Forgotten Monsters

Chapter 20- Plotting

The next time Resa woke up she was feeling much better. The headache was still there, but it was more of an annoying ache than an all-consuming pounding. The room was empty so she swung her feet out of bed and got up. She wandered over to the window to see a narrow street below. It was a patchwork of broken signs and still windows. Paint peeled off of the doors and a lone dog skulked along the wall searching for food.

            Feeling a rumbling in her own stomach, she ventured out the door in search of some food. She stepped into a long grey hallway and turned right, towards the faint murmuring of voices. Turning a corner and climbing down a flight of stairs she found herself staring at a table. Both Matthew and Cain were sitting at it doing what she could only describe as plotting.

They saw her simultaneously and immediately stopped talking, Matthew rising to his feet.

“You’re not supposed to be out of bed.” Cain said after a while. 

“What are you two doing?” Resa motioned at Matthew to sit down as she seated herself next to him, facing Cain.

“Nothing.” Matthew said at the same time as Cain said, “Scheming.”

Matthew shot him a glare but Cain just shrugged and replied, “We’d have to tell her at some point, she’s a part of our plan.”

“What plan?” Resa asked feeling extremely out of the loop.

“We’re going to kill my aunt.”

“Why is he a part of it?” She asked, jerking her head in Matthew’s direction. Resa knew that she would help Cain, but she couldn’t fathom why Matthew would.

“She killed my sister, I want revenge.” A small part of Resa’s brain had known that Aydrus was dead, but she had not had conformation of the fact until that moment. It hit her like a punch in the stomach, for a moment she couldn’t even breathe let alone speak. Tears prickled in her eyes, but she fought them back, unwilling to break her composure.

She managed to nod, knowing that telling Matthew she was sorry would do nothing to improve his mood. When her mother had died, she had wanted no one’s superficial apologies.

“What is the plan then?” Cain pulled a small, leather bound book from his inside pocket and placed it in front of her. She looked at him enquiringly and he flipped it onto its side so that the spine was facing her.

“What is it?” Matthew asked, leaning forward in his chair.

In response Resa pulled her necklace out of the front of her shirt and unclasped it before holding it up in the light, letting the pendant slowly spin round.

“You should keep that on.” Cain warned and she quickly fastened it around her neck once again. Cain leaned forward and flipped the book open to a dog-eared page and pointed at a picture on the margin. It was roughly sketched and slightly smudged, but she could see that it was a girl with no exceptional features. More importantly the girl was holding her heart in her hand as she burned in the fire that surrounded her.

“Look at her necklace.” Matthew breathed, but Resa had already seen the necklace, identical to her own.

“What does it say about the symbol?” Resa questioned, referring to her pendant. At that Cain looked slightly embarrassed and he wrung his hands nervously.

“I, um, wasn’t able to read much more.”

“Why?” Matthew asked.

“The print is incredibly hard to read and what little I could make out, I didn’t understand.”

“What do you mean you didn’t understand it?” Resa asked.

“I don’t read very often ok! Why would I need to?” Cain shot back indignantly.