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Creed ran a thin, pale finger down the jail wall and scowled. He peered down the dank, gloomy stone hall, which was dimly lit by sputtering torches. Several barred cells were spaced at uneven intervals, most of them silent except for the one nearest him, from which came the highly unpleasant sound of someone retching noisily.
“This place is filthy. Gods, how do people survive in here.”
Behind him, a smooth, musical voice like a mermaid’s song laughed harshly. “I don’t think prisons work that way. You should know better than anyone.”
“What did I say about bringing that up?” he hissed. A silvery blur, a whiff of strong perfume, and Loralei was beside him, delicately stepping around puddles of who-knows-what.
“Please, you know I was just teasing.”
“Stop it.”
She pouted. “You’re no fun.”
He turned and glared at her. “We’re here for one reason and one reason only. Keep your voice down, and do not leave my side.”
She sighed noisily. “Yes, sir, whatever you say, sir.”
Ignoring Loralei’s steady stream of sighs and mutterings, he carefully flicked the edge of his dark cape behind his arm and strode down the hall, never pausing for even a moment. The guards had said that the man would be in the very last cell. Appropriately dramatic, of course, but Creed was never one for exceedingly glamorous presentations. He was excruciatingly thin, as if he had never seen a meal; his skin was so white it was nearly translucent, and his dark eyes were dull and shadowed. He wore his black hair lazily tied back, partly brushing his bony shoulders in limp strands. Everything about him radiated exhaustion
And yet, despite his frail appearance and ridiculous shiny buckled shoes that tapped wherever he walked, people would shudder when he passed them. Whether it was fear or revulsion, no one could pinpoint, but something about Alastor Creed was…off.
The girl next to him was anything but. Like him, she was pale, but instead of giving off the impression of a lifeless wax statue, she was more like a porcelain doll, smooth and delicate. Her limbs were petite but strong, enhanced by years of performing pirouettes and arabesques on the stage. She radiated life, her presence as vivacious and full as her long, silvery hair that shone and bounced with every step. Her eyes were bright, almost too bright as if one had been staring into a lit lamp for too long. She laughed often and sang sweetly, her words dripping like honey from her lips.
She unnerved him.
As they made their way down the seemingly endless hall, a new noise began to assault their ears. Scraping, high and raspy, like two rusty pipes being rubbed together. It started off quiet, but with every step towards the furthermost cell, it grew in volume, until Alastor could barely hear himself think. It bored its way past his eardrum, into his skull, like a thinly pointed drill.
Loralei began humming, either in an attempt to drown out the sound, or because she knew it infuriated him, but either way when they finally arrived at the source of the scraping, his nerves were on a razor’s edge. He stilled his shaking hands and carefully dabbed several drops of sweat from his brow.
“We would like to speak with you. Preferably without that hideous sound you’re making.” he said.
A pause, then the scraping resumed, only this time it was accompanied by a low, mirthless chuckle. Creed clenched his fists, his nails biting his palms. “You would be wise to listen to what we have to say. It concerns your…future prospects, shall we say.”
The scraping continued, its speed and volume seeming to have increased at a manic pace. Pain flared in Creed’s temples, and he nearly turned away at that moment. But Loralei placed a perfect, lineless hand onto his sleeve. She was smiling, be it an unnerving smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Let me try with him,” she cleared her throat and stepped forward, nearly touching the cell bars with her nose. “Hello, Lance.”
The effect was immediate. The scraping ceased sharply, and the pain faded. In fact, everything faded, and Creed suddenly felt warm, and pliable. He looked at Loralei and knew that he would do exactly as she asked; she could order him to gnaw his own leg off, and he would do it, grinning from ear to ear the entire time. He felt as if honey had entered his veins, warm, heavy, and overpoweringly sweet.
He shook his head, and the feeling disappeared. Nausea curdled in his stomach. Loralei’s powers weren’t directed at him at the moment, but her influence seeped into the air around him, so strong that he could swear his clothes were stained. He could only imagine what kind of effect it must be having on the man in the cell.
“I’m sure you know why we’re here,” she continued, ignoring Creed’s obvious shiver. “After all, we’ve heard you’re quite intelligent.”
“Have you, now?”
He cringed. The voice echoing from the darkness of the cell was almost as bad as the scraping: it clawed at his ears with a grating roughness, as if it had been used up a long time ago with shrieking laughter and bellowing shouts of war. It felt…violent.
