Young Wild

Prologue

"No!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, adding a shrill shriek at the end in horror as I watched the 'calm and kind followers of Dionysus,' or so they had described themselves, tear apart my only family.

"Our offer still stands, girly. you don't have to watch," one of the monsters tossed my way in a sickly sweet voice. 

We'd been at Montauk for less than an hour, barely enough time to get settled in our rented house for the greatest vacation of my life when we'd been ambushed--we being my mother, brother, and I.

Jay, my brother, was twisted in their grip, trying to escape. He grabbed at the loose edges of the old carpet. The teenage-appearing girls grasped him tightly with their claws. Their dark eyes glinted in the dimness of the room.

My mother yelled and threw punches and kicks around aiming at the quick-moving attackers. "Go, Addalynn! Run, or they'll get you, too!" she heaved between swings.

"Oh, no, no, no," called the ringleader of the vicious party acts as she waggled her finger side to side, not daring to get her pretty little claws dirty, "We only attack those who aren't the great lord Dionysus or a possible addition to our exclusive little club; that's why the girl is left unharmed."

"Unharmed. Because watching my family get torn to millionths isn't harming at all," I grumbled, struggling against the tightening grip of two of the clawed creatures that had appeared at my side.

The leader shot eye-daggers at me and I closed my mouth. 

"It's really a take it or leave it. They don't have to die. You can say yes now and they might make it to a hospital." 

Jay fell to the ground and he made an extremely loud thump. I didn't look--I couldn't. I already knew that there wouldn't be much to see anyway. Tears welled at my eyes and strolled down my cheeks like a waterfall. I couldn't bear this anymore. 

"Just make it stop!" I hollered over the cacophony, alligator tears raced down my face. I didn't know what to do.

Everything suddenly stilled, as if it all had now been captured in a picture.

"Well, well, well, it looks like we broke her" laughed Babette, the leader.

"I'll do it." My voice cracked as I thought over the alternative, which could only mean the end of my own life as well, though I still didn't know why I bothered allowing myself live. I'd lost everything I cared for in a matter of moments. I seemed to acquire no purpose. Since, my mother still hadn't moved from the moment everything stilled and my brother continued to lay on the ground undisturbed, blood pooling around him, more and more by the minute.

"Perfect. Girls--" All the creatures froze. "Drop." 

Anything still held at that point clattered to the ground, including my mother. 

"But you can't possibly perform such a miracle so simply," I contradicted, throwing my gaze over the room in a way that I hoped came off more as a ha-I-wish rather than an eye roll. My vision was murky and I couldn't see anything clearly-- I was a little torn apart at this point. "There's a catch for something that great, a complication of some sort?" 

Babette looked pleased by my response. "You would be correct. But that is a yes?" 

"Well, if it's possible!" 

That couldn't have been a worse thing to agree to.

They pulled me through the forest. Dancing and skipping around. I leaned so far forward with the force of the girls' pull that I may as well have been laying on my stomach--in the air, I suppose.