43

James and Joshua came to a quiet halt in the shadows that the forest provided. They waited until the rest caught up with them.

Weak, yellow rays of light reached them through the greenery. The Runners figured that this was the reason the birds had brought them here.

“Why are you guys not out of breath?” Kyle asked, hunching over behind them, violently dry heaving.

The Runners ignored him. They all knew the answer. They edged closer to the light, pushing branches out of eyeshot. It turned out to be a porchlight attached to a modest cabin, situated in the woods, several hundreds of metres away from the nearest road.

Pedro, An, Meriyem, Amber and Theresa came to a silent stop behind them. The sounds their movements made were nothing more than a whisper.

Their guides landed all around them, as if God spread out a huge blanket over the forest, the cabin and the clearing in front of it.

“I can’t believe we are following a bunch of birds over Christmas,” Meriyem commented, scanning their surroundings for any peculiar shapes or sounds.

She looked like a huntress from a video game, carrying a massive bow and a quiver filled with arrows, her face partially hidden behind the hood of her coat.

“Well, we gotta do what we gotta do,” Joshua said, trying to ease her mood.

“What else were we supposed to do?” James whispered.

“Oh, I don’t know… maybe follow Brad’s instructions,” Amber said tensely.

“The diaries said the nymphs would bring monsters or whatever,” Theresa muttered. “Do you see any?”

“Oh, they’re here,” Kyle informed. “I have seen proof of that this morning.”

His brain didn’t even hurt over the fact that he was talking about his mother. A part of his soul was screaming about it, of course, but he had parked that part in a sound proof room. The door to that room would be opened later, much later, or maybe never. It was just too much to comprehend. He was handling this day one step at a time.

Pedro took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He folded his hands before his chest. “I feel a pres…” he started.

Suddenly the Runners bended their knees, until they sat crouching on top of the snow. The others immediately followed their lead and disappeared almost entirely in the thick, untouched layers of icy whiteness.

“Get down,” An whispered, pulling the other Mage towards the ground by his sleeve.

As the Prophets tuned out the subtle, swift sounds the birds were making they focused on the cabin, which was obviously their subject of interest.

The birds folded their wings and quieted down, muting their own chattering and chirping. The only sounds that the Prophets and the Mages perceived was that of branches giving in to the snow and breaking off, somewhere in the distance, a soft wind playing with the treetops and that of a plastic wrapper being torn from an energy bar.

“How can you be eating right now?” Meriyem hissed.

“What?! I have blood sugar issues,” Joshua explained with a mouth full of muesli, berries, chocolate and sugar.

“Right.”

James craned his neck as muffled sounds, coming from inside, travelled towards them. Those were surely boots on a hardwood floor, some laborious movements and sighs and then a door handle being pushed down.

Two men, one in his twenties, the other in his late fifties, stepped outside, wearing loose, unfitting clothes. They stood hesitantly on the porch, carrying a crossbow and a hunting rifle. The oldest one peered around and into the distance with binoculars. The youngest one looked quite defeated.

Gene had recognized the house. He had helped the owner out with his divorce three years ago. The couple had been childless. He had lived alone since the separation and Gene had figured he had been one of the many victims of the mass drownings the area had suffered in the previous months.

He had turned out to be right, which they found out after they had broken into the modest cabin. Actually, since the backdoor had been unlocked it hadn’t really been much of a break-in at all.

They had both gotten rid of their wet, dirty clothes by shoving them into multiple trash bags and dumping those outside. Each of them had taken a shower, while the other rummaged through the closets for a decent outfit to wear.

The men had stocked up on guns and ammo once again. They had seen what they were up against and in that light ditching Nick’s weaponry back at the mansion was one of their main mistakes. They had made many that day, but that was a major one.

Back on the porch the day was taking another strange turn on account of dozens of birds sitting perched all around the property. None of the animals made any sounds. Nick turned around on his heels and noticed a bunch of them even sitting on the beams of the porch. He was too tired to be surprised by any of it.

“Is there any possibility we could have died back there?” Nick wondered.

