Bloodlines

by S. K. Gregory

  After only eating a few bites of his dinner, Phillip excused himself to go back to work.

  I decided that I was mistaken about his earlier conversation. I’d obviously misheard him.

  After finishing my own meal, I retreated to my room. I lay on the bed, playing games on my phone, unable to relax.

  I wondered what Roxy was doing right now. Considering I was a few hours ahead, she was probably at her job at the bowling alley. She promised to speak to her manager about getting me a job for the summer. Some extra cash would be useful.

  I wondered if Mom would let me stay at Roxy’s house for the rest of the summer. I was never out of her house anyway and I didn’t mind doing chores or even paying my way.

  Part of me really hoped that Mom was trying to change, that she actually wanted to spend some time with me, but once again she just up and abandoned me for her job.

  I hate her.

  Curling up into all on the bed, I started to cry. I just wanted to go home. Why couldn’t I have normal parents like Roxy? If my dad was around, then I could stay with him, hell, if I knew who he was, I would go live with him. Anything was better than being left with strangers.

  At some point, I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, I was awoken by arguing downstairs. It was dark outside, I squinted at my phone to find that it was close to midnight. It was Mrs. Miller’s voice that woke me.

  Dragging myself off the bed, I opened the door a crack to listen.

  “Keep your voice down, you will wake her,” Lurch said.

  “You can’t do this. I thought he was going to wait,” Mrs. Miller said.

  “He has moved up the timetable, now step aside.”

  “Fine, but I’m not cleaning up any mess you leave behind.”

  There were footsteps on the stairs. I backed away from the door, wondering what to do. I ducked into the closet and closed the door as quietly as I could. A moment later, I heard the bedroom door squeak open. The conversation between him and Phillip came back to me. Sedate her and bring her to the lab.

  Oh, God. He’s going to kill me, I thought. I checked my pockets for my phone, but I must have left it on the bed.

  “Nova,” Lurch said softly, his tall, lanky frame leaning over the bed.

  He would see that the bed was empty, I couldn’t stay here, I needed to run – now! Pushing open the door, I rushed for the door. Lurch spun and reached for me but missed. I ran downstairs, Mrs. Miller was standing in the hallway.

  Her eyes widened when she saw me, but she didn’t move to stop me. I wrenched open the front door and ran outside. My mind was a blur, I had no idea where I was going, just as long as it was away from them.

  It was pitch black outside, but I ran blindly on. It was only when I crashed into the locked gate that I realized I was trapped. I could hear grunts as Lurch ran after me. I broke right and followed the wall around to the back of the house. If I remembered right, there was a small gate somewhere in the back wall that led to some trees. If I could get there, then I could hide in the dark from Lurch.

  I was halfway across the back lawn when the first earthquake hit. One minute I was running and the next the ground seemed to drop under my feet. I pitched forward and faceplanted in the dirt.

  Why the hell is there an earthquake? England doesn’t get earthquakes.

  No time to wonder, I got to my feet, but before I could take one step, something hit me in the back of the neck. I reached up and pulled a small dart from my neck.

  “What the…?”

  My vision swam and I collapsed.

  Chapter 3

  I watched as she rose out of the ground, her red eyes blazing. As she placed her foot on solid ground, her bone white lips stretched into a smile.

  “She’s coming!” I screamed, jerking awake. I tried to raise my arms to my face only to find them tied down. I looked around, but I didn’t recognize the room I was in. It was gray concrete all around, a stainless-steel table sat against one wall and the bed I was strapped to sat in the middle of the room. My back was on fire, it felt like someone was pouring acid onto my shoulder blades.

  “Who is coming?” Phillip asked, appearing beside me.

  “What the hell is going on? Why am I tied up?” I snarled.

  “To make it easier to run tests.”

  “Tests? What kind of tests?”

  He simply smiled and moved over to the table.

  “Let me go, you crazy bastard. Help! Help me!”

  “No one can hear you.”

  I ignored him and continued to scream, twisting my arms, trying to free them. When my throat was raw, I lay back and started to cry.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  He ignored me.

  “You won’t get away with this. My mom knows I’m here.”

  Phillip finally turned to face me, and he was laughing. “Oh, my dear. She isn’t even your mother.”

  “What? Of course she is.”

  “You are merely an experiment. She has been observing you since the day you were born, and now it is my turn.”

  This is a nightmare. It has to be. I’m asleep in bed and this is all a dream.

  I dug my nails into my leg in an attempt to wake myself up, but it didn’t work. Phillip came towards me with a needle.

  “What are you doing?” I cried.

  “I need to draw some blood,” he said.

  I jerked about, making it impossible to get the needle in my arm.

  “Robert!” he yelled.

  Lurch came into the room and pinned me down while Phillip took my blood. I tried to bite Lurch, but he avoided my gnashing teeth.

  When he was done, they both left the room. I needed to find a way to get free. The straps around my arms were thick, I would need a knife to get through them. I craned my neck to look around for something suitable. The door they left through was partially open and I could see a small TV mounted on the wall. The news was on, a reporter was talking and I recognized Stonehenge behind him.

