Stranger Stories 3

Braylen and Nanami

It was Braylen. The way she had heard of their relationship, it was a failing love story; childhood buddies, Sammy realized he had a crush on him when he was a teenager, tragic incident that resulted in the death of Raven's grandfather, Sammy's uncle. Sammy moves away. Huge fallout over sentient plants and zombies. Sammy figures out he can make people love him using magic. They have another fallout over that.

Now, Braylen dies for him.

By the time Raven got to the door to the roof, Arya was opening it. "Good. I need you to do something for me." she stumbled through the house, stopping every so often almost as if she had forgotten where she was. "Downstairs." she snapped her fingers, seeming a bit more like her old self. "There's... there's something there, I haven't seen it but..." she ran past a confused Hastur downstairs, almost tripping on the last few steps and pressing her hand on a stone on the wall. "There's voices. Behind here. I don't know if they belong to people, but..." she slumped to the ground, newfound energy quickly fading. "She could open it."

Hastur and Nita came down the stairs. Hastur had started to say something, but stopped, eyes fixated on a corner of the room. "Oh. hi."

Raven glanced at the corner he was talking to, fairly surprised to find something there. It was another figure who was just standing there, blanketed in shadows and smoke.

"Um... is someone there?" Nita asked. She and Arya had the same skeptical looks on their faces.

"You can't see it?" Raven said, motioning towards the smoky figure that was just beginning to clear.

"Her." the figure replied, stepping out of her shadow. Given the skin tone and facial features, she looked just like Hastur.

"Oh. Now I see her." Nita said, helping Arya up. Hastur just looked terrified. The death angel turned to face him.

"So this is where you've been. Where's your scythe? Don't tell me you don't have it."

"Hastur? Who is she?" Raven asked, looking back at Hastur. He looked just about two words away from running for it.

"Hastur? Is that what they're calling you? Honestly. You change your name every three days by now. It doesn't matter, just... come with me." she grabbed his arm, starting to leave. "And... you three? You might as well get the people in there out. One of them's already dead. I'll need to collect one of them." the stone Arya claimed were people behind crumbled, unveiling a tunnel that turned sideways, out of sight. Arya darted inside, Raven following. She ran into her almost immediately after she started, just as the tunnel opened up. Soon enough she realized why.

Arya had been right all along. There were people there. None of the ones looking up at them were familiar, until she started looking closer. When she did, she vaguely recognized one of them. An old friend she hadn't talked to since she was a kid. Arya tried to help the people who looked like they had been left to starve and die in the hellhole they were in while Raven stared at her old friend, trying to remember what made her stop talking to him. "Arya."

The vampire stopped, handing another white-haired child to Nita. "Yes?"

"This one's died. He used to be a friend of mine. That's why..." Raven said, trailing off at the sight of some on=f the young faces behind the stark white hair. White. Like her mother's. "That's why their hair's white. They've all died before."

Arya stopped, considering the option. "See if you recognize anyone else. I'm going to get the unconscious ones to Nita."

Raven nodded, turning her head slightly to the side and noticing an unconscious head of brown hair. She inspected the owner of the head, stopping. Recognizing the face, despite the longer, clearly dyed hair. Dyed brown before she died, apparently in Japan.

"Nami. Nami, wake up." Raven said, accidentally jolting her awake. She didn't mean to do it, but Nanami's eyes flickered open anyway, a small, fearful noise escaping her mouth before she relaxed, realizing it was Raven who had woken her up. She shook her head, crawling backwards until she hit the wall.

"You're not. You're not Raven. You..." she cocked her head, eyebrows furrowing. "What did you do the first day I moved in with you and Nita?"

"We ditched you to go practice magic. You were pissed and told my dad. He yelled at me for like a solid twenty minutes."

"Oh, hey, it is you." Nanami said, relaxing. Raven helped her up and to a shocked Nita, who almost immediately pulled Raven aside to ask whether they would tell them that they had died. It only took a moment for them both to agree that they wouldn't tell anyone but Nanami. Raven left to dispose of the body she had noticed was still in the tunnel. She turned to where she thought the old man's body would be, but it had disappeared. Confused, she went upstairs where Braylen and every other body on the floor was. Or used to be, really, considering that they were no longer there. The only evidence of the incident was the bloody wreckage of a living room Sammy and Braylen had left behind. Raven ran upstairs, hoping Eve's body was still there. She wasn't. The only people there were Sammy and Cody, who, although clearly there were a few side effects to Eve's blood, looked much better than he did beforehand. Before anyone could speak, she left, trying to figure out what else there was to do at the house on the top of the hill before she could leave. It would be better for the five people Eve had raised from the dead to not stay there, but then came the question of where Hastur and the strange woman he seemed to recognize went. Raven and Hastur had both recognized her as a death angel, so she had to assume that wherever she took Hastur, he would be safer, with hopefully a better grip on his current realm than if he had stayed with them. Raven, Nita, and Nanami could go back to their own house, and that would leave Sammy, Cody, Arya, and the other four of Eve's prisoners to go to Sammy's house. It was big enough that they could probably fit until they went somewhere else. Then at some point Raven's father would come back from looking after Summer and Seiji's house while they were in Japan. That raised another question. Of how would they explain the fact that Nanami had apparently died somewhere in Japan, but was somehow back. But, once all of that was cleared up, their lives could, possibly, return to normal.

Whatever that was.