Chapter Two
“Seriously,” Michelle said as the woman walked towards her. “That…that thing…”
The woman held out a hand to help Michelle off the ground. Michelle grabbed it, feeling the dampness of the creature’s blood on the woman’s skin, and was heaved back onto her feet without any apparent effort.
“Let’s get you home,” the woman said, clearly determined not to answer or explain anything. She picked up the blood-stained coat where she’d dropped it earlier.
Michelle let herself be led to the door of the apartment building.
She mechanically took her keys from her shoulder bag, moving through the motions she had repeated hundreds of times, their familiarity now feeling fragile.
The woman followed her inside. She walked behind her on the staircase and through the corridor up to her front door.
Michelle’s hand shook as she put the key into the lock.
The familiar sight of her apartment, of all of her things, of the life she had lived contentedly over the last couple of years, no longer felt as steady a foundation as they had before.
She walked in and turned on the light, not surprised when the woman followed and closed the door behind her.
Michelle dropped her bag onto the ground and turned towards the woman, crossing her arms to hide the shake of her hands. “So?”
The woman sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Some of it had come loose from its ponytail, framing her face. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
Without a word, Michelle walked to the kitchen cupboard, her knees unsteady. “It’s…it’s…” Pain radiated across her face, causing her eyes to water. Black spots danced in her vision.
“Please sit down.” The woman led her to a chair and slowly lowered her into it.
The tap hissed for a moment as she washed her hands of the grime that covered them.
Then, she was back with the first aid kit.
Without any hesitation, she unwrapped some sterile gauze and started dabbing some disinfectant onto Michelle’s face.
In the bright light of the kitchen, Michelle got her first proper look at her.
Her long, straight hair shone golden except where the creature’s blood had darkened it.
Her eyes were green, her long eyelashes giving a softness to her face.
She didn’t wear any make-up, not even to cover the silvery scar running through one of her eyebrows, down across her temple, disappearing in her hairline.
Michelle wondered what it would be like to trace that line with her fingertips.
The woman was incredibly beautiful, like an from Greek myth.
She looked like a woman who could face anything.
Her touch was unexpectedly gentle, her hand cupping Michelle’s chin soft and warm.
Despite the searing pain of the disinfectant on the wound, she found herself leaning into the touch, finding a moment of solace in the contact with another solid, human being.
It didn’t hurt that she was also gorgeous.
“I’m sorry it got to you,” the woman murmured, carefully wiping Michelle’s cheekbone.
Intent on her work, the woman’s face was so close.
Michelle could see every individual eyelash, the dewiness of her mouth.
Up close, she looked almost vulnerable, a sharp contrast to the fierce woman who had expertly wielded a knife only moments ago.
Michelle closed her eyes, using the pain as an excuse.
Now was not the time to swoon at the potentially dangerous woman standing in her kitchen.
She blamed the lack of any romantic action in her life. It had been too long.
Closing her eyes, however, brought back images of the horrible creature. She saw it coming at her again and again, its strangely shaped limbs outstretched.
She opened her eyes. “What was that thing?” she finally asked.
Her voice came out almost as a whisper. It was a question that held immense weight.
What she was actually asking was not only what that creature had been, but also who this woman was and what role she played in all of it.
Michelle couldn’t grasp how her safe, almost boring life had turned into this: being attacked on the street in the middle of the night by… whatever that was.
She didn’t expect a reply. The woman continued to clean the scratch on her cheek. Michelle was surprised when she started to speak. She almost sounded apologetic.
“You were right before. I think people, without realising, instinctively know one when they see it. It was a demon.”
“A demon,” Michelle repeated. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry.
“Yes. A tenebris, to be more specific. Some demons are powerful enough to walk the earth without being summoned. A tenebris, however, has to be summoned.”
Michelle mulled on that for a moment. “Who summoned it? And why?”
Silence followed. The woman stared at her intently. Michelle felt caught by her intense gaze. “I think,” she said, “that it was coming for you.”
