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  I looked to Angie, wanting to gauge her thoughts, and, assuming I read her frown right, she was having the same doubts as me. Sensing Lauren was close to snatching up one of the tubes, I clutched her hand, and pulled her closer toward me, drawing the attention of all three men to me directly.

  I glared back at Navan, trying to infuse my posture with confidence.

  “We’re not going to agree to drink some random substance,” I stated, attempting to keep my voice even. “And you can’t keep us here—that’s a criminal act. I suggest you let us out now, or believe me, you will get into trouble. We have friends and family who will notice our absence very quickly, and there are only a few people in this complete wilderness who could be culprits. Given that you literally just arrived here, it won’t take long for the cops to narrow it down to you.”

  I realized, as I stared into Navan’s rugged yet very humanlike face—save for the gray tint of his skin—that I was talking to him as if he were a normal person who would be scared of such things as the police force. Given that my brain hadn’t offered a better alternative yet, I was going to have to continue that hopeful train of thought… Which was probably a good thing for my sanity.

  There was an agonizingly long pause as the men looked back at me with unchanging expressions.

  “Guys,” Angie ventured, her voice shaking slightly. “You really just need to let us go. Please. We have family who love us and—”

  “I would hate to have to force you to drink this,” Navan cut in, once again completely ignoring what Angie and I had just said—and I became suddenly very aware of just how imposing he was. From the hardness of his stubbled jaw to the lines of his torso showing through his thin shirt, I realized he could easily follow through with that threat. His companions were not exactly pushovers either.

  And yet, despite the threat in his words, there was something about the condescension in his tone that made me want to reach out and slap him. Whoever the hell he was, he had no right to thrust some arbitrary rule upon us, when all we had done was come here to see if they were all okay. They’d refused to answer even a single question of ours, and he expected us to just drink whatever crap he shoved beneath our noses?

  “Sir,” I began, planting my hands on my hips. Anger was rising in my veins and making me feel suddenly bolder, stronger. “There is no way we are drinking anything in this house, and there’s nothing you can say to change that. It’s not like you’re exactly trustworthy, either. You told us you were workers, come here to fix up this property—and yet, it doesn’t exactly look like you’ve been doing much fixing up around here, does it?” I gestured around the dilapidated room. “Why the heck have you boarded up the windows? That doesn’t sound like fixing something up. Why were you all… crouched around that fire? What was that guy doing lying on the floor, groaning? Why is your skin gray, and why were you wearing wings?” There, I finally said it, and I could tell from the exhale Angie gave that she’d been hoping someone would finally voice that too. It hadn’t just been our imagination, I was sure of it. “What are you, really? What you doing here? And why the hell is this house the temperature of a sauna in the middle of freaking summer?” My pitch rose at my last question, as I became aware of just how horribly hot I was. My clothes were drenched in sweat—which had been cold at first, from the panic and the adrenaline, but was now as hot as my temper.

  As Navan and his companions stared back at me, I realized that I probably should’ve been more strategic in my questioning, and not spat out a barrage of questions at once, but my temper had gotten the better of me.

  “I assure you that it’s safe,” Navan replied evenly after a moment, his hand still outstretched. “It is, as I say, a memory potion.”

  “A memory potion?” Angie cut in, her voice also stronger than before. “Seriously, what do you take us for? Kindergartners?”

  Navan clenched his jaw, and although his face remained mostly controlled, there was the odd muscle twitch that told me we were testing his temper too. But I could hardly care anymore. This whole situation was absurd.

  Now that I thought about it, they hadn’t even asked us why we had come in here in the middle of the night in the first place. All they seemed to want was that we drink this potion that would knock us out. Ha. No way. It was dodgy as hell, and I was becoming more and more convinced that they were druggies who were members of some weird cult. That didn’t explain the superhuman strength with which I’d been thrown into this room, but then again, maybe the drugs they used gave them such power.

  “Yes, a memory potion,” Navan replied, and I could tell from his expression that he believed what he was saying—and fully expected us to believe it too. “As I thought I made clear already, we do not wish to harm you, simply to expel you from this place. Think of it as us doing you a favor. A big favor. Because my next move is going to be something a lot less pleasant than this scintillating conversation we’ve been having.”

  “Look,” I said, frowning. “I apologize that we barged in here—but I assure you, it was only because we heard someone yelling and we thought one of you might need medical assistance. You seem to not want any help, so let us go now, and I give you my absolute word that we won’t tell anybody, not even the pol—”

  Before I could complete my attempt at negotiation, Navan’s outstretched hand suddenly retracted, withdrawing the vials, which he stowed in the pocket of his pants. His shoulders convulsed, and there was a ripping sound, and then something rose behind him… wings. Large, black, hooked wings shot out from behind his shoulders, and then…razor sharp claws emerged from his fingertips. He bared his teeth, revealing a pair of white pointed fangs. His very skin seemed to darken, along with his eyes, as his whole being turned into what I could only describe as a beast.

  We were so stunned that it took us a few seconds to remember to scream. Lauren’s went off first, then Angie’s, followed by mine. We rushed to the back of the room, pressing our backs against the wall as if we could sink into it and emerge on the other side.

