Entering the manor with measured, quiet steps, Bela couldn't get that open door out of her head. All of them knew how insistent mother was about that rule, ever since the incident when a hutia got in and wreaked havoc in the house, breaking her favorite vase, brought all the way here from their castle.
Nobody greeted her, but that was not surprising - Cassandra was on one of her hunts today, Daniela likely reading in her own room, being completely absorbed by her newest romantic novel lately and mother was probably in the garden, behind the house, or in her own study. Not suspicious enough to disperse into a swarm but wary enough to walk slowly and quietly, her simple summer shoes making little noise, Bela approached the living room and gasped at the sight that greeted her there.
Right in the middle of the room, near their large all-family sofa was the prone and unmoving body of Daniela - her colourful dress and red hair unmistakable. Unheeding the voice in her head that was screaming at her to proceed carefully, the protective older sister rushed to her sibling's body.
If only she had managed to keep her cool, her sharp eyes would've surely noticed a small, white tripwire near the ground, going across the door frame to the living room.
As her exposed ankle touched the wire, her whole body was instantly electrified by a powerful current. Dropping down into the living room like a log, Bela could only silently curse herself, as she came face-to-face with the unmoving redhead. Daniela's yellow eyes stared back at her, in horror, but the girl said nothing. Trying to move, Bela found her mimicry of human musculature completely unresponsive, while her second form refused to show itself, the constituting flies ignoring her mental commands. She was completely at the mercy of whoever did this. Soon, she heard the sound of approaching footsteps and laughter. A pair of strong hands turned her paralyzed body, allowing her to get a look at her captors.
It was four men, all of them wearing dark black military boots, simple jungle camouflage pants and shirts; a number of weird-looking gadgets attached to their belts and simple kevlar vests over their chests. They were also wearing simple military caps. The one who turned her around was the most intimidatingly built out of the four, a tanned Caucasian in his late thirties, with bulging muscles obvious on his frame. He had a number of ugly scars visible on his rough face and one on his exposed right hand. Giving a laugh at her 'shocked' expression the man spoke in a gruff voice, addressing a lanky-looking man to his left, in English.
"Using the redheaded bitch as bait actually worked. I knew we kept you on payroll for a reason, Joe. A good head on your shoulders, son."
The lanky man adjusted his thick glasses and replied, curtly: "Just doing my part, sarge."
A man to the 'sarge's' right, a dark-skinned, also well-built male in his early thirties and with a pair of dark sunglasses, spoke next.
"Didn't the contract say 'extremely dangerous'? This is too easy… Are they really goin' to pay us ten mil for these cunts? Sounds too good to be true, if you ask me."
The final man, all the way in the back, a person whose face Bela couldn't see spoke after. Bela found his low-pitched voice the most unpleasant.
"You know they always pay what they promise. Never heard of 'em screwing up any of the boys before. Also, the huge one took enough tasers to drop an elephant before she went down. Not enough of a challenge for you?"
They got mother too! These vile men… if only I could move…
Just as she felt her strained muscles starting to relax, the leader of the invaders placed a small white device on her chest, which immediately started sending an additional, constant current throughout her body, making her muscles once again tense to their limit.
The leader then spoke, still looking at Bela's prone form with an ugly smirk on his uglier still face: "We still have one more little girl to catch, according to the contract. Reset the tripwires and get back into positions, boys."
'Bang'
Before the men could do as told, Joe gained an additional breathing hole right in his forehead, courtesy of a 7.62×63mm round. A horrible exit wound from the powerful round making sure the coroner would need to do a dental to identify the corpse, the man dropped down like a sack of potatoes, dead on the spot.
As the men turned to address the newest threat, Bela could hear a distinct reload sound made by a bolt-action rifle, before another deafening shot took place. The person in the back, his simple kevlar vest doing little except to transfer additional kinetic energy from the round into his body - came flying towards Bela, his form landing close to her own. He screamed out in pain, but didn't move to stand up.
With just two men left standing, the shape of Bela's savior was now visible. It was Cassandra, dressed in her simple hunting outfit and armed with her rifle. Her normally beautiful face - now a mask of terrifying rage.
As the two remaining invaders raised their tasers to fire at her, the woman, knowing she had no time to reload the slow bolt-action weapon again, threw her rifle at the dark-skinned attacker instead. With deadly precision and inhuman strength behind the throw, the hefty weapon's wooden buttstock impacted the man's face with a horrible crunching noise, breaking his sunglasses as well as his whole visage. Falling on his rear from the sheer power of the attack, the man clutched his ruined face and let out an agonized cry.