“Me?” Michelle said incredulously. This idea was even more preposterous than the existence of demons.
Even if she could accept that supernatural creatures made of nightmares stalked the streets of London, there was absolutely no reason why anyone would want to set one loose on her.
She was a nurse, for God’s sake. Though the parents of patients could sometimes get belligerent, often out of fear for their child, she couldn’t imagine any of them sending a demon her way.
Other than them, she didn’t live an exciting enough life to have ever made any enemies.
This must have all been one massive mistake. It had to be some weird fever dream that she would wake up from tomorrow.
“I don’t know why,” the woman said. “Nor do I know who sent it. But I intend to find out.” For a moment, they sat suspended, the woman still cupping Michelle’s chin in her hand. Then she retreated, closing the first aid box. Michelle found herself missing her touch. At least that had felt real.
The woman continued. “I’m afraid you can’t stay here tonight. While I don’t think whoever summoned the demon is going to try again immediately, it’s not safe here. You’ll have to come with me.”
“Come with you where?”
“I can take you to a place where you will be safe. There will be more people like me to protect you. I realise this is quite a shock to you, but I’m asking you to trust me. I wouldn’t take you from your home if I didn’t think it was necessary.”
Michelle considered the tall, muscular woman standing in the middle of her kitchen, splattered with gore.
She had seen how strong she was, how fast, how she had stabbed a creature and made it disappear.
If she’d wanted to hurt Michelle, there would have been plenty of opportunities.
She looked at her open expression, her large green eyes pleading.
She thought about how gentle her hands were, and how even the memory of the demon created a pit of fear in her stomach.
She could not imagine sleeping in her bed tonight, knowing that something like that could come after her again.
“I’m not sure I trust you,” Michelle said, wrapping her arms around herself. There were more questions in her mind than she thought she could handle answers to.
The woman didn’t seem offended. “That’s fair enough.”
Michelle looked around her apartment. The second-hand furniture she had collected over the years.
The laundry bag sitting beside the sofa, exactly where she had left it this morning.
The pictures of friends and family on the walls, all smiles.
Somehow it was all wrong. “But I also don’t think I can stay here.
” Not while the image of the demon still lingered on her corneas.
“You will stay with us,” the woman said in a definitive tone.
She slipped a phone from her pocket, swiped a couple of times, and pressed it to her ear.
“Hey, it’s me. Could you come pick me up?
We’ve got company.” Without waiting for a reply, she ended the call and focused back on Michelle.
“You may wish to pack anything you may need for the next couple of days.”
“Right.” She would need her toothbrush. Underwear, socks.
A couple of changes of clothes. All she had to do was grab some of these everyday items. Yet somehow she couldn’t make herself stand up, couldn’t force herself back into action.
A tremor ran through her arms, and she couldn’t make it stop.
Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t even know your name,” Michelle said, her voice straining past a sob that was trying to escape.
Immediately, the woman was by her side, gently grasping her hand between her own.
“It’s Lavinia. What’s your name?”
“Michelle,” she sniffed.
The woman’s face was blurred by Michelle’s unshed tears.
Still, she recognised the steel in Lavinia’s eyes, an edge that would be terrifying if it had been aimed at her.
The woman knelt on the ground at her feet.
“Michelle. I promise you that we will protect you. I will protect you.” It sounded like a vow.
* * *
On Lavinia’s steady insistence, Michelle managed to throw some basics into a rucksack within fifteen minutes.
Meanwhile, the warrior woman tried to wash as much of the creature’s blood off her arms and face as she could in the kitchen sink.
Michelle had caught a quick look at the scratch on her own face in the bathroom mirror as she packed her toothbrush.
It looked a lot like a chemical burn with some local abrasion, stretching along the curve of her right cheekbone, skin bright red and angry.
It seemed pretty superficial, and unless demons had some sort of poison or something that she didn’t know about, it would probably heal within a week or two. Michelle counted herself lucky. If the creature had scratched her eye… With a shudder, she had continued packing her bag.
