Alternate Realities

Prompt: What they Told me

TW: blood, violence, death...

The natural rhythms punctuated the world around her usually in a chorus and sometimes a cacophony. The thrum-thrum-thrum of the sparrows diving low to the ground, the lilting li-li-li-li of the old dog steadily trotting through the hallway. Every beat of every heart pulsed against her skin in a unique harmony. The small things crescendo-ed together like the hum of a thousand horns blaring into the wind while the larger creatures - mostly the humans - pulsed in a predictably structured base-march.

Wren couldn't remember the last time she'd truly been alone. She needed fifty feet or more for the signs of life to fall below her senses even if she had to be inches away to use her special skills. Staring up at the ceiling supposedly alone, she could feel someone walking in the rooms beneath her, wandering the hallway above her, rushing through the courtyard below her window. She could count the mice in the wall and the crows that crowded on the gutters. But none of that was unusual enough to catch her attention.

The sudden darting beat quirked her attention. The heart slammed rapid and stilted and then pulsed once... waited... twice... and then....then.... it went missing. The harmony of the house unsettled in a moment of panic and unwilling surrender to an unwanted end. Wren bolted from her room and raced down the hall holding onto the sensation that forced her feet down the stairs to the room below hers. She predicted heart attack, stroke, a sudden fall, any number of accidents or defects. If she got there soon enough, she could revive them. She could bring them back.

She checked behind the tables and the sofa in the library, but no one was in the room. She cursed and flew down to the next door, Ptolemus's private study. She could feel three hearts in the room, more than when she started her race through the estate. She hoped they were rendering aid well enough to keep the blood from pooling, avoiding oxygen deprivation in the brain. She stumbled through the door and leapt towards Ptolemus.

"I'm here. Give way!" She shouted.

Ptolemus dragged a silver blade across the neck of a fighting, small girl.

Wren screamed, gripped the girl and followed her body to the floor. She felt the tear the razor-sharp edge had slit through the trachea. She could even sense the blood pumping down into the lungs. She knitted the airway back together, the blood gushed red over her hands. She tried to seal the artery, the girl's hands thrashed and scratched her arms. The girl's eyes had dilated into black disks. Her tongue swirled in the blood, red-pink collected between every tooth.

Before Wren had it, before she could cinch the artery back in place, Ptolemus had her hands to her sides and her body in his arms. Wren kicked and thrashed and screamed a dozen frequencies all buried together in a hideous pitch.

"Let me help! Let me help!" She whimpered as the heart stopped and the girl twitched next to the other body.

Ptolemus release her. She landed back on the girl. Wren searched for the signs of life. Heart beat: gone. Brain clicks: gone. Even the high frequency of the involuntary actions of the body had ceased.

Blood bubbled out of the girl's neck as the body relaxed and flattened with gravity. Wren could hear only two heart beats outside of her own. Ptolemus: fast and humming–a musky adrenaline coated smell wafted towards her, one she knew came with his pleasure. And Oliver - Ptolemus's second-in-arms, an oblivion from the House Lorelan, probably more spy for Annabel than friend. Oliver's heart didn't settle as fast as Ptolemus and his entire body shook saturated with chaos and confusion and not a trace of joy.

"What did you do?" Wren asked, twirling on Ptolemus.

"Dealt with the problem." Ptolemus smiled.

He stooped. She though he might comfort her, eye level on one knee. But instead, he looked down at her skirt - red and stained - picked up the edge and wiped his knife.

"Oliver, get some of the servants to help bury these two. Make sure they know this is what happens when people snoop."

He only looked away from her to press Oliver into motion.

When he stood, he sheathed the knife into a pocket on his pants. Then fixed his hands on his hips and looked at the bodies, at her.

She looked back and shied away from the wide, frightened eyes of the servant girl and glanced at the man next to her. His white hair had streaks of blood through it, but she couldn't see his face through the slashes and the blood. Ptolemus had swiftly disfigured him before taking his life. She forced herself to look closer-the man frothed at the mouth, clear evidence of a poison pill.

"Don't just sit there wallowing in the filth," Ptolemus said. She came to shaky feet and faced him. His scent was shifting from the adrenaline coating to an endorphin rush - a mixture of pheromones that spoke of a sudden euphoria and relaxation. She had her own rushing sensations: sickness, disgust, realization. Her own panic–he was insane.

"What? Don't tell me you're gonna cry over a little blood. I thought you were a healer." Ptolemus teased, grinning.

"You... you... cut his face."

"And?" She gaped at him. He looked her over and then glanced down. "Careful, you're dripping. Don't get that on the hallway rug."

Blood was running down her hem and splattering the floor beneath her feet. The queasiness overtook her.

"You really aren't good with blood, are you?"

"It's not the blood." She clutched her stomach.

Oliver returned with two petrified servants. Ptolemus snapped his fingers and pointed. The man shrieked in recognition - his daughter? His brother? His friend? Maybe he wasn't good with blood and brutality.

"Come now, Wren, what's got you so worked up?"

Death to traitors seemed like an okay policy - one that she at least understood. She even could cope with the necessity of coercion and pain as a tool for information. But she could not believe the pleasure she smelled on him, that she could not reconcile.

"You're making me think that what they told me about you was right." She barely got one foot in front of the other on her way out the door. His hand reached for her elbow, but she jerked away.