by Steve McHugh
The pair entered the small hut, which was dark and had an unpleasant smell of stale water. The two windows had been boarded up, and its only light came in through the missing wall, which also meant that the place was covered in leaves and rotting vegetation.
Diana reached the door inside the hut and crouched in front of it, pushing it slowly open with one hand while peering into whatever lay beyond. She pointed to Layla and then pointed outside, and Layla went through the open door, keeping low and moving quickly until she reached a large nearby tree. She stayed behind it as Diana followed the same route.
“The mansion is a few hundred feet up that slope,” Layla said.
“I see other buildings up there. I can smell people too, at least three. Two of them are in that long building. Looks like it used to be a guest house, or something. The other one is walking around to the far left of the main building—he’s smoking an incredibly awful cigarette.”
“You smell anyone else?”
Diana sniffed. “No, I can only smell the two in the long building because they just went inside. There’s too much interfering with my nose out here. A lot of crap in the air.”
“We clear out the buildings as we go?”
“That’s the plan.”
“I’ll take the guy on his own near the hut over there. You take the two in the guest house?” said Layla.
“Sounds like a plan. Be careful.” Diana took off in a crouched sprint, moving from tree to tree until she was quickly out of sight. Layla couldn’t run anywhere near as quickly, but she was still faster than any human, and moved through the trees with speed and grace until she reached the final one before a small hut. It sat at the side of the huge garden at the rear of the mansion, halfway between the tree line and the guesthouse. The overgrown vegetation at the end of the garden allowed them to move toward their destinations without being spotted.
Layla faced the rear of the hut, and occasionally she saw the cigarette smoke from the guard who stood outside it. The hut itself was covered in moss and vines, which looked as though they were keeping it from falling down.
She looked across the expansive yard and saw Diana creep around to the rear of the guest house. Layla took that as her cue and slowly moved to the side of the hut; the smell of cigarette smoke was evident even to her human level sense of smell.
She glanced around the corner of the small hut and saw the guard stood outside the front of it. He was just under six feet tall and wore jeans and a white t-shirt. A rifle was slung over his left shoulder, and a leather holster with a pistol of some kind sat on his hip. He leaned against a white wooden post, close to a dark brown door. He faced away from Layla and blew smoke up into the air.
Layla crept around the hut and, the moment she was close enough, launched herself at the guard, wrapping her arms around his neck and tightening her grip as she leaned back, taking them both to the ground. With her enhanced strength, it was only seconds until the man passed out. She grabbed hold of his rifle and dropped it by the wall of the small building, along with the pistol a few seconds later. Layla then grabbed the man by his lapel and dragged him over to the hut, depositing his unconscious body out of sight.
Layla walked back to the door, just as it opened and a heavy-set man stepped outside, his shotgun aimed at Layla.
Layla considered her options and was about to take control of the metal gun when a second man followed him into the garden. This one was skinny, with a large beard and long, mousy hair. It looked like he hadn’t washed in a considerable amount of time and he smelled of stale cigarette smoke. He held a baseball bat.
“We got us a visitor,” the bat-wielding man said.
“You here for some fun, girl?” the larger man asked, his voice a deep baritone.
Both men sniggered.
Layla reached for metal in the shotgun, but before she could do anything she caught a blur of movement in the corner of her eye and a small, red, fox-like creature leapt at the larger of the two men. The man’s eyes widened as the sword the fox-man carried opened his throat; a sword that was then quickly buried in the chest of the skinny man. Both were on the ground and dead in seconds.
The fox-man stood up to his full three-and-a-half-foot height and cleaned his two specially designed, basket-hilted swords on the skinny man’s clothes, removing the blood from the blades before returning them to the sheaths he wore on his back.
“I could have dealt with them, Remy,” Layla said, happy to see her friend.
“I know. But I’ve been watching these assholes for a few hours and wanted to kill them the first chance I got. Tell you what, the next cockwomble we come across is all yours.”
Layla chuckled despite herself.
Remy had once been human, although that part of his life had ended when he crossed a coven of witches who decided to turn him into a fox and hand him over to a hunt. As it turned out, their spell hadn’t quite worked, and Remy had ended up with a dozen witch souls inside his new hybrid form.
“I dealt with the others. How many more?” Diana asked as she joined the pair.
“Eight inside, that I could see. Chloe is in the basement with other captives. Two guards.” Remy paused. “It’s not great in there. I came close to just slaughtering as many of the bastards as I could before you arrived. Had to take a breather. They drug those they kidnap. And some are taken to the bedrooms upstairs.”
Layla didn’t want to hear any more.
“They abuse them?” Diana asked, her voice hard.
“If you mean experimenting or sexual, I don’t know,” Remy said. “Only noticed the state of them. I saw the aftermath of one guy taking a hell of a kicking, so it’s not making a huge leap to imagine none of the prisoners here are treated well. He’s in the room to the north. He needs medical attention.”
“I’ll go get Chloe,” Layla said.
“We’ll deal with the rest,” Remy said, drawing one of his swords. “I removed the guard from the rear doors just before I spotted you. These bastards are about to learn how pissed off a fox can get.”
