Chapter 4: Nighttiming"Do you think she's a Giant, too? She's so big."
"You're too harsh, Cullum. And she's not big. Just tall."
"Not unlike you."
There was a long pause and then "No. No, I don't think she has the bone density. Wouldn't it have been nice right now if we'd waited until they were able to distinguish the different kinds of fay?" But there was no regret in his voice.
Different. Kinds. Of fay. In the state of Yuri's mind, the words were rather hard to digest.
"She's awake," the other voice announced, only then making Yuri realize they--the voices--had been talking about
her. It seemed like they'd been talking to each other forever, although Yuri couldn't remember the very first things they has said.
She opened her eyes. Everything was blurry at first, but she could tell from the quick, jerky movements away from her bedside--if not from their voices--that there two other boys in the room with her, and that the room was definitely not her cell.
"Where am I?" she demanded.
The boy to her right straightened up slowly, like he didn't want to startle her. "This is my apartment. My name is Holden van Woodsen."
"And why am I here? I thought I was supposed to be locked up..." Her head moved to the side and her eyes fell on the other boy. "So you're Cullum."
The boy's eyes widened. "Have we met?"
"No, I was just listening to snippets of your conversation, and if
he's Holden," She jerked her chin at him. "That would make you Cullum, wouldn't it?"
The boy frowned. "You don't think she's part-Witch, Holden?"
"You know that's not possible."
Yuri turned to look back at Holden, who was watching her with pensive eyes, and glared at him. "What do you mean I'm part-Witch?"
Holden looked at her. There was a difference, Yuri knew, when people were looking at you and studying you, and when they were really seeing you as a person. She was thankful to earn the latter this time.
"Cullum, make her a cup of tea."
"Excuse me?"
"Make her tea."
"Since when was I a
slave here? Ugh, you just want me out of your way... I get it." He backed out of the room resentfully, giving her a very mean look as he left.
"I apologize for my friend, he can be a bit, well, I don't know if 'blind' is the word exactly." Holden smiled in thought. "But he's reckless, to be sure."
"You two kidnapped me."
"Yes. In a sense. If it were up to me, I would have just let nature take its course. You see, humans have something of a natural vulnerability to--"
"
Why? Why did you do it?" She suddenly felt angry. It didn't help that Holden both looked and sounded so reasonable.
The left side of his cheek crooked up in a semi-grin and he said, "Will you listen to the first part of the story first?" He waited about three seconds for her to argue and continued to speak when she didn't. "Anyhow. Humans have a natural vulnerability to fay. It's that they can't quite believe fay exist. Sooner or later, the people who worked for that company would have begun to get confused, forget to come to work, look for new jobs. The company would collapse on itself. They would simply forget you or disbelieve you. It's happened before. But there was something very different with your abduction and the last few abductions."
He took something from her bedside, a mug, and took a long swig.
"What do you mean different?" Yuri asked. She'd gotten a feeling he was waiting for her to.
"Well, before, the mongrels got to leave scot-free. Nowadays, after they're set free, they become untraceable. It's like they disappear. And I don't trust the fay to be generous enough to have taken them in. That's why I was worried about your case, the only case to be produced in such mass media."
"The fay are extinct," Cullum said, suddenly entering the room. There was a slight sigh from Holden that Yuri didn't think anybody but her heard. "That's why
we've got to fend for ourselves." He addressed this to Yuri, eyeing her with the equal open curiosity she'd been able to feel even while virtually unconscious. "You're sure you're fay?"
"I--That's what they tell me."
"Of course, but that's probably what they would have told every mongrel with different blood. They probably had a rogue warlock set them on the right path. I'm only curious if you are true fay."
"Cullum!" Holden snapped, making him shrink back.
"I'm sorry," Cullum said, not really to her. "I, um, I think I'll go for a walk."
"Good idea," said Holden, not unkindly. Cullum nodded once more and left. When he was gone, Holden breathed another longer sigh, like he was letting off steam.
"I apologize again, for Cullum. He didn't mean anything--"
"What did he mean "true" fay? Like there're so many kinds--but of course, you're a--"
"That's what I
would be getting at if you'd stop interrupting." Yuri blushed and Holden smiled. "You seem to like to speak your mind, even if it means being rude sometimes," he mused. "It reminds me of Cullum when I first met him."
"Sorry about that."
