Chapter 42Where a Boy is Dragged

The boy collapsed. He laid very still in the circle and the candles all doused. It wasn't the wind or the woman. They just all went out as if they could burn no longer. Their flame simply... stopped. They had their answers.

The following silence was like a cover over everyone's mind. Everything stopped. Even outside nothing made any noise. The silence after the storm.

The men and women started moving again, their spell broken.

"Only three predictions and... that weird one at the end. It's getting worse. He won't last much longer." It was one of the men holding him before.

A woman looking slightly more concerned about the boy then the rest. "Does he remember anything?"

The leader, well the one in the circle before, shrugged. "He doesn't seem to remember anything. But it will not be a problem to get a new one. All he knows is that he is gone for a night and gets chocolate for dessert tomorrow. What more does a child want?"

The concerned woman didn't look entirely convinced but shrugged it off. "I supposed that's alright then." She walked to the woman whose daughter would probably end up in the hospital. She put her arms around her and whispered words like 'it will be alright'. I didn't pay much attention. What the man did was much more interesting.

He picked up the sleeping, drugged boy and walked outside. Two of the other men took some bleach, it's horrible smell attacking my nose, and washed away the blood on the floor. I felt how my eyes would normally want to tear, even up here the smell was horrible. Ironically my body could of course easily stand it, but old reflexes die hard I guess.

I stepped to the side quickly and looked through a window on the side. The walkway creaking very slightly, but it's rusty tones were lost in the den of sound downstairs.

The man outside unlocked his car with a remote as he walked toward it. The boy in his arms. I half-expected him to put the boy in the trunk but he opened the left front door to put the boy in, using the seat-belts to fasten him. I guess that was the smart thing to do.

Orphanage...

Where did that thought come from? I knew my mind picked it up somewhere. I intensely looked at the car again, trying to find where I saw it. I half-noticed the man already walking back inside and almost felt Valerie looking at my back, urging me to return. But I wanted to find... There! The rear window. St. Michael's Orphanage. I made a mental note to ask Kai to look into it. Time to walk back to Valerie and Isabel.

"He's completely out of it, worse then last time, his heartbeat is really slow. We need a new one, but it's so hard to find a suitable boy." The man said.

The man with glasses nodded. "I may have a solution for that problem. We have to leave now though."

The woman and the men all nodded, getting their stuff and making sure not to leave any traces. The bleach, still harassing my nose, was swept away into a grating in the floor. Something that kind of surprised me, as most buildings wouldn't have a grating like that. Little time to think on it though. I heard the cars outside starting. They were all going. I mentally counted what I had seen, seven cars, expensive ones. That meant some of them rode together, lived together? Also, most of them seemed business men or women I felt. A sharp contrast with what they did here.

I turned to Valerie. "Did you understand the words? Sister of the moon, daughter of Ba'al? I know the other one was me. I think, because it felt like me."

She looked guilty. "Yes, I am the sister of the moon. Was once. To us the moon was what brought our dreams to us. Our visions. And... Isabel means daughter of Ba'al."

Isabel had stayed quiet all this time. Just standing there. I walked over to her and looked at her intensely. "What do you know? What was the boy talking about."

Her words came, calm and soft, sweet almost. "Your future. Your dreams."

Memories came flying back to me. I'd had dreams since I was changed. Some of them intense but I could not remember them clearly, just the taste of the air sometimes, or the feel of something else. Why did I feel they were real. They were going to happen, but I didn't know what it was exactly. Like a movie you'd seen but forgotten. You remembered bits of it as you saw it again, but still everything was new.

Valerie interrupted my thoughts. "Kai has it too, the dreams."

I was completely surprised. "And Khuna?"

Valerie nodded. "Yes, Khuna too."

All virgins... all dream-visions... what else?