#zahara | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mystic-ocs · 6 months

Text

Welcome to Mystic

Word Count: 2,158

TW: Guns, violence

Two years.

Two years, she��d known something was amiss about the way the organization handled things. She’d been part of it for nearly her entire adult life. One of her wives had grown up in it. Her children had grown up in it. That alone was enough for her to give it the benefit of the doubt, but when she’d risen through the ranks enough to be given an assignment that required killing children, she’d known something was wrong.

Vampire or not, a sixteen year old didn’t deserve to die just because of what they were. She’d always questioned the unrepentant hatred the organization had for vampires, but it wasn’t until she looked into the dark eyes of a cowering teenager, a teenager her own children’s age, that she’d realized just how wrong it was.

So instead, she’d ordered the child to leave through the window and sprinkled blood in the area to make it look like she’d attacked the kid and he ran off. She got reprimanded for leaving a witness, but that was better than the alternative.

(Sometimes, she wondered what had happened to him. Did he get away to live peacefully somewhere else, or did the organization get to him despite her efforts?)

A week prior, she’d been given an assignment to kill a nest of vampires, though when she looked into the situation personally, she hadn’t seen anything amiss and had instead worked through the underground network to alert the nest that an attack was coming. Unfortunately for her, she hadn’t realized the higher ups were getting suspicious and had laid a trap. A trap that she fell right into.

She curses herself for not seeing it coming as she fights a man she’d once called a friend. She ducks under his blade and conjures a trio of ice daggers, launching each one at nonlethal spots on his body. He dodges two, but the third embeds itself into his thigh. She has it explode, leaving icy bits of shrapnel behind. He won’t be able to walk on that leg for a while. One down.

She turns and runs, hearing the sound of gunshots firing behind her. Her heart skips a beat. If she dies here, her wives will never know the truth of what happened to her. She refuses to die here. A bullet embeds itself into her shoulder.

She refuses to die here.

She channels her magic to her feet, leaving bits of ice behind her, and hears someone slam into a wall as she skids around a corner. Good. Two down.

The last remaining person is the trickiest though. She hears a bullet whiz past her ear, feels blood drip down the side of it. The next time, she might not be so lucky.

She runs down the final corridor, turning just enough to see where her purserer is. A gun is pointed her way. She elects to focus on running instead. It’s tempting to try and impair them in some way as well, but she knows this man. He’s the same rank as her within the organization and a crack shot to boot. The fact that he’d hit her ear instead of her head is a miracle. If he were a better sniper, she’d be dead.

She bursts through the front doors and makes a beeline for her car. As she slides in the driver’s seat, she ducks down, glass windows shattering as bullets rush over her head. She curses, both herself and the car for not starting faster. Once it does, she sits up and presses her foot to the gas pedal, peeling out at high speeds.

Thank the gods for combative driving classes.

She arrives at her own house an hour later–a trip that should have taken at least twice that–and wakes her wives. “We need to go,” she says curtly, hyperaware that any minute now, someone will come here looking for her. If they find anyone here…

She shakes the thought away as Ione asks, “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“It was a trap.” She throws the first thing she grabs from their closet at them. Her shoulder hurts like a bitch, but she ignores it for the time being. It could be healed later, when they weren’t in danger. “Get dressed. Wake the kids. We need to run.”

Rayne’s breath hitches. “Oh, gods.”

She throws a suitcase at her. “Help me pack. Quickly. They’ll be here any minute now.”

Rayne jumps from the bed to ruffle through their things, grabbing Zahara’s medicine and a few heirlooms to toss into the case. Meanwhile, she hears Ione’s rapid footsteps leaving their bedroom to wake the children. The fact that neither stopped to insist on healing her says they understand just how dire the situation is.

Gods, the children. Zahara, Ione, and Rayne had done their absolute best to keep knowledge of what was happening–that their mom was technically a spy–from the kids, but now it was going to come out, and she was scared of what that would mean.

She sighs as she pulls into her stepmother-in-law’s driveway and exits the vehicle, looking over her shoulder cautiously as Ione and Rayne usher the children inside their grandparents’ house. No one seemed to have followed them, but her in-laws were well known among the organization. It wouldn’t be long before someone thought to look here as well, but hopefully, they could rest here for a bit and plot out their next course of action before that happened.

She enters the modest house last, shutting and locking the door behind her. It wouldn’t do much to stall anyone, but at least it was something. Rayne had told her parents about the situation two years ago in anticipation of something like this happening. Zahara had hoped it never would, that she, Ione, and Inez would find a way to take it down from the inside before that happened, but that hope was in vain.

Zahara runs her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know yet. It’s not safe here, but-”

“Where are you going to go now?” Rayne's father, Dean, asks after everything has been explained. Seraphina, Rayne’s stepmother, is frowning thoughtfully.

“What about my hometown?” Seraphina asks.

The trio look between each other as they process what she’s offering. “I mean, that… could work for now. Where are you from?” Ione replies for all of them.

Seraphina makes a noise of amusement. “It’s a little safe haven called Mystic, Vermont.”