  “After last night’s earthquake officials are worried that some of the stones could topple. The sinkhole that opened up at the center of Stonehenge has left experts baffled.”

  If the earthquake was last night that meant I had only been here a few hours. Not long enough for anyone to miss me and who would anyway? Roxy? I’d let days go by without contacting her in the past. Mom was apparently in on this, so she wouldn’t do anything.

  “What the hell?”

  My eyes flicked back to the TV. Something was happening at the sinkhole.

  “It appears that something is climbing out of the hole,” the reporter said.

  I saw a clawed hand emerge from the dirt, before Lurch blocked my view by moving in front of the TV.

  What the hell was going on? I remembered my vision, was that what was crawling out of the ground? I shuddered at the thought.

  Phillip came back into the room, looking worried. “Make the arrangements,” he yelled over his shoulder.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Things have taken an unsuspected turn. Once again that woman has screwed up!”

  “You mean my mom?”

  “She took you to the stones. Did you bleed?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “She’s supposed to be a scientist. Believing in bloody prophecies, I told her to leave it alone.”

  I had no idea what he was rambling about. I was more interested in the needle he held in his hand. This one wasn’t to draw blood, it contained liquid.

  Phillip held it up. “Sorry, my dear, but you are going to have to take a little nap.”

  “No!”

  It wasn’t like I had a choice though. As the sedative took effect, the last thing I saw was the TV screen, the image was shaking as the cameraman seemed to be running away from something. My last conscious thought was: whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t end up here.

  ***

  The light woke me. I was lying on my back, which still burned like crazy. I was reli
eved to find that my hands were free, but the straps were replaced by a chain around my ankle, which was tethered to the wall. I was lying on a battered mattress in an empty room with dingy walls. The light came from a bare bulb hanging above me.

  I raised my head off the mattress, wondering where Phillip was. They had definitely moved me, but I had no idea where I was. My mouth was dry, and my stomach was rumbling, I needed food.

  “Hello?” I croaked. Complete silence. Surely, they didn’t leave me here? The thought sent adrenaline pumping through my veins and I jumped up making my head spin.

  “Hello!” I yelled.

  The door opened and Lurch appeared. “What?” he snapped.

  “I’m hungry,” I replied.

  He rolled his eyes at me and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a bottle of water and a bag of chips. He tossed them to me.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “What do you want? A gourmet meal?”

  The second he closed the door, I called him every name under the sun. I opened the bottle and gulped back half of it, before ripping into the chips. I shoveled them into my mouth, barely taking time to chew them. Who knew where my next ‘meal’ was coming from?

  Once I was finished eating, I checked out the chain. It was closed with a small padlock, the bolt in the wall wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe I could find something to pick the lock with. I snorted, yeah, I was a regular criminal! I had no idea how to pick a lock but sitting here doing nothing would drive me insane. Make a plan, follow it through, isn’t that what Mom always said.

  Great, now I’m taking advice from the woman who left me with a psychopath. A woman who may not even be my mother.

  She certainly wasn’t going to win any mother of the year awards, but I couldn’t believe that she would leave me with Phillip, knowing what he would do. He was lying, he had to be. Mom would try to contact me and when she couldn’t, she would call the cops, or do something about it. I imagined her kicking in the door to rescue me. Maybe not.

  No, I was going to have to save myself, somehow.

  A stabbing pain ripped through my back causing me to groan in pain. What the hell was going on? Was I having a reaction to something? Maybe that dart thing they shot me with? I reached my hand over my shoulder. The skin on my back was burning.

  “Hey, Lurch!” I yelled, not bothering to use his real name. We were well past niceties.

  He swung the door open, letting it hit the wall behind it. “What?”

  “There’s something wrong with my back. It’s burning. I need to see a doctor.”

  “I’ll inform Phillip.”

  “No, a real doctor!”

  He shut the door on me. The pain started to intensify, something was really wrong. I crouched on the floor, moaning in pain.

  “Make it stop, make it stop,” I whispered. I felt the skin across my shoulder blades rip and I started to scream.

  Phillip and Lurch came running into the room.

  “Help me!” I shrieked.

  Something burst from my back, and I collapsed face down on the floor.

  ***

  Asteria sat on her make shift throne, anger coursing through her. He wasn’t here. That coward ran rather than face her.

  Then why free us, Oberon?

  She didn’t understand it. Unless he didn’t spill the blood himself. But that would mean that someone overpowered him, stole his blood and that wasn’t possible.

  No matter, she was free, that’s all that mattered. She had lost time to make up for. The few humans present at Stonehenge, as it was now known, made for a tasty treat, but she needed more.

  Right now, her minions were spreading out across the land. This land, the humans called it England, was rich in history. It sported many strongholds, castles fit for a Queen.

  Once the humans were brought to heel, she would fashion this world the way she liked it.

  Walking through the dirt, her bare feet drawing energy from the Earth, she could feel the magic build inside her. The sun felt incredible on her skin, how she missed it.

  She spied a human man cowering in the bushes. Drawing her arm back, she let the magic fly free, instantly reducing him to ashes.

