“Ash!” I darted toward her but the creature lurched into my path.
“Give it or I takesss it.” Snarling, it stepped closer to me, raising its hand to attack but then froze briefly before grabbing my arm and flinging its back against the wall with me held tightly in front of it like a shield.
From the shadows, Mr. Gorgeous stepped slowly in our direction.
“Please, help us!” I begged hoarsely but stopped on a cry when my arm was squeezed so hard I was afraid it would break at any moment.
The creature made a frustrated whining sound followed by a growled, “Hunterrrr.”
“Unless you want me involved, I suggest you disappear,” Mr. Gorgeous warned in a menacing voice just loud enough to hear.
My heartbeat pounded in my ears and a phantom coolness ghosted behind me just before I fell back into the wall. I scanned the dark alley to see where the creature had gone and watched as a cloud of smoky shadow melted into the surrounding darkness.
For a second I was too stunned to move—I wasn’t sure if I was more concerned about the creature’s disappearance or the fact that it had run in fear of the man.
Who was this guy?
I shook myself out of my dazed state and jumped up.
“Ash! Oh God, Ash please wake up!”
I hurried to my friend lying on her side on the damp alley floor. She was breathing but unconscious and her arm beneath her laid at an odd angle.
“We need to get out of here, now.” He bent down and scooped up Ashley like she weighed nothing.
“Wait, where are you taking her? She needs to go to a hospital.” I grabbed our purses and ran after him.
“We can’t go to a hospital, we can take her back to the club.”
“Absolutely not, I will raise holy hell if you don’t either get her to a hospital or put her down this instant so I can call an ambulance,” I demanded with enough conviction that he stopped and turned.
After our eyes had been locked long enough for me to notice that tick in his jaw, he dropped his chin and acquiesced. “My car is on the street.”
He headed to the front of the building and got in the same sports car from the first night we spoke. I crawled into the backseat and he placed Ashley next to me. Cradling my best friend’s bleeding head in my lap, I softly stroked her hair as tears ran down my cheeks.
“What’s your name?” I asked softly in the quiet car.
“Lochlan.”
“You see them too then?”
“We can discuss that after we get your friend some medical attention.”
“Thank you, for saving us.” His impenetrable eyes met mine in the rearview mirror but he didn’t say another word.
8
We pulled up to the emergency room and a team of doctors took Ashley away on a gurney, while a nurse questioned me. I told her we were mugged on the way home from a club, hoping Ashley would tell the same story. Finally, she sent me to the empty waiting room.
My thoughts drifted back to the horrifying creature—I wasn’t sure how to describe it. Like a small human man had been dehydrated to a hunched bony thing, but he still had a large round skull with giant black eyes. If he smelled, I hadn't been able to tell over the stench that already permeated the alley. His skin had been tough, almost leathery, and he wore some kind of drape that appeared to be made of animal hide. He was so bony that it made him appear fragile but his strength astounded me—how could something that thin and seemingly frail fling Ashley up in the air as if she had been a doll rather than a full-grown woman? More importantly, why on earth did he want my necklace? Was he some kind of troll who liked to collect gem stones and shiny things? Did he and all the others have me confused for someone else out there in Belfast who just happened to look like me?
I felt Lochlan enter the room before I saw him, as if my body was tuned to his frequency. He folded his large frame into a chair across from where I sat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He had been gone longer than it would have taken to park his car but I had no idea what else he had been up to. I hadn’t been one hundred percent certain he was going to come back, but now that he was there, I realized that I was relieved to see him.
“How’s your friend?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Don’t know, they haven’t come out to tell me yet.”
For the moment we were alone in the small waiting area with just a television playing some late-night talk show softly in the background.
“What did the draug want with you?” I sat up taller at his unexpected offering of information.
“What's a draug?”
“I’ll tell you about the draug after you tell me what it wanted,” he said with a raised brow, clearly implying that he was the one running the show.
“What makes you think it wanted something?” Realizing this man had the advantage in knowing significantly more than I did about the situation, I became cautious about offering up information.
“There's no way a draug would make a scene so close to the Huntsman unless it had a very good reason.”
“Why would he avoid the Huntsman?” Was it dangerous like Cat had suggested?
“Woman, just answer my question.” His exasperation was evident and I didn't want to piss him off. He had information that I desperately wanted and the draug had been scared of him—both good reasons not to make him angry. However, I didn't know what Lochlan's role was in all of this and if the draug was willing to kill me for my necklace, that could mean Lochlan would be, too.
“He said something about give it to him and that it wasn’t mine to have, I think he was just trying to rob me. What was that thing? Please tell me what is going on.”
He sat motionless, arms crossed in a stance that I was beginning to associate with his interrogation mode. Eventually he spoke. “Draugs are extremely dangerous and this creature should not have been here. It's not the first creature to find its way here and we are investigating how they are getting here.”
“We?” I asked in confusion.
“Me and my colleagues.”
Apparently, I wasn't the only one answering questions with vague generalities. I grunted in frustration and stood with my hands on my hips and began to pace.
