Something deep down ached inside me, “Leave us”, I said to Katherine.
“I don’t think so I am to escort you down to the party, once you put these masks on”, she said.
I snatched them from her grasp and she growled at me but I growled back louder, “Leave now”. Her eyes glossed over for a moment then she nodded, “Fine”. She left the room and I knew he had Okayed it, he knew I was ready and that I would be coming down to the ball.
“You alright?” Kaley asked me wearily.
I nodded, “Fine, just nervous that’s all”.
“Liar”.
I turned to look at her.
“You forget I can see in your head, I’m not her Stacie, you won’t lose me or let me down”, She said softly, “I’m not Tanya”.
“I…I…You look so much like her”.
“I know”, she said her eyes down, “That’s why I never wore my hair down, I saw her in Cain’s room in the picture you gave him and then, I saw her in your mind”.
“Look we just stick to the plan tonight, if anything goes wrong you run…Don’t try to look for me, don’t try to help me just…run”.
She nodded, “Ok”, she didn’t try to persist with the Tanya thing since I changed the subject and I was glad, I didn’t need the distraction tonight.
We were summoned down to dinner at 8pm sharp by Katherine who banged on the door till I answered, she made sure both our masks were in place before escorting us down the now clawed staircase to the dining room. The big table had been set out again all adorned with meats, fruits and vegetables, I had to wonder how much of a supply of this stuff they had, we had a grand dinner every night since coming here and again tonight or maybe it was because of the heritage of the castle and they wanted to live in it like the Royals once had and tonight judging by the decorations and the style of the food layout and how everyone was dressed, a royal occasion this was sure to be.
I made sure to each as much fruit and vegetables as I could fit in, I wanted to keep my strength up and I needed the energy to fight with, or flight if the worst happened. Kaley on the other hand just moved bits of food around her plate, Christian kept looking over to see why she wasn’t eating but I just glared at him.
“Stacie can I have a word?”
I looked to Kaley and she waited.
“Alone”.
“I’ll be fine, wait for me”.
She glanced at Christian with a weary look in her eyes before walking away.
“So…” I said.
“So? Is it so bad that I want to ask you for the first dance?” his eyes gleamed with the atmosphere.
“But there is no music”, I stated.
He clapped his hands and Katherine wheeled in a trolley, on it was an old record player, a long wire indicated it was plugged into an old generator that was hidden in the hall. Fairy lights blinked on around the dining hall which I hadn’t even noticed had been hung up, then the record began to play.
“Shall we?” He held out his hand to me and I took it, glancing back at Kaley who just stood in the shadows watching.
He spun me around like a delicate flower, his powerful arms twisting me around. I knew that before this life he had to have been one of those spoilt rich kids who had been taught how to dance, ride horses and hunt foxes. He spun me in time with the music and then brought his mouth to my ear, “So I want to talk to you about my wife, you will be her blood donor when the time is right but I need to know that you won’t attack my child when it is born”.
“And if I did?”
“Then I would simply kill you on the spot”.
“So I guess I won’t then”, I smiled politely as he then swung me around the room again.
“I mean it, there is no room for a Queen a King cannot control. I will kill you if you step out of line”.
“Oh change the record”, I hissed as the song changed to a slower paced one.
He moved his arms to wrap them around me, one on my hip and the other in my hand then he made me move and dance to his will. I threw a quick glance in Kaley’s direction and found her talking to Katherine who was eyeing me up with such distaste I had to smile at her as we passed just to rub salt into the wound. So it seemed that young Katherine liked Christian but she had not been a contender for Queen-hood, well once we were gone from here she would be more than welcome to take my throne from me. Just as the tempo of the music changed again I heard the loud ache of the main doors being thrown open and the flitter of worried footsteps, then Lara burst into the room. The other so called party guests looked in her direction and growled but with such an air about her she ignored them addressing only Christian. “The baby’s coming”.
“Come on”, Christian said grabbing me.
“What about Kaley?”
“She can stay at the party”, He tightened his grip on my arm, “You are coming with me, now”.
I had no choice but to be dragged along by him to the old servant quarters where his poor wife was now screaming and crying out in agony, I could hear her screams through the walls. We rushed through the kitchen and into the bedroom door, his wife was howling and wailing, panting and breathing hard.
“ARGH”, she cried out gurgling blood from her dry and crusted lips, “The…Ba…by”, she whispered to Christian, “It HURTS!”
“I know precious, I know just lie back down and we will guide you”.
“Do either of you two know how to deliver a baby?” I asked.
“No…but we know we will have to cut it out otherwise it will tear all the birth canal and kill her outright but that’s where you come in”, and he took my arm and tied a piece of cloth around near my elbow and waited until a thick vein popped up, “You are going to transfuse the blood to her so she doesn’t die and she heals”.
I felt my whole body shake at the thought of my blood pumping into someone else’s veins, turning them into me, but she was already a half breed, having my blood could confuse matters more and turn her into something worse.
