The Last Call From The Basement Novels & Stories

I snickered. "Fall back!" Mr W ordered his men. "Mr W, we-" "I said fall back, Deli!!" Mr W snapped. They probably weren't far gone when an explosion shook the basement, and the tremor made the pillars lose whatever structural integrity they had left. The whole place was coming down -----

Stared at the wall. I thought about the cage in the basement. The boys at the party with their empty eyes. Teddy on his knees on that cold floor whispering I'm sorry to whoever was behind those bars. How many cages? How many basements? How many boys? The burner phone buzzed from behind the panel in my closet. I got up. Pulled the panel. Took out the phone. One message from Sylvester. ~Tonight. Old factory on Millbrook. Ten o'clock. I read it twice. Deleted it. Put the phone back. I looked at the recorder on the white sheets. He needed to hear this.

She ended up telling the maids to watch over me. Alone in the house, I secretly began planning a celebration for Raymond. I used years of saved allowance to reserve a hall at Moonlight Tavern on the outskirts of town. I even contacted some of his friends ahead of time. By evening, I was just about to message Raymond to send him there when the ground trembled beneath my feet. A brick crashed down from above, knocking me to the floor. My ears rang, filled only with the roar of collapsing stone. Seeing the chandelier was about to fall, I tried to crawl to safety, but my limbs were too weak.

The battlefield from humankind was more dramatic and louder than the fight against demons was, but it was all the same war in the end, meaningless as it was. The hallway was becoming dusty from the blasts outside and the crumbling cement inside. The agent who helped Jasmine was now leading everyone out, trying to find the stairs to go up a floor. “We’re on the basement floor. We need to go up one level to get to an exit.” He informed them while staying very low as he turned to them. “Who created a basement with no exit?” Jasmine asked in a low whisper scream.

With shaking hands, I picked up the phone and called the dean of my home pack—the one who had tried to bring me back many times before. My voice was hollow, but firm. "Dean… I'm ready to return. I'll come back to our pack."

Cold realization flooded me all at once. Every strange reaction. Every silence. Every withheld answer. Every moment he watched me too closely. This was never random. Another vibration rolled beneath the cathedral floor. This time the entire structure groaned around us. Ancient black stone split wider beneath my feet. Cracks branched outward in jagged vein-like patterns across the floor while dust rained heavily from the arches above. Then bells rang somewhere deep underground. Slow. Heavy. Funeral bells. My chest answered them. Knock.

That was enough for Steven to stop and watch as I was dragged into the room by Jeremy, ignoring my pleading gaze. Jeremy pushed me onto the bed, pinning me down, his hands fumbling with my clothes. "Make babies! Make babies with my honey!" He stripped off his clothes, his pale, flabby body pressing down on me. I felt so disgusted that I wanted to throw up, yet no matter how much I hit him, it didn't seem to faze him at all. On top of everything, my injured leg was in so much pain that I couldn't move it. Outside, loud music blasted—a tradition when our group of friends gathered.

The disciplinary probation didn't seem to affect Harley at all. If anything, he looked even more pleased with himself than the last time we met. "You older guys really don't see the big picture. After all that fuss, all you wanted was 70% of the assets? Professor Chambers is still young. It won’t be long before she makes it all back—and then some!" I didn't bother responding. Just like last time, his attempts to provoke me had no effect whatsoever. Still, if he wanted to play this game, I was more than happy to play along.

"She can die out there for all I care." The call ended. *** My body still lay at the intersection. The crowd was gone. Only the driver stayed beside me. My lips had turned purple. So had my fingers, curled stiff against the frozen ground. Dirt and ice were packed under my nails.

“Like it’s… aware.” “It’s always been aware,” Emma answered softly. “We just weren’t ready to hear it.” Lira’s voice was low, almost reverent. “Then this isn’t the end.” Emma stood, slipping the pulse device into her hand. She looked out at the horizon, where the first rays of sunlight pushed the night back one shadow at a time. “No. It’s the beginning. The Last Signal wasn’t an ending—it was a warning. A threshold. From here, what we build will decide whether this becomes our greatest ally… or our final mistake.”