Eli Fletcher: Mark of the King: Book 1

Chapter Fifteen

I’m Saved From Human Sacrifice

Last night I didn’t have as bad of dreams. I had a few about Fiona trying to get my attention; she’s usually shackled to a wall in some kind of cave or tunnel and I can hear Cassie’s and Abby’s voices nearby. I desperately cling to the hope that what I see in my dreams isn’t reality. But, at least I haven’t woken up to puke again. I’m not sure if I can handle doing that every night.

As I’m about to head into the kitchen for breakfast, I hear lowered voices behind the door.

“…think he’s ready,” said Megan’s voice. I stop at the door to listen before entering the room.

“Then we’ll just add this to his breakfast and he should become compliant,” says Moon.

“Do we really wanna do this? I kinda like the kid,” I hear Ray’s voice next.

“Stay away from the orange juice,” Aiden whispers in my ear, making me jump.

“You scared me,” I hiss back at him.

Before he pushes the kitchen door open, he gives me a meaningful look, his eyes wide. No orange juice today. That’s fine with me; I’m just looking forward to real eggs again. However weird Moon might be, her eggs are fantastic! I sit down at the kitchen table and a plate of ham and eggs is set down in front of me.

“What would you like to drink, honey?” Moon asks sweetly.

I glance at Aiden and he nods.

“Milk please,” I say and begin eating my eggs and ham.

“Milk it is!”

A few seconds later, a tall glass of milk is set down in front of me. I mumble a thank you through a mouthful of food. Then I notice that Megan isn’t in the room. That’s weird; I could have sworn she’d been in here talking to Ray and Moon.

“Where’s Megan?” I ask, after swallowing a mouthful of food, washing it down with a gulp of milk.

“Oh, she’s working on something down in the basement,” Ray says absentmindedly.

The basement; where Aiden said they’re preparing a bedroom for me. He’d said not to look before they said to because they’d be upset. What could they possibly be doing down there that would take this long for it to be ready for me? Not that I’m anxious to leave Aiden’s room; I enjoy sharing the room with him.

When I finish eating, I put my plate in the sink and run some water over it. When I turn around I’m sitting down, reading a story to the kids. Fiona is sitting across the room watching me with a smile like she always does. When I finish the story, the kids lie down and take their nap. Abby gives me a hug and kisses me on the cheek, and then Fiona and I leave with the rest of the older kids. But for some reason she and I don’t follow them to the classrooms, instead we go for a walk on the grounds of the group home. I’d never realized just how big the place is. I wonder why we never use any of the other buildings.

“I want to show you something,” Fiona says, taking my hand. At that point, I don’t care where we’re going; all I can think about is the fact that she’s holding my hand. “It’s in one of the older buildings.”

“Okay,” I say stupidly, not paying attention to where we’re going.

She pulls a board aside from one of the lower level windows and crawls inside. The room is completely dark, but once I step inside, I can see just like I do when the lights are off. Everything is in different shades depending on the light that’s able to leak through.

“This way,” she says, taking my hand once again and leading me through a set of double doors across the room and into a hallway. She leads me up a set of stairs and into a wide open room. It’s a basketball court, and in the center is a cart full of basketballs.

Fiona is suddenly next to the basket of balls, pulling one out. How she got their so quickly, I have no idea. But, I also don’t care. I’m alone with Fiona in some abandoned gym.

“Wanna play?” she asks, holding the ball up in front of her, just below her chin.

“Sure,” I say, grinning like an idiot.

We take turns shooting the ball into the hoop. Not much is said between us, but we’re having fun regardless. Soon it turns into a game of one-on-one. I’m standing between her and the basket, she turns her back to me and dribbles, stepping backwards to protect the ball. She runs into me and holds the ball in both arms as I try to reach around to knock it out. Fiona giggles at my attempts, and when I realize everything I try is futile, I decide to play a dirty trick.

I poke her in the ribs. She jolts to the side, half laughing and half screaming. I found a tickle spot! I poke her again on the other side and she bends sideways, laughing more. I decide to go in for a full on tickle-attack. Soon, she drops the ball and kicks it away before spinning around to face me, trying to attack me with tickling as well. After she gets a couple pokes to my ribs in I have her by the wrists and the tickling stops.

She’s still smiling widely and breathing heavy from our tickle fight, but she’s staring straight into my eyes with those piercing blue eyes. My mouth goes dry, as if cotton has been shoved into my cheeks. I try to let go and pull my hands away, but she grabs them quickly; she apparently doesn’t care that they’re sweaty. I don’t know what to do next but she seems to.

