Soul-Bonded to the Alien(44)

“He should be in the attic, if this Sudir holds true.”

Joaquin walked down the attic stairs. “I have taken care of all the traps in the stairwell. You’re welcome. What’s in the room will not be that easy to conquer.”

There was a flurry of activity as they began to ascend the stairway. There was no reason to be quiet; the Sudir knew they were coming for him.

“What will we find?” Paige asked in a quiet voice.

“Your worst nightmare,” Rylan relied quietly.

The stairwell had been strangely quiet of any sound except what they made. Now they stood before the door that kept them from Vick.

“It’s now or never.” Selma threw the door open wide.

Paige almost tripped over her two feet as she went sprawling into Cal’s arms. She wanted to say thank you but the trembling in her limbs extended to her vocal cords.

Selma asked the question she couldn’t. “Is that an illusion?”

“It’s very real,” Joaquin replied. “I will deal with the black widow spider; the rest of you will have to deal with whatever else you find in the room.”

Joaquin shifted into a huge alien with lethal claws. He cut through the web distracting the easily seven foot spider. They slipped in while he enticed her away from the door.

The attic covered the entire length of the house. Vick was lying hovering over a table at the far end of the attic, wrapped in dark pulsating energy fields. The Sudir had huge tentacles coming from his body reaching towards Vick.

“We can’t let him touch Vick with those.” Rylan’s voice a kaleidoscope of agony as he spoke.

“What are they?” Paige looked at him.

“Horror.”

She moved cautiously towards Vick with the others not asking another question. Every line of Rylan’s taut body communicated the agony he suffered at the hands of the Sudir. Paige felt the desire that bled off of him in waves to tear the Sudir apart.

She might have spent time feeling sorry for him if she hadn’t been hit with the most intense longing to see her parents. She needed them, the weight of it crushed her as she fell to her knees, arms outstretched trying to grab onto anything for balance.

Her brain exploded into a thousand parts, mocking her attempt to regain any measure of sanity.

“So glad you came to me, I didn’t want to seek you out again.” The Sudir’s voice reached into her causing the shreds of her brain to retract in horror as the darkness of it chilled her overheated skin taking her from painfully on fire to freezing cold.

Her knees gave out completely dropping her to the floor. She sprawled there in a heap. Her fingers curled into the wood as she grabbed for leverage, any small thing would do to propel her to a different part of the room. Finding nothing, her body convulsed as shards of ice enveloped her before she stilled.

Awareness came slowly, tickling her brain and teasing her dead body. Nothing on her moved except her eyes limiting her view of her surroundings. She knew she was hanging, her arms and legs were stretched out wide as she hung over the room. She couldn’t see her body, but that bit of knowledge had been granted. The Sudir’s way of layering torture upon her.

“Where am I?” Her mouth never moved, she was dealing on a level of pure feelings.

“This is where you will be kept until I am ready for you.” The words were translated to feelings.

She could feel his grim satisfaction as if it were hers. It bubbled against her deadened skin, touching parts of her that were dark and shady. She never would have believed that evil could lie just beneath her skin, but there it was. It crept through her demanding the right to own her.

Furiously she found herself trying to fling her head back and forth only to realize her body was indeed dead. Her cry for help fell on death ears, she was alone. Turning inwards she reached for the door, the path that connected her to Cal, only to find it missing as if it were never there. Alone.

Raising her eyes, the only things left to her, she looked upward to find two images coming towards her. They smiled in joy as the name ‘Paige’ seemed to echo around the dark space of the room.

“Who are you?” she asked, feeling the words that weren’t words leave her.

“I’m your mom and this is your dad.”

Paige rolled her eyes in lieu of shaking her head. “My parents are dead, Sudir. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’m not biting.”

“Paige, we are your parents. Your dead, Baby,” her mother whispered.

“I can’t be dead, I just started to live.”

“Sorry, love,” her father said, looking at her with sad eyes.

“No, just no.” She hung there helpless.

Dead. There would be no more watching Cal as his eyes heated up with desire for her. She would never slip into his mind again, she was just learning that trick. His Matra would never sit on that huge couch and wait for her to wake up. Her dreams of this being a perfect Christmas, trimming the tree, beating the Sudir, and maybe receiving a gift from Cal had been stolen. Her time was up and the life she was just beginning to appreciate flowed through her fingers alerting her that her time was at an end.