Ontario, Canada
The Swain House
Thud.
“What the heck was that?” Aubrey called out to her husband.
“I have no clue,” Darren said, wearing a confused expression on his face.
Thud.
“There it is again!”
“Sounds like it is coming from the roof. I'm going to go check it out. It's probably the stray cats getting into mischief.”
“Okay, you do that. I am going to check up on Elizabeth,” she said, heading down the hallway to their daughter's room.
Darren climbed up the stairs to the door that opened up to the roof, cranking it open, shivering as the chilly Canadian air wrapped around him. The full moon, shining bright in the starry night sky, provided just enough light for him to able to see into the dark.
Two stray cats played about, hissing as they pounced at one another, one thud after the other, just as he had predicted. Darren grinned as he shooed them to the stairs that led to the roof. The cats sprinted down it with no effort, resuming their rough-housing soon as they touched ground.
Crash. A loud scream came from downstairs; he instantly recognized it as his wife. He turned quickly, running for the door, just as it slammed shut.
“What the...?”
“Hello, dad,” came Annabelle's voice as she grabbed her father, lifting him as though he was a feather above her head. She drifted to the edge of the roof, studying the ground.
“Annabelle, put me down this instant!” he boomed.
“You should of thought about that before you 'behaved like a jerk', Dad.” She hurled his body out into the open space, watching as he fell through the air, landing with a sickening splat on the ground beneath. Blood and brain sprayed out onto the pavement around him.
She cackled, surprised at how awesome that had made her felt. One down, one to go.
She cracked open the door, hopping onto the staircase and following them down into the familiar kitchen, ignoring the stench of burnt food. She sensed Dragon in the room her parents used as an office as she walked stealthily through the house, opening the door to the office.
Her mother was cowering in fear in the corner, her hands bound with a cord behind her. She glanced at her daughter; relief replaced the terrified expression she wore on her face.
“Oh, Annabelle, I am so glad to see you!” she exclaimed, “call the police, please!”
Annabelle curled her lip, staring at her mother; what a pitiful human being.
“Dragon, just gag her and have your way with her. I do not care about this bitch.”
“What, Annabelle, no--” her cry was stifled as Dragon shoved a second rope between her teeth, twirling it around her face, tying it in a knot behind her head.
“Sorry, mother, you and dad should have maybe thought of the repercussions of abandoning your daughter in her time of need,” she said, hatred flaring in her eyes as she stared down upon her mother.
She closed the door just as Dragon tore the clothes off the trembling woman's body, topping her body with his, forcing himself in her.
The screams from the office seemed to wisp after her as she entered her little sister's room, whom perked up immediately, her brown eyes dancing with excitement when she saw Annabelle.
Elizabeth was the one person that loved Annabelle without judgment. She was also young enough to not comprehend the reasons for the screams sounding outside her door; she figured mommy and daddy were playing one of their games.
“Annie!” she squealed, reaching out for her big sister.
“Hey, squirt.” Annabelle smiled as she retrieved her sister from the crib, playing with the tousled, long black hair. The human side shone through the demon for a moment, love for her sister beaming in her heart.
“Mommy and daddy told me you weren't coming back.”
“Well, mommy and daddy were wrong,” she said, her eyes tinkling red as another smile, twisted in its nature, appeared on her face.
“Annie, your eyes changed color! Why did they do that, Annie?”
“You'll find out in just a minute, squirt,” Annabelle said as the screeching stopped. With her sister cradled in one arm, she opened the door to the office. Her sister's high-pitched screeches filled the quiet house.
Their mother lay sprawled out in the middle of the floor, her legs yanked open, her mouth remaining ajar in an eternally silent scream. Half of her intestines had been scattered throughout the room, the other half dangling from her stomach, and the rest, that had been used to asphyxiate her, remain twirled around her neck. The demonic language Annabelle could decipher now was handwritten in the dark liquid that coated the walls.
Hovering over the body was Dragon, his eyes scarlet red, his rows of blade sharp teeth exposed.
“I bet half of Canada heard that bitch. I thought you gagged her?”
“I removed that gag as you were leaving the room,” Dragon said. “I'm sorry, but I just relish hearing my victims scream for their life as I kill them.”
“You are sick, Dragon,” Annabelle teased as he gazed upon the wailing toddler cradled in her arms.
“Who is that?” he growled.
“This is my little sister, Elizabeth. She's almost three. I think she's a wee bit frightened.”
“What do you suppose we do with her?”
Annabelle looked at her sister once last time, the love she had felt only minutes before trying to override the evil that resided in her. Once again, Annabelle was unsure on how to proceed, but the moment of indecision passed as quickly as it came.
She tossed the little girl at Dragon, who leaped ravenously at her sister, tearing into her. Elizabeth's blood and insides splattered out of her, her screams lasting for only a nanosecond. Her blood splashed onto the interior of the office to mix with their mother's.
The urge to vomit came over Annabelle as she backed out into the hallway. She stood there, frozen, unable to believe what she had done.
Silence filled the townhouse as Dragon joined his bride in the hallway, closing the office behind him.
“I'm going to be honest. That was too much. I loved my sister,” Annabelle confessed after Dragon finished devouring the toddler.
“I love you, Annabelle Swain,” Dragon said. “I tried to make it as painless as possible for your sister. I just broke another code of conduct: don't harm children.”
A rain cloud of guilt towered over her, but like the many emotions she had been experiencing, it passed. “I love you too, Dragon.”
She peered at the hallway around them, fidgeting almost awkwardly.
“Uh, so what now?”
“Well, I am going to promise you something,” he declared, “as long as you're with me, I will treat you the way you deserve to be treated; nature you can enjoy in peace and all of the cats you could ever want to talk to. You'll never be treated as a pariah for loving the critters the way you do.”
That was her heaven come true. She beamed at him.
Dragon smiled, “...on one condition, though, Annabelle.”
“Anything for you.”
“You arise with me every hundred years to slaughter humans.”
She hesitated for the thousandth time that night. She disliked people, but going on a murder mission was an entirely different subject. Could she really do that?
The only human that had truly loved her for who she was had been her toddler sister, and look what that love had rewarded her: sacrificed as a meal to a demon. She reminisced the treatment she had been given by everybody else for her seventeen years of life; how the ones she should have been able to trust with it had betrayed and abandoned her.
The hesitation disappeared.
“I agree to your conditions.”
“Our work here is done then.”
Dragon slipped his hand in hers, tipping her chin up to look into her eyes, splaying his hands into her hair as he kissed her for the first time. The kiss seemed to melt her bones into jelly as her knees threatened to buckle underneath her; her body went limp and she allowed herself to press into him.
“Are you ready, Annabelle?” Dragon asked through the kiss.
The gray three-dimensional tunnel that had appeared during her transformation enveloped the space around them, the townhouse fading into the background.
“Yes.”
He kissed her again as the tunnel swallowed them whole and they descended into slumber for the next hundred years.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