Fiona steps closer to me so we’re only inches apart. Then she lets go of my right hand and it falls to my side. I can feel that my smile has vanished due to a knot twisting in my stomach, but hers has changed. Instead of the natural, playful smile she’d had from laughing, it looks strange, like she’s admiring something she loves.

What’s happening here? I know she likes me, but, what’s she going to do? I fear she’s going to kiss me right then and there, in that dark basketball court. But then she doesn’t kiss me and a part of me is disappointed. Why doesn’t she want to kiss me? Or does she and is just too scared to? Instead of kissing me, though, she leads me towards the rogue basketball that escaped us.

Stopping in front of it, she looks up at me again. “Pick it up, Eli,” she commands gently.

Involuntarily, I pick up the basketball and then she walks back towards the basket it belongs in. Fiona stops and stands next to the basket; she obviously wants me to put it away. So, I walk over and stand over it with her. But I don’t want to put the ball away. I stand there just staring at the other balls in the basket like dropping it in would do some kind of harm to the others inside.

“Put it in, Eli,” Fiona says, but something’s different. She doesn’t sound quite like Fiona anymore. Her voice is mixed with another one that sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. I look at Fiona and she’s smiling once again, but it isn’t her smile. She doesn’t look like the sweet, innocent girl I know. She has a big, fake, toothy smile. Suddenly her teeth grow into rows of razor sharp teeth.

Fiona’s hair turns golden blond and her facial features stretch from her roundish face to a more almond shaped one with a narrow chin. Her electric blue eyes darkened a few shades and her pale skin becomes golden tan. Suddenly, just before she opens her mouth to speak, a dark figure lurches from my right and tackles me into her.

My eyes snap back to reality. I’ve been in some kind of a trance, dreaming I was with Fiona. But I hadn’t been with Fiona at all. The person I’d thought was Fiona was actually Megan. What had happened to me? I never drank the orange juice! How did they drug me?

“Grab him! Hurry!” I hear Megan scream.

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs and see Billy struggling to his feet. “Billy?” I say groggily, still feeling the effects of whatever they’d slipped into my breakfast.

“Come on, Eli! Let’s go!” he says hastily, finally getting to his feet, though he’s dazed from tackling me into the hard cement of the basement.

I drop a dagger to the hard floor, its clanking sound bouncing off of the unfinished, cement walls. What the…?

Looking around the room again, I see that it’s lit only by candles, black candles; and in the center of the room is an ancient-looking table with Aiden was strapped to it; shirtless and wearing only his black, skinny jeans.

“Aiden? What’s going on?” I ask, still feeling a little disjointed from my body.

I glance at the dagger once again, Megan is back on her feet, joining her parents in cornering Billy a few feet beyond me.

“Eli! Help!” Billy calls out to me. I can barely see him between the three Adlers now surrounding him.

“Eli! Get me loose!” Aiden pleads.

I jump to my feet and rush over to Aiden, releasing him from the shackles then help him sit up. I twist in the direction of his family, run for Billy, lowering my shoulder as I ram myself between Ray and Moon like a football player breaking through the offensive line. I shove Ray in one direction as I knock Moon in the other. She hits her head against the cement wall and Ray staggers some but doesn’t fall. I don’t have time to finish the job; I have to save Billy.

I grab Megan by the wrist, squeezing tightly. Slowly her grip on Billy’s neck loosens until he’s able to slip from her clutches. He darts out of the way, and stands next to Aiden while I finish off the Adlers. I turn and flip Megan over my shoulder, slamming her back against the wall. I hear a thud mixed with a few cracks of bone. When she lands on the ground, her eyes are closed and her mouth is open a crack; she isn’t smiling that fake smile anymore. Blood trickles out of her nose and the corner of her mouth.

Suddenly Ray rushes for me with a yell. I duck down once he’s in front of me, shove my fists into his stomach and use his momentum to throw him into another wall behind me.

“Let’s go,” Billy says, grabbing my shoulder and snapping me out of the shock of possibly killing the Adlers. I examine Megan closer and see her chest slowly rising and falling. She’s still alive, but unconscious.

Satisfied I haven’t killed her, I follow Billy and Aiden out of the house. When we’re out on the street, Aiden pulls on a plain black T-shirt and then looks back at the house. He looks confused, like he’s glad to be out of there, but lost at the same time.

