CHAPTER 1
THE BLOODY NIGHT
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Author's PoV
Shine Residence
Rockleigh, Aelburn
July, 2021
The struggle between Lauren Shine and Verona Driscoll ended in favor of Verona when she stabbed Lauren's thigh. Lauren fell to the floor, not letting out a scream even after watching her blood color the floor. Now Verona's hand was encircled around Everett Shine's neck. Lauren's blood from the knife dripped on his shirt when Verona held the knife gravely pressed against his throat. A primitive smug of exhilaration cavorted at the lips of Verona of being so close to her first murder.
"Don't do this." Lauren Shine's voice was wimpy with the last rays of hope. "You're better than this." Lauren tried to placate Verona. "Lyndon is not worthy of you. He would definitely abandon you too." She wept, lying on the floor, blood draining and dousing her from her right thigh. Yet Verona had no interest in heeding her plea but held on to her parasitic nature.
"I told you this would happen. I told you never to trust a parasitic creature like her and yet you let her in. You let her in your own life." Lauren's dad said in a tired faint voice. He wasn't strong and agile as he once used to be. He was old, exhausted from trying to save the world and now at the hands of Verona.
"If you do this, you would become evil and there is no turning back. You were the one who thought nothing was permanent. He isn't permanent. Remember, I'm the only one who is always looking out for you?" Lauren's voice was laden with desperation to turn Verona's determined-to-kill eyes toward her.
"No." She sent a shrilled voice from the back of her throat that rumbled in the corners of the house. The house was huge, wide, tall and magnificently everything but alone on a lonely road at Rockleigh in Aelburn. "Your father tried to kill me. He tried to butcher me like I'm an animal. Maybe I am the last of my kind, but I am not weak," she said with a grotesque expression, with a cruel, already lifeless tone. "Now it's time for me to unleash the supernatural qualities in me," she laughed in a lifeless timbre now. "He still thinks he is purging the world by killing the last of us." Her grip over him soldered further.
After all, she was a Parasitic Supernatural Being (PSB) whose very nature was to feed on other people's energy or kill a person and feed on their soul's energy or dine on the whole soul itself.
Lauren tried to crawl her way through the blood-covered floor to reach Verona, but it was too late. The floor mindlessly let her dad's blood mix with her own blood. Verona had already sliced the throat of Lauren's dad and he fell, blood oozing from his sliced throat. It was barely even attached to the body now. He fell right in front of Lauren. His soul emanated out of his body forcefully. Unwillingly. Unwillingly, because his daughter was still in a dire situation. Lauren had always been able to see spirits. Maybe that was because both of her parents could see them as well. Maybe that was because both of her parents were exorcists. In a matter of seconds, Verona sucked out the fresh, out-of-body soul's energy. Verona could have feasted on his whole soul and made his soul extinct like he never even existed, but something stopped her. Maybe she wanted to trap his soul in a dark cell where there existed no speck of hope.
The Shine family lived by the code - never to let a Parasite live once the Parasite had killed a human or fed on the energy of a living human. Everett wanted to end Verona's life only because she had plans to kill Ashlyn Emerson-Stone because the Parasite in her ruled over her human self. Ashlyn was Lauren's soon-to-be sister-in-law. Lauren wished for her dad to blink his eyes or even flinch in pain, but his life was long gone now. She wailed and wept for her foolishness in trying to save a Parasite or did she think she could change her? Nothing mattered anymore. Verona was going to kill her, too. Lauren couldn't see her dad's soul. His soul was already fading at its outline, as most of the energy had been sucked out.
As Lauren was ready to give up her life to the Parasite in front of her, she saw, with her eyes now blurred with tears, that Verona was struggling to stand on her feet. She seemed to be in more physical pain than Lauren was. She let out a cry of pain, which again sent rumbles to the corners of the house. She tried to reach Lauren with the blood-stained knife, hands, blood-drenched clothes and with great efforts she reached where Lauren was lying, already lifeless in her emotions. The very second she reached Lauren, her knife came to a drop just near Lauren's neck. If she had aimed well, she could have killed Lauren, but the pain that she seemed to be in was a hindrance to her aim. Verona fell on her face down, still screaming and kicking in pain, but her hands were aiming for the knife that was out of her reach.
If Lauren had tried, she could have grabbed the knife to stab Verona, but she didn't. Not because Lauren thought there were redeeming qualities left in Verona, but because she knew the dangers of killing a Parasite. Verona was being pulled away from Lauren as if she was being yanked by her ankles. Lauren had forgotten all about the curvy roof they had and the spire at the northeast corner of her house. Verona had just fed on a human soul and she couldn't stay inside Lauren's house. She wasn't pure anymore.
