Riddle Of The Owl - YA Fantasy

Chapter Fifteen

Rising. Alleria was rising through a clinging blanket of thick dream-like blackness. Incoherent thoughts chased one another in a stomach-tumbling sequence. And then all at once — feelings. Confused, numb, in pain, afraid, sad.

Cassel's face was inches from hers.

She was lying in a mess of jagged broken things upon the living room floor. It was dark save for some light coming in from the kitchen. She was gagged and she assumed her legs were tied too because she couldn't move them.

Cassel's eyes stared ahead, glassy and empty. His mouth was slightly agape, his skin looked ashen and waxy. His blond hair fell across his forehead in a way that, if she could, she would have brushed it aside so it wouldn't tickle his eye.

He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing. He was dead.

Dead.          

Alleria couldn't turn her head to look away and it shamed her that she wanted to. Even through the tears that filled her eyes she could still see his face and know that it was vacant of him. The empty shell that was Cassel was sickening, it was nothing but Cassel-shaped flesh.

She was hauled up and slung over someone's shoulder as if she were no more than a rolled-up carpet. Tears continued to drop out of her eyes. With the gag in her mouth, she wanted to vomit. Instead, she tried to wriggle around to see who her captors were. Including the one holding her and excluding the exorcist, there were half-a-dozen men. If they were priests, she couldn't tell, they had all abandoned the church regalia for simple black clothes. For such a large group, they walked silently, marching down the building stairs without alerting the neighbours. She wondered if someone had heard her scream for help earlier. Had they feared coming for her aid or were they otherwise somehow detained?

She wondered where her parents were.

Cassel's green eyes glimmering as lifelessly as crystals.

She prayed to whomever would listen that her parents hadn't been harmed.

They bodily threw her into the back of a black van parked outside the building, the jarring impact made the gag dig into the corners of her lips, filling her mouth with blood. She hadn't seen this van when she went inside, but she hadn't been looking. She didn't suspect they'd come after her in her own home.

"The danger is never over."

Willum was right, she was a fool and Cassel had paid for that. She wondered what happened to a part-demon soul after death, where would it go? Were there even really souls? Or was it a lie, like everything else?

The door of the van closed with a metal bang pitching Alleria into total darkness. Was she a demon then? Was she evil? If so, what was evil?

Cassel was dead.

That was evil. That was wrong. The van vibrated beneath her as it rolled over the lumpy cobbled streets. The blood in her mouth tasted salty. Her arms were numb and her wrists burned, the shoulder she was lying on hurt but if she moved she'd fall on her face.

An unmeasurable amount of time passed. The road was smooth now, they were no longer in Callivar. The endless discomforts were't recognisable anymore, she couldn't distinguish what hurt. Pain was a monotonous drone as consistent as the hum of the van's motor.

A lock of blond hair falling across his forehead, she wished she could move it aside.

Did anyone find Cassel's body by now? Would anyone recognise him? Will his mother finally come to realise he had been by her side all these years, or was she going to forget his death like she forgot his life?