Mimic (Wardens Legacies - Ancient Blood III)

24 - A GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE

A reasonable person would have instantly left the house and driven to the next location. I am not a reasonable person. Therefore, I must come up with a plan. If I were planning on surprising my best friend with a weekend of fun and excitement, sure I would drive to the hospital and surprise her. Instead, I intend to drain that wicked witch of the core that was possessing her. That is, once I get the answer to why the children are carrying additional cores and not just their own.

So instead, I drive to a nearby hotel and pay for a room. I already have a partial plan in place, but it was going to take time to figure out what exactly I was going to do. If I walk in as myself it is a guaranteed death sentence. Not sure how she would do it. Probably knock me on the head with one of her many weapons, detach my core from my body, and allow another being permanent residency inside my vacated shell. If I try to disguise myself as someone else, it better be a damn good replication. It would have to be someone that they knew, someone that I knew, and the disguise would have to be flawless.

The second part of my plan could prove to be slightly problematic. Mags was inside the institution held, most likely against her will. My overall goal expanded. I was going to kill Lidia and free Mags. Now the question comes up: What do I do about Phillip?

For him, I was going to need to plan out a more extravagant procedure. I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me, but I had nothing to take from him. I doubt me taking the boys from him after they were born harmed him in any way. I needed something else. The thought that popped into my head disturbed me. What if I took Elle from him, right out from under his snooty nose? No, that was not a possibility. No harm was going to come to her. I had to think of something else, something less like I was sinking to his level.

I pondered on my thoughts for some time. Before I knew it, the sun had gone down. I was sitting in the darkness of the hotel room thinking over and over in my head, that my overall goal was to stop him from being able to complete the resurrection process. So, the end game was even more apparent. Kill Lidia, rescue Elle, and pull my daughter from his evil clutches. That was after I had all of Michael's journals, and whatever else he had left for me.

There was a light knock on my room door which startled me. I stumbled through the darkness and opened the door a crack to see who was on the other side. I was shocked to see the woman from the house standing there, her eyes filled with fear. I was uncertain how she followed me, as I had changed my appearance again to even procure the room in the first place.

"Can I help you?" I asked trying to sound as if I had been sleeping.

"Yes. I am looking for a Gretel Bradly," she answered, her lips starting to quiver.

"For what reason?" I was not about to open the door to a complete stranger unless it was absolutely necessary.

"A girl came to my door today asking for a man named Michael. I turned her away knowing that if I said anything while I was in that house, my family would be in jeopardy." She reached towards me with trembling hands. She was holding a stack of notebooks. Not the large kind you purchase for school projects, but smaller ones. The ones that were not quite a stenographer pad but still had the same appearance.

I opened the door and allowed her in. I turned on the light and looked at her. She was young, mid-twenties, with a wedding band on her finger. I could see how scared she was to be there. I felt concern flow through me as I remembered she had been carrying a baby when we spoke earlier that day. I had a feeling the reason she was standing there now was because of something written in the tiny volumes she held onto.

"What is it?" I asked, my heart beginning to pound.

"I wasn't lying when I said we bought the house from the owner a year ago. He had said the house had been passed down generation to generation since the thirties." She paused and looked around the room as if she was confident someone else should be there.