Gene sighed. How would he know? He had never been dead. At least, not that he could remember.

“Maybe God gave us the opportunity to clean ourselves up, before inviting us to heaven. Maybe that’s why the birds are here, to pick us up,” Nick explained the sight to himself.

“You’re not dead,” the kid that worked at the clockstore told him.

Suddenly the teenager was standing in front of them, with a whole bunch of other people that appeared to be around his age. This was not reassuring at all to Nick.

“Hey, it’s you,” was all Nick said.

“Yeah, it’s me. What are you guys doing here?” Kyle wanted to know.

“The birds brought us to you, not to whatever the nymphs made,” James said, as if that explained anything.

“Because Brad gave us another location,” Meriyem pointed out.

“Sure, Brad,” Nick said, nodding.

At least he knew him. They had gone to school together.

“Yeah, but the birds know stuff,” James said, failing to convince any of them that they had made the right decision by ignoring Brad’s instructions.

“Do you guys work for Brad?” Nick asked, his mind racing for clever questions to ask.

“More like with Brad,” Amber said, right before her face twisted in horror.

“Ayo, why does that dog look like you dug it up from Pet Semetary?” Joshua wondered.

Olive just scurried out of the cabin, ready to join the group on whatever mission they were on.

“Shit, you forgot to wash Olive,” Nick said, looking down at the smelly creature at his feet.

“Me?” Gene asked surprised. “It’s your dog.”

“While you were showering I was removing floorboards to find these,” Nick explained, gesturing at the arms in their hands.

“Why were you guys showering?” James wondered, knowing this house was not in possession of either of them.

Nick flicked his eyebrows to signal they had had a day.

“We, eh… sort of looked and smelled like that,” Gene explained, pointing at the Corgi.

Nick and Gene gave the group of teenagers and young twenty-somethings in front of them the shortest and most concise summary of the biblical day they had suffered through.

The Pupils told them where Lieke and Marith and the other girls were to be found, without actually using the words Pupils, Kid, Empty or Web. Gene and Nick accepted their explanation to some extent, knowing there was absolutely more to the story.

Neither of the parties asked anymore questions, except for the most obvious ones.

“What do we do now?”

“Have you ever hot-wired a school bus?”

“We have to walk back through that drab? I don’t think so,” Nick said, his stomach still hurting from throwing up violently.

“What drab?”

“How did you come here again?” Nick asked, a frown travelling across his forehead.

“Through the forest,” Joshua answered, gesturing at the thick greenery behind them.

“Maybe we can make a detour through the forest as well and avoid most of the snot,” Gene spoke, pensive.

“That’s on the roads too?” Meriyem whispered in disgust, looking at the dog.

“Okay, sure,” Nick agreed, lacking the energy to protest.

He had noticed the weapons the kids were carrying and realized that stealing the hunting rifle and the crossbow had probably been the right decision.

James walked up front, leading the pack, Joshua was the last of the line, closing the ranks. The Runner was scarfing down his third energy bar, humming the tune to “a land down under” by Working Men.

They marched through the gully in the snow that Gene and Nick had already made on their way to the cabin. The Pupils had to slow themselves down to a human pace, which made them feel restless.

The birds had taken off again. They had done their part, for now at least. Brad had given the group several locations and the first one was where they were headed right now.

“You’re not wearing winter gear?” Nick wondered, stomping through the snow behind An.

“And you’re also not a Runner…” Kyle added, just now realizing that this was odd.

An was wearing nothing more than a leather jacket, jeans and simple leather boots.

“A what now?” Gene wondered.

“How much do you guys know?” James asked over his shoulder.

“Definitely less than you think we know,” Nick answered.

“In the winter I am my own fire,” An explained, raising his right hand, orange and yellow flames licking his fingers. “In the summer I can be my own ice, if I want to,” he finished, raising his left hand, which had icicles shooting upwards from his fingertips.

They landed in the snow all around them, leaving little holes in the white blanket.

“Must be nice,” Kyle commented, teeth clattering.