Christian held up a drip line with a needle on the end, he pierced it into my vein and I watched as the blood flowed out from me and down the line, he then pierced his wife’s skin near her vein and I watched in horror as my blood moved into her. Then they prepped her for a sudden and horrific surgery, they knew she didn’t have long especially as her cries were becoming more and more hushed and her face paled so much she looked green.
“Give her the morphine”, Christian ordered Lara and she injected some into her sisters body. After a minute or two the poor woman began to breath shallow and softly, it was killing her and now she was doped with drugs so death wouldn’t hurt her.
“Scalpel please”, Christian said and Lara passed one to him, he had drawn a line over the woman’s abdomen and placed the scalpel to her flesh and he sliced, the cutting noise of flesh being cut was sickening but the scalpel wasn’t strong enough. Her belly had hardened so much that it couldn’t cut right the way through, just the top layer of skin was slit, the blade was useless.
“No come on”, he breathed sweat beading on his forehead.
I watched as the wife fitted on the bed as the abomination inside her tried to crawl and tear its way out, blood leaked from underneath her and from her mouth and nose, it was tearing her apart. Christian began to freak out, stabbing away at his wife’s abdomen, blood pouring out over him and the bed sheets.
“Come on”, he shouted panic ebbing away at his normal happy and amused persona, “Come on”.
Suddenly the wife’s eyes flew open and she screamed so loud it felt like my ears were going to shatter, the morphine was no longer working on her and she could feel everything. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing so I pushed Christian out of the way and drew out my claws, I shook as I took them to her swollen belly but before I sliced down her tummy rippled sickeningly, I had to do it now, I dragged my claw along the line and it bore deep, deep enough to cut right through to her womb. She screamed loudly again before falling unconscious or maybe even dead back on
the bed. Christian was right at my side putting his hands inside the unconscious woman and pulling, first out came a leg, a deformed humanoid leg which had claws where its toes should have been, the knee’s buckled and bent the wrong way. Next came the back where the spine staggered in points looking sharp where the bones protruded almost threatening to tear through the strange grey mottled skin. Lastly with a final tug came the arms and the head, the arms were like the legs, bent at weird animalistic angles and claws where fingers should have been but it was the head that made me vomit on the floor behind me, the head was long an alien like, its eyes were slits with small piercing pupils and its nose was just a flattened crevice with two small holes where it breathed in and out the bloodied and stinking air. The mouth was lipless and held no resemblance to a cute babies smile, its teeth were sharp and jagged and it cried out with a hunger I had never heard come from something before.
“It’s a boy”, Christian exclaimed, personally I couldn’t tell with all the blood and slime what it was but whatever this was it wasn’t human, it was death.
A movement caught my vision and I spotted Lara bolt for the door, tears streaming down her cheeks then she was gone. I took a look at her sister and I knew she was dead, Christian had focused so much on the abomination that he hadn’t noticed that with all her writhing and fitting she had pulled her part of the transfusion line out and now she lay there a dead and bloody wreak. She didn’t have enough of my blood to heal her, I had to admit I was relieved, who knows what she would have turned into, especially since having a child that looked like…an alien.
“I think I will call him…Murphy”, Christian said with wild adornment in his eyes, “And he’s hungry”, for the first time Christian looked to his wife to see she was no longer with us, his eyes fell for a moment looking at the drip in my arm and just presuming he had done it properly and that it hadn’t worked to plan. Instead of crying out in anger or grief he simply laid Murphy down in the sagged pit of the woman’s stomach, the thing stood like a beast, an animal on all for legs the elbows and knees cracking and pointing the wrong way. It sniffed at its mother before snapping its jaws at her and biting down into her raw flesh. It howled with pleasure as it chewed on its first meal but this was too much for me to handle and Christian was so pre occupied he didn’t move when I tore the drip from my arm and followed Lara out of the room. I just made it to the kitchen sink where hot vile vomit spewed from my mouth, my stomach heaved until empty.
“Is she gone?” Lara asked looking deathly pale.
I couldn’t say anything I just nodded as more bile rose in my throat.
“And that thing?” she asked.
“Is…is alive and eating…her”, I whispered throwing up yet more bile.
Lara slid down a unit and hit the floor, tears streaming down her face like a flood from the heavens, she cried out in grief and pain at her loss. I stood up and looked behind me, the doorway was still empty Christian was in a strange world now. I had to take it, now was my chance. Grabbing Lara’s hand I whipped her to her feet and dragged her from the kitchen and back to the grand hall where I left Kaley but upon arrival I noticed she was gone but Katherine was still there and she eyed me and Lara up.
“Where’s Christian?” she asked.
“With his baby, you should go see it”, I said trying to hide the panic and need to leave in my face.
“Our sister?” she asked looking at Lara.
Lara just looked away in disgust at Katherine, so I replied, “She didn’t make it, I’m sorry”.
Katherine’s eyes welled up, “I need to see her”, and she went to leave but before she did I grabbed her arm.
“Where’s Kaley?”
She shrugged, “Dunno, she wondered off ages ago”, then she left to see her sister and the abomination.
