by Steve McHugh
Eventually, Layla let go and lay back on the bed.
“They had to take a bullet out of your arm,” Chloe told her. “Who did this to you?”
Layla was in the middle of telling Chloe everything—although she omitted the blood elves, and the fact that an ogre had killed everyone in the depot—when the door opened again and a man and woman walked in. The man was just under six foot in height, well built, and gave off an imposing presence. He had pale skin and wore a dark, well-tailored suit. Clearly he hadn’t shaved for several days, giving him a rugged look. He glanced over at Chloe and a small smile creased his mouth. Layla wondered if the two had met before, presumably while she was asleep.
The woman was taller than the man by a few inches, her skin more olive in color. She wore a pair of black trousers and a red hoodie. While the man appeared to be from some sort of law enforcement agency, the woman looked like she was security or a bodyguard. She rolled up her hoodie sleeves, showing muscular forearms, and Layla had the impression that she could probably bench-press her if she so wished.
“Hi,” the woman said, offering Layla her hand. “My name is Diana, and this is Thomas Carpenter.”
Thomas waved a little, and Layla noticed Chloe smile and look away.
“You’re police?”
They both shook their heads. “We’re from an independent security firm,” Diana told her. “Thomas here is the managing director of the company.”
“Thomas, what’s the company called?” Layla asked, wanting to remember to Google it later. She didn’t know these people, and wasn’t sure if she was meant to trust them.
“Enhanced Security, and you can call me Tommy.” He smiled again, and Layla thought he had a nice smile, warm and inviting. She noticed the wedding ring on his finger, a simple band of white gold or silver, she wasn’t sure which.
“I don’t understand,” Layla said. “I don’t understand why you’re here.”
“They’re here to help you,” Chloe told her. “They spoke to me last night and asked if they could discuss the people who took you.”
“Elias Wells is the person who kidnapped you, yes?” Tommy asked.
Layla nodded.
“He’s a dangerous man,” Diana said.
“He had thirty-nine people murdered to get to me, so I assume so. He told me that he took some of those working at the depot hostage. Elias said they were kept in the same place where they’d taken me. They’re in danger.”
“We found the car you used to escape. We checked the sat nav system and retraced the route you took last night,” Tommy said. “Several armed agents are currently en route to find where you were kept and deal with any threats found there. Anyone who is there will be freed, you have my word.”
Layla felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She looked between Tommy and Chloe. “I don’t understand why the police aren’t dealing with this.”
Tommy picked up a chair from a small table and placed it next to the bed. “Layla, we know that you went through a terrible ordeal last night. Several hours in their captivity, having to escape, being shot. It’s a lot, but we deal with things the police can’t. And Elias Wells is one of those things. You’ve seen what these people are capable of; the police just aren’t equipped to deal with them like we are. We’re here to make sure Elias is taken down. One way or another. I don’t want to have to sit beside anyone else’s bed telling them what I’m telling you. I don’t want Elias free to hurt anyone else.”
Layla told them all that had happened, but once again left out the blood elves, ogre, and she didn’t mention the spirit scrolls at all. She wasn’t sure exactly how much she could trust Tommy and Diana. Both of them listened intently without ever interrupting. Chloe held Layla’s hand the whole time, which Layla greatly appreciated.
When Layla was finished, Tommy nodded. “Thank you. Is that everything?”
Layla nodded, although she was certain that Tommy wasn’t convinced, but he said nothing about it.
“Thank you for your time,” he said and got to his feet. “You’re going to be staying in hospital for a few days, the gunshot needs to heal, and I’ve made sure to keep security on the door at all times. Diana here is your security.”
Diana winked. “I’ve brought some books to read if you want any, and I’ll be in the hall.”
“What if I just want to go home?” Layla asked.
Tommy paused at the door. “Right now, this is the best place for you. The only people who will come to question you are me and Diana. No one else will come here that you don’t know. The police are not involved in this side of the case, they’re more interested in finding out who killed thirty-nine people last night, and even then that’s only for the public. We’re the ones looking into it, we’re the ones trying to find Elias and anyone he kidnapped.”
“Will you find him?”
Tommy nodded. “Finding him isn’t the trick, it’s getting him without him hurting innocent people. With you here, hopefully he’ll think twice about coming for you, and if he doesn’t, then Diana will be able to persuade him and his people.”
Layla shook her head, no matter how in shape Diana appeared, there was little chance she could go up against the ogre and live. “One of his people is a monster. If it comes here people will get hurt.”
“A monster?” Diana asked with a smile. “We’ll be fine. We’re on the seventh floor of Southampton General Hospital. You’re the only person in a private ward. I will be outside your door for the next two days, and we’ve placed two more guards outside of this room who will check everyone coming and going. Tommy has been doing this an extraordinarily long time, he knows what he’s up against.”
“I doubt that,” Layla said, but both of them were already through the door.
“They seem like they’re good at their jobs,” Chloe said.
“They’re going to get hurt. The thing that came after me . . . it wasn’t . . .” She paused, unsure how to continue.
