Breakout

  breakout

  Paranormal Prison Book One

  Copyright © 2020 Annalise Clark

  Cover design by Pixie Covers

  All Rights Reserved

  The characters and events in this book are a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  Breakout: Paranormal Prison Book One

  They wanted to end magic forever...

  So, they locked me in this prison. But it wasn't just me. No, they wanted to rid the earth of ALL paranormals.

  I was in here with werewolves and other shifters, vampires, fairies, and who knows what else! Supposedly, they were all criminals, convicted of horrible crimes.

  But I wasn't so sure about that. I mean, I was here, and I was innocent. Besides, they didn't look all that scary to me. In fact, they looked scared more than anything.

  The good news? I'd made a friend on the inside and we had a plan. A plan to get us out of here...

  It was time for a prison break!

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Sneak Peak of Book 2: Undercover

  Chapter One

  I woke in a cell, cold cement under my skin, a faint smell of mildew in the air. It was dark, and my body was very sore, like I had been a few rounds in the ring with someone twice my size. Groaning, I pushed myself up to a sitting position and looked around the small, dank room.

  There were two beds, if you wanted to call them that. They were dingy cots with worn mattresses and no bedding. A stainless-steel toilet sat in the corner, out in the open, with no privacy. A sliver of light came through a very small window at the top of the room, but it had bars down the middle of it.

  It was too high for me to reach it, but even if I did, I couldn’t get it open. Turning behind me, I saw a gated door on the cell. It was locked and there was no one else around, as far as I could see. My first instinct was to call out “help,” but a second thought told me this would be fruitless.

  I was in jail.

  What the…?

  And I had not been brought here by the cops, at least, not as far as I could remember. Which brought up another point: what did I remember?

  Not much of anything, really, but I was hurting all over. As I wiped the dried blood from my upper lip, I tried to remember how I got here but my brain was a fog.

  The last thing I remember was being out for an evening jog. The sun was just starting to set, but it was not dark yet. I had already had dinner and I was feeling anxiety about… something… I couldn’t recall. But the best fix for anxiety was to run it off, so I’d grabbed a light jacket and headed out the door.

  I jogged this part of my neighborhood every day, sometimes twice a day. It was a clean, suburban area in a low crime zone. Nothing controversial or dangerous ever happened here, and I liked it that way.

  In fact, it was the very reason I had moved to this neighborhood. Peaceful, quiet, and a good place for a magical being to hide away and not get noticed. Our world has supernatural beings of many types, but not everyone liked us here.

  The law gave us equal rights as humans, but there were those who opposed it and they liked to make life a living hell for people like me. There was a time I fought it. I protested and fought alongside the best of them to demand that paranormal beings like me were allowed to co-exist alongside regular humans.

  But now, I was tired. I lost someone very dear to me in that fight, and maybe I just needed time to grieve and heal, but I had no interest in fighting anymore.

  The law was made, we were protected, and although there were some who wanted to tear it down, I just wanted to enjoy a quiet, peaceful life out of the public eye. I needed to heal, and I needed to recharge. That is why I moved out to Midway, one of the safest small towns in America.

  It was a quiet, suburban town with very low crime statistics and very diverse population stats. No one cared who you were or what you were doing, so long as you followed the law and kept your lawn trimmed. This was exactly what I needed – to lay low with no drama.

  So, how had I ended up here?

  I peeled myself up from the floor, determined to find some answers. While the cell seemed fashioned for two, I was alone at the moment. There was a trail of blood on the cement floor, from the entry gate to the spot where I had woken up. My blood, I presume.

  Despite the pain, it didn’t seem like anything was broken, so that was a good sign. I was battered, but I would survive. Groaning, I hobbled over and sat on one of the cots. It was nasty, but I was beyond that at this point. Besides, I’d experienced worse.

  I rubbed at my arm that was crusted in blood and immediately felt something strange. Looking down and wiping away the blood, I could see that something had been inserted underneath my skin. It felt hard and bumpy, and there was a cut that was stitched up with two or three janky stitches that looked like they had hastily been done in the field. But I knew it was more than just an abrasion. I could sense there was foreign matter inside me.

  What the hell? I thought to myself, but there were bigger concerns, like where was I?

  Though it might take me some time to get myself fully together, I was determined to figure out where I was and why I was here.

  “Hey, you alive in there?” A deep voice from across from my cell called out, startling me from my thoughts. I wasn’t alone!

  “Y-yeah, just a little roughed up.” I called back to the stranger I couldn’t see.

  “They got you good, girl! Dragged you in here bloody and unconscious. I was afraid you was never gonna wake up.”

  “I’m feeling it, for sure. So, where am I?”

  “Oblivion Penitentiary.”

  Oh well, that didn’t sound ominous at all…

  “Peni – wait, I’m in jail?”

