“I know you can, baby. And you do it so well,” she praised him. Robyn grabbed Carly as she pulled herself over the last rung, and watched her crouch down with her back to the wall. She was clearly exhausted, and suffering the effects of her injuries. “Mika?”
“I’m sending him up now.” He hadn’t bothered to learn the name of the professor, and couldn’t remember what had been written on the prints. “What is it, love?”
“Carly’s shattered. Can we give her a few minutes?”
“Don’t see why not. I think this one’s gonna need a rest too.” Mika wasn’t tired in the least but he knew that the time would give him a chance to sort his head. He silently scoffed at his superior healing abilities and stamina. He and Robyn could probably cover twice the distance of a normal person before they started to get tired.
Carly felt the fingernail cut Robyn had given her on her neck, and fetched her hand back splattered with blood. Most of her aches and pains came from bruises, and the energy it took to withstand the pain made her muscles cry out for rest. “And a full body transplant… sounds good.” She refused to give in to the numbness that threatened to take over her, and let the violent waves of physical exhaustion wahs over her for a while.
NINETEEN
Annie was screaming long and loud.
To Robyn, it was just music to her ears. She wondered, for only the briefest of moments, if she should give the child a rest, but quickly decided that she was simply having too much fun to stop right now. The days of torture, some of which Annie had already endured and some that may be to come, seemed endless to all three of them. Mika was a little bored of hurting the girl over and over again – it had been very enjoyable for a time but he craved the kill now – but he never ceased to be pleased by Robyn’s squeals of delight, and her just-this-side-of-crazy smile. He knew he would do whatever it took to keep her safe and happy.
Absolutely anything.
“You will never have this amulet as long as I am alive,” Annie spat. Blood began to fill her mouth and she could taste the bitterness of it.
“We’ll just have to make sure you’re not alive when we take it then,” said Robyn lightly, acting as though it was not a threat but friendly chat. Her fingernails had red underneath from where she had dug them into her flesh and drawn blood. “It would be more fun if you were alive but I guess it wouldn’t work.”
“This is a protective amulet. It contains power you could never imagine.”
But Robyn had imagined. She would not want it this badly if she hadn’t.
“It will protect me until after I die. Until my souls crosses over, in fact. And even when you kill me, my spirit will not leave your side until the amulet is safe and your existences have been terminated.”
“Tough talk – I like that. But it’s funny how you’re the one tied up here,” laughed Mika. “Hmm? Is that determination I smell?”
“I don’t have to be determined any more,” whispered Annie. “I know you’ll kill me. But what I don’t understand is… you were human once, were you this evil then.”
Quite honestly, neither of them could actually remember what it was like to be human, though they knew that an immortal existence must be far better. “Humanity, compassion. There’s too much to lose there, like love. As demons, love changes but it never goes away.”
“When who-ever killed you killed you, you chose to be demons and kill people. It would have been just as easy to become angels and save people.”
Mika went over her words a few times, picking out her choice of words. Yes, demons was what they were, but they didn’t do anything wrong. He couldn’t see what was morally wrong about killing a few people here and there. For the fun of it, he could hear Robyn thinking. “An angel. Is that what you think you are? Running all over the place, fighting the forces of evil, saving people, and then they don’t know or want to know. Is that what you were?”
Annie gave him the cold, hard look that she had perfected over the years. No-one outside of her predecessors knew about her calling. No-one cared, even. Mika was right, it was a thankless job, but it was still her job to do. She glanced over at Robyn who had put her arms out at her sides and was happily twirling around in her long, white nightdress, looking like a young child trying to amuse herself. Annie thought it was rather sweet how the two seemed to need each other so much. Why had they chosen this path of chaos and carnage, for she knew that they definitely weren’t the shy, retiring types. For instance, when alone, Annie had noticed that Mika always preferred to go for the straight kill or feed, whereas Robyn liked to toy with her victims first. They liked to make their presence known, leaving dead bodies in places people would never otherwise look.
“You know what I think we need to do, Mika?” Robyn stopped dancing just long enough to stop the room spinning and skipped over to her. “Annie’s getting cranky. Cranky girl with evil eyes. I think we need to bleed her… let some of that bitterness out.”
Blood dripped down the side of her chin, but despite the energy this sapped from her, Annie still struggled against the bonds that tied her wrists together behind the sturdy wooden beam that supported the house. The ties were much too tight for her to break or work loose and, even at full strength, she doubted that she would be able to pull herself free. She felt her muscles tense up as she waited for Robyn to do her damage.
Mika was too young to draw blood and be able to resist, even Robyn admitted that it was hard for her to hold back at times. It was all about willpower, and it took a hell of a lot more strength to refuse the source of survival than it did for a person to stay off the drink. Robyn felt her face harden. She looked down at the satin skirt of her nightdress and smoothed it down. The light of the moon cast weird shadows onto it and it looked creased. Did she look pretty and kind? She liked to look pretty for Mika. Of course, she knew he would love her no matter what she looked like, but she liked to look nice for him. She left one hand on her skirt, furiously brushing at the non-existent wrinkle and lifted her other hand.
