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  ‘Who can that be?’

  She swapped anxious glances with Erdwin and Dr Frobisher.

  Celly saw that Jake was too sharp not to notice this strange anxiety.

  ‘Come on Celly!’ Perisa held out her hand once more, this time shaking it as a sign of her urgency.

  Oh mum! Celly thought. Can’t you see that Jake already realises something’s not quite right? Without you making things worse by treating me like a five-year-old?

  But before they left the room, Mary appeared at the door.

  ‘I’m sorry ma’am,’ she said uneasily, ‘but they insisted on coming in; it’s the police!’

  *

  Chapter 3

  Celly’s parents and Dr Frobisher left the room, leaving her with Jake to finish playing the game.

  Jake wasn’t playing so well anymore. His mind was obviously on other things.

  He frequently frowned, and not just because his score was falling.

  He kept glancing Celly’s way, like he was waiting for her to say something. Like he was upset because she was holding something back from him.

  This was just a part of Jake’s character: the way that he could latch on to the fact you were hiding something, realise you weren’t being quite open with him; the way that he wouldn’t express his irritation but, just like he felt you were holding in your secrets, hold in his frustration, his growing anger.

  Letting it build and build inside him.

  Simmering. Silent. Sullen.

  Yet, after all that, he rarely let it all explode as uncontrollable anger.

  Rather, somehow, Jake managed to contain it, let it all ease off inside him.

  Then, suddenly, he would turn to you and breezily chat away as if the original slight he’d sensed had never happened. As if, too, the last few minutes (or hours) of silence had all been imagined by you.

  Today, Jake and Celly never reached that point.

  Perisa appeared at the door.

  ‘Celly; the detective would like a quick word with you, please.’

  ‘Detective?’ Jake was more concerned and curious than ever.

  ‘It’s nothing; don’t worry.’ Celly gave Jake the best smile she could manage under the circumstances.

  ‘Nothing? Like the headaches are nothing, you mean?’

  ‘Jake, please,’ Perisa insisted. The urgently waving hand was once again urging Celly to hurry.

  ‘How’d you know it’s nothing?’ Jake persisted, leaping out of his chair, obviously intending to accompany Celly. ‘You haven’t spoken with him yet. What’s going on here Celly?’

  ‘No, Jake; you have to stay here.’

  Perisa now swiftly held up her hand, indicating that Jake wasn’t to follow them.

  ‘Please; finish your game,’ she added firmly as she and Celly left the room.

  *

  ‘It’s about a missing woman, Celly.’

  Celly’s mum said it to her as innocently as she could as they entered the main room and approached the waiting detective.

  The detective frowned disapprovingly, but Perisa continued, giving Celly as much information as she could without appearing overly suspicious.

  ‘The detective wants to know if you saw something when you visited L’Orange, as that’s where he believes the poor woman was last seen before she disappeared.’

  L’Orange was the shop. The police had obviously worked quickly in tracking the woman’s whereabouts.

  Celly struggled to stay calm. Only the kicking-in of her protective instinct prevented her from completely breaking down into a quivering, apologetic shambles.

  ‘Missing woman?’ Celly said. ‘At the shop?’

  She glanced quickly about the room, taking in the situation.

  There was another policeman, this time a uniformed officer, standing closer to the door. Like he’d been placed there to guard the only exit out of the apartment.

  The detective was smartly if not elegantly dressed in a suit. He smiled, but it was a forced smile, no doubt contrived to put everyone at their ease and reveal more than they should.

  He was tall, yet was still naturally shorter than her gracefully slim parents. He might have been a hand’s width taller than Dr Frobisher, but it was hard to be sure as the latter was the only one in the room seated.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Mrs Volance?’ the detective said. ‘I really need to ask your daughter these questions without any prompting from yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry officer; I was only trying to help.’

  Perisa smiled. Her smile was charming, warming. Disarming.

  It didn’t seem to work on the detective. He returned the smile, but the rest of his face was more scowl than enchantment.

