“So, what do we do exactly?” Lauren asked in a hushed tone. “Climb over the fence?”
“No,” Angie replied, eyeing the fence with a slight wariness. “I think we should just yell and hope they hear us.”
And so we began to call out. “HELLO?”
“ARE YOU OKAY?”
“DO YOU NEED HELP?”
But the shouting continued undeterred, as if he couldn’t hear us at all. Even when we yelled at the top of our lungs, it was as if it fell on deaf ears.
Angie huffed, her gaze passing along the top of the fence again, pausing at a few low-hanging branches.
“So maybe we should climb over after all,” she muttered.
Lauren looked nervous, her lips twitching, but she nodded. I didn’t actually think it would be a big deal. Several of the trees looked easy enough to climb, with many low branches. It wouldn’t be any harder than climbing a ladder.
Angie went first, with Lauren and me giving her a boost, and I went second, climbing just high enough so that we could drop our legs over the other side, and leap down. There were other trees on this side that looked easy to climb, too, so I didn’t worry about us getting back out—in case we didn’t end up finding whoever we were here for, or he couldn’t unlock the fence’s opening for some reason.
Once all three of us were safely on the ground, we headed through the trees, guided by the ever-present shouting…which had finally grown a little softer, and now sounded more like groaning.
We hurried, careful to dodge brambles and fallen trunks—as well as a large pit that had been dug in the ground. I wasn’t sure why they’d been digging a hole here, but the sight of it confirmed the shoveling noise we’d heard earlier.
After five minutes of walking, an old wooden house came into view, and my eyes widened. It was much bigger than I’d expected it to be — bigger than the Churnleys’ home, with four stories rather than two, and about twice as wide. As we drew closer, I also realized that all the windows had been boarded up — and it was with new wood, which meant that it had been done only recently, probably in the last day or so. Which confused me somewhat, given what the guys had told us earlier. If they were here to renovate this old house, why had they boarded up the windows?
I shrugged the thought aside as we reached the porch. Five low steps led up to it, and twin wooden columns rose up on either side of the door, which certainly looked like it had seen better days. Like the rest of the house’s exterior, the wood was roughened with age, and discolored by moss and mold.
“Am I the only one getting a creepy vibe from this place?” Lauren said quietly.
I shrugged. Yeah, I guessed the fact that it was built in the woods, and we were approaching it at nighttime, did give it a Hansel and Gretel vibe. Though I imagined that in the daytime it looked quite picturesque.
Angie reached the door first and was about to knock, when it gave way slightly under her touch. It glided open, creaking softly, and Angie looked back at us with a questioning expression.
Lauren and I said nothing, so she continued pushing it, until there was a large enough gap for the three of us to slip inside.
Once we were through, we found ourselves standing at the beginning of a long, dusty hallway. Everything was wooden, from the walls to the floors, and completely bare, except for a few dusty gas lamps fixed at odd intervals against the walls.
More than anything, I was taken aback by how high the temperature was. It felt like a wave of hot air had washed over us as we stepped in, and I found myself stilling for a moment, trying to adjust to the temperature as my mouth went dry. It definitely was a good thing that Lauren had brought water.
“Okay, yeah, this is pretty creepy,” Angie whispered, eyeing the general decor—or rather, the stark lack of it. She pulled back a bit, so that she was level with Lauren and me, rather than ahead of us.
I refocused on the groaning, which sounded like it was coming from the other end of the hallway.
“Hello?” I called softly.
Still no response.
I wondered where the other men were, and from the confused expressions on my friends’ faces, they were wondering the same thing. Were they all sleeping in this place? It seemed so… bare. But where else would they be? We hadn’t noticed any kind of camp on our way here, unless it was set up around the back of the house.
I poked my head through the open doorways on either side of the hallway as we passed them, and each of the rooms beyond, also bathed in dim gaslight, looked equally derelict. Most were scattered with furniture, covered with thick layers of dust, and none of it looked like it had been used in years. Perhaps upstairs was nicer?
It was the strangest thing, but as we crept deeper into the house, I realized it was becoming hotter. By the time we were two-thirds down the corridor—having passed a set of stairs leading up to the higher floors—we had to stop and take a sip of water.
“Seriously, it’s like an oven in here,” Lauren gasped, stowing the bottle away once we were done with it.
I brushed away the sweat that was quickly forming on my brow with the back of my hand, and set my focus on the only door in this corridor that was closed — right at the end, and now only about five feet in front of us. This house was far deeper than I had anticipated; the hallway had seemed to stretch forever. I guessed the heat also had something to do with that impression.
As we closed the final feet between us and the last door, my ears picked up on something other than the persistent protests of pain. There was murmuring coming from the room—which meant other people were in there—but there was also the sound of… crackling?
It sounded like the crackling of flames.
“It’s all right,” a deep voice spoke from within. “It’s almost over.”
“Just think,” a second voice added, “one more day, and it will be done. You’ll never have to go through this again.”
