Chapter 56

STEFANO

Shock engulfs me in waves, but my instincts still kick in.

The moment Eden enters the room, I prepare a ball of fire in my hand, ready to blast it all over her face. However, just as I raise my palm to burn her, she catches my wrist in time and breaks it as though it’s made of glass.

Pain shoots up my arm, spreading to my entire body. I fall back, the flames in my hand extinguished completely. I land on the floor while Eden towers over me, watching me clutch my broken wrist and writhe in pain while she smiles as though she enjoys this scene very much.

“I knew you were up to something,” she says, her voice a mere hum as she steps inside the room. “I admit that I didn’t do well trying to find out what it was, but I knew you were going to come see this bastard soon enough.”

I turn my body, trying to get back on my feet. As I do so, I catch a glimpse of Jake cowering in the corner, this feet still strapped to the floor. He’s covering his ears like he’s gone through this before.

So just as I get up, I summon another concentrated ball of fire and aim at the bolts keeping him chained into place. It pops right off. Jake’s eyes widen, and when they find mine, I yell, “GET OUT NOW!”

He realizes that he’s free, and with that, he runs out of the room as fast as he can.

Eden tries to make a grab for him, but I bring my glowing palm against her leg and sting her as intensely as I can, bringing the heat of my flames to white-hot.

The smell of burning flesh fills the air, but something about it feels oddly synthetic, like the thing that’s burning is not pure flesh but mixed with some sort of plastic.

I thought she was a vampire, but apparently not. She stays intact even as the flames sear her. She is something else. Not even a faerie.

She lets out a loud scream. I scramble to get to my feet as she tries to stomp on my face, but I just end up sliding across the floor. Apparently, even a burned leg is not enough to stop her. She grabs the back of my collar to pull me up, but when I try to struggle against her grip, she steps on my back. Hard.

A muffled cry escapes my lips. Suddenly the whole room turns dark and black spots start to dance before my eyes. I crawl across the floor, begging to find something I can prop myself on, but my vision is getting blurred because of the pain from my side. The force of her feet seems to have broken some bones in my ribs, and inhaling is becoming harder and harder.

I crawl across the floor, finally propping myself up against the wall, but the only thing I can manage is sit up.

Eden laughs at me, and even though she’s limping with her burned leg, she still looks as strong as ever. She even has the strength to grab me by the throat and lift me to my feet.

“You think you can outsmart me,” she whispers, her breath strangely rancid, like she’s been feeding on something rotten. “But no. Valeria would die on the night of the Red Moon, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”

At the mention of Valeria’s name, I find a sudden surge of strength.

Eden tightens her hand around my throat, causing air to get stuck in my windpipe. She sneers into my face, so I raise my hand and slap her across the face with white-hot flames.

Staggering back, she lets out a piercing cry that weirdly enough, I feel like I already heard before. I take the chance to head to the door while she’s distracted.

But before I can even get close, something strange happens.

The walls all become white. The furniture vanish. The window disappears. I find myself in a pure white square room like those you would see in a typical psychiatric room, except that there is no visible exit.

I feel like I’m back in the tunnel again, with its ever shifting walls and its ability to close down every exit and block off anything from the outside.

Now I’m face to face with Eden, alone in this room with no exit point.

Half of her face is burned off. I can see her muscles and some of her more prominent bones. Chills run down my spine when I see smoke coming out of her head, her hair seared into almost nothing.

I hate that I have to hurt her, but I don’t think this is the Eden that I know anymore. Or perhaps I never knew her at all.

As though to confirm this, she starts to walk towards me, smiling with her half burned face and saying happily, “I fooled all of you. I pretended to be an innocent little girl worried about her boyfriend, but I was the one who acted out this plan. I know you’ve been in and out of those tunnels. I know you killed one of my brethren.”

“Brethren?” I mumble. “You mean….”

“Yes.” She smiles, and her face starts to morph like melted candlewax, trying to take shape. “I’m just like the monsters under that tunnel. We’re all shape-shifters.”

With that, her body starts to grow. Her skin turns white, and her eyes start to roll back into her skull until it’s milky and blind. Her back is hunched over, her face still half-burned, but there is no doubt in my mind now.

Eden is indeed like the monsters in the tunnels.

And in that disembodied deep voice, she says, “Goodbye, Stefano.”

Eden the monster lunges at me, but this time, I’m quick. I inhale, powering myself just enough to expand the flames in my hand. I point the big blasts on her just as she’s about to tackle me.

The fire bathes her, engulfs her body like an even bigger monster. Smoke goes up into the air, rancid and sharp, filling my nose and making me tear up. The billowing black clouds swirl in the enclosed space as Eden starts to disintegrate right before my eyes, reduced into a puddle of ash and bloody muck around my feet.

The walls suddenly shift back to the way they were, with everything making a reappearance. Her scream pierces the air once more, going louder and louder….

Then there is silence.

I fall to my knees, choking on the smoke. I look up, shaking violently.

There I see that Eden is dead.

And I killed her.

The realization hits me like a punch in the gut. There is no body to bury, because she’s just a monster who took the shape of someone I thought was my friend. She was a shape-shifter from the tunnels. Nothing but a beast who wants to kill Valeria.

For what?

The question still remains, and for that very reason, I have to get out of here.

I stagger out of the room, expecting the humans to come and apprehend me. To my surprise, the building seems to be empty. Was everything just an illusion, or did they leave when they heard the noise?

This was no time to figure it out. Even with my body crying in pain, I down through one of the elevators, finding that no one is in the lobby as well. The absence of everyone is getting to me, but then I see Jake in the corner of the door.

He turns around as soon as he sees me. “Stefano!”

“We need help,” is all I can say. “I need to call someone….”

I take my phone out to seek help from Priestess Lilith, but that’s when I see something strange. The date and time on my phone.

It’s showing me December thirty-first, ten thirty in the evening.

But I arrived here December thirty.

“The time,” I stammer. “The time is wrong--”

“No,” Jake interrupts. “Those monsters can warp time. They can warp space. I have been here living like that, not knowing what time it is and how many days I have been here. The only reason things make sense now is because you killed her.”

I shake my head. “But the dance. Valeria….”

Jake looks at me darkly. “Is she with Auric right now?”

“Yes.” I swallow hard. “But that’s alright, he’s--”

“He’s just like Eden, Stefano. Auric is another monster from the tunnels. They’ve been working together all this time.”