  He turned to Celly, holding up a photograph of the ‘missing’ woman.

  ‘The assistant at L’Orange says she’s sure she saw this woman going into a changing cubicle, Celly – it’s okay to call you Celly, isn’t it? – the changing cubicles where you were Celly.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s right to ask Miss Volance such upsetting questions at present, inspector.’ Dr Frobisher quickly came to Celly’s defence. ‘As I’ve already explained, the reason for my own presence here is that she hasn’t been feeling well recently. She really can’t be questioned over such matters just yet; maybe later, yes?’

  ‘And as I said, doctor, my questions won’t be difficult or upsetting; I’m simply trying to ascertain the whereabouts of a poor woman who has unaccountably gone missing.’ Having turned to talk the doctor, he looked back to Celly once more. ‘Surely you’d like to help us find her, Celly?’

  ‘Of course we’d like to do everything we can to help you find this unfortunate woman, officer,’ Celly’s father said. ‘But as Dr Frobisher has already patiently explained, we would hope that your questioning of Celly is kept as brief as possible.’

  ‘My questioning, Mr Volance, will be incredibly brief. We already know that Mrs Crendal’s mysterious disappearance took place within L’Orange. Her husband had only just left her outside the shop as she prepared to go in. He left to visit another shop nearby. When he returned to find her, she was not only not there, but the shop was strangely closed.’

  ‘How odd.’

  ‘Odd, yes, Mrs Volance. Very odd. So if I may continue to ask your daughter just a few, simple questions?’

  If the detective had noticed the wary glances between Perisa and Erdwin, he didn’t show it.

  ‘Now Celly, the assistant remembers that, after you and Mrs Crendal both went into the changing rooms, your chauffeur Hincheley followed her in there–’

  ‘Surely you’re not suspecting Hincheley of–’

  Erdwin was interrupted as the door guarded by the police officer opened. Two more police officers entered, holding the taller Hincheley between them.

  Despite being handcuffed, Hincheley remained proud, calmly defiant, as if the police officers weren’t his imprisoners but royal guards. Of the three of them, he appeared the superior in dress, demeanour and elegance.

  ‘We have forensics there now, Mr Volance,’ the detective sternly asserted. ‘There are definite signs of blood, a splatter pattern associated wi–’

  Perisa slashed his throat with a swiftly extended talon.

  Erdwin similarly dispatched one of the officers standing alongside Hincheley. Even though still handcuffed, Hincheley swung his arms up and around, the extended talons effortlessly penetrating the chest of the other officer standing alongside him.

  Dr Frobisher lithely yet unhurriedly moved across the floor towards the policeman guarding the door. Wide-eyed with terror, the officer turned to flee through the door.

  But Mary was there, blocking his way.

  The talons of her abruptly outthrust hands sunk deeply into his upper body, the bloodied tips coming out through his back.

  He gurgled, blood bubbling at his mouth as he died.

  ‘Oh my God!’

  Hearing the frantic cry behind her, Celly whirled around.

&n
bsp; It was Jake.

  Jake had entered the room.

  *

  Chapter 4

  ‘The boy.’

  Dr Frobisher said it in such a calm, noncommittal way that it could have been taken to mean anything.

  ‘The boy’s there.’

  ‘What should we do with the boy?’

  ‘The boy’s seen everything; we have to kill him.’

  ‘No, no! You can’t kill him!’ Celly cried out anxiously.

  She ran towards Jake, intending to throw her arms around him protectively.

  Jake backed away from her, horrified, disgusted.

  ‘What…what are you?’ he hissed.

  Despite backing away from Celly, Jake stood his ground. He didn’t run.

  If he had run, Celly realised, he might well be dead by now.

  In the frenzy of the sudden killing spree, his panicked actions might well have been instinctively interpreted as endangering their safety. He would have been dead before that instinct had been brought under control.

  Perhaps Jake had himself innately realised that fleeing would have been useless. Perhaps he’d been simply frozen to the spot with fear.

