Ava’s Revenge (An Unbounded Novella)

This is a work of fiction, and the views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author. Likewise, certain characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Ava’s Revenge (An Unbounded Novella)

Published by White Star Press
P.O. Box 353
American Fork, Utah 84003

Copyright © 2014 by Teyla Branton
Cover design copyright © 2014 by White Star Press

Cover and ebook design by
ePubMasters

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for supporting the author’s rights.

ISBN: 978-1-939203-54-0

Printed in the United States of America
Year of first printing: 2014

To Seek Revenge, You Must First Manage to Survive.

AVA O’HARE JUST WANTED
to love her child and live in peace, but a normal life was never her destiny. One stark day in 1745, everything she loved was taken from her, ripped away by the very man who should have protected her.

Somehow, miraculously, Ava survived.

Now it was time for revenge.

Long before Ava O’Hare became the successful leader of a modern-day Renegade cell, she had other battles to fight. If you’ve enjoyed the Unbounded series, you will love this extra peek into the events that shaped Ava’s life and made her a Guardian of Humanity.

Please note:
Ava’s Revenge (An Unbounded novella)
is a novella, not a full-length novel. It is separate from the main series and can be enjoyed at any time. However, the last scene is present day and fits into the Unbounded timeline just after the end of
The Change (Unbounded Book 1)
, so readers may better appreciate
Ava’s Revenge
after reading the first book.

Part One

June 1745 - Near Williamsburg, Virginia

Ava’s Change

SIMON WAS IN A BLACK
mood, the kind that even after thirteen years of marriage brought terror to my heart and made me want to flee. I had almost run away a year ago, but I couldn’t do that now because of Hannah. I couldn’t risk her.

I could feel him coming, imagined slights and impotent frustration clinging to him like sticky gray cobwebs. I felt the darkness as if I could see into his mind, as if I were a part of him.

He was late and dinner had long since cooled, despite my moving it on and off the heat for the past two hours. I hurried to stoke the dying fire, swinging the kettle back over the flames, praying it would reheat quickly. Simon had never been content with the customary cold leftovers from the larger afternoon meal but required all his food served hot. Though I’d originally made the roast in the oven built inside the fireplace, today I had reheated the meat in the kettle, nearly burning it when he didn’t appear on time.

Stepping to the other side of the hearth, I peered out the window of our three-bedroom house—a house larger than those of our neighbors. Solid on the outside but reeking putrefaction on the inside. Sure enough, Simon was coming up the dirt road that led to our main fields, riding Old Bob. Simon’s face was his normal red, and his thick, aging, slouch-shouldered body didn’t appear any more tense than usual, yet the dark emotion remained lodged in my heart. Clearly, his planned discussion with our neighbor about our troublesome cow hadn’t gone well.

Around his body was a glow I had been seeing around everyone since before Hannah’s birth. Always the same white color—like twenty candles framing the body. I didn’t know what it was, but every living thing had it, even animals and insects, except these were muted compared with the brighter human auras. It could be quite distracting at town council or in a church meeting, but for the most part I found it comforting, especially with Hannah. There was no glow around the deceased.

A sound stilled my heart. “Oh, no,” I whispered. “Let me get him taken care of first.” Because three-month-old Hannah knew nothing about our world and how it worked. Nothing about her father.

“Shush, my sweet.” I scooped up the baby, thinking hard. I could take her to the woodshed, where her cries wouldn’t be heard. I’d done it before, rescuing her as soon as possible, her face red and her fists clenched in indignation at being ignored. I would pay the price for not being in the house when he came home, but that would be preferable to his noticing Hannah.

Desperation clogged my throat. I’d lost too many babies. The first had been a boy, in my womb less than five months. Simon had cried real tears that day, his worn face sorrowful. I’d been eighteen and I’d believed the tears. Almost, I’d forgiven him.

The second baby I miscarried six months into the pregnancy, a little girl. Simon hadn’t wept over her small corpse or apologized for hitting me, and that was when I began to suspect the depths of his depravation. The third baby I lost at two months after Simon kicked me in the stomach, and the fourth at five after he slammed me into the wall and locked me up for three days without food. Afterwards, Simon had been angry because I had lost another boy. He’d raped me that very evening in the effort to start another.

But that was it. No more babies. Not for me. No more victims for Simon. As the years went on, I was just Ava O’Hare Brumbaugh, the barren woman with the poor, hard-working husband, who really couldn’t be blamed for stepping out at the brothel given his hardships.

Not that his attempt at showing his manhood protected me from his advances. Because he still wanted a son. I was just as determined not to give him one, so I took the herbs that women only talked about behind closed doors when their husbands and children couldn’t hear. Just in case my body decided to heal.