“Yes. Let some of it out.”
Annie screamed again, this time barely realising she was doing it.
Mika screamed along with her for a few seconds before letting the scream morph into one of his more evil and dangerous laughs. “Scream all you want, girl. I’ll even scream with you but listen. Ssh.” He silenced her by putting one finger over her lips, like any lovers would do, and held it there as they listened to the complete lack of sound around. “Do you hear anything?” Annie shook her head, more scared by the silence than she had been by any noise. “Now do you see? There’s no-one coming to save you. No-one else is willing to risk their life for you. That’s how much you ever meant here. No friends, no rescue, and – my personal favourite – no hope.”
“I’ll save myself,” she bit out hopelessly.
Red hair flew behind Robyn as her body disappeared in a blur.
Desperation filled Andrews head as he dragged himself through the last part of sewer before the underground entrance to the shamans’ house. He wouldn’t normally have been this tired at walking this distance but it really made a difference when you were being terrified and verbally abused all the way. He saw that Mika was walking at the side, his arm linked with Robyn, acting as though this were nothing out of the ordinary – which, to them, it probably wasn’t. From the way they put their heads together and talked quietly, but intensely, he thought that there might be something wrong. He turned his head away from them and his eyes found Carly. It was almost hard to believe how young she still was as she struggled through the slime, thrusting one arm out to the sewer wall as she stumbled through. Andrew liked to think that he had played some part in her life, but knew that she had done this all herself. The courage and drive and determination that Carly was showing now – that was all her, he’d had nothing to do with that.
“We’re here,” said Robyn abruptly.
“Thank God for that.” Mika r
eturned her questioning look with raised eyebrows, and proceeded to answer that glare. “I don’t think I can stand much more of that bloody moaning.”
Carly began her defence for her old professor. “Hey. He’s a regular mortal just like – well, me. He’s not used to this and it’s human nature to complain and why the hell am I sticking up for him?” She didn’t even like the guy any more. She watched Robyn kick down the grate to a basement with one sharp snap-kick to its centre, then hauled herself through using her feet and one hand. The other arm was pretty much out of action as the burn had taken its’ toll and rendered it much too painful to move far, and Carly held it across her chest.
Once inside, she leant against the cool stone wall and closed her eyes as she breathed in deeply. The air in the dank, damp cellar was only a little less stomach-churning than the rotting stench in the sewers but she breathed it in regardless, hoping to rid her nostrils of the stink of decaying God-knows-what. Mika and Robyn did not have that problem, and could choose whether to smell something or not. Andrew, however, had not realised that they didn’t breathe. Carly wanted to keep him in the dark as much aas possible for now – he was scared to death anyway, what would be the point of loading that on him too?
“Where are we?” he said between gasps for air.
“We thought you might recognise the place. The stars said you know this house. They say you’re all afraid of me.” Robyn ran one finger down the side of his face, her eyes gleaming dangerously. “Are you scared of me? I do like making people scared… they scream and cry… the noises make my ears buzz like a happy bee.” She pinched her fingers together and made a buzzing sound at him. “Mika, can we take the bees if he has any? I want to string them up by their little wings and hang them in a row in the window.”
“He? Who’s he?” Carly thought back to the other person that she had seen on disk. Curiously, she couldn’t remember ever talking to him – even though she had talked to practically every FDR employee at some point. “The shaman. I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him work. If that’s anything togo on, he’ll have some pretty powerful barriers up.”
“There are spells at work. I can feel them pulling at me already,” Mika informed them. Enchanted barriers were generally created to prevent demons from crossing its’ path. With the correct incantations, almost any object could be injected with this protective energy. There were very few records of evil beings ever being able to break through these walls, which usually felt like pushing through a solid wall of electricity. “This energy hits you, and you don’t wanna go any further in case it really hurts.”
“But you’re strong enough to push through it, right?” Carly wasn’t quite sure why she had posed that as a question because she knew that they were. Well, definitely Robyn was, but she was starting to have doubts about Mika – he looked ready to drop. “I know you have the strength. It won’t touch us ‘cos we’re human but you are strong. Anyway, you said you’d broken Haven spells before.” They must have run across a powerful witch or two in their time, they must have done this before. It should be nothing.
Andrew pushed himself off the wall and rubbed his hands over his face, feeling his eyelids begin to droop. “It’s quiet outside,” he noted. “Either, everyone’s calmed down or-“ No! he refused to let himself contemplate the alternative. It was too horrible…
Though that did not stop Carly from voicing the words. “Or, they’ve all killed each other in a frenzy of terror!”
“Is it my fault that they’re too weak to resist? It’s so easy for them to give in to their animal instincts.”
“Yeah, and who was it that put the temptation out there?”
Animal instincts and temptation – the concepts struck familiar chords in both Mika and Robyn. While Robyn took the ensuing conversation as the ultimate compliment, Mika felt himself falling away to the scene that haunted him.