“Wasn’t what?”
This was it, the part where her friend either believed her or thought she was crazy. “It was an ogre. An actual, ogre.”
For just a split second, Layla was certain she saw fear in her friend’s expression. “I’m sure Tommy and Diana can handle an ogre,” Chloe eventually said.
Layla was certain that Chloe was mocking her. “You don’t believe me.”
“If you say you saw an ogre, then you saw an ogre. Tommy and Diana seem like tough people, I’m certain they can handle anything thrown their way. Why wouldn’t I believe you, Layla? There’s enough weirdness in the world that occasionally you have to take a leap of faith. Besides, something had to attack those people, and I find it more comfortable to think it’s a large monster than just some random nut job human with a gun and knife. Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
“Because they’d think I’m crazy. Ogres and the like, it’s not exactly believable. It makes me sound like I’ve hit my head a bit too hard. Besides, I don’t know them. I don’t know anything about them.”
Chloe took hold of Layla’s hand and held her gaze. “Never think you’re crazy. If you say there are ogres, there are ogres. That’s all there is to it. I’ll go tell Tommy and Diana what you just told me, and I’ll be right back.”
Chloe left Layla alone for a half hour, until she returned with a smile on her face. “Well, they said thanks for the info.”
“So, they didn’t believe me after all? They think I’m crazy?”
“Not at all. They said it’d mean they’d take extra precautions. Tommy said he’s seen an ogre before.”
Layla wasn’t sure she’d heard her friend right. “You serious?”
Chloe nodded. “From talking to both of them, I’d say they’ve seen their fair share of weird shit. I get the impression they’re trustworthy. I know you’ve been through a lot, but these people want to help.”
Chloe stayed with Layla for several hours, until Harry arrived and wanted to know what had happened, and ho
w he could help. It took several minutes to get him to accept that Layla was actually okay and that her shoulder was more sore than actually painful. The latter of which was something she found a little odd as she hadn’t been given any painkillers apart from the odd paracetamol from a young nurse who’d stopped by a few hours before.
Eventually her friends had to leave, and Layla switched the TV back on, settling in for a long night alone. Chloe’s bag had contained grapes, several bottles of water, and two massive bars of chocolate that got eaten by the three friends long before they’d left. There was also a pair of jeans, some underwear, and a few t-shirts, all of which Layla was exceedingly thankful for.
She wasn’t sure exactly how much she believed Tommy and Diana’s story. They were clearly security of some kind, but who had hired them, and why? How did they know where she was? Were they another part of Elias’s plan? The answer was a resounding no. If they had been, Layla doubted they’d have allowed her to have Chloe and Harry in the room. As for the other answers, maybe the police had brought them in. She assumed that the hospital had contacted the police, who had contacted Tommy. Maybe Tommy and Diana did this sort of thing all the time, traveling the country and defeating monsters, like a UK version of Supernatural.
She’d mentioned the ogre, but why keep the blood elves and spirit scrolls to herself? To be honest, she wasn’t even certain what the scrolls really were. Spirits inside a scroll giving her power? Maybe she’d had some kind of psychotic breakdown and used that as a way to justify what she’d done to escape. As for the blood elves, she had been going to mention it, until she saw Chloe’s fearful reaction to the ogre. Layla wasn’t so sure it was a good idea to add to that fear.
After a few minutes, Layla climbed out of bed and walked over to the mirror in the en suite bathroom. Although the bathroom was more functional than anything she’d seen in a hotel or house, she didn’t have to share, and she was grateful for that. She unfastened the hospital gown and pulled it aside, revealing a white dressing on her shoulder. It was three inches square and secured in place with tape. She knew she should leave it, but she wanted to see how bad the injury looked, so she picked at the tape and slowly pulled one section of it free, causing a lot less pain than she’d been expecting. She removed the adjacent piece of tape and took a deep breath before pulling the dressing aside so she could see the wound.
A second later she tore the whole dressing off, dropping it into the sink as she stared at the complete lack of a bullet wound.
She’d been shot. She remembered being shot. Although she hadn’t been in her body at the time, the memory of it was still there. As was the memory of her killing the second blood elf. She paused. She’d killed two people on her way out of the compound. She pushed the thought aside for the moment to deal with the fact that her bullet hole no longer existed. In its place was some tender scar tissue, but even that didn’t look too bad.
“What the hell is going on here?” she asked herself in the mirror. For a second she half expected a monster to appear in the mirror beside her, but that didn’t happen. More memories from the night before flashed into her head: her in a Victorian carriage, the cage in the center of the glade. The creature inside it.
“I need answers. I need to know what’s happening to me.”
You’re becoming something more than human, a voice that she recognized as belonging to Rosa said inside her head. Please don’t do the “You’re not real, this is all a dream” thing. I did it, and it was annoying.
Layla knew it wasn’t a dream; no one could have dreams where they actually got shot, not unless they were in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
We need to talk. Face to face. You need to learn who you are, and what has happened to you.
