A month after Trenton and Ariel's imprisonment.
Orion
"Wake up," a voice ordered, poking me hard on my sides. "Come on, Orion. You have to help her."
"I'm up," I grumbled out, my voice coming out hoarse and scratchy. "You can stop poking me now, Scotty. And who am I supposed to be helping?"
Opening my eyes, I met his gaze and to my astonishment, there were tears gathering in his eyes. I rushed to stand up, ignoring the dizziness from the sudden movement. "What happened?" My voice sounded sharp and held a tinge of fear that I couldn't hide.
It was rare to see him cry. Scott barely cries. He gets angry and cusses a lot, but never does he show his tears. And then I remembered what he said.
"Wait," I croaked, feeling hope in my chest that quickly accompanied with fear. "You said her...Are you talking about Ariel?" I looked around the room as if she just magically appeared in the basement after God knows how long.
It was so hard to keep time in this wretched basement.
My eyes stopped roaming when I saw that the rest of the guys were standing in front of the bathroom door. It didn't take me long to realize that something was seriously wrong. They were all going haywire.
Leon was banging on the door, demanding the person to open it and I knew that without a doubt that she was back.
I staggered my way across the room and pushed my way past the others.
"Ariel?" I asked softly, while putting my finger to my lip to shut everyone else up. The louder they shouted, the more I knew she wouldn't listen to us ."Open the door, Angel."
There was a pause where everyone held their breath, secretly praying that she would respond.
"I have to do something," she finally whispered from the other side of the door and I closed my eyes, feeling alive once again. It was so long since I heard her beautiful voice.
So long, indeed.
Leon opened his mouth to shout, but I placed my hand roughly over his mouth. I pulled it back quickly though, when I felt his fangs graze my hand.
He glared at me and I shook my head back, returning a glare of my own.
"Not now," I mouthed to him and he rolled his eyes in response.
"What are you doing in there?" I asked softly, returning my attention to where it was needed most. "Please open the door."
A moment of silence passed as everyone held their breath.
"I need some time alone," she replied back and the lack of emotions in her voice scared me. It scared me a lot.
"Ariel, open the goddamn door!" Scotty shouted, no longer being patient with her. Even with his useless leg, he was still as determined as ever.
"Whatever is going on with you, we can help," Cameron shouted too, slamming the palm of his hand on the door. "We're your family."
Leon was back to pounding on the door with his fists and I knew that they were all hanging on a thin thread.
Even Arlo, who was the calm one out of all of us, was looking like he was in hell. Our eyes met, and I gave him a pleading look to do something about our current predicament.
If there was one thing I can count on Arlo for, other than his extremely high IQ, was the way he had with his words. He can be pretty damn convincing when he wanted to be.
Unfortunately all he did was shake his head back at me. It seemed he too was at a loss for once.
The sound of the water tap opening was heard and I strained my ears when I heard a soft noise that left me baffled. I couldn't pinpoint what the exact noise was but it left me breathless and worried.
"Ariel, what are you doing?" I asked, when the sound came again. It sounded like- no.
"Open the door!" I shouted, banging on the door and surprising everyone else with my sudden burst of energy. "Right now, Ariel!"
The others, hearing the panic in my voice, resumed trying to knock the door down as well. How weak have we come that a simple door left us all out of breath and faint?
Leon finally resorted to using his foot to bash the door and slowly but surely, the door broke away and hung on its hinges before dropping flat onto the ground.
However the state of the broken door was the last thing on anyone's mind.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Leon roared, and I jumped straight into action, ignoring all the profanities circulating the air from everyone.
My heart was shattering into tiny pieces but I knew that I had to ignore that too.
Ariel, our princess, was finally back. Only she didn't look quite the same and she certainly was not acting the same as before.
She was holding a pocket knife in her left hand while trying desperately to cut her right wrist. I couldn't believe my eyes and it left shivers down my back.
"Let go!" I shouted, my voice sounding foreign and strange to my own ears. I grasped her left hand trying to wrestle the knife out of her hand. She struggled hard to keep a hold of the nail and it pained me to use my size as an advantage against her.
When she growled in pain, my entire form filled with guilt, but I knew I couldn't be soft with her. Not now, at least.
I was able to finally relax a bit when the knife clattered to the floor at a safe distance from her reach. "Give me some tissues, Arlo. We need to stop the blood flow right now!" The cuts were already so deep and I knew that tissues weren't enough to fix the damage.
"She needs stitches, Orion!" Leon said, taking the next words right out of my mouth. He was keeping a tight hold on her right wrist, making sure to slow the blood flow.
All the blood dripping to the floor made me sick but knowing that it was Ariel's, that she herself did this, made me want to drop to the floor and howl in rage and despair.
