Where Loyalty Lies Read Free

The new one was wearing black trousers and a white shirt and he had my attacker pinned down on the floor. He looked up at me and I could see he had the same black eyes and fangs. The look he gave me wasn’t hostile though. There was dirt smudged on his face and he had bits of plant stuck in his choppy brown hair.
    “Go!” he shouted. “Get out of here.”
    I wanted to but my legs wouldn’t move. They’d stopped listening to what I was telling them to do.
    “GO!” he yelled, and the sheer volume of his voice was enough to jump-start me. I grabbed Mary, ignoring her protests and attempts at pushing me away, and with one last look at the man who’d saved me, I ran.
     
                                       *  *  *
     
                “Faine.”
    At the sound of my name I looked up. Simon Clark was sitting next to me on the front steps of one of the neighbour’s houses. It was where I’d collapsed when I’d finally got Mary into the safety of the neighbour’s house. After that I must have gone into shock because I had no recollection of what had happened between then and now. I hadn’t even seen Simon arrive. He was a police officer, well known in this town for his handsome young face and his fair attitude. He was giving me a patient look and I got the impression he’d been calling my name for some time. I blinked a few times and tried to focus my attention on him.
    “Faine, can you hear me?” he said.
    I nodded.
    “Can you tell me what happened?”
    I thought I would burst into tears but there was nothing, just enveloping numbness that made me feel heavy. I fidgeted just to see if I was able to control my body and found that, at some point, someone had draped a blanket over me.
    “Can you tell me what happened?” Simon said again.
    “Yes.” My voice sounded croaky and my throat felt raw after so much screaming, but the seriousness of the situation came back to me and I cleared my throat and tried again. “He tried to kill us.”
    Simon looked confused. “Who?”
    “I don’t know. He was there in her room and he tried to kill us...” I trailed off, aware that I was repeating myself. Get a grip Faine. “I heard a noise and, when I went to see if Mary was okay, there was a man there. I tried to stop him and he chased me and then he tried to kill me but someone else came and stopped him.”
    Simon frowned and cast a look around; there was nobody close to us but he lowered his voice anyway. “Are you sure that’s what happened, Faine? How did the fire start?”
    I stared at him for a long time. “Fire? What fire?”
    “The house was on fire. It was put out before it could spread, so it’s just the kitchen that’s been really damaged. There aren’t any bodies there.” He cast another look around and then spoke in a whisper. “Mary’s ranting about you being the devil and the blood on her fingernails looks pretty consistent with the scratches on your face.”
    I raised a hand and felt a series of scratches down one side of my face. Realisation dawned on me and I knew what people were thinking. Simon tried a few more times to ask me questions but I shut down and, after a time, he seemed to realise it. I watched as he walked over to a small group of policemen. He didn’t tell them my story, just that I was in shock and needed time to calm down. I couldn’t blame him, after all who would believe my story? I’d even left out the crazy part about the fangs and the black eyes and he still didn’t believe me.
    One of the policemen had left the flashing lights on his patrol car on, and the blue lights seemed to have drawn everyone in the street out of their homes.  
    My attention was drawn to a group of gossiping women, all huddled together. I focused on them to find out how much they knew.
    “I heard Mary found her trying to burn all the Bibles and the fire got out of control,” one woman said.
    I scoffed. They lived for gossip and that was the best they