  “You, me, and the rest of us, sister!”

  “Who are you?”

  “Name’s Kallisto. You?”

  “I’m Caleandra. Cale’s fine.”

  “Well, nice to meet you Cale.

  “You, too.” I wanted to ask her more, but hesitated. I didn’t know this Kallisto, or anything about her. I couldn’t even see her.

  Forcing myself up from the cot, I walked slowly across the jail cell toward the gate that held me inside. It was only a couple of feet, but it felt like eternity, my body was in so much pain. Directly across from me, I saw another cell, just like mine. Beside it, rows of gates to other cells just like this.

  Pulling myself to the gate and holding my body up from the bars, I looked up and down the narrow hallway. Cells lined the entire hallway as far as I could see, which admittedly was not that far. I could make out maybe 10-12 cells on each side…

  “It’s a full house,” Kallisto said, standing up and walking to the front of her gate where I could see her.

  She was a big bear of a woman, stocky, strong, and with a kind, gentle face. Instantly, I knew she was paranormal. I had a sixth sense for these things, but out in the real world, most of us hid our true forms with magic.

  “Bear nymph,” she said, seemingly reading my mind. Now it dawned on m
e what her name reminded me of. In Greek mythology, there was a legend of a nymph named Kallisto. She was the daughter of King Lycaon, a follower of Artemis, and would often appear in a bear form. Nymphs were nature deities. They were not shapeshifters like werewolves but could sometimes be confused for them by those who didn’t know better.

  Years ago, I had worked with a nymph, but many of them had been wiped out in the Great War. Those who remained, kept themselves hidden. It was safer that way. I was surprised to see her, and that she did not seem to be masking what she was. She wasn’t in shifted form, but it was still possible to tell her true race.

  “They have this entire place spellbound somehow, so that no magic can work in here. And the non-magic paranormals wear chains and handcuffs to prevent them from using their abilities.” Kallisto paced the floor as she talked. Again, it was like she was reading my mind.

  “Wow, how many paranormals do they have in here?” I asked, shocked. It wasn’t often that you see that many supernatural beings in one place where such precautions would be necessary. Usually, they would just house us in a separate wing and keep surveillance on us. Not that I had ever been locked up, but I had worked in the system and I knew how it operated.

  “Dear, the entire prison is full of paranormals… they’re rounding us up from all over the globe.”

  “But how…?”

  “They nab us and put these things in our arms so we lose our strength,” she said, pointing to her own arm where she had a scar in the same place as mine.

  Her words hit me like a ton of bricks. My knees went wobbly and my legs were weak. Speechless, I slowly lowered myself to the ground and sat on the cold cement. Something was wrong; something was very, very wrong. And I did not just mean the obvious.

  Just then, I heard a door open from down the hall and heavy footsteps coming our way. Kallisto moved quickly away from the cell gate and looked away from me.

  The gesture was enough for me to pick up on. The guards did not want us talking. I followed suit and turned my back to the gates. The marched through and opened one of the cells further down from me, pulled the woman out kicking and screaming, and dragged her down the hall and out a large, security door. We never saw her come back, but they replaced her with another girl a couple of days later.

  ***

  That was my first day in Oblivion Penitentiary. Now, I had been here a full week. I was marking the days on the wall behind my cot to help me keep track. We didn’t have access to clocks, calendars, phones, or any personal effects, so it was easy for the days to start to bleed together. I had to do something to keep sane.

  They fed us, but you could hardly call that slop food. And they definitely did not take into account the special diets of a lot of the inmates. It was an eat-the-slop-or-die situation, but I was finding myself getting by with a lot less than I would on the outside.

  We also got recreation time, although rumor was, they only did that to keep us from going insane and turning on the guards. I didn’t much care what the reasoning, I was still grateful for the time outdoors. It was only fifteen minutes or so, but it was better than nothing at this point.

  Every day at 2p.m. on the dot, the wardens brought my cell block out to the courtyard for some rec time. There were twelve-foot high fences all around us and at the top, it arced over and covered the entire topside of the outdoor grounds, essentially putting us in a big cage.

  They had accounted for any and every way a person – supernatural or not – might get out of this place. We were trapped, and the closest thing we got to a reprieve was fifteen minutes a day in the air. I would say “fresh air” but it was anything but. Every time we came out here, there was a horrible stench that I couldn’t quite identify but it smelled like a mixture of rotting meat, sewage, and old cheese.

  In fact, it was probably best I didn’t know what was making that smell. At least it was good for a bit of sunshine, on a good day. Today was one of those days. Occasionally, I would pick up the slightest smell of the ocean, but I couldn’t be certain that wasn’t just my imagination.

  Positioning myself where a ray of sunshine could come through the bars above and pour on my face, I took a deep breath and imagined I was anywhere but here.

