Here Be Dragons (Completed)

Intrigued

I jerked in my seat, gripping the arm rests tightly as I searched the room for the source of the shriek. It sounded muffled like it was coming from far away and I imagined they had a basement built for keeping people prisoner. I knew I wasn't the first person to fall victim to them, and apparently they were treating me much better than their other...guests.

"Sean, did you leave someone on the operating table again?" Victor asked impatiently and it made me question how many times that had actually happened.

Sean took a moment to think and then shook his head, "Nope, I didn't have a surgery today."

Everyone turned their gaze on Kota who was staring at Nathan in confusion. "Did you get the dosage right, Nate?"

"Yeah, because if something goes wrong, it's automatically my fault." Nathan whined and scooted his chair back with a loud screech against the floor.

Kota wiped his mouth on his napkin, the blood curdling screams continuing to ring through the room. "Sorry for the interruption," Kota apologized as he rose more gracefully then Nathan had, "he wasn't supposed to be awake yet." Both he and Nathan left the room quickly and after ten minutes of awkwardly eating to the sounds of wailing, the cries were finally cut off.

I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that the annoying screeching was over and finished off the chicken and mashed potatoes from my plate. Kota and Nathan returned to the table moments later, Kota looking distracted as he muttered to himself and tapped his finger on the wooden surface in a sharp staccato rhythm.

"Problems?" Owen asked as he dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, bringing Kota out of his hard thinking.

"No, we have things under control." He seemed annoyed that there'd been a mistake to begin with and I burned with curiosity to know what he was talking about. They had at least one other person in this house and I wanted to know exactly what they were doing with them.

"Who was that?" I asked, after deliberating several minutes. I was peeking at Nathan beside me but it was Kota's voice that answered.

"His name is Frank." He said simply and I cocked my head to get a view of him at the end of the table.

"Frank?" I asked and Kota nodded before returning to his plate and daintily forking a piece of chicken into his mouth. He chewed deliberately as I stared at him waiting for more of an explanation. When none was forth coming, I cleared my throat loudly bringing Kota's eyes back up to mine in question. "That's it?"

Kota pushed his glasses up his nose with his middle finger looking mystified at my question. "Um, his last name is...Hanson, I think?" He checked with Victor who nodded his head as he takes a sip of wine.

"He's a priest." Victor added.

Were they for real? I huffed an exaggerated breath. "He was just screaming bloody murder for like fifteen minutes and that's all you have to say?"

Nathan grunted from beside me. "Well he woke up in Kota's lab without his hands, what did you expect him to do? Sing Christmas carols?"

It felt like the oxygen had been sucked from the room as I stiffened in my seat. "He was missing his hands?" Nathan nodded slowly. "You cut off his hands?"

"Well, technically, I only removed one of his hands." Nathan reassured and I quickly slipped my hands off the table and into my lap. "Kota cut off the other one."

I spared a glance at Kota and he was watching me, his face wiped of emotion. "Why did you cut off his hands?"

A rather dangerous look overtook Kota's face and I flinched away from him as he spoke in a cold voice more befitting Owen than himself. "I decided that, since he didn't know how to be responsible with his hands, he had no use for them at all. So I took them away."