  The creature before us growled so deeply, the noise rumbled through my very core, before he spoke, in the same voice that… Navan had just been speaking in.

  “I told you this was going to be a lot less pleasant. So we’re going to have to do this the hard way, it seems… Perhaps a night in here will help you reconsider.”

  He remained standing before us a moment longer, as if he wanted us to drink in his monstrous form and burn it into our brains. Then his wings, claws, and fangs retracted as suddenly as they appeared. He turned, revealing the shredded back of his shirt where the wings had burst through, and stalked out of the room, the others following him silently. The door slammed shut and was bolted once again.

  Chapter Seven

  “Remind me which genius suggested we go chasing strange noises in the middle of the night?” Lauren wheezed, about five minutes after they had left the room. It took us that long to discover our voices again.

  There was no humor in her tone, just pure shock, and neither Angie nor I could bring ourselves to answer.

  The first thing I did was grab hold of my friends’ shoulders, squeezing them so hard they yelped, as my brain just wanted to be triply sure that we were not dreaming. We weren’t.

  We had stumbled upon some kind of supernatural creature. Not even my rational mind could doubt that any longer. What I had just seen was far too real, far too visceral—no amount of special effects could have pulled that off.

  Then what on earth were they? And what were they doing here?

  “T-These men are not human,” Angie finally said.

  “Glad I’m not the only one who noticed,” Lauren murmured, removing her glasses, which had misted up, and wiping them on her shirt. “So, maybe we should stop referring to them as men.”

  I looked around the room again, desperately hoping to find some loophole we had missed the first time.

  “We’ve got to get out of here before they return,” I whispered.

  It was maddening to
think that there were less than a few inches separating us from the outside; if only we could figure out how to break through the damn windows. I used my flashlight to amplify the light in the room given off by the two gas lamps on either wall, trying not to miss a single detail.

  I walked around the room slowly, examining everything—from the clock on the wall that had frozen at 9:05 AM, God knew how many years ago, to the chintzy floral green sofa, blanketed with dust.

  An idea slowly occurred to me, and I gazed directly up at the ceiling.

  It looked rickety, to say the least. There were fifteen long beams, stretching from wall-to-wall, and on top of that, it looked as if there was nothing but the floorboards of the room above, no plaster or cement. If we could somehow…

  “We need to build a tower,” Angie whispered, and I looked at her, realizing she had followed my gaze to the ceiling.

  “A tower,” Lauren repeated, now also staring at the ceiling. “You really think those wooden boards are loose enough?”

  I let out a breath. “We can only try. And we’d better do it fast.”

  Navan had said we would stay the night here, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t visit us again to intimidate us.

  And so we scrambled about the room, deciding the best way to go about this—which furniture to use, and in what order. We chose the small dining table first, then a coffee table, and above that, a basic dining chair. We were lucky the ceiling wasn’t very high.

  I took a step back, staring at the end result. It really didn’t look safe, and I had no idea whether it could take my weight. But there was no time to doubt.

  “I’ll climb it first,” I said, figuring that Angie was a bit too short for this, and I was more athletic than Lauren and would do a faster job.

  “Are you sure?” both of my friends asked.

  I nodded curtly, and then stepped onto the table. I climbed slowly, wincing each time the tower wobbled, but managed to make it to the top without the whole thing tumbling down.

  Breathing heavily, I looked up at the ceiling and stretched out my hands, beginning to feel the floorboards, my flashlight clenched between my teeth. It was as I had hoped—they were loose—and from here, I could even see gaps, directly exposing the room above.

  I just had to hope nobody was up there. When the guys had left us, it had sounded like they had retreated deeper within the ground floor of the house, so hopefully that was where they were staying.

  I fumbled with the floorboards within my reach. They all felt pretty weak, like a hard enough shove could dislodge, maybe even crack, them. The wood had gone soft with age, the nails rusty and loose. This old house really was a wreck.

  Lauren handed me up a piece of wood Angie had found in one corner, which had probably broken off from some piece of furniture. I gripped it hard, and pressed its tip between one of the cracks, using it as leverage until the board loosened and gave way, creating a hole directly above me. I then worked on the boards on either side, until I had created just a large enough gap for me to squeeze through. Given how fragile I had just proven the floorboards to be, I felt nervous about trusting them with my weight but… Here goes.

  I placed my hands through the hole and gripped its edges, and managed to haul myself upward, until my head and shoulders appeared above the floor. I gazed around anxiously at this new room. It was dim, except for the light trickling through from the hallway. The windows were boarded up here too.

  I lifted myself the rest of the way, until I was up through the hole and on all fours, floorboards groaning beneath my weight. I looked back through the hole, and my friends gazed up at me, their eyes shining with fear.

  “There’s nobody up here that I can see,” I whispered down. And then I paused, realizing that it made no sense for them to come up, too. Not only was I worried about the floorboards’ strength—perhaps they were the reason those creatures appeared to be sticking to the lower floors?—but also, we were much more likely to be caught with the three of us lumbering around.

