Her eyes opened to a dark cluttered room. There were boxes stacked around her and dirt was on the floor. The air smelled musky like old books, but it still smelled cleaner than her cell. Sarain sat up with a groan. She was considerably less dizzy than she was before, but still didn’t feel like her old self.
“You’re awake,” the familiar and surprised voice of Winston spoke then added, “I thought that you’d be out much longer.”
“Where am I?” Sarain asked, looking around in confusion.
“You’re in a warehouse, downtown; I didn’t know where to take you that was safe,” he answered her nonchalantly.
“You carried me here?” she questioned.
“Yes,” he said simply, figuring that it was an obvious answer, but then realized that perhaps she was still a bit confused from the drugs. He then continued to talk by saying, “You were pretty out of it. It looks like they messed you up bad.”
“You mean your people?” Sarain said while beginning to examine her injuries.
“They’re not my ‘people’,” he responded back, bothered by her remark.
“They’re demons, you’re a demon, and you live and work with them; so I would say that makes them your people,” she pointed out, not really caring to how Winston took her comment.
“They kill, I don’t. Besides, I’m the one who got you out of there,” he said in his defense.
“Yeah, right after you led them to my house,” Sarain replied, getting annoyed with Winston’s inability to take fault.
“I wasn’t involved in the raid on your house; I was followed the night I went to talk to you. I didn’t even learn of the attack until it was already too late, then I heard they had captured you and were keeping you in the dungeon. They were going to put you through Sephor’s process,” Winston explained.
“I know, he wanted me to lead his army,” she muttered with disgust.
Winston looked a bit shocked, as though he didn’t know Sephor’s full plans for Sarain, and then he responded, “You must have made quite an impression on him.”
Sarain was silent, Winston looked over at her expecting her to comment back, but her attention was not on him. She was looking at her shoulder, where her flesh had previously been torn off by claws; it was now caked in dry blood.
“They really tore you up good, I’m surprised that you’re able to move around so well,” he said observing the amount of blood that was on her back.
Sarain remained quiet for another moment before finally saying, “Don’t get any ideas about my blood.” She had said it gruffly without looking at him, never breaking her attention away from her wound. She was trying to pull down the clothing from her shoulder and examine the wound at the same time, but it wasn’t working, her sleeve kept bouncing back up and it was apparent that she wasn’t going to remove her dress in Winston’s presence.
“Do you need help?” he asked moving towards her.
“Don’t touch me,” Sarain quickly said, her attention finally shifting to Winston. She watched him for a while to make sure he didn’t come any closer to her before she looked back at her shoulder again. She started rubbing and picking at the dried blood.
Winston observed her for a minute then said, “You probably shouldn’t do that, the scab needs to heal properly or else it’s going to scar.” He stopped talking once he noticed the dried blood flaking away and that clean untouched skin was underneath. Winston could have sworn the wound looked worse, but since he hadn’t been there when she received it nor had he gotten a close look, he figured that perhaps it was just mostly smeared blood on her back. But now he couldn’t even see a wound from which the blood could have originated from. He thought about the night when he had talked to Sarain outside her house, she had moved well for having a stab wound, and he was unable to see a scar on her head from when she cut it open. He contemplated it over before saying, “You don’t heal like a regular human, do you?”
Sarain looked up at him, but didn’t answer; she felt that he had no business knowing her family history. She tried to ignore him, but felt his eyes still on her waiting for an answer. Finally she replied, “What would you know about being human? How long has it been since you’ve been one?”
Winston thought for a moment then answered, “It’s been a long while,” he left it at that.
Sarain gave him a glance and then asked, “What were you, twenty-five, twenty-six at the time?”
“Twenty-eight, but I’ve already more than doubled that now,” he said in response.
Sarain felt a little weird sitting there talking to a vil sang like an ordinary person, but then again, nothing about her life was ever like that of an ordinary person’s so why not sit and converse with a demon. Besides, Winston was quickly proving himself to be unlike any other vil sang she had ever met. She didn’t know how to take it, but she wasn’t ready to let her guard down with him. She was curious to what angle he was playing at.
“Have you worked with Sephor long?” Sarain asked him, genuinely intrigued to know.
Winston wondered if Sarain had meant the question as another insult, but didn’t hear any harshness in her tone so he answered, “Just for the last few years; he needed someone to front his club.”
“So why you?” she asked.
“I had been doing that kind of work since I was human, so he had learned of me by reputation; I’ve always found it easy to get what I want by saying and promising others what they needed to hear. Most people are easy to read like that,” Winston replied honestly.
“Is that what you’re doing with me? Saying and doing what you think I want?” Sarain asked him with a blank gaze.
Winston looked up at her, Sarain had no problem being upfront with not trusting his motives, this was obvious, but his answer was truthful when he told her, “I can’t read you.”
An awkward silence grew between them as Sarain found herself beginning to believe what he was telling her. She tried to blame it on a momentary lapse of judgment, and scolded herself in her head, telling herself that this was what he does, he had even just admitted so. Still, she was curious to know what his answer would be to, “Why did you save me?” Then she realized that she had said the question aloud.
Winston just looked at her then started to talk when suddenly the sound of boxes crashing to the ground stole their attention. Someone else was in the warehouse. They quickly rose to their feet and looked in the direction of the sound. A group of demons stood behind where the boxes had been stacked, it was unclear how long they had been there, but their attention was very clearly set on Winston.
For a moment Sarain had thought she had been once again set up by Winston, who had just been playing another game until one of the demons, a short scaly demon with big red eyes, said, “The master was hoping not to find you with the girl, but I suspected otherwise. I always knew your dirty little half blood was too human.”
It was evident that Winston was no longer with them, like he had said. The group of demons was fairly large, and Sarain was without a weapon. She also wasn’t sure that her body was healed enough to fight at her usual strength. She definitely couldn’t take all these demons in a battle, she just hoped that Winston could fight, and with the demons approaching, she would soon find out.