Page 3 of House of Kallan
Heading down the hall, I stopped at the orphan room on this floor, which was by far one of the biggest suites in the entirebuilding. Each floor had one, and it broke my heart to know that we were constantly adding more residents each week.
It’s staffed around the clock by supernaturals, and the kids socialized and got play time. They’re not kept in cages. Uh… mostly.
I stepped in and was greeted by one of the infants I wanted to check on. She could only be described as toothy. With more than one mouth and more than one set of teeth per mouth. Needless to say, her mother didn’t survive her birth.
Stopping in front of her, I crouched down to get eye level. She was three months old now and laying on her side with her face close to the bars.
“Hi,” I said, running my finger over where her small hand was fisted around a bar. She sighed and blinked at me. “We’re trying to place you, baby girl. Hang tight.”
Honestly, we didn’t know where to place her. Like nearly all these children, she was her own species of monster. I shuddered to think what Silence’s intent was behind creating her. Then again, I was partially convinced that every single mutation they created was an accident, since no two were ever alike.
Leaving toothy girl, I headed for the cribs with the one exception to that observation. There were eight of these children. By studying them, we had concluded that this specific genetic code was intentional and that they were trying for something very specific. Our oldest at nine months was the calmest of the other eight, with the youngest—only eight-weeks-old—being nearly a black hole itself.
Stopping in front of Shadow, the oldest, I hunkered down to get eye level with him. Like our tentacle baby, his eyes were all black. Unlike the tentacle baby, Shadow and his species’ eyes were matte black. Depthless. Haunting.
“Hey, little monster.”
They never made any sound. Not a coo. Not a cry. Not baby babble. Nothing. I half suspected that their voices were going to be like that of a banshee’s scream. We’ve had very longconversations about that, considering what the single known living banshee went through at their hands.
“Hungry?”
Shadow tilted his head and blinked at me. He was sitting in an open top crib against the wall with a stuffed fox in his hands. While we put him in the playpen with the others from time to time, he much preferred to be in his crib and simply observe.
I touched his head, running my fingers through his fine hair. His skin was a strange pallor; gray, but around the edges were dark. Not like dark-skinned humans, but like someone took a black permanent marker and started coloring at the edges of his being. It was weird and disturbing the way those black marks bled a little more sometimes.
“I’ll be right back.”
He watched me go. I could almost physically feel his eyes on me. It felt demonic, which only added to my hypothesis that he was somehow related to a banshee at his core.
Stepping into the kitchen, I found a whole slew of workers preparing meals. “Feed time soon?” I asked.
Daisy nodded. “Yep. Who you bringing food to?”
“Shadow.”
She nodded and inclined her head to a row of bottles. There was one in a sippy cup which was Shadow’s. He also had a little cup with baby bites in it. Puff chew snacks that tasted like dried berries. “Shadowkind in that corner, Miss Tatum.”
Shadow was our first, and then when the others came, we began calling them Shadowkind. The name stuck, although we didn’t truly intend it that way.
“Thanks, Daisy. I’m just taking Shadow’s.”
She nodded and went back to her work, so I grabbed the two I came in for and headed back into the main room. There were eight adult monsters in the room at all times. Just because there were so many unknown monstrous babies to deal with.
Stopping in front of Shadow, I handed him both cups. For the first time maybe ever, the corner of his lips quirked upslightly as he looked at me. It was difficult to know where he was looking with his dark eyes, but I was sure he was looking at me.
While his smile should be slightly chilling, I smiled back. “Eat up, honey. Growing babies need their strength.”
This time, his little hint of a smile felt amused.
I got the very distinct impression he was a ticking time bomb. As I left, knowing that he was considered the “least evolved” of the Shadowkind, I shuddered to think what that meant for the eight-week old.
Tatum
Once a month,the directors of all departments within The Harem Project held a big meeting so that everyone involved in upper management knew what was going on in the rest of the organization. Most of the time, I appreciated the meetings. It gave me the opportunity to make sure everyone knew what horrors came through my doors. And also, that we were lacking some essential things.
But usually I liked to know what others had going on too. Especially the sanctuary programs and those having to do with Silence and ORKA.
“We found an isolated unicorn in captivity at an ORKA facility in New Mexico,” Zuri, the Director of ORKA Monitoring, said with a frown.
