by Bell, A. C.
“I’m sorry,” Michelle muttered contritely. “You shouldn’t have run.”
A tear rolled involuntarily across the bridge of my nose. “Does he know?”
“No.” She pulled a syringe from the pocket of her coat and uncapped it. “I’m sorry,” she repeated before sliding the needle into my collar and pushing the plunger.
“He’ll hate you.” I wasn’t even saying it to hurt her. The idea of Raiden hating his only living relative broke my heart.
The heartache in her face mirrored my own. “I know.”
I started to get woozy until sleep took over.
On Display
I came to again, this time in some kind of infirmary. Several blankets had been laid over me, but did little to ease my shivering. My body was still failing to warm itself as Das Verdorren slowly killed it. Terror filled me again and I looked around for something to distract me. The tiles on the wall were an ugly seafoam green and ventilation ducts stretched across the ceiling. It was a large room with privacy curtains around what I assumed were other beds. Mine had been left open, of course, and guards at the doors watched me as I stirred. My mouth was dry from being unconscious and I groggily wetted my lips. The rings of a curtain slid across a curtain rod across the room, sounding much louder than it should. A man in a doctor’s coat had stepped out of the curtain around a bed. He noticed me stirring and quickly shut the curtain and hurried over.
“Hello, Ms. Parker. I’m Dr. Reyes.”
“Like, a ‘doctor’, or a ‘mad scientist doctor’?” I slurred drowsily. They must have upped the dose of knockout drugs they’d given me this time.
He actually smiled. “A ‘doctor’ doctor.” He started looking me over, checking my vitals and everything.
“Why is my side numb?” I asked.
“I’ve numbed and treated your burn.”
“My—” I cut myself short when I realized what he meant. I must have gotten burned when that guy electrocuted me, because the baton had pressed my skin against the metal inside me while electricity shot through it. Electrocution was definitely not something I wanted to experience again, especially while my skill was active.
“We’re also treating your hypothermia.”
“It’s not hypothermia. Why are they having you treat me?” I asked. “Why would they bother?”
“It’s not for me to say. I’m just a doctor. Treating people is what I do. If it’s not hypothermia, then what is it?”
The doors of the infirmary swung open and half a dozen armed men marched in and made way for Michelle to approach. I couldn’t seem to look away, even though I didn’t want to look at her.
“Adeline,” she said softly. “I tried to warn you away from this.”
“Do you want a medal for your sacrifice?” I asked bitterly. My seething anger went a long way to sap my drowsiness.
She didn’t say anything. She hardened her expression and straightened her shoulders. “The boss wants to see her. Unstrap her. Any sign of metal, shock her.”
A few of the men undid the steel shackles that held me to the table and let me clumsily help myself up. My knees gave a dangerous wobble when my feet hit the floor, but I held myself tall. They surrounded me, shock batons at the ready, and Michelle led us from the room. The halls outside the infirmary looked like a doctor’s office. Ugly speckled carpet covered the floor and the walls were painted a pale taupe color with plain abstract paintings hung up in a few places. Two rights and a left later, Michelle stopped at a set of double doors in the middle of a hall. She opened one of them and moved out of the way. I stepped inside.
A woman stood behind a large desk in an expansive, mostly empty office. Her long, wavy black hair cascaded down her back. The opposite wall was entirely made of glass and she was looking out at what looked like a repurposed airplane hangar. The left wall was covered in tv screens that displayed security footage. I itched to go over and look, but my captors probably wouldn’t appreciate my curiosity. The door shut behind me and I turned to find that I had been left alone with the woman. If they felt secure enough to leave us alone, I shouldn’t underestimate her. She didn’t turn or acknowledge my entrance. A clock ticked loudly on the wall in the silence that followed.
After forty-five seconds of it I said, “Why didn’t you have your people kill me? You’ve had no reservations in the past.”
Her head turned ever-so-slightly toward me. “I wanted to give you a chance; To show you what we do here.”