Since the sun had somehow gone down earlier than usual the temperatures had been dropping fast.

Gene and Nick had stopped walking. They looked flabbergasted and at the brink of two mental breakdowns.

“After we got our Rebirths we either became Prophets, Mages or Runners,” An explained. “I became a Mage, so did Pedro.”

This information did not help at all. The two men looked stunned and upset.

“Who are Prophets, Mages and Runners?” Gene asked.

“Well, we are all Pupils first, but Nate, Lisa, Amber...” Meriyem started.

“Nate?” Nick asked, his shock growing by the second.

“Shit, Mer,” James hissed at her.

“What?” She wondered with a jolt.

“Nate’s his brother. He’s been missing for…”

“Four years now,” Nick finished the sentence for him.

“Oh, God, I wasn’t aware… at all,” Meriyem spoke apologetically.

“That must have been rough for you,” Theresa said, trying to soothe him, but even her soft, angelic voice couldn’t put him at ease.

Nick’s mind was racing, tossing and turning, not sure of where to put all the emotions that came flooding in all at once.

“Look, I am really sorry, man,” James said to Nick. “Everything about this sucks, but at least your brother is alive. He didn’t disappear without a good reason, I can tell you that.”

“Marith is one of us too,” Kyle said.

“We figured,” Gene mumbled.

“What?!” The Prophet demanded, when he was met with angry faces. “They might as well learn the whole story now!”

“Keep your voice down,” Joshua hissed, turning his head so that every sound from the mountains could travel towards his eardrums optimally.

After a few moments the rest could hear it too. In the far distance, on the roads to their right, the Pupils could hear sirens and roaring engines coming their way. They tried to not give it too much of their attention, although police-presence in Sweet Lake was rare these days.

“They must be from out of town,” Kyle mumbled to himself, hoping that it had nothing to do with the Kid and the nymphs and the monsters. He knew better, of course, but continued to follow James, An and Nick.

“Yeah, we may have called emergency services with the land line, back at the cabin,” Nick informed. “Is that a problem?”

“It’s the least of our problems,” Theresa said, trying to comfort him again.

“Let’s keep moving,” Pedro urged.

The group of ten pushed further into the woods, trailing away from the path Gene and Nick had taken earlier. They continued their hike back to the school grounds for about three more kilometres, until the winds changed and a smell of rotting flesh was blown their way.

“This is what we’ve been talking about,” Nick clarified.

The smells came to them first, then the sounds came. Soft shrieks, sobs and other wet, sopping noises travelled their way.

“Joshua, James, go check that out,” Meriyem ordered.

“Brave of you,” Joshua muttered, swallowing what Meriyem hoped was his last muesli bar.

The mindless horde of drooping candles made its way to the Pupils, before they could split up.

Grotesquely large hands and freakish, jerking movements made the monsters travel faster than they looked. Their clothes were torn and the skin of their faces was stretched out over their skulls, as if they’ve had horrendously failed facelifts. That is, if they still had a skin that resembled that of a human. Most stumbled and slid around wearing a green, slimy goo around their bones.

Their eyes had melted out of the sockets, leaving soulless, black holes behind. Their teeth were rotting or were gone entirely.

Some had grown patches of fur on the bared skin of their hunched backs, in addition to their new, unnatural limbs.

“This is the fuel of nightmares,” Pedro whispered.

“Throw holy water at it!” Meriyem almost screeched.

She staggered back and reached for her arrows.

“We’re Mages…” Pedro calmly informed her.

“Why?” An sighed, looking at the blubbering blobs.

“Because this whole fucking town is fucked up, that’s why,” Kyle muttered from behind the scarf he had pulled over his face to protect his nose from the putrid smells. “At this point the government just needs to lock it down and nuke it,” he continued darkly.

“Let’s just try to fix it without radiation poisoning first,” An answered, his mind racing.

The women moved in slow-motion, but also faster than the human’s attempts to eliminate them, as if they travelled in their own vacuum. The monsters appeared to be messing with their minds, just like the nymphs. They covered an unusual amount of distance for such cumbersome creatures, as if time ticked differently for them.