“Come on we need to find Kaley”, I said to Lara.
“Who’s Kaley?”
I looked at her, the poor thing hadn’t been out of the servant quarters and hadn’t even met Kaley, “She’s my friend”.
“Where are we going?” she sobbed and panted hard trying to keep up but her human body was so weak from being abused and starved.
“To get my things and then we leave”.
“They will not let us leave”, she cried out.
“Then they will have to try and stop us”.
~
Kaley sat waiting in the dining room for Stacie, “What the hell is taking her so long?” Trying to keep calm she tried to focus in on Stacie but for some reason she couldn’t reach out to her maybe something had gone wrong, all she got were flicking white spots like the old static on televisions but Stacie was only just a few walls away.
Walking to the door she looked out.
“Why you so afraid? Your friend will be back soon and then she will be crowned Queen”.
“I’m not afraid I just like having her around”, Kaley said turning away from the woman.
“What’s the matter don’t you wanna play?”
“Play?” and before her Katherine started to change, the gloves came off revealing her swollen and puss filled fingers, her face blackened with decay and her eyes sank back into her sockets, “look I don’t want no trouble”, but the girl in front of her didn’t care she grabbed Kaley by the throat with her infected, puss dripping fingers and howled, then like a domino effect all the others in the room howled with her.
Kaley couldn’t help but claw at her throat and struggle to breathe, “Get off me”.
“What’s the matter weakling? We don’t tolerate humans here”.
“I’m not human”, Kaley wheezed I’m infected.
“Really don’t look like it to me, you can’t do anything like us infected can, I think you’re lying”.
“I said get off me”, Kaley spat and she felt it, her mind bending like it did before the power sparked, whoosh she blinked at Katherine and the decaying mess of a woman flew across the room, she skilfully landed on her feet bending her knees and cocking her head to look up at the now free little teenager.
“What was that?” she hissed but Kaley didn’t listen she threw up her hand using the telekinesis to launch the infected woman out of the dining room and to land in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. The other half breeds in the room shied away from her in fear but she knew it wouldn’t last not when they realised how little she could use it before collapsing. Then she heard them the voices at the top of the stairs and none of them were Stacie’s, something bad was happening and Stacie wasn’t here, she had to run, now.
Her legs took off without her brain really registering the movement, they just moved in a motion that sprang forward one foot in front of the other, over and over until she was gathering distance between her and them. She dodged past Katherine and charged through a door under the staircase and slammed it shut behind her, at the end of this room was another staircase so she took to it racing up the flight of stairs and coming into another hallway. She raced through another door and then into another room and cried out, it was a dead end. Knowing she had no time she took to a window that was nestled into a corner, a beautiful and small neat window seat sat below the window looking out over the grounds but she had no time to admire the view, she forced the window open smashing it to pieces and then grasped hold of the window sill, looking to her left she spotted a tree and a then a roof of a much smaller out building. Turning her body she aimed for the tree and jumped hoping to grab the long branch, her fingers grasped the branch but it snapped under the force and sending her plummeting onto the roof below, her knees smacked into the roof before it shuddered and gave way, she let out a scream as she fell into the darkness below.
She fell to the floor with a thud but luckily she hadn’t broken anything, bits of roof fell on top of her but she brushed them off as she stood up. Taking a look around she noticed something in this room smelt off, the only source of light came from the new roof light, the shadows cast by the new light danced and shimmered in the corners. Then she heard it the slithe
ring noise of something that sounded like a huge wet snake moving over the floor boards, her heart caught in her throat and she stood still hoping that whatever it was would just pass her by but there was no such luck.
She screamed a high pitched wail that even chilled her blood to the bone, the thing in front of her had once been human but it was so badly infected it looked like nothing she had ever witnessed before. It’s body was long and stretched like it had been put through a mangle and pulled, its arms were bloated with infection with pustules dripping down it causing the wet noise as it moved, its legs were useless, both broken and decayed with gangrene by the looks of things and that’s what looked to be the cause of the opposing smell. Its eyes were red, puffy and tear stained, like the monster had been crying for weeks. Its mouth was the only thing that still looked remotely human, even its skin had blistered and was filled with puss and other fluids.
She froze just staring at the thing then it spoke, “Help me”.
“W…w…what?”
“Help me please, it hurts so much please”.
“But you’re infected”.
“So are you”, it said its voice strained and rasping.
“What happened to you?” she asked warming to the voice and to the thing, it had stopped coming closer and just lay there in a heap, stinking on the floor.
“I was bitten and survived like most of the people in this god forsaken castle, I showed no promise of an ability though I was just infected, almost a human to them”, he motioned towards a door and I knew he meant Christian and the others, “So they tried experimenting on me to try and make me stronger and more…powerful but it didn’t work it just fucked my body up and now I’m this thing…The human slug they call me”.
“The human slug?” Kaley whispered, “But that’s nasty”.
He nodded or tried to but his neck was so puffed up she could only tell by his chin wobbling, “Yes very nasty seen as they done this to me”.
Alone (Book 2): Lone Page 23