Liberté Foncée

CHAPTER ONE: BINDING BLOOD

People told them about a time of peace. They didn't know such a time, so they regarded it as a fantasy. A dream. In other words: complete and utter bullshit.

There was no peace. The world was one big mess, and you had to be lucky to make it past the age of fifteen.

If you were really lucky, you made it to your twenties.

If you knew how to play your cards right, you got to see your twenty-fifth birthday.

If you were strong and knew how to survive you might even make it to the age of forty.

Barely anyone made it past fifty. It just didn't happen. It was fact.

It was life.

It was death.

Whatever it was, it was reality.

*

Once upon a god-forsaken time, there lived a group of people (Incase you can't pick up the oh-so-subtle hints you've been given so far, this isn't a fucking fairy tale).

They weren't exactly friends. They had nothing in common, really, other then being born in the same unfortunate year and onto the same bloody planet. The greatest thing they shared was a common wish... a dream... a hope...

There were four of them:

Rayne, Alena, Shane, Ayden.

Over the years that the future had in store for them, they would grow to love one another, and then to hate each other with a bitter passion and rage. Over time they would find loyalties and betrayals, love and heartbreak. They would find the strength inside themselves, and they would discover their weaknesses.

It is on a clear, cold, winter night around the time that these four individuals were fourteen years old that our story starts.

*

YEAR 2112

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know. Be quiet, will you?"

"Ow! Don't kick me!"

"You're such a baby..."

"I am not!"

"Will the two of you shut it?"

"They'll never shut up. Live with it,"

The four stumbled through the woods and into a clearing where the moonlight shone through.

The moon was a bright, blinding white that night. The stars were visible for the first time in weeks. The ground beneath their feet was still damp with the rain that had come with autumn and left only a few days ago, letting clouds linger.

The full moon was nestled in the dark sky like a seed waiting to sprout. A distant howl sounded, sending shivers up their spines. No one dared to ask about the werewolf population in the area.

Weeds sprouted up around the small, bare clearing, enclosing it in a circle.

Three of the four children looked at the fourth. "Now what?" Alena asked Shane.

He smiled secretively. "We all agreed on what would happen tonight," he said quietly, dropping his voice an octave or so. They all nodded. "Is everyone still prepared to go through with this?" Another round of nods greeted his question.

Shane acknowledged them with another smile. "Then let us begin,"

He was leading the ceremony because it had been his idea, and he was doing it well. Rayne felt a shudder dance over her backbone as he pulled out a cigarette lighter and start a smile camp fire with some dry wood he'd brought with him from home (they four had agreed earlier that the chances of finding dry kindling after several solid weeks of rain were practically nil).

Once the fire was lit, the flames licking the inky sky above, the assembled in a circle.

"Tonight, there remain no secrets between us," Shane proclaimed, drawing something out of his pocket.

Regulations the government had set down stated "clearly" that everyone must carry a sheaf of ID tags (like dog tags given to soldiers many years ago in the Muggle army) stating everything - Name, Date of Birth, and anything unusual about them (like being a werewolf, vampire, animagus, etc).

Now, Shane drew forth a chain with several tags hanging off it. Metallic clinks sounded as they bounced against one another.

Around the fire, Ayden, Alena, and Rayne did the same.

"Ladies first," Ayden said, and Shane nodded.

"Go on, Alena," he offered, reading Rayne's slightly uncertain and panicked look.

Alena nodded grimly, and tossed the tags toward him.

ALENA WEST
BORN DECEMBER 2, 2097
FAIRY BLOOD ON MOTHER'S SIDE

Shane read all this aloud, and Alena nodded, as if verifying the information was correct.

Their ceremony continued, revealing minor details such as that Shane's grandfather had been a werewolf and that when he was five, random objects around Ayden liked to explode for no apparent reason.

When all secrets had been revealed, they proceeded. "Tonight, we are united. Tonight, we are family," Shane reached in the pocket of his jacket, and drew out a knife, long and crooked. Parts of the blade were rusted, and the handle was mangled. Chunks had been torn out of it completely. No one felt it was necessary to ask exactly where this knife had come from.

They had discussed this all beforehand, and everyone knew what to do. With Shane beginning, they all took the knife, and with the edge, nicked and tore the skin directly in the center of their palms, right down to the blood. The red dripped down their hands, tracing the lines of the palms, coving their hands in crimson.

A deep scarlet crept over Alena's palm, a sharp pain biting her hand. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out, and passed the knife to Rayne. She admired the girl. As she cut both palms and let the blood flow over her hands, Rayne didn't even flinch. In fact, her expression didn't change at all. She was tough.

When they were through with the knife, Shane slipped it back into his pocket with their blood still glistening on its edge. Shadows from the fire licked their faces, and the flames darted up towards the sky sending flickering lights in all directions. The light caught the blood on their hands, still pouring freely.