They left a trail of yellowish, green snot in the snow, which explained Olive’s fur and what Gene and Nick had been talking about earlier.

The little dog was now running laps between the horde of green blobs and her retreating humans, barking her little lungs out.

For a few undecided moments the Pupils just felt like casual observers of their own failing lives, unable and unwilling to fight the feelings of hopelessness and despair that washed over them.

Until Meriyem shot the first arrow that was. Kyle followed swiftly after. Gene put the crossbow in his hands to use as well. Nick’s rifle was locked and loaded and ready to fire. Amber switched the safety on Brad’s semi-automatic off.

The Pupils took the monsters to town. At least, that’s what they planned to do.

They shot until their quivers and magazines went dry, but this didn’t even so much as slow the blobs down. They either evaded the bullets or they disappeared into the stinking, heaving mass.

Gene, Nick and the Pupils withdrew further back. Their ears were ringing, their hearts thumping and their feet were clumsily trying to find grip.

The closer they stumbled backwards in the direction of the main road the louder the sirens echoed through the night. If any of them would have looked over their shoulders they could have seen the red and blue lights flashing behind them.

One of the squad cars came to a skidding halt. Two other police cars parked themselves into the first one, unable to stop in time on the snot-covered asphalt.

Three police officers that weren’t Brad crawled out of the wrecks into the green blubber and then scrambled into the forest as fast as they could to get away from whatever was sticking to the road.

James and Joshua had heard every detail of the accident and the conversations that emerged after that. None of the officers had been badly hurt, so the Runners stayed beside the humans and the Mages and the Prophets.

Meriyem turned out to be an excellent shooter, but all her arrows disappeared into the slimy mass. When she was all out of arrows one of the women made a leap forward, towards Olive. Nick send a shot of hail her way.

The police officers, two men and one woman, came thundering down the slope yelling stuff, weapons drawn.

Eight people turned around and lowered their weapons, but James and Joshua kept their eye on the monsters.

The Pupils stepped away, parting like the Red Sea, so the officers got to see what they had been fighting.

The female police officer yelled more stuff, panicked and shot one of the monsters. One, two, three times. The third shot was in the head.

To everybody’s disgust a sack of green snot filled with hundreds of white pearls slid from the bullet hole and fell into the snow with a flopping sound.

“Hell, no! Gross!” Kyle yelled.

The group jumped back, not in the least, because more indiscernible mountains of otherworldly grossness were still headed their way.

“Kyle,” An spoke slowly and deliberately to the Prophet who stood by frozen in utter horror, “they’re breeders.”

Kyle nodded. He understood. They were both young men. They had read the horror books, seen the shows and played the video games. Every sane person knew how this was going to end.

“Do what you have to do,” he uttered breathless. “My mom isn’t here anymore,” he finished grimly.

Kyle wasn’t sure when his moment of collapse would come, his outburst of anger and sadness about his family being wiped out by the villain of his story, but he wasn’t feeling it yet and at this point he doubted it would ever come. Maybe emotional episodes about things they couldn’t change just weren’t for the Pupils.

“Pedro, An, do your thing!” James instructed, ignoring the frantic screams from the police officers and the frightful chatter over their radios.

Theresa wrapped an arm around Kyle and spun him around, while Pedro took every last sense of the women away so An could set the forest ablaze.

The three officers froze mid-movement.

Amber caught the full spectacle. She was breathing heavily and sweating profusely under the thick layers of clothing she was wearing. She let go of the gun. Joshua caught it while it was on its way to the snow.

He had also caught the look in her eyes. “You alright?” He asked while he guided her away from the massacre.

“D-do you think my mom is in there?” She wondered.

She started to cry. Joshua put an arm around her shoulders and felt how she was trembling.

Shit, he thought, everyone that has grown up here is losing relatives today.

“Let’s go,” he told her softly, gently taking her away.

“They’re like Brad,” the youngest of the two male officers said to no one in particular.

