Damn. This would probably be the best haul Eliza would have in a while, and this was just the basement.
There had always been a certain air of mystique around the rich. It was very enjoyable brushing the fog away as one did to a fart. This was one of those houses which wasn't just on the outskirts of a city, or on the outskirts of a suburb, even—it was on the outskirts of the outskirts, requiring a special trip to get through the expansive, ostentatious grounds.
Logically it was a stupid place to burgle. There was so much open space and nowhere to hide and blend, no easy lies, just your own ability to hide and sneak. There were marks as rich in the city and in the suburbs—although since the inside of this place was more than matching the outside, that was getting hard to imagine—but some trouble between the street gangs had stirred up and it'd be a while before Eliza could go back and remain safe, sane and solo.
And besides, it was nighttime and none of the windows had been lit. Only the dysfunctional rich families felt the need to twaddle around in the middle of the night, and this didn't look like one.
Eliza worked the torch into a solid grip between her teeth so she could take care of this safe with both hands—it was trickier than she'd first thought. She checked the serial number again—damn, she'd misjudged the generation. She'd been going about cracking it wrong. This one had those strange, super expensive drive cam notches that made muted sounds and were harder to listen to. This would require much more attention, and she didn't have anything to amplify the sound.
Eliza glanced back at the door. Well, she was already in quite deep—literally—and though she'd snagged a lot of jewels, she didn't quite have enough to justify the 'high risk, high reward' scenario this was.
Eliza pressed her ear right up against the safe, and tried to recall the one time she'd tried to crack this kind. The sound was different to usual, she remembered that, but what exactly was she listening for…
Ah, shit. In her focus, she'd stopped listening for the most important thing—someone approaching. The door was opening.
Eliza snapped to duck into the darkness among the other clutter in the basement room, turning the flashlight off with her teeth and dropping it into her palm. Only the really observant, really awake ones tended to catch her out.
The door opened to reveal no light, so the silhouette was barely identifiable. It opened the door in the gloom, entirely in the dark.
"You shouldn't be in here."
Huh. Not afraid of the dark at all, and instantly spotting her. Count Eliza's curiosity piqued. She flicked the flashlight on and stood.
Holy shit, she was hot.
If Eliza was into that sort of thing, this was the sort of person she'd do it with. It was a young woman—could've been a teenager with that slight frame and her voice, but she looked much older. She wore a dress, not quite the sort you'd wear out, but nothing homey or slouchy either. She had very pale skin, the sort that just looked beautiful, and any paler would have looked sickly. She had soft and wavy deep brown hair which tumbled around her shoulders in an enviously effortless fashion. Her features were almost symmetrical, and there was something just soft enough to complement the sharp angles and make them alluring and attractive.
To her credit, the teen—on closer inspection of her face, she looked younger than Eliza—barely flinched as the flashlight hit her. Her eyes narrowed, and she glared.
For a moment, Eliza was contemplating knife throwing, despite her infamous lack of skill with it—before the girl did the most helpfully stupid thing she could have.
She came into the room and closed the door.
Eliza let out a half-sigh-half-laugh of relief and drew her switchblade, flicking it out. "Sorry kiddo—I'm gonna assume you're a kiddo, here—but I can't just not take advantage of a mistake that stupid. You're gonna show me the way out, and no one's gonna find us, or that pretty little face gets drastically less pretty."
"Rest assured, I'd love to." The girl didn't seem scared at all. Had she been dropped as a child? The pretty did tend to be brainless. The girl stepped closer, a warning look on her. "Get out and never come back. You hear me? Never. First, give back anything you've taken, and tell me; what have you seen?"
Eliza snorted. "Cute. You're not scared. Okay, listen—I have a knife, okay? I don't know if you realised that. I have a knife, several, actually, and I'd prefer not to use it—and we both know who'd win here, missy."
The girl strode forward.
Eliza's heart stuttered with a jolt of strange panic.
"No." The girl's voice was final. "We don't."
Eliza sighed and prepared to dodge and slice—cause pain, clap her hand over the girl's mouth, try and give her a quick education in basic common sense.
As she ducked and the knife slid through the bare skin of the girl's arm, it snapped out with unnatural speed and grabbed Eliza's throat.
The sudden burn in Eliza's chest was punctuated with the sound of her knife clattering to the ground.
She wasn't bleeding. The girl wasn't bleeding—or was that just because Eliza's brain had a much lower amount of oxygen than before and the flashlight had fallen on the floor too at an unhelpful angle?
"Give it all back and get out." The girl's strange certainty made a terrible sort of sense now. "Just give it back, tell me what you've seen and get out. I don't want to hurt you and I don't care about what laws you've broken now or in the past. Just—"
Instinct took over as adrenaline suddenly surged in Eliza's body, almost as if it was flooding in where the oxygen had been. Heart pounding, Eliza snapped her own arm up and twisted, throwing her weight against the girl's thumb—the weakest part of her grip. Even an obscenely strong human was still built like a human, and mechanical weaknesses existed to be exploited in Eliza's book.
