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.
