"Take them."

Two of the tall brown men stepped forward and brought their hands up in the same formation, I had seen Alice do earlier.

The house began to fade, behind us... and so did Clara’s body.

Alice, Will, Stephen, and I were the only ones brought through this...strange vessel.

When we landed, hard, we were on a large salt flat... There was nothing in any direction for miles.

Nothing living, at all, except us.

We quickly recovered and Will found me, taking me into his arms protectively, as if Stephen might just claim me, then.

Revak began to speak.

"I will observe the law, though it will be futile..." He stepped towards Hunimehl.

"You wish to claim the rights for your grandchild?!"

"Yes." he said.

"Then you must take it...From him."

Hunimehl turned towards Stephen. And then he began to change...His body shifted form until he was a hyena, laughing up at the waning night.

He lept at him. We all were frozen, our eyes glued to this strange spectacle. This was what Hetu really were, for all their talk of being above animals.

It landed on Stephen’s chest...The hyena "yipped" loudly and bore dangerous looking fangs nipping centimeters away from Stephen’s throat.

Stephen held him back with his hands....Each propped on his upper and lower jawline...

It was over too quickly...We heard a snap, and the bloodied animal lay still on the flat ground.

Alice, already wrecked by the night’s earlier horrible events, was on the edge of her sanity now...

"He wanted to free her...And he failed. He wanted to free you." Revak said looking at Ibis,

"...and he failed again. He dies a failed animal."

"Fitting he was a hyena. All of his attempts were a joke." He said, coldly.

Alice saw it now... The choice he had made, his wife, her mother enduring who knew what kind of fate in her place.

She was now most certainly, dead.

Alice could no longer cry. She sat as still as statue, staring down at the corpse.

Stephen stood triumphantly, covered in blood, on his hands and from the neck up.

"Come with me, Ibis...Your boy will live on unharmed."

Alice looked at me, then...The expression on her face was so weakly resigned to whatever pain was next, I shook Will’s hold of me off and went to him. I couldn’t bare any more of it.

"You’ll tire of me. All of this pain. And you will tire of me, like the others." I said, quietly.

"Maybe not." He said and grabbed my wrist. He pulled me the rest of the way to him and grabbed my face with his bloodied hands...

He forced me to face him and planted a rough kiss on my lips. He tried to force his way into my mouth, but I bite his lip. He shoved me away and wiped at his mouth, with amusement.

Will started after me, but Stephen held up a sticky hand... "Boy? You wish to die t-?"

He didn’t get to finish.

Will had jumped on him, knocking the words from his throat. They fought viciously. The blows that landed, reverberated throughout the empty expanse.

Revak watched this scene with a vague sense of amusement.

I crawled next to Alice...Trying to get her back, from wherever she’d gone...With her dead kin.

*****

They were at a tense impasse, each had the other in a tight death-hold...

And Stephen taunted. "She will yield to me...They all do. I stir them in ways, none could match."

"You want her because she won’t...She never will."

Stephen flipped him off and tackled him from behind. He gripped his throat, but Will somehow managed to wedge it, with his hands.

Will brought his elbow up and knocked him back...

And Stephen immediately caught him in the chest knocking him to the ground.

Stephen was on top of Will, his hands on his throat again, intending to take his head off.

A low moan began in Alice’s throat.

I stood up..."No! Stephen, I won’t fight you-..."

I didn’t get a chance to finish... In that brief moment he was distracted, Will slipped from his grip.

He brought Stephen’s arm up in a painful angle, snapping it. He rolled up to higher height and took his head into his arms.

There was a sickening pop and Stephen fell over dead.

Will sat for moment, looking at his hands, trying to comprehend what they had done.. When he finally looked up, he saw me holding his mother.

He got to his feet and walked towards us.

Revak stood up, clearly intending to finish what Stephen had started. "No human’s claim is valid."

I didn’t see it...

One second, I was holding Alice, the next, she was gone.

"No." She said, standing between Revak and Will. "No more of mine."

She said, calmly, steadily.

"You kill me. You coward."

He stood there confused for a moment, and then decided he would still lunge at Will.

Big mistake.

Alice reared up and her hands became like claws...She raked across his throat spilling his blood.

He looked up at her, his hand holding what was left of his throat together, his eyes wide with shock.

He fell over, and whispered an incantation to staunch the flow...but others, other Hetu appeared on the plain.

One of them, an old one, walked over to him and kicked away his hand.

Revak bled out quickly and was no more.

*****

The old one looked at us. Alice, Will, and I, covered in blood and looking as embattled as we were.

"We are finished." He said.

The plain swirled around us and disappeared.

Again, we thudded back inside Will’s home.

*****

The reality of Clara’s death hit us all hard, in the time that followed.

Poor Alice, blamed herself. I blamed myself. Alice at least forgave her father. Now, that she knew what he was under. She put them all to rest.

Like all grief, the pain eventually dulled...but never left.

Will never returned to school. Nor did I.

*****

A year later...We held a small wedding ceremony inside an old abandoned church.

Everything that we had been through, the challenges, the beauty, the pain, culminated in this one moment.

I wore a very simple cotton shift, and Will a simple suit...

Tess watched us with a mixture of sadness and happiness in her eyes. I would never be completely lost to her, but things would be different.

I eventually had to reveal myself to Nelli. Between Clara’s death and her abusive stepfather, who I did have to visit, it was unavoidable.

She was there for our ceremony.

*****

Ten years later, we have a miracle. I am pregnant. It is a rare thing for our kind to reproduce, so it is exciting and frightening all at once.

Tess and Alice are fussing over me, both eager to have a new young one around to spoil.

We know she’s a girl.

Her name will be Clara.

THE END