The pain woke me.

It pulsed with heat, quivering from my skull along my spine, into my trembling shoulders where the muscles bunched and strained. The ache shook off the unconscious confusion and I pulled against the hold on my numb arms when I realized they were pinned above me, my feet grazing a smooth surface, my chin resting on my chest. Lifting it sent new pain firing through my neck. I groaned.

"Sara? Sara, can you hear me?!"

That's Tara. Where are we? What happened?

Prying my eyelids open hurt, the light vague but piercing in intensity, emanating from somewhere below. I scrunched my nose and focused. Are those...? Those are...candles.

Less than a dozen candles sat loosely arranged in a ring, a paltry yellow corona illuminating a shallow, metallic basin positioned on the floor. The basin was large, large enough for me to question what it could possibly be used for, and polished until the sloping surface reflected the outlines of rafters above. What is that?

Movement at my side turned my head as far as it would go. "...Tara?"

"Oh, thank God you're awake. Can you see Rick? He's there, next to you—."

The three of us hung together on a welded rack: a steel bar running atop two thick columns stabilized by mounded sandbags. Handcuffs threaded over the top of the bar bound our wrists and, our feet, balanced on that strange basin, had been weighted down by thick chains that looped about our ankles and spilled over the basin's edge. Our flickering bubble of muted candlelight burned alone in the dark like a single ember left breathing in a wildfire's wake.

"Wh—where are we?" I asked, dry mouth desperate for relief. "What happened?"

"I don't remember." Tara's heavy breathing didn't echo in the empty space; the dark seemed to eat the sound, consuming our words like a hungry beast licking up table scraps, waiting for more. Waiting for what exactly, I couldn't say. "I—there was a van, and I screamed, but there's nothing after that. I woke up here." Her voice grew thin as she spoke and panic threatened to overwhelm her. "Can you please check on Rick?"

Turning my head again proved just as harrowing as it had the first time and I felt a sticky residue crack and pull at the fine hairs on my neck's nape. I strained to peer past my own arm, panting, and tried to make sense of what I saw. Rick, silent as the grave, hung without precipitable movement next to me. Red stained the front of his dress shirt.

"He's—unconscious," I lied, trembling all the harder, the cool air biting at the perspiration beading my brow and the dip between my shoulders. Tara didn't deserve my lies but we couldn't panic, not now, not in this situation. Bile crept up my throat and I swallowed again, tears burning beneath my lashes. He's dead. Oh, Christ—Rick's dead and we're next—! "Do you know who these people are? What they want?"

"No," Tara said. "Do you think they're...kidnappers? Do you think they're trying to get money out of Mother and Dad?"

Eleanor and Luc Gaspard made a tidy living as a cardiovascular surgeon and an accountant, respectively, but they didn't possess the kind of money that would motivate a triple kidnapping and subsequent ransom. Besides, why would these people take Rick if they meant to extort money from our parents? Why would they kill him?

"I don't think that's it," I whispered.

The rack creaked when Tara shifted, the dirty hem of her dress brushing my leg. "...what are we going to do, Sara?"

We're going to die. We're not going to make it—. I crushed that thought before it could spiral into madness. No, I told myself, taking hold of my resolve, clenching my teeth until they clicked. I'm going to get Tara away from here. I'm going to get her home. We won't die. Not like this. I won't allow it.

"Can you get free?" I asked instead. "Just one arm, or a leg? Anything?"

"No. I can't even feel my hands anymore."

I couldn't either, but the lack of sensation didn't stop me from bouncing and jerking against my restraints, muscles screaming from exertion, every breath coarse and ragged. The chains abraded my ankles and blood trickled along my numb forearm.

The lights came on.

My headache roared with fresh potency and I slammed my eyelids shut, gasping, shouting, willing the whirling nausea and pain to subside. It crackled like lightning through my veins until I could concentrate on nothing beyond the raging agony.

"Who the fuck are you people?!" Tara screamed.

I had to look, though I wanted nothing more than to keep my eyes shut, to submit to the feeble need of ignorance as if pretending this wasn't happening could somehow make it so. Biting my lip, I braced myself for the pain and peeled my lids open. Through the film of tears and matted lashes, I watched our assailants approach.

They amassed in a formless cloud, crawling closer and closer from a doorway a dozen yards away, all garbed in the same black, shapeless attire that blurred their edges into a singular body rolling across the warehouse floor. It was a warehouse; the details escaped my vision, and yet I could see the boarded windows above the brick walls, the deep furrows and grooves in the concrete underfoot, the steel pillars and supports lining the distant ceiling. Across the basin resided a wooden lectern of all things.

