"Well now, it all begins with a baby..." Danny said like he was beginning story time at a nursery.
My curiosity was going nuts. I wanted to know so badly! The thoughts of where Tael had come from, who his parents were, and how he became what he is today was eating at me. Deep down, in a mostly unoccupied corner of my mind, I was thinking of how relieved I was that he had gotten away from Hell and the demons. The same went for all the other kids, too, of course. But the wonder... I was in need of some answers!
"I might as well just state it outrightly," Danny said, almost like a thought to himself. "Alfred, you're Tael's father. Just by the way. And Rayn's his mother."
I tried to look at my brother, but Danny was blocking my view. Still, it didn't take a genius to imagine the shocked look on his features. "No... No way... She was right?"
"Oh, so Rayn did suspect it from the beginning," Danny assumed with an expression of glee. His fangs glinted in the light of the hot lamps beating down on us. "That makes me glad~"
"How in the world did you manage to take their baby from them, though?" I asked with the hopes that I could keep the conversation going. My questions were so loud inside my head...
"You know how demons steal souls, right?" Danny said to me.
I nodded, my chains rattling the tiniest bit with the movement. "Usually you kiss the person and take it from them."
"Yeah, but sometimes we just reach in and pull it out," Danny said. "Kinda hard to kiss away a fetus' soul, y'know?"
"You took his soul?" Alfred cried out incredulously.
"Mmhmm. The fetus died inside your wife, she gave birth to the body, and you both sent it away to a crematorium." Danny seemed a little bored for a moment, and then a glint of excitement lit up his blacker-than-ink eyes. "But we stole the body before it could be cremated~"
"You-- What? We got his ashes back, what are you talking about?" Alfred exclaimed.
"The people at the crematorium realized the baby's body was missing, so they substituted some of another person's ashes and hoped no one would notice," Danny explained with a malicious grin stretching his lips. "Humans are so predictable. They covered our tracks for us and left everyone none the wiser."
"But why would you do that?" I demanded angrily. "What's the point?"
"Curiosity. Experimentation. We wanted to create something new," Danny said, leaning closer over me with each given reason until he was right in my face. I suppressed my urge to grimace at the hot breath blowing against my face, and then he was standing straight again.
"You all know countries are strong. You can live indefinitely, and you can heal faster than what's physically possible. Humans babies just weren't cutting it with the reptile merging process. So, we as scientists got a brilliant idea: to use a country, or what came as close as possible to being a country." Danny laced his fingers together and pushed them outward, causing them to crack and pop audibly. I saw his tail dart out to tap Alfred in the center of his chest. "Your son was a perfect candidate for the experiment. So, we took him."
He faced Alfred, so his back was to me.
"You're a bastard," I spat. My brother seemed to have fallen silent, which was odd for him.
"I'm a scientist," Danny corrected me without turning around. "And a damn good one at that. Heh..."
He pivoted on one booted heel and strode closer to my table. "You saw what his soul looked like, didn't you. What did you see, Alice?"
I gulped. "It... was intertwined with another soul..."
"Exactly!" His black, leathery wings flipped out for a second and then folded back against his back again. "It's so simple, really. You take two souls, join them together, do a little tweaking with the body's DNA, and there you have it! A sometimes viable recombinant life form. I'm particularly proud of my handiwork with Tael, personally. Country DNA is so much more complicated than a regular human's."
"I should snap you in half for what you've done," Alfred growled darkly. So darkly, in fact, that I jumped a bit and my heart rate picked up.
'Al...?'
"Ke ke ke ke... I'm sure you feel that way, but you're pretty tied down right now by the looks of all those restraints," Danny pointed out with a triumphant smirk. "Plus, you wouldn't want anything to happen to your sister, would you?"
I grimaced at the threat. "What do you think I am, a damsel in distress? I've come back to fuckin' life, in case you've forgotten."
"Ah, sure. But you still died before you could come back. Who's to say it won't happen again?"
~
Things were clicking into place a little more now. When Tael's soul was pulled from his body, which preserved itself like mine did when I went on my soul journey, he basically died. Then, when he was brought back to life by putting the soul back in his body, the markings on his back had to have appeared after that. I don't know how he got the markings other than maybe something odd happened because he was only a baby when it happened... But my curiosity was more or less sated for the time being.
