Invisible Monsters

by H L Macfarlane

  “Monster,” Chloe breathed, barely able to process what her eyes were seeing. She backed away, only to thump heavily into someone. Shivering from head to toe she turned her head; Dorian was looking at her with a forlorn expression.

  “I wish you hadn’t seen that,” he said. “You were one of the good ones.”

  BETHAN KOT

  Fred

  Fred thought for sure he was going insane. He knew he was dead – knew it from the moment Dorian had appeared in front of him as a monster out of a nightmare – but not knowing when and how he was going to die was more terrifying than the act itself. And there was so much else he needed to know. There was no getting around it.

  He had to speak to Poppy.

  She’s petrified of me, Fred thought dully as he wound his way through the facility, working out where everyone who might be able to stop him from talking to her was. Casey, who had now inexplicably made up with Poppy, was in the hot tub with Patrick, the two of them sitting so closely together that Fred thought it looked as if they were conspiring together. Rachelle and Andrew were with Nate, Robin and Rich, lounging in the social area with far too much food and a few games. Andrew glared at Fred when he spied him looking, though nobody else noticed.

  He couldn’t find Dorian anywhere in the central wing, which meant he was likely in the west wing. And he hadn’t found Poppy, either, which suggested that either she was in her room or together with Dorian. They’d been different since their suicidal climb up the cliffs, though Fred of course knew better than to believe such a climb was all that dangerous for the two of them.

  Not for the first time he was forced to acknowledge exactly why Poppy was the kind of climber that she was, and why she’d never heeded any of Fred’s safety warnings. She hadn’t been doing it to deliberately get on his nerves – she simply knew the ropes and harnesses were all but useless for her.

  I wonder, if she didn’t heal the way she did, if we would have been friends, he thought, though considering how many other things the two of them had clashed over Fred somehow doubted it. He laughed bitterly at the notion. Their hatred of each other had been so petty.

  Until he turned it into something else.

  Until he tried to kill her.

  Fred was shaking by the time he reached Poppy’s bedroom door. For all he knew she was going to slam the door in his face again, or refuse to open it at all. And he didn’t know what to say, either. His head was a numb jumble of barely connected words and phrases, sending him into a wild panic as he reached out a fist and knocked.

  No response.

  “…Poppy?” he called out tentatively. “King, I need to talk to you. Please.”

  Still nothing.

  Placing his ear to the door Fred listened carefully. It didn’t sound like Poppy was in the shower, nor in her room at all. He turned the handle before he could think better of it, stepping into Poppy’s dark and empty room and thus confirming that she wasn’t there.

  She’s with Dorian, then, he thought. I wonder how long she’ll be. Will she stay the night in his room?

  Fred didn’t like that idea at all. Dorian had clearly forced Poppy into a horrific situation she didn’t want to be in – one which she couldn’t speak about to anyone – but nowadays it seemed more and more like the monster pretending to be a man was no longer her enemy.

  He looked around her room; Poppy’s phone lay abandoned on the bed, all but useless with the non-existent signal in the facility. A sheet of paper was beside it, listing the names of everyone in the club. Names were scored out – all of the people who had been scouted, as well as Ross Bridges, who’d been kicked out, and Poppy herself. Other names were ticked, including Nate, Rachelle and Andrew. One girl, Bethan Kot, had her name circled in green with the words ‘this week?’ scrawled beside it.

  Casey and Fred’s names were some of the very few still blank.

  “G-get out,” came a small, uncertain voice from behind Fred.

  He straightened up immediately, preparing himself to plead for Poppy to listen to him. When he turned he was relieved to see that Poppy was alone.

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “You owe me that much at –”

  Poppy slammed the door shut behind her in fury, all her previous fear forgotten. “I owe you nothing, you sick fuck! You tortured me, tried to kill me – wanted to kill me! And for what? Punishment? To get me to own up to something I didn’t do? So tell me why the hell I owe you anything, Fred!”