Lavinia escorted her downstairs again, and as they left the apartment, Michelle found that she struggled to look at the spot where the creature had appeared.
She was glad that a sleek black car idled next to the building.
Lavinia opened the door for her and helped her inside, and within a moment lowered herself onto the leather backseat beside her.
Immediately, the car pulled away smoothly, driving down the quiet midnight streets of the London suburbs.
Michelle didn’t know much about cars, never having owned one as a born and bred city-dweller, but even she knew that the soft purr of the engine and leather seats meant that this was a very expensive car. Hell, it even smelled expensive.
“Michelle, this is Zachary, our driver. Zachary, Michelle is going to stay with us at the mansion for now. She’s had a rough night,” Lavinia said.
The man was in his forties, had a broad face and an easy smile.
He wore a neatly ironed white shirt without a tie.
In the darkness of the car interior, his expertly cut hair shone black.
He glanced at her through the rear-view mirror and smiled.
“Nice to meet you, Michelle.” His eyes flicked over to the side, and he frowned. “You look like hell, Vin.”
Lavinia didn’t seem fazed by the man’s directness. “Sorry. You might have to wash some demon blood out of the seats tomorrow, I didn’t have time to change.”
The man sighed deeply, like this was a common occurrence in his line of work. Perhaps it was. Nothing in Michelle’s world really made any sense anymore.
“So where are we going?” she asked. Out of London, that much was clear.
He had turned onto one of the large roads radiating out of the city.
Pools of streetlights flashed by as the car quietly glided down the road.
She should probably be nervous that she was in a car with two strangers, going to some unknown location.
It certainly wasn’t what her mother had taught her to do, but after the night she’d had, this seemed a safe as anywhere else.
“I’m taking you to our base, where I can keep an eye on you. It’s towards the north, past Nottingham.” It would be at least a couple of hours, then. It was a relief to leave the city, and its demons, behind. The more distance between Michelle and the creature, the better.
Still, she should probably let someone know where she was. If she was being kidnapped in some very elaborate way, at least someone should know where to start looking.
Michelle slipped her phone out of the bag at her feet.
Lines like a dense spider web traced across the glass screen.
Michelle winced. That was going to be expensive to fix.
She was still paying off the phone, and she couldn’t afford a new one any time soon.
Luckily, it sprang to life at her touch.
She opened up the conversation with her friend Iris and quickly tapped out a message.
She wrote that she was staying with a couple of new friends for the weekend, and shared the location on her phone.
She watched the little dot on the map steadily moving north for a moment.
Iris would see the message in the morning and would almost certainly be full of questions.
That was a problem for tomorrow. For now, Michelle felt a little better knowing that at least someone would know where she’d gone.
Even if she didn’t exactly know where she was going herself.
If the worst happened, at least Iris would have something to show the police. She smiled to herself at the thought of her short friend yelling at some tree of a detective. The movement pulled on the scratch on her cheek, and turned into a grimace.
Lavinia glanced at her, focusing on the wound. “Is it giving you trouble?”
“Not too much,” Michelle lied. She didn’t want to admit that the scratch throbbed with every beat of her heart.
She didn’t want to complain about her scratch when Lavinia was covered in them.
She was about to ask Lavinia about hers, when she caught a look at Lavinia’s arms. Michelle did a double take.
Even in the bad lighting, it was clear that the skin of her bare arms was smooth and unblemished.
She could have sworn…
“I should have given you some painkillers,” Lavinia said. “Zachary, when we get out of the city, let’s stop at a gas station and get some for Michelle.”
“No, that’s okay—” Michelle started. She didn’t want to be a bother.
“I insist,” Lavinia said with a smile to soften the steel in her voice.
Michelle couldn’t help smiling too. It wasn’t often that someone took care of her, instead of the other way around.
She settled deeper into the soft leather of the seat and let herself be carried to some mysterious place in the north of England, in the care of this beautiful warrior woman.