Chronicles of Araxx - Forever Broken
Chapter 22

That night was full of everything but sleep.

Lee kept going over every single little detail in her head. If she was going to become strong enough to defeat the vampire and stay away from the werewolves, she would have a lot of work to do.

It was two in the morning when she sat down on the floor of the flat with the laptop in front of her.

The first thing she had to do was move. They had been due to move soon anyway, and the flat was full of memories she wanted to get away from. Everywhere she looked, she could see Bree, hear her voice, smell her.

She opened a search engine and typed ‘apartments in London’. After searching for a while, she realised how expensive London was. There was no way she would ever be able to afford any of the properties advertised. Even for a small studio flat where almost everything was in one room, she would be looking at paying nearly £1,500 a month for rent.

She looked at the wad of money they had collected that week and counted it. There was only £500. Lee wasn’t entirely sure if £500 was a lot of money or not, it was a foreign concept to her, but she knew it took her and Bree three days to collect, and Bree was a lot better at pickpocketing than Lee, so, as it was, she wouldn’t be able to afford £1,500 a month easily.

Then Lee remembered the flat they were currently living in wasn’t rented. They were just squatting in an empty flat, so all she needed to look for was somewhere empty. She would move in, stay for a while until it looked as if someone was going to be moving in and then she would move out again.

She changed the way she was searching and looked instead for warehouses. There were plenty of empty warehouses to let in her area, and Lee knew from talking to Bree that most of these were empty for months at a time. She found one which looked as if it would suit her purpose, and it was just around the corner from where she was staying now.

The thought crossed her mind that maybe she should leave London, leave it far behind and possibly even go to another country, but she didn’t know anywhere else. Bree had thought her everything she needed to know about being homeless in London.

Besides, Jacob would think she had left town. He would think she wouldn’t wait around but try to get as far away as possible.

The next few hours were spent researching vampire, werewolves and warlocks. Information about them was very mixed, and Lee was confused by it. Every single website she went on contradicted the next, and it wasn’t much help. The one thing they all agreed on was that all supernatural creatures were stronger, faster and harder to kill than humans. Lee needed a way to make herself strong enough to be able to battle them and to get away from them if she needed to.

Lee knew Jacob was after her, and according to her suspicions, although it was difficult to believe, she also knew he was a werewolf. From her extensive research on the internet, Lee surmised he would be fast, which meant she had to be even faster.

The sun was up by this point, but Lee had not looked outside yet.

She opened up another search window and entered ‘fast ways for people to travel’. The first things that came up were cars, bikes planes, all the usual forms of transport.

Then Lee came across something called free-running. She’d never heard of it before but from the images, it looked just like people running, and moving fast too.

There were video links in the search results and Lee clicked on one. She waited for the video to load and then watched as the video showed people running through cities, using their surroundings to get around quicker. Lee was enthralled by this and decided this could be a way to stay ahead of Jacob. She would learn how to move like the people in the videos, and she would need to learn how to defend herself too.

The next videos Lee researched were self-defence videos. Looking at the videos, it didn’t look too hard, but trying it out might be another matter.

Lee got up from the floor, stretched and finally saw the time. It was 10 am, and the streets outside were alive.

Lee looked around the flat, and everything she saw reminded her of Bree. She could feel the sadness creeping up inside her, and decided she would have to take her mind off it. She would spend that day moving home instead of being sad.

Lee also couldn’t help the feeling Jacob might know where she’d been staying. How else would he have been able to replace her at the club? She didn’t even know how he found out she was in London, then it hit her. If Jacob was a werewolf, he would be able to track her scent. But still, she’d travelled across the country. How would he have been able to track her that far? Maybe someone tipped him off about where she was. One of the vampires, no doubt.

She made a mental note to not move around outside during the night any more and to stick only to going out in the daylight, just to be on the safe side.

She decided to first take a run to the empty warehouse she found on the internet and scope it out. While she was there, she would look for a way in.

The run felt good. The half hour it took for her to jog to the industrial estate where the empty warehouse was helped clear her mind.

It was spring and the trees were all blossoming pink flowers. She ran past people who were going about their daily business, not a care in the world. She tried hard, but Lee couldn’t help thinking about her and Bree’s last day together. If only she’d known what would happen if they went to that club, Lee could have stopped it all. But it was too late.

Lee’s train of thought was broken as she entered the industrial estate and spotted the For Sale sign hanging on the wall of the warehouse she had seen on the internet. The warehouse was old and the paint was chipping off the walls, but other than that it looked okay.

It was in a deserted part of the city, and there weren’t many people around.

Lee walked around the back of the building and spotted a fire escape up to the second floor. She ran up the stairs and found the door at the top was unlocked. Lee gingerly opened the door, not knowing what she would replace inside.

She stepped inside and looked to her left, replaceing a light switch on the wall. Lee flicked it, not expecting anything to happen, but to her surprise, the lights came on, and the building was flooded with bright, white light.

“This’ll do,” she said.

Lee squinted at the ground, wondering if an idea she had would work. She thought very hard about the rug that was in the living room back in the flat, but nothing happened.

“’Twas worth a try.” She sighed.

It turned out her ‘powers’, as she was calling them, were temperamental, and she was not going to be able to magically make the entire contents of the flat appear in this warehouse. She would instead have to resort to other means of transport and she would have to hire a van with somebody to drive it to move her belongings to the warehouse.

Lee walked down the interior stairs to the ground floor of the warehouse.

After a thorough scout of the building, Lee found a shower room with a toilet, sink and a wall full of mirrors. A small room in the back where she would put the mattress and her clothes, and better yet, she found all the doors downstairs were locked from the inside.

Lee took a look in the back of the warehouse and found what must have been the office. On the wall of the office, Lee found a key.

She laughed. “If this is the key for the door upstairs, I might just… I don’t know. I hope it is,” Lee said. She paused. “Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, Lee.” She laughed, then picked up the key and ran upstairs.

She burst out laughing when she put the key in the lock, turned it and it worked.

“Amazing!”

She ran back downstairs and tried it on all the doors. Every single one opened with that one key.

All she had to do now was to arrange for a van to bring all her belongings to the warehouse, although she had to make sure she did it during the day. It was getting late, and the sun would soon be going down.

Lee made her way back to town and found a small moving company.

The whole encounter with the men and the van was awkward. They never voiced it, but Lee could see they wanted to ask why she was moving everything from a flat to a warehouse.

“Photography project,” Lee said to throw them off.

“Excuse me?” One of the men asked as she paid him £200 for moving everything.

“It’s for a photography project,” she repeated.

“Cool,” he said sarcastically. He didn’t really care as he’d just made £200 for three hours work, and that made him happy. He really didn’t care what this strange red-headed girl was doing in a warehouse, as long as he got his money.

When the men left, Lee was left to move everything into their right places. The warehouse had electricity, but no heating. After digging around in one of the store cupboards, Lee found a couple of storage heaters. She put one in the bedroom, the small back room she’d put her mattress and clothes in, and the other she put in the main warehouse close to the back. She pulled one of the bean bags closer to it and decided this was where she would sit most of the time when she was doing research.

Then it dawned on her. Internet. Lee didn’t know much about technology, but she did know the internet wasn’t everywhere. She turned the laptop on, and to her surprise, she found an internet connection. It wasn’t very strong, but she would be able to use it.