Layla picked up the pistol she’d taken from the unconscious man and emptied it of bullets, throwing the parts in opposite directions. She then picked up the rifle and used her ability to tear it in half.
“Still don’t like guns?” Remy asked.
“I’m good without them,” Layla said.
The group moved toward the mansion, where Diana opened the door, allowing Layla in to the main building first. Remy followed soon after, with Diana last, closing the door behind her.
“Basement is down there,” Remy said, pointing to a set of stairs. “There must be a few rooms below, from the number of small ground level windows I saw around the mansion. Chloe is in the left one facing the house. Be careful. Like I said, I only saw two guards. Could be more.”
Layla nodded and slowly descended the nearby staircase, feeling the dread inside her grow with every step. When she reached the bottom, she pushed open a door and stepped into a corridor.
The walls were made of large, gray, concrete slabs, and the floor of pure stone in a variety of dingy colors. The hollow structure made Layla concerned about causing echoes as she walked to the first junction and looked around the corner. There were two doors off the corridor, and a sizable open room at the end. She considered taking off her boots, but figured she’d spend more time doing that than just creeping slowly along.
Layla stopped at the first door and tried the handle. It opened with ease, revealing nothing more than a supply cupboard. The door on the opposite side of the corridor contained the same thing: food, water, cleaning supplies, and a host of bedding. They’d certainly maintained a good stock, and Layla wondered just how many people had been through this mansion on their way to Nergal’s clutches.
She pushed the thought aside and left the small room, moving toward the end of the corridor. The open room beyond contained several washing machines and a few sinks. Clothes had been hung up in one corner, dripping water into a drain.
Taking a few steps into the room, Layla realized that it was much larger than she’d thought. There was a set of double doors at its far end, behind a large pillar that had obscured them from the entrance.
Layla crossed the area and pushed the doors open, revealing a set of dimly lit stairs. She immediately heard voices somewhere in the distance, although they were muffled. When she reached the bottom step, she looked around the corner and saw eight cells, each one with a barred metal door. The cells faced one another across a large space. Through an open door at the end of the room, Layla could hear two guards talking about the previous night’s baseball game at a volume that suggested they’d been drinking. She ignored them and crept away from the staircase, looking into each cell as she went. Of the first six she passed, most were empty, but two had occupants—one male and one female—both of whom appeared to be asleep. Neither of them was Chloe. Layla moved to the other side of the room, closer to one set of cells and out of view of the doorway, and spotted Chloe in the cell closest to the guards. She sat on a bed, looking out through the bars as Layla approached.
Chloe smiled, and Layla held a finger to her lips. She tapped the bars. Tearing them apart wouldn’t be a problem, but she had a better idea. She held up a finger to communicate that she’d be back in a moment and then walked into the center of the room, between the two rows of cells. And she whistled.
The two men looked out of the doorway in a state of confusion.
“Hey, I’m a bit lost,” Layla said. “Wondered if there’s a toilet around here? Oh wait, you guys would call it a bathroom. I still get confused with the English versus American thing. Which is weird, as I was born in New York.”
Both men staggered toward her, batons in their hands.
“No guns?” Layla asked with a slight shrug. “I sort of expected guns.”
“We don’t need guns,” the closest of the two men said. “Not for a little thing like you.”
Layla nodded, her expression deadly serious. “You should have brought guns.”
There were several loud creaks, and the two guards looked slightly worried as Layla stretched out her power to grip the bars of several of the cells.
“Really should have brought guns,” she repeated, and tore the bars from the closest two cells free with a horrific noise. Pieces of stone and mortar filled the air as Layla threw the metal rods at the guards with enough force to send the men reeling. Moving her hands, Layla then wrapped the steel bars around them until they were unable to move.
“How very X-Men of you,” Chloe said with a slight laugh.
“I’ve been wanting to try that since Harry showed me those films,” Layla told her. She went over to the guards and melted part of another liberated bar in front of them. She wrapped the metal around her fist in a gauntlet and punched both men in the face hard enough to break bone and knock them out. Like Rosa had said, Layla took no enjoyment from hurting the two guards. It just needed to be done. She turned back to Chloe and concentrated on the bars of her friend’s cell, tearing out enough of them to free her.
“You okay?” Chloe asked.
Layla nodded, leaning against the wall and taking a few deep breaths. “I think I’m meant to ask you that. Tearing those bars from solid stone took a lot out of me. That was considerably more metal than I’m used to throwing around in such a short time. Usually, I can only manipulate the same amount as me, size-wise.”
The pair found the keys to the other cells and unlocked the two that were occupied. The man and woman within were beaten, dehydrated, and scared, but were otherwise okay. They were able to walk under their own power, although Layla wouldn’t want them around to help out in a fight.
“So, what happens now?” Chloe asked, raising her wrist to show the sorcerer’s band.
“Now we find Diana and Remy and see how much carnage they’ve caused.”
3
With the sorcerer’s band on her wrist, Chloe was unable to heal the injuries she’d sustained at the hands of her captors. She said she didn’t think that any were serious, but to Layla it looked like she’d been hit hard a few times.