"Please join hands," Shane said quietly.

They formed a ring, palm to palm, wound to wound and remained so for a minute of silence. Blood to blood.

"We are now tied by blood," Shane said quietly. "We are now brothers and sisters of the same cause. We will help the fight. We will help win,"

Everyone around him nodded solemnly. Shane glanced to Alena, and she began her part. "We now remain forever bonded to one another. A bond not to be taken on lightly, or broken,"

"The bond of blood, and eternal loyalty," Rayne added.

"Forever," Ayden said. "In life and death,"

"Together, and apart," Shane finished, releasing Alena and Ayden's hands on either side of him.

*

When she was younger Alena would hear stories about the Fighters. She would hear her great-grandfather talk of a time when they were just starting out. Alena knew the stories; she'd heard them a million times. She knew how the Fighters had just appeared one day, a group dedicated to one cause. She knew that the evil had been around much longer. She knew that the good was helpless, but the last part she'd figured out on her own.

Everyone knew the story of the Girl Who Died.

Marie Easton had been four years old when she had the unfortunate luck to run right into the hands of evil - right into the hands of a wizard whom had been feared many years ago. To Alena, over a hundred. The same Wizard was still feared today. The Wizard who, with Marie's soul, had finally achieved immortality.

The good called him a monster, a villain, wretched.

The evil called him a lord, a master, a fucking god even.

The Fighters called him a challenge. They fought for a freedom from fear, and he brought about terror.

They fought against him.

At night, when her house was dark and her family lay asleep, Alena would whisper the name of the one who brought terror. She mumbled the name of the one she wished to help fight against - the one she'd joined her blood with others to defeat.

"Voldemort."

*

Shane crept in through his bedroom window and gently dropped down to the floor. He pulled off his jacket and sweat-soaked T-shirt and started changing into his pajamas, praying that everyone in the house was asleep and that no one would hear him sneaking in.

Shane had had some bad experiences with sneaking in in the past. His mother's boyfriend, Jack, was convinced that Shane was some sort of teen pervert who snuck out every night trying to find a whore off the street. In truth, Shane just tried to spend as much time out of his house as humanly possible to avoid Jack who, aside from being the biggest bastard/egomaniac Shane had ever met, also got severely drunk almost every night and ended up taking out any anger he could find in himself (and there was usually a lot of it) out on Shane.

He'd still have some of the marks when he was into his thirties - if he ever made it that far, which, living in this world (especially in the same house as Jack Morris) with Shane's luck was doubtful.

*

Ayden slipped inside the door of the flat he shared with his twenty-two year old half-brother, Mark (their mom had died shortly after Ayden was born, and Mark's father had left his wife shortly after Mark was five years old. Ayden's dad had died of cancer when Ayden had been three).

Ayden wasn't surprised to find Mark and his girlfriend, Violet, snogging on the couch. It was practically a daily occurrence. He nearly made it to his room without being noticed, but Mark happened to look up just in time to see his brother disappearing into his bedroom.

"I'm glad to see you were planning on coming home at all tonight," he said sarcastically.

Ayden froze in the doorway and slowly turned. "Good night to you too," he said, getting ready to slip into his room and close the door, but Mark rolled his eyes and stopped him.

"Where've you been?" he demanded.

"Mark, give the kid a break," Violet said, smiling at Ayden.

Ayden liked Violet, because she wasn't like some of the other girlfriends Mark had had. She was cheerful, and didn't act like he was inferior to her very being just because he was younger and happened to live with her boyfriend. She was really the closest thing to a big sister Ayden had ever had. Violet was also useful when Ayden was about to get in trouble for staying out late or what not, because she was one of the few people on the planet who could talk Mark out of being the protective big brother that he liked to try to be.

Mark relented, and nodded. Ayden grinned at Violet. "Thanks, Vi," he said, and then turned to go to his room, calling over his shoulder. "'Night, Lovebirds,"

He ducked into his room before the couch pillow Mark chucked at him could knock off his head, and heard it band against the door he had just closed and locked.

Ayden leaned against the wall of his room and exhaled, contented. He glanced down at the palms of his hands where the two small cuts lay. They had stopped bleeding, but they were still clearly visible, a raw, red look to them. One could tell they had just been made.

*

All was silent when Rayne stepped inside the kitchen of her house through the back door, tossing her denim jacket onto a chair and pulling the elastic out of her black hair, letting it fall loosely around her shoulders. She walked to the kitchen sink and let the water flow over her hands, soothing the cuts on her palms.

The bond of blood, and eternal loyalty,

Had she really said that? The past few hours were hazy, but Rayne knew that whenever she looked back on the day in the future, she would remember every detail. She turned off the running water and dried her hands, cursing quietly when blood stained the towel.

Blood.

Hers mixed with that of others. So what were they all now? A family of sorts, supposedly. They would work together, help one another, be loyal to each other, and forever be tied by the very blood in their veins.