Just as the leader was about to shoot Cassandra, she rushed him, her gloved hand gripping her trusty sickle already. Seeing the man making the motion to pull the trigger with her keen eyes, and not wanting to take a chance against their weaponry - with her two sisters already defeated, Cassandra crouched down to the floor at the last possible moment, making the man miss her head by inches, his taser wire impacting the wall behind her harmlessly.
The man could only curse before the brunette was upon him, her sickle slicing three fingers off his trigger hand with a single, smooth motion that could barely be followed by a human eye. The weapon fell to the floor, forgotten, but the man was not out of the fight just yet.
Jumping back from the woman, the man swiftly grabbed a baton from his belt with his intact right hand, before pressing a button on it, making it spark with deadly energy. Cassandra was unperturbed by the surprising resilience of the man and continued her relentless assault on the filthy invader.
In a show of unbelievable skill and speed, the man actually managed to keep up with Cassandra, putting her on the defensive with his sparkling shock baton, the brunette smart enough not to try and block the electric weapon with her metal sickle, opting to dodge every attack instead.
After a brief back-and-forth, however, the woman's inhuman speed and strength proved too much for the veteran fighter, and with a simple feint of her sickle, Cassandra impaled his healthy hand's wrist with a dagger that inconspicuously found its way to her second hand. Not waiting for the man to recover once again, she quickly sliced his throat with her sickle, fresh blood from the deep, undoubtedly fatal cut instantly spraying her fearsome face. The man gurgled and leaned against the wall, his life - forfeit in mere moments.
Pulling the knife from the man's hand, she marched towards the dark-skinned attacker, who was now trying to stand up, still clutching his face and crying in pain. Muttering a hateful "you came to the wrong house, fools", she stabbed the knife deeply into the man's exposed throat.
Done with their unwelcome guests, Cassandra rushed to her downed elder sister's side, roughly shoving away the man lying next to her with her booted foot. The man in question had already expired from his terrible chest wound, his last breath made several moments ago. Not sparing the wretch a glance, Cassandra eyes immediately fell upon the white device on Bela's chest. The brunette tried to roughly pull it off, only to be rewarded with a shock that elicited a small yelp of pain from her. Thinking for a moment, the woman tried pressing a button in the middle of the device next, and with a humming noise it powered off and fell down itself. Repeating the process on the redhead, both sisters soon came back to their senses. Daniela was first to speak, her voice a pained shriek.
"They took mama!" The girl cried out loudly, before starting to sob heavily.
Bela herself felt close to panic, but, clenching her fist, forced herself to stay calm and rational, knowing that her sisters and mother counted on her to be able to fix this mess.
We need to find out who these men are and where they took mother… Clearly they came prepared for us, with their equipment being so effective.
Moving towards the fallen leader, his body bloodied and mutilated, the blonde started shuffling through his pockets, even as she addressed Cassandra, who was now trying to comfort Daniela with a tight hug.
"You could've left one alive, sister… we needed the information they had."
The brunette replied, hateful notes still present in her voice: "When I saw them standing over your unmoving bodies, I just had to end their miserable existence as soon as possible…"
Bela just hummed, knowing well how protective of their family the middle child was. Cassandra asked next: "Who are these filthy men anyway?"
Suddenly, the redhead broke away from the brunette's embrace and yelled out, accusingly.
"It's all your fault, Cass! They are probably the government, coming for us in retaliation for all the people you killed around here! Don't think we didn't know about your 'activities'!"
Cassandra reeled back at that, surprise and anger burning in her eyes at the accusation: "Oh yeah? I only hunted like seven or eight men down during the two years we've been here, and I made sure to cover my tracks. Nobody would come for us over that." Pointing her finger accusingly at Daniela next, the brunette continued.
"Maybe it's that boy-toy of yours you decided to eat right outside the town that got their attention?"
Reminded of the painful memory, the redhead broke into tears again.
"Enough, girls! They are not the government, none of you are at fault here! Didn't you hear what they were talking about? Someone is paying them money to bring us in, alive. Also, look at this." Finished Bela as she flashed a plastic card she found in the man's wallet. It was white, with the man's picture, name, rank and I.D. on it, as well as a logo of a vicious looking wolf. Below the logo was a writing - 'Dire Wolf PMC'.
"What does that mean?" Asked the brunette.
Bela responded simply to that: "They are mercenaries, and someone provided them with our location and told them to capture us."
Daniela spoke next, hurt still plain in her voice: "Who would do something like that? Where would they take mama…"
Not answering, for she had no answer, Bela looked at the phone of the leader next. Astonishingly, it was unlocked. Perhaps the formerly formidable man never expected anyone to challenge his possession? Before she could look into the man's phone further, a radio on his belt sprung to life: "Charlie team, how copy? Are all three additional targets secure? Bravo and Delta teams are still on standby. I repeat, Charlie team, how copy? Over."