“Can you burn them all?!” The female officer screamed over the sounds of An’s flame throwing.

“Trying,” An answered curtly.

He was under a lot of duress. This was not working out the way he had envisioned it. A pine tree about twenty metres away gave in to the heat and plummeted down.

They were surrounded by walls of fire from which the monsters casually emerged as if they were posing for a movie poster.

“They’re enchanted or something!” Pedro concluded, grabbing the officer’s arm to evacuate.

“And with too many!” An gestured hopeless at the horde of charred, decomposing blubbers still making their way towards them.

The group of thirteen turned around an jogged uphill, towards the main road.

“We need to go directly to the source,” Meriyem shared cryptically.

“The nymphs?” Pedro wondered.

“Definitely,” Kyle answered darkly.

Unbeknownst to them a tornado of birds had just formed above the Bellevue in Sweet Lake.

Samuel sat lazily in a camping chair with Lieke’s limp body in his lap, her head resting in the nape of his neck. One of the hypnotized women had grabbed the folded chair from the bus for him, which to Marith was confirmation that he had planned every aspect of this day.

Even though her own heart was trying to leave her chest she was still monitoring Lieke’s.

Samuel was talking about his part in the beheading of Cicero using grant gestures with his free arm.

“I wasn’t physically present of course. I am a busy man, but you could say I was a great inspiration to Marcus Antonius, his muse if you will,” the Kid spoke, very pleased with how things were turning out.

While Samuel was educating the group of Pupils on the woes and throes of the Roman empire the first horde of monsters that had started their journey that morning reached the group.

The group was still standing next to the defunct school bus, the orbs hovering over them protectively, when the smell of rotting flesh wafted their way first.

What on Earth is that smell? Jonathan wondered.

The stink caused William to stumble away from the group and throw up. The others covered their faces with whatever they had on them. The kidnapped girls stood by without moving a muscle. Marith wondered how quick the frostbite would set in. Would their toes and fingers still be salvageable?

They’re coming, Brad shared.

Marith looked to her left. She saw nothing but a curtain of snowflakes whirling down and only a wall of greyness existed behind it.

She closed her eyes and let the vibrating strings in her head wander down the road in both directions. There was nothing there. At least nothing with a heartbeat.

She frowned and looked at Brad. He glanced back at her with a questioning look in his eyes.

Samuel was watching the Pupils as if he was attending a tennis match. He was amusing himself immensely.

“You see it now, Marissjh? You’re not an all-powerful Mage, none of you are,” Samuel said, gesturing at Marith, Vanessa, William and Brad. “But I am an all-powerful Runner. I am unbeatable.”

Marith had brought her attention back to Lieke and the creature in whose lap she was sitting. She shot him a dirty look.

“Here they come,” Samuel said, looking her directly in the eyes and smiling an evil little smile.

“Let me shoot that!” Brad exclaimed, enthusiastically pointing his gun at something that was appearing from behind the grey curtain.

A creature so hideous and so disgusting the Devil hadn’t been able to come up with her himself emerged under the light the orbs were casting.

Marith froze. More were following and she wasn’t able to sense them, to pick up on them with her talent.

Brad took aim and shot at one of the bigger ones up front in the slimy procession.

“No, don’t!” Kyle screamed. He came running to the group, severely out of breath. “They’re… they’re breeders!” His footsteps made wet, thumping sounds on the road. “Breeders, Brad!”

The head exploded in a fountain of goo and chunks of snot, but it immediately grew back on another part of the mass, where the right shoulder should have been. What seemed like a pearl necklace, sealed in a transparent bag, slid down the body onto the asphalt.

“What am I looking at?” Lisa whispered.

“The Kid’s going away present,” Joshua answered, coming to a halt in their midst.

Marith had learned that the human brain was willing to accept a lot of crap for truth, but even for her this was one bridge too far. That was until some ancient neurons in her brain fired haphazardly and reminded her of the nightmares Lieke had recently told her about. The kind of nightmares that would wake the entire house up when they were little, because Marith would scream her lungs out, fighting to wake up.

