Breaking Angelina
Rita Webb
TJ Webb
Robot Playground Inc
First published by Robot Playground Inc
Copyright © 2013 by Rita Webb & Thomas J. Webb
All rights reserved. Published in the United States
by Robot Playground Inc
This is a collection of works of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either the
product of the authors’ imagination or used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events or locales is entirely
coincidental.
Cover Design by Regina Wamba
Mae I Design and Photography
www.maeidesign.com
Chapter 1
~ ANGELINA ~
Green and gold pom-poms in hand, I wait for
Sarah to signal us to move onto the court, the
anticipation coiling tightly in my gut. No matter
how many times I perform with the Seawolves
cheerleaders, I’m still terrified of the crowds.
Nineteen years old and going to college at the
University of Alaska Anchorage–you’d think I’d
have gotten over stage fright by now.
The other girls plaster smiles on their faces, and
I pretend I’m just as happy to be here as they are.
Here at the away game in Idaho, the stands are
packed in a gym twice as large as ours. So many
people rooting for their team, cheering, screaming,
laughing, yelling, booing.
All their emotions swirl around the room—hope,
excitement, fear, anger, pain, disappointment, lust,
hate, worry—crawling over me, digging into me,
like snakes biting at my skin.
I try to gulp fresh air, but everything squeezes
tighter over me.
And over it all, I hear the cackling of the voices,
laughing at my despair.
You are weak.
Ugly.
Stupid.
Broken, desperate girl.
My deepest, darkest secret. The voices haunted
me since I was twelve, ridiculing me when I talk to
friends, threatening to kill me when I’m alone,
demanding my undying loyalty to their will. I’ve
gotten good at faking being normal.
It’s never been this bad before. I could always
endure it, push it away and pretend it wasn’t there.
What’s wrong with me?
“Get your head in the game, Angelina. We’re
almost up.” Cyndi elbows me, and a shiver ripples
down my back and settles uncomfortably in my
stomach. I never like Cyndi touching me. The color
of her aura is a sickly green, like a gangrenous pus
eating into her soul.
Nodding, I step back. She can’t possibly hear me
over the roar of the crowd. I can’t even hear myself
think; it’s as if all that noise explodes inside my own
head.
The cheerleaders for the other team finish their
last cheer, and the crowd roars, chanting their
team’s name. I don’t even remember who our
basketball team is playing against this time.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, shoving
all those emotions away from me, until finally I feel
alone in my head. Just me and the dark voices I
carry around with me.
“Ready? Let’s go.” Sarah jogs onto the floor and
the other girls move forward as one.
On auto-pilot, I follow. We’ve trained until I
could do these cheers in my sleep. Busy moving
through the steps, I forget everything as I leap,
dance, shout, cheer, shake my pom-poms and my
butt, and back flip in perfect timing with my team.
At the end of the routine, the two girls on either
side of me lift me up, but as I rise into the air,
smiling at the crowd, a wave of dizziness rolls over
me.
I fall in front of everybody. My head hits the
hardwood floor.
skin.
Groaning, I roll onto my side and look at the sea
of faces surrounding us. All their emotions slam
into me, breaking down my walls. I lose myself in
their pain, hopes, hatred, and love.
The faces spin, and the whole room whirls
around me in a dizzying array of colors and shapes.
Then everything goes black.
“… Concussion,” someone is saying.
I wake to find a woman with gray hair and a
pinched face, shining a light into my eyes.
“Who are you?” I say, but that’s not what comes
out. It sounds more like, you what who are.
“Definitely a concussion. Take two of these and
keep some ice on that bump. Don’t go to sleep.”
Lying on some sort of bench, I shift, trying to sit
up to take the pills. The wooden slabs dig into my
bones, and my head pounds as I sit up. Well, one
part pounds. The other side is numb as if nothing is
there.
“What?” I hold the pills in my hand and study
them. I want to ask more, but I can’t figure out the
words I’m supposed to say.
“Only some Advil. It will help with the pain and
the swelling. Keep the ice on it.” She picks up the
bag of ice off the seat beside it, shoves it into my
hand, and directs my hand to my head, and then I
realize I had been lying on the ice before I sat up.
I’m a little slow.
I put the pills in my mouth, but I don’t have a
glass of water to swallow them with.
