Leave a comment

~Chapter 6: The Party~

When Friday came around, Evelyn still had not had a chance to call or text Perse yet. That evening, Avery had invited her and some of their co-workers to go for a few drinks with them in celebration of the blonde’s 25th birthday.

Evelyn had decided to wear the dress that she bought last week as a birthday treat for herself. The dress was a small strapless black number that had barely reached her mid-thigh, with a low neckline and an asymmetrical cut with a stretchy fabric that was higher on the right side. The dress accentuated her curves and brought out her best assets – with a hint of her breasts exposed and her long legs on full display. A touch of makeup and her blonde curls tied up in a simple braid had finished her classy yet sexy look for the evening out.

They had agreed to meet at an up and coming new club in town, one of their colleagues had said that he knew someone who worked there and would be able to get them in easily. This club had been trending on social media due to the rumours that the club catered to famous celebrities and other rich patrons.

When Evelyn got to the club, she immediately spotted her best friend, the green-eyed woman typically looked very different outside of work. She was dressed in an emerald mini dress that brought out the green in her eyes. The low neckline of her dress showed off plenty of cleavages and with how short the dress was, her shapely legs appeared to run for miles. As soon as Avery caught sight of Evelyn, she waved her over to their group of acquaintances. When Evelyn was making her way to the group, the lighting brought out a pale blue tinge to the redhead’s skin. Evelyn closed her eyes and shook her head to get rid of the odd image. When she opened her eyes again, the redhead’s skin looked normal so the blonde just waved it off as a trick of the eye.

One of their male colleagues led them towards the entrance where he flirted shamelessly with the huge bald bouncer who eventually let them skip the line and into the club. As soon as they entered the club, the booming noise practically reverberated inside Evelyn’s head and she could barely even hear herself think.

The club was decorated with 90’s themes with sparkling disco balls reflecting off coloured strobe lights onto the dance floor. A Spice Girls song had many clubbers gyrating and grinding to its beat on the dance floor. The bar ran along the entire left side of the room and two curving stairs sandwiched a seating area on the right. The stairs led up to a quieter half-floor littered with private individual booths overlooking the dance floor. The top floor was reserved for the VIP patrons of the club, cordoned off with stained glass walls and keycard entry system.

Their ragtag gang swarmed the bar right after their entry where each of them tried to buy a drink for the birthday gal. Upon their raucous insistence, Evelyn had finally agreed to down the dozen or so shots they bought for her. The loud cheers of her co-workers incited strangers to cheer along. After that, Avery had so graciously handed two tall glasses of water to Evelyn. Evelyn downed the first glass of water to chase away the bitterness of the burning alcohol and slowly sipped on her second glass through a straw. Avery had stayed by her side nursing her own drink while waiting for the blonde to finish her glass of water. Most of their colleagues had adjourned to the quieter first floor to find seats.

Avery ordered another drink for herself and water for the blonde before they made their way through the dance floor to reach the stairs on the other end. The redhead made it look so easy, bulldozing her way through the mass of sweaty bodies like a war tank smashing its way through a battlefield. Evelyn always puzzled over how the redhead could waddle through busy crowds without spilling even a drop of her drinks. Evelyn on the other hand, had to dance her way through the mass of bodies, as they said: ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’.

By the time Evelyn had cleared the dance floor and ascended the stairs, she had broken a sweat and the redhead was already seated in a booth with the rest of their colleagues. Evelyn groaned at the sight of several strangers seated together with their group of colleagues. A few of them were trying to chat up the redhead but she took no notice of them, she merely waved exaggeratedly at the approaching blonde.

There was no seat left by the time Evelyn had reached their booth, so the redhead half-jokingly offered, “You can sit on my lap, babe.”

Seeing no other options, the mostly-drunk blonde plopped down comfortably onto the redhead’s lap with a “Thankies, Avie”. The redhead shoved the last glass of water at the blonde as her response. All but one of the strangers hitting on Avery stopped after witnessing the public display of affection. When a long moment of ignoring the man did not stop his incessant blabbering, the redhead just couldn’t handle it anymore.

“I am not interested.” She muttered in annoyance.

“Come on, don’t be like that, sweet peach,” the man’s spirit actually lifted after Avery’s acknowledgement. He scooched closer to the pair.