“You’re hunters. You hunt down and kill anything supernatural.”
“Did my father tell you that?” she scoffed bitterly. “As if he knows anything.”
“Your father?”
“We’re actually very similar, you and I, inheriting something that makes us unnatural against our will.” She turned around. My breath caught. Every inch of her was sleek, glinting metal.
“Wh-wh-” I couldn’t find the words to ask what was happening.
“My name is Amelia Parker.” she explained.
I balked. For half a second, I thought she meant she was the woman who had married Xavier way back when, but then I remembered the family tree Alexandra had made for my family. Wyatt had named his only child, a daughter, after his mother. This woman was my grandmother, the woman who had abandoned my dad when he was a baby. I didn’t even bother trying to keep the resentment from my face.
“You’ve never cared about family in the past. Why now?”
She turned back to flesh and her blue eyes—eyes I had inherited despite my complexion that leaned close to my mother’s Egyptian roots—dimmed sadly. “You’re referring to your father.”
“You abandoned him. You didn’t even have the decency to bring him to a hospital or something, you just left him in a diner.”
“I couldn’t risk losing my nerve and I couldn’t keep him. I knew that if I did, I would—” She cut herself off and crossed her arms over her chest, her brows pinching together. “I’d had horrible thoughts. I couldn’t let myself do that to him.”
“There are ways to help with postpartum depression. What about the father?”
“He’s not in the picture,” she said.
I set my jaw and looked away, shaking my head. The door opened abruptly and a man poked his head in. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but the delegate from the Magisterium has arrived and he’s feeling impatient.”
The Magisterium…The Hunters really did have their fingers in all the pots.
“I don’t care, he’ll have to wait,” Amelia snapped. The man blanched and nodded before hastily disappearing. The door shut and I turned my glare back on her, wondering if we’d pick up the argument. Amelia had other plans. “This is not what we’re here for. Come with me.”
Her skin turned metal again and she swept around the desk and past me, her heels clicking loudly on the polished wooden floor. Every fiber of my being seethed with loathing. I debated ignoring her, but what was I going to do, stand in her office? It’s not like I could just wander off. So, reluctantly, I followed her. Down the hall was an elevator beside a staircase, both with keycard locks. I stepped into the elevator after her and, once again, we were left alone as the doors shut. She was making a show of demonstrating how in control she was. Her skin remained metal.
“I want you to think carefully about my proposal to have you join us.”
I kept facing forward, ignoring her, and wrapped my arms around myself for what warmth I could muster.
“Your change is starting, I see. I’m…very sorry.” There was real sympathy in her voice. To her, Das Verdorren was probably an evil thing, something she’d been forced to suffer because of choices her grandparents had made. But then, wasn’t I treating it the same way? Suddenly, I was determined not to be afraid of it. I dropped my arms and let myself be cold.
She chuckled. “You’re still young. Given time, you’ll see what I see.”
“And what would that be?” I asked sarcastically.
The elevator pulled to a stop and the doors slid ope
n. “I’ll show you.”
I followed her out of the elevator, not unaware of the two armed men posted on either side who fell in line behind us. This network of hallways was white and sterile. People in lab coats moved about. I counted the hallways as we passed, mentally mapping my way back to the elevator just in case.
“Our staff strives continuously to reverse the effects of the lamian and cynocephali viruses so that, one day, the victims can return to their normal lives.”
I watched a lab coat wheel a metal tray past us with freshly cleaned surgical utensils. “And what about those who don’t want to be cured?”
“We’re working on a different solution for that problem.”
“Let me guess; It involves making them disappear, right?”
A smile curled Amelia’s lips upward. I rolled my eyes. We turned a corner and came face to face with a huge, round steel door. Amelia mashed a button on a control panel beside it and a small siren above the door began to blare as the door moved heavily outward. It didn’t open however. Amelia fastened her hands to handles I hadn’t noticed imbedded in the sides. These pegs were evenly spaced around the entire circumference. She began to roll the door out of the way. Even with her heightened strength, it took quite a bit of effort. She was the only one who could open it, I realized. What better way to secure something than you make sure you’re the only one strong enough to open the door?