“Here, Angelina.” Sarah hands me a water
bottle, and when I can’t open the lid, she smiles
and does it for me. If it were Cyndi, she’d sneer, but
then Cyndi wouldn’t bother to stick around to see if
I’m all right.
“Feeling better?” Sarah asks.
“Yeah. Fine,” I lie.
The gray-haired woman checks my vitals again,
my pulse, my eyes, and whatever else it is EMT’s
do, and then with a nod and a pat on the shoulder,
she heads out, the door swinging shut behind her.
I look around. Brown lockers line the narrow
aisle on either side of me. The sound of the game
roars from the hall, through the walls, and into my
head, pounding against the insides of my skull.
I must have hit my head harder than I thought.
“I’ve got to go back to the game,” Sarah says. “If
I turn my back for five minutes, someone will be
doing a strip tease rather than cheering. You’ll be
okay here?”
I try to nod, but that only makes the pain worse.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
She disappears around the corner.
I groan, covering my face with the crook of my
arm to hide from the glaring lights. What
happened? One minute I was feeling faint and I fell.
Th
en I remember all those faces, hundreds of
people staring at me, all their emotions bashing
against me, like a wave breaking against the beach.
“You survived,” an unfamiliar voice says.
I open my eyes to find a blue-skinned woman
standing over me. Delicately pointed ears, blue hair
short and spiky, eyes white as if she has no iris or
pupil, and she’s staring right at me, like a lioness
fixated on her prey.
Her skin is blue!
I blink quickly, trying to clear my eyes, but when
I stop, she’s still blue. She smiles at me, and her
teeth, a brilliant white against the dark blue, are
pointed.
I hit my head harder than I thought.
Kill her! Traitor! Murderer! KILL HER NOW! The
voices screech in my head, and I sit up to obey. The
room swirls and my stomach churns, and she grabs
my arm and helps me ease back into my place on
the bench.
Like I could actually kill her anyway. Sharp claws
as long as a knife grow from her fingers. Even if I
wanted to, what would I kill her with? Her bare
hands alone could probably tear my heart out of
my chest.
The door bangs open, and the two cheerleading
quiet ours is. They walk right past the blue woman,
completely ignoring her. My brain must be really
messed up right now. I never heard of concussions
causing hallucinations.
Sarah stops by my seat. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine.” The words aren’t as slurred as they
had been earlier.
“Good. We’ll get you back to your hotel room
shortly. You can get some rest, and in the morning,
we’ll head home.” She pats my shoulder before
going to her locker.
I glance at the blue woman to see if she’s still
there. An amused expression plays across her face,
one corner of her blue lips turning up slightly.
“They can’t see me,” she says. “Or perhaps it
would be more accurate to say they choose to look
elsewhere.”
Before I respond, I wait until the girls have
gathered up their towels and toiletries and then
disappear around the row of lockers to head for the
shower.
Close up, her skin seems to be made up of blue
scales. Her face is thin and angular, her almond-
shaped eyes are more of a pale blue than the white
I thought they were, and the short hair on her head
is soft like downy feathers.
Her hand still grasps mine, the nails pricking my
skin. “Ah, so that is why I could not read you. You
are blocked.”
Traitor. You doomed us. You stole our power and
imprisoned us beneath the earth. We will make you
pay.
“But imprisoned, you can’t harm me.” As she
studies me, her eyes darken, shining with an
iridescent blue. “I see, you use the girl’s power to
amplify your own, what little you have left.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I am called Saffyra, the last fae half-dragon. My
brethren were destroyed in the Purge.”
“And you betrayed them? The voices?”
“That is only what they told you, child,” she
says. “Interesting. I can see why they like you. How
ironic, to use my own power against me. All these
years, all these generations, how odd to find power
as strong as yours. It should be more diluted.”
“What?” I try to pull away, but her fingers
tighten, her sharp claws digging into my skin.
“So young. So naïve.” She cocks her head to one
side and studies me as if I’m a bug in a jar. “You
have come in contact with the imprisoned Rune
Emperor, child. It explains much.”
“The Rune Emperor?”
“He’s nothing more than a wraith now, his
power stripped away.”
I look down at my hand, turning white where
she squeezes, and notice a bracelet on her wrist.
