Chapter 9

John and James trudged through the thick foliage of the woods. John aggressively swung and kicked at the clingy underbrush, his fists and jaw clenched since they had split from Helen and Nigel at the cabin.

James held the lantern and eyed his friend as he stomped on twigs and swatted at thorns.

"Something wrong, John?" he asked carefully, keeping his tone even so as not to provoke him.

"I'm fine," John barked. "I just can't bloody see where I'm going!"

John angrily stomped and kicked some more.

"Can you believe that she blames me for all this? Like I personally planned for Nikola to lose his head on this trip!" John kicked a thorny bush.

"Ah, you're upset about Helen," realized James.

"Of course I am, I am upset about all this. He always has to do this; take a trip that was supposed to be for all of us and make it about him, that's what he does, and she lets him!"

"John..."

"Alright! I read the book, I made some off-handed remarks, I poked him a little and suddenly I am the child in all of this! I'm the inconsiderate brute who ruined the entire vacation!"

"John!" James snapped.

"What?"

"There is something on my leg," James said stiffly.

"What?" John turned to his friend.

"Something has grabbed my leg," James said coolly despite the small hint of terror in his eyes. "I can't move, can you kindly see what it is?"

John sucked in a breath and moved towards James slowly, carefully kneeling down to his left leg to check. A root from one of the ancient spindly trees had snagged the hem of James trousers. John let out a log huff, quickly untangling the material.

"You could've fixed that yourself," he growled.

"I had to do something to stop your tirade," shrugged James.

"So you decided to terrify me?" John gave him a look.

"You leapt to conclusions, all I said was that I was caught," James shrugged.

John growled and broke the offending root right off, tossing it away with a sneer.

"Can we keep going?" he mumbled with just a hint of malice.

"What is going on between the three of you, John? You, Nikola, and Helen, what is..."realization dawned on him. "She is sleeping with him, isn't she?"

John's jaw visibly tensed.

"Of course, it makes perfect sense," James continued. "All those times they would disappear together, or go have a little "talk", heh, how did I not see it before?"

"You're wrong," John said tersely.

"Well, if you think about it..."

"No, I know you're wrong!" John growled.

"How?" James crossed his arms.

"Because...Helen is with me."

James' face fell.

~~~~Elsewhere~~~~

Helen and Nigel trudged through the woods silently. Helen kept looking for a smudge or a blotch, a sound, or even just a tiny bit of movement that would signal Nikola's whereabouts.

Nigel held the lantern high and as far out as his arms could reach.

"Damn and blast, can't see a bloody thing, everything looks the same," Nigel muttered.

Helen did not respond, her eyes furiously scanning the trees for even a trace that Nikola was nearby or had gone this way. There were no footprints, no broken ground, not even a crunched leaf to be seen.

"Perhaps James and John are having more luck," shrugged Nigel.

Helen hoped not, if Nikola was out there she wanted to be the first to find him. Nikola had been sleeping peacefully until she and John had...and maybe he'd heard...or seen something...maybe he was just terrified when he woke up to find himself alone in the dark.

"We should've just listened to him when he said he wanted to leave," Helen sighed. "I should've stayed with him, he must be in such a state to run off like this...it's not him!"

Nigel pursed his lips slightly in thought.

"What if..."

"What?" Helen said, sharper than she intended.

"What if this is Nikola's transformation? What if all this fear he is feeling is because - to his mind, his body is betraying him, changing, altering his state of mind and he has projected it out towards his surroundings..."

Helen pondered the cockney's hypothesis with serious deliberation.

"Think about it Helen, we have no idea what that blood does but we already know he had the strongest reaction to it out of all of us."

Helen felt her stomach hit her feet and her face betrayed her thoughts as he watched Nigel study her in the dim light.

"What's wrong?" he asked, concern evident in his voice mixed with a slight suspicion.

"I gave him a higher dosage than the rest of us," Helen averted his gaze and twiddled her fingers together.

"You what?" Nigel's face fell.

"I was so desperate for a reaction, any kind of reaction so I gave him a small percentage more, barely a finger's width more! I thought he could take it, I thought he was strong enough!"

"You just might've killed him!" yelled Nigel.

Nigel was not the type to get angry like this. James and John were the shouters, Nikola could be provoked into a tirade if he felt he was not being heard, but Nigel...Nigel was patient, calm, relaxed and always reasonable about his arguments, to have him shout in anger was as jarring as having cold water thrown on you while sleeping.

Helen ducked her head lower, feeling shame burn her cheeks.

"What if we can't get him back?" Nigel said coolly, grabbing Helen's wrist and jerking her to look at him. "I'm not just talking physically, what if he returns a shell of the man he once was Helen, did you ever think of that before you put his life in the balance?"

Helen felt tears sting her eyes.

"No," she sobbed. "I'm sorry."

"I know you're first and foremost a scientist Helen but I would've never expected you to put science ahead of us, this group, we were meant to discover the boundaries of science as a team not throw Nikola in as a sacrificial lamb."

"That was not my intention! I never lied to Nikola, I told him before I injected him that I had upped the dosage, he could've said no, he had the choice!"

"You bloody well know he did not, not when you were asking the question!"

Helen paused, choking back salty tears.

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?"Nigel scoffed harshly. "You could've asked Nikola to jump off a cliff into a river of poisonous eels for the sake of your science and he would've done so without a single moments hesitation. The man has adored you since he first met you, Helen, and don't say you didn't know, you know how easy it is for you to ply him to your will, you've been doing it this whole bloody trip! A soft word and a gentle hand and he would've gone into the depths of hell. Well, now your selfishness has paid off, hasn't it?" Nigel slammed a hand into a tree. The slap made Helen jump. Helen was speechless, every word of his had felt like a slap to the face.

"I'm sick of this," Nigel snarled. "I'll find him myself and when I do I'm taking him home, to your father to receive proper care. Nikola!" Nigel called, leaving Helen in the small clearing, taking the lamp with him.

Helen let out a gasp, almost more like a sob. Was it true? Had she possibly killed her best friend?

She sucked in air, her throat closing itself off to her guilt.

Nikola was right all along, they should've never come here in the first place. This place was poison.

A cry startled her from her thoughts. Nigel called for her. Without a moments hesitation she followed his call, hopping over fallen logs. Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of what he'd found. Nikola savaged by some wild animal?

Suddenly she heard a scream and she picked up the pace.

"Nigel!" she cried.

"Helen!"

His voice sounded even more far off than before.

"Nigel!"

Another bloodcurdling scream echoed through the trees as a singular gust of wind rustled them menacingly. Then silence.

Helen shuddered.

The darkness became thick, and surrounded her from all sides. The trees faded into it, and even the moon seemed to be blotted out by it. It took on its own menacing life, crawling with icy hands to creep up her arms and over her shoulders to take purchase on her throat, lodging her screams in her trachea.

Helen took a step forward and heard a crunch underneath her shoe. She peered down and saw, just barely, that she had stepped on a fragment of glass. She felt its trail of broken shards, jolting back when her finger slid against the sharp jagged edge of a large piece. Nigel's lantern. She could smell it now, the oil can had broken and was spilling on to the forest floor.

"Nigel!" she called again.

Nothing. Just a faint rustling in the breeze. A feeling of immense dread washed over her. There was something...something in the woods.

~~~~Author's Notes~~~~

So...don't know if i'm going to continue this one...I've been sort of distracted with other things lately...I know bad writer (wrist slap)

I follow the muse where it leads me and for right now my Sanctuary fics will have to suffer because of it. I am still planning to finish Old Souls Young Eyes though! So there's that!

Thank you lovelies!

Geek