"And that's too bad. None of us here are doctors," Scotty snarled back to Leon and went to grab more tissues. "We don't have an inkling of medical knowledge. Unless Arlo..." He looked at Arlo hopefully but his face crumbled when Arlo shook his head back at him.
"Even if I did know what to do, which I don't, we still need materials," Arlo said, grabbing the tissues from Scott's hand.
"And if you haven't noticed, we're living in a basement where we don't even have windows," Cameron commented roughly, pulling the ends of his hair with his fingers. "Guys, what the fuck should we do?"
By this point, all of us were crammed inside the small bathroom looking frazzled and filled with fear. Only Ariel was watching the flow of the blood with avid interest and I knew that time was slowly running out.
Maybe she finally did reach limit. Who knew what she went through, and the fact that Trenton was noticeably not here, worried the fucking hell out of me.
"Call Lucius," I ordered, knowing the bastard was supposed to be our last resort, but also seeing that we had no other resorts to turn to. "Or Scar-man. Or anyone. Get one of them down here immediately."
"No," Ariel whispered, speaking the first words since we entered the room. "I'm fine."
"No you fucking aren't," Leon shouted, grabbing Ariel's face in his hands. Her face, filled with grime and dirt, looked so fragile and small in Leon's hold. "Look at you! Why would you do this to yourself? Were you planning to leave us like this? Leave me? Get Lucius down here. I'm not letting her die." The last commands were directed towards Cameron who was already rushing to get out of the bathroom.
However as soon as Cameron was about to exit the bathroom, the broken door that was laying on the ground, shot up by itself before blocking his way completely. Every single person in the room froze and for a moment, we all looked around thinking Lucius was already here.
"What the-" Cameron muttered, looking at the door which was now placed back in its original position. "How did it...," His voice died down as he turned and looked at Ariel who by then, had everyone's full attention.
"You can let go of me, Leon," she said calmly, and Leon out of shock and disbelief, dropped his hands as if they weighed a ton.
"Ariel?" He asked softly, obviously at a loss of words. "Did you do that?"
She looked at every one of us before holding her wrist toward us. Slowly I dragged my eyes away from her face and looked at her wrist, where a moment ago was bleeding like a stuck pig. Now though, it was completely healed. As if there were no cuts to begin with.
"How?" I breathed, capturing her wrists in my hands and running my fingers across the smooth, porcelain skin. "Are you able to heal yourself now?"
She smirked, that same smirk she gave me once before, as she shook her head. "Not quite, Oreo."
She brought her wrists toward her body, before cupping her hands together. We all watched with avid fascination as fire ignited from her hands and continued to grow in size. We all took a step back as the fire grew until it formed the shape of a sword that was still doused in flames.
In the blink of an eye though, the fire looking sword turned into ice, and a sharp, dangerous weapon was made in front of our eyes. We all took another step back on instinct, not wanting the sword anywhere near our vicinity.
"Here," she said, and threw the sword at me to which my hand automatically caught. "That's for you, Oreo."
"Ariel," Leon said, looking at the sword in my hand with obvious confusion. "What the hell is going on? How are you doing this?"
She didn't reply as she continued to make more fire in her palms before changing them to ice swords again. Pretty soon, all the guys held the deadly weapons in their hands and all I can do is watch in awe at all of it.
If I didn't know any better, it almost appeared as if we're going to battle.
Ariel looked at each of us in silence and her eyes, her heterochromia eyes, slowly changed into a darker color. Unlike last time, where the pupils of her eyes disappeared, the irises of her eyes were the ones that changed colors.
Instead of her blue and green eyes, it was now a red tainted color.
Red as blood.
A crimson color. There were no other words to describe it and seeing how no one spoke up, it was obvious that I wasn't the only one.
"There are a few things that you should all know before we do anything," she said, giving each of us a pierce look.
"What is it?" Arlo broke the silence, still looking back and forth between the weapons in our hands and the change that occurred in her eyes.
"The most important thing we need to do is get the book back before we leave," Ariel said, looking at Arlo. "Without it, escaping is pointless."
"Okay?" Cameron chuckled, looking nervously at her. The way she talked and how calm she sounded about everything, worried the hell out of me. "And how exactly are we supposed to get the book with Lucius and his guard dogs sniffing around the place?"
"For that matter, how the hell do we even leave the basement?" Scotty asked, and looked down at his useless leg. He, as well as everyone else, knew that he was the weak link in the group seeing as he couldn't even move for a long distance without falling back down.
"Lucius is in Paris right now, hunting down the Werewolf Prince," Ariel said. "His name is Prince Loker and if he's killed, their kingdom will fall into pieces. You were right, Arlo, about your predictions that you told Orion last month. Their ultimate goal is to take over the kingdom, and Lucius and his father are indeed using our powers to achieve this."