  In the distance, she saw a strange metal beast moving quickly away from her. Searching her memory, she recalled seeing them in her glimpses of the world. It was a type of carriage, used to ferry humans around at great speed.

  She whistled and a horde descended on the car. It swerved into a tree as screaming filled the air. It wouldn’t be the last.

  Chapter 4

  “I don’t believe this. Wings! She’s grown bloody wings!” Phillip said.

  Opening my eyes, I found myself still on the ground. Something heavy was draped over me. The burning pain was gone, but my back felt raw. I reached back and my hand hit something, it felt soft like feathers. Craning my neck, I looked back to find a bloodied wing.

  “Oh my God,” I sobbed. “That…it can’t...”

  Panicked, I grabbed hold of the wing and tried to yank it free. I only succeeded in hurting my back more.

  “Get it off me!” I screamed.

  Lurch grabbed my arms and the two of them dragged me into the other room. I was strapped to a table, face down.

  “Get it off!” I screamed again.

  “It can’t be done. They are a part of you,” Phillip said, and I could hear the awe in his voice.

  “What am I? Why was I an experiment?”

  “You, my dear, are Fae born.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  He kneeled down beside the table, I twisted my head to look at him. “You are an actual fairy.”

  I felt something snap in my mind and I started to laugh hysterically. “You’re insane! You did this to me!”

  “No, you were born this way. You are part human, part Fae. The only one to survive infancy, the only one born looking human, at least until now.”

  Only one? There were more like me?

  “My mom?” I said.

  “Assigned to watch you as you grew. She was told not to get close, but she failed in that respect. That is why she was sent away.”

  “Close? You obviously knew nothing about our relationship,” I said bitterly.

  “Oh, you have no idea how different your life could have been. She was the one who insisted on raising you outside the lab, to send you to school. She should have kept you in a cage.”

  “Is that what you are going to do? Keep me in a cage?”

  “We shall see. If you behave yourself, you may have some freedoms. Robert, I need a full work up on her bloods now that these have appeared. I will also need to do a biopsy.”

  I drowned him out, staring at the floor. I was a freak, not human. Just a lab rat without a wheel. I closed my eyes and cried.

  ***

  The next few days were filled with tests. On top of blood and DNA tests, Phillip tried to make me use my wings. I didn’t know how, they just dragged behind me. I caught sight of myself in a mirror at one point. They ran from my shoulders down to the ground, about two feet in diameter. The feathers covering them were white or at least they were under the blood from where they had formed. They looked like angel wings, not fairy wings. Fairies were little pixie like creatures, weren’t they? Every picture I had seen as a child showed tiny, glittering wings. Not these monstrosities.

  “If fairies are real, how come no one has ever seen one?” I asked Phillip.

  “Plenty of people have seen them. History is full of stories of the Fae. Over time they have become the work of fiction. Many years ago, the Fae were locked out of our world. A few remained, we even managed to capture one. Your biological father.”

  “And my mother?”

  “We used an anonymous egg donor and a surrogate. She did not survive the birth.”

  “So where is my father?”

  “Dead too.”

  I have no one.

  “Try and move your wings,” he said.

  Sighing, I tried movin
g my shoulder blades, but the weight of the wings prevented it. “I can’t.”

  “That is because you are trying to move your back. Your wings are an extension of you, like your arms. You need to control them.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  Phillip glared at me. “Would you like to go back to your mattress?”

  I shook my head. My only freedom was in the lab, I didn’t want to go back to that dank room just yet.

  I closed my eyes, trying to focus on moving my wings, but it was so hard. It was like suddenly growing a new set of legs, my brain didn’t seem to be connected to them.

  Phillip circled me, taking notes. Concentrating hard, I felt the wings flutter a little, but that was it. Sighing, I opened my eyes.

  “I can’t do it,” I whined. I didn’t want these stupid things, I wanted to be normal again.

  Phillip said nothing. He set his notebook down and turned his back on me. I waited for him to order me back to my room. He turned, quite suddenly, and screamed in my face.

  I backed off fast, raising my arms to defend myself. My wings unfurled too, spreading out on either side of me as if to take flight. I felt heat rise in my hands, almost like they were on fire, but it wasn’t painful.

  Phillip just smiled and picked up his notebook again.

  “You did that on purpose,” I snapped.

  “Of course, I did. I’ve been thinking of you as mostly human, but I forget that you are also…animal.”

  “Shut up!” I snarled.

  “You have animal like instincts. You thought you were in danger, so the wings reacted, ready to aid in your escape.”

  “Are you saying I can fly?” I sputtered.

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. “What do you think wings are for, Nova?”

  It honestly never occurred to me. I looked at them now in a different light. If I could fly, then maybe I could use them to escape this horrible place.

  That was if I was ever allowed outside. I didn’t even know where here was. There were faint sounds in the distance at night, traffic maybe. Phillip probably had several houses all around the country. I never thought much of it, but now I wondered how he made his money. The science game wasn’t exactly lucrative, not if Mom was anything to go by. Our house in the states was modest and although I had never wanted for anything growing up, we didn’t have expensive vacations or flashy cars. On second thoughts, I probably didn’t want to know where he got his money from. It probably wasn’t anywhere good.