"What do you want from us?!" Tara continued to rail and yell at the people with no results. Excited murmuring met our ears like distant thunder, the patter of their feet like raindrops on the stone. Pat, pat, pat. I searched for a face but could see nothing aside from the occasional slip of flesh inside a swaddled hood. I tried to count their number but couldn't make sense of the roiling horde.

They parted as they neared and encircled the basin—encircled us. None of their number paid attention to Tara's screaming or my panting or Rick's ominous silence; their hoods angled toward one another as they chattered, and no matter our struggle, the crowd ignored us.

Why? I wondered in a furious burst of indignation. What is the purpose of this?

The amassed bodies shifted to allow a single figure forward; this person dressed in white, slipping through the black fog like a lighthouse beacon beckoning us to crash against a storm-tossed shore. They crossed to the basin's head and, from within the billowing folds of that white cloak, withdrew a decaying vellum scroll. I concentrated on their withered, decidedly masculine hands as they spread the vellum atop the lectern.

"Let us begin," they—he—said, calling those in attendance to order. The murmuring ceased and the oppressive silence returned to the fore as the man in white gathered himself. "We haven't much time."

"Time for what?" Tara snarled, fear and terror rendering her voice hoarse. "What is this? Let us go! I can—I can pay you, whatever you want! We'll leave! We'll pretend we didn't see anything! Please!"

Again, they ignored her. I held my breath and pulled on the handcuffs.

The man in white inhaled. When he spoke, his words boomed like the demands of a Nordic god being issued from on high, resonating in the mountains and in the dales, along the frozen fjords until it filled the very sky. "Rath'le forsuile valas farath, Balthier."

The crowd echoed his declaration. "Rath'le forsuile valas farath, Balthier."

"What are they speaking?" Tara demanded, not caring if our audience heard. "What language is that, Sara?!"

"I don't know," I replied. I didn't; though I scoured my memories, I couldn't recall a time when I'd ever heard words quite like these, and I supposed it was not their native language; the morphemes fell clunky and malformed from their lips, spoken slowly, the static their chanting formed unbalanced and ugly.

"What fucking good is your degree if you can't even tell us what these bastards are saying?!" Hysterical, Tara wept, and my heart lurched as the tears slipped over her red cheeks.

"I'll get you out of this. Calm down, Tara, calm down—!"

"Rath'le forsuile valas farath lasuride et-rath'le gerin."

The handcuffs rattled against the bar as I struggled.

"Errae orran rath'le damasene."

Tara sobbed.

"Rath'le mauvade athar valas et-farath prallena."

Two of their number slipped from the conglomerate and approached the rack. The first—taller, lankier—reached into his robe's voluminous sleeve and withdrew a decorative silver dagger. His pale hands glowed like shined alabaster, white as chalk with fingers as thin as spider legs, a tattoo of a lizard emblazoned on the back of his right wrist, the tail looped about his thumb. The second figure—stocky, hands ruddy in coloration—accepted the blade.

"Rath'le forsuile valas farath, Balthier."

"No!" I shouted at the pair who came to the rack's end and reached for Tara. My sister cried and thrashed but could do little against the restraints pinning her in place. The pale man stood behind her and gripped Tara by the hair, forcing her head back, the shorter man stepping into the basin, where his loafers scuffed the polished shine.

"Rath'le tadame et-rath'ma'le orran et-farath drall alarith'le."

My heart pounded. My wrists grew slick.

"Mauvade haila et-fararh nimeara, Farirrath mir Ridmal."

The silver dagger flashed in the overhead lights and came nearer my sister's bared throat.

"Lurire et-rath'le farire'le."

"I'm pregnant!" Tara sobbed. "Please, I'm pregnant! You can't do this!" Her pleas for mercy went unheeded.

"Mauvade arotir'le farran."

"No!" I denied, writhing against the chains, eyes wide, lungs heaving.

"Adan mauvade fafarran dirris et-rath'le wen'le!"

"Sara!" Tara begged through inconsolable wails. Our eyes met, and in that moment we reflected one another better than we had in years; it didn't matter that she dyed her hair to differentiate between us, didn't matter we lived different lives, loved different things, and had become different people. We shared the same beginning—had shared a womb, a mother, a father, had clasped hands in the dead of night, built forts, rode bikes, told each other stories, and had consoled one another when a boy broke our hearts. It didn't matter if we were different, because we shared the same beginning, and it seemed we would share the same end.

