DUSK

seventeen

"Take them."

Two of the tall brown men stepped forward and brought their hands up in the same formation, I had seen Alice do earlier.

The house began to fade, behind us... and so did Clara's body.

Alice, Will, Stephen, and I were the only ones brought through this strange shift.

When we landed, hard, we were on a large salt flat... There was nothing in any direction for miles.

Nothing living, at all, except us.

We quickly recovered and Will found me, taking me into his arms protectively, as if Stephen might just claim me, then.

Revak began to speak.

"I will observe the law, though it will be futile." He stepped towards Hunimehl.

"You wish to claim the rights for your grandchild?!"

"Yes," he said.

"Then you must take it, from him."

Hunimehl turned towards Stephen and then he began to change. His body shifted form until he was a very large hyena, laughing up at the waning night.

He lept at him. We all were frozen, our eyes glued to this strange spectacle. This was what Hetu really were, for all their talk of being above animals.

It landed on Stephen's chest.  The hyena "yipped" loudly and bore dangerous looking fangs nipping centimeters away from Stephen's throat.

Stephen held him back with his hands. Each propped on his upper and lower jawline.

It was over too quickly.  We heard a snap, and the bloodied animal lay still on the salt flat.

Alice, already wrecked by the night's earlier horrible events, was on the edge of her sanity now.

"He wanted to free her and he failed. He wanted to free you," Revak said looking at Ibis, "and he failed again. He dies a failed animal."

"Fitting he was a hyena. All of his attempts were a joke," he said, coldly.

Alice saw it now. The choice he had made, his wife, her mother enduring who knew what kind of fate in her place.

She was now most certainly, dead.

Alice could no longer cry. She sat as still as statue, staring down at her father's corpse.

Stephen stood triumphantly, covered in blood, on his hands and from the neck up.

"Come with me, Ibis.  Your boy will live on unharmed."

Alice looked at me, then. The expression on her face was so weakly resigned to whatever pain was next, I shook Will's hold of me off and went to him. I couldn't bare any more of it.

"You'll tire of me. All of this pain. And you will tire of me, like the others." I said, quietly.

"Maybe not," he said and grabbed my wrist. He pulled me the rest of the way to him and grabbed my face with his bloodied hands.

He forced me to face him and planted a rough kiss on my lips. He tried to force his way into my mouth, but I bite his lip. He shoved me away and wiped at his mouth, with amusement.

Will started after me, but Stephen held up a sticky hand. "Boy? You wish to di-?"

He didn't get to finish.

Will had jumped on him, knocking the words from his throat. They fought viciously. The blows that landed, reverberated throughout the empty expanse.