Last month? Has it really been that long since Ariel and Trenton disappeared from us after the battle that took place outside the mansion.
"But how? What were they using?" Arlo asked, and he and I were the only ones who understood where this conversation was coming from. The rest of the wolves and Leon looked confused as fuck and that was probably since we never shared the piece of information with them.
When Ariel was taken away from us, conversations died down. Without her, we lost hope and we all became withdrawn into our minds.
To say the least, without her, we were nothing.
"I haven't figured out what that is yet but," Ariel said, a gleaming look entering her eyes, "On the other hand, who the hell cares? Something in this house is blocking you all from shifting into wolves."
"So what?"
Ariel smirked, and if anything, the crimson color in her eyes burned brighter. "So, it's simple. All we need to do is burn this place down." And to put her words into action, a burst of fire grew out from the tips of her fingers.
My eyes flickered from the tips of her fingers to her eyes and though I can feel the excitement coming from the others, there were still so many questions unanswered. "You said our wolves."
Ariel frowned at me, looking confused by my words so I repeated it.
"You said something in this house is blocking us from shifting into wolves," I clarified, watching the confusion leave her face. "What about you? Are you saying that you can shift now."
A ghost of a smile appeared on her face and she nodded. "That's exactly what I'm saying. Some things changed for me and I'm not quite the same person you saw a month ago."
"What does that even mean?" Leon asked sharply, seeing how blunt her words were.
"Let me worry about that," she replied back, effectively ending our line of questions when she presented a new shocking piece of information. "There are a total of twenty wolves upstairs, excluding Lucius' father, Scar-man. To get out of this place, we need to kill all of them."
"This is suicide," Arlo muttered but didn't elaborate more. I agreed but like him, I didn't say anything more to her crazy idea.
I trust Ariel with my life but I have major doubts that the girl standing in front of me is our Ariel. Killing twenty plus wolves in the condition we're in is suicide.
"It's not," Ariel said, without hesitation. "Without me, there are five of you here, meaning each of you should be responsible for taking on four of the wolves each. But there's a slight problem with that, considering Scott's leg makes him practically useless in battle."
Scott flinched back at the harsh statement.
"That means you four," she said turning to Cameron, Arlo, Leon and me, "will have to take down five each. Scott and I in the mean time will be going upstairs to retrieve the book from Lucius' office while the rest of you create a distraction for us."
"It's not going to be that easy," Arlo argued, shaking his head at her. "If you say that you can shift into your wolf now, you're the best bet in taking down the werewolves. These swords that you made for us are deadly weapons but only if its wielded by an imposing individual. And that means you, Angel."
"Do you honestly think that all I'm going to be doing upstairs is retrieve the book?" She asked harshly, as she now shook her head back at him.
"What does that mean?"
"It means while you fight against the wolves, Scott and I will be taking down a more deadly opponent," she replied, staring at each of us hard. "Scar-man."
"There's no way in fucking hell we're letting you take him down yourself!" Leon shouted instantly, staring at her if she lost all of her marbles. "It doesn't matter if you got part of your powers back. Scar man and his bastard of a son is on a whole new level. They'll pulverize you in a minute."
"Let me worry about that," she repeated back calmly as if we were discussing about the weather. She turned towards Scott then. "While I'm distracting Scar-man, you need to retrieve the book. You do remember how it looked like, right?"
"I do," Scott said, hesitant with his next words. "I'll take care of it."
"Alright then."
"But in return, I want a promise from you," Scott said, his soft look turning hard and demanding.
"And what's that?" Ariel asked back, the fire in her eyes burning so bright, it blinded us.
"That you win," Scott said giving her a harsh look. "That you win and return back to us. I believe in you just like how you should believe in us back."
She looked at all us and nodded curtly. "I promise." The words came out strong and clear and I didn't know if she was telling us the truth or if she was being a very good actress.
"I need to give you something," Leon spoke out, and from his tone I knew he wasn't happy about Ariel's decision to fight Scar-man alone. He also knew that when Ariel sets her mind on something, it's hard for us to change her decision. "Since I know there's no way of changing you mind, Ariel, I hope this can help you."
We all turned towards the vampire, wondering what in the world he possibly had to give her. Leon though was already opening the bathroom cabinets, rummaging through the trash and dust that accumulated over the years.
"What is it?" Ariel asked, tilting her head to the side when Leon placed a large wad of toilet paper on the palm of her hands.
"Open it," he nodded to her hand and she did, very carefully might I add. A spider crawled from the toilet paper and she paused, looking up at Leon with a raised eyebrow.
"Is there a spider's nest in here?" she asked, and Leon chuckled weakly, and shook his head.
"Sorry about that. It has been there for about a month now."
Ariel calmly threw the spider aside and unfurled the wad of tissue to reveal crumbled pieces of blank pages.