“And how do I go about doing that?”
For now, sleeping will lower the barriers between us. It takes a few days before we can appear easily to you when you’re awake.
“You knocked me out.”
I promise I will explain everything when you see me. I swear to you, I did what I needed to do to keep you alive.
She didn’t know why, but she somehow knew that Rosa was telling the truth. She walked back into her hospital room and checked the time. It was only eight, but she wanted to know what was happening, what had happened. There really were spirits in her mind. It wasn’t a psychotic breakdown, it wasn’t some dream; it was real. She had power that she hadn’t had before she’d accepted the scroll. She needed to learn how to use it, and talking to the spirits seemed like the best way.
Layla climbed into bed, and after initially tossing and turning, fell into a deep sleep.
12
Elias was over halfway to America by the time the call came in telling him of Layla’s escape. He’d wanted the pilots to turn the private jet around immediately, but had been told doing so would make them crash in the middle of the ocean. Instead of continuing with any threats, he admitted that stopping in New York and refueling was the better option. But he hadn’t been happy about it.
By the time they’d reached the private runway in New York, filled up, and set off again, several hours had passed, and Elias’s mood hadn’t improved.
“So, are you planning on telling me what our employer said?” Dara asked after several hours of silence. The jet was just about to begin its descent to the airfield in England.
“It wasn’t the best conversation I’ve ever had with him. He seemed to be happier that the blood elf in charge of Layla is now dead. I had Reyes kill the elf, and told her to ensure that the rest of the blood elves know what happens to those who fail us. I don’t think a second screw-up is going to be tolerated. On top of that, Shane was bested by Layla, a mistake I’m sure he’ll want payback for.”
“Ah, Shane. He was never quite the professional. Always looking for his next hunt, and having to rein himself in. I assume he survived the confrontation.”
“It seems that way, yes, although I doubt he feels too good. We’ll get more details when we get back to the compound.”
“So, with Layla killing two blood elves in her escape, and Reyes killing the one who failed us, do we need more people?”
Elias shrugged. “There’s five of us, and including the blood elves, ten. The boss said if we need it, he’ll send extra staff, but I’m hoping this can be done with the numbers we have. We got caught out and royally spanked for it. I don’t plan on making the same mistake with Layla again.”
“How did she get out of the compound? How did she manage to kill two blood elves and disable Shane?”
“She took a spirit scroll. My guess is a spirit was in the driving seat. If it had been Layla, I doubt she’d have killed so quickly, and if it had been the demon, we’d have seen a smoldering crater where the compound had been. It would have stayed there and killed everything, or at least tried to.”
“Her having a spirit scroll complicates things.”
Elias rubbed his temples. He didn’t really need Dara telling him something he already knew. “She won’t be strong with her new abilities yet. We still have a few days before the bonds are complete. And I doubt she’ll be in any hurry to accept the demon into her psyche, so she won’t have anywhere near the power she could have. This is still a job we can complete without trouble. We just need to find her, get her, and get out of the country. No more hanging around there to get her to talk, no threatening her friends; just get her unconscious and on this jet. Nothing else matters. We’ve tried the easy way, now we make it hard on her.”
Dara’s expression of glee was all that Elias needed to see to know that she was looking forward to whatever came next. Elias had worked with Dara for several decades, and the pair had grown close. To him she was the most trusted, and in many ways, most valuable member of the team, and on more than one occasion that closeness had grown physical. “Even monsters need to love,” she’d told him after their first night together, and Elias had to agree. They were both killers: murderers of the innocent, and not so innocent, in equal measure. He cared a gr
eat deal for Dara, and while he was sure she felt the same way, there was no indication that their relationship would ever be anything more. Settling down and growing old together is hard to do when those people might never grow old in the first place, when both of them enjoyed their work a bit too much to ever live peacefully in some suburban idea of paradise.
The plane landed at the same private airfield they’d taken off from the day before. Once the jet was stationary, the pilot opened the door to let everyone out. Ordinarily there would have been a steward to do that, but one hadn’t been supplied on this occasion, and Elias wondered if that was a small measure of punishment by Nergal. He was certainly petty enough.
Elias found that the red Audi RS5 coupe was still parked in the spot he’d left it in, something he was grateful for. He didn’t want to go looking for a car, and he’d taken a liking to the Audi.
“I’m hungry,” Dara said as they both got into the vehicle.
“We’ll grab some food after we’ve spoken to the rest of the team. I want to talk to them immediately,” Elias said as he started the engine. The rest of the drive was completed in silence.
They reached the dirt road, stopping the car outside the entrance to the compound, and then rode the lift all the way to the bottom, where Shane met them.
“Evening, boss,” he said, with a lot less cheer than usual.
“What happened to that?” Dara asked, pointing toward the lift-activation system.
“Our house guest removed all of the metal from it, frying it completely. I’ve had to completely rebuild the mechanism and circuitry. Hopefully it works now, because otherwise getting out of here is going to be impossible.”