The other six Pupils arrived on the scene as well.

“I got rid of all my competition by killing the young males. I impregnated the fertile women… and now you can fight this!” Samuel shared overjoyed.

He had stood up from the camping chair, Lieke dangling in his arms.

His repulsive gaze landed on Marith. “I will show you what housewives can do.”

He cackled evilly, while the group wondered if they should be expecting fish or frogs to fall form the sky instead of thick snowflakes.

The slimy, rotten images that had plagued Marith in her past came crawling and stumbling towards them over the road.

With stretched out claws they dragged themselves across the tarmac. The chafing caused their bloated torso’s to rupture and spill their swollen, rotting insides.

Like the stripes of condense airplane leave behind the women left a trail of mucus, faeces and decomposing intestines on the road.

These creatures were still wearing a layer of green and yellow snot over their bodies, indicating these were not the ones An had tried to burn. This told the Pupils there were several flights of monsters headed their way.

“Mom?!” One of the girls wondered in a high-pitched voice that neither dogs nor men could handle.

She had thawed from her trance somewhat and appeared to be screaming at a slimy blob that slid by like a fast snail, wearing a cameo pendant around her neck.

Her mother greeted her by burping in her face.

“Not anymore,” Joshua shared, before An unleashed another burst of flames that did nothing except make them angrier.

“Who are they?” Vanessa wondered amidst the chaos.

“Karens,” Theresa answered curtly.

“Are they fighting us with memes now?” Nate mumbled.

Their faces filled with horror as they started to realize this world was filled with actual monsters. Not monsters that entered this world from another dimension through some Turkish guy. No, these were monsters that used to be human and, certain parts of them, still were.

They were created by human imagination, shaped by human flesh and behaved like humans, without a shred of decency or decorum left.

The nymphs had definitely sowed the seeds, created the sparks, for this to happen, but the potential to become monsters had been inside these women all along.

“Guys, I am starting to feel like we are not in control of this situation anymore,” Alexander said, looking around worried.

“Were we ever?” Jonathan grumbled, raising his axe.

“Marith do something. Stop their hearts!” James ordered.

“They don’t have a heartbeat!” Marith answered in a blind panic.

They sense us, Amber shared.

She had had an epiphany.

What? Several other Pupils asked for clarification.

“They cannot see us!” Amber hissed, in a loud whisper. “Look at them. They barely have eyes anymore.”

“They are looking for us,” James agreed.

The whole group froze, which seemed to slow the monsters down. The women’s reality wasn’t the Pupil’s reality.

“They’ve got one foot in another dimension,” Pedro said, “that’s why they can’t see us.”

“One foot in de grave you mean,” Jonathan answered, still startled by the sight before him.

“What do we do with them?” Vanessa asked.

“Firebomb the shit out of them!” Jonathan urged An.

“We’ve tried and we’ve failed,” Pedro informed. “It only made them angrier.”

We need to go directly to the source, Meriyem repeated her earlier conclusion.

We really can’t right now, Vanessa reminded her. We’ve got someone else to deal with currently.

Speaking of which, Theresa thought, while nodding towards the Kid.

He was moving away from the battlefield, distancing himself from all the drama.

“Ah, my chariot has arrived!” Samuel spoke cheerily, dragging Lieke with him.

Another big yellow school bus, identical to the one William had prevented from ploughing through their line of vehicles, stopped some twenty metres behind the first one.

The door opened with a hiss. Three police officers poured out of the bus, running down the little stairs, weapons drawn, shouting orders at Samuel.

Samuel kept walking, with pep in his step and his enslaved women in his wake. The officers didn’t faze him and their bullets sure as hell wouldn’t hurt him, but he knew they wouldn’t shoot. He was carrying one of his victims in front of him.

To Marith’s surprise the orbs floated with him and so she followed them. There was no point in fighting the creation of the nymphs.

Why are they crying? Lisa wondered about the monster-women.