“The forbidden fruit is always the sweetest.”
Oh God! He was trying to justify this with religion… of all things. There wasn’t a religion in all the world that made mindless killings okay. Carly knew that religion had been used to justify murder, but it was just an excuse. Saying that your beliefs somehow made you think that it was right to kill people was just something to hide behind. “Your telling me that these people wanted to hurt each other?”
“They wanted to do it, and we just gave them the freedom to do so. If they wanted to, they would have done it now, and those that eat the apple… well, I think you know that story.”
“Yeah, yeah. Listen to the snake, eat the fruit, get chucked out of Eden. How do you do that, prof? how do you use a Bible story to try and cover this up? Just ‘cos you can dress it up as a re-enactment as whatever book of the Bible it was, you think no-one’ll see how ruthless you’re being.” She couldn’t explain it as well as she had wanted, but thought he got the message.
“Carly,” said Andrew, putting a hand on her shoulder. Carly stared down at his hand with narrowed eyes until he moved it. “There are monsters in this world… evil beings that can do horrendous things to you and me. And everyone else in this forsaken place.”
This was news? Carly turned her gaze to Mika, who had tensed his shoulders and looked only slightly more than a shadow of his usual self. “Look. There’s your monster, your evil being. Both of them. I know exactly what they can do – they torturepeople young and old alike, they keep people alive for days so they can feed alone. They hurt people for no reason other than to hear them cry. They killed my boyfriend and mutilated his body for fun, and they’ve killed nearly every part of me. I know the evil that they possess.” She stared at her old teacher and suddenly realised that she was now giving the lesson. It felt good to be in power, to have control over another person – she wasn’t a student any more. “But I also know that these two are actually doing a good thing here. I might not agree with their reasons for it, but I sure as Hell ain’t gonna argue it. I’m part of this so I can save humanity from a slow, burning death it doesn’t deserve.”
“Don’t you want to rid these low creatures from the Earth?” Andrew felt the wall behind him but could only feel slime covering the brickwork. If there was something he could use to shut her up with, he and the shaman could finish this. “Wouldn’t the world be better if we never had to worry about what’s lurking in the dark? If it was as bright as day all the time, they could never rise and attack.”
“Everyone’s going to Hell – us included. So are the demons. But, before we go – we’re gonna stop this thing.” Too late for a miracle or not, they would stop this.
Blood bubbled from her mouth, and Annie had to stop herself from wondering if any organs had ruptured. She would know if something had torn because the pain would be unbearable, but because death was what she lived and breathed, she had a natural instinct to think about it. It was quite morbid to think about those sorts of things before anything else. It was morbid to have to have to wake up every morning and know that it’s your last… unless you fight. Being a Warrior of Night was her choice and she had accepted it – even though she would always have the shadow of death hanging over her.
Her stomach was bruised and felt knotted as volleys of punches had been landed on it. Two open puncture wounds showed on her neck; the place where Mika and Robyn had taken turns to feed from her. Between them, they had taken so much blood that Annie didn’t know how she had enough to keep her alive and bleeding. She coughed and spat a red lump onto the floorboards.
“We were just going to take the necklace and leave you with all that pesky guilt,” said Robyn. She had entered the room a few minutes before and was sitting in the corner watching the blood and tears. Annie realized that she hadn’t even heard her come in – she knew she was dying. “Except… it’s just so much fun letting you struggle. We’ve had such a lovely time. We should do this again.”
“Where is he?” Annie whispered hoarsely. “I want to see hi
m.”
“Mika! I wish I had that pretty little accent of yours.”
Annie pointedly ignored her, but found that it was not nearly as satisfying when coughing blood and dripping it everywhere. She felt weak and her soaked clothing stuck to her body. She coughed again and peered out of eyes that were beginning to turn pink with her own blood. She made out two shapes crouched together on the other side of the room, which suddenly seemed very far away. “I’m dying,” she told them.
“Well, this is news. I expected you to hold on for at least another day or so.”
“How long have I been here, Mika?”
“A little over a week.” But, I must say you have fought admirably throughout.”
“We have been feeding from her, Mika. She can’t have that much life left inside that poor carcass.” Longs nails scratched at the wooden boards, and traced a swirly pattern in a nearby pool of blood. She hummed a made-up tune as she played and Mika watched. If Robyn was happy, he was happy. She lifted her fingers to her mouth and licked at them, letting each finger stay on her lips, savouring the taste of the bittersweet liquid. Annie still had the energy to be disgusted by it. She wondered why the amulet had seemed to stop working, but didn’t waste her last minutes thinking about it. “Are you fading, sweetie? Have we killed you?” asked Robyn, voice dripping with insincerity. “Do you think we murdered you?”
Annie summoned the energy to nod but it hurt to move her head. “I hope you burn for this.”
The words seemed to strike a chord as she thought Robyn looked spooked, but that could have been her blurred eyesight. Robyn shook out of it in a split-second and put her handed on Mika’s shoulder.