Page 9 of House of Kallan
The first womanI had placed in my arms was on death’s door. I stared at her as I set her in the bed and was momentarily at a loss for what to do. She was already nearly dead from blood loss. Seriously, she was covered in blood and… I was not even going to say how she looked from the brutal birth.
I turned to the people running by the room. “I need someone who deserves death,” I hollered. “Anyone.”
An oni I hadn’t seen before with a bloody newborn in his arms stepped into the room. He was dark-skinned with a creepily smiling face and bright green, curly hair over dark eyes. “Hello,” he said with an unsettling grin. “Just one?”
“Who are you?” I shook my head. “You know what? Never mind. Yes, but… not that baby.”
He sighed and looked at the baby, almost mesmerized. “Not this baby,” he agreed. Arranging the newborn so he could hold it in a single arm, he reached into the shadows and pulled out a screaming hybrid monster who looked worse for wear. It was fighting the oni’s hold with no success; but I wasn’t sure if that spoke to the oni’s strength or the hybrid’s weakness.
The oni gave a harsh pull of his arm and a resonating crack sounded through the air. The monster screamedin pain. He offered me the man as if it were a present that he wanted praise for. His smile was still wide as he looked at me.
“Thanks,” I said. “Uh… good job.”
He beamed at me.
That was all the time I had to offer him right now, though. I touched the nearly dead girl’s sunken, cooling skin and then reached for the hybrid. The room turned to molten white light as the death transferred bodies. The ripping inside the woman sewed itself together centimeter by centimeter as the insides of the hybrid beast began tearing apart. He screamed in agony, trying to get away from it.
The oni held him firmly, keeping him within my reach as I continued to transfer the death. All while grinning at the newborn in his arms as if they were the only people in the room. As if he wasn’t holding a hybrid beast currently being torn apart from the inside. The rest of us simply didn’t exist to the oni right now.
The process was interesting—and by that I meant horrific, fascinating, and sickening—when you saw injuries and pain that were only capable of happening within the body of one gender being inflicted on that of another. This hybrid didn’t have a womb that was capable of being torn open. Didn’t have a vagina or broken pelvic bones and a ruptured floor. Yet, the way this man screamed, I was sure that he was experiencing whatever the equivalent of that pain was.
Maybe his dick was exploding. Or his balls were being torn into shreds. I didn’t know, nor did I care. I remained the conduit of the transfer of death between the two until the man lay dead at our feet and the woman opened her eyes.
She looked at me, confused and scared.
“Hi,” I said gently, wiping at her face. She was still covered in blood, after all. “How do you feel?”
Her jaw trembled as she carefully shifted on the bed until her shaking hands covered her stomach. I swear, I could see themoment everything came back to her. Tears ran down her cheeks as she looked at the bed she lay in.
“Where is it?” she asked. “Where is the… thing that tried to kill me?”
“It’s a baby,” the oni said disapprovingly and the woman, just noticing him, almost screamed as she nearly fell off the other side of the bed to get away from him. The oni just smiled. “He’s rather perfect, you know.”
“Keep him away,” she said between sobs. “He tried to kill me.”
“That’s hardly his fault,” the oni said, with a frown. “He was incapable of a normal birth. It was instinct. Just as your instinct is to be scared of me.”
“Okay, okay,” I said and stood. Approaching the oni was a little unsettling. There was something strange about him. “Back to my original question. Who are you?”
“Tyrus. Who are you?” he said.
“Tatum,” I answered, smiling despite myself. “This is her child?”
“No,” the woman said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tyrus said to her. “Of course he is.” He looked at me as if he couldn’t quite understand this woman. “He really is perfect, Miss Tatum. Do you want to see?”
I nodded and reached for him. Tyrus wasn’t keen on letting him go, but he did with a little persuasion. None of the blood appeared to belong to the newborn and he seemed to be all in one piece. Knowing that I was needed elsewhere now that this crisis was over, I handed the newborn back to Tyrus and glanced at the dead body at my feet.
Not going to lie. Despite the fact that he most likely deserved the horrid death I just served him, the sight of how he was covered in his own blood made my stomach roll.
I looked back up at Tyrus holding the baby.
“What do you plan to do with him?” I asked, more to gaugehis answer than being willing to let that child out of this building.
“Well, if she doesn’t want him, I think I’ll keep him,” Tyrus said.
“Oh, no you don’t,” another man said from the door. He’d been on his way by. This one, I actually recognized. Idris had stopped by Haven many times since it opened. “Iker will have my head if I let you bring that baby home.”
