Damon

Lyla’s POV

“Did your ass suddenly grow bigger?” Pearl’s sickening voice made me turn back and glare at her. The girl was so extra. She could be nicknamed Fifty Shades of Extra.

I’ve been friends with Pearl and her twin sister for years now. We’re basically sisters from different parents, and luckily enough for me, I’m more like Pearl, while Aurora, her twin sister, is quite an opposite of us both.

We were currently on our way down to the mall to get her some dresses for the date she has with Lucas tomorrow while I get some extra dresses for myself. Maybe Prince Charming will walk in with money and sweep me off my feet.

“Are you wearing an artificial bum right now? Your ass seems bigger than the last time I saw it,” she exclaimed, trying to make me think she’s really surprised.

“Are you going to get in there and stop behaving like your brain is the size of an orangutan’s?” I asked, still glaring at her.

Angrily, I opened the door of the car and sat, waiting for her to sit on her side, so the driver can take us to the stores.

I wasn’t supposed to be mad at her statement, but to be sincere, I’m embarrassed because she’s right. I’m wearing an artificial bum. My ass is so close to non-existent that it embarrasses me most of the time, and I always connect it to my small body and tiny shape.

I always eat like a pregnant elephant, and still, none of my diets worked the miracle that I needed.

“I’m correct, right?” she asked, smiling sheepishly at me. She settled in, and the driver took off.

“Fine! I’m wearing one, but that’s because I want to appear sexy at the shopping mall” I confessed, feeling even more embarrassed.

“There’s nothing wrong with your body, girl. You look gorgeous, and your ginger red hair is to die for. Everything about you is beautiful.”

Astonished, I asked her, “Excuse me, have you seen me? Like, have you seen my ass?”

She laughed out loud.

“Lyla, listen. Like I always tell you, there’s nothing wrong with you. Get over this insecurity of yours because you’re perfect. If I was a boy, I swear I’d do you every now and then.” Her words made me smile.

“Well, unfortunately for me, you’re not a boy” I announced as we got out of the car.

Pearl spotted a small girl selling dreamcatchers and being a sucker for those, she ran quickly into the mall to probably get seven or ten of those. If you enter Pearl’s room, you’ll get sick of dreamcatchers, aside from the pink color that gives you an instant headache.

I was about to follow her when a hand suddenly pulled me back. When I looked down, it was a weird woman in a black dress that matched the color of her eyes. Her nails and toes were painted black, and she had black hair.

Several tarot cards were displayed in front of her on a cloth, making me realize she was a tarot reader.

She opened her mouth and smiled at me with her black teeth, creeping the hell out of me. I removed my hand forcibly from hers and looked around to see if anyone was aware of whatever was going on here.

“Pick a card, my child.”

“No, I do not want to,” I replied firmly.

“Pick a card and refute death.” Her eyes were turning red, scaring the crap out of me. I quickly picked up a random card and gave it to her.

“The future is dark for you, child. So dark I can barely see anything aside from death. Be careful of the lady in the pink dress,” she said after examining the card.

I ran into the mall, avoiding her scary and nonsense words. I met Pearl still talking with the girl selling the dreamcatcher. She was holding some in her hands.

I tapped her shoulder; she turned back and looked at me.

“Why are you so pale? Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?”

I pointed at the entrance of the mall. “A woman, a tarot reader. She talked about death and some other scary stuff.”

Pearl looked behind me. “What woman?” she asked.

When I turned, I couldn’t see the woman there. I moved closer to the entrance with Pearl hot on my tracks, yet it was as if the woman had never been there.

“Maybe you’re just imagining things, Lyla. There’s no one here,” Pearl suggested.

“I’m not crazy, Pearl. I’m still in my right senses. I saw a woman here who asked me to pick a card, and I did. I picked the card and…” Pearl’s phone suddenly beeped.

“Henry said we should help him pick up a book at the store on our way back,” she informed me.

I wonder why my brother had to text her to ask when I was available and here.

“How did Henry know we went shopping?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Maybe Lucas told him. Maybe they’re together” Pearl explained, and I nodded.

“Let’s pick up the book first. The library might close before we finish shopping,” I suggested, already forgetting about the creepy thing that just happened.

“It’s in the opposite direction. Let’s just ask the driver to take us there.”

We walked to the parking lot and instructed the driver, and he drove us to the library. Thirty minutes later, we arrived.

“What book are you looking for?” the librarian asked once she saw us searching through the shelves.

“The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene” Pearl replied.

I couldn’t care less about the book, so I went through the shelves where romantic and erotic books that’ll fuel my fantasies were. I picked one and borrowed it together with the whatever Henry had needed.

As we were on our way back to the mall, Pearl was going through the book while I was smiling like a fool as I read the first two pages of the erotic book.

“This is weird,” Pearl said, making me look away from the book.

“What is weird?”

“This book. It talks about a parallel….” Pearl didn’t finish her statement because the driver suddenly stopped as we got to an empty road.

“What’s going on?”

The driver didn’t say anything. He just opened the door and walked out of the car.

I tried opening my door just so I could ask what he was doing, but my door wouldn’t open. As I was kicking and trying to get it open, Pearl was also doing the same thing.