Verona was dragged outside by the power of the house's curvy roof and the spire in the northeast corner of the house. After all, Lauren's dad's idea of building the house had saved her from a Parasite. No impure spirit or ghost can go through the walls of Shine Residence. Everett and Karleen Shine -Lauren's parents, had their life's mission to hunt the Parasitic Supernatural Beings to extinction. Their daughter made the dire mistake of befriending one. That was the hamartia of the Shine family.
"It's your house, isn't it?" Verona laughed from outside. The sound of the laughter was nearing its peak of evil with just one murder and feeding off a soul's energy. "You know, you have to come out at some point." She mocked Lauren for hiding in the house. "Does the house have enough groceries to keep you alive for your lifespan?" She spat, losing that laughter of hers and losing her patience as well, to just kill Lauren and get it over with. She had forgotten the fact that Lauren was the one who had ever befriended her. That proved that there was no redemption for someone from the Parasitic Supernatural race once they had fed on a soul's energy.
Lauren did not reply. She limped to her bedroom, leaving her dad's body lying on its face. Lauren knew that her dad's soul wasn't extinct, but he was in no position to help her for now or for at least a few more days. Not until his soul's energy was renewed. She leaned in on the security device pressing a button to take the word she uttered as a password. She or her parents never had to use the tiny room embedded inconspicuously inside a wall of her bedroom. She whispered, pressing the red button, 'nerual mi'. She didn't have to use the keypad on the device to type a password, for she knew exactly how to pronounce the words. She had to take a step back, holding and wincing at her stabbed thigh as the wall moved aside. The floor beneath her shook and that exact moment Verona, from outside, provoked Lauren. "Are you going to hide inside your secret room?" She laughed again at the agony of Lauren. "I am not going anywhere. My plans for killing someone can wait for tonight."
Lauren saw the tiny room's door that showed itself from the wall from where she stood, but she couldn't enter the room until the fountain was formed. The floor sunk down to the basement and opened in a neatly formed semicircle elongating to the edges of the room. The semicircle sent out a water tubing part of a fountain with three tiers and the floor closed itself, forming the water basin with a fountain pump. The water oozed from the top of the fountain and filled the basin.
Verona must have heard the burbling of the water flowing. "You know, if I can feed on enough souls, I can probably get inside of your so-called pure home," Verona said, pacing to and fro still with the gruesome knife in her hand. "I can probably set this place on fire in that five-minute window I get or," she paused for amusement, "I can rush inside and just kill you."
Lauren's hope sparked once she saw the fountain. Half the time, she doubted if the fountain would ever emerge from the floor if needed. The other half of the time, she told herself that there would be no need for her to hide in the room behind the fountain. Now that Lauren had seen with her own eyes that the fountain was working, Lauren finally had the power to send a response to the mocking Parasite in a way that would bite her skin. "Yeah, you can. But you will never know the password and sooner or later you can never cross the fountain."
Those words must have done what it was supposed to do, because Verona groaned. "I should have killed you when you were outside the house. But I still have an idea to lure you out." She laughed at her own intelligence in plotting a murder. Lauren knew exactly what she was talking about. A tear escaped Lauren's eye and her heart wrenched at the thought of it, but she didn't let those threats get to her. With great efforts, she dunked her good leg into the water in the fountain and with another, greater effort, she dragged her hurt leg and walked through flowing fountain. She reached the door embedded in the wall, which had the same device that she whispered the password into. She again whispered another password, 'foor devruc erips retaw gniwolf nerual mi'.
Verona flinched and blenched at the sound of those words. Those words weren't a problem when Verona was pure. It was now, as she had let the Parasitic nature of her flourish. "You said you would never use this language against me, Lauren." Now Verona's voice was low yet shrilling. She sat down, playing with the knife in her hand.
"And you said you would never hurt a soul." Lauren paused for a sniffle and a sigh. "The human part of you is long gone. You are just a Parasite now." Lauren stood at the threshold of the tiny room with her voice steady now.
"Your parents killed my kind and yet you haven't hated them. Your parents killed mine. Do you hate them? No, you just pitied me."
Lauren didn't answer to that and shut the door behind her.
The room was supposed to be a hideout for Lauren, if at all she was under the attack of a Parasite when her father wasn't home, while he was out exorcising or hunting the Parasites. Lauren contemplated calling the cops but gave up the thought on realizing that it would make things much worse. It would cause a frenzy and much more if she said the word Parasitic Supernatural Being out loud. Half of them wouldn't believe her and she might be sent to an asylum; the other half would believe her and live in fear. Her father wouldn't have wanted that for her or the world.
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