Loralei smiled and continued. “Yes, we have, and we’ve heard quite a bit about your…accomplishments.”
“Y’mean my body count?” There was a gleeful chuckle.
She faltered, unsure for a split second. Creed felt it too, a quiet reverberation in the air. But, quicker than a breath, Loralei was back.
“If that’s what you call it, yes. We’ve also heard you’ve gotten in some trouble for it, right?” She didn’t give him time to respond. “But we,” she gestured to Creed and herself. “Think that your sentence is extremely unfair. After all, you were just doing what you had been told to do. Some might even say you did it too well.”
There was a moment. Loralei waited; when nothing happened, she went on, although, Creed noticed, there was a slight tremor in her voice. She was getting tired, he thought, and her powers were taking a toll on her. The man in the cell– Lance– must have been stronger than he thought.
“We have a proposition for you,” she said. “We would like for you to join us– the Wonders.”
Lance was quiet. The silence went on for so long that Creed, beginning to think that the man had fallen asleep, reached for Loralei to tell her to leave it be.
In the blink of an eye, he found himself yanked sharply against the bars, their torn and aged bits scraping against his face, his wrists, everywhere. Loralei shrieked and leapt backwards. A sweaty, iron-tinged scent filled his nostrils, and moist, warm breath filled his left ear, which was pressed so tightly against the bars that he thought it might fuse with the steel. Lance, mostly out of sight, bent close and snapped his teeth near Creed’s cheek.
“So you think I’m violent enough for your little group, eh? Think I’ll make a nice guard dog for you to just throw around when you’re feeling too delicate to get a little blood on those clean white clothes? Think I’m eager to get a bit of gristle on my hands?” Lance’s voice trembled on that last word, and Creed, with a jolt of victory, knew they had him. He felt no fear, only disgust, at the man’s smell, at his heavy, wet breaths, and especially at his own stupidity. He’d gotten too close to the bars, all the time knowing what a dangerous man Lance was.
Whole armies laid to waste, a bloody, shredded trail torn through their ranks. Limbs hacked into pieces, heads separated from their bodies. Oh, Lance was well known by now for his “skill” in battle. He was rumored to be uncontrollable when he was enraged, a killing machine with seemingly endless stamina. But the Jury hadn’t exactly approved of his senseless violence and considered him a waste of resources. They had sentenced him to a lifetime in prison, less to punish him and more in an attempt to protect themselves.
Which was why Creed had convinced the Jury to let Lance join the Wonders, pleading the case that they could use him as an invaluable witch hunter. His energy: limitless. His force: unmatched. He just needed a little reminder of who was truly in charge.
Creed relaxed, letting his body lean against the bars instead of being pulled against them. He felt his powers swell, letting them ooze out into the air around Lance, whose grip slackened.
“What the hell- stop it, I know what you’re doing!”
“Do you now?” Creed grinned, the appearance unsettling on his waxy face. “I was sure you’d be too strong for something as simple as a little…drain.” The temperature dropped.
“Stop! Fucking stop!” He heard Lance retch, and felt the fist around his neck become slick with sweat.
“I don’t think so. Not while these bars are still touching my face, that is.”
“I could kill you. Right here, snap you like a twig.”
“And I bet you’d love that, to finally feel bones crunch under your fingers. Feel the life drain from me. But think about it this way,” his energy was starting to fade. “After you kill me, do you think you’ll ever see the light of day again? Do you think anyone would ever let you out of this little cell? I doubt you’d ever see any blood except your own.”
He peeled his cheek from the bars and twisted so that he could look Lance in the face. He was still mostly in shadow, but there were bits and pieces. An angled jawline, the edge of a surprisingly high cheekbone, a broad outline of shoulders. But what stood out most were the eyes. Sharp, glinting, manic, they held a fiery determination. Fear too, so much fear, as he felt Creed slowly drain his powers from his body.
They stared at each other, a rat glaring into the eyes of a dog who knew that a single bite from the rat would infect him, shorten his lifespan to that of one filled with misery and sickness. The dog would never taste the blood of his prey ever again.
Or maybe not. Lance, with obvious effort, unclenched his fingers from around Creed’s neck and wrist. In return, Creed eased power back into Lance and backed away, now fully aware of what it felt like to have one’s throat in death’s grip. He was cautious, but not afraid, unlike Loralei, who was planted firmly against the opposite wall. Her eyes were wide.
“My powers…why didn’t my voice work on him?”
