Unsettling Futures Chapter 1

Unsettling
Futures

By
Jamie Carlson
(a.k.a. Cardinal Syn)
Chapter One: 
"Nightmares
Come True"

Yawning tiredly, Lilium Noir crawled into bed. She eeped as Kaiou Elios rather rudely pulled the bedspread out from under her, stealing it for her own use. The brown-haired Lilium glared balefully at the red-head, but was ignored as Kaiou curled up on the right side of the bed.

Lilium wiggled under the covers, and watched the lighter-brown-haired Tsukai Hitonokono, the only male in the room (which didn't really matter since he was gay and all) worm his way into his sleeping bag.

"I'm really tired,"
Nida Richards complained as she settled down on the mattress on the floor to the left of Lilium's bed.

"No wonder," Kaiou retorted. "It's almost five in the morning, and we're just now going to bed."

"Yeah, I
know," Nida said, stretching. She looked around at everyone. "Umm, could you turn the lights off and not look at me so I can change? Thank you." Much rustling was heard after Tsukai turned the light off, and then Nida continued. "Anyway, like I said, I know. But I'm more tired than normal - I don't even feel like making you guys ask me questions!" Lilium blinked at this.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"You won't be saying 'Ask me a question?' over and over again?"

"Nope, I don't think I will." Nida replied merrily as she settled down on
the mattress laying on the floor.

"Uhh… Good? I suppose…" Lilium said. But almost before she was done speaking, Nida's snores filled the room. One by one, the four friends fell asleep in the bedroom they shared at Nida's dad's house.

And one by one, they were stolen away, whisked away to a land unknown, a future never to be realized.

When they awoke, it wasn't to chirping birds and the sluggish gray mornings of
Bremerton, Washington winters. It wasn't to Nida's dad greeting them all with things like "It's awake!" and "So where are the other two?" (or three, or "Where's the other one?"
depending on who got up and who was still asleep). It wasn't to the normal "call of nature" that usually roused even the most determined to sleep longer than everyone else.

When they awoke, it was to muffled shouts outside their room. It was to banging, as if someone was hammering doors shut, or trying to wake the occupants on the other sides of those doors. It was to the sounds of strange men and women, whose voices none of them had ever heard
before.

And strangest of all, it was to finding themselves looking a little different than they had when they fell asleep.

The first to awaken was Lilium, and Kaiou awoke only moments after. Lilium lay still, her heart pounding, knowing something was wrong. But not what.

Lilium frowned and wriggled. The mattress wasn't as comfortable as normal…. It was always a tad too firm, but it wasn't so.. lumpy. And the blankets felt funny on her bare legs….

Wait. Bare legs? She had gone to bed wearing pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. Why were her legs bare?

Weird blankets.

Lumpy bed.

No pants.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

"Kaiou -"

"I know." Kaiou's voice was sharp, and she sounded annoyed and frightened. "There is no mattress under me, and I'm wearing pants. Something weird is going on."

"Did you steal my pants and shove the mattress under the bed in your sleep?" Lilium asked. She was hopeful. That was weird, but not as frightening as the other thoughts that came to mind.

"No."

"Oh…"

"What are you guys talking about?" Nida muttered groggily.

"Who took my sleeping bag?" Tsukai shouted, angry at having awoken to find his precious dark blue sleeping bag gone.

"Whoever took my pants!" Lilium snapped. She blushed, aware of only wearing what felt like some sort of nightshirt made of cotton and her underwear. From what she could tell, the nightshirt barely covered her thighs.

"….. Why am I wearing pants?" Nida demanded.

"Maybe you took my pants…" Lilium ventured weakly.

"Nope, your pants are too girly for me. Plus, why would I want to see your underwear?" Nida replied logically.

"Good point," Lilium replied. She reached to her left, groping for the small dresser and its lamp that went there. Her groping hand met air, and was soon swatted by Nida.

"Keep your hands on the bed!"

Lilium pulled her hand away, and plopped onto her back, staring at the darkness of the unlit ceiling. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Normally, she would have given up after a few moments, but to her surprise, the room wasn't as dark as she had thought.

"Hey…Did you leave the blinds open?" she asked.

Nida sat up, and looked about the room. She had excellent night vision, and saw immediately that this was definitely not the spare bedroom at her dad's house.

"Hey, where the hell are we?" she demanded angrily, standing up. She brushed her short, boyishly cut black hair back irritably. "Wood plank walls? And the ceiling's too high! And there's only one window, and this room is WAY too big…! WHAT THE HELL?"

Tsukai was up now, heading toward the wall near the door, groping for a light switch. Again came the pounding sound, only it was on their door now.