Suddenly, all four doors of the car opened, and four men entered. A black bag was thrown over my head and struggling, I tried removing it, fighting them, until a hard object was hit against my head.

I felt dizzy, but I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I couldn’t fight back anymore when I was hit again at the back of my head, making me lose consciousness, and for a minute, I heard howling even though I wasn’t sure it was what I really heard.

Lyla’s POV

My eyes opened slightly, squinting from the light that penetrated the room. I tried lifting up my body from the cold hard floor, but I couldn’t. I looked down to see my hands had been tied tightly together with my legs, and my back was resting against a wall.

“Lyla, are you okay?” I looked beside me to see Pearl with a deep cut on her mouth. She was also tied down like an animal about to be used for a sacrifice.

“Where are we?” I asked her, feeling the taste of blood in my mouth.

“I don’t know, Lyla. I woke up to see us like this. My head fucking hurts. The last thing I remember was being at the mall.”

Then, it clicked; I had gone to the mall with Pearl during the day to get us some nice dresses for the family dinner she’ll be attending with Lucas, her boyfriend, later in the week.

We then went to the library to get a book for my brother. We had gotten halfway when the driver suddenly stopped, and before we could say flapjack, the driver got out and other men took over while two men joined us in the back seat. Before we could scream for help, I was hit with a hard object.

I closed my eyes and opened them once more, trying to confirm if I was really locked up in a place smelling like a…

“This place smells like fucking horse urine. If Aurora were here, she would’ve thrown up a million times,” Pearl said, confirming my thoughts.

If the situation had been different, I would’ve had a good laugh, but now the thought just wasn’t coming to my head.

“Who do you think could have brought us here?” Pearl asked.

“Maybe the cult,” I replied with the only answer I could get.

My brother, Henry, and his friends Sebastian, Derek, and Lucas, who happens to be Pearl’s boyfriend, have been fighting with a big cult in town for years now, and this could be them retaliating.

“What cult?” Pearl being so chatty at this time made me wonder how well she was taking the situation. I hate to admit it, behind my jovial, playful, and always smiling character lies a fragile and scared child who lost her parents way too early in life.

“The same ones…”

I was about to reply when the door suddenly opened. It had been pushed strongly enough to bounce against the wall and echo around the empty room.

A tall giant came in, walking with a cane supporting his movement. His face was scarred, and he looked no less than 60 or maybe 65 years old.

“Why are there two girls?” he asked, turning to the guys behind him.

The two guys replied to him in a language that I didn’t quite understand.

“So, you’re telling me that this one,” he said, pointing to me, “is a mistake?” He turned towards the guys with the guns, and they nodded.

“Get me Damon. Since we don’t need her, we might as well waste her.” My body tensed up at his words. Waste, as in kill?

How did I get here?

My heart pounded as tears rolled down my face. I wanted to free myself, and as much as I tried getting the rope off my hand, it didn’t work.

“Lucas must think himself lucky to have such a beautiful lady like you.” The man touched Pearl’s face, and she spat on him.

He held her tightly by the hair and slapped her almost immediately.

Still holding her by the hair, he said, “Maybe Lucas didn’t tell you a little bit of his past, young lady. If he had told you, you would know I’m not someone to mess with.”

“Fuck you. You hear what I said, coward? Fuck you a million times.”

Angrily, the man threw her to the other side of the room, her head hitting the wall. She screamed from the impact.

“You better give yourself some sense, girl, or else I’ll call my boys and watch them take turns with you over and over till your tiny body gets so exhausted that you’ll beg for death,” he threatened as he hovered over Pearl. She wasn’t moving, and she was scaring me. I wanted to call out her name, but I knew I couldn’t.

He turned to look at me angrily.

“What’s your name?” he suddenly asked while cleaning his hands off.

“Lyla,” I replied through tears.

“Such a nice name. It’s such a shame that I’ll have to waste you. You know why?” he asked, and I shook my head. “You’re just an unexpected abduction. She was the target, not you. When you see God up there, tell him to make you lucky in your next life”

Not understanding what he was saying, I kept looking at the floor asking for a last chance from God.

The door suddenly opened for the second time.

A really nice smell hit my nose, making me wonder where such a nice smell was coming from. This place wasn’t smelling this nice when I first got here, and now I have to embrace the wooden smell that was just like the way books smell which drew me to the library each and every time.

When I looked up to find the smell, the first thing I saw was a gun. Whoever it was was holding a gun. I couldn’t possibly run, so I crouched into the wall more, hoping it’ll open up and swallow me.

The old man in front of me stood up and walked towards the man who had come in with the gun.

“Kill her,” he instructed him.

The guy didn’t waste any time in lifting up the gun as instructed. I looked up in the direction at which the gun was lifted.

Our eyes met and mine widened in shock. His deep blue eyes penetrated mine, shaking me to the core. I suddenly wanted to run towards him and pull him into a tight hug, but I couldn’t as the situation didn’t warrant it.

The gun still pointed at me, he smirked, dropped the gun back down, and swore terribly.

“What’s the matter, Damon? Kill her,” the old man screamed at him.

“I can't,” he simply replied.

“Why?”

*Mate*

My eyes widened one more time when I realized he hadn’t opened his mouth to say a word, and yet I heard the word mate.