Made of antique silver with strange symbols etched
into it, it’s something I would love to wear. The
pinkish red stone in the center is beautiful, the
colors almost seem to swirl. I could get lost in it.
“A sister, hmm. Does she have the same
abilities? I wonder …” Letting go of me, she covers
the bracelet over with her other hand. “Careful.
Activating this would unleash a horror you could
never imagine. The monsters in your mind would
love to get their claws into this power. Inside this
bracelet, I hold everything they want, but in their
hands, they would destroy the world. They nearly
did once.”
The key. Give it to us! All the voices demand at
once, sounding like a gong vibrating through my
skull. I cry out in pain and grip my head, trying to
hold it together.
The blue woman watches me. “Over a thousand
years have past, and I have faithfully guarded this
prison. I will not relinquish my duty. Not until I find
someone worthy.”
We will be free. One voice speaks now, louder
and stronger than the rest.
She laughs, flashing her sharp teeth.
You were a half-breed, only the one voice
speaks, his voice louder, more commanding. All the
rest fall silent as if in respect. We tolerated your
presence in our kingdom. You owe us your
allegiance. Bow down to your emperor, half-blood.
“You have no power to control me. Not even the
little you’ve stolen from this child.”
We can punish her for your insolence.
“That would sadden me, but not for long. I will
remove your influence over her soon enough.” She
grips my hand harder, her nails drawing blood.
Give it to us now.
“Enough,” she says.
The pink stone on the bracelet brightens, and
the voices grow silent.
I tear my gaze away from the bracelet to look at
her. The blue of her eyes blazes brightly.
“What are you talking about? What do they
want?” I ask.
“I imagine you will figure it out in time. Tell me
about your sister. This Emma.”
“You’ve been asking around about me?”
“Your mind is unshielded.”
“What are you talking about?”
She smiles, her lips peeling away from sharp
teeth, but doesn’t let me go. Blood trickles down
my arm.
I try to pull away, but her grip is firm. “Who are
you?”
“I am the one who saved the world from
madness.” Letting go, she rises and leaves.
Once she is gone, the strongest voice whispers
in my mind, Now you will pay.
White light blinds me, piercing through every
pore in my skin, ripping my flesh from my body,
burning my bones to ashes. I scream and tumble off
the bench before slumping to the ground.
Chapter 2
~ HUNTER ~
“I’ve flown all over the Caribbean, but working
for her is the best job I’ve ever had. The fringe
benefits are worth it, if you know what I mean.”
The pilot waggles his eyebrows. “Believe me, when
you meet her, you’ll like what you see.”
“Great.” Suppressing a sigh, I try to squirm
without bumping anything. My muscles cramp from
folding my frame into the tiny cockpit. This
glamoured body is almost as large as my real one.
“There it is.” A sleazy grin spreads across his
face. Poor foolish human. He’s already addicted to
the sorceress’s charms, but it won’t be long before
she’s sucked down so much of his soul he won’t
even know how to smile, let alone fly this plane.
I watch the island grow closer as the pilot
prepares to land on the water. The crystal palace
shimmers in the sunlight, a dazzling display in the
midst of an exotic garden. It makes my flesh crawl.
“You’ll be back in about an hour?” he asks.
“Yeah. Shouldn’t take me long.”
The sea plane docks, and I step out onto the
tropical island in the middle of the Caribbean. Every
instinct in me says to turn and run. But I have a job
to do.
Get the details on what the sorceress wants me
to find and get the hell out of here. As a chimera,
the wolf and hawk in me make me a natural
hunter. Whatever someone wants, I find.
So long as they pay my fee.
The island is beautiful. Vines with exotic flowers
climb up the cliff side, colorful birds flit among the
treetops, and luscious greenery shades the cobbled
stairs leading up to the cliff face. Sammi would
have loved it here–at least for a little while. The
tropical breezes keep the heat from becoming too
oppressive.
But me—I’ve only been here a few minutes, and
I already hate this place. I miss the bracing chill of
Alaska, the frozen wonderland I now call home.
The heat makes my fur itch under the shoddy
witch-made glamour, and while I don’t mind taking
a swim every now and then, I’m part wolf and
hawk, not fish.
My people, the chimera, are a blend of human
and at least one animal. Few refugees and fugitives
have migrated to this mundane world—Earth; the
portal is difficult to find and dangerous to attempt.