The sense of the sentence like, “The space shuttle entered the atmosphere with the power of a battering ram crashing into the fortification wall,” for example, would have been completely lost on somebody who had never seen a space shuttle or even a picture of it and had already forgotten by now, what a battering ram was.
Watching television was easier for him, as it provided a visual image of things, even if the motivations of people’s actions and their behaviours portrayed in the movies and TV shows still escaped him sometimes.
Apparently, he really loved to watch documentaries because the cause and effect there was more clearly demonstrated, and the events tended to be discussed in a more logical, consecutive order.
I didn’t have to ask him to come to bed with me this time. He climbed under the covers with me on his own, as if it was the most natural thing to do, after finally taking his clothes off and leaving only the pair of tight, black boxers on. He pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me, just like the night before.
We left the heavy curtains on the window partially open for the night. The greenish light from the airport terminal outside entered the room through the tinted hotel windows, painting the inside of the room in a faint green glow. The train that connected the airport terminals passed by at regular intervals. Its sound, barely audible through the soundproof glass, was more soothing than distracting.
“Sleep, Alyssa,” Sytrius said and kissed my hair. Warm and comfortable, I drifted to sleep within minutes, knowing that he would be there when I woke up.
First, I heard a loud thud, as if a body hit the carpeted hotel room floor with force. Then I felt a pair of arms as they grabbed me and pulled me out of bed.
I knew those were not Sytrius’s arms when a gloved hand covered my mouth, muffling my screams. I was also absolutely sure that the arms did not belong to a human. The hard bracers of the armor crashed into my ribs, pushing my naked back into the hard chest plates, and I knew that they had found us.
Panic rose in me immediately, blinding me and robing me of any rational thought. I thrashed and screamed with the power of a woman possessed. It was no use though. The demon holding me was infinitely stronger than I. His arms did not shift by an inch as a result of my struggle, and my screams did not make it past his glove.
They were taking me! This was just like the last time. I had run and run but I got nowhere. I was back where I started, and I would still end up in the dungeon again. Only this time, Sytrius wouldn’t be there to carry me out.
“Alyssa!” I heard him scream my name, sharp and urgent, before hearing another thud. This time it sounded like flesh hitting flesh, or more precisely, a leather clad fist hitting exposed flesh of my man!
Sytrius!
All was not like the last time after all. I was not alone this time! There was Sytrius. What were they doing to him? You can’t kill a demon, but you sure as hell can make him wish he were dead. Concern for him pushed aside even my thoughts of self-preservation.
The guy holding me didn’t move, and I let myself slump in his arms for a second to catch my breath. He used the moment that I stopped fighting to throw me over his shoulder, getting me into a better position to carry along. I was upside down now with the hard armor on his shoulder digging painfully into my stomach.
The sounds of flesh hitting flesh kept coming in a steady rhythmic succession from somewhere behind me, accompanied by grunts and groans, interrupted periodically by what could only be the sickening sound of bone breaking…
In my new position, the guard’s hand was off my mouth, but I didn’t try to scream again. I needed to see what was happening. I pushed with my hands into his broad back in front of my face and swung my upper body to the side to see the rest of the room in front of him.
The guard holding me stood between the bed and the window, facing the two men fighting at the entrance to the short narrow hallway that lead to the exit door in front of us and to the bathroom door to the right.
Another guard, dressed in the dreadful grey uniform, was lying on his back, motionless, his arms spread wide aside. His helmet was off, exposing the mop of thick wavy chestnut-coloured hair. Sytrius was lying on his back on the floor next to him with the third guard straddling his chest. The guard’s gloved fists rained punches on Sytrius, aiming for his face.
I stuffed my clenched fist into my mouth as far as it would go to stop myself from screaming his name. He was busy defending himself, reflecting most of the blows. He didn’t need me to distract him right now. It must have been he who knocked the other guard out.
The guard on top of Sytrius missed a punch and lost his balance for a fraction of a second. Sytrius used the moment to twist under him. He then threw the guard off and simultaneously jumped to his feet.
He was still shirtless, and his feet were bare, but he must have had some warning because his cargo pants were on, and I remembered him taking them off before going to bed. The demons had almost certainly come through the walls, but he must have heard or sensed them before they ambushed him.
I understood then why the guard holding me was not going anywhere. He might have come through the wall into out room, but he needed to exit through the door if he wanted to take me along. To get to the door, we needed to get past Sytrius. There was not much room in the hallway to get around the two men fighting. The guard holding me was waiting for the other guy to incapacitate Sytrius before attempting to go for the door himself.
Sytrius got down on one knee, looming over the guard that he’d just thrown to the ground, and grabbed his shoulder with one hand. He then hooked the fingers of the other hand under the edge of the guard’s helmet and ripped it off.
A cascade of golden blond curls spilled out and around the guard’s shoulders, making me think for a moment that the guard was a woman despite the wide shoulders and the bulky arms. The rough low grunt came out of the guard’s throat, as the fist of Sytrius landed on the side of his face, confirming to me that the gold, silky locks belonged indeed to a man.