“Because they are leading soulless, empty lives,” Samuel answered casually over his shoulder.

“Pedro?” Lisa asked, a begging undertone in her voice.

“Yeah, I’ll try to take it away,” he assured her.

When Samuel and the police officers collided he moved Lieke’s weight into his left arm and did something with his right arm that happened too fast to follow, even for the Runners. All that Marith knew was that their hearts almost instantly stopped beating.

“Tools of the state,” he mumbled, stepping over their dead bodies.

When he arrived at the bus he ordered the girls to enter the vehicle without even speaking. They did as they were told with a glassy look in their eyes.

Gene struggled to get out of the bus, but he made it. He carried Olive in his arms.

“Marith? Finally!”

Samuel swiftly moved past him, entering the schoolbus last.

“Dad?!” She screamed elated. “Stay away from him,” she added hastily, pointing at the pale monster in black.

Before Gene could turn around to see his youngest dangling from the immortal Runner’s arms the Kid had ran into Nick, who had decided it was time he took matters into his own hands.

“Let her go, fucker!” Marith and Gene heard Nick’s voice coming from inside.

Then a dull thud followed. Marith’s heart skipped a beat.

Nick was here… and he was about to die.

Every Pupil had felt the atmosphere change at once. William came barrelling through the horde of monsters as if he was in a football game.

It appeared that Nick had punched Samuel in the face, which was as brave and admirable as it was stupid.

More sickening thuds became audible, followed by the sounds of a struggle during which Lieke was dropped.

“Nick, stop!” Marith almost cried.

Gene had turned around and recognized his daughter, now leaning against a metal pole in the bus, about to collapse. Olive fought herself free from his arms and ran to Nate, barking a sad, hoarse bark.

William evaded the dog, shoved Gene aside, without pushing him to the ground, and reached the entrance to the bus. Right before Samuel was about to speed-kill Nick by ripping his head off a burst of lightning escape his outstretched fingers.

Nick had stopped beating the immortal Runner and the immortal Runner had paused his attempt to murder Nick.

After a few frozen seconds Samuel turned around. If Marith wasn’t mistaken there was steam coming out of his ears and the blue electricity that William had attacked him with still ran behind his eyes. He seemed agitated, at best.

He had lost his hat. His hair stood straight up in random strands with smoke circling up around them. He looked as if he was wearing a soft porcupine on his head as a fashion statement.

“Thanksss, I needed that,” he hissed dangerously at William, who in turn staggered backwards as well.

The Kid slowly stepped out of the bus, moving slowly and stiffly. Behind him Marith could see Nick helping her sister stay upright while blood escaped the damaged skin on his hands.

“Marith,” Lieke mouthed softly, looking outside with wild eyes.

She was just now seeing the war that was raging outside of the bus.

“Lieke!” Marith yelled back.

Could the electrocution of the Kid have severed the creepy bond he had with the women he had impregnated?

Lieke tried to stumble outside and failed. Instead, Nick helped her out of the bus, step by step, which Marith thought was not a great decision given the circumstances.

Samuels pale lips formed a thin line on his face. A face that was covered in blood. Marith knew it wasn’t his, but the streams of red liquid rolling off his skin made him look like a warlord out for revenge.

Marith sensed he was going after William first and so did William, judging by the rays of blue lightning pulsing under his skin. He was preparing for the worst.

Marith wasn’t about to let that happen. Enough was enough. She stopped monitoring Lieke and the other girls and retracted her snares, only to deploy them again immediately.

Samuel turned his head in Marith’s direction with a sudden jerk.

“Is this really how you want to play this?” He asked the Mage, putting his left hand over his heart.

He looked at her intently. His eyes were dead and alive at the same time.

“Because in that case I just charge myself again with your blood,” he informed.

He opened his mouth once more and fresh blood appeared on his tongue. Marith knew that it wasn’t Nick’s. It was Lieke’s. Apparently the hand-thing he had done earlier had been just for show.

Her sister collapsed behind the Runner. Neither Nick nor Gene could prevent her from falling in the blubber on the road this time.