Though it was much tougher than Eliza remembered, the girl's grip broke. Instinct won out and Eliza started running . There had to be another exit through the basements with the size of this place above ground, and she could hide if she needed to, damn that knife or flashlight. There was something wrong here, something very, very wrong, and it was terrifying Eliza more than she'd let herself be terrified in years.
"No!" The sound of footsteps pounding, and real alarm seeping through the girl's voice. "Don't go that way!"
Eliza didn't quite compute. She turned a corner, hoping to lose the girl in circling around through what seemed like a maze of basement corridors.
Instead, she saw blood.
A frail girl hung limply from the grip of another, taller girl. And Eliza's vision had adjusted enough to see that the taller girl was biting into the other one's neck, and blood was bubbling out of it and practically dripping down her side.
The taller girl noticed, eyes flicking up. She drew her tongue up the side of the other's neck and stood straight, throwing the other's body aside like a rag doll. The taller girl tilted her head to the side and grinned, showing fangs which glistened with blood even in the limited light.
This wasn't 'wrong'. It was a nightmare.
"What's this?" The tall girl's features became clear, forming out of the shadows as she stepped closer. She was even more stunning than the other girl, her paleness accentuated by icy blue eyes and platinum-blond hair. She looked fake. Unreal. It was too much even for plastic surgery, and it didn't have that awful stiffness to it. This was natural and out of a storybook at the same time.
Her grin was so predatory. She got close enough for Eliza to graze if she moved, and Eliza realised, dimly, she'd been rooted to the spot. The girl licked her lips, as if—as if she wanted to collect the blood which stained them. She was still grinning. "Is someone being naughty, sneaking into places they aren't allowed and taking things that aren't theirs? Or did Marcus get a new toy and not tell me? You're a little scared to be a doll. Indulging his fun side, is he? Your heartbeat is going so adorably fast. I love the sound."
The girl stepped even closer, towering over Eliza. She was barely a 'girl'—she had an aura of power to her so palpable Eliza was swamped in it now. The girl tilted her head to the side again. "The sound really is lovely . What can I do to get more of it?"
Just before the last stage of the rapidly approaching shut down of Eliza's brain occurred, something grabbed the scruff of Eliza's clothing and pulled her back. The tall girl's terrifying grin morphed into a pretty pout of annoyance and a gentle scowl.
"Lucille, back off ." It was the first girl. And what was happening that made Eliza feel so relieved? The first girl continued, voice right behind Eliza. "She's… She's mine!"
What?
The tall girl, Lucille, crossed her arms with a huff. "Oh, that's so like you. Can't control them at all unless they're practically drooling over you, hm? Anyone even slightly unruly and you're hopeless."
"She panicked! That's all. Blood dolls can panic," the first girl snapped back. She tugged hard on Eliza's shirt, and started practically dragging Eliza away.
"What the fuck?! "
Eliza's voice sounded on her own ears. Ah, finally. Brain functioning back. Right when it was least helpful.
Lucille raised one delicate eyebrow. The other girl's hand suddenly clapped over Eliza's mouth in an iron grip, and unfortunately since Eliza's brain was back, that meant her struggle reflexes were too.
Unfortunate because they got absolutely nowhere , and it was terrifying .
"Blood doll. Mmhm." Lucille's eyebrow was still quirked, before her disbelieving tone morphed into a disturbing sing-song one that scraped against Eliza's spine like a screeching violin. "Oh, Maria dear! Did someone cave and get a thrall? Maria has a thrall, Maria has a thrall, Maria has a thrall!"
The childish tone crammed into the adult, blood-stained body nearly fritzed Eliza's circuits a second time.
"Stop it!" The first girl, Maria, snapped out. "Stop it, you—you're scaring her!"
Lucille tipped her head back, her whole body contorting, as if she was trying to make her laughter as disturbing as possible. "Oh, you're priceless. Maria, that's what they're for . It's no fun if they're all coddled all the time—I'll be oh so disappointed if you do this wrong. Disappointed enough to maybe take her for myself."
Something about that made Eliza's body so cold that all the struggling ceased.
Lucille was grinning again, that predation all over her face. "Her heartbeat did make the cutest little sound."
"You have your own." Maria hissed. She gestured sharply to the crumpled frail girl that Lucille had tossed aside, jerking Eliza's own body to the side. "Though you might lose her if you continue to treat her like a chew toy."
"She is , you little weakling!" Lucille's grin disappeared in a growl of sudden viciousness which made Eliza's heart leap into her throat so hard it pushed a small scream out of her lungs and into Maria's hand. "You lose all the fun if you treat yours like glass! " As she spoke, however, Lucille turned back to the fallen body she'd left, reaching down and picking her up one-handed. Like it was absolutely nothing.
Maria took the chance to steer Eliza's body in her own terrifyingly-strong grip away from Lucille, dragging her back through the cellars and the route Eliza had dashed, straight through the door Maria had burst in from. Once Lucille's chilling influence had passed, Eliza started thrashing again. Her heartbeat was the only thing in her head, an endless thumping which pumped high-purity fear all through her body, like a shot of good heroin straight to the best vein.
Maria pushed her away, then grabbed her head. Eliza was staring into Maria's dark, intensely focused and stormy eyes—
And then nothing.