Beyond The Walls (NOW ON AMAZON!!!)

Grief

"Why didn't you tell me?" Hadley yelled, walking up to Gram Lee. "You know what I've been through! You know how I've lost everyone I cared for! Jamila, Ruq, Teroi, Aunt Zee, my mother... everyone! Why didn't you say anything? Why did you make me feel like I finally found a place to belong, and a person who actually cares enough that I did, knowing that it was all a lie?"

"Hello to you too, Hadley," Gram Lee said, her voice irritatingly calm.

The old woman was laying on a blanket on the forest floor, holding a small rolled up incense bundle between two fingers on her right hand by her side. The thick, musky smoke from the little bundle hung heavy in the air surrounding them. She then surprised Hadley by lifting the smoking bundle to her lips and pulling on it in a deep breath, holding it for a long moment and then blowing out the smoke in a slow exhale.

"I wish you could share this with me," Gram Lee sighed, smoke drifting from her mouth and nose like whimsical vines. "It's some good shit."

Hadley had a million questions about the incense bundle and why the woman was breathing it in, but there were more important questions to ask first.

"Why are you doing this?" Hadley begged to know, falling to her knees next to the old woman.

Gram Lee sighed. "Metastasis."

Hadley didn't know what the word meant. She resisted the urge to punch the forest floor, frustrated by just how much she still had to learn! Focusing on her breathing to calm herself, Hadley let the nagging silence between them push Gram Lee to keep talking.

"I have fought this battle so many times before, Hadley, and I won every time," Gram Lee continued, pulling in smoke from the bundle once more. "But I only had to lose once, and I finally did."

The next words Hadley would speak were selfish, but she couldn't stop them from spilling over. "I can't do this without you, Gram Lee. I still don't even know who I am or where I stand with your people. I need you! Stay, please!"

"You're a Fisher, Hadley," Gram Lee said with a little chuckle. "You will always be a Fisher. You will always be seen as a Fisher, and that will either instil fear or hope in every person you meet, there's no in-between. You'll find there's a special set of ideals that come with being a Fisher that is expected of you. Don't fight it Hadley. That's who you are and where you stand with your people."

"I thought Wildlings believed in freedom," Hadley threw back, frustrated by the rigid framing of that description. "And I thought that included freedom of thought and action. That we can choose who we are!"

"And what is it that you disagree with about being a Fisher, Hadley?" Gram Lee asked, her demeanour still being much too calm for Hadley as she pulled in another lungful of smoke. "Do you disagree that you'll change the world? You escaped from a Compound, something no human has ever done before. You survived a vampire cult that killed your friends, not to mention an uncountable number of vampire dog attacks – while having a vampire dog companion who'd give his life for you. You killed the Disemboweller. And, even if you've tried to downplay it and keep the details from me, you have a relationship with a vampire that I have never heard of between a human and vampire. There's a trail of change dragging behind you from every single place you've stepped foot, Hadley Fisher."

Hadley's mind betrayed her by adding to that list her rapidly healing wounds and the vampire dog dying after sinking its teeth into her leg – the only true secrets she had left. If anyone was to know vampire dogs died after they bit her...

She pushed the thought away.

"Stay, Gram Lee. Please! At the very least, stay and meet my daughter."

The old woman took a moment before she responded to that blatantly self-centred imploration. Hadley cringed, but she was not beneath fighting dirty if it meant stopping the old woman.