  “Isn’t the sun great?” I said aloud, to no one in particular.

  But someone did hear me.

  “Speak for yourself, cupcake,” said a sultry voice from underneath the cover that overhung by the door.

  I looked in her direction, squinting my eyes as the sun beat down on me in the yard, recognizing her kind almost instantly. “You’re a vampire?”

  “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner, folks.”

  “Ooh, what’s my prize?” I asked, winking slyly.

  She grinned from ear to ear before answering with a wink of her own, “I probably won’t suck your blood while you sleep tonight. I mean, unless you’re into that kind of thing.”

  “Well then, I’ll call that a win,” I said, laughing along with her. With the sun blaring into my eyes, it was hard to see completely, but she was very pale, thin, with long dark hair, similar to mine. But where mine was unruly and frizzy, hers was sleek, shiny and perfect.

  “Does it hurt you, being out here?” I had only met a couple of vampires in my time, so I didn’t know a lot about them.

  “Only if I’m directly in the sun,” she replied. “Usually, I use protection from that sort of thing, so I can walk the daylight hours whenever I want, but in here…”

  “Yeah,” I sighed in solidarity. The lack of magic was taking a toll on all of us.

  I looked across the courtyard at all the other women in here. These were just the ones from our cell block. Kallisto had told me there were four other cell blocks!

  It was a diverse group, which was obvious just from looking around. Some of us might pull off the hardened criminal look, like me with my tattoos, or the vampire flirt I was currently chatting with. But there were others who looked far out of place here.

  Across the way was one such being. A small, very fragile-looking blue fairy. She sat on a stone bench with her legs pulled up in front of her, knees to her chest, and her dark blue wings tucked behind her back. Her face looked incredibly sad and lost.

  “What is she in for?” I asked, pointing toward the fairy.

  “Murder.”

  “W-what? Fairies don’t murder people.” I was completely taken aback by this statement. Everyone knew that fairies were incapable of crimes like murder. It went against the nature of their existence. It was impossible.

  “Yeah well, tell that to those asshole guards.” She just pointed toward the guard station and then spit on the ground.

  She had a point. They were real jerks. And would it be such a surprise that others here were innocent of the crimes they had been convicted of? I was innocent, after all, and here I was.

  In fact, I wasn’t even sure of what they were accusing me of. I was never officially charged, I had never been read my rights, or even explained where I was or why I was here. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. They couldn’t just keep me here like this and not even tell me why, or who they were.

  I was a citizen and I had rights!

  The guards abused us and roughed us up if we questioned their methods. We were not being fed properly, or given medical attention, and our magic was all being blocked. There were so many rights being violated, I could hardly keep up. Not to mention the fact that I had never heard of Oblivion Penitentiary.

  It was beyond fishy. Something was definitely up at this prison. I intended to get to the bottom of it. For now, our time was up, and they were already calling us back inside. Ugh… I didn’t have a watch, but I was pretty sure they were not giving us the full fifteen minutes, either.

  ***

  Hours had turned into days, which had now turned into a week. Tomorrow would be day eight here and I was no closer to understanding how I got here than I was on day one. Determined to find answers, I vowed to speak to a guard the next chance I ha
d.

  What was the worst that could happen? They might beat me again, but my wounds had mostly healed from whatever they did to me the night they brought me in.

  A week spent on the grounds meant I was also meeting other inmates and getting to know them better. As you’d expect, some were much chattier than others, but I was making my way around, trying to talk to as many as I could from our cell block. Some of them had memories of being nabbed right off the street, blindfolded, thrown in the back of a vehicle and brought here.

  Those who resisted were beaten, and some were shocked with some sort of electrical pulse gun or sedated with unknown drugs to force them to comply, or to just knock them out completely. It was scary stuff, and a large number of us had no memory of how we got here at all.

  We just woke up in a cell, bloodied and bruised.

  The longer I was here, the more stories I heard that were just like mine, and they weren’t telling us anything once they had us in here, either. Any hopes we had of understanding the situation were pretty well out the window. Tensions were very high, as a result.

  Not surprisingly, a lot of the inmates had a chip on their shoulder. People were angry, rude to one another, and sometimes violent. I suppose that was another reason they took our powers away. It was a powder keg of tension of paranormal proportions, just waiting for a match to set it all ablaze.

  There were fights over seats, showers, food – you name it.

  I suppose that was typical of any prison, but it was especially bad here, at least from what I could tell in only a week here. And when we fought, the beat us more. I just tried to keep my head down, stay out of trouble, and not offend anyone.

  As I was finding my way around the prison and learning the prison politics, I noticed a trend – everyone here was supernatural or paranormal in some way, and each and every one proclaimed their innocence. I mean, I guess if you go to most prisons, you’d find a lot of inmates swearing they didn’t do it, but something still felt off about this whole thing.