Amethyst Origins Ch. 02

Author's Note: Hello again! Thank you so very much for the ratings! I really appreciate it! The more feedback I get from my readers really helps me know if I going in the right direction for you all. Furthermore, here is Amethyst's next chapter. I really believe that Alana's alter ego Amethyst is the real her. Somewhat like how Clark Kent's alter ego Superman is really who he is. When you put on the mask and you're able to escape the mundane in the world and just be yourself and free. A lot of Alana shines through Amethyst which is why she maintains her humanity and refuses to kill even though she realizes how close she's come to doing it. Enjoy!

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Chapter Two

Alana Hastings drained her third cup of coffee as she watched her class continue to practice on their training dummies. Her afternoon class had been learning CPR and had just moved up to minor injury training. She'd been a certified paramedic for four years and had been offered an instructor's position after she'd responded to her brother's murder two years ago.

Alan gripped her coffee cup tighter as the horrid memories flood her mind. Her head ached and felt like it been turned to lead. She set down her coffee mug and began rubbing her temples. She thought about the bottle of anxiety pills in her bag that Dr. Moore had prescribed her and contemplated taking them.

Just one of them could set her mind at ease for a couple of hours.

She'd been assigned to over six months of grief counseling after the Hastings Massacre. That's what the papers had called it. The shrink had diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and recommended anti-anxiety medication and relief of duty. She still saw Dr. Moore once a week as a requirement for her training position.

Four years in the US Navy as a medical corpsman and two deployments. Still, none of her training had prepared her for the sight that night at her brother's home. She swore she could still smell the blood. Taking care of the soldiers on the battle was one thing to her because she'd been trained for the worst in combat.

Her family was killed in their home where they should have been safe. That's why she'd fought all those years, to protect them. She'd failed them. She wasn't there when she needed her the most.

Alana felt her hand begin to twitch and decided it was time for a break. She was about to head to the locker room before a comforting hand touched her shoulder and startled her. Alana nearly knocked over her coffee cup. She clutched her hands to her chest.

"Whoa there, I didn't mean to freak you out, honey," said a familiar female voice. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

Alana looked up into the comforting soft brown eyes of her friend and fellow instructor, Tessa Carr. She smiled softly at her friend and nodded slowly. "I'm just tired that's all, really," she admitted before resting her hand on top of her friend's and giving it a gentle squeeze.

"Have you been out fighting crime again, girl?" Tessa teased.

Alana almost crushed her friend's hand. She felt herself break out into a cold sweat. She also knew her face must have turned an ugly shade of pale because Tessa stared at like she was ready to put her on an available gurney. Tessa's brown eyes looked her friend over.

"Lana, it was just a joke," Tessa said trying to easy her friend. She raised a thin blond eyebrow. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked with her prying voice.

Alana released her friend's hand. "Yeah, I think I'm just going to go home. I don't feel well," Alana lied. It wasn't entirely a lie. Tessa nodded her agreement.

"Can you please take over?" Alana asked even though she knew she didn't have to.

Tessa nodded softly. "Of course," her friend said before leaving to take over the class.

Alana grabbed her things and left the training facility that was located in Liberty City Police Department. Her late brother, Marcus, had been a detective here two years ago. She wouldn't have accepted working here if there had been a better cover for her midnight excursions.

She walked over to her brother's red 67' mustang that was in the parking lot across from the main building. After he was murdered she inherited everything since their parents had been killed in a car accident ten years prior-she had been just sixteen years old. Marcus had been in college when that happened and had to drop out to take care of his baby sister.

Marcus had been a Marine scout sniper who left the corps to become a cop. He said he'd wanted to prevent bad things from happening to good people on the home front. He'd loved the corps and had wanted to stay but he'd told Alana that being away from his only family had left a hole in his chest he couldn't fill. He couldn't protect her if he wasn't around.

