“You’d do well with a friend, maybe.”

Fifteen-year-old Elia France continued staring listlessly at the wall before her, refusing to respond to the man’s mocking tone.

“Or should we leave you alone?”

She didn’t answer.

It’s been almost eight weeks since she got here—‘here’ being a place where people wore strange clothes, had strange accents, used a strange kind of English, and were strange in general—and she’d never spoken to anyone since the first day. She’d screamed and yelled and cursed then.

Elia glanced left just in time to see the brown wooden door slide closed, and she sighed. For weeks the owners of the house she was stuck in tried to make her talk—and she’d been treated for her silence, too. Her arms, pale and bare due to only wearing a plain blue shirt, were bruised and had several cuts and gashes where she’d been grabbed at, scratched and hit.

It didn’t show, but Elia’s legs and back, too, looked the same. Her jeans—unwashed for the eight weeks she’d been a tortured prisoner in this miserable house—was worn and caked with blood and dirt. The knees were fraying and so were the hems, and she tried her best not to imagine how she’d look like.

She closed and opened her fists, testing her fingers to see if they still worked. They did, thankfully, but they hurt. Her right hand was chained to the four-poster bed she was leaning against, and the chain—probably long enough to encircle the whole room, had she had the inclination to try and see—pooled around her like silver and jingled a sort of soothing lullaby each time she moved.

She’d always been skinny, but she was almost a skeleton now.

Elia hadn’t eaten much other than fruits and water for eight weeks. Her skinny wrist slid almost effortlessly out of the loop of her chain, just at it had in the past week she’d been trying. Slowly she stood, grabbing one of the bed posts to keep herself balance.

She walked towards the window. She’d been plotting an escape for days now, and her only route was down. The window opened to a canal—she was about three or four stories up—and the closest flat ground was a bridge, which was more than fifteen feet away from the window sill.

Elia shook her head.

She was suicidal, hard-headed, stubborn, and stupid, but she wasn’t that desperate.

Instead, Elia walked over to her spot, slid her hand back through the loop, and waited. A few moments later the door opened again, and she found herself staring at the smirking eyes of her ‘guard’.

“Another pair of inquisitors for you, lady.”

Elia didn’t answer. He sneered at her and moved back. She looked away, towards the ugly blank wall beside the door again, hoping she could somehow get out of this stupid little prison. She didn’t belong to this place—she didn’t belong to this time at all!

A pair entered her room just as promised, a few minutes later. One was a beautiful brunette woman, the other a handsome blond young man. They both looked uncomfortable at the sight of her. She stared, indifferent, at the woman, as she slowly moved forward probably to prod her with her stupid little fan.

She was wearing a gold gown, which brought out the gold of her skin, sort of like the dress Belle wore in Beauty and the Beast.

Except, she thought, this one isn’t a fairytale much, is it?

The woman slowly knelt in front of Elia, but Elia wasn’t really sure what she did—the gown as too big to determine the movements of the body underneath. The young man stayed where he was, standing, but he relaxed.

“Paris White,” the woman said softly. Elia looked at her and almost laughed—but she stopped herself. That was the name she had given when they forced her head underwater for seven minutes. It was a fake name, but no one knew it, and everyone who came to question her believed it truly was her name.

“What on earth did they do to you?” the woman’s companion asked. Despite his bearing—tall, regal, authoritative—his voice had a gentleness to it that made Elia miss home and realize that she’d been missing for more than two months.

She looked down on her arms. It was a riot of color—red for the fresh blood, cream for the skin, blue for the bruises, yellow and brown for the healing injuries. Even her shirt, which used to be a dull sky blue, was dark with dirt and blood. And her jeans and sneakers—well, let’s just say her ensemble was as dirty as she expected it to be.

Elia was about to say something, but the woman beat her to it.

“We’re here to take you away from this place,” she whispered, her voice as gentle and as soft as her first tone. She reached up and hesitantly ran her fingertip through the bruises on Elia’s arm. “We’re here to take you somewhere you’ll be safe.”

Elia swallowed and cleared her throat. “Where?” she asked. Her voice was nothing but a whisper, hoarse from misuse. “Where are you taking me?”

“To our home,” said the young man. Elia looked up at him to see him smiling down at her gently. Slowly, she shook her chain free of her wrist.

“How?” she asked again.

The smile on the young man’s face turned from gentle to mirth. His brown eyes sparkled as he looked down at her and offered her his hand, which she took. He pulled her to her feet effortlessly—which wasn’t a feat, considering she hasn’t taken that much solid food for weeks.

The woman stood and looked around them.

“My name is Elizabeth,” she said casually. “And this is my brother’s son, Christopher. We’re here due to reports of a young girl being tortured.”

“Kid being tortured right here,” Elia muttered as she walked over to the ottoman near the door and grabbed her blue backpack. She checked the things that she remembered she put in there—an extra shirt, an extra pair of jeans, a notebook, her cell phone, earphones, her wallet (still filled with money and coins) and toiletries.

She was on her way back home to her mom’s apartment from a weekend at her dad’s when this whole… twist happened.

And Elia was thankful for the circumstance.

Her jacket was in there, too, stashed above everything else, and she sighed in gratefulness.

“We must work fast, though,” said Elizabeth, breaking her from her thoughts. “I will run out to the corridor and scream my head off, and you and Chris will run out to the streets as fast as you can.”

Elia nodded. “What happens after?”

Chris smiled. “Simple: we run.”