A three-way junction awaited us beyond and Amelia lead me up the center hallway. Windows, nearly floor to ceiling, lined the walls, each with an informatory plaque underneath like some kind of twisted zoo. The walls inside were all sterile white and full of bright florescent light. The creature in the first room was oddly proportioned. Its back legs were about a foot shorter than the front legs and its build was bulky and muscular. The thick fur that covered its body was dark red except for the thick black stripe down its back that continued to a bushy black tail. Its head was dog-like with short stubby ears. Its mouth stretched back behind its ears, creating a creepy smile whenever it bared its sharp teeth.
“The crocotta,” Amelia explained. “A vicious hunter. Early accounts suspected they were the offspring of a wolf and a hyena, but the strength of its jaws is disproportionate to its size, even with all its muscle.”
The next window was completely black. All I could see was my own reflection looking in. After a few moments, however, a disembodied smile began to appear above my reflection’s shoulder. I jumped and looked over my shoulder, but there was nothing there. Only my reflection looked back at me when I looked at the window again.
“The baubas,” said Amelia. “Or ‘boogeyman’. It plays with the minds of its victims, scaring them witless so it can feed off their fear until they are little more than a husk.”
“Why do you let it sit in the dark? Doesn’t that help it?”
“We don’t ‘let’ it do anything. It stamps out all light around it. Otherwise, the light from out here would illuminate the room. Luckily, its reach is limited through walls, only able to play mild mind tricks. Of the creatures we’ve contained, this has been here the longest, since 1862. It was found tormenting Confederate soldiers on a plantation in Georgia during the Civil War.”
The next window had a small humanoid creature huddled in the corner. It was lanky and bone-thin, its skin a strange grey color. It turned to look at us with large, pupil-less white eyes set on the sides of its head. A curved horn protruded from its chin like a goatee and larger one from its forehead, forming a crescent profile. Several rows of needle like teeth flashed when it snarled and tossed a fireball at the window. When the assault didn’t make us leave, it faced the corner again and folded in on itself. It turned invisible. Pity gnawed at my stomach. It didn’t like being watched.
“A pukwudgie, or goblin. Don’t feel too badly for it,” she said, noting my expression. “Tricky little monsters. Goblins lure people to their deaths and steal whatever they can off the bodies to horde. After taking a few bites out of them, that is.”
A woman sat in the middle of the next room. Her long curtain of white hair blanketed her back as she trembled. Was she crying? “The Banshee”. After a moment of watching her, she went still. My heart began to race. Slowly, her head turned. Through a part in her hair, I caught a glimpse of a wide white eye. In a flash of movement, she was at the window, her mouth of long black teeth gaping open in a wail I couldn’t hear. I jumped back and Amelia laughed. The skin on the banshee’s face looked like it was stretched too thin and tiny black pupils stared hard at me like a rock peeking out of the snow in the whites of her eyes, with no irises.
“Soundproof. Don’t worry. Their wail causes blindness to disorient their victim so they can sap their happiness away, filling them with despair. If left to the wail for too long, the victim’s brain and eyes melt.”
I grimaced at this creature’s luckily thwarted attempt to melt my brain and quickly turned away. The next room, twice as tall as the others, was not for the faint of heart. The emaciated bipedal form crouching on the floor would have been at least ten feet tall if it stood up. A gnarled mess of antlers, bringing to mind the strange coffee table in Slade’s living room, sat atop the creature’s head. The shape of its elongated skull was plainly visible under the thin layer of epidermis that clung tightly to it, showing off the deer-like shape of its skull. The teeth were sharp and carnivorous and the eyes were sunken into the sockets, making them look empty. It stared up at the food hatch on the ceiling with open maw, ready to pounce at any sign of movement. The room was filthy, piled with poorly digested excrement.