Of course, my anger was a completely different story.
"I can't believe you would do something like this!" I screamed, yanking against the chains that kept my wrists together and above my head. "This is sick, I can't even dream why you would do something like this!"
"I already answered that," Danny said boredly as he swung his tail around and around lazily. "Curiosity."
'That's no excuse!' I yelled angrily in my head, though I kept it to myself. I didn't want to get us into any more trouble with the demons. Who knew what they would do to us...
"What are you gonna do about Tael now? Are you gonna try and take him back?"
I was surprised at Alfred's question; he was acting so much more level-headed than I thought he would in this kind of situation. But why...?
Danny snorted. "Ha! No way. He might be one of my best works, but he's still faulty. The telepathy link he establishes is leakier than a colander, and he's so damn weak. He was fun to whip, but I still grew bored with him."
'I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you' I chanted in my head like a mantra, even though it was doing the opposite of calming me down.
"You know, I've been thinking about a couple of fun ideas," a new voice said from the rafters above. The voice was on the verge of echoing, which made me wonder just how tall the ceiling above was.
A fluttering sound later, the newcomer stepped into the circle of light. It bounced off his off-white wings and pink-ish hair. I winced at the looped curl bobbing with every step he took to come closer. 'Oh, no...'
"What's that?" Danny asked with intrigue.
"We want to torture them eventually, right?" Devil-Canada said with an evil grin that made me swallow thickly.
"Uh-huh," Danny said, enjoying the suspense that was making Alfred and I sweat with anxiety.
"Let's make sure they're always being tortured, eh?"
"You don't mean...?"
"Yup."
"Wh-What are you talking about?" I heard myself ask shakily.
"It's actually pretty fun," Devil-Canada said. "By the way, I'm Liam. I'd suggest shaking hands, but you look a little preoccupied." He glanced pointedly at the chains binding my wrists, and I glared at him.
"But, see, it's simple. We pull your souls from your bodies, then let your bodies decay for a few months before putting the souls back in!"
I think my face was twisted by the horror I was feeling. Alfred was no different.
"The body preserves itself, but it can only do so much, after all. I'd say, oh, six months would be all it takes before you would be in excruciating, constant pain." Liam was smirking widely now, clearly enjoying the expressions on our faces. "You'll be like real-life zombies~"
"No way in fucking hell!" Alfred shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Ah, but isn't that the point?" Danny asked him as he bared his fangs gruesomely.
~~
"It'll be okay," Matthew told his kids a hundred times. Still, they wept or looked forlornly at something they didn't really see.
Matthew, Tatiana, Tael, and Evan were in the waiting room of the hospital nearest to the meeting building. Milo had been rushed away alongside Nekochi barely ten minutes ago, and they all were anxiously waiting for the doctor's verdict on both patients.
Rayn had appeared about five minutes previously and was now sitting across the hall and absentmindedly massaging her punished knuckles. Her gaze never seemed to leave the blank wall across the walkway, and only rarely did her face changed what emotions it displayed.
Matthew had tried to ask about Louvel, but she didn't seem to hear him. Maybe it was because she couldn't see him, or maybe she was too deep in thought to hear anyone. Who was to say, really? He tried to not worry; after all, the tot was probably in perfectly capable hands. Matthew felt the beginnings of resentment blossoming in his heart, but he pushed it away with some well-placed reason.
'She's going through a lot, she can't be expected to remember everything. And she's worried about Nekochi, too...'
"Daddy, is Milo... gonna die?" Tatiana asked fearfully, her lower lip stuck out and quivering.
Matthew stood and got down in front of her, taking her hands in his. His indigo eyes spoke of sincerity. "No, Tia, he isn't going to die. Don't think that, ever."
"Do I gotta think happy thoughts to make him get better?" she asked.
Her father nodded. "Yes, think of him getting better. Think of him getting much better, and hugging you all because he's okay and happy."
