"I should have known," I shook my head, spinning an old glass vial in my hands.
"The feeling was different this time,"
The room was dark, lit only by a few flickering candles casting dancing shadows of light across the worn stone walls and dirt floors. I leaned with my back against the wall, feeling a tired mixture of disappointment and relief. A pain in my chest reminding me there was more to do. I was set back. I had followed a false lead.
I watched the dust flutter, and for the first time in awhile, I felt weary.
The small one, Harley, was tucked in the corner of the room, his black suit now disheveled, clutching his arms as if he thought if he held himself tight enough, it would all go away. The shadows of the room intensifying the dark circles under his eyes, deepening his permanent glare.
"How could you have known?"
"It has to do with my gift."
I surveyed the room, eyeing the wrought iron door dividing us from the hallways beyond and stairs leading to the trapdoor outside we'd come through, the crumbled dirt and stone half walls and heavy wooden beams, the numbers carved into the ceiling. We were three stories under the church, a place no one knew existed but myself, and now these two.
At the other end there was a gate, heavy steel bars padlocked and chained. It's interior reeked of an unknown past, shackles bolted to its walls. A figure, crumpled, the only visible thing being the tuft of flax blonde hair, chest rising and falling, shivering, shallow breaths wrapped under the heavy curtain of sleep. I eyed the shackle binding his hands, heavy and rusted and unkind. I had never liked those shackles.
"Nothing will get through these doors, in or out," After descending the long staircases, through hallways and hidden doors and tunnels smelling of mold and age, I led them into one of the many rooms of the catacombs. I gripped the bars of the cell and shook it, upsetting dust and rattling the chains around them but not budging an inch. "They'll hold you,"
His gaze brimmed with wildness. "It's not enough. You haven't seen what the beast will do."
I had seen enough to trust. But he insisted we bind him in metal as well as enclose him in that box.
"Gift..."
A draft ran through the room, sending shivers over both of us. Harley took in a shallow breath, wrinkling his nose. "Most gifts are just well disguised curses,"
I pressed my lips together and looked away, setting the half-filled bottle with a thunk on the ground that unsettled it's dark, swirling contents.
"It was inherited, I didn't get a choice. But someone has to do it,"
"I'm sorry,"
"Forget it,"
"I wonder if he feels the same way,"
Our attention turned to Leon, the anticipation building for those short few minutes until moonrise.
"Maybe," I straightened up from the wall and turned my back. "You don't have to stay here, you know."
"I want to,"
"No, you don't."
"I need to. I need to see it for myself,"
As do we all.
"I need a reason to believe all of this is true,"
I couldn't blame him, but the feeling of his impaling stare brought me to believe he expected me to. I crouched, taking out the contents of my bag and lining them on the floor.
"Why? For someone you barely know? There's nothing in it for you if you help him,"
Three minutes.
Harley's tone cut sharp. "He's just a scared boy, like the rest of them."
"Like you."
"Like me,"
He sighed.
"I don't have a reason to go back anyway. The wedding was almost over and my dad will probably be too drunk to take me home,"
A silence. He averted my gaze, guiltily. Almost as if he had said something he shouldn't have.
"You're in luck then,"
I held out a dagger for him, a light one with maybe only four inches of blade. He reached out, wrapping his hand carefully around the grip, pulling it away as I released the point. "Because I might need you."
"What's this for?"
We sat cross-legged in the cell, Harley leaning against the door watching silently. I handed Leon the vial, the rial dark liquid sloshing against the sides of the glass slowly, sluggishly.
"Drink it quickly, it will help."
"Is it an antidote?"
He eyed me hopefully, holding the vial up to candlelight to see it's true color. Sickly blue, like the deepest depths of the sea.
"I don't know of any antidotes," I said blankly. "But it will take away the pain."
"So it's a drug?"
He lifted it carefully to his lips and swallowed a little of it, wincing at the vulgar taste.
"Yes."
We watched as he slumped, eyelids slowly closing, breath catching and then easing into a relaxed, even state. Washed under the heavy tide of rest.
There were no windows this far below the ground, but the full moon had a way of waking her children.
We stood up at the sound, the heavy growl that vibrated throughout the room, echoing against our insides and our very beings. Like puppet strings made taught, Halloway tensed
On shaking legs he pulled himself up from the dirt ground, leaning at an unnatural angle.
We watched. Breathed. Silent and still.
His eyes flew open. Like shattered glass, amber shards and floods of gold pierced us in a million pieces and pooled down from his eyes like tears. A bleeding heart, melting rock and molten lava. His body convulsed, mouth dribbling blood. Growling, screeching. Skin moving and flexing as if something inside was fighting to break out.
"Oh my god…"
Leon was no longer in the room with us. The creature that had taken his place was a creature of burning flesh and a thousand sharp, saliva coated fangs.
We watched as it tore its skin from his body, Dagger sharp bones protruding from its ragged, diseased hair, hunched over and seething.
We were frozen. Slowly it raised itself, inch after inch of dark, bristling fur. Eyes of golden flame, burning like coals into its deformed skull and steaming out in trails of coughed black smoke. White razorlike teeth, each one longer than my hand and drooling, oozing spit and blood.
Ten feet of sheer terror, tipping it's snout to the ceiling and letting out a shrill, scream-like howl.
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