"Is this...," Ariel asked, and her eyes widened when she opened the pieces of paper. To the rest of us, there didn't seem to be a single word written on the pages. But to Ariel, it looked as if she struck gold.
"It's only three pages from the book that you're trying to get upstairs," Leon answered, seemingly pleased by the amazement in Ariel's eyes. "But it's a start, right?"
"Dude, how and when did you get this?" Cameron asked, looking at Leon like he grew another head. "And how did Lucius and his father not figure out about this?"
"It was when you were fighting the Victoran brothers outside and I was alone with Ariel when she was unconscious," he replied back, but his gaze was solely on Ariel, who was looking at the pieces of paper like it was her life line. "The book opened by itself and the chains were no longer bound on the book."
"I remember," Ariel replied softly, and flipped the page to the other side. She was talking to us, but her eyes never left the three pages. "I told you to put the chains back exactly as it was so that Lucius and his father wouldn't be suspicious about how the book opened."
"Yeah but what really happened was that as soon as you left me and went to search for the others, the chains started moving by itself," Leon replied back, getting a faraway look in his eyes. "As you were leaving the room, the chains started to wrap itself around the book as if it was controlled by magic."
"Not magic," Arlo deduced, staring at Ariel as well. "But her. The chains only fell away because like Ariel once mentioned, it spoke only to her. I guess when she left the room, the book was closing again since its connection with Ariel was lost."
"Not me," Ariel muttered. "But the crimson wolf."
"The what?" We all echoed back, puzzled with her choice of words.
Ariel ignored us, and looked solely at Leon. "And then what did you do?"
"I just reacted quickly," Leon answered, letting Ariel's comment slide for now. "I knew the book meant so much to you and when the chains were about to close around the book, I quickly grabbed some of the pages of the book and tore it off. I wanted to rip off more, but the chains were too quick for me."
"I see," Ariel replied back, and turned to look at the last blank page. Her eyes were flying across the page as she was drinking each imaginary word in.
"I kept it in the bathroom so that I can give it you when we returned to the basement, however," Leon swallowed, "After the fight with the Victoran brothers, we were all unconscious and barely breathing."
" When we woke up again, we were back in the basement," Arlo continued solemnly. "The only difference was that both you and Trenton weren't here with us."
"I'm here now," Ariel responded, and there was a look of victory etched on her face. "And thank you, Leon. You just ensured our survival and freedom." And with that, she placed the three pages inside the pocket of her ripped and dirtied dress.
"I have?" Leon asked, looking at her with confusion. "What did the pages say? It's obvious that there's something there that the rest of us can't see."
"Let me-,"
"Worry about that?" I finished for her, tired of hearing the same line over and over again today. "What exactly are you doing, Ariel? If you want us to fight, we will. Hell, we will listen to anything you have to say without hesitation. But you have to be honest with us too."
"I'm not hiding anything," she replied back, but I can feel the lie coming through her every word. The lack of emotion on her face and words were slowly killing me and I knew in my heart what caused this change too.
"Oh yeah?" I asked, dreading asking the question as much as I dreaded hearing her answer to it. "Then answer me this, Angel. Where's Trenton? Where's your mate?"
The others stopped breathing as we waited for her answer. I already knew it of course. I knew immediately when I opened the bathroom door and saw that the mark that Trenton once placed on her neck, was no longer there.
But I needed to hear it. I needed her to tell me in her own exact words.
But most importantly, I needed to see fucking tears in her eyes as she finally told us what happened to her soul mate.
However, that wasn't what I got at all.
And sadly, a part of me wasn't surprised about her answer.
I might have been horrified by her reply, but I wasn't surprised.
"He's dead," she replied back, without a trace of emotion in her voice. She looked me in the eye and repeated it again.
As if we were again talking about the fucking weather. "Trenton is dead."
I shook my head, trying to wrap my head around her reply.
While the others around me swore and demanded for more answers, all I can do was shake my head in pain.
Fucking devastated. Never thought I would feel this devastated in my life.
And I knew this feeling in the pit of my stomach did not just stem from learning about Trenton's death. It was also from seeing the change in our friend. Because there was no way in hell that the girl standing in front of us was Ariel, the same Angel we grew up with for years.
And that's when it all clicked.
Her crimson eyes, her smirk, her lack of emotions and what she said before. They all made sense when they were put together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
"The crimson wolf," I echoed her words, feeling that the name was a perfect description for the emotionless girl standing in front of me.
Her crimson eyes narrowed on me and I knew then that I was completely right. She didn't however reply to me or acknowledge that she even heard what I just said.
She smirked instead. The same smirk she gave me once, before everything went to hell.
I closed my eyes, controlling the urge to scream and cry out loud.
Trenton is gone and it feels like we lost our Angel too.
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