  “Because I’m going to die, and I want to know why!”

  Poppy cleared her phone and the list of club members away from her bed, then took a step towards Fred, though it was clear from her face she wanted to be as far away from him as possible. Her eyes were full of tears. They unsettled Fred to no end.

  “You weren’t going to, you know,” Poppy told him, which only confused Fred more. “I was going to save you, though I hated you. I was always going to save you. And then you gave me a better reason than literally anyone else in the club to throw you to the wolves. You did that to yourself, Fred. That’s not on me.”

  “Poppy, I didn’t want to – I didn’t mean to try and kill –”

  “Of course you didn’t!” she cut in. “Until you did. And that’s what’s wrong with you, Fred: you act all good and caring and proper but, when it came down to it, thinking I was hiding some deep, dark secret from you literally drove you crazy. There’s something wrong with you. I’ve always known it.”

  “Then fine,” Fred spat out, hating that Poppy was right. “There’s something wrong with me. I hate you, and I obsess about you, and you drive me insane. And now you’ll be the reason I die. So put me out of my misery. Just…tell me why. I’m begging you. Please.”

  Poppy stared at him as the tears in her eyes streamed down her face. Then she looked away, rubbing a palm across her eyes. “Damn it, Sampson. Fucking…damn it.”

  Fred took a tentative step towards her. “What? Poppy, what’s going on. Please –”

  “Stop asking me so earnestly! Stop – stop making me want to save you, too. I can’t…there’s too much to do; there’s just too much –”

  “Then let me help! You don’t have to do this all on your own. Whatever it is, just tell me and I swear I’ll do anything.”

  She glared at him, freezing Fred to the spot just three feet away from her. “Why should I trust you when you didn’t trust me? We might never have agreed on much of anything but at least I always trusted you. Why couldn’t you afford me the same luxury?”

  When Fred reached out to touch Poppy’s arm, still wrapped in a useless compression sleeve, she flinched away as if he might run a knife through it, like he had before. It hurt Fred to watch the expression on her face, though he knew he deserved it and so much more.

  “Poppy, I can never apologise enough for what I did. But when you fell, something…something wasn’t right. And my suspicions about that – the ones that drove me mad in the first place – ended up being correct. It got to my head. I couldn’t think about anything else. All I wanted to do –”

  “Was put me in my place,” Poppy finished for him, tone completely flat. “You really are one pathetic son of a bitch, Sampson.” She ran a hand through her hair, pulling it away from her face. She took a deep breath. Another. Then she let out all the air as one huge sigh.

  “Poppy…?”

  “Fine. Fine. But you have to do absolutely everything I say. You don’t question me again – ever. If I explain something to you, that’s it. That’s all you’re getting, and you’ll be happy I even told you that much. Do all of this and you’ll even look like the hero to the rest of the club, and I’ll be the villain. I am the villain, anyway.”

  Fred said nothing. He knew Poppy wasn’t the villain; Dorian was. But clearly she’d had to do some pretty deplorable things. He couldn’t help but wonder if they were worse than what he himself had done to Poppy.

  “I’ll do everything you say,” Fred agreed. “Of course
I will. So tell me what the plan is.”

  She scowled. “It’s not like I have everything figured out –”

  “Poppy?”

  Both of them froze. Dorian was knocking on the door.

  Fred’s eyes darted from the door to Poppy. “What’s he doing here? I thought you were just with him.”

  “What? No,” Poppy bit out anxiously. “I went for a walk. Why did you assume I was with him?”

  “Because –”

  “Poppy, I can hear you talking to someone. Don’t ignore me. I have something important to tell you.”

  “Don’t come in yet, Dorian. I –”

  Dorian ignored her, opening the door wide to the sight of Poppy and the person she hated most all of a metre away from her. His face darkened immediately.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked quietly.

  Fred backed away. “I was apologising. I’m just leaving.”

  “I told you not to go near her, Sampson. You just couldn’t resist, could you?”