“You’re doing better than we could have hoped, Ronad,” a third voice spoke. “Hang in there.”
Ronad?
More groans interspersed the comforting statements, and my curiosity reached the breaking point. I strode forward, gripped the handle, and pushed the door, springing it open wide and granting the three of us full view of the room.
Nothing could have prepared me for what we saw.
I had to be hallucinating.
I frowned, then closed my eyes and blinked several times, trying to shake myself to my senses, but when I opened my eyes, the scene was unchanged.
I glanced at Angie and Lauren, and from the look of utter shock on their faces, I realized they saw it too.
A fire roared in a hearth in the center of the room, beside which stood a small stand holding a round glass container, filled with reddish orange liquid. Huddled near the stand and in front of the fire were four men, bare from the waist up. At least, “men” was the first term my brain spat out for what they were. Unlike any man I had ever seen—or unlike any human for that matter—these men had skin the shade of ash, literally gray in color, and… wings. Two broad, black wings that protruded from beneath their shoulder blades, except for one man who was lying on his back closest to the fire, supported by some sort of stretcher—he appeared to have only one wing.
Lauren let out a string of curse words and stepped back, while Angie and I remained rooted to the spot. All we could do was gape.
The men whipped around at Lauren’s movement, and I recognized three of them instantly—the three men we’d met earlier, outside the fence. Only, earlier they’d looked like bronzed gods, rather than some kind of ash demons from hell.
My gaze locked on the taller man, whose eyes had darkened to thunderous storm clouds. His jaw went slack as he stared at us, apparently as shocked to see us here as we were to see them, and a hard look came over his face, one so stony and unreadable it frightened me.
The next thing I knew, an arm as rigid and strong as iron had locked around my waist, pushing me backward, and then the floor disappeared from underneath me
. I felt the sensation of intense heat around my midriff, where the arm was holding me, as well as against my back, which was suddenly pressed against something smooth yet rock hard. It was all I could do to not cry out at the surge of heat flooding through my veins, before my stomach dropped, and the last breath was knocked from my lungs.
I soared off the ground and flashed through the corridor and into one of the open doorways at what felt like lightning-speed, then landed with a thud that caused whatever strength I had left in my knees to leave me. The iron arm released me, the heat relinquishing along with it. I sank to the floor, gasping for air, and felt my two friends collapse on either side of me.
When I looked up barely a second later, the door to the room slammed shut, followed by the sound of a bolt being drawn.
We’d been thrown into one of the dusty rooms cluttered with old furniture. I scrambled to my feet and darted to the door, slamming against it, yanking the handle. It wouldn’t budge.
“Help me!” I wheezed, panic setting my brain alight.
This couldn’t be happening. We couldn’t be stuck in here. With these… I didn’t even know what they were.
My friends rushed to help me, but no matter how hard we slammed our fists or kicked against it, the door wouldn’t move.
I paused, holding up a hand to indicate to Angie and Lauren to do the same. I took a deep breath and pressed my ear against the door, listening, half fearing what I would hear.
Someone was murmuring. Were it not for the heated tone of the conversation, I doubted I would be able to make out the words. As it was, I could, just about…
My friends followed my lead, pressing their ears against the wood, and I gazed at them with wide eyes, one finger over my lips as I strained to hear.
“It doesn’t matter,” one of them spoke. “They’ve seen us, Navan!”
“I am aware,” came the growled response.
“So what do we do? We can’t keep them locked in there forever.”
“We have no choice for the time being,” a distinct third voice replied, similar in tone to Navan’s. They all had similar, hard-to-place accents.
“I wonder how much of a problem it would be if we just… smothered them,” a fourth voice added, and our breath caught in our throats.
“Forget it, Ianthan,” Navan’s deep growl returned. “You know that’s against my code… We’ll have to give them Elysium.”
“Elysium? Do we know if that will even work on humans?”
“It will. It just requires the right concentration.”
Elysium? Work on humans? What are these men?
It seemed that Lauren couldn’t take it anymore. “Please, let us out!” she cried, and began banging against the door with her fists. “I swear, whoever you are, we won’t breathe a word! Just let us go!”
The voices had fallen quiet. There was the sound of a door opening, and then swift footsteps just outside, moving toward the far end of the corridor. Another door creaked, and then all was completely silent, save for the soft crackling of flames.
It seemed they hadn’t been aware that we could hear them. Which left me with the terrifying question of why they wanted privacy.
What are they talking about now?
What are they going to do to us?
I sensed those questions trembling in my friends’ eyes, too, as we inched away from the door and gaped at each other.
Chapter Six
I didn’t know what was happening—all I knew was that we needed to get out of here before whatever they were, returned.
We raced around the dingy room, picking up any objects we could find that might help us break the boards covering the windows. But there was nothing we could do to get the wood loose. We’d need at least a hammer to have even a chance, and there was nothing close to that in here.
I had been afraid to try the door again, because it would make a lot of noise and draw their attention, but it seemed we had no choice. I hurried back to the door, Angie and Lauren right behind me, but we had no better luck than before in trying to pry it open. Not even a minute had passed when the sound of footsteps returned.