“Go get her back,” he said.

As if time didn’t exist for him Samuel appeared behind Gene.

The Kid and his favourite Mage held eye-contact for what seemed like a decade, but was probably a matter of seconds, before he finally snapped her father’s neck.

Gene’s body limply joined Lieke’s in the goo on the road.

His prostrate body appeared to be lifeless. It wasn’t breathing, it wasn’t bleeding, it wasn’t twitching. He just wasn’t there anymore.

Samuel inspected his work, laying at his feet. He looked proud and content with the havoc he had wreaked.

The others stood by as if they were watching a circus, which, in a way, they were.

The absurdity of it all came raining down on her. Marith almost burst out in hysterical, cackling laughter herself, but she reigned it in at the last moment.

Tranquillity took over. She wasn’t sure if it was fatalism, stupidity or bravery, but it was happening now. There had been better plans in the brief history of her life, but to be fair she was quite underprepared for this endeavour, and so was the rest of the Chain, actually.

If there was one thing her depressions had taught her it was how to come to terms with the inevitability of life. She had come to terms with what was likely about to follow and she was the embodiment of calm determination.

This wasn’t Marith’s world. It never had been. She was just existing in it… or in front of it. It was a mirror. This was between Marith and Marith.

But when it came down to it, she appreciated this world and the lessons that came with it enough to protect it.

Marith remembered being scared, when she was younger, more naive and less enlightened. Now she just felt numb... and tired, tired of existing, tired of fighting the way her brain was wired, tired of how the Kid was able to toy with her and everyone else, tired of how society had chewed her up and spit her out, lonely and insecure.

In the years leading up to her return to Oregon Marith had incredulously started to wonder why she was even born if her life was going to be like that, but now she knew. There was indeed a point to her existence.

Yes, the Dutch are special people, Marith thought, and we usually enjoy anything God has forbidden.

Being a victim is ultimately always a choice and to Marith it was the wrong one. For Samuel it appeared to be his default setting.

When had the Dutch ever complained? About the floods in the Netherlands, due to living below sea level? About being invaded and occupied by Romans, Spaniards, France under Napoleon and later Germany under Hitler? About the clay, the wetness and the rain? When had the Dutch ever moaned and whined about how the word Yankee had started as a slur for Dutch Protestants in New York?

Samuel lit a primal fire in Marith that she hadn’t really known she possessed. She had never met this side of herself, but in a way she had always suspected it existed.

She understood now what Anton had meant by the drums, battle cries and galloping horses of their ancestors. She could not only hear them, she could feel them. Something old and powerful was on a stampede inside of her.

I can take you, you weak fool.

The truth was, she did carry a devil within and she wasn’t sure she could control it. The monster was crawling under her skin and she felt she had to get rid of it, to purify herself.

It had always been there, fed by the stirrings of this immortal Runner and his mind games and both of their childhood issues.

It had been loud when she was little, she had pushed it away as a teenager, since her Rebirth she had become reacquainted with it. Hoping she could live with it, embrace it and use it, she had given it a chance, but now it grabbed a hold of her beyond her intentions and control.

She became the monster, because she knew she had to lose her soul in order for the Kid to lose his.

She had been gaslit her entire life into thinking things hadn’t been that bad, things hadn’t happened that way, she remembered certain events wrong and got her memories twisted. She had told herself she had one lousy parent, but at least she also had a good one. Now she remembered, they were both deplorable.

There would never be justice for Marith. She would never have her childhood back, she would never get to experience any lost milestones and she would never be able to live life in a brighter light. She would never grow into the woman she could have been.

Being alive was supposed to be a party. Unfortunately Marith had never been invited to the festivities.

There would never be redemption for her, but she wasn’t too far gone to know that others were not beyond saving. It wasn’t too late for Lieke. She could do justice to her dandelion sister and the billions of others on this planet by ending these atrocities right now.

It was about time that the abused, broken child in Marith would get a decent parent. Her demons would always haunt and taunt her, but Lieke still had a shot at a decent life.