“You okay?” I ask him.

He looks at me for a second then back at the house. There’s something else in his eyes, too; disappointment.

“I’m fine, let’s go before they wake up,” he says and the three of us jog down the street towards the main drag of Manitou Springs.

Halfway down the street a small but monstrous beast jumps out at us. It looks like a dog, but has reddish/black skin and blood-red eyes. Pulling the paperclip from my pocket, it immediately grows into the blade of my sword. I slice through the air with it, cutting through the dog’s head. It explodes like a balloon, expelling black liquid everywhere. Somehow the mess misses me as if my sword created a force field.

When I turn back towards the other two I find they’ve also been spared from a black, gooey mess. I’m also met with two different reactions. Billy looks amazed that I’d moved so quickly and killed the dog-like demon so easily. But Aiden is staring at the blade in my hand. I don’t have much of a grip to hold onto, but the stone being in the center helps; if anything, the stone’s healing powers keeps my hand from blistering from holding onto a grip-less piece of steel. I have to do something to remedy this until I find the hilt.

We continue on, but this time we walk so we can see an attack easier; I also keep my blade out just in case. The sun is already high in the sky; I have no idea how long I’d been in that trance. It felt like just a few minutes that I’d been shooting hoops with Fiona, but with how bright the sky is now, it looks like I’d woken up and eaten breakfast about three hours ago.

When we near the main road through town, I pocket my blade and we join the foot traffic along Manitou Ave.

“Okay, Billy, you need to explain a few things to me,” I say, joining his side as we wander up the sidewalk. “I need to know why you left, and, this is just out of curiosity, how is Cassie your cousin?”

“Yeah,” he says uneasily

We find a park bench near the creek that runs through the center of town and Billy begins to explain what’s happened to him since I went home with the Adlers.

“So, the night Cassie disappeared was the same night I found out she’s my cousin. They’d just found out I guess. My mom and her dad were siblings, but they hadn’t spoken to each other in years. Her dad was left a single father when she was born, and I guess he just didn’t think he could take care of her, so he brought her to the home in hopes that she’d end up in a good home. That was three and a half years ago. My parents both died when I was young, so that’s how I ended up there.

“Anyway,” he says, going on as if that part of the story doesn’t matter. “I knew you had something to do with what was going on. Not in a bad way,” he backpedals, seeing the guilty look on my face. He apparently isn’t blaming me as much as I’m blaming myself. “I mean, you seem to know what’s going on better than anybody. Nobody would tell me anything; not even Fiona.”

I smile at that; she’s still looking out for me even though I’m not there. My smile fades as I remember again just how much I miss her. It’s only been a couple of days, but I really want to see her again.

“When three more kids disappeared the other night, I decided to sneak out and come find you. Of course, I didn’t know how to get here, but I ran into this kid on a skateboard. He told me he would walk with me. When we entered the town, he disappeared. Just vanished from sight, just like that,” he snaps his fingers. “I started wandering up the street and there was this girl staring at me from across the street. I stared back for a few seconds and started to walk away, but she kept staring. I could feel it, like her eyes were digging into the back of my head. When I looked back, she was still staring. Then she started walking up another street. I assumed she wanted me to follow, so I did.”

Billy leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees; he looks up and down the walkway, watching the people as they walk by. He seems suspicious of anybody who comes near.

“What happened after that?” I ask.

He watches a couple more people walk by, they look back at him as well, evil glares on their faces.

What’s that about? I wonder.

I stare back at them and when they meet my eyes, they look flat out murderous. I touch the paperclip in my pocket. They seem to notice, so they continue on. If they’re demons, like the Adlers must be, then this whole town is infested. I watch more of the people around us and a lot of them look in our direction.

“We should probably get out of here,” I say and start to stand up but Aiden grabs my arm, stopping me.

“Just let them go, they’re no threat,” he says quietly.

“How-”

“Don’t ask,” he says as he stares at the demonic people watching us. “I just know they won’t attack us here.”

I start to feel a little nauseous again, almost as bad as my first night here.

“We should call someone to come get us,” I suggest.

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” Billy says and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a silver cell-phone.

“Where did you get that?”

He looks ashamed. “I stole it from Miss O. I figured we would need a ride if I found you.”

I stare at him blankly. This isn’t the same Billy I’d known before. Although he was telling me how he found me, what I really wanted to know is how he seems to have changed so much. He scrolls through her contacts list until he lands on one.