The guard holding me must have decided to take advantage of Sytrius being occupied with the blond guy and made a run for it. He took a better hold of my thighs at his shoulder and jumped onto the bed then ran across it towards the hallway. He jumped off the bed, landing on the other side of it, right in front of the hallway, and attempted to run past the two men fighting and towards the door.
Sytrius threw another punch to the head of the blond guard. The wet cracking noise of a skull being crushed made my stomach lurch. He then threw his left arm out into our direction without even looking, and his fist connected with the side of the knee of the guy carrying me.
Sytrius didn’t have enough room or momentum for his fist to break the guy’s leg this time, but the blow still knocked the guard off balance. He tripped and threw his arms out to catch himself, releasing his hold on me. I slipped off his shoulder and fell to the ground, painfully hitting the floor with my hip and elbow.
I cried out in pain but got to my hands and knees as soon as I could and scurried away from the fighting men as far as possible.
Still on all fours, I crawled into the hallway around the corner and to the right. With the guards now behind me, the thought to go straight for the front door flashed through my mind, but I dismissed it as soon as it came. Even if the hotel security saw me running naked through the hallways, they would not be able to do much against the demons. That was if the security would even come to me at all. The memory of the betrayal sat still deep inside of me from the first time I was taken. There also was security at my condo building where I lived and there were cameras too, but nobody came to my rescue that time. No one even tried. I didn’t trust any human authorities at this point.
My best bet now was to stay close to Sytrius.
I crawled into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open. Closing the door would not stop them anyway, but this way at least I could see what was going on outside the door in front of the hallway.
The blond guy was now limp
on the floor looking unconscious, the side of his face smashed into a bloody mess, his luminous hair spread on the carpet like a golden halo marred with gore and blood. My would-be abductor seemed to have lost his helmet too. His dark curly hair pulled into a bun at the nape of his neck was exposed now. Sytrius held him in a headlock, blocking his air supply. The smooth, olive-colored skin of the guard’s face was now raised with ugly, bulging veins as he struggled for air. Desperate to escape, he drove one elbow into Sytrius’s ribs and lurched out of his grip.
They used no guns or knives. There was no need for weapons – they couldn’t kill each other anyway. The point of the fight was to incapacitate, and they were strong enough to break each other’s bones in order to do so.
All three guards that the Council must have sent for us were just as big and seemingly just as strong as Sytrius, but he proved to be a little faster than them, a little quicker on his feet. His reflexes were that much sharper too, just enough to give him an advantage in the fight of one against three.
Sytrius tripped the guard, making him fall to the ground again then pushed his knee into the small of the guy’s back, pushing him into the floor. He grabbed his hair bun with one hand, pulling the man’s head back then gripped his chin with another hand and twisted his head sharply with enough force to break the demon’s neck. Another crunching noise of broken bones and ripped muscles brought bile up to my throat…
I sat on the floor in the middle of the dark bathroom, deliberately staying away from the walls, just in case there were more guards waiting to seep through. I watched the body of the third guard drop lifelessly to the ground and pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. My eyes were open wide in the darkness, my breathing hard and shallow, as if I had been out there in the middle of the fight myself.
Sytrius rose to his feet slowly, his chest heaving with heavy breaths, his massive shoulders still raised in tension, and his hands bruised and smeared with blood.
“Alyssa,” he called cautiously, turning around.
“In here,” I replied in a raspy voice then cleared my throat. “In the bathroom.”
He took two steps into the bathroom and crouched in front of me, reaching with both hands into the darkness.
“God, you’re so scared!” he breathed out.
“Terrified, actually,” I said, but batted his hands away. “Don’t you even think about taking any negative emotions from me right now! I’ll deal with them on my own, but I need you in your top fighting form!” I gestured towards the lifeless bodies in the room and the hallway. “Look, we can’t afford to have you sick or weak right now!”
He shook his head and scooped me off the floor, just the way I was, curled into a ball. “I won’t take anything if you don’t want me to,” he said softly. “But I have other ways to comfort you. Come here. I just want to hold you.”
He pressed me to his bare chest, still damp with the thin sheen of sweat from the fight, and carried me into the room. I hid my face in his shoulder as he stepped over the lying bodies on the floor. I didn’t want to look at them again.
“They’re not dead, are they?” I asked.
“No. They will be conscious again within the next hour or so. Their injuries will heal eventually.” He lowered me onto the bed, and I noticed him wince when he straightened up in the greenish semi-darkness of the room.
“You’re hurt!”
He inhaled and frowned again, holding his side with one hand. “Some ribs might be broken.” He raised his hand and spread the fingers wide. “Some bones in my hands too.”
“Will you be okay? Should we have your bones set? Do you need a cast?”
“No. They’ll heal fine on their own. It will just hurt for a while.”
“We should get you some Tylenol for pain downstairs.”
“No,” he said again. “Painkillers won’t work on me.”
