The Otherkind Book One:Heart

~*~ 48 ~*~

~*~ 48 ~*~

"Grayson?" I called out as soon as I neared the barn. It didn't look as frightening as it had the other night but it didn't look safe either. The roof was not going to be remaining above the sagging walls for much longer.

"Hello?" Going to the door way I peeked in. It was dark but not too dark that I couldn't see in. There wasn't much to see, a bunch of stalls falling in on each other. Some old tools hanging forlorn and forgotten on long rusting nails in the walls. A pile of hay long brown and filled with mice lay in a deflated mound in what would have been the main trek through the barn.

There was no sound whatsoever. Looking back over my right shoulder I wondered if he had walked somewhere else waiting for me. A matching pair of sheds equally in disrepair, their doors barred and closed, stood opposite the barn.

From my left, a large hand grabbed me around my shoulder jerking me backward and the same time as his other hand covered my mouth before I could make a sound. He drug me deeper into the ramshackle barn.

"Easy now pretty sister of mine."

Archer? My struggled to come up with an explanation. I had no brothers.

In a moment I was bound tightly, he had tied a rag around my mouth. I was then made to sit on an old milking stood in the darkest part of the barn.

"We finally get to meet!" A man who looked incredibly like my father but my age, pulled another stool from a darkened corner and set it down in front of me, taking a seat there. "You think you are surprised! You should be me! After all these years to find out I had a twin."

I shook my head at him twisting my hands in the ropes trying to loosen them. He shook his finger at me. "Not now pretty sister of mine. You and I have work to do first."

I glared at him.

He laughed. "Spirited too! I like that. It will come in handy. Where's your boyfriend?"

I didn't like the way he said that word.

"I know. He's off leaving his pretty girl all alone. Pity."

He pulled out a knife with a wickedly long blade on it and began picking at his finger nails. "Bet your wondering who I am and what is going on? Aren't you sis?" He sighed as if it was a great pain to tell me.

"See, when you and I were born, our mother saw fit to take you to our father but me—-" he frowned "I was left to be the slave of a wretched soul who taught me all she could of her dark arts and then I killed her. Went to go live in Ber' Sador, lucky break for me living with the witch of Ber' Sador."

I stared at him, my eyes widening.

"Ah, you've heard of her too. See? I was determined to find the parents who abandoned me, and my sister who got to grow up having everything.

I became a seer. A pretty good one. I found one of our relatives. It wasn't that hard to find out more. I got our grandfather inebriated and he was more than willing to tell me the names of all those who had made his life so miserable." he sneered.

"And then later it was a total serendipitous moment when I found out what the old seer was up to. Numa's mistake was carelessness. She wants her spot back licking Arminius' boots in the worst sort of way!" He grinned rakishly "Her other mistake, believing that I would make a good lackey." He laughed. "Me? Can you imagine?" He laughed again.

"Deciding to follow her little spell box, I figured that if I" thumping his chest "got the triplet boys back for Arminius, I would be set for not just this life, but for all eternity! And then I found out he was with you!" he grinned and then chuckled "things are surely getting very interesting!"