She nodded with determination before squeezing her eyes shut and focusing all her mental energy on the image of Milo getting better. Evan saw what his sister was doing and copied it, pursing his lips with the effort.
Tael was not so easily fooled by the notion of well-wishes helping a person get better. The boy was much more aware of harsh reality and what it gave and took away at whim.
Clean shoes squeaked against the tile flooring as the doctor on hand walked briskly down the hall, a clipboard in hand and news to give.
He found the Williams family (well, some of it) and Rayn. Apprehensively, he cleared his throat. "Excuse me. Are either of you the family of Nekochi Jones or Milo Williams?"
"Y-Yes!" Matthew replied like a kid being called on in class as he stood and his other two children followed him. Tael slid off the bench slowly, trying to go unnoticed.
Rayn stood silently, and the doctor imagined she was only worried for her daughter enough to not want to speak.
"Please follow me. They're both doing just fine."
~~
"I swear to God if you don't back up I will castrate you," I snapped at Liam as he crept closer and hovered over my helpless form.
He chuckled. "Is that so?"
Alfred was also protesting loudly, shouting threats that he would never be able to carry out in his current state.
Liam leaned in, grinned at my fearful expression, and then dove in for the kiss that would seal my fate.
Darkness was all I knew after that.
Omniscient POV~
Liam pulled back to watch as the miniscule, star-like pinpoint of light drifted up from her slightly parted lips. The star gently rose, hovered for a second, and then burst into its full form: a ball of fire with a color that was specific to the owner of the soul.
The pink-haired devil smiled as he took the soul in his hand and looked it over. The orb with its slightly flickering flame was a dark blue. Its light reflected in Liam's black eyes.
The soul's vessel lay inert on the table, basically dead and yet not quite so. Things in Hell didn't die, really. Otherwise the souls of the damned wouldn't have nearly as long a stay in their place of eternal torment.
Alfred was staring incomprehensibly at his "dead" sister so close and yet so far away.
Danny was relishing his pain.
Lacey appeared on the scene and leaned over Liam's shoulder to look at the fiery ball that was Alice.
Suddenly, Lacey's ebony eyes narrowed and she stared hard at the captured soul. Wait for it... There it was again! Liam's eyes widened as well, he must have seen it. A flicker of white and the barest trace of black within the white had blinked into existence among the dark blue before vanishing with hardly an afterimage in its wake.
"What was that?" she wondered aloud, plucking her counterpart's soul from her mate's hand. She yelped and promptly dropped it onto the ground, where it rolled and then stopped. "It burned me!"
"Eh?" Liam exclaimed, bending down to retrieve the soul. It rolled from his fingers and stopped just a few inches away.
The lamps above helped to make the soul seem less bright while the dark floor enhanced the hue and radiance. All in all, it was a distorting contrast.
"Just get in a jar, guys," Danny said without amusement in his voice. "Quit screwing around."
"We're not doing it!" Lacey said defensively.
"Then what is?"
Liam lunged and got a hand around the ball, which didn't burn him through his gloves. Still, the heat it emanated was obvious.
"What the fuck is up with this soul?" he wondered aloud before moving toward a shelf crammed with jars.
Yeah, Mason jars.
That's what they stored their captured souls in.
No joke.
It's legit.
Mason jars.
It was almost inside, the soul was, when something completely extraordinary happened.
Two patches of white appeared, equidistant from each other and in the shape of eyes. A black dot drifted to the center of each white "eye" and gave it the appearance to be looking right at Liam with a glare.
"Fucker, don't you dare put me in that freakin' jar."
------------------------------------------
Say WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!
Do the drill!!!!!!!!!!
----
Hey guys! It's Basque_girl123 (Creator of Kadi!)
So... I know you guys hate me right now... With good reason. (I am the mastermind co-author for this whole sequels plot mwahaha) Also, I killed off Fuoco. I am sorry for this. I wuv him :) (Wuved?)
So, to address something. Fuoco could not have lived in Kadi's house. His kind cannot survive out of that dimension. And add to that the fact that his very essence belonged to Hell. He was a slave, a servant. So as much as I wish Kadi could have taken in our little pyro.... It could never have been. I apologize...