by Mason Sabre
She only stared at him with eyes so dark and sunken that they appeared almost black. She held herself tight, but it didn’t hide the depth of the fear that rocked her tiny body and made her shake. The Human probably didn't see it, but it was there if he'd cared to look close enough, which of course, he didn't.
They feared her, didn’t they? They were so terrified of the little shaking creature in the cage that they put up mental defences and saw her through angry eyes, rather than the eyes of someone with empathy. There was nothing to fear with her. She was so small and so fragile; one touch would probably break her bones. She had tiny fingers that would have struggled to rip a piece of paper. Oh yes, she was frightening for sure… how would the poor Humans ever survive against her?
Two more men came into the room. They both yelled at each other; neither listened to the other. The smaller of the two, a weedy man who wielded the biggest bar came to stand by the first and glared at Amelia in the cage. “Did you open this gate?”
When she didn’t answer or even move, he smacked the gate with the metal bar, and the gate rattled on its hinges, giving a protest at his vicious attack.
A man, dressed casually in shirt and jeans, came into the room. Both guards turned, glared at him and then stood straighter. He was chewing on what was left of a sandwich, the crust of it held in his hand. He put it down on a bench just in front of one of the cages, not realising when a little hand came out and tried to reach for it, even though so small and starving, they would risk death to eat the scraps of what the Human had been eating.
Stephen wanted to warn the child, but then he realised the child had no ears.
“Did you leave the gate open?” the man asked the guards.
The bigger one, the first who had entered, shook his head. “She must have done it herself," he said. "It wasn't like that moment ago." He went into the cage; his eyes fixed on her. "Did you try to get out? How did you open this gate?"
Little eyes met his, and if it were at all possible, she made herself smaller than she had been before, and tucked her wings behind her and pressed them into the wall.
"Five men to bully a little girl." Stephen wished with every ounce of his being he could somehow cross the veil of his world; even if it was just to scare one for a moment. They’d probably piss their pants.
"How?" repeated the guard. "Tell us how you got this open?" When he got no answer, he turned to the one in the jeans. "Is she mute?"
“No.” In his other hand, he had a cup with a straw sticking out of the plastic top. He pinched it between his fingers and brought it to his mouth to sip the contents. He didn't care. That he could stand in the room and eat, without bringing it all back up in disgust at what they had done, spoke more about him than anything else.
He put the cup next to where sandwich had been and then stepped into the mouth of the cage. "Tell us how you got this open?"
A pause as they waited.
“Answer us.” The first guard struck cage again, and this time the metal rattled so loud even Stephen winced. Yes, breaking the metal will surely get the answers they wanted.
“Are you all so stupid?”
The boy came to stand next to Stephen and even though they were in two different worlds, there was such a strong vibe of hate coming from the man; pure hatred, laced with fear. It came off in waves like the pungent stench of decay. It was almost like there was another person in the room. He’d personified it so well he could no doubt bring it to life if he tried.
From the hallway came the sound of freshly polished shoes, clipping against the tile floor. As the sounds grew closer, the men stepped further back, and all of them had their eyes on the door to the room.
Stephen moved inside the cage as if he could protect the girl. There was nothing terrible about her. She was nothing but skin and bones. She was shaking so violently she might snap her birdlike frame in a second. No one would hear it; no one would care. No one could hear anything over the deep shrill of Human anger.
Lee stepped into the room, his entire demeanour controlled, a control so deep it was a power vibrating through the air. “How did this happen?” He lifted the small lock that hung loosely across the catch. It wasn’t broken. He swept his sadistic gaze slowly across the men. “How did she get the door open? Did someone leave it unlocked?”
The guards remained still, one of them backed away, doing a rendition of a shit-scared hyena. They tried to hold themselves together in one way or another but didn’t manage it very well. They shook together, stepped together. Stephen wondered if they even went to the bathroom together. All their movements in imperfect synchrony.
Lee went into the cage, and as he crouched, he smiled at Amelia, but it was not a smile that held any affection, no. It was something bordering on a smile and a sneer mixed. There was evil in his mind. It ticked over like a cog, loud enough to echo if anyone was listening. It bore through him as an integral part of his functioning. There was no guilt in this monster, and there never would be.
Lee was a walking irony. He was part man, part tiger, and by definition of his features, he was the embodiment of everything he hated. Although he moved with perfect control, the stripes were brighter, vibrant. His teeth had come down, but it seemed like Stephen was the only one who had caught the flash of white. The teeth were not down enough that they would hinder him when he spoke, but he was a rage of fire, and he was holding onto the lid so tight. He had learnt control. It was an ability only natural shifters had, but there it was, in front of Stephen, splayed out before him. Lee ran his tongue across his teeth and grinned with intention at Amelia.
"You're pathetic," Stephen said. He didn’t put anything in to force the words across the worlds. No. He was there for the girl only, not Lee, not for himself or his need to freak Lee out. If Lee knew Stephen was around, he would no doubt take it out on the girl and use her as an example of what he could do, and what Stephen couldn’t stop.