Rayne shivered. Forever was a long time.

*

The next morning, the sun rose bright and early. A cold chill swept through the air. There was frost on the ground, filming the world with a half-white surface. In a clearing a mile or so past the outskirts of a small town where four teenagers lay sleeping with small scars on the palms of their hands, the ashes of a midnight fire remained, now covered with a thin layer of frozen dew.

Beneath the arctic carpet, one who looked would still be able to see the deep red of frozen blood mingling with the morning ice.

*

Alena hated her job. On weekends, she worked at a Muggle shop that sold CDs that nobody in their right mind would buy - unless they wanted something particularly ancient - and that from Alena's perspective were prehistoric.

As usual, the music playing over the sound system in the shop was of terrible quality on some old disc. The song wasn't bad, an old ABBA tune, but the recording, which a centaury ago would have been regarded as "brilliantly digitally re-mastered", was awful.

Alena cringed and glanced at her watch. Only two hours and fifty-six minutes left on my shift, she thought dully (it was a three hour shift). Why this store was even in existence as of today was a mystery to Alena. Nobody, as far as she knew, had bought anything in over three months. Any customer even entering the store was treated like a miracle.

She was so deep in her thoughts of wondering whom the manager could possibly have bribed (or how, for that matter) to keep the shop open, that she almost missed the sound of a bell tinkling by the entrance (a sound so unheard in here that she almost didn't recognize it as a ringing bell). She nearly had a heart attack when an actual, living, human being (more then that - one she recognized) walked up to the counter.

Shane offered her that same secretive grin he'd worn yesterday night, and said, "Hi,"

Alena smiled. "'Morning," There was a silence, but not an uncomfortable one. Finally, she spoke. "I thought nobody in their right mind came in here,"

Shane gave her another one of those little grins. "I thought nobody in their right mind would work here," he retorted, and Alena flushed.

"Blame my parents," she informed him.

"I will,"

He had a nice smile, thought Alena, and the definite potential to be cute once the braces came off.

"So," she began. "What's up?" She glanced down at the palm of her hand where the small scabs from the night before rested.

"Nothing much. Couldn't sleep last night. Kept thinking about the four of us..." he glanced at his hands too.

Alena nodded slowly. "Bound by blood," she said, voice coming out in a near whisper.

Shane grinned at her, and unknowingly to both of them echoed Rayne's thoughts from the previous night. "Forever, right? That's a long time,"

Alena smiled. "I guess we'll have to try hard not to get sick of each other,"

Shane opened his mouth to reply, but a shout cut through the conversation. "West! Are you going to do any work or are you going to flirt?" Alena groaned inwardly, and a blush crept over her cheeks.

Vanessa Elliot, the manager of the store had always been a symbol to Alena of what to work hard to never become. She was a twenty-two year old woman with the sense of humor like one of those old ladies with a hundred cats that called the cops when kids ran across her yard, and a dictator in her small universe of music retail.

She always seemed to have some date with some random guy, because despite her lack of humor, Vanessa was one of those women who would still be able to turn heads in their forties. She had light colored hair with natural streaks of different shades of blonde in it, and eyes of a deep blue that reminded one of the skies just before twilight. She was full-figured, and most men would describe her as a knockout.

However, as she came through the door from her office, Shane simply raised an eyebrow at her, and scowled. Alena smirked to herself, before running through the introductions. "Vanessa, this is Shane. Shane, Vanessa,"

"Pleasure," Shane replied shortly, making it clear that he could have happily lived his life without meeting Vanessa Elliot.

"Get back to work," Vanessa spat at Alena, not saying a word to Shane. Then, she turned and went back into her office it continue applying makeup.

Shane muttered something under his breath that shocked Alena slightly, but, in fact, was a perfect description of Vanessa. She giggled, and he flashed another grin.

"Did I tell you to flirt or work?" Vanessa called from her office.

Alena rolled her eyes. "Hypocrite," she muttered.

Shane nodded and then he glanced at his watch (which incidentally had stopped working two weeks ago). "I should be going," he's gaze flicked to Vanessa's office door, and he frowned. "I'll see you later," he told Alena.

"Bye," Alena said, looking gloomy at the prospect of going back to "work" (i.e. sitting at the front desk chewing bubble gum and wondering how much times was left until her shift was over).

Shane hesitated. "You doing anything tonight?" he asked suddenly.

Alena raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking me out?" she asked.

"I might be," Shane admitted.

"Get working, West!" Vanessa's voice came from her office.

"Maybe I'll call you," Shane said.

"Maybe I won't answer," Alena said. She chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. "Maybe I will,"

Shane grinned. "I'll see you later, Alena,"

"Later," Alena echoed as he headed towards the door. As it closed, the little bell tinkled, leaving Alena alone with Dancing Queen on the speakers and Vanessa in the office.