Irked, Avery took Evelyn’s glass and put it on the table, she then tilted the blonde’s face towards her. Even drunk, the blonde knew the look on her friend’s face – this was the look the redhead usually gave her when she wanted to get rid of her pursuers and resorted to the ‘I’m taken’ tactic. Evelyn felt a hand moving to the nape of her neck, pulling her in for a kiss. The redhead had even given a good show of shoving her tongue into the blonde’s mouth to prove her point.

When she turned back to the guy with a sweet smile as if saying ‘so you see how it is now?’, the guy was slack-jawed with a prominent bulge in his pants. He nodded dumbly to her silent question before he ran off, covering the front of his pants with his hands. Evelyn would never understand why men thought that watching two women getting it on was arousing when Avery always gave her the sloppiest and most invasive kiss ever. If Evelyn didn’t treasure her best friend so much, she would have totally bashed her for this.

The redhead mouthed ‘sorry’ to the blonde when the guy was well out of their sights, knowing full-well that the blonde did not enjoy those showy sloppy kisses. Evelyn just nodded her head to show her forgiveness.

“Eve, you ready to get your dance on?” the redhead spoke into her ear to be heard over the loud music. She winked at the blonde then downed her drink, the blonde took a few more sips of water before unsteadily standing up. The redhead reached her hands out to stable the drunk woman and then proceeded to lead them down the stairs into the sweaty masses. When Evelyn started to sweat from the aerobic exercise, she found herself envious of how Avery never sweated.

Evelyn sang incorrect lyrics of some 90’s song at the top of her lungs, stumbling clumsily as Avery supported most of her weight. Evelyn usually ended up absolutely wasted and waking up with killer hangovers when she tried to keep up with Avery’s drinking since the redhead could possibly drink a dozen gallons of alcoholic beverages and still not get drunk. Despite all of Evelyn’s stumbling, the redhead managed to walk them steadily from the taxi all the way to the elevators.

Avery’s body tensed up when the pair reached Evelyn’s apartment door, she cautiously reached out to turn the doorknob. Drunkenly, Evelyn spoke up, “Avie? The door is locked.” However, when the doorknob twisted all the way without resistance, Evelyn blinked in confusion, she was certain that she had locked the door when she left earlier that evening.

Avery pushed the door open tentatively and stepped through the doorway. The redhead didn’t bother turning on the lights but her sure-footedness in the dark told of her impressive night vision. She stopped abruptly as soon as they reached the archway into the lounge room, all the muscles in her body tensed into battle-ready mode. She snarled into the dark, “Who the ꜰᴜᴄᴋ are you?”

Evelyn was about to ask the redhead who she was talking to when a snarky voice emerged from the direction of the lounge room, “Is that any way you treat a guest?”

Evelyn glimpsed a flash of gleaming teeth in the darkness of the apartment, her frightened drunken mind dumbly moved her lips for her, “Hello?”

“Surprise!” The gleaming teeth parted when he answered, revealing the unnaturally sharp points of his canines. Without even the blink of an eye, the blonde was deposited in a heap on the floor, the redhead and the invader undetectable by human eyes in the dark. Hisses and loud smashing echoed around the room, soon followed by the clinking noise of shattering windows. With the aid of the moon and city lights through the window, Evelyn could barely make out blurs of bodies moving around the room.

Fear sobered up her drunken mind faster than any cure could. The thought that her petite best friend was currently fighting bare-handed against her possibly armed trespasser had her blood running cold. She would rather the trespasser take whatever he needed from her apartment than losing her best friend. “Avery?” She fearfully called out to the dark, more concerned with the safety of her best friend bravely fighting off the intruder than her own safety.

“ꜱʜɪᴛ! No one ever told us this!” A higher-pitched male voice cursed out loud and the blood further drained from her face. She had only then realized that there was more than one trespasser in her home and that some of them had somehow entered her apartment through her windows. “But that just couldn’t be possible,” she denied valiantly. Evelyn lived on the 13th floor of her apartment building, a distance too high for anyone to jump in through her windows. However, even at this inappropriate moment, her brain had unhelpfully informed her that it would punch a hole in her wallet to fix the damage.

Evelyn called out for Avery again but all that answered her was a loud scuffle in the room. Only then did her survival instinct kick in and her hands started searching aimlessly in her clutch for her phone.

When she finally got a good grip on her phone, she slid it out and immediately dialled 9-1-1 but just as the call connected, a hand shot out to snatch her phone away. The blonde watched the dull screen light of her phone arching in the air until it smashed through the lounge room window and broke through it with a loud crash. She lost sight of it as gravity took it to ground level.