The blade sank into her throat, and I could do nothing to stop it.

"Rath'le forsuile valas farath, Balthier."

"Tara!" The dagger drew back and silver tears curled through her lashes one last time. Red streamed through the channel formed by her collarbones and into the valley between her breasts, staining the lavender dress, descending ever downward. A gasp left her, a puff of air, pitiful and wet, crimson bubbles blossoming on her gaping lips. "Tara!"

This can't be real. This can't—!

"Rath'le forsuile valas farath, Balthier."

My sister sagged, final breath rattling in her torn throat. Blood ran into the basin as the man stepped aside as if he couldn't fathom getting his loafers dirty. He turned to face me.

I didn't beg. I didn't wish for leniency or mercy, didn't surrender myself to the unforgiving embrace of misery and hopelessness, because whatever desire I had to live through this event and continue my wretched, boring life had just been garroted before my very eyes. When the blade rose again, I screamed with naked savagery, tasting copper in my mouth once more, blinded by fury rather than pain.

How dare they?! How dare they, how dare they, how DARE—!

The bar creaked. Their voices droned, cruel and unending. When the man reached for me, I didn't cower; I lunged. Startled, he stumbled and I felt something pop in my left hand before the handcuffs gave and the hand slipped free. I fell upon my sister's murderer with a snarl and he yelped, dagger falling, and though my arms burned as blood rushed into them again, I gripped his hood and yank.

I didn't recognize him. I stared into the bland, surprised, and watery-eyed countenance of a middle-aged Caucasian man and had no recognition of him. He could have been anyone.

Not all monsters are what they appear.

Teeth bared, my nails scoured his bare face and plunged a thumb through his left eye. He shrieked.

"Restrain her!" bellowed the man in white, and the pale murderer with a tattoo on his wrist hurried to grab me from behind, one hand working through my hair as he had done to Tara, cinching an arm about my waist. The unveiled man wrenched himself away and toppled from the basin, clasping his wounded face.

"Let go of me!" I raged, more out of instinct than any actual belief that these monsters would do anything I said. "Let go of me, you bastard!" Struggling, I threw my elbows into his ribs and thrust back my head, trying to dislodge myself, but the man's strangely powerful grip didn't yield in the slightest. He held me to his sturdy front with little effort.

The room had gone quiet. I looked up through my disheveled hair—and found that we were not alone.

A new man had appeared in the middle of the bloody basin while I fought my attackers. I knew he hadn't been there before because he didn't wear one of those ridiculous cloaks; instead, he dressed in a bespoke suit, his tie sage green, a golden fob chain dangling from one of his vest buttons, so incongruous to the silenced horde he couldn't be anything but a figment of my frenzied mind.

He swept a hand through his tidy, brunette hair and sighed. I stared into his black eyes and saw nothing looking back. "Well, then."

"Celene taralil drinan, Balthier!" the man in white cried, shattering the quiet, his chant taken up once more by the frenzied crowd. I realized then why they hadn't paid much attention to Tara or me; in the course of baiting a trap, one cares little for the dead meat they toss between the trap's steel jaws. The meat is inconsequential. It is simply sacrificed to attract something else.

The well-dressed man stepped forward and paused to pluck the soiled dagger up from where it'd fallen. His gaze flicked from the excited audience to the man mewling on the ground, to me and to the person restricting my struggles. The expression on his handsome face remained constant, never wavering beyond bored detachment as he took a final step closer and towered over me.

Cold leached into my very bones.

The man at my back released and left me to stand before this new threat, my weak knees folding as the adrenaline and anger lost strength. He caught me by the neck, callused fingers rasping against my skin, and I tried to push him away, the handcuffs rattling on my right wrist, the left shoving at his braced arm to no avail.

They're too strong. There's nothing I can do, but I won't let it end like this. I won't!

He had Tara's blood on his shoes and I could feel it between my bare toes. When his thumb swept across my jaw in mimicry of a caress, I glared up at the man who would be my end with hatred, with an ineffable fury that defied all fear, all worry, all trepidation. Every rapid beat of my heart bled incredulous ire. "Go to Hell," I said.

Had this been a fairy tale—or one of papé's ghost stories—this was the part where the villain would monologue, where he'd wax poetic about his goals and intentions and someone—anyone—would come to our rescue. Tara would live and I would live and Rick would live and we'd go on, putting this horrid, horrid night behind us until it became as ephemeral as a sour dream shaken off when one blinks their eyes and greets the morning's dawn. Life would resume. We would forget.