  A heavy rain was now battering on the windows, emphasising the silence filling the apartment.

  ‘We’re not much that much different from you, Jake,’ Erdwin said, answering Jake’s question. ‘As you’ve seen over the months you’ve been visiting us.’

  ‘Where we are different,’ Perisa added, looking about the room at everyone, speaking firmly as if reminding everyone of this, ‘is that we don’t harm children.’

  ‘But he’s seen too much.’

  Lowering his arms, giving them a shake, Hincheley let the officer’s bloodied body slide off his talons and crumple to the floor. Behind him, Mary casually did the same.

  Jake winced.

  Celly worriedly moved towards him once more, only to be disgustedly rebuffed yet again.

  With a flexing of his wrists, a pneumatic pumping of gasses into his flesh so that it became as hard as steel, Hincheley shattered the chain running between the handcuff’s bracelets.

  ‘You’ll have to take him with you.’ Dr Frobisher stated flatly. He was moving from body to body, checking that each of the officers was dead.

  What would he do, Celly wondered, if he found that one of them was still alive?

  ‘You’ll be staying I take it, Harry?

  The doctor nodded in reply to Erdwin’s question.

  ‘Staying?’ Jake’s head whirled. ‘You’re all leaving? Not me; I’m not going anywhere!’

  ‘You have to Jake; sorry.’ Perisa spoke kindly, sadly.

  ‘If we stay, we’ll be discovered,’ Erdwin said. ‘And we cannot be discovered. For the good of us all.’

  ‘All? There are more of you?’ Jake gulped nervously.

  ‘All living peacefully amongst you.’

  Jake smirked sickly, looking across at the bodies strewn around the apartment.

  ‘You call this peacefully?’

  ‘We were endangered; not just us, but our entire species. Wouldn’t you protect your people?’

  Jake seemed as if he were about to answer but, catching Celly’s disapproving glare, said nothing.

  How many times had he said he would do anything to protect his own kind while playing the games?

  Sure, that was just a game – but wasn’t there some truth behind his statement?

  ‘If I stay, I can try and explain what happened here,’ Dr Frobisher said. ‘Something along the lines of you panicking, striking out at them with a murder weapon you took with you.’

  ‘What murder weapon would that be, Harry?’ Perisa asked, drawing his attention to the unusual puncture marks in the officers’ bodies.

  ‘An ornamental trident, perhaps?’

  The doctor smiled, as if aware of and amused by the inadequacy of his explanation.

  *

  Stepping out into the apartment block’s hallway, they bypassed the lift.

  They took the stairs. And they headed upwards, towards the roof.

  Hincheley had informed them that, as he had been led upstairs from the basement where the police had found and arrested him, they had passed other officers in the foyer. On hearing this, everyone had agreed that more officers were probably guarding the block’s other exits; the police had obviously come here with the intention of making an arrest.

  It was the powerful Hincheley who had taken charge of Jake.

  No matter how much Jake squirmed in an attempt to break free of Hincheley’s firm grip on his arm, it was useless. Even if he tried to drag his feet as they ascended the stairs, Hincheley lifted and pulled him along effortlessly. After a few painful experiences of the inevitable tightening and twisting of Hincheley’s hand on his arm, Jake eventually stopped trying to hang back.

  When they opened the door leading out onto the rain swept roof, however, he hesitated.

  ‘Where…where are we going?’ he asked fearfully. ‘You’re not going to…to…?’

  ‘To throw you off the roof?’ Hincheley grinned sourly. ‘No; though if you keep on struggling to break free of my grip, you might find you end up falling anyway.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? That you’re going to make out it’s an accident?’

  Hincheley didn’t bother replying. They were now out on the roof, where the heavy rain was drowning out any normal level of conversation.

  No one was talking anyway. They were all stripping off their jackets, shirts and blouses.

  Hincheley swiftly changed the hand gripping Jake’s hand as he shrugged off his own jacket. He simply ripped off his shirt.