"You don't have to apologize for being like Cullum. He's a good kid, you know,
deep, deep down." He tapped a finger to his chest. "Best to let him be, although you're still a kid yourself."
Yuri wanted to say something but held her tongue. Holden didn't look much older than her and Cullum, which she'd wanted to point out, and she wondered why he both spoke and acted like he was middle-aged.
Holden had been thinking and when he turned back to look at her, he seemed to come to a decision. "The explanation of true fay will have to wait, though. In the mean time why don't you see if you can find Cullum? He couldn't have gone too far and I've got to see if we've made international headlines yet." He smiled again but grimly letting her know there was some truth to the statement. But it was also his way of telling her she could come and go as she pleased, and she wasn't planning on wasting that liberty.
I've got nowhere else to go home to, she thought.
Steph would definitely turn me in."Sure."
It had been troublesome finding clothes for her. Once she decided she wanted to go out, she also realized she was still dressed in the clothes from the facility, which were made with slippery, hospital scrub fabric.
"Cullum's shirts would fit you," Holden had suggested. "But his pants won't." In the end, she borrowed a gigantic knitted sweater and scarf from Holden that could be mistaken for a dress and had had to push the overlong sleeves all the way up to her elbows. Tied tightly enough, Cullum's boots fit, but the gaps between her feet and the shoe made it hard to walk normally. She stumbled at least five times on her way out the door.
She was walking on pavement again, the familiar feeling giving her some reassurance, but she'd never been in Williamsburg before and everything seemed dirtier, though she tried not to think of it that way. She had been walking for twenty minutes and had not seen one glimpse of Cullum, despite Holden's promises that he was just "around". She wasn't even sure she remembered the way back home.
"Oh,
furk," Yuri grumbled in frustration and stepped to the side so that she could kick a wall, or a lamp post. She ended up bumping into something warm and alive. "Crap, I'm sorry, I wasn't... looking."
It was him. Cullum. And he looked terribly pleased with himself.
"That's because you were looking for me. Holden probably sent you out for me, but he knew you wouldn't be able to if I didn't let you. He just wanted you out of his hair for a bit."
"And you think you're an expert on evasion?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. I've been following you around town the whole time. You're lost, aren't you?"
"I..." Now that she'd thought of it, she didn't quite know which turn led back to the apartment complex. "I'm not Lost. My name is Yuri," she replied lamely.
Cullum snorted. "I
know that. My name's Cullum."
"Pleasure to meet you, Cullum."
"Et tu." He peered at her. "You know, Holden took a big risk letting you out of his sight like that. People might recognize you. I can't quite say I agree on him on that decision."
"And you trust him to make the right decision? Most of the time?" She could hear the apprehension in her own voice. After all, her fate was in Holden's hands now. Holden and Cullum's.
Cullum shrugged and he looked past her, at something behind her head. "He's the adult. Wait, I'm not sure but," he sucked in a breath. "I'm sure now. I wasn't the only one following you."
She turned, just in time to see two dark shapes disappear into an alley. Yuri watched them doubtfully, as their dark clothes blended into the lightlessness of the alley. They could have been there for anyone.
"Come on, let's find out what they want." Cullum whispered, his face hard.
Yuri looked up in surprise--she was glad that unlike Holden, Cullum was easier to look in the eye. They were nearly the same height whereas Holden was for all intents and purposes a
giant. He'd towered over her, which wasn't a feeling she was used to getting from people. "What?"
"Either follow me or find your way back." He was already halfway to the alley. Doubting that she was making the right decision, Yuri followed close behind, walking into Cullum when he came to a sudden stop.
"What--"
"Shh... They're gone. I want to find them."
"Cullum, I really don't think they--"
"Shh."
She gave up.
"Alright. Let's split up. I bet they won't be so shy if you're alone."
"If I'm alone! What are you, cra... zy. Crazy." Cullum had disappeared completely. She was alone inside a dark alley, in an unfamiliar town, and now she wondered if Cullum's plan all along had been to get rid of her.
"This isn't funny!" she yelled angrily. She waited a few more seconds before she nodded to herself, as if confirming that there was no reason to stay, and tried to step back into the lit portion of the alley.
To her surprise, her back hit a wall, or what felt like a wall. Yuri gasped as she turned around, seeing the all-familiar sidewalk she had walked on earlier, but it was like she was sealed behind a window. She tried knocking on it experimentally, making no sound. "Cullum?" she said his name uncertainly. "If this is a trick--"
"Yuri. That is what you choose to be called?"
