Welcome to Lenore

Chapter 3

Lucy's POV

I felt something warm and wet on my throat.

The sensation pulled me back into consciousness. The last thing I remembered was Maddie's hands against my chest, me falling, the sensation of empty air rushing past me, and the city lights spinning as I plummeted toward what should have been my death. But I wasn't dead… Was I?

The licking continued; it felt gentle but insistent. I heard sounds towards my ear and realized it was a small black dog licking my throat. A haze of confusion brushed my mind. “Where…am I?”

I tried to reach up to touch my throat, but my arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and my fingers wouldn't cooperate properly. I finally managed to press my hand to the wet spot on my throat, and my palm came out sticky with fresh blood.

"What the hell…" I panicked.

“Okay… Lucy breathe… You're dreaming… This must all just be a very bad dream,” I stammered to myself, still holding my throat.

That's when strong hands suddenly gripped my shoulders from behind.

"Don't move. Don't make a sound."

It was a male voice; it sounded very low but deep. Before I could process what was happening, I felt myself being pulled backwards. The small dog barked furiously, scurrying towards where I had been taken, just before the corner of my eye saw a figure of what looked like another human, but everything else was wrong.

Its limbs looked too long and too thin in some places and swollen in others. The figure was putting on a sky blue nun’s habit, but it was shredded, torn, and stained with dark brown spots that seemed to be blood.

The figure turned sharply, pouncing towards where I was lying down. It wasn’t a human. It was a werewolf! A scream tore from my lungs, “Get me out of here! Somebody… help me!” The man covered my mouth and dragged me back to a corner. “Shhh, you have to be quiet,” he whispered.

The small dog that had followed me began to whimper, shrinking back with its ears flat.

The wolf turned its gaze on the animal and had what looked like a smile on its face. It lunged at the dog, ripping into it with its teeth, its claws dripping with fresh blood. The feeding sounds that followed were worse than anything I could have imagined.

I tried to move slowly backwards to escape while the werewolf was still turned, feeding on the dog. The man held me as I tried to escape. “Where are you going to… You can’t make it out of here alive with that cut on your throat, even if you tried.” He whispered. I resisted taking a step back when my foot snapped a twig.

Click

The werewolf's massive head snapped up from its meal; its yellow eyes blazed at us with pieces of the dog still clinging to its teeth. It had heard me. And now it was my turn.

“Go hide under those bushes and stay there!” the man yelled at me, pointing to a large heap. He uttered a string of words in a language I didn't recognize, and the creature began stalking towards him and lunged out with its claws.

I watched in horror as its massive claws raked across his chest, tearing through the fabric of his clothes. Dark blood bloomed across his dark jacket, spreading in wet patches.

But he didn't fall. He didn't even make any sound.

He took out a dagger from his satchel and stabbed the creature in the chest. The werewolf groaned and stumbled back, and suddenly the shadows around us exploded outward like living darkness into a form. They wrapped around the creature, binding its arms and legs, covering its eyes and mouth until its roars became muffled growls.

The werewolf fought against the shadow bonds with its remaining strength, its muscles bulging out, but the darkness held firm, squeezing tighter with each struggle, until the werewolf finally gave up its fight and allowed itself to be dragged away into the fog.

I slapped my cheeks. “Wake up… This is not real… Wake up!”

I was shaking uncontrollably; my whole body was trembling. What just happened? What is this place? . My hands were pressed to my mouth, and I froze.

“You are okay. Come on, we have to leave this place. It isn’t safe here.” The man said, giving me a hand. I stared at his chest, then at him, wondering how he didn’t look like he was in any pain.

"It's fine." He pressed a hand to the claw marks on his chest, blood seeping between his fingers in streams, but his voice was steady. Calm. Like getting mauled by monsters was just another Tuesday for him. "You're new… This is normal here."

"Normal?" My voice pitched high, cracking on the word. "That thing just killed an innocent animal and nearly killed you because I couldn't keep my mouth shut, and you're saying this is normal?"

He looked at me with his winter-blue eyes and shook his head sideways. “Get up, we have to leave this place right now for someplace safer first, and then you can ask me all the questions you want.” He grabbed me up and tore some cloth from his shirt and wrapped it around my neck. “It’s going to feel a bit tight, but we need the pressure to reduce the bleeding for now.”

“Come on,” he said, waving his hands for me to follow him.

“There’s a pathway that would lead us back to town; we just have to be quiet and careful. There are more of those creatures everywhere,” he said.

I followed him, shaking and looking around, and I stared at this man in awe, knowing he had seen horrors like this before, and I just knew this wasn’t going to be his first or second time witnessing these kinds of creatures.

"Where… the hell… are we? I whispered, moving closer to him.

"Welcome to Lenore," he said quietly. "And if you're here, it means you're dead."