Last year, at thirty, I discovered I was expecting again despite the prevention. Given the low life expectancy in Virginia and my volatile relationship with Simon, I was surprised I’d lived that long.

Hannah had fallen back to sleep, turning her lips toward my breast and making sucking motions, her bottom lip disappearing inside her mouth as she nursed in her dream. “Good girl,” I murmured. “Please stay asleep.” I stroked her soft cheek. Just once and only briefly. She was due for a feeding soon, but I couldn’t have her awaken now, not with Simon in that foul mood. Unfortunately, Hannah was a fussy baby, and though I had ample milk, every day it was an increasing effort to keep her quiet.

To deepen her slumber, I held her as long as I dared. As Simon’s boots sounded against the steps, I slipped her into the little cradle that lay inside the large corner cupboard where I had once kept cooking supplies.

Untucking my skirt from my underclothes where I’d put it to prevent it from catching fire, I hurried back to the fireplace.

I wasn’t fast enough.

Simon’s eyes pinned me as I bent to check the food, then strayed toward the cupboard, his eyes narrowing with the jealousy he showed toward anything that took my attention from him. Fury emanated from his body as prominently as the stench of his sweat.

I forced my jaw to unclench. “Good evening, Simon. How was your day? Dinner’s hot and ready.” This last was a lie, or maybe a desperate hope.

His eyes left the cupboard, and I nearly gave a sigh of relief, the knot in my stomach lessening slightly. “Rotten,” he muttered. “Imbeciles. Barker and the rest. He had three of the others there to witness his demands for payment. It ain’t my fault his old fences can’t keep out my livestock. He even had the gall to ask me to fix his fence.”

He looked at me expectantly, so I shook my head in commiseration. “What did you tell him?”

The potatoes and carrots were ready, and the new butter and the freshly baked bread I had struggled over all day would please him, but the meat wouldn’t be as hot as he liked. I should have kept it warm, no matter his complaints about the wasted fuel. He could afford it, despite the setbacks he’d experienced lately with the crops.

Simon pulled out a chair and sat at the table, cursing under his breath as he removed his boots and tossed them by the door where I’d have to remove the caked mud later. “I told him he owes
me
for treating the cow for bloating.”

I suspected that Simon had let our cow into Barker’s field, or at least starved her into desperation so she would break through the fence. She was older and after the summer would become our meat for the winter. Fattening her up on Barker’s grain would mean better eating for us.

Or for Simon. These days I had no appetite—a good thing because Simon seemed to begrudge anything that went into my mouth. That I hadn’t lost weight or felt weak, I chalked up to a miracle.

Maybe I can find a way to leave with Hannah
.
He might not find us.
I’d been saving every bit of money I could, but it wasn’t enough to get us very far. Not yet. Simon was careful with what he gave me, and the only money I had was what I earned from my needlework for Mrs. Adamson. That tiny nest egg and the hope it represented—and sweet Hannah, of course—were the only things keeping me alive.

Because if we didn’t go far enough, I knew he would find me. And he’d have help. Simon was a contributing member of our society, if not a friendly one, and most of our neighbors and acquaintances would work together to return a runaway wife. I belonged to him like the chickens or the cows.

He was proud of me in his own way. My face maintained much of my youthful beauty, my blond hair was long and lustrous, and I didn’t carry extra pounds. The scars he’d given me over the years had disappeared, and even the deep bruises he now gave me faded overnight. I worked hard and needed little sleep. As long as I didn’t linger too long with any of the local farmers or their sons, he was willing to take me out to church or other town functions and show me off. He even endured Hannah’s presence during the outings because she represented his prowess of fathering a child.

No, the only way Simon would let me leave was in a pine box.

Like his first wife.

Until Hannah arrived, I had begun to think of the first Mistress Brumbaugh as the lucky one.

“Well?” Simon looked at me expectantly.

I swept up a plate, but instead of going to the stove, I approached him, my mind scrabbling to find a delay so the meat could heat thoroughly. “Maybe we can go for a walk this evening. Would you like that?”

He studied me, his face turning a deeper shade of red. Simon wasn’t an ugly man, but there was nothing remarkable about him. His height was average, or perhaps slightly less so. He was wide and his arms thick, but his strength was also average by comparison. He looked no more or less worn than any of the other wrinkled, leather-faced men who spent their entire lives toiling under the sun.

Simon’s very averageness might have fueled his ever-present anger. Maybe if he’d been taller, he would have been more confident and not so quick to take offense. If he’d been stronger, he might not have needed to prove his domination over me. If his eyes had been more compelling or his face less red, perhaps he wouldn’t regard my every interaction with other men as flirting. If he’d been wealthy, instead of just slightly better off than the rest of our neighbors, or if we lived in one of the big, fancy houses in town and he was a doctor or politician instead of a farmer, maybe everything would have been different.