"OI!" a gruff male voice cried from the other side of the door. It creaked open. Shrieking, Lilium clutched the covers to her chest.

The man, a grizzled, gray-haired old innkeeper, looked about the room briefly.

"All four o'ya in 'ere?"

"Yeah…" Tsukai said uncertainly.

"Good. Get dressed, an' c'mon down t'the cellar. They're riding through town!" The man's gruff voice was tinted with foreboding, and Lilium felt a shiver run down her spine. After the man shut the door, forgetting her usual embarrassment when it came to showing skin, she leaped out of bed, identified the dresser to her right, opened the drawer, and started pulling out clothes.

"What are you doing?" Tsukai asked.

"Getting clothes…" Lilium mumbled. She yanked out a white bundle of cloth, found arm and head holes and yanked it on. It was a white floor-length dress, with blue and silver ribbon tying the front together. She found a silver belt to gather the skirt's folds around
her waist.

"There's a lot of clothes in here… It's like we brought it all with us…" Lilium mumbled, somehow managing to put take the nightshirt off under the nearly skintight dress.

Nida had found the lights. They were dim and old-looking electric lights, like what
they had when electricity was first discovered. The four teens quickly dressed and made themselves at least halfway presentable, then nodded to each other.

Tsukai and Nida went out first, then Kaiou and finally Lilium. A maid was waiting outside. She beckoned for them to follow her, and the four did so, still confused as to what was happening.

Nida looked more like a boy than Lilium could ever remember seeing her, and the maid kept referring to her as "sir". When she asked for their names, Nida said "Alex", apparently enjoying the moment of confusion. She grinned broadly and shrugged at Lilium's questioning look and Kaiou's eye rolls.

The maid lead them into the cellar, where twenty other people ranging from children to adults as old as the innkeeper had gathered.

Before she stepped down into the darkness of the cellar, Lilium looked about her. They were in the storage room full of boxes and packages, and the innkeeper was speaking to someone near the doorway.

Lilium's breath caught in her throat, her eyes widening.

The man the innkeeper was speaking to was tall, much taller than Lilium's height of five-eight, almost five-nine. The man was taller by almost a foot. He was dressed in black form-fitting armor and a black cloak, a very long, slightly curved sword strapped to his back. A wide-brimmed hat cast a shadow over his eyes, but Lilium could see his sensual mouth, and elfin chin and ears. He was as pale as moonlight, and locks of wavy chestnut hair framed his face and rested on his shoulders. He was beautiful, more beautiful than any man Lilium had ever before seen.

He's so… so beautiful… she thought. Almost… unearthly….

Lilium would have been content to keep staring at the man, but Tsukai grabbed her wrist, yanking her arm irritably.

"Lil! Come on!" he snapped, dragging her into the cellar. "Whatever's going on, it's not good - you don't have time to sit and gawk at cute guys!"

"Why not?" Lilium hissed back, annoyed, her voice barely above a whisper. "You do it all the time!" Tsukai didn't reply as the innkeeper was shuffling past them, but he glared angrily at Lilium, his left eye twitching.

Even as the cellar door began to close behind them, Lilium had the strangest feeling that someone was looking at her. She turned, and caught the faintest glimpse of the man in black armor. He was facing the door. Had he been looking at her…?

Nida was talking to a young man near the back. Lilium blinked as she listened to the conversation - Nida seemed to be hiding the fact that she was a she. She seemed to be making her voice sound deeper, and had taken to wearing a very loose brown jacket over her white buccaneer shirt. The soft brown pants she had donned also were loose enough to allow her to be androgynous.

Kaiou was enjoying the admiration of a few other young men. Where Nida was gathering information through blending in, Kaiou was simply basking in the admiration of a bunch of cute guys. They made comments on her coppery hair and pale, lightly freckled skin, her tawny eyes that seemed to match the lightness of her hair, and her green velvet dress - as well as the curves beneath the dress.

Tsukai went and looked out the single ground-height window. He had to stand on tiptoe, as the window showed the ground level of the world outside of the cellar. He saw the dark shapes of a few houses, all of which were silent. He guessed that the word had spread, and everyone was hiding from Them. Whoever They were.

Lilium hugged her arms to her torso, holding her elbows. She stepped lightly over to the innkeeper.

"Sir, why did that man in armor stay outside? Shouldn't he be in the cellar with us?" she asked softly. The innkeeper looked her over silently for a moment, then seemed to weigh the options of telling her or not telling her in his mind.

