Yurui The Cursed One

I bite down.

The horrible taste punches straight through my teeth and into my soul. Not just dirt or sweat. Something sour and rotten underneath, as if the rope has been dragged through garbage and then left to ferment in the remains of a dead animal.

I gag.

Thea whispers, “Quiet.”

I pull back just enough to glare at her. She has the decency to shut up. I go back to work.

Fibers scrape my tongue. My teeth ache. My jaw trembles. Every movement sends fresh pain through my skull. I keep having to stop and breathe through my nose, which is somehow worse because now the stench of the rope fills my nostrils. Time stretches. Ten seconds become a minute. A minute becomes forever.

At one point, Stephan shouts loudly, and my whole body freezes. Thea’s muscles go rigid beneath the rope. The chicken woman snaps something back at him. Both of them are still too preoccupied to look our way. I bite harder and wriggle the rope in my mouth. Every few seconds, I have to stop myself from throwing up. Thea stays still, breathing carefully, watching the two kidnappers from the corner of her eye.

The knot finally loosens. Thea pulls at her wrists, but the rope holds. She tries again, harder this time, and it slips free.

For one heartbeat, neither of us moves.

Her body starts changing before she can even get to her feet. Her shoulders roll. Her spine arches. Her body lengthens by inches, then narrows into a slender shape that clearly looks built for speed rather than strength. Spotted gold fur ripples over her skin. Her nails darken into curved claws. A tail cuts through the back of her ruined suit and lashes once behind her. The air around her changes. My instincts recognize it before my eyes do.

A predator.

I slowly inch away from her. She looks down at me.

“Stay low, if you see a chance to escape, go for it.”

Oh wow, she’s actually giving me advice. That is almost touching.

Then she is gone. A spray of sand marks the place where she stood a second ago. She does not even look back to see if I heard her.

Not that I’d fall for it. There is no way she can win against them in her state; even when transformed, she doesn't look THAT strong. She's probably hoping to use me as a distraction so she can escape herself. Well, too bad for her; I'm not stupid, and I'm not moving an inch. Rather than go on yet another pointless escape attempt and get even more injured, I'll stay still and behave like a good girl, score myself some brownie points; maybe they'll take me to a doctor then. They have gone through an awful lot of trouble to keep me alive. It is safe to assume that as long as I do not make too many waves, they will continue doing so. My health should be my number one priority; whatever comes next, I’ll figure it out later.

I am surprised by how calm I was. Either years of borderline torture have finally hardened me into shape, or all the recent blows to my head have started getting to me now. The second option feels slightly more likely. What can I say?

Wonderful.

A scream tears through the night. I jerk my head up too fast, and the world nearly spins away from me.

Thea is on Stephan’s shoulder. One arm hooks around his neck. Her claws dig into the meat below his jaw. Blood spills down his chest in a heavy, dark flood.

“Hey,” she says, voice bright and vicious. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to mess with Miracle Inc?”

The chicken woman shrieks.

“Miracle Inc?”

Thea grins. Stephan roars and grabs for her. Too slow.

She drops before his hand reaches her. The instant her feet touch the sand, she launches again. A blur. A flash of teeth. Stephan’s arm jerks, and a chunk of flesh comes away with her.

He screams.

The sound punches straight through my skull. I curl inward, wrists still bound behind me, and try not to pass out.

Thea lands lightly, blood smeared across her mouth.

“I’m just getting started.”

Looking at her now, I can easily see the resemblance between her and Arisa.

Stephan swings so widely that his whole body lurches off balance. Thea is gone before the blow lands. His fist crashes into the car instead, crushing part of the frame inward with a scream of metal. The impact reverberates through my spine. I stop breathing. If that had hit me, the doctor would have needed a sponge, not a stretcher.

Thea darts around him, cutting, biting, vanishing. Stephan flails after her with both hands, each swing too slow, each miss violent enough to ruin whatever it touches. Sand bursts. Metal groans. Broken glass jumps across the ground.

Thea is winning. That much was evident to anyone with functioning eyes. Stephan was bigger, stronger, and violent enough to shake the desert with every missed swing. But the wounds were adding up, and Thea is still moving without showing any sign of slowing down. For one second, my chest loosens.

Then it tightens again.

Because I realize that Thea winning does not mean I am safe. It means she gets to take me back. And if she loses, Stephan and the Chicken Woman get to keep me. I stare at them, my throat dry, and realize I have no side in this fight.

I twist my wrists behind me. The rope cuts deeper into my skin. The knot does not loosen. Of course. I can untie someone else with my teeth, but not myself.

Very funny, God.

“Nara!” Stephan roars. “Get her off me!”

The chicken woman- Nara, apparently, stands a few meters away, watching with narrowed eyes. She does not appear to be in any hurry to rush in and help.

The expression on her face makes my stomach twist. I know that look all too well.

“Don’t just stand there, you stupid bitch!” Stephan bellows, blood flying out of his mouth as he shouts.