I gasped, feeling offended for him. “You were really meant to suffer! Why?”
He shrugged his shoulder way too casually. “I don’t know.” Then he offered hesitantly, “Punishment?”
“What good is the punishment if you don’t even remember the crime?”
He didn’t reply, just started collecting my clothes and putting them on the bed next to me. “I can function. We’ll need to get out of here for a couple of hours to let them leave. We’ll also need to stop at the front desk to give some explanation of the noise in here too.”
“Just for a couple of hours?” I asked incredulously, haphazardly throwing my clothes on in a hurry. “I don’t ever want to come back here again!”
“They will leave here as soon as they can, especially if we are not here when they wake up.” He pulled his t-shirt over his head then zipped up the hoodie and was tying the laces of his boots now. “We have the room for another night. I should be able to pick up the passports tomorrow night or the following morning the latest. There aren’t that many incubi awake and functioning. With these three out of commission now, the Council may not even have another team close enough to get to us in time before we leave the country.”
“Look,” he continued, seeing that I was not convinced. “Even if there were more Soldiers around, they would find us anywhere, just as they found us here. Then I would fight them, just as I did tonight. We may as well stay here, but I will get you an amulet. I wouldn’t be able to leave you alone otherwise when I go to get the passports.”
“What are you talking about?” I was fully dressed now, itching to get out of the room but not looking forward stepping over the lying demons on the floor on the way to the door.
“Do you know how we can get to Kensington Market from here?” He asked as he took a wad of cash from the duffel bag and stuffed it into his back pocket.
“Why?” I still stood by the bed, hesitantly stepping from foot to foot, working out in my head the best route through the floor littered with broken bodies.
“That’s where the stores are that sell the real thing, Alyssa. There are a lot of fakes everywhere, you know,” he said as he swept me off my feet with one arm on his way to the door and carried me over the unconscious men.
I peeked over his shoulder, and my eyes went to their faces. They looked peaceful, almost serene, and incredibly handsome, which seemed to be the common trait of the incubi. It’s not their good looks, though, that attracted my attention. I saw the telltale shadows hallowing their cheeks and sinking their eyes, highlighting the protruding cheekbones and the sharp edges of their jawlines.
“They’re hungry,” I said quietly as Sytrius carried me out of the room.
“Always hungry,” he conceded, closing the door behind us.
Chapter Twenty Seven. The Amulet.
The skies were of a hazy grey colour over us, and the faint glow of sunrise from the east was drawn out by the city lights.
We took a taxi to Kensington Market since I wasn’t sure if the streetcars were running there at this hour.
Ever since the incident in the hotel, I kept holding on to Sytrius with my hand placed in his hand, or on his elbow, or on the top of his knee during the ride in the cab, just to assure myself that he was there at all times. My fear of the men in grey showing up from nowhere and dragging me back into the basement cell made me excessively clingy. I hoped it would pass when we finally left the country, but as long as he didn’t say anything, I hoped he didn’t mind meanwhile.
I wasn’t entirely sure what the store that sells magical amulets should look like, but I was expecting at least something like an antique store with a feel of Harry Potter movies. Instead, Sytrius asked the taxi driver to drop us off in front of a store selling wooden incense burners and long tie-dye skirts.
The store was still closed, and I realized that he would have to go in on his own and leave me alone outside. My anxiety shot up immediately.
Seeing it, Sytrius put his hands on my upper arms, looking straight into my eyes. “ I will be gone just for a few seconds, I promise. Stay right here.” He moved me further into the cor
ner of the front entrance recess. “With you back to the door.” I nodded without saying anything, not wanting him to hear the panic in my voice.
He kissed my temple. “I promise. Just a few seconds,” he repeated, letting me go and stepped backwards through the door.
I nodded again even though he was inside already and couldn’t see me anymore and turned my back to the door, facing outside, looking out for any signs of men in grey uniforms.
Had the ones we left lying on the floor in the hotel room have enough time to regain consciousness yet? What if there were more than three sent after us, and the rest had followed us here?
With my overactive imagination running wild, the panic was mounting. I clenched my hands into fists, fighting to keep in control and pressed my back into the door as hard as I could, as if I was going to follow Sytrius though the door myself.
“I’m here.” I heard his calming voice just above my ear before his arms hugged me from behind and his chest pushed me forward slightly so that the rest of him could emerge through the door and out from the store.
Then, he turned me to face him and put a leather cord over my head and around my neck. “Here you go. Don’t take it off.”
I looked down the cord at what looked like a small rounded cylinder of yellowish light enclosed from both ends in an ancient-looking ornate bronze setting. The whole thing was a little too large and a bit too primitive looking to be considered a true piece of jewelry.
“It’s glowing…” I said, fascinated by the unusual orange-yellow glow that appeared to be coming right from the centre of the cylinder. It wasn’t a steady continuous light and it wasn’t pulsating either. Instead, it looked like it was liquid. I could see the tiny swirls of light and colour moving inside when I looked closely.
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