The Blood Bracelets #1: Blood Bound

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Taryn woke up feeling as if she had been asleep for days, her head heavy, her stomach sickeningly empty and her eyes barely able to focus. It didn't help that she had the cold and hard ground underneath her.

Wait.

Taryn cracked an eye open – only to close it just as quickly when she was hit with bright white light, like a fluorescent globe was pointing directly down at her. But she didn't have fluorescent lights in her room.

Braving the pain again, Taryn opened her eyes to see that the brightness had receded. Her eyes adjusted, and as she woke up completely and her mind cleared the pounding at her temples began to disappear, telling her she hadn't really been in some sort of coma. That didn't explain how she ended up in what looked like a factory warehouse.

The fluorescent lights lined the ceiling in rows, most of which were flickering on and off like strobe lights. She avoided staring at them for too long and tried to find an exit amongst the steel-wire shelves and boxes that looked soggy from sitting in puddles of water that had leaked through the ceiling somehow. The windows were blacked out, smashed or boarded up, and any equipment Taryn could see looked old or broken.

Definitely abandoned.

So why were the lights on?

Taryn stood up slowly, and the sound of her shoes scraping against the slate ground echoed off the walls. She felt incredibly lethargic and it took her a moment to remember why; the alley. She remembered feeling sick, and then something had grabbed her from behind. Had she been attacked?

Taryn felt for her phone and wallet, which were still in her pocket. She fished her phone out to dial her uncle's number, only to find that her phone wasn't even working. The screen was flashing an odd mix of colours, like a television set that hadn't been tuned properly. She hit it against her palm a couple of times and tried to dial a phone number, but nothing happened.

'Damn,' she sighed, slipping it back in her pocket. Surely her uncle would be looking for her by now, since he had demanded she not leave the house.

Taryn just wished she had listened. 

There was a service exit in the corner to her left so she jogged over to it, her feet splashing in a puddle, and grabbed the heavy handle that sealed the metal door. She pushed and even though she put all her strength into it, the door didn't budge.

Taryn turned around, her eyes darting around the warehouse for another exit. She saw a large steel roller door with a manual mechanism that looked as if it would open it, so Taryn crossed the warehouse hurriedly, trying to keep her panic down.

But as she neared the roller door something seeped inside from underneath the small slit where the roller door didn't quite meet the ground. It looked like smoke, but it was too black and moving too fast, like oil spilling in from outside. Taryn stopped, something in her head telling her to stay back, and when the oil began to lift off the ground like gravity was sucking it up into the air Taryn took another large step backward.

The substance didn't take a form exactly, but it curled about itself, shapeless, like a piece of material caught in an up-draft. A second one appeared in the corner of Taryn's vision, making her jump back in shock, her eyes dancing between the two as they closed in around her.

Taryn turned and bolted back toward the service door, praying that it would somehow open this time. She threw herself at it, grimacing when her shoulder hit, and then tried to open it again.

'Please open,' she said desperately, pushing all her weight against it. Feeling something at her feet, Taryn looked down to find the sickly black oil seeping in from under the service door and flooding her feet, sticking to it like tar.