Another hand grabbed Evelyn, she tried to fight off the unwanted contact but she might as well have been fighting against an immovable force. The insistently tight painful grip on her bicep let her know that it wasn’t Avery grabbing her. The hand dragged the blonde across the floor, Evelyn yelled out in pain, “Let me go, you ꜰᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ!” And almost as if the command worked, the grip on her arm was gone instantly, replaced with a pained yowl.

Evelyn pulled her injured arm back protectively against her chest, she breathed out hopefully, “Avery?” Her eyes once again searched frantically and unseeingly in the dark for her friend with no luck. A wave of relief washed over the blonde when she finally heard a voice she would recognize anywhere, “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Eve.” The blonde couldn’t believe that her petite friend had somehow survived amongst all odds against these intruders.

Before her relief could even settle down, another hand gripped her wrist, forcefully pulling her up and took off running. Evelyn stumbled blindly, nearly tripping over her own feet many times. She did not dare to try to drag her weight against her captor for fear of further injuring herself. But even in the darkness, she knew the path well, they were running in the direction of her bedroom.

When they finally sprinted through the open door to her bedroom, her captor stopped abruptly, leading to Evelyn staggering painfully into his back. The light streaming in through the open windows of her bedroom allowed an adequate amount of light into the room. Around her large captor, she could see the surreal quality the dim light lent to the room and the man sitting on the window sill.

The man was so gorgeous he reminded the blonde of princes in fairy tales. He was reclining on the window sill leisurely, looking as normal as any other person watching the city life pass by on a Friday night if only, he wasn’t mysteriously in the blonde’s room. Three-fourth of his silver-blue hair was slicked back to the right while the rest was swept to the left. He had ‘S’ shaped eyebrow that lined his sharp grey eyes, refined nose and parted lips quirked in a sarcastic smile. His face was smooth and cleared of facial hair. His dream-like appearance looked oddly misplaced with his human ears. He donned a white dress shirt with a dark purple vest and black dress pants held up with a black leather belt.

The silver blue-haired man climbed down from his perch on the window sill when he finally noticed their presence, his melodic voice danced across the distance, “Leaving the party early, are we?” He had an almost-fragile looking frame, but with every movement he made, the pure sinewy muscle underneath his smooth skin could be seen rippling even through the materials of his shirt.

The brute of her captor tightened his already painful hold on her wrist. A sharp pain rippled through her right arm with the distinctive sound of bones cracking. The blonde cried out in agony and her right hand fell limply in her captor’s hold. She gritted her teeth, trying her best to hold back the pained wails wanting to burst through her lips from the further grinding of bones in her wrist as her captor unforgivingly increased the strength of his hold gradually. He breathed heavily to himself, “We were told that this would be an easy job!” He then turned to snarl with a voice sounding more like an animal’s than a human’s at the other man, his voice booming loudly, “This has nothing to do with you.”

“On the contrary, this has everything to do with me. Now, let us try this one more time,” The grey-eyed man spoke casually, taking a step closer to them. “Unhand the woman like the nice gentleman you were brought up to be and let her come to me. I may think about letting you go alive.”

The pale captor’s eyes flitted back and forth a few times between his target and his opponent helplessly. He knew who his opponent was and that he was too young to be able to win a fight against the decade-old adversary. He was practically a dead man walking – refusing to release the woman, the hitman would kill him; release her to the hitman and his boss would surely kill him. An insane glint shone in his eyes in his last moment and Evelyn just knew that he was going to do something devastating.

Time appeared to slow down and the blonde felt as if she was a spectator in her own body watching his canines lengthening and sharpening. When his face lowered to try to clamp his jaw on her neck, she was not even able to lift her free arm to defend herself before she felt the sharp pain. However, as soon as the pain erupted on her throat, it was gone instantaneously. Evelyn would have doubted it had even happened if not for the warm liquid flowing down from her torn neck.

The blue-haired man was still standing before the window sill but his left arm was raised across his body as if he had just slapped someone. Her previous captor laid on the floor, shrieking in pain, his entire body on fire. Evelyn gasped at the sight and smell of the scent of burning flesh. Soon enough, the fire was extinguished and nothing remained of his body but ashes.

“Are you well, Miss?” Her saviour asked, walking towards her. A deep thundering growl behind Evelyn vibrated through her bones as a warning to the man. The animalistic sound frightened the blonde into trying to run towards her saviour, only to be stopped by a familiar feminine hand holding onto her uninjured wrist.

