by Sonia Harper
Reaching out, she placed her hand on the oak door and pressed her ear to the door, hoping to hear if anyone was outside. Unfortunately, the door was too thick to allow such noises through. She thought briefly of looking out the parlour windows but decided against it. If she could see out, someone could certainly see in. She did not want to take that chance. Grasping her pepper spray tightly in her hand, she took several deep, calming breaths before pulling on the handle and heaving the massive door open just a tiny crack.
She brought her weapon up instantly as sudden, loud sounds assaulted her ears. She yanked the door open wide enough to stick half of her shoulder outside the door, pepper spray first.
Before she could even blink, something had grabbed her fist and removed her pepper spray. Her body was propelled forward through the doorway and smacked hard against a body. She opened her mouth to scream, but her eyes focused in on a thick head of hair.
Red hair.
“Pytho?”
“What are you doing out here?” He asked, and although she wasn't exactly aware of all that was happening at that moment, it sounded like he was concerned.
“I...”
“Nevermind,” he cut her off and reached for her shoulder. “We need to get you back inside the house.”
“What? No, I can't go back in there. There's someone in there!” Panic came back in full force. “I think he broke the window in the parlour.”
“No, that wasn't-,”
Pytho was cut off as a body suddenly came flying through their line of vision and landed about ten feet away in the circular gravel driveway, falling still upon impact.
Shrieking, Adelyn moved closer to Pytho just as he moved forward and threw his arm out in front of her. “Stay back!” He shouted at her and was about to move forward when another man came running out of the darkness and, with a giant roar, launched himself at the fallen body on the ground. The man turned the body on the ground around so that it was facing him and began pummeling the other man's face with his fist over and over again.
Adelyn leaned forward to see what was going on, and another scream made its way out of her throat. It wasn't two men fighting. It was one man fighting some....thing.
“What is that?” She shrieked and reached for Pytho's arm, clinging to it as she tried to tear her eyes away from it. What she thought was a human body was actually a sickeningly grey-coloured creature with long white hair falling from its head. Its body appeared to be human, but she could tell from the lack of clothing that it lacked genitals. Its fingers tapered into long, claw-like nails. The eyes were what caught her most of all. They glowed a bright gold colour that seemed to light up the entire entryway.
“How's he doing?”
Adelyn's head jerked around as a dishevelled Donovan came around the side of the Manor and walked up the steps to where they were standing.
“I think it's about had it,” Pytho replied tersely, his eyes glued to the scene ahead of him.
“What's she doing here?” Donovan snapped, and his eyes widened as he finally noticed her tucked away behind Pytho.
“She heard what was going on,” Pytho replied. “I was trying to get her to go back inside when Gideon decided to provide us with a better view if you catch my drift.”
“Great,” Donovan shook his head. “Okay, one issue at a time here. Gideon!” He called out to the man in the driveway. “Are you finishing up there?”
“He's...almost...a....goner!” The man answered back with each punch to the creature's jaw.
The sound of its attacker's voice must have awakened something in the creature because it suddenly jerked and, with a high-pitched wail, punched the man on top of him hard in the throat.
Gideon fell backwards and gave a loud choking sound before hitting the ground.
“Shit,” Pytho mumbled under his breath.
The creature picked itself up, its long limbs elevating it to its full height, well past what any human could have reached. With an odd screech, it reared its head up as if to cry something out to the sky. Gideon was back on his feet in an instant, clutching his throat with one hand and reaching for a large rock with the other. He launched it at the creature's jaw, and it gave a sickening cracking noise as the sound of rock met bone. The creature fell down, stunned yet again.
A movement behind her made Adelyn jump, but she was too terrified to make any more noise. She turned around and saw the man from below the Manor standing behind her and staring out at the fight in front of them. She stared up at his face and tried to find some way of making her vocal cords function so that she could alert Pytho and Donovan of his presence.
Pytho must have sensed that she was struggling to speak because he turned around and glanced at her before turning to the man behind her. Eyes widening, he immediately grabbed Adelyn's arm and thrust her towards Donovan. She landed against the other man's chest and was immediately pushed behind him. Jostled, confused, terrified, and otherwise emotionally taxed, Adelyn stood stunned for a moment.
When she was finally able to shake herself out of it, she noticed that the man from the cellar was walking past Donovan and Pytho. It suddenly occurred to her that he was moving toward the fight. She wasn't sure what came over her, but she needed to warn him about the creature that was out there. A little voice inside her head was telling her that she had finally lost it. Trying to protect a potentially dangerous man with possible non-human abilities about a potentially dangerous non-human creature with non-human abilities was by far the craziest thing she had ever done.
She rushed forward and tried to grab the man's arm. “No, wait! There's some sort of monster out there!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pytho and Donovan start forward the minute her hand touched the other man's arm. Once her fingers grasped his forearm, it was as if time had stopped. Pytho and Donovan were both standing very, very still behind her. She could see their arms outstretched toward her. Turning slightly, she could see the man named Gideon had left the creature where he had fallen and was now focused in on what was happening on the steps.
The man stiffened under her touch, and he slowly turned his head down to look her in the eye. Adelyn froze. The anger she saw before in his bedroom was nothing compared to the sheer rage she saw in his eyes now.