  “Dorian, let him leave,” Poppy insisted, grabbing hold of the man’s arm to pull him away from the door. She fired a look at Fred. “Go, Fred. Don’t let me find you in here again.”

  Fred was only too happy to comply; if he stayed for even a second longer he was sure Dorian would kick his skull in. But talking to Poppy had worked – sort of. Fred still had no clue what was going on, but at least now he might not die. Maybe.

  He was itching to find out more about what was actually going on, and how Poppy planned to get everyone out of the facility, and why.

  Fred never thought he’d look forward to talking to Poppy King, but there was a first time for everything.

  MATEUSZ KOWALSKI

  Dorian

  “Why was he in here, Poppy?”

  “I told you. To apologise.”

  “It didn’t much look like he was apologising to me.”

  Poppy winced. “That’s because you came in at the wrong time.”

  “Oh, so there was a wrong time to barge in on the conversation?”

  “Dorian, why are you making it out like you caught me and Fred screwing on my bed? Ugh, that’s disgusting even to say,” she said, shuddering.

  Dorian slumped onto said bed, indicating for Poppy to come and join him. Though nothing had happened between the two of them since their rainy afternoon in the forest, he had only grown more obsessively protective of her.

  Clearly that feeling is more than warranted.

  When Poppy finally sat beside him, Dorian asked, “Why was he standing so close to you?”

  “Because he was trying to see my arm again.”

  “What, because stabbing you a hundred times wasn’t proof enough that you can heal quickly?”

  When Poppy’s face grew ashen he immediately regretted bringing up the subject. But then she rested her head against his shoulder, which was the most affection she had shown Dorian all week. “Can we please not talk about it?” she begged. “Fred and I…it doesn’t matter what he said to me. Nothing has changed.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Of course. Fred’s the only attempted murderer in the whole club. He’s the only one who deserves to be sacrificed.”

  Dorian smiled in satisfaction as he stroked Poppy’s hair. He brushed his lips against the top of her head. “Good. But if he bothers you again that’s it; I’m killing him then and there.”

  She snorted. “Deal. You’re a couple days late for taking blood, by the way. Are you wanting some now?”

  “You’re asking me if I want some?” He laughed incredulously at the notion. “I never thought I’d hear you ask that in my life.”

  “That’s a very long life to live without hearing me consensually invite you to drink my blood.”

  “Well…you were terrified of me and hated me. I didn’t have much positive evidence to suggest you’d ever have a good relationship with me.”

  Poppy glanced at Dorian, eyebrows raised. “And yet you were convinced I wanted to have sex with you all along. That’s rather twisted, given I hated and feared you.”

  He shrugged. “I could have lived with twisted, kinky fuckery…for a while, at least. Then I’d want more.”

  “You always want more.”

  Dorian kissed her softly. “And you always give me it, so who’s to blame?”

  “You. Absolutely you.”

  Poppy looked surprised when, instead of laughing, Dorian sighed heavily. He pulled away from her and straightened up. “When I came looking for you I really did have something important to tell you.”

  “That’s…” Poppy frowned. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Dorian glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Chloe Bettany. I don’t reckon you were ever planning on giving her up. She was a good person.”

  “Was? Dorian, I don’t like the sound of –”

  “I caught her in the first floor of the west wing today,” Dorian said, talking over her. He knew if he didn’t tell Poppy now then he’d never be able to tell her the truth at all. “She must have been looking for someone to help her out – her hand was bleeding. But she saw Franco – Nick’s father – through a door. I told him to close the door. I always tell him.”

  “He…wasn’t human at the time, I take it,” Poppy said, voice barely a whisper. All the blood had drained from her face, just as it had when Dorian had forced her to watch Franco dismember Ross Bridges. He couldn’t handle the fact that he’d done that to her. It made him feel sick to his stomach.

  Dorian shook his head. “Not human. I shouldn’t have even let him buy anyone else; Ross should have been more than enough. But the Richardson’s are a powerful family. Filthy rich. I can’t turn them away.”