“Oh, it did,” he grunted, smoothing out the newly formed creases in his sleeves. “Trust me, if it hadn’t, he would have killed you already.”
She huffed, now indignant, and extremely embarrassed at her fear. “Well, this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t gotten so close to him.”
He ignored her complaints, instead focusing on Lance, who was nursing his wounded ego. There was a glimmer of something in his eyes. Some might call it fear, others rage, but to him, it looked like something darkly similar to twisted respect. The dog had found a master who would not tolerate misbehavior.
“I’m giving you a chance here. You can either rot in this cell for the rest of your life, or,” he gestured toward himself and Loralei. “You can take this opportunity. There will be fights, and brawls that would make even the captain of the Jury’s knights sick to his stomach. But not you. I know what you’re capable of. I can see the real you, the one snapping at his leash. I can give you exactly what you need and more.”
It was silent. The air was thick. Lance’s expression was unreadable.
Loralei, surprisingly, was the first one to move. She threw her shoulders back, lifted her chin, and scowled. “Come on, Creed. He’s obviously not worth it.” She grasped him by the sleeve and began to pull him away. He let her, realizing at once what she was doing.
They made it naught but ten feet from Lance’s cell when they heard him shout after them. They kept walking. The shouting grew louder, more pleading, desperate in its tone. He began rattling the bars of his cell.
“Fine!”
They both halted. Creed turned, letting Lance just barely catch a glimpse of his profile.
“I- fine, fucking fine. I’ll join the Wonders. Just,” he looked demented, his eyes wide and his mouth twisted into a crazed, stretched grimace. “Don’t leave me in here.”
Creed’s face remained impassive, his expression like that of a stone. “What’s to keep you from killing me and everyone else once you get out?”
Lance bowed his head, his shoulders shaking. He was exhausted, Creed realized. Lance was exhausted by him. He was well and truly cowed. Here was a man who had never seen a fight he hadn’t won, and something about Creed’s curse scared him. There would be no definitive answer, no guarantee of safety around this man. But, of course, there was never a guarantee of safety. Especially not amongst the Wonders.
He stepped forward, and let himself go near the cell once again. Lance didn’t move. Creed flexed his curse one more time, letting Lance feel the sucking numbness enter his body, the agonizing cold. He didn’t move this time. Creed grinned, for real this time, and it was somehow more disturbing than the last. His skin stretched, and his dull, lifeless eyes shone like glass marbles under a spotlight. He stretched out a frigid hand.
“Welcome to the Wonders. I promise, you will see blood.”
Lance stared at the outstretched hand. Then, surprisingly, he lifted his chin and looked directly at him. The dim light cast by the torches spread onto Lance’s chest, where three black star-shaped marks spanned his muscles just under his collarbone. They matched the ones along Creed’s arm and Loralei’s spine, the marks of those with curses to wield. He tilted his head.
“One condition.”
“You’re not in any position to make-”
“One. Condition. That’s all, and I won’t touch any of the Wonders.”
“And how am I to trust you?”
Lance shrugged. “Just hear the condition.”
Creed remained silent.
“No draining. Not on me. And,” he grinned wickedly, pretending not to hear Loralei sputtering in anger. “I want all the loot from any battles.”
“That sounds like two conditions.”
“Fine. Two conditions.”
Creed thought for a moment. They weren’t unreasonable asks, and he had planned for the first one. But the second…?
“Alright. I’m putting my faith in your ability to control yourself, as unbelievably stupid as that might be,” he ignored Loralei’s snort of disbelief. “But, may I ask, why the second?”
Lance shrugged. “I like shiny stuff.”
Creed squinted, not believing a word of it. But, they had little choice. Although he and Loralei had feigned disinterest when walking away, they were both desperate. There were more candidates lined up for the Wonders, especially one that Loralei had her eye on, but Lance was important. More important than he needed to know.
“Alright. I will allow it. But,” he stepped forward sharply, right up to the bars, and glared up into Lance’s face. “If you so much as look at the other members funny…” He let the threat hang between them.
Lance cracked a smile, and, shockingly, threw his head back and roared with laughter. He went on for several minutes. Patiently, Creed waited.
Finally, Lance drew a deep breath and blew it out. He reached a calloused, thick-knuckled hand between the bars and roughly shook Creed’s pale, slim fingers. “I think we’ll get along pretty decent, yeah?”
Loralei cringed. Creed clasped the hand gripping his and nodded affirmatively. “Yes, I think we will.”