Page 8 of Lower World
It couldn’t have been easy for her to see monsters breaking into her home, the one place she expected to be safe. The shock she was experiencing must be the reason her fingers were stiff around the handle of the breadknife. Or so I thought, until the tips of my fingers grazed the knife in my attempt to take it from her and a strong electrical zap sent me flying into the doorframe and whatever was left of the front door. I landed on dead bodies, bouncing off them with a groan.
“It wasn’t me,” Alice squeaked when I looked at her. Her head was trashing left and right, sending the glasses flying off her face. “I swear I didn’t do it.”
“I know you didn’t,” I rushed to assure her so she didn’t go into full-on panic mode. “ Just breathe, Alice. I know you’d never hurt me.” Both hands at my sides lifted in a placating gesture, and I prayed that I wouldn’t topple over.
“I wouldn’t, Brooklyn. You must believe me.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, mixing with whatever blood sprayed her skin. Her dark hair had escaped her messy bun, and tendrils of it were sticking out wildly around her ashen face. “I don’t know why it’s glued to my hands. I used it earlier and it didn’t have anything on the handle, least of all glue.”
“We will remove it, I promise,” I assured her, and I wished I was as confident in my words as I sounded. “Can you stay here so I can check on Dominic? Just hold the knife away from you so you don’t hurt yourself. It’s a lot sharper than it should be. Can you do that?”
Her head bobbed frantically, while she kept her eyes on the knife as if it’d jump and bite her if she wasn’t staring at it. I took that as confirmation that she would do what I told her since it was as good as I was going to get from her at that moment. Slowly, I inched toward the entrance to the living room, keeping tabs on her from the corner of my eye. Each move made my stiff clothing rub against the cuts and bruises on my skin, and I had to clench my jaw so I didn’t whimper. Atua were nearly impossible to kill, but that didn’t spare us the pain when we were hurt. If anything, with our heightened senses we experienced double than our human cohabitants.
I maintained my balance with one hand gliding across the wall and moved with measured steps until I stopped between the living room and the kitchen. A quick glance in the kitchen made my sluggish heart skip a beat. A dead Atua was sprawled in the middle of it, his head a couple of feet away from his body. Glass from the broken window was sprinkled around him on the floor, reflecting the yellow light that made the shards stuck in the wide puddle of blood twinkle like stars.
I watched Alice sideways.
My human friend was the only one that was in the kitchen when the guardians attacked. It was where she got the knife from. And apparently she decapitated an Atua. Something not many supernaturals were able to do. I was sure he’d underestimated her since she was human, but still, it took me a moment to process what I was seeing. Turning away from it for the time being, I placed one foot over the threshold of the living room so I could have Alice still in sight.
“Dominic?”
The shifter was standing in the middle of the room, surrounded mostly by body parts. From my quick perusal, I couldn’t find a whole body among the limbs littering the floor. Dried blood matted his usually shiny black fur, lumps of it clustered around his front legs and wide shoulders. His ears were still pinned to the back of his head, and he curled his upper lip to snarl at me, his tail lashing behind him. Chills slithered down my spine when his glowing emerald eyes pinned me in place.
“It’s Brooklyn.” Holding myself still in case any twitch would provoke him, I had to breathe through my mouth so I didn’t faint. “You know me, remember? We are in this mess together, but I need you to snap out of it right now.” The warning rumble coming from deep in his chest spread numbness though me.
If he attacked me, there was no way I could stop him from killing me.
I was barely standing on my feet.
“I know you are in there, Dominic, and that you’re reacting on instincts right now from the adrenaline. Alice needs our help.” When the panther snarled and lowered as if ready to pounce, I rushed to get the words out before he attacked. “She’s not hurt, I swear. We protected her. All the guardians are dead, but we have another problem.” Those emerald orbs narrowed on me. “I can’t see if you’ve been hurt, but I am. I’m barely standing on my feet, Dominic.” Showing weakness was out of character, but I didn’t see another option to get him to shift back. “I need you to shift so we can help her before she hurts herself.”
Nothing happened.
We stared at each other, the panther and I, neither of us blinking. It occurred to me that he might be hurt and couldn’t shift because his animal would block him to protect him from the pain. If that was the case, neither Alice nor I were safe around him. Until he healed, he would attack with intent to kill anyone that was a threat while he was wounded. That theory went down the drain when the panther sat back on his haunches, his long, thick tail curling around him. He sat there like a house cat all hulked out, glaring at me expectantly.
I frowned at him.
“I don’t have time for games, Dominic, I need you to shift back.” He tensed, and if a large cat could look suspicious, the shifter sported that look.
That was when it hit me.
Dominic was waiting to see if I would force him to shift with my ability. The damn shifter was testing me while I could barely hold onto my consciousness, and I’d never been more hurt or insulted. I could no longer see Alice thanks to the dark spots that continuously spread around my vision, and the speeding of my heartbeat from Dominic’s shitty behavior just added to it. The hurt, anger, and blood loss did their damage, and my knees buckled where I stood. The room spun around me, raising bile to burn the back of my throat, and I started to go down.
As if from far away, I heard Alice shout my name, but there was nothing I could do to stop what was about to happen. A million thoughts swirled through my mind, the loudest one being that I did everything I could to show both of them I wasn’t like the rest of the Syndicate. I didn’t deserve to be looked at with suspicion when I was always ready to give my life to save both of theirs.
Couldn’t Dominic see that?
My body tilted, and as I went down, I could’ve sworn the panther shifted and Dominic darted toward me, but I was already too far gone to know if it was true. I hoped with everything in me that he truly did so he could help Alice. Any other scenario was unacceptable for my muddy brain.
Darkness took me before I hit the floor.
6
“Hold it higher. Are you mentally impaired, human?”
The deep grumble pierced the thick darkness in which I was drowning. It felt like it had been an eternity where I drifted through the pitch-black space with no direction in mind. All I remembered was the cold. A bone-deep chill that sank into the core of my being and spread through every inch of me. I thought I’d never warm up. When I became aware of my extremities, I also realized that I was shaking so bad that someone was restraining me so I didn’t jump off of whatever I was laying on. It wasn’t a bed because it was too hard, even for the threadbare mattress Alice used for sleeping.
“If you call me mentally impaired or human again, I swear to everything holy I’m going to stab you with this breadknife in your nose.” Alice’s voice was becoming clearer and stronger the longer I listened.
“You are human.” Deadpanned, the same deep grumble told me it was Dominic insulting my friend again, unintentionally.