Silence was better in so many situations.
Lee moved more into the cage and then laced his fingers into the girl's dark matted hair. Stephen's gut clenched with the anticipation of what was coming… this was it.
“You need to answer me." Yanking his arm back, Lee dragged her out, and even then, even with all the pain she must have been feeling, she did nothing to fight him off. She moved only as she needed to. Her face was so small, so delicate; it was like nothing Stephen had ever seen before. She was just a doll—a doll so intricately made, she would have remained unused on a shelf somewhere to save her from being spoilt.
Stephen almost forgot the boy was with him, and it wasn’t until he stepped forward and put a hand out towards her, did he gasp in air and let himself straighten. The boy reached the tips of Amelia's fingers, and she responded so slightly by twitching.
“How?” Stephen asked watching them both. “How is it you can reach through?”
The boy said nothing, but as Lee lifted his hand back, the girl caught sight before it came down to strike her, and the boy plunged a hand into her and thrust the girl back. The clear essence of her soul slipped out of her body before Lee's claws slashed down and dug in to spray blood everywhere.
Lee bared his teeth and let out a growl as blood ran down his hand and Amelia flopped. She was gone. She had her hands wrapped so tightly around the boy’s, and he pulled her all the way out toward Stephen, not her body, not herself, but the very thing she was inside.
In one fluid movement, Stephen wrapped his arms around Amelia and lifted her off the ground. She pressed her face into the crook of his neck as he stepped back. She didn’t need to see the last moment of her life.
“Shush,” he soothed, almost an instinct, but she locked her arms around his neck and her small legs around his waist. He placed a kiss on the top of one of her pointed ears. “They can’t ever hurt you again.”
The boy came to stand next to Stephen, and even he wrapped his small arms around Stephen’s thigh as if needing the comfort himself. Stephen did the only thing that came naturally,
and he reached a hand down and pressed it against the boy’s shoulder. “Look away.” He tried to pull the children back as Lee gripped Amelia’s face and crushed her jaw between strong fingers that made the bones slide out of place. He looked into her eyes as he did—dead eyes.
He was so enraged with her; he hadn’t even noticed she was already gone. He wanted her screams, didn’t he? His top lip curled as he brought her closer to his face. “Useless,” he spat, and then he tossed her broken body to the back.
Stephen was already around the corner with the girl and the boy when Lee got himself back out of the cage and dusted himself off. Amelia's wings draped over Stephen's arm; one of them was broken. It was probably broken when she was alive. It was snapped at the white stem, and there was a dark smudge of blood inside her feathers. He ran gentle fingers down it, smoothing them as if he might heal the pain.
When he got them both far enough away, he loosened his grip on Amelia so he could see her face, and when he set her on the floor, he knelt with both children. "You're okay now," he said, and he pushed her hair back from her face the way he had done to Helena a hundred times. "No one can hurt you anymore."
She stared up at him with eyes so innocent, eyes like Aiden, so vulnerable. “You fixed it,” she whispered, and he frowned at her. She lifted her broken wing and let it spread out behind her. “My wing.”
“I did.” He didn’t say that with any arrogance, more of shock and curiosity. He slid a hand around the side of her face and cupped her small cheek. “All better?”
A nod and a light that filled those eyes. “Yes.” She turned around for him, little arms out, her back was clear, and all the lashes and bruises were gone. When she came around to face Stephen again, she gave him a soft smile, one no longer filled with empty sadness, and he knew it was time to let her go.
He opened his arms to her again as she came to him, standing with little legs pressed against his thigh. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck just as she had done before, and he embraced her entirely before kissing the side of her face. "Sleep tight, little one."
Chapter 22
Stephen knew the Humans to be cruel and vicious, but this … their cruelty knew no bounds. He couldn't believe it. They struck out at anything they deemed a threat and so many things that weren't, but this … this … god, he had no words. His heart formed a massive lump, and it crashed into his ribs. He had seen his fair share of what the Humans could do and that shocked him down to the very core, but this, he couldn’t even explain it. Even his tiger had paused and locked itself into some mental haze to try to figure out what was going on.
“There was no reason to kill her.” This was fear, fear and the need to feel they were something, anything … something strong and more important than they were. Maybe they sat around all day and discussed just how vile they could be. Perhaps they had quotas and targets to meet.
Stephen had one list, and Lee was right at the top of that. His death would be the worst of them all, it would be painful and slow, and Stephen would give him every ounce of agony and suffering he had ever dished out, and he would enjoy it.
“I’m going to save them all … every single one of them.” Lee had no idea who was standing right in front of him. Stephen kept his voice low when he spoke. It was a rumble in his chest; a promise from him and his tiger.
Every child in those cages fell into silence. Each victim sat back and resigned themselves to their mourning. Stephen could only imagine how much death they had already witnessed in their short lives, but there would be no more, not if Stephen could help it. He would do whatever it took to stop every child meeting their maker at the hands of someone who didn’t even deserve to grace their presence.