She whirled around again, making herself dizzy. The voice wasn't Cullum's, it belonged to the outline of two figures coming towards her. As they came closer to the light, she saw that they were people, a woman and a man, dressed in dark raincoats with the hoods up. They pulled the hoods down as they approached, revealing pointed ears.
Yuri bit her tongue, tasting blood. "Listen, I don't have any money. This was all a mistake! You see, Cullum--"
"Cullum Johnson." Their eyes positively darkened and Yuri gulped inwardly. "And Holden Wood. They think they can keep cheating our world without consequence. It's too sad that
you weren't put under their full protection or you could have lived like that
half-breed." It was the woman who had spoken and she spat the last word like it was acid, her face scrounging up.
Cheat? Holden, at least, had been nothing but nice to her since she'd met him. And she had never thought of Cullum as vile or evil, though just now he'd left her to the two pointy-eared maniacs who'd followed her. "I only met them today. I have nothing to do with them," she pleaded, looking for sympathy--or she wasn't sure what--in their eyes. She didn't find it. "Please," she begged.
The pointy-eared couple looked at each other blankly and then wordlessly, the man uncovered a plain-looking dagger from his raincoat's pocket.
"Oh, no. Hell no, you do
not want to--"
"Silence yourself, half-breed!" The woman growled. Yuri gave up on trying to talk her way out.
The woman cackled viciously, sneering at her. "But you're not even a half-breed, are you? Barely any fay blood to mark you as anything but mortal."
The man had come several steps closer to Yuri. She backed away, coming to a stop helplessly against the invisible barrier that separated her from the rest of the world. She turned her head a fraction, hoping someone would pass by, but as if she had guessed what Yuri was thinking the fay woman had made a disgusted noise and came over, close enough to Yuri to grip her face in her hand. "Don't you realize,
human, that people won't see you?"
She let go, only to grab the dagger from the man's hand. She tapped the flat side of the blade against Yuri's cheek, chuckling softly to herself. "And probably not even true fay. This is a waste of our time, Ash."
"Heads up."
Ash and the woman both bent their necks up to the sky. Yuri looked up too late; Cullum was already on his way down from the window of one of the buildings that made up one side of the alley. He landed lithely on his feet, only to be kneed in the stomach by Ash.
"Cullum!" a hoarse scream Yuri recognized as her own rebounded from the walls.
The woman, having priorly been distracted by Cullum's sudden appearance, seemed to only remember Yuri was still there and turned to her, raising her knife.
"Be glad, human, that we were distracted from imagining any, more creative way for you to die."
There was a sound like a whistle and the woman sank to the ground, a dagger with an elaborate handle sticking out of her back.
There was a low moan from several feet away. It was Ash, he'd watched the scene happen in horror and then he yowled, a distorted sound that made Yuri's eyes water.
Cullum's eyes were like saucers, his arm still outstretched from when he'd thrown the dagger. And then, the woman's body appeared to break into a million pieces disappearing into the air. Ash, still yowling, disappeared in the same way, the noise dying away with him. The invisible wall, too, disappeared, and without it to support her weight, Yuri's knees gave out on the pavement that had made her felt so familiar seconds ago.
Cullum recovered faster. Slowly, he'd walked over to the spot where the woman had lain and recovered his dagger. It was stained with blood now. Just as slowly, he came and dropped to his knees in front of Yuri. "Are you okay?"
She wasn't. She never would be.
"Come on. Let's go home. I've got to tell Holden."
-
Oh my goodness, I haven't even done so much as reread this! What am I doing posting it?! Bah. Well I swear that soon I'll be working on my papers for English and Physics, and I wanted to leave behind something before my brain bleeds to death and such. So I hope you guys like this. 
@Danni! Sadly, we didn't get to the epic part where Holden's glasses are put on (I'll be honest, I forget to mention them.) But thank you so much. I hope you enjoy reading this.
@Mhay If you don't mind, saan ka nag-aaral? I usually update on weekends (I'm also a student and devote my weekdays solidly to study 
) so I guess you could check for updates on Saturday evenings. You don't have to call me Ate Phoebe, either, as I'm only sixteen. And even if I was older, I wouldn't have you do it, haha! Thank you!
Yet another inappropriate song for this chapter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlYGEaeoBWw But it's real cute too.
And we both go together if one falls down, I talk out loud like you’re still around