“David Reese. Is that Mr. Reese, the P.E. Teacher?”

I shrug. “I guess so.”

“Guess it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

He hits the send button on the cell phone and a couple seconds later I hear hysterical squawking coming from the phone. Billy quickly pulls the phone away from his ear and only puts it closer to speak.

“Hi, Miss O….I know…I’m sorry….I went to find Eli…Yes, I’m with him now….Okay, here he is,” he hands me the phone. “She sounds pissed.”

“Well, that may have something to do with you running away and stealing her phone,” I say then put the phone to my ear as he grins sheepishly. “Hi, Miss O.”

“Eli, are you okay?” she asks, much calmer than when she’d been talking to Billy.

“Yeah, I’m fine. If it weren’t for Billy, then I think something really bad would have happened.”

I hope that gets Billy off the hook for what he’s done.

“What do you mean?” she asks her voice thick with concern.

“Well, after breakfast this morning, I ended up in some kind of a trance. I thought I was playing basketball with…” I hesitate, “Fiona. The next thing I know, I’m waking up in the basement of those foster parents.” I can feel my face getting hot. I’m getting angry. She’d been the one to make me go with them. But it wouldn’t have been her fault if I’d killed Aiden. “I had a knife and was about to stab Aiden while he was shackled to a table.”

Silence.

“Their daughter was guiding me towards him,” I continue but Miss O still doesn’t respond.

“Miss O, who were those people?”

“Eli, I’m so sorry,” she apologizes, her voice thick with regret.

I breathe heavily through my nose, teeth clenched tight, trying to calm myself.

“Where are you?” she asks

“In Manitou still. We’re on a bridge over the river.”

“Okay, I know about where you are. We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

I hear the roar of an engine before the call ends; she’s on her way to get us. Finally! I’ll be back at the home where I should be.

“Why don’t you finish your story, Billy?” I say, handing him Miss O’s cell phone.

“You should probably give it back to her, not me,” he says; it’s not a bad idea since she may forget about how angry with him she is if I can distract her.

Billy seems reluctant to continue his story, but he does anyway. “So, I followed that girl until I caught up with her. She pointed at a house and I assumed she was telling me you were inside. I asked her, but she never said a word. It was like she didn’t trust me but was curious about what I’d do.”

Luce’s words come back to me. I have to try and keep Billy from joining the wrong side. From the sound of his story, I don’t think that’ll be a problem anymore.

“Anyway, I went inside and heard something going on in the basement. I opened the door and snuck down the stairs; that’s when I saw you with this weird look on your face. Your eyes were glazed over and you were holding that knife, following every direction that girl gave you. When you were about to stab him, I ran and tackled you.”

So, now I’m caught up to the present. But it still doesn’t fully explain his change of attitude towards me.

“So, why are you acting so different with me now?”

Billy looks at me confused for a second then realizes what I mean.

“Well, I…uh…I guess I just realized that I was kind of a jerk, especially the way you said goodbye the other day. It was like you were counting on me and didn’t really hate me.”

I think he can see how skeptical I am about his story, but after realizing I didn’t actually hate him, my skepticism fades. This is the most sincere I’ve ever seen him.

“Oh yeah,” he speaks up again, “this weird guy tried to get me to let him help me. He said he could get Cassie and Abby back for me. But I got a weird feeling from him. That was when the kid on the skateboard showed up. The other guy disappeared right away. I didn’t even see him leave.”

“What did he look like?” I ask quickly.

He looks startled. “He was wearing a business suit; had slicked back hair-”

“Tentatio,” I whisper.

“Huh?”

“That’s the name of the demon,” I say, my voice still quiet.

“Demon?” Billy questions.

“Long story,” I say with a sigh.

I stare at the pavement in front of us, processing everything Billy’s told me and all that’s happened recently. The three of us remain pretty quiet for a few minutes until a familiar voice catches our attention.

“Eli!” Miss O calls out from a minivan at the curb.

I stand up immediately; Billy joins me but hangs back a couple steps, fearing Miss O’s wrath. I wave to Aiden to follow as we walk towards the van. Looking back, he seems hesitant about coming with us but he follows.

We don’t make it to the van before Miss O reaches us, smothering me with a hug, and then scolding Billy for leaving. When she’s done with her short verbal lashing, she hugs him too. With a sympathetic smile at Aiden she corrals us into the van to take us home.