Alana felt the tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. She missed him so much her heart still ached. She remembered the screams from the terrible night. She'd responded to a usual 911 call. She hadn't heard the address because she had been loading up the ambulance while the medic in charge took the call.

She hadn't realized where they were driving until she'd seen the children's toys in the front lawn and the four blood stained gurneys that had come out of the townhouse. Alana had felt like the ground beneath her had crumbled and at any moment she would have fallen straight down into the abyss. In that very moment her life had changed. Since that moment she knew the only way to make it right was to take down the man responsible for her brother's and his family's murder.

A car honked near her, jolting her from the bad memories. Alana got into her brother's mustang and drove toward her city's only cemetery. She hadn't been to the cemetery for a month and she stopped to get fresh flowers for her family's gravestones. She picked daisies because that had been her late sister-in-law's favorite.

Alana had pulled a dark coat over her uniform to fight off the chilly mid-September air. She walked through the black iron gates of the cemetery that housed all her relatives and was soon standing in front of their graves. Her whole family, her parents, her brother, his wife, and her niece and nephew were there.

She placed the daisies in front of all their graves as loneliness filled the very core of her. She felt the tears sliding down her hot cheeks. Alana hadn't cried for a while and the tears felt foreign to her. She knew she should've been through her grieving processes by now. Her blue eyes fell to the epitaph written on her parent's gravestone.

Her cold fingers traced the engraved words.

"I miss you so much," Alana whispered the words and they carried along the wind before wrapping around her. The only noise in the cemetery was her voice. The tears continued to fall as she stood there for what seemed like hours. She felt caught between her past and her present, while still trying to carve out her future.

"I'm barely surviving as it is," Alana whispered softly.

She was alone.

"I won't let him get away with this," Alana forced out, her voicing cracking with each word. She felt the sorrow begin to fade and the anger that began to replace it. It happened every time she thought about her brother and his family. She felt the grief eating her up from the inside.

Joe Marcello would pay for what he did to her family, for what he did to the people of her city, and for whatever other sins he'd committed. Alana would finish him if it was the last thing she'd ever be able to do. The Hastings family had suffered enough from the hands of men like Joe Marcello.

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"Where is he?!" Amethyst shouted at the brawny man beneath her heel. She'd caught him off guard and now he was on his back holding his arms over his head to protect himself from her blows. Amethyst knelt down and pressed her knee into the man's chest and let the full weight of her body crush into him.

"You tell me what I want to know. It's your choice whether you want more pain involved or not," Amethyst stated before sending another blow down on the thug.

She'd found the man pushing drugs to a couple of kids in an ally at the lower East side of the city on one of her usual routine night raids. She wanted to kill him for the sickness he was helping Joe Marcello spread across her city.

These were just kids.

"Who's your supplier? I want a name!" Amethyst ordered.

She'd been interrogating the drug dealer for over half an hour and he wasn't breaking.

She scoffed.

He was probably too fucked up to even know his own name. She felt disgust boiling up from inside of her. She'd been in the field long enough to recognize a drug addict. A day without their liquid mercy meant a day of unimaginable hell and not just the physical kind.

"You're not going to get anything out of him," said a familiar voice.

Death Row appeared from out of the shadows of the dark alley with his usual brilliant smile in place. Amethyst ignored him and returned her attention to the drug dealer. The man was sobbing and had pissed himself in fear. Amethyst sighed in defeat.

"Get the hell out of here before I put you out of your misery," she yelled at him before lowering herself to stare down into his very soul, if there was still any of it left.

"If you ever—and I mean ever—sell to kids in my city again... I'm coming for you," she warned in a deadly tone. Amethyst pulled the wallet from the man's back pocket and looked at the name.

She looked up from the driver's license and pinned him with her blue-eyes.

"Do I make myself clear, Mr. Carlton?" Amethyst asked sharply.

She didn't even bother to wait for the man's meekly answer before she turned away from him and walked past Death Row. She didn't bother acknowledging him either. She just pushed herself past the vigilante.

