Lucas ✔️

Forty-Five

Dad waved at me from afar, a large smile on his face. He was pasty and white and looked as though he wasn't completely there. I waved back, feeling my own smile grow as I walked towards him. The ground was soft, like kinetic sand between my toes.

"Lilith!" he yelled, a delay between his mouth and the sound that hit my ears.

I picked up my pace as I glanced behind me, noticing a darkness catching up. It swallowed the pale ground and white fog behind me and threatened to drag me down with it. I turned back and started running towards him with my hand outstretched.

"Lilith!" he cried more urgently, the smile dropping from his face as he held his hand out. My outstretched fingers brushed against the calloused tips of his just as the darkness swallowed us both.

"Lilith!"

My body shook, and I groaned, sitting up and instantly crying out in pain as my head throbbed madly.

"Fuck," I whispered, lifting my knees and resting my forehead on them, placing my hand at the back of my head where the pain was forming. It was wet and lumpy, my hand coated red when I pulled it away.

"Lilith! Thank god!" I turned to see Janie and Cole, both tied helplessly to a pair of poles across the yard.

"Janie? Cole?" I replied, trying to stand up. I fell back to the ground, my knees scraping against the rough tarmac and my head throbbing in pain. The world swirled, and it felt as though I was the only thing standing still.

"Stay down Lil!" Cole yelled, a chain rattling as he struggled. "Your head is bleeding."

"What happened?" I asked them, my voice cracking as I looked around.

The yard was wide and long, metal shards sticking up on the left and a pile of crushed cars behind me. There was something dark hanging in the sky which looked like a style of crane.

"Where are we?" I asked Janie and Cole, looking back at them as I gingerly touched my head again.

"I think it's the scrap yard," Cole said calmly, sending Janie a worried glance as she shivered.

It was cold – the type of cold that told me I had been knocked out for a lot longer than I originally thought. The scrap yard had large flood lights focussed right on us, making it nearly impossible to see out into the darkness. I pulled my hand away and frowned at the fresh blood on it. I needed to stop the bleeding and find a way to get Janie and Cole free. Whoever had locked them up had obviously brought me here too, and I didn't have to think hard to figure out this probably had something to do with Lucas. The thing is, I didn't want to have anything to do with Lucas, nor with the gold ring weighing down on my neck.

"What are you doing?" Janie asked as I ran my hands along the ground, picking up a small, rusty nail.

I didn't bother answering her as I pulled my shirt off, painfully catching a blood-crusted clump of hair. I flipped the shirt around, grabbing the hem and pushing the nail through the material. After repeating a couple of times there was a hole large enough for me to bite and I pulled roughly. The shirt ripped smoothly, but not that evenly, leaving me with a long strap of material and a dodgy-looking crop top.

Janie and Cole stayed silent as I dropped the shirt to the ground and took the material, pulling as much of my hair out of the way as possible as I wrapped the material around my head. Pain bloomed from the base of my head and I briefly wondered if I should be wrapping up a head injury but decided stopping the bleeding was the best course of action – especially if the pool of blood behind me was any indication. I couldn't afford to lose any more as I needed to get us out of here.