“The wendigo, a cannibalistic demon that binds itself to someone who has resorted to eating human flesh. No matter how much it eats, it never gains any weight. We tested it. Fed it for a week straight. It was never full and didn’t gain an ounce of weight. Capable of imitating any voice, they lure their prey close and consume them dead or alive, as we have unfortunately witnessed with a few of our staff.”
“So that’s why all the…” I gestured to the excrement.
She nodded. “We no longer allow anyone to go into this cell, even to clean it. Even without food, it hasn’t starved.”
I looked at the way the wendigo sat staring hungrily at the hatch. It thoroughly wigged me out, so I turned toward the next room, but the plaque brought me to a stop. “The Wulver” it read. My heart pounded. Would I find Peter inside? After forcing myself to look, I deduced it was not Peter. Relief swelled in my chest, followed by guilt. This was still someone. He sat hunkered in the corner, shrinking away from prying eyes just like the pukwudgie. He was bulkier than Peter, looking more like a mutated, humanoid bear.
“Why is he here? Wulver aren’t from Purgatory.”
“In order to learn how to reverse a wulver’s condition, we needed a wulver we could study. The SAU provided us with a convicted cynocephalus awaiting the death penalty so we could infuse him with the lamian virus.”
“What was his name?”
“What?”
Heat warmed my face, furious anger boiling in my chest. “What. Was. His. Name? Before you forcefully injected him with the lamian virus and turned him into this, what was his name?” I asked. She made a face that looked like she was restraining a scoff and looked down at the plaque to see if it said. “You don’t even know, do you?”
“It’s in our records somewhere, but his name isn’t important. If we can find a way to reverse his condition then perhaps we can find a way to cure those infected by the lamian or cynocephali viruses as well.”
I shook my head in indignation. “Is that a backup plan in case Purgatory doesn’t work out?”
“We’ll keep trying to cure them until we get the portal open. If we haven’t found it by then, they must go. There’s no way around it. We can’t let them continue to put humans at risk.”
My anger continued to rise and as it did, I felt the change happening. Inch by inch, my skin was turning metal. I turned and drove my fist into the window as hard as I could to keep from hitting her. Her
guards sprinted closer, drawing their weapons, but Amelia waved them down. I noticed, with a degree of satisfaction, that her glance slid wearily to the window that was strong enough to keep a wulver contained. I’d cracked it. The wulver inside flinched at the sound
“You’ve found the worst the supernatural world has to offer and call it proof that being abnormal means that someone doesn’t deserve to exist. What gives you the right to decide that for people?”
“These are not people, they’re monsters. Just like you and me. The difference between them and us is that we can fight them. Our very blood gives us what we need to stop them, to fight the injustice they’ve caused in taking over this world and hurting its people. To protect and serve, just like you and your father have both felt the need to do. You and I are the same. We’re family. Why can’t you see that?”
“Because the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. What we are, the way we were born doesn’t make us monsters. You did that all on your own. You chose hate and prejudice and you chose to use your bigotry as an excuse to hurt people. You’re not a hero, you’re a tyrant and I’ll have no part of any of it. I choose them.” I could feel the metal crawling up my neck, up into my cheek, up to my eyes.
Amelia set her jaw. “Have it your way.”
She lunged for me. I ducked out of the way and grabbed her. She pinwheeled around me and I used the momentum to throw her into the window. It shattered beneath her weight and my strength and we both toppled through to the floor. A siren wailed and a red light on the ceiling flooded the room with a creepy aura. Amelia pushed to her knees and snatched me by the throat. She hauled me to my feet and slammed me against the wall beside the window.
“What was the point of that? You’re outnumbered,” she admonished.
“Am I?”
A deep, loud growl filled the space and Amelia froze. She released me and cautiously turned to face the wulver and his large, snarling teeth. He uncurled from the corner and took a threatening step closer to us. Amelia’s pair of armed guards aimed their guns at him through the window.