This was not a story.

The man said nothing, and emerald color flashed through his irises, quick as a green flash arresting the sky at sunset, gone just as swiftly, and he smirked.

The dagger was thrust under my ribs.

I screamed despite myself when agony burst through my middle and I fumbled at the blade's hilt, hands too weak and battered to grasp the slick handle, warmth spreading along my hip and leg where the blood trailed. The man tossed me aside, and by sheer grace alone I missed landing upon the dagger itself and instead bounced onto my back, head smacking the concrete.

Spots floated in my vision and I blacked out for an indeterminate amount of time; when I came to again, the man—my murderer—had vanished. They had all gone, the great tide of black-robed bodies seemingly dissolved into midair, leaving nothing behind but the tools of their murderous design.

The overhead lights went out, though the candles remained giving relief to the blood-soaked scene. One monster had stayed, as I could hear him shuffling about in the dark even as my vision began to fail. He removed the basin—grunting as he did so, dragging it along the floor, scraping the concrete—and then went to the rack as he muttered under his breath. The candles revealed only the slightest delineation of his form, a corpulent specimen still in his costume, riffling through his pockets until he found the key to release my sister.

This can't be how it ends, I thought, hand cupped about the dagger being warmed by my lifeblood. We can't die here—not like this. Not to these fucking people!

Tara's body collapsed to the floor with a wet, defeated thump. Hatred seared through me.

A sudden gust of air broke the warehouse's monotonous heat and stopped the cloaked man after he released Rick. I could smell smoke. "Patrick?" the man asked as he stepped past the empty rack and toed the line where the hungry dark encroached upon the candlelight's dying ring. "Patrick, cut the shit so we can get this cleaned up—."

'Cleaned up,' he said, like we were unsightly spots sullying his best linens. Cleaned up.

His voice choked and ended with a curious crunching sound. A body hit the floor somewhere in the shadows.

I could see Tara where I lay, and I reached for my sister, sore fingers clawing at the pitted concrete, stretching, and yet I couldn't take her prone hand in mine.

I'm so sorry, Tara, I'm so sorry—.

Footsteps neared with a predator's measured stride, bloodied tennis shoes coming into my line of vision, pausing as their owner observed what lay before him. "My," said the newest addition to this horror show. "This seems a lost cause. You're beyond the redemption of an angel, let alone a lowly demon such as myself."

Angel? Demon? What difference did the distinction make when my world had been shattered in minutes and my life now dripped along a blade's edge? Would they ever discover our bodies? Would they ever clean our blood from the floor, or would it seep in, stain it, a final reminder of where the Gaspard twins breathed their last? Tara was dead. I would soon join her, unless—.

The legs moved as if to depart and I clutched at his pant leg, curling my fingers into the stiff cloth. "No," I hissed, every breath a hard-won battle stolen from death's vice. "No...."

He knelt. Warm fingers clasped my jaw, turning it toward him, and I met the red-eyed stare of the creature who crouched above me. He called himself a demon, and in that half-crazed, agonized hysteria I drifted through, I could believe him.

"Not ready to give in, are you, mortal?"

"Never."

My chest ached, ached with rage and grief and torment until the air tasted like fire and red pulsed in the darkness. Red like her blood on a silver blade. Red like the demon's eyes intent upon my own.

"Submit to becoming my earthly host." The fingertips pressed into my skin, tight and grounding. "Give me an anchor to this realm and a promise to your soul, and I will do what you bid, will give you what you want most. What I require from you is simple: an accord, my promise and your order. Your soul, in return for that which you desire most."

"Yes," I gasped. "Yes."

A smile twisted the creature's mouth, a slash of white in an otherwise blurred face, and all around us the shadows seemed to hold their breath and tremble with an unseasonable chill, awaiting his every word.

"Good. Tell me then, host, what do you want? What is it you want me to do?"

What do I want?

I remembered her final scream, my name on her lips—a plea, a prayer, perhaps even a farewell.

"Sara!"

My answer came with shocking ease.

"Kill them," I said, new tears building in blind eyes, my grip failing. Reality slipped from my numb fingers. "Kill them for what they've done."

The last thing I heard was the creature's laughter. It lifted like the roar of an inferno, soaring higher and higher, devouring all in its path, and I dropped into the sweet, blessed dark of the unknown.