Oops.
Carefully letting go of his arm, she slowly began walking backwards to Pytho and Donovan. He kept his eyes on her as she moved away, those grey orbs never blinking once as his face slowly contorted from fury to thinly-veiled annoyance the further away she became.
She felt two sets of hands reach out for her shoulders, and she was once again pushed behind two sets of bodies. She decided to keep quiet this time as she saw the man move forward once again from her partially-blocked view.
She overheard the man speaking to Gideon in a different language, then heard Gideon respond in kind.
“What the hell was that?” Donovan demanded.
“How should I know? I thought she'd be a goner the minute she touched his arm,” Pytho's voice sounded weak. It was clear something unusual for both of them had just happened.
“Wait,” she spoke aloud. “You know him?” She looked up at both men.
“He's...our brother,” Donovan replied reluctantly, his normally soft voice returning.
She should have been surprised. “Of course he is,” she closed her eyes and prayed that when she opened them, she'd be back in her apartment, drawing middle fingers and cartoon penises on her eviction notices and filling out applications to fast-food restaurants. When she finally opened her eyes, she was sorely disappointed to find herself in the same situation. “Damn,” she cursed.
“Pytho.” A familiar voice seemed reached her ears, deep and powerful.
“You need me?” Pytho immediately answered the voice.
“Scorch it.”
The hairs on Adelyn's arm raised as the implications of those words hit her. “Wait, what's going on?” What were they talking about? The Manor? She latched onto Donovan's arm.
“Bring her over here.”
“Good idea,” Donovan answered the voice. “The last thing we need to do is go chasing after a human in the middle of the night.”
Adelyn frowned, more confused than ever. She resisted as Donovan reached around her waist and pulled her forward with him towards Gideon, Pytho, that angry man, and that...thing on the ground. “What is going o-?”
She was cut off as Pytho suddenly reached out with his hand and flames ignited all around the prone body of the grey creature. They appeared instantly and stretched over the body, engulfing it in flames and incinerating the body to ash almost instantly.
The orange blades ripped one last time through the area and finally fell to the ground, gone.
Adelyn froze. A cold, unforgiving feeling crept up her back and settled heavily on her shoulders. Her head dragged itself up and found the eyes of each of the men she was surrounded by.
They weren't human.
She wasn't sure if it was that thought, or the stress finally catching up to her, but she felt her body give way and barely felt the rip of pain as her head smacked hard against the gravel-covered ground.
Chapter Four
Adelyn couldn't find the strength to open her eyes. A splitting pain went through the back of her head and she whimpered. She made an effort to open her eyes, but they were heavy, and it took several attempts to open them at least halfway.
A dark, blurry figure was standing over her. Blinking several times, Adelyn's vision cleared and she could barely make out a man's face concentrating above her. The room was pitch black, save for a single surgical light that was facing the ceiling in the corner of the rather small room. After taking another sweeping glance, she could see that she was in some sort of medical setting.
A cold, wet cloth brushed across her forehead, and she was surprised to feel a slight sting. As the pain settled, Adelyn suddenly remembered where she was and what had happened.
“Oh god,” she groaned. “It's still happening.”
“What's still happening?” The man above her asked, a curious look on his face as he put the cloth away and picked up a bandage.
“Are you one of them?” Adelyn asked in a small voice.
“Who?”
Feeling strangely bereft of emotion, Adelyn tried to muster a sense of fear but found herself unable to do so. Adelyn closed her eyes and sighed. “I guess just I don't care anymore.”
“That's because I just gave you a rather strong sedative,” the man chuckled warmly.
Adelyn swallowed, suddenly aware of the fact that her body felt heavy on the table. “Are you going to kill me?” She asked, almost relieved at her inability to feel anxiety underneath the crushing pillow of calm that was pressing down on her body.
“Why would I go through all the trouble of fixing you up only to turn around and kill you?” He frowned as he stood over her, a long lock of wavy blonde hair fell from behind his ear and landed on his cheek.
Adelyn found herself staring at the hair and the way it kept rubbing against the slight stubble on his jaw as he worked to unravel medical tape. “I don't know,” she trailed off slightly.
“No,” the man shook his head, light grey eyes closing briefly. “I'm not going to hurt you. Nobody here intends to hurt you.” He asserted with a sense of authority.
“You sure about that?” She replied as a vision of bright orange flames crossed her memory. Whatever these people were, they were definitely not human.
“Positive,” he gave her a small, reassuring smile before applying the tape to a bandage on her forehead.
“Am I in a hospital?” Adelyn asked, eyes scanning the room once more now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She knew the answer, of course. Behind the tables piled high with medical supplies and books, she could see the distinctive wallpaper that matched nearly every other room in the Manor.
“No,” he answered quietly, concentrating on writing something down on a notepad somewhere above her head.
“Then where-,”
“I'm Derion, by the way,” he set his pen down and focused on her once more.
“Let me guess. You're one of the owners?” Adelyn heard her voice become low and sarcastic. She almost immediately regretted it. After all, it wasn't his fault that she was caught in a nightmare.
