Lunar's Curse

9- Lamia

     We didn't know where we would go except that we had to keep on running. I was afraid the crazy half-souled people would be right behind us but they weren't. They were too slow to catch up. Almost like zombies.

     The sky didn't change and soon, Justine and I were dead tired. The fog had faded along with Alex's camp. The landscape had changed though. It still held the same odd trees. But this time, there was grass. Dead grass. Grass that looked like it hadn't seen the sunlight in years.

     It was more like a foreign town, really. There was a sand path along the gently sloping hill once we left Alex and his cronies. The grass was waving in the breeze. It would have been nice if you ignored the fact that the grass was dead and we were in Seul Âme.

     There were a few houses along the road but we didn't approach any of them. Or rather, I had to pull Justine away from them. Though this looked normal enough (despite the vegetation) I knew it wasn't. I was almost sure that there were Vampires of wolfen living inside those houses. If they saw us, they would probably try to suck our blood or lock us up. Neither of them sounded pleasant.

     More than once or twice, we had come across someone. Or more like seen them. Luckily, there were woods to our right once we started seeing people (if you could call them that) and we would quickly duck into them and hope that they wouldn't see us.

     Once, we hid behind a great pink tree. These were one of the trees in the bloom (the ones in bloom are always the odd ones) and it lashed out at us. The pink blossoms fell over us and the tree's trunk seemed to creak and groan and I realized it was heading straight for us.

     Justine and I got out of its way (last minute) luckily. When we did, the tree's trunk didn't relent and it kept trying to hit us.

     We still weren't over that fiasco.

     “So...” said Justine as we continued to head down the road. “Where exactly are we? Doesn't look like anywhere I know so far.”

     “No,” I agreed. “Unfortunately.”

     I had thought it was a joke until she said, “So we're just going to walk until we find the city, right?” She looked at me with expecting eyes and I stared almost blankly back at her.

     “No,” I said slowly. “Where do you think we are?”

     Apparently, Alex had told her that he had taken her to the countryside. She had been walking home when Alex appeared and asked her to get in his car. She didn't hesitate and he got her here. When I asked how, she just said, “He drove me.”

     I explained to Justine (all while watching her reaction!) that we weren't in the city anymore. We were in another 'dimension' as Alex put it. Seul Âme, or whatever else they called it.

     Justine stared at me when I said Seul Âme. “Only Soul?” she asked me. “I didn't know you were learning your languages.”

     Now it was my turn to stare at her. “Seul Âme,” I repeated almost slowly. “That's the name of this place, wherever we are.”

     “It's means Only Soul in French. Oh right, you don't take French anymore,” Justine said. “But yeah. Only Soul. That's what it means. Do you think it has any meaning to this place?”

     “Probably,” I admitted. “But...I don't know what.” I didn't know if that was a lie or not because the instant I said it, I thought back to the half-souled things that wanted me to 'fix them'. Then I thought about Mel. Mel the grim reaper or whatever. That dream felt so...real. Just like the dream about being chased through the woods...