 

We run wasn’t as simple as Chris made it sound like. Her bag was on his back, and he was pulling her behind him, but weeks of misuse of her body and lack of food took a toll on her as soon as they hit the alley.

It was shining brightly out—so bright that it burned her eyes.

The wind bit at her and she shivered, but she couldn’t help but notice her surroundings. Old buildings, old people—if not for Chris pulling her with him, she would have stopped and gaped at the stone walls and the uneven cobble streets and the horse-pulled carriages and… just…

“Where are we?” she gasped. She was weak, tired, and she felt a pang of hunger hit her as she got a whiff of newly baked bread.

Chris laughed. “You don’t even know where you are? Strange. Very strange indeed—London, if you’re still asking.”

“Oh.” She pumped harder, trying her best to catch up, or match Chris’s almost leisurely pace. It didn’t help that she was about eight or nine inches shorter than him, though. “That explains your accent.”

There was a moment of silence before Chris answered again, this time sounding a bit breathless. “I will take your remark of my accent a compliment, Miss White.”

“France,” she corrected without thinking.

“A beautiful place,” he said. “Do you wish to go there? Or are you telling me you came from there—here.”

He turned to a dark alley suddenly—so dark she was—again—momentarily blinded. She blinked and bent over, hands on her knees, gasping, trying to catch her breath. Chris was leaning against the wall behind her, facing her, and he wasn’t as breathless as he was moments before.

“I—how did you—gods, it hurts,” she gasped. She leaned against the wall and slid to the ground, her chest heaving, still breathing heavily as she tried to calm her heart. “Where do we go from here?”

He shrugged. “We wait, mostly. So, what about France?”

“I mean,” she said slowly, cautiously, “France is my name. It’s not White.”

Christopher was silent. Elia wasn’t looking at him, but she was sure he was looking at her, studying her, probably deciding if she was worth it. If she was him, she’d leave herself to die in that alleyway. Elia just wanted to scream, I’m not worth it! Leave me alone! You’re endangering your life for nothing!

But she was tired of making decisions for other people. All her life she’d done just that for her friends and family. It was probably time she allowed others to decide what they wanted to do with their lives where she was concerned.

“Stand up, Miss France,” Chris said suddenly, in a voice so low that a sliver of fear slipped into her mind. “We’re not alone.”

She stood, very slowly, and approached Chris’s side. She felt a strong, strange but dangerous presence right behind her, and she twisted around slowly. Chris slipped something silver from his belt, and then moved forward. Elia watched, when suddenly—

No, they weren’t alone.

And the enemy, whatever it was, wasn’t, either.

There were three of them. Elia tried to study whatever they were. They seemed to be nothing but large black masses moving. She looked to the ground and scrunched her face in disbelief. Where it touched the stone, it seemed to burn. She gulped and looked back up.

Chris shot forward so fast that Elia was shocked for a minute. One moment there was a shadow in front of him, the next, it was all ashes by his feet. He was concentrating on the other shadow in front of him that he didn’t notice one looming up from behind him.

“Chris—” Elia began, but it was too late—that shadow, too, hand turned into ashes.

Both Chris and Elia turned to look at the stranger, another young man, about two years or so older than Elia, who had a smirk on his face that said, ‘I did that’.

“I was wondering if you’d ever show yourself,” Chris called to the younger man.

“Of course I’d come,” the other boy answered. His eyes—a strange mix of gold and silver—slid towards Elia. “And I see you have Elilianis France with you.”

The shock of hearing her name froze Elia all over. People rarely knew her by that name—she only used her nickname. It was even the name she used in all her records at school. But the boy with gold and silver eyes was already on the move, advancing on both the shadow and Elia.

“Who—who are you?” she demanded. She heard footfalls behind her and turned to find Elizabeth, looking ragged and breathing hard, brandishing a silver dagger.

There was no answer.

Three more shadows were coming up to them. Elizabeth drew nearer to her, and Elia pushed her back up against the wall. Chris turned so that his back faced Elia, but the other boy was still looking at her, studying her in silence.

“I asked you all a question,” she said. Chris had dropped her bag beside her when they’ve arrived at the alley, and she rested her leg against it. “Who are you?”

Elizabeth threw her knife, and the closest shadow turned into ashes.

Again, she didn’t get an answer. All she got was a simple command of “duck” and a knife whizzing by her head, embedding itself against the wall, pinning along a bird-like creature, except it had scales instead of feathers, and had a metallic beak.

“Ew,” she muttered. “What on earth is this thing?”

“It isn’t a creature from Earth,” said the boy, talking like he was talking about news on the papers. “It’s a creature from Hell, more like.”

Elia shuddered as she heard two more dull thuds and knew that the two other shadows had been eradicated, too.

“Who are you?” she asked again. She was beginning to feel like a ruined record. She swallowed as another pang of hunger hit her—but this one worse than it normally was.

And then she remembered something she had miraculously forgotten in the course of the two months she’d been imprisoned in that beautiful, but miserable, house. She had ADHD—she needed more sugar in her body than normal teenagers. She’d been depriving herself of that, and she had involved herself in the strenuous activity of running.

And she had mild ulcer—thanks to ‘forgetting’ meals for years. She doubled over and tried to swallow down the bile which rose into her mouth. As she did, her injuries decided to start acting up, too—she felt every bruise, felt every wound, felt every strain and sprain her body had suffered.

“You will give me answers,” Elia breathed through her gritted teeth. Black spots danced in front of her, like dizzying stars taunting her for her stupidity. “I will get well enough, and you’ll give me answers.”

She only had time to hear “’course we will” from Chris before her body gave out.