  “What is it?” Angie asked.

  I hesitated, unsure of how they were going to react. “Guys, I think you should stay down there for now.” They opened their mouths to respond, but there was no time to argue, and the more we spoke, the more likely it was the creatures would hear us. “Trust me on this,” I whispered. “I’m gonna try to figure out where they are in the house, then locate an exit. If… If I think I can make it out, I’m just gonna run for it and get help, okay? There’s more chance one of us will make it out of here than all three at the same time.”

  Their faces fell, and I could see what a hard pill that was to swallow. I felt it too, but it was the only way to go about this.

  They looked at each other, then back at me, and nodded.

  “Okay,” Lauren said. “Just please be careful, Riley.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and nodded, then backed away from the hole, staying on my hands and knees as I crawled to the open doorway. Once I reached it, I stilled, listening. Everything seemed quiet. There wasn’t even the faintest sound of the injured guy—perhaps he had fallen asleep.

  Straight ahead was the staircase, and I moved toward it. I peered down cautiously until I was certain it was empty. I wasn’t ready to attempt going down the stairs yet, as I worried about how much noise that would make. As I had told my friends, the first thing I had to do was pinpoint the monsters’ location, assuming they were still in the house. I passed the staircase and crawled deeper along the corridor. Splinters wedged into my hands as I moved, and the floor was rough on my knees, but none of that mattered—all my brain could focus on was the location of our strange neighbors.

  After a couple of minutes, I detected the sound of deep voices. I was sure they were coming from below the room directly opposite me, so I crawled into it, more careful than ever to move slowly and avoid creaking, until I was positioned directly over the room. I pressed my ear against the floorboards, and held my breath, listening.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t sense their arrival,” a voice muttered.

  “Navan already warned us of this,” a voice I had not heard before spoke up. It sounded older than any of the others—which made me realize that there were more of these creatures than we had seen. His voice held a maturity that I would attribute to a human in his late fifties. “This level of heat renders a coldblood’s senses practically worse than a human’s.”

  Coldblood?

  “Anyway, what’s done is done,” the older voice continued. “There’s not a lot we could have done to prevent it, and I would rather focus on deciding what to do next.”

  “What if, come morning, they still refuse to take the Elysium?” another voice asked. It sounded like Navan’s brother. “It’s not like we can bring them back to Vysanthe.”

  Vysanthe?

  “They will take it,” said the deep voice I now clearly recognized as Navan’s. Chills shot down my spine as I recalled the demonic vision of him.

  “They’re going to have to take it within twelve hours of their arrival here,” the older voice pressed, “or even the Elysium won’t be an option, and we will have no choice but to knock them off.”

  “That is not an option,” Navan replied pointedly, and in spite of all the other questions crowding my brain, I wondered why he appeared to be so against “knocking us off.” Maybe he was afraid of the police after all? I couldn’t imagine why he would be, when they could all just apparently fly away.

  My curiosity burned, wishing I could better gauge his expression, and that of everyone else in the room. I lifted my head, searching the floor for cracks. I spotted one that I figured might just be large enough to peer through, a few feet away, and cautiously made my way over to it. The floor was thin enough that I could see through the hole and still hear what they were saying at the same time.

  The room was small, about the same size as the one we had been locked in, and lit by three gas lamps. It was bare, except for three long sofas positioned around the edges, and some sort of co
ffee table in the center, which held a round steel bowl filled with a large pile of the same silver vials Navan had showed us earlier.

  Navan, in his humanoid form and still wearing his ripped shirt, was prowling around the room, while three other men were reclining on the sofas. The three men consisted of Navan’s brother, the fair-featured man with long blond hair who I guessed might be Ianthan, and another man with similar fair features, but clearly older… though not nearly as old as his voice sounded, which was odd. He looked perhaps in his late 30s or early 40s. I wondered if he and Ianthan were related.

  Silence engulfed them as Navan continued to prowl, and I tried very hard to breathe only as much as necessary. My eyes bulged slightly as Navan’s brother leaned forward and plucked one of the vials from the bowl, opened the lid, and downed it. Ianthan did the same, which made me realize that those silver tubes were probably just general containers they used for various liquids—in this case, some kind of beverage. Surely, they wouldn’t be taking Elysium.

  The older blond-haired man, after reaching for his own silver container and drinking from it, interrupted the quiet. “Killing them might have to be an option, unless you force the Elysium down their throats,” he stated. “We simply can’t afford to have leaky holes. Those girls will not keep quiet, despite what they may promise you now—especially not after your display, Navan.”

  Navan stopped walking, and I could make out the deep scowl settling over his face as he looked at the older man. “Jethro, this conversation is going around in circles. Just leave this mess to me—I’ll deal with it, one way or another. In the meantime, I suggest you all get some sleep.”

  With that, he headed for the door and left the room, closing it sharply behind him.

  Panic suddenly washed over me, as I feared Navan might be heading upstairs and would find me, but his footsteps did not reach the staircase—rather, they seemed to be heading deeper through the house, in the opposite direction. Hopefully, he was retreating to another room downstairs to rest.