Lee picked up the cup the jeaned Human had discarded on the table and tossed it into the trash. "I want this place cleaned up." He pulled a piece of blue cloth from the dispenser on the wall and wiped his hands. He didn't even care it was the blood of a child. “Make sure that cage is cleared out and ready for the next one, and make sure the lock holds on it this time. There are no mistakes here.” He stepped over Amelia’s broken body like she was a piece of trash and caught her with the tip of his shoe, but he never looked down at her and never looked back.
“You heard him. Get that shit cleaned up,” the first guard said to another.
"He was talking to you too," came the reply from one of the other men.
“What’s wrong with you people? This is a child.” It was so crazy. Everything Stephen had ever seen, and he still couldn’t believe what the Humans were capable of. They argued about who was going to clean up the mess … The mess … Even that, the way they described her as a mess — they were picking up the broken body of a little girl for god’s sake. “You all make me sick.”
How was it they could be so cruel to have forgotten the child already? She wasn’t even a haunting memory for them. She would be to Stephen, they all would, every single child locked in this place. He would free them. He knew right then he would think of this place, this moment, for as long as he lived, and it would be his fuel — his thing he worked toward. He would fight. He would fight them all if he had to, but this segregation had to end. It all had to. The Humans had to learn they were wrong, and they had to understand the Others were not monsters for them to fear … no, it was the other way around.
There would be unity between Humans and the Others, or there would be no Humans. And that suited him just fine.
Lee left the room, and the boy had come to stand beside Stephen again. He had that look about him, the innocent eyes, the gaze of a child so hurt and so broken. It made Stephen want to soothe him in the same way he had done with Amelia. He offered Amelia's ball to Stephen.
“She deserves a second chance,” Stephen said without any hesitation.
The boy nodded and rubbed his thumb across it the way he had done before and sent it crumbling into sand between his fingers.
Stephen nodded; he was so tempted to send her onto the good place, to the place across the bridge where she could live in peace, but that was pity for what the Humans had done to her and guilt at the thought of what if she came into another form to be treated even worse than this time? What if he had sentenced her to be reincarnated into a crueller life?
He shook his head as if he could shake the very thoughts from his brain. He would do himself no good thinking like that.
The sand didn't fall on the floor; instead, it floated away up above them and spread out into the air to become nothing. The boy rubbed his hands together after and stuffed them back in his pockets.
“Tell me your name. If you can’t say anything at all, you can at least say your name.”
The boy gave no indication that he was going to answer, and his face held the same blankness to it. The expression that showed either he didn't know what was being said, or one that wasn’t rude it was just silent.
“Joey,” he said after a pause and pointed to himself.
“Joey?” Stephen asked testing the name and the word on his tongue. “I’m Stephen.”
“Stephen,” the boy repeated. “Joey … Stephen.”
“Yes. Can you say anything else?”
One Human came and walked right through them. It made Stephen’s head whoosh and his body grow with a warmth that was fleeting, but he still staggered back from it, only regaining his balance with enough time to see another Human dragging Amelia by her arms. She was the tattered and discarded remains of a doll; her battered body was bruised, and she was nothing as they dragged her behind them. The Human who held Amelia by her arm did so without care, although Stephen suspected they probably would do it without care even if she were alive.
Her wings were missing now. They had been torn from her back and left only the blood coated stems that jutted out from her shoulder blades. Amelia was a flower they had cut down before she had time to grow. There were no caring Humans to handle her. She may have been dead, nothing more than an empty shell, but she was something once, someone’s something. Maybe
somebody was still looking for her.
Stephen followed the Human out of the room with his morbid curiosity to know where they were taking her. Outside there was a small trolley, the type an office might use to serve hot teas and coffees at break time. It apparently made no difference that these were children, though they hadn't yet begun their lives; they had been sentenced before they even had a chance to do any wrong. To Humans, those children broke the rules and deserved to die no matter how stupid it was. There would be no parents to mourn at the graveside, and no teddy bears delivered once a year and on special occasions. They were the forgotten … she would be forgotten.
The Human in front of Stephen was nothing more than an example of Human garbage. He wore a wedding band on his finger, and he probably had children at home. Did he manage to sleep at night? If Stephen had been whole, his claws would have come out, and he would have pushed the tips of his fingers into the Human’s flesh.
Tossing the girl on the trolley, the Human wiped his hand down his top and then pushed her toward the elevator doors at the end of the corridor. He pressed the button and whistled as he waited, tapping his foot to some unheard tune.
Stephen stood beside him because he wanted to know what was next. It was going to be bad, but he needed to see; he needed to see just how terrible this all was. He knew he wasn't ready for it, but this was his sacrifice, and he was going to do it for these children. He was going to do it so when he got his body back and tried to get people to fight alongside him; he could describe to them what had happened here. He could show them exactly why the Human race needed to either stand down or get out. There would be no equality. Not anymore
“You should be on your knees begging for her forgiveness.”