My chest constricted as I staggered back, instinctively gripping the arms of my friends and tugging them with me. Whatever those four were, they weren’t human. There was nothing human about that experience of being picked up like I weighed nothing, then flung through the air so fast I couldn’t breathe. Not to mention that unworldly heat that had coursed through me the moment he touched me. The rational part of me didn’t want to believe it, even though I knew it was true.
A bolt drew on the other side of the door, and it opened ominously. I wanted to look away, close my eyes, but I stood there, rooted to the spot, and stared. The tallest man—Navan?—entered first, followed by two other young men, all of whom we had seen just a matter of hours ago, outside, by the fields.
I blinked hard, realizing there was something different about them compared to when we had walked into that fiery room. I was sure, absolutely positive, that they’d had wings— the same kind of black wing we’d found down by the creek—but now there was nothing shadowing their backs. Nothing at all. They donned black shirts, and the only evidence proving that my initial vision hadn’t simply been a hallucination was their skin: it was still ashen.
“Wh-Why’s your skin that color?” Angie stammered, apparently hoping—like I still was, deep down—that they were human after all, and perhaps simply part of some weird cult.
Navan took another step toward us. His gray-blue eyes took us in, one by one, before settling on me. His lips tightened, and then he held out his right hand, palm up. Resting there were three small cylindrical containers, each about the size of my thumb. I had no idea what was inside them, because the walls of the little containers were opaque, made of some type of metal—and the fact that he was holding them out toward us, like I should know what to do, just made the whole situation even more confounding.
He continued to stare at me as though I were the only person in the room, a hard frown on his face.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said suddenly, startling me. He had been so still, I hadn’t even been sure that he was going to speak. “But you weren’t supposed to see this. We cannot simply let you go as you are.”
“As we are? What have we discovered?” Lauren croaked from behind me.
“Something I don’t think you’ll be able to comprehend. All that matters is you get out of here, right?”
“Yes,” Lauren, Angie, and I said in unison.
“Then it’s simple—each of you take a vial from my hand and drink its contents.”
I stopped breathing for a moment. “Wh-What? What is it?” I asked, recalling that allusion to something strange called Elysium. For all we knew, it was some kind of poison or dangerous drug.
Not that I had any idea why they would want to poison us, or give us dangerous drugs. Then again, I didn’t have any idea about anything in this scenario.
Navan’s intense eyes bored into me, and it felt as though everything else in the room fell away. I blinked, my heart pounding.
“You don’t trust me?” he asked, and to my surprise, the tiniest of smiles curved the corners of his lips. I really hadn’t been expecting that from this growly man, and I wasn’t sure how to respond for a moment.
“I-Is that supposed to be a joke?” I stammered. “Of course we don’t trust you. Who are you? Why are you keeping us captive like this?”
It was hard to read the expression on his face, though if I were honest with myself, there was a part of me that didn’t mind having to stand there and scrutinize him… he was undeniably handsome.
Stop it. That is completely not the thing to be thinking about right now!
But it was almost as if he could read my thoughts, because that curious smile deepened, just a little bit, and his eyes seemed to sparkle as he held my gaze.
“Captive? I believe you were the ones who broke into this house.”
“We didn’t break in,??
? I snapped. “The door was open and the only reason we were out there was because we could hear someone in pain and we thought maybe you needed help.”
“How thoughtful,” he replied, raising his dark brows and ignoring my initial question. “So let me return the gesture. Drink this and it’ll wash your memories of approximately the last twelve hours. It will knock you out for about thirty minutes, during which time we will return you to your beds, and you will wake up with no memory of entering this house.”
“N-No memory of tonight?” Lauren sputtered. “I’m down for that.”
“Wait, wait.” I held up a hand, frowning. I shook my head, trying to force my frazzled brain into some semblance of order. “Who are you, first of all? Why is your… skin like that?” I couldn’t quite get the question, And why were you wearing wings before? out of my throat, so I settled on that for now.
He sighed. “You have a lot of questions. Now, there are few things more attractive to me than an inquisitive mind, but in this case—you’re better off doing as I say.”
Attractive? To my annoyance, my brain couldn’t help but register the adjective, but I shoved the thought aside. I opened my mouth to argue back, but before I could, the guy I had guessed to be Navan’s brother spoke up from his right, and now I could place it as one of the voices I had heard during our eavesdropping. “Ladies,” he said, clearing his throat, his voice almost the same tone and depth as Navan’s. “You won’t be getting anything out of us, so if you would like to get out of here, I suggest you take up our offer. Rest assured, we won’t be letting you leave with memories of tonight.”
Navan stretched his hand farther, pushing the vials closer toward us. I heard Lauren gulp as she stared down at the silver tubes, and I had to admit, the idea of being let out of here made it tempting to just grab one and down it, but… that would be really stupid. That would be something I would do in a panic. And acting based on panic was never a good idea. Everything about this just felt so wrong.