungry.”
This made him outright laugh. “Not so easy to stop, huh?”
&nbs p; “Yeah, yeah, I get it now.”
Their back-and-forth was both baffling and eerily creepy. As if they didn’t even notice the full-grown women twice their size in their arms, kicking and screaming as they got dragged off to God knew where. They might as well have been picking up two feral strays off the street and talking about their day while the animals harmlessly hissed at them.
“You’ll take care of the car?” Grace asked her companion.
“Yeah, but what about you? How do you plan on explaining this to Father?”
“He won’t be happy, but… he’ll forgive me.”
“Right,” he snorted, “because he’s totally the forgiving type.”
“Hey, I got two, didn’t I? We’ll see how well you do on your first recruitment.”
He puffed his skinny chest at the challenge. “You know you owe me one, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, Rob, I know.”
At this point, Shiloh finally saw the van they were approaching with its back door open in their direction, and her panic reached a tipping point. She was already terrified beyond words, but seeing the van drove her over the edge, screaming until her vocal cords hurt. It was a wonder her heart didn’t simply give out right then and there.
She desperately prayed for someone—anyone—to rescue her. Except that there was no one around for miles. Her throat hurt so bad, she started to cough uncontrollably.
That was when Shauna apparently saw the vehicle and tried swinging her wrench again. Finally, one attempt proved successful as she whacked Rob over the side of his temple. The boy’s head snapped back for a second, and everything stopped.
Shiloh’s coughs hiccupped and went silent, and she held her breath to see what happened. Even Grace paused for a moment, though Shauna only renewed her efforts to escape with more vigor. A wide cut appeared on the side of Rob’s temple, but as they watched, the wound quickly closed until all that was left was a trail of dried blood on his skin.
What the hell were these two?
“That’s gonna bruise!” he complained, and his voice showed his age more now.
His grip on Shauna tightened until she stopped resisting and shrieked in pain. Grace intervened before he could inflict any lasting damage, though probably not out of any sense of goodwill.
“Quit whining,” she snapped, silencing him. “It’ll be gone before you get home.”
“It better. What was she trying to do anyway?”
He slid the wrench out of Shauna’s hands as easily as if her grip were melted butter.
Grace chortled derisively. “They thought they could knock me out, take the keys, and steal the car.”
That seemed to bring him a whole lot of enjoyment, and he tipped his head back in laughter. “You’re right, it is more fun this way.”
Then, the two of them threw Shiloh and Shauna into the back of the van with the same level of ceremony as they’d been dragging them and promptly closed the door behind them. Shiloh huddled into the back of the van and folded in on herself, but Shauna banged on the doors trying to get them open. It was only when she heard Shiloh quietly sobbing in the back that she stopped and crawled over to her.
“Hey, I’m here,” she softly crooned. “I’m right here, Shi. I’m not gonna leave you, okay? We’ll be fine.”
There was no way she could make such a promise, but in that moment, Shiloh clung to the consolation. She fitted herself into Shauna’s arms, as if that would be enough to keep her safe, and absorbed the latter’s whispered words of reassurance like they were a lifeline.
After a while, the driver’s side door opened, and Grace hopped in behind the wheel. She turned around and grinned when she saw the two of them through the partition, huddled together for safety.
“Get ready for a bumpy ride, babes,” she gleefully declared. “Sunrise is only a few hours away. Father will kill me if I don’t get you home before curfew.”
CHAPTER TWO
Now
As soon as she got to the motel, Silver barged into the room Adam had rented. In her hand was a paper that she had the clerk print back at the convenience store, which she proceeded to smack down on the table.
The sudden act startled Theresa, who was napping on the chair and nearly fell. It also attracted the attention of Adam, who came running out of the bathroom in different clothes than the last time Silver had seen him.
“What happened?” he asked, his tone urgent as his eyes scanned her up and down for injuries.
“What the hell is this?” Silver demanded, pointing at the article.
The two of them approached the table curiously to get a closer. ‘Monster in The Family,’ the headline said. They started to read the article, but Silver wasn’t patient enough to wait for them to finish.
“This says you died three years ago,” she snapped, which caused Theresa’s eyes to widen.
“Where did you get this?” Adam wondered.
“It doesn’t matter where; the point is I got it. Care to explain what that’s all about, Theresa?”
“I-I don’t…” the girl stuttered. “There’s gotta be a mistake. This is obviously somebody’s idea of a prank. Didn’t you find anything else?”
Silver finally reached a boiling point. Her magic was still going haywire after what happened during the car chase, and her frazzled brain hadn’t recovered from the ensuing withdrawals.
This time, when her power begged to be released, she didn’t resist. Unleashing it at full strength, she once again attempted to force her way into Theresa’s mind, though whether it was to extract information or to cause pain, she wasn’t so sure.
But Theresa didn’t even notice. Her eyes remained downcast, staring at the printed article with a bewildered expression and no clue that Silver’s magic was trying to rip her to shreds.
It was Adam who noticed first. “What are you doing?”
Looking up, Theresa barely had time to register Silver’s pearlescent eyes before the latter’s hand clamped down on her neck and lifted her off the chair.
“Whoa! Hey! What the hell?” Adam yelled and lunged after her.
Silver ignored him and lifted Theresa up against the wall. Her careful control over the past couple of days vanished, and she relished in finally having the human under her mercy. The fear in those brown eyes brought her immense satisfaction, as did the fact that she could elicit it.
Adam tried to grab her, but Silver’s magic flowed with such fury that it didn’t take much effort to telekinetically force him back.
They’d both made a fool out of her long enough. Maybe now she would finally get some honest answers out of the girl. And once she was done, she would set her sights on the man beside her. She didn’t remember who he was anymore, but it didn’t matter right now.
“Shiloh, stop!” he screamed, trying in vain to push back against her magical barrier.
He stood no chance in the face of her might. Right now, she was made of pure power.
And he was nothing.
Silver focused her attention on the girl in front of her. The source of all her troubles. The frail human was writhing as she attempted to get out of Silver’s chokehold, but she was even weaker than the man from before.
She was less than nothing. And yet she dared to challenge Silver, to tug at her weaknesses like it was an amusing game, and make her question herself like she never should.
“Who are you?” Silver demanded, her voice cold as ice.
“Shiloh! Let her go!” the man shouted. He might as well have been a fly buzzing around her head.
“Why did they take you?” Silver pressed on. “Are you working for Master? Hmm? Using whatever magic immunity you have to spy on me? You want to trade me in exchange for some precious superpowers? Is that it? Still trying to be a hero, thinking you live in a fantasy dreamworld? Wake up, you stupid, stupid girl!”
Theresa’s mouth opened and contorted in an attempt to speak, but nothing was coming out. It infuriated Silver even more, who tightened her grasp.
“Answer me!”
“For God’s sake, Silver!”
A sharp sensation pierced through the haze of fury, and she froze.