Shit!
Looking at her sisters, Bela could only mumble out: "Well, if any of you girls secretly practiced impressionism, now would be the time to put it to use." Not hearing any response, the woman returned to the smartphone in her small hands, the press of time heavy on her shoulders now.
Looking through the number of irrelevant contacts and messages, the blonde finally found what she was looking for. An inconspicuous message from an unknown caller providing only a set of coordinates. Pointing to her sisters, Bela exclaimed: "There! I think they took mother to these coordinates!"
Cassandra just scoffed and asked: "What are we supposed to do with these random numbers?"
Bela just shook her head in annoyance, before rapidly standing up and moving upstairs, towards her own room. Her headstrong sister really had no interest in modern technology beyond guns and sometimes explosives. Quickly turning on her modest PC, Bela opened Google Maps before inputting the provided coordinates. She was instantly directed towards an unmarked and unnamed place, that was actually not that far away. Looking at it closer, she figured out it must have been a small, private air-field.
Shit, Shit, Shit!
Standing up, not bothering to power off the computer, the blonde rushed down towards the living room, where she found both Cassandra and Daniela feasting on the men's remains.
Feeling peckish as well, but knowing that they had no time to waste, Bela clapped her hands loudly, attracting their attention.
"Girls, we have to go fast! I know where they took mother, but I don't think we have much time to rescue her!"
Their faces bloodied, the two sisters, nevertheless, shot up to their feet; Cassandra picking up her rifle, while tossing both Bela and Daniela a .357 Desert Eagle pistol each, which all the mercs had as a sidearm they never got a chance to use. Both women had trained with the small firearms for a bit, under the insistence of Cassandra, who used to be desperate to share her newest passion back then; but they both had no particular joy from using a man's weapon. Yet they both accepted it, knowing that it could be helpful in what was to come next. Making sure to quickly stuff the essentials into her travel backpack, Bela put it on, and rushed out of the house, her sisters doing the same and following along.
Giving their house of two years that they came to love a single last glance, the Dimitrescu daughters took to their inhuman forms and flew away, the eldest providing the direction.
Coming back from his workplace, Ethan was not having a good day. His boss, who never liked him in the first place, took particular offense to the blonde's man slipping work quality lately. After a lengthy lecture about the 'consequences of laziness', Ethan was finally free of the larger man's ear-grating, high-pitched voice.
Wanting to stop at a small pub for a few drinks, the man was then confronted with the fact that his credit card was suddenly declined. Not carrying any cash at hand, the man had to endure a scene from the owner, who threatened to 'call the bobbies on his skinny bum ass'.
Now finally home, he opened the door with his keys, before stepping inside. He was immediately greeted by the hateful stare from their nanny, Mary. She was a plump, middle-aged woman with messy, dark hair. Before he could say a word, she shrieked at him in her slightly nasal voice.
"Mister Winters! What is the meaning of this? We had a clear agreement that one of you would be home by eight PM! It is now half-past eleven! I cannot work under such conditions!" She stomped out the moment she was finished, not letting the shocked man respond.
Mia's not home..?
Taking his shoes and coat off, Ethan quickly walked towards his daughter's room. Opening the door quietly, he saw his precious angel, now a beautiful and healthy three-year old, sleeping peacefully in her bed. Silently moving towards her, the father gave her a small, but loving kiss on the forehead, before leaving the room and closing the door to it.
Coming to sit on his own bed now, Ethan took out his phone, dialing Mia's number. All he got in response was a 'Number not in service' message.
What the hell?
Locating a bottle of gin nearby, the man took a gulp right from the bottle, before starting to search for clues. He didn't need to look far, it turned out. Coming up towards a small cupboard next to Mia's side of the bed, the man opened it up, his brown eyes immediately falling upon a simple piece of paper, with her unmistakable hand-writing on it. Picking it up with his free hand, he started reading, his eyes widening in shock.
Dear Ethan. I love both you and our Rose so very much that I cannot describe it with mere words. But this is why I have to do this. To make sure that neither of you come to harm, I must leave, perhaps forever. I am sorry for not saying anything earlier. Like a fool, I was hoping that all this would pass, like a bad dream. It didn't. None of us could've done anything about it, so don't blame yourself, I beg you. Please do not try to search for me and take good care of our beloved daughter in my absence. Know that I cherished every moment we spent together, and nothing gave me more pride in this life than the child we have created, just you and me. If you have any love left for me, don't look back towards what we lost today, and look towards the future you will build for Rose.
Your forever loving wife, Mia.
The sound of breaking glass did little to break Ethan out of his stupor.
Note:
This was a pretty violent and dark chapter overall, since I wanted to establish the threat the characters will face in this work. Thanks for reading!