"He's a Hunter. If any o'the creatures seek t' c'm inta our inn, he'll be a-waitin' for 'em." The innkeeper glanced out of the cellar window, frowning a bit as Tsukai grasped the bars and tried to wiggle them. "Them bars ain't commin' out fer no normal man, lad, 'specially not one as puny as you! Give up!"

Trying not to laugh as Tsukai slinked away, his face red, Lilium thanked the innkeeper for sharing that little bit of information with her. Although she didn't know what the "creatures" were, she knew enough about books and legends to guess.

The only things she could think of that required "hunters" to kill were Werewolves and Vampires. And since werewolves didn't ride horses, she figured it had to be the latter.

As if they all shared some sort of bond on the psychic level, the four teenagers quickly converged in one dark corner of the cellar, away from the other people, to converse.

"Vampires," Nida and Lilium said in unison. Lilium gestured for Nida to continue before Kaiou could start asking questions.

"I found out that every once in a while, a vampire count named Meier Link rides through the town. When the villagers are fortunate enough to find out," Nida said, gesturing around the cellar, "Everyone gathers in their cellars, or in this cellar her in the Inn if they
don't have one at home.

"Tonight, they were fortunate enough to have a Vampire Hunter pass through," Nida said, jerking her thumb at the door. "Geoffrey over there says his name is D, and he's a dung pile or something like that."

"Dunpeal," Lilium corrected. "I'm guessing that's dhampir, but in this region's dialect, it's said dunpeal."

"What does that mean, though?" Tsukai asked.

"It means he's half vampire himself."

"So isn't that dangerous?" Tsukai asked, shocked. "I mean, wouldn't he just help the vampires?"

"Did you miss the part where I said he's a Hunter?" Nida replied, condescending. "MY guess is, he doesn't like vampires."

"Probably emotional issues," Lilium mumbled distractedly. She was looking at the stairs and door that lead back out into the storage room. Did the man called D still stand there? Or had he went to the front of the building? Was he standing sentry at the only way Lilium could think of to gain access to the humans, or would he stop any vampires that would try to come in from the outside?

"Everything is emotional issues with you!" Kaiou scoffed.

"No.. I mean, think about it," Lilium said, turning back to her group of friends. "Dhampir are half-vampire, as I said before. They have the night vision, strength, senses of a vampire… Sometimes their powers as well. Even a very, verylong lifespan - almost an eternity. But they'd be shunned; most humans hate them, even others of the Vampiric kind. The vampires see the human blood as the Dhampir's curse, and the humans see the vampire blood as a curse. It's a two-way street… to loneliness."

"… Lil, you need a life. I mean, really. And you think about this stuff in your spare time?" Kaiou said, staring at Lilium. Lilium stuck her tongue out at her red-haired friend.

"Look! The carriage of Meier Link!" a villager cried.

The people in the cellar all crowded around the window, straining to look out and catch glimpses of the carriage. It was a fancy, olden times carriage of black, with six black cybernetic horses pulling it, their red eyes flaring in the night.

Lilium and her friends hung back, none of them liking strangers enough to get poked and prodded and possibly groped just so they could try and see the carriage of the guy that they were supposedly hiding from. Lilium leaned against the wall, Tsukai next to her. Nida
frowned at the crowd, and Kaiou walked along the edges of it.

After what felt like an eternity, the sound of the horses' hooves and the rattling wheels of the carriage died away. The innkeeper went to the door and unlocked it.

The moment the door swung open, darkness flowed into the room, blotting out the candlelight from the lanterns on the walls. Several women screamed, Lilium included, having very poor night vision and being very afraid of the dark.

The sound of shouting, the odd twang of a samurai's sword, and the nigh-blanket fell. The Hunter, D, stood over the body of a vampire male, his sword outstretched. He was only feet from Lilium, and she felt a surge of power emanating from him.

"Lock the door!" D commanded. "They are not gone! They are still out there!"

Lilium shivered at the sound of his voice. It was deep, nearly monotonous in its tone, and it wielded power. Seeing that no one had bothered to heed his command, Lilium went to the door herself. She dashed up the steps, reaching out to swing the door shut.

"No!"

D's cry came too late. Lilium gasped as a strong, clawed brown hand reached through the door way and caught her wrist. With a trill of fear, she was dragged out of the cellar and lifted off of the ground. She looked up into yellow eyes nearly covered by shaggy hair before she was snatched up and thrown the arms of a beautiful woman with amazingly long and wild green hair in a skintight green outfit. The woman smiled at her, a lopsided smirk.

Suddenly very, very afraid, Lilum let out a final shriek before being knocked unconscious by the woman in green.

"NIIIIDAAAAA!"