“What is going on? Why are you being so cryptic? I want to know exactly what that thing was. Some kind of mutant? An alien? I want some answers or I’m going to go crazier than I already am!” I threw my arms in the air, my voice rising the longer I spoke. By the end of my rant I was breathing heavily and had stopped in front of Lochlan's chair.
He stood up, forcing me take a retreating step back to make room for him, and placed his hands on his hips, mirroring my stance. “What I can tell you is that you aren’t crazy, and the world is not as simple as you may have once believed. I can also tell you that there are things that go bump in the night and since you seem to have caught their attention, you need to be more careful. Now I’ve told you everything you need to know, for the moment. I still have questions for you, but I’m starting to realize that you're somehow clueless, so I doubt I'll get any answers.”
“Well you certainly aren’t a wealth of information either.”
“It appears to me the questions revolve around you so maybe you're the one who needs to think of some answers.”
“Well, that's super helpful, Yoda, thanks.”
Instantly his face was inches from mine, his eyes blazing. “Was saving your life not enough?”
Recognizing that I sounded ungrateful, I calmed my voice and spoke softly. “Maybe if I knew more about what was going on, I wouldn’t have needed saving.”
Our eyes were locked on each other, mine pleading and his fathomless. Suddenly, I was achingly aware of just how close our chests were from touching and I could feel the air around us shift but the moment was cut short when a man in scrubs entered the room.
“Family of Ashley Moore?”
All arguments fled from my mind as I rushed over to the doctor. “Yes! Well, I’m her best friend and she has
no family here, she’s visiting me from the States.” Hope and anxiety both swelled in my chest. “Is she okay?” My voice cracked on the words.
“She’s good. She has a concussion that we will need to monitor for a day or so and her humerus bone in her right arm is fractured. The orthopedist is currently setting it, but otherwise, just some minor scrapes and bruises.”
“Can I see her?”
“At the moment the doctors are still working on her arm and she’s on some heavy pain medicine so my suggestion for you is to go get some rest and come back to see her in the morning.”
My lungs deflated with both relief that she was okay and frustration that I wouldn’t see her tonight. Something about seeing her awake with my own eyes would have gone a long way to reassure me that she was all right. Resigned, I nodded and told the doctor how much I appreciated his help and turned to Lochlan, who was still standing in the same spot with his head tilted down, clearly listening to our conversation.
“Come on, I’ll take you home,” he offered, and I was too tired to argue, so I fell into step behind him as he made his way out to the hospital parking garage.
I didn’t give him my address, we both were aware that he knew exactly where I lived. The drive wasn't long and while I still needed so many answers, I couldn't seem to form a single question. I was pretty sure shock had set in and shut down my brain because not only were my thoughts suspiciously quiet, but I couldn't seem to summon any emotion either.
After he drove up to the curb beside my apartment, I began to lift myself out of his car when he spoke softly. “Try to keep yourself out of trouble, Rebecca.” He held my eyes for a couple beats longer than normal, igniting in me a sudden surge of feelings more intense than I cared to recognize.
Once I was safely inside, his black car sped off into the night. I dragged myself upstairs and in a zombie-like state, removed my makeup and put on pajamas. My brain had apparently fried a circuit because my mind was a blank and I fell into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
I woke with the dawning awareness that my face was resting in a puddle of drool. It appeared that my brain had been in dire need of a reboot because I had been asleep for over ten hours. I woke feeling recharged and stretched out in bed like a languid cat before a freight train of memories from the night before slammed into me and I shot upright.
Ashley was in the hospital.
Glancing around, I confirmed that she wasn’t in the bed with me, the black dress I had worn was wadded up on the floor, and a glance down at my arm where the draug had held me revealed a large fading bruise.
I was surprised at its blue and green coloring, as if it was several days old and partially healed rather than freshly bruised. My dark complexion had never bruised easily, and I healed faster than most of my friends, so I wasn't terribly unsettled, but it was odd enough to catch my notice.
A shiver coursed through my body when I thought about how much worse the night could have been. Ashley was going to be okay, but we both could have been killed. Of course, you could get mugged any day of the week in New York—it wasn’t like other cities were completely safe. But this was a whole different level of danger. I thought about Ashley’s suggestion that I find work somewhere else and it made my chest ache and my head hurt. My internal monologue sounded schizophrenic as I argued the merits of staying and leaving.
Any sane, rational person would have run for the hills by now—what was wrong with me? How could I leave a job that I had waited so long for? Why was I fighting with myself over a decision that should be a no-brainer? Why did I feel like I was somehow involved in these strange events? What if this happened again but next time I wasn’t so lucky?
I had never wished for a nightmare, but if it meant last night would have never happened and I could have woken to find Ashley safely asleep, I would have gladly endured every minute of the bad dream. Lying back in the bed, I stared at the cracked ceiling as I ran through the possible explanations for all my questions. My hand absently went to my necklace and I held the stone that had basically been a part of me as long as I could remember.