  Poppy was quiet for a minute. Then she asked a question she clearly didn’t want to ask. “So what’s happening to Chloe?”

  “She’s with the others, for now. But…I won’t lie to you, Poppy. Someone’s already bought her. They’ll be here next week.”

  For a moment it looked like Poppy might cry. Her eyes shone too brightly, and the breath she took was more like a gulp. But then she shook her head and smiled bitterly at her hands.

  “You’d think I’d be used to all of this by now, but I’m not.”

  “Poppy, I’m so sorry –”

  “Can you leave me for the evening, Dorian? Sorry, I just…I’m tired.”

  Dorian resisted the urge to push Poppy against the duvet and ignore her request completely. He contented himself with squeezing her hands – both of hers beneath one of his – before leaving without another word.

  When he reached his office Dorian was surprised to find Nick sitting inside, waiting for him.

  His stomach lurched. “Nick, I wasn’t expecting you. It’s a bit late for you to still be here, isn’t it?”

  Nick held up a sheaf of paper. “My old man forgot to get your signature earlier. He really should let me take over as family head and be done with it.”

  Dorian relaxed slightly as he sat down behind his desk, taking the papers from Nick when he proffered them and dutifully signed them. When he handed them back over he smiled. “I’m sure Franco will retire when he feels the need to. And it’s not like you’re bone idle, Nick. You have plenty to do.”

  Nick laughed heartily. “I’ve spent all summer pretending to be one of your sports scouts, Dorian. That’s the definition of bone idle. Though I suppose if I hadn’t taken you up on the offer I never would have met Miss King, so all’s well that ends well.”

  “Nick, I already told you –”

  “That Poppy wasn’t up for bidding. I know. But I don’t care. I want her, Dorian. Price isn’t an issue.”

  Dorian forced himself not to break away from Nick’s hard, imploring stare. The man’s sheer bulk made him an intimidating figure, even to Dorian. He knew better than to needlessly rile him up.

  “Nick,” he began carefully, “it’s not a question of money –”

  “Then what is it? You can’t possibly be intending to keep h
er for yourself. That’s hardly fair, Dorian, after you let Patrick have Casey without ever putting her on the market.”

  Dorian’s hand twitched. “I do believe I can do what I like with my own merchandise, Nick.”

  The other man’s eyes grew flinty, though he was still smiling. “A fair point, I’ll grant you. But don’t forget what the Richardson family has done for you and your father, Dorian. We’ve never asked for anything in return for our generosity. Consider this the first and only favour I’ll ever ask of you. Give me Poppy King.”

  Nick’s reasoning was too solid for Dorian to counter. If it had been any other human up for auction then of course he’d have granted Nick’s request. But if he even so much as hinted at Poppy being special then Nick wouldn’t rest until he found out why, and then Poppy would be doomed.

  “She’s too good to simply be eaten, Nick,” Dorian found himself saying, which was, of course, completely true. “I can’t find it in me to sell her off just for –”

  “Oh, lord, of course I don’t want to eat her!” Nick exclaimed, relief obvious on his face. Clearly he figured Dorian’s reluctance to do as he asked was because of this one, specific concern. He smiled broadly, and this time it was genuine. He leaned heavily on Dorian’s desk. “I’ll be honest with you here, though I’ll kill you if you start spreading this around – my family is dying. We’re all getting old. I’m the youngest, and I’m already thirty-five. Next youngest after me is my uncle, and he’s seventy.”

  Dorian didn’t like where this was going in the slightest. “Why has no one in your family had any offspring, then?”

  “We’ve tried. Believe me, we’ve all tried. But come on, Dorian; you’ve seen the size of us. It’s hard enough finding another monster that can handle giving birth to one of us, let alone a human.”

  “So what makes you think Poppy could handle it?” Dorian asked, trying his hardest not to grit his teeth at the question.