Amethyst hoped her got the clear "fuck off" message she was trying desperately to portray. She wasn't in the mood for Death Row's scrutiny or sarcasm. She felt like she was finally about to break and finally kill someone and he was starting to look like a good enough target for her.

"I've never seen you make a bad guy piss his pants before," Death Row said when he caught up to her and fell into the same pace.

They were halfway through a dilapidated basketball court. It reminded her of Marcus and her nephew. Amethyst mentally shook herself and focused on the situation she was in. Apparently, her "fuck off" message hadn't been clear enough.

So she tried another tactic.

"Don't you have your own drug dealer's to torment?" Amethyst asked.

She started walking faster, trying to shake him.

Death Row's hand shot out and caught her by the forearm. In one instant Amethyst had gripped his hand, twisted it, and flung the larger man over her shoulder to fall flat on the ground before her. She had her heel to his throat, the serrated blade rested against the artery there. The blade glistened menacingly in the moonlight.

"I'm so not in the mood tonight," Amethyst warned through gritted teeth.

Death Row, ever the pain in the ass and sarcastic prick laughed at her, even in the face of imminent harm. She fought the urge to roll her eyes—typical man/vigilante ego syndrome. He smiled up at her coyly and moved slightly, which caused the blade to nick his neck. Small droplets of blood poured from the wound and tricked down his neck towards the dark pavement.

"Well, I just so happen to be in the mood," he taunted her before in a blur of impossible speed he gripped her calf and threw it out from underneath her and she tumbled to the hard ground. Amethyst cursed, humiliated by being bested. She then quickly used her weight as an advantage to flip Death Row onto his back and leave her in the dominant position.

"This isn't how I expected the evening to go," he said before pausing to let the words sink in.

"Though, I'm not complaining either," he said chuckling from underneath her.

Death Row was impossibly close to her. She could smell his aftershave or something that made him wonderfully male. It magnetized her to him. Her blue-eyes were drawn to his dark ones like a moth to a flame.

Death Row wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her flush against his. His chest was hard like stone. She felt her walls begin to deteriorate as he looked at her with those hypnotizing eyes. His lips were scant inches from hers.

Death Rows hand rough hands slide up from her waist, up her neck, and into her long dark hair. She felt her body pulse from the charge that electrified between them. She knew what he was trying to do and she couldn't let that happen. She hadn't been touched by a man in years and this dangerous man was starting to make her want things she couldn't have.

So she did the only thing to could think of.

She punched him.

It was a mean right hook to the left side of his amazingly hard chin. Her hand burned with pain from performing the blow but at least she'd defended her honor. She grimaced as she watched his jaw begin to swell.

Death Row let go of her to nurse his wounded jaw and she pulled herself up from him in disgust and something else entirely that she couldn't admit to him, let alone herself. She straightened herself and glared down at him in disapproval. Amethyst fought down the urge to apologize and instead took the easy way out.

"You have no right!" she declared with a glare from her icy blue-eyes and a steel reinforced tone.

She had to be strong and lay down the rules before she did something she'd regret.

Hell, she wasn't so sure anymore.

She didn't even know this guy and she'd almost let him kiss her. Death Row was holding his jaw but look otherwise still in one piece. He stood up and met her glare.

"This really didn't go as I expected it would," he said with a sigh.

His dark eyes held hers and she swore her heart stopped beating.

Finally finding her voice again she spoke. "It doesn't matter," she announced with as much pride as she could muster.

The problem was it really did matter.

"Don't touch me again unless you don't want children," Amethyst admitted with a cool look towards his anatomy.

Death Row smiled but otherwise kept his distance.

"Enough said," he agreed before turning away from her. He stopped midstride and look over his shoulder. "I'll see you around," he affirmed.

With that, he was gone.

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Look for the next chapter in the New Year! Merry Christmas to my amazing readers!