My mom had always been more about the earth and transcendence than personal possessions like jewelry. Because of that, I had assumed that growing up under her influence was why I had never wanted to change out the necklace with something new and shiny. Thinking back on my conversation with Ashley, I couldn't help but wonder if my attachment to the necklace had been more abnormal than I wanted to admit.
I went to the cheap mirror hung on the back side of the bedroom door and studied the necklace intently. Inch by inch, my arms lifted up toward the back of my neck and my skin broke out in goose bumps, although the room was plenty warm. My stomach roiled as my fingers went gently to the clasp and stopped. I stood there, hands behind my neck, and held my own eyes as the nauseating reality hit me—I couldn't make myself take it off.
My fingers worked, in theory, but I couldn't seem to carry out the command. Like the signal was being sent from my brain, but there was interference in the synapses on the way to my fingers, and the message was lost. I told myself over and over, chanting in my head, take off the necklace, you can do it, just open the clasp. But my body stood still, not a muscle moved.
Finally, on a defeated sigh, I let my arms fall to my sides. As much as I wanted to believe that this was all some kind of mix up and there was some other girl out there deep in some serious shit, I was certain that there was something special about my necklace and the poor girl mixed up in some serious shit, was probably me.
I stepped closer to the mirror, just inches away and turned my body to the side in an attempt to see the back of my neck. Worse than I had suspected, there wasn't a single mark from the draug’s brutal yank on the necklace—not a cut, not any scabbing, not even a bruise or a welt. The necklace was obviously what the creature had been after and I was willing to bet that it was also the reason I was seeing these creatures.
I could hear myself telling Ashley that I had a magic necklace and even to my own ears it sounded absurd. But what other explanation was there? When I started seeing magical creatures, a magic necklace wasn't that much of a stretch. Once I came to that conclusion, I had to wonder what other powers the necklace might possess and how I had obtained it. How had the draug known I had the necklace and would there be others hunting me down?
I was going to have to give my mom a call and see what I could learn about the necklace I had acquired as a child. I couldn't recall ever hearing where or when I had gotten the jewelry, it had always just been there—when I slept, when I swam, on my first date, and even at prom. Like a friendship bracelet that you tie on and don't remove until it falls off with wear. The piece becomes a part of you, except this was not a simple friendship bracelet, and it was evidently not going to come off anytime soon.
Startling me out of my thoughts, my phone rang, and I frantically tried to pinpoint its location in the small, disorderly room. After three rings, I found my clutch purse from the night before and extracted the buzzing phone.
“Hello?” My voice was breathless from worry that it was the hospital calling with news about Ashley.
“Is this Rebecca Peterson?” asked a man in a firm but kind voice.
“Yes,” I offered hesitantly, recent events spiking my suspicions.
“This is Officer Quinn of the PSNI. I'd like to get your statement about the attempted robbery last night, would you be able to stop by the station this morning?”
I breathed out a sigh of relief that it was just the police following up on the attack. “Absolutely, I can be there within the hour, if that works,” I offered, hoping my ready compliance would start me off in his good graces.
After he gave me the station address and we ended the call, I took a quick shower to wash away the grime from the night before. I had been too worn down to shower when I got home and was glad to finally be cleansed from the contact I had with the creature.
Wanting to be comfortable, I put on some stretchy skinny jeans with flat bootie
s and a large comfy sweater. My hair was still wet, and I didn't feel like taking the time to dry the mass of waves, so I pulled it up in a messy bun on the top of my head. With a couple swipes of mascara and some neutral lipstick, more to moisturize than for style, I was ready to head to the station. I had wanted to go straight by the hospital first thing, but I knew that I needed to get my visit with Officer Quinn over with before I was free to visit Ashley.
The Musgrave Police Station was built in part with the old red brick that was so prevalent in Belfast, but a large part of the building had been re-surfaced with smooth grey stones. Between the gated entry and the large expanse of stone with a handful of small windows, the building had the appearance of a fancy prison. The interior was also somewhat recently updated but still had a sterile feel with white walls and standard florescent fixtures.
I informed the reception clerk of my appointment to meet with Officer Quinn and was instructed to sit for a moment on the well-worn wood bench near the front door until he was available. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long until a man in his late thirties to early forties with hair so red it was basically orange approached and introduced himself as Quinn.
The main floor consisted mostly of desks arranged in a large open space with just a few private offices on the perimeter. Quinn must not have been of sufficient rank to earn one of the enclosed offices, which meant he led me to a chair in the sea of desks and dug around for his paperwork on a haphazard desktop littered with papers.
“We appreciate you coming down Miss Peterson, I'll just have a few questions for you.”
“Not a problem, I'm glad I can help.”
As I spoke, my eyes were drawn to a woman approaching the desk. She was relatively short and incredibly shapely, with ample hips and chest and curly dark brown hair. My hair had wave, but this woman's hair had a life of its own. A contrast to her dark hair, she had smooth, porcelain skin and striking blue eyes. She offered a smile as she came to stand next to the desk, placing her hand on Quinn's shoulder in an authoritative manner.
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