Soul exchange

Twenty one ~ Dad's gonna kill me.

Red hair plasters to her face. Her body sticks to the bloody leather fabric beneath her broken back. Creatures scurry around, stabbing her belly full of liquids and vials of brackish blood. She can't remember how many times they poked and prodded her. Twice, the syringes glowed gold. The creatures are cautious with those. While her baby dances in her womb, she floats in and out of delirium. "Why is he doing this to me?" she cries. Finally, a face with menacing eyes appears from the shadows. She cries harder, edging as far as her paralyses will allow. "Don't hurt my baby!"

Feline teeth glisten beneath the lights. "That is no baby. It is our weapon."

*

Nyx woke gasping, her face wet with salty tears and snot. "Oh God." she rushed to the bathroom, a hand clutched across her abdomen and the other over her mouth before she released her stomach contents into the porcelain throne.

The nightmares had become more vivid as the nights went on, and there was still no sign of Micah. She thought about calling him, but a strange niggling in her chest stopped her. After the woodland encounter with Neo, though, she couldn't stop thinking about him. She wanted to know what he had to say as much as she tried to curse him for everything he had done. To her mother. To Iris. To her.

Nyx washed her face and rinsed her mouth before settling her grey eyes on her reflection. "I can't do this anymore," she whispered, watching her rosy lips recite the words. I can't keep looking over my shoulder. Poking her head out the door, she saw the time was three in the morning. She could hear the gentle snores of her parents and Selene from the other rooms.

Her bed was the last place Nyx wanted to be. Instead, she put on jeans, shoes and a thick jacket and pocketed her house keys tiptoeing out the door to the parking garage. Wherever she did this, it needed to be private and secluded. She had to confront him.

The little voice in her head screamed at her to stop as she pulled out of the garage and onto the dark, slick roads. Rain drizzled across the windscreen, and she lowered her window, letting the water flecks wake her up.

This is a terrible idea.

The images of her birth mother struggling and suffering were too much to bear. Nyx gritted her teeth, so hard her jaw ached, and she stuck her head out the window, letting the sting of needle rain distract her.

After twenty minutes of driving, she had left the city borders where trees sprouted around the gravel roads beside dim streetlights. When she hadn't passed another car for ten minutes, she pulled over and killed the engine, keeping the headlights on for visibility. Her panting breaths and strangling grip on the wheel almost brought her back to her senses. No! We're doing this now. I'm done hiding. Nyx flung the seatbelt and shoved open the door, letting herself feel the sky's tears mingle with her own. The downpour grew heavier, and her copper hair quickly plastered to her face.

Before embarrassing herself, she pulled out her phone and dialled the number she had saved. It shot through to voicemail immediately. "Alright. That didn't work." Pocketing the phone, she turned in a circle ensuring she was alone and took a breath of resolve. "You can do this," she whispered.

She let her anger bubble from her lips as she summoned him with a ragged shout. "Aidoneus Mephistopheles. I need to talk to you." When nothing happened immediately, she felt a flush of embarrassment. "Neo!"

"What do you want, soul stealer?" The familiar feminine voice bit out from behind. Nyx spun and blinked the rain from her lashes. "Maeze? Where is he? I need to speak to him."

"No. You need to stay away from him." Maeze prowled forward, covered in leather head to toe. She seemed unbothered by the rain as she sneered down at Nyx. "As soon as we found out what you could do, we should have disposed of you. You can cause nothing but harm. You shouldn't even exist!"