“Someone knew I was here,” Chloe said as they reached the top of the basement stairs. The two injured men followed just behind them.
“Any idea who?”
Chloe shook her head. “I’d like to find them and make them see the error of their ways, though.”
You and me both, Layla thought, and Rosa agreed inside her head.
Any fighting carried out by Diana and Remy had finished by the time Layla and Chloe found them in the main living room. Both sat on chairs, and several people lay around them in various states of consciousness. All had their hands tied behind their backs with plastic cable ties.
Layla helped Chloe sit on one of the couches and motioned for the man and woman to get comfortable.
“We found a drawer full of them,” Remy said, pointing to the ties, as if aware of what Layla was thinking.
“There were nine of them,” Diana said, getting to her feet. “We haven’t searched the top floor bedrooms yet, but according to our friend in the next room, this is everyone involved. We wanted to make sure that none of these assholes could do anything to jeopardize the rest of the captives.”
“You believe him?” Chloe asked.
Diana nodded. “He’s a sorcerer. Low-level stuff. Turned out he had a bunch of sorcerer’s bands just hanging around. Most of them were for umbras, but we found a few that worked for other species. He’s been quite compliant since we switched his magic off.”
“I’m going to the bedrooms,” Layla said. “Do we know how many captives are up there?”
“He said nine. Three in each room. All out of their minds on whatever cocktail of shite these people have fed them.”
Layla prepared herself for the worst and set off to find the survivors of Nergal’s influence.
“You still want to kill him, don’t you?” Rosa said as Layla reached the halfway point on the large staircase.
“Nergal? He killed my mom.”
“Not exactly an answer.”
“Would you want to kill him?”
“I’d flay the skin from his bones. But I’m not you.”
Layla stopped walking. “Yes, I want him dead. But I’ll settle for his punishment. How many lives has that man ruined? How many families has he torn apart? He deserves to go before an Avalon court and be tried and convicted. But seeing how Avalon is currently Nergal’s biggest fan, I’m guessing that’s not going to happen for a considerable amount of time.”
Layla reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the hallway. To her left was a window overlooking the front of the mansion, and to her right a corridor that snaked around the first floor. Several doors were set along one side of the wall only a few feet apart, and she opened them as she went, finding the first two only contained beds, a TV, several fans, and some chests of drawers.
“The guards stayed here,” Layla whispered, picking up a shotgun that rested against one of two single beds. She emptied its shells onto the mattress before turning its metal into a molten puddle. She left the room and crept along cautiously as she turned the first corner of the hallway, in case she met another kidnapper waiting to strike.
The third door wore a macabre wreath made from the bones of small birds. “That is some Silent Hill level shit,” Chloe said as she turned the corner and stood beside Layla.
“How are you feeling?” Layla asked.
Chloe raised her wrist. “We found a key for my sorcerer’s band. I healed up fairly fast after that. Thought you could use a hand.”
“Thanks.” Layla opened the door and the smell of urine and sweat greeted her. There were several filthy mattresses in the room, placed on the ground next to one another with barely enough space between them to see the linoleum-covered floor. Two men and a woman occupied three of the beds, and they appeared to be sedated. None of the captives looked older than their mid-twenties, and all were disheveled and dirty.
Chloe and Lay
la checked each of them and found no evidence of needle marks or drug paraphernalia. And other than looking like they were on another planet, the young people didn’t appear to have any obvious injuries.
“What were they given?” Layla asked.
“We need Diana or Remy up here—maybe their noses will help. It’s as if they’re in some sort of trance. It reminds me of those old films when they show opium dens where everyone is just stoned out of their gourd with not a care in the world. And now I know exactly what those dens smell like, and it’s disgusting.”
“Go get one of them. I’ll check the next room,” Layla said. She walked around another bend in the hallway and saw a set of stairs at its far end, next to one final door. Like the previous one, it wore a wreath of small animal bones, and Layla braced herself before opening it. She discovered the same set up. Except this room held a man and two women, all in the same condition as the others.
Layla checked each of the captives and, like before, found no evidence of drug use. She left the room and ascended the stairs to a landing above, which held two doors. Neither had anything on them, but she opened the first with a sense of trepidation about how much more awful things could possibly get. The curtains in the room had been drawn, keeping out the last rays of sunlight, but Layla could easily make out the double bed and the single occupant upon it.
She flicked on the light and forced herself not to turn away. A young man, no older than those in the rooms downstairs, lay on the bed. He was unconscious and hooked up to various medical machines. A heart monitor beeped at regular intervals and Layla spotted a catheter bag, and a drip one that fed him nutrients. A third bag appeared to collect the man’s blood, and after a few seconds there was a slight noise as blood ran out of the tube hooked up to the man’s arm and into the bag.
“What the hell is going on?” Layla said.
She left the patient’s room and opened the only other door on the landing. A huge four-poster bed sat in the center of the bedroom. Black and red velvet drapes hung all around it, blocking the bed from Layla’s view. The window drapes were made of the same material. A dressing table next to the window was covered in gold leaf, and its mirror sparkled with various stones. The chair in front of it matched the gold theme.