“Owners?” The man turned away and picked up his little notebook, tucking it away in his shirt pocket. “Oh, you must be referring to that company that Donovan manages.”
Adelyn frowned. “What-,” She shrieked as the door to the room opened with a loud bang. The angry man from the cellar stormed into the room and took three long strides to the opposite side of where she was lying. Something thick and wet went flying out of his hand as he threw it against a long metal table along the wall.
“Deal with that,” he practically snarled and pointed to it viciously before turning around and leaving through a second door in the room.
Taking a moment to recover, Adelyn turned her head and tried to see what was on the table. Derion stepped closer to block her view, but she had already seen the pulsing, dark red mass.
“Oh my god, is that a heart?” She could feel the effect of the sedative lift as panic began to settle over her. “Why is it still moving? Why is it there? Whose is it?”
“I can assure you, it's noth-,” Derion was interrupted as another man entered the room in the same manner as the first. Adelyn recognised him as Gideon, the man who had fought that creature outside.
“Got something else as well,” He sneered as he, too, threw something wet and red on the same table. He reached for a towel and wiped what looked like dripping blood off of his arms and face. Eyes narrowing, he focused in on Derion. “You going to do your damn job, or are you having too much fun playing with the human?” He spat.
“Why can't Pytho take care of it?” Derion replied tersely as he grabbed the towel from Gidon's hand to cover the masses on the table and hide them from Adelyn's view.
“Because I sent him out on one last round, that's why,” Gideon snapped. “And last I checked, it wasn't your place to question duties around here.”
Adelyn watched as Derion's face turned to stone. His grey eyes lifted from the towel and met Gideon's glare. “Don't push me, Gideon. Get out.”
“With pleasure,” Gideon sneered as he strode across the room, slamming the door behind him as he left.
Derion sighed, reaching over and picking up another towel from a pile next to him. "Great," he muttered to himself.
"Wha-," Adelyn barely had time to get the word out of her mouth before the door opened once again. Her body tensed slightly as she saw a familiar flash of bright red hair. As friendly as Pytho had seemed before, she still couldn't get the image of what he had done to that creature out of her head.
"Is she okay?" Pytho asked immediately, making his way to the table she was on. Concern was written all over his face, which both confused and reassured Adelyn all at the same time.
"She's fine," Derion replied, leaning toward the pile and throwing a second towel over the first one as blood started seeping through. "These samples are garbage now that they're contaminated," he sighed and turned to face Pytho. "You should probably get to work on destroying the evidence."
Adelyn felt the effects of the sedative start to finally lift as a full-blown panic erupted from her chest at the sound of those words. Destroy what? How? Was she also something that needed to be disposed of?
“I'm going to die here, aren't I?” she moaned. “Nobody will even know I was he-,” Adelyn gasped, and she immediately struggled to sit up. “My room!”
“Your room?” Derion frowned, surprised at her sudden panic.
“My room!” She shouted once more, trying to lift her upper body. “I need to go to my room!”
“Okay, don't worry, we'll get you there,” Pytho suddenly sprung into action, pushing Derion aside and lifting her to a sitting position on the table by sliding an arm under her shoulders.
“We will?” Derion ask
ed with an incredulous look on his face.
“Yes, we will,” Pytho grunted as he helped Adelyn slide off the table. Her feet immediately gave out from under her, and she grabbed Pytho's arm for balance.
“And why would we be doing this?” Derion asked as he watched Adelyn struggle for balance. "She should be resting. The blow to her head wasn't severe, but she's still covered in cuts and bruises. Not to mention the fact that the sedative I gave her should knock her out soon.”
“Because she needs to see her dog,” Pytho explained as he lifted Adelyn with ease, securing his arm under hers. “Look, I get humans. You guys don't. Just trust me on this one,” Pytho replied. "She needs this to relax."
Derion watched as Pytho helped Adelyn walk a few steps towards the door. “She needs to see her what?” He finally asked as he came up behind them, supporting Adelyn from the other side and walking her to the door. As he opened the door, he sighed. “Well, it's probably better that she's in her room, anyway,” he said as he steered them toward the staircase. “We have a few...tests we need to run.”
“I thought they were contaminated?” Pytho replied as they started ascending the stairs.
"Try telling Gideon that," Derion rolled his eyes. "I don't want to deal with him. I have an older stock we can work from."
Adelyn could barely hear their voices as she focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Pytho and Derion were carrying most of her weight, but she was determined to regain as much control of her body as she possibly could. The cut on the heel of her foot stung sharply as she tried to place more weight on it.
As the stairs came into view, Adelyn began moving her legs faster. Familiarity. She needed familiarity. She needed to be in her own room, sit on her own bed, and reassure herself that Sinatra was fine. After that...well, she would assess her situation. Her car was supposed to be in a garage somewhere on the grounds, but she had never gone out to make sure it was still there. She had taken Gregory's word that he had parked it in a safe place.
Gregory. Was he involved with these people? Was he one of them?
Adelyn's legs felt stiff as she tried to lift them up the stairs. She knew she was essentially being carried up the stairs, but she tried to at least make it appear as if she was moving of her own volition.