  Neither Perisa nor Mary seemed perturbed or embarrassed about revealing their breasts. But Celly hung her head, hiding her blushes, her shame.

  Jake, despite the horror and disgust he had felt earlier, thought she looked beautiful. He tried not to stare, yet couldn’t avert his eyes.

  Celly’s skin was changing, glistening. It sparkled, as if made of finely spun gold and silver threads, graced with whirling patterns. A ruby glow spread throughout it, a sign, though Jake didn’t know it, of Celly’s embarrassment.

  Even through the heavy rain, Jake could see that everyone around him was going through a similar transformation. Their skins shone like expertly burnished metal, like jewels that had been crushed and turned into elaborate mosaics, like the aurora borealis, captured and only slightly tamed.

  The light reflected from them created a multitude of rainbows in the falling droplets of rain.

  With a sound like the abrupt snap of a flag in the wind, wings appeared from each of their backs. The nearest equivalent, Jake supposed, would be like colossal bat wings, but here the membrane stretched between the thicker framework was of the same gloriously sparkling skin.

  He looked back towards Celly.

  With her outstretched wings of patterned gold and silver, she was terrible, frightening – and the most entrancingly gorgeous thing he had ever seen.

  With the merest flap of her powerful wings, she began to effortlessly rise into the air.

  He suddenly felt strong arms wrap around his waist from behind; then he was rising up alongside her.

  They were flying through the pounding rain.

  Glancing down at the city streets passing far below, Jake immediately realised the meaning behind Hincheley’s warning not to struggle.

  If he broke free now, he would plummet to his death.

  *

  1 week later

  Chapter 5

  Both Celly and Jake had rapidly learned how to move through the jungle swiftly and silently.

  They didn’t want to warn off any animals that, even now, might be about to innocently wander into their carefully set traps.

  One of the prime spots for their traps was the large pool lying beneath a small waterfall, which itself stemmed from an offshoot of one of the many streams flowing down from the surrounding hills.

  That’s where they were hea
ding for now, hoping that they’d trapped one of the animals that used the pool for drinking.

  As they approached through the thick undergrowth, Celly and Jake could hear angry shuffling, frustrated grunting.

  ‘We’ve caught something,’ Jake exclaimed excitedly. ‘Sounds quite large too.’

  ‘Sounds like it’s still alive too,’ Celly added more doubtfully. ‘Perhaps we’d better leave it for Hincheley or Mary to take care of.’

  Celly was aware that, no matter the size of the trapped animal, she’d be more than capable of ‘taking care of’ it. But even now, even though Jake knew she wasn’t human, she’d didn’t like undergoing even the smallest transformation in front of him.

  She preferred to try and maintain the fallacy that she was still the Celly he had always known.

  Even when the trapped animal was small enough for either of them to quickly dispatch with the twist of a neck, or the swift slicing of a blade across the throat, they both originally insisted on leaving it for Hincheley to ‘take care of’. It was only when they realised this was prolonging the animal’s suffering that they decided they would take turns in dispatching the poor creature.

  Celly would always use a knife, never a talon. Even the neck wringing seemed to her to be too much of a sign of her being ‘monstrous’.

  They broke through the thick curtain of large, rubbery leaves surrounding the clearing containing the watering hole.

  Jake halted, Celly almost colliding into his back.

  ‘Hah, that’s much bigger than I expected.’

  It was a gigantic wild boar, trapped by a hind hoof in the twine noose.

  As Celly and Jake appeared from out of the enveloping jungle, the boar halted its frantic efforts to pull itself free. It eyed them both suspiciously, curiously, like it was trying to figure out if they had anything to do with its entrapment.

  It surely, Celly thought, didn’t see them as a threat. They were far too small to give it any cause for concern.

  Whatever it had decided, it suddenly propelled itself forwards towards them.

  Unable to withstand the abrupt jerk of the powerful charge, the twine noose snapped.

  And suddenly, Jake found himself standing directly in the path of a furious, rampaging boar.