Chapter 6

Evangeline ran for her life again. She dashed up the hill between dark trees, trying to duck, and dodged the branches. She had to get away from the man who kicked in the door, killing all the Duke Boys, which she wasn’t sad about, but she didn’t trust him. No one in the world puts their lives in danger just for the sake of being good. He wasn’t some angel from Heaven. He wasn’t some hero in her dime novels she loved to read.

                He was lying to her.

                She had to get away from him. She had to get to the skyport and her grandfather. He would keep her safe. She hoped he would make sure her father paid for killing Evangeline’s mother. She wasn’t sure her grandfather would kill her good old dad, but he would make him suffer, and Evangeline didn’t mind it all.

                Frist, she had to get there. She had the ticket, the money, and the friends to get her somewhere safe.

                But Evangeline was tired of running. She had been running for months, but if she was honest to herself, she was running a lot longer than those months. She would run and hide whenever her parents got into a nasty fight. She would hide under the bed until her mother came into her room to talk to her. Sometimes, she had a black eye. Sometimes, she had a bloody lip, but she was always crying when she got Evangeline to come out from under the bed.

                And then her mother found out something about her father’s business. He was screwing over a lot of the families on his pay roll. Worse, he lied to Evangeline’s grandfather about their business deals, forcing Evangeline and her mother to run the business. If the truth came out about what her father was doing, many people would be after him.

                He would be dead before the next sunrise.

                They ran. God, they ran as far as they could, only being taken by some of her father’s people in Tennessee. They were locked in a house for three days before her father arrived. He came in with all the rage of a storm, jerking her mother up and pulling her into the next room. Then came all the screaming and crying, with Evangeline running for her life again.

                She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. The air this high up was thin, and she hadn’t got used to it yet. She looked back down the way, seeing nothing but darkness in the cold night, promising snow to come this year.

                Her legs burn about as much as her chest, and she kneels for a moment, covering her face. It was all happening so fast that she had difficulty wrapping her mind around her life. She didn’t get to choice to be born to a mad man, but then again, her mother was the kindness woman God had placed on this world. She was the one who got Evangeline out of danger, never letting her father use her in his games of power.

                She felt something pushing against her leg, reaching into the pocket to find her grandfather’s ring. It was a family ring her mother kept hidden from Evangeline’s father.

                “Take this to any skyport,” she told Evangeline the night she was murdered, “and give it to a captain of Omega. They’ll get you to some place safe and then they’ll take you to your grandfather, do you understand me?”

                “Yes, mama,” Evangeline said, holding the golden and red ring with the roaring lion at the center and the wings of angels above its head.

                She held it close, recalling her grandfather's words the last time she saw him. He rarely came around due to his grand hate of her father, which they shared, and he stood alone with Evangeline on the porch of her father’s house.

                “I always hate to be ground walking too long,” the dapper man, who carried himself like a lord of an older time and dressed the part of a wealthy man who only knew the finer things of life, said while drinking a chilled glass of whiskey. “One day, my little lion, you’ll have to come see my house in the sky.”

                “I would love to, sir.”

                “You’re always welcome in the halls of my house,” he said, turning his bright sky-blue eyes to her. “You are a Blazestorm before anything else, you understand me?”

                “I do.”

                Her grandfather would never turn away anyone who had his bloodline in their veins. He welcomed all his children and grandchildren back home to their rightful place, and there were many of them to which he had to open his doors. He had seven daughters, all married, all over the world, and five sons, one dead, two in the States, one in Europe, and the last one living in Omega with him, but all of them worked with their father.

                All his family was welcome into his home. He loved them deeply.

                It was the same love she felt falling to her like a shooting star on the wind.

                “Don’t run, sweet child,” a smooth and sweet whisper raced to her on the wind, almost causing her to drop the ring. She grabbed it and jumped, looking for someone who spoke. There was no one. There was nothing but darkness. Her heart started to race, thinking about how the Duke Boys spoke of old magic in the mountains. Magic was hidden a long time ago by the whites who came to this land, but magic was dying in the world, and like all things that were dying, it lashed out with rage.

                She put the ring back into her pocket, taking off up the hill. She ran for as long as she could, looking for anywhere to hide from those monsters chasing after her. She almost felt the eyes of someone on her. She stopped looking around, finding a lone light off in the darkness. It was a single candle burning in a window, and Evangeline ran for it, praying it was a haven from this evil.