“Ver-Vermont?” Zahara exclaims. “Do you have any idea how long it’d take to get there from here?”

“Yes, but it’s a safe haven. A refuge. Whatever you want to call a place that hides magical beings in situations like this.”

Well. That certainly changed things. “A safe haven.”

Seraphina nods. “My parents used to run a shelter for people running from Hunters.”

Zahara glances at the other two. “That could certainly work. Where’s the border? How do we get in?”

Seraphina pulls up a map of the state and points toward the general area that the town was contained within. To Zahara, and according to the map, it looks like a state park, which was a common cover for places like this. Supposedly Yellowstone contained one too, but Zahara had no idea where it was. The organization had been trying to find it for decades but to no avail.

“When you’ve been driving down this road about twenty minutes, stop. That should put you right over the border, and someone will come to investigate. All you have to do then is explain your case.”

“Are you sure someone will come to investigate?”

“Absolutely. It’s the best known safe haven in the Northeast, so they’re used to situations like this. For a time, I even worked border duty and helped people like you.”

Zahara looks at her wives again, both of whom look inclined to accept the suggestion. “It’ll take over two days to drive there, and that’s if we do it straight through with as few breaks as humanly possible.”

“Do you know of a closer one?” Ione asks.

“... No.” Places like that, safe havens for magical beings, went to great lengths to keep their locations secret from things like the organization. And for good reason. The fact that Seraphina not only knew where one was but had lived there… oh, if only they knew.

“Mystic, it is,” Rayne says.

Two days later and Zahara’s about ready to pull all her hair out. As much as she loved her family, spending two days in a car with them while in a hypervigilant state was exhausting. If Anatole in particular didn’t shut up about his girlfriend back home in Washington, she was going to explode.

It didn’t help that traveling as a visibly queer family was terrifying, even if they were in the supposedly more accepting northern part of the country. She passed well enough at this point that her transness wasn’t as big of an issue as it would’ve been when she was a younger woman, but it was still terrifying to stop for bathroom breaks in unfamiliar towns.

By the time they reach the point Seraphina talked about, Zahara is tired, irritable, and in urgent need of a restroom but hesitant to stop anywhere when they’re so close to their destination. She drives the required twenty minutes and stops, ignoring how her bladder pulses. This was fine. She could handle this. She’d handled worse.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for someone to appear. The person who appears is young, maybe a couple years older than Anatole and Eleni, and clearly bored by the whole thing. Zahara steps out of the car to greet him. “Hello. My name is Zahara, this,” she gestures toward everyone in the car, “is my family. We’d like to see shelter within Mystic’s wards.”

The boy sighs, pulling out a clipboard. “What are you running from?”

Zahara hesitates, wondering if the truth was in her best interests right now. “It’s mostly just referred to as the Organization.”

The boy looks at his clipboard then back at her. “Uh, this… you… uh, one moment please.” He disappears behind the invisible wards, and Zahara curses her luck. So despite being more prominent on the west coast, the organization still had people here living in fear as well.

Twenty long, agonizing minutes later, a woman appears from the wards. She’s older, probably in her 50s or 60s if Zahara had to guess, with long black hair pulled back in a ponytail and unique violet eyes. Zahara exits the car.

“Are you Zahara?” The woman asks.

“I am. These are my wives, in name if not legality, and my children,” she explains, gesturing at the car.

“My name is Helena Ravenwood. I’m the mayor of this town.” Good gods, a mention of the organization was enough to draw out the mayor? “I hear you're having issues with a certain organization.”

Zahara nods, shifting in place as her bladder continues to demand attention. As a soldier, she hates herself for fidgeting in the first place, but gods, does she hope this won’t last too long. “Yes, ma’am. I…” she sighs. “I was part of it until I found out it’s corrupt and doing more harm than good. When they realized I was no longer loyal to the cause, they tried to kill me. I was hoping your town would be a refuge for me. For my family.”

“You understand that the organization you speak of is incredibly powerful, yes? Who’s to say this isn’t just a ruse to get us to allow your kind inside?”

That’s… annoyingly fair. “I understand your concern, but I assure you if I were trying for something like that, do you really think I’d bring my whole family? My underage children?”

Helena wavers. “I don’t know you.”

Also, annoyingly fair. “I understand that, but I need you to understand that I’m just a woman with her family seeking refuge from a dangerous organization that wants me dead.” And a trans-friendly bathroom, but that can come later.

Helena runs her fingers through her hair, pulling a few strands loose from her ponytail. “Letting you in is a risk, but I suppose if you really are on their hit list coming here was a risk for you as well.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Zahara can see the indecision in Helena’s eyes, torn between protecting her town and living up to the rules set forth by an ancestor to always welcome magical beings in need. “Please.”

She closes her eyes with a sigh. “Please don’t make me regret this.” With that, Helena steps back and places her hands against an invisible barrier. A series of colorful runes spring forth, many archaic ones that Zahara’s never seen before, going about ten feet up and around before stopping. As they disappear, Zahara can see a bustling town within. “Welcome to Mystic. Stop once your car is inside, and I’ll help you find a place to stay.”

#writing #zahara

2 notes · View notes