Nara’s feathers ruffle.

“Oh, now he wants help.”

Thea lands on top of the crushed hood, crouched low, tail swaying behind her.

“To be honest, I’m surprised the two of you lasted this long,” Thea says. “With teamwork that bad, I can only assume the only reason you are alive right now is cause no one could be bothered to get rid of you."

Stephan turns on her, bleeding from a dozen places, chest heaving.

“Shut up.”

“Not good enough,” Thea says. “You wouldn’t even make it as a grunt in Miracle Inc. security forces.”

His face tightens. The dullness in his eyes burns away. For the first time, he looks truly angry.

“I’m not useless.”

Thea smiles wider.

“No?”

“I’m not fucking useless!”

He swings.

This time it was different. Even sitting from all the way over where I was, I could feel it in my bones. The air itself seems to buckle around his arm. The punch misses Thea by several feet, but the force behind it explodes through the sand with a blast of noise so loud that it makes my teeth click together.

The ground erupts like the desert itself was cracking open. A crater tears itself into the earth.

The shockwave slams into me. My back hits the car hard enough to knock the breath out of me. Somewhere across the crater, Thea tumbles through the sand and hits the ground awkwardly. Her right arm hangs loose at her side, while her left leg is trapped beneath her, bent the wrong way.

She does not get up.

Stephan draws in a deep breath and starts laughing. The sound rolls out of him, loud and bellowing. Then it stops just as suddenly as it started. He wipes at his eyes, still smiling.

“Come here,” he says, lifting one massive hand and curling his fingers toward her. “Let’s see which one of us is the grunt.”

Thea pushes herself up on one arm. Her smile comes back. Clearly strained. She was trying to put on a tough act despite her injuries.

I look at Stephan. Then at Thea. Even though Stephan was covered in blood, all his injuries seemed surface-level, nothing life-threatening. Thea, on the other hand… Well, Thea looks mangled enough that not a single person here would be surprised if she were to drop dead right on the spot.

My heart beats so hard I feel it in my teeth. This is bad. This is so fucking bad. At first, I hoped I’d be able to score some brownie points by staying put. But now that Thea has pissed them off really bad, well, all that pent-up anger is going to have to go somewhere. And as always, I’m the prime candidate to be everyone's personal punching bag. I have been around people like this enough to know what happens next. I could clearly tell which way the wind was blowing.

I try to pull my legs under me. Nothing happens. Or no, that is not true. Pain happens. A hot, sickening pulse rolls through my skull, and the world tilts hard enough that I almost throw up. Running is not an option. Standing might not even be an option. And even if some miracle dragged me upright, the giant man would only need one hand and half a second to turn me into paste.

Thea raises her good hand.

“I surrender.”

Stephan pauses. Nara tilts her head. Thea swallows.

“I surrender,” she repeats, louder. “You want money? Fine. I still have enough pull with the company. They’ll pay ransom. More than whatever your boss promised. We can negotiate.”

Her voice is steady. And somewhat desperate sounding at the same time.

I see a weird shadow flickering on the ground. My eyes flick upwards at the same time as my heart sinks like a rock.

Far above us, silhouetted against the moon, a winged humanoid figure hovered in the sky. Bathed in moonlight, it looked almost beautiful. Angelic, even. At first, I thought my concussion was finally flaring up.

But then…

Then the figure tucks itself downward and drops. Moonlight flashes along something long and metallic in its hands.

A bat.

Thea has her eyes fixed on Stephan. She has no idea of the impending doom that’s coming right at her. My mouth opens. A warning rises in my throat. Then stops there.

Her fate is sealed. There is nothing I can say or do now that saves her. There is, however, plenty I can say that gets me killed. So I keep my mouth shut. For now, obedience is the only thing I have left to bargain with. As pathetic as it may sound, it beats being dead, that’s for sure.

Do nothing. Stay silent. Win. Perfectly reasonable.

I have been swimming against the current my whole life. At some point, I learned to stop asking what I wanted and start asking what hurt the least. So, to make my shitty situation even slightly better, I made it a point to always choose the most rational option available. I know I chose the correct answer. The rational answer. And yet the ugly feeling in my chest will not go away. It feels like I was about to personally murder her with my own two hands.

By now, Stephan has noticed Nara as well. Thea, for some reason, was painfully oblivious to the fact that the chicken chick was missing.

Some part of me was praying that she would look up.

She does not.

The chicken woman is thirty feet above her now, dropping like a falcon on prey. She raises her bat. My mouth hangs open. Thea lifts her chin.

“I said we can—”

Nara drops on her. The bat smashes into Thea's head. The thud echoes through the night.

I will remember that sound for the rest of my life.

Thea’s head bursts apart. Blood, bone, and brain fragments spray across the sand. Her body jerks upright as if surprised, then collapses in a loose, broken heap.

The desert goes quiet.

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