Evelyn nearly fainted at the sight of Avery behind her, more in shock than relief. The green-eyed woman’s clothes were more bloodied rags than a dress now and her body was shredded up like someone had run her through a paper shredder. She was covered from head to toe in both her own blood and others’, with even more blood flowing down her body practically pooling on the floor underneath her. She looked like a prime example of Dracula’s bride who had just taken a bloody shower.

Even in her wounded condition, she still looked fiercely strong glaring at the man by the window. The dumbstruck blonde allowed herself to be pulled along by the gentle tug on her wrist. Her severely injured best friend resolutely placed herself between the blonde and the handsome stranger, without any signs of fear or pain on her face. Instead, she snarled viciously at the man, “Touch her and I will rip your pretty Faerie head off your shoulders.”

Unamused, he raised his brows in challenge, “Your species may be tough but you are awfully young, you do not want to challenge me in your current state. Now hand the human over and I shall spare you.”

Avery doggedly lowered her stance to prepare herself to fend off the attacker. When she relinquished the blonde’s wrist, Evelyn regained enough motor functions to quickly reach out for her friend’s bloody hand. She blurted out trying to save her friend from inevitable death, “Avery, this man just saved my life!”

The redhead glanced uncertainly at the blonde and then directed her fierce glare at the man. When she opened her mouth to question the man, he ran a hand through his hair and cut her off nonchalantly, “Well, I guess you are an ally then. No matter how much you distrust me at the moment, you might want to have her throat looked at before she bleeds out.”

Avery remained suspicious of the man and she looked like she had wanted to retort but she relented when she noticed the blonde’s wounded throat. Her doubtful eyes never once left the Faerie while she was leading Evelyn into the bathroom, afraid that he would attack her when her back was turned.

“C’mon, Eve.” She sat the blonde down on top of the closed toilet seat.

Evelyn tried to protest, “What about yourself, Avery? You look-”

“Shhh, don’t worry about me, babe. I promise it’s not as bad as it looks, you should have seen the other guys. Now we gotta make sure you don’t get yourself killed, alright? I’ll answer all of your questions later. Please let me take care of you first.” Avery shushed the blonde with a forefinger to her lips.

Avery pulled a towel off the rack and pressed it to her friend’s wounded neck to try to stem the bleeding. Now that the adrenaline had left her system, Evelyn could feel the wooziness of her head from the blood loss and the soreness of her body doubling down. Avery asked the blonde to hold onto the towel so that she could take the first aid kit out of the medicine cabinet. However, when the redhead returned with the kit, the towel was mostly soaked through with blood and the blonde could feel herself leaning towards unconsciousness.

The redhead cursed under her breath and quickly removed the towel to inspect the wound. A flash of outrage glinted in her eyes before she schooled her expression. She knelt down in front of the blonde, leaned in and looked into her eyes; her mouth moved but Evelyn couldn’t hear a word she said. Even though the blonde had no idea what was said, she knew from the redhead’s eyes that she was asking for the blonde’s permission. The pain was getting duller by the seconds, Evelyn knew she wouldn’t last much longer and she trusted her best friend with her life so she nodded once weakly in assent.

Avery pulled away from the dying woman and literally dug her hand onto the wound. It was like her hand was a searing iron, burning away at the human’s flesh, Evelyn screamed out in pain as the agonizing heat flowed from her hand into her body. The heat was particularly scorching on the blonde’s broken wrist and throat. When Evelyn tried to resist and jerk away from her searing hot hand, another hand came up to grip behind her neck to hold her in place.

After what seemed like forever and a moment more, the redhead finally released her, Evelyn was nearly hyperventilating, having extreme difficulty trying to get air into her lungs. For a petite woman seated on the floor, Avery easily picked up the blonde to straddle her waist as if she was picking up her favourite stuffed toy off a high shelf. She cooed gently at the sobbing woman clutching tightly to her chest, one of her hands wiped her tears away and the other stroked her head lovingly.

When Evelyn finally calmed down enough, the redhead pressed a kiss to her temple and easily stood up with the blonde in her arms. She seated the healed woman on the countertop beside the sink. She then proceeded to wipe off the blood on the blonde’s throat with a small wet towel. Once Avery had wiped most of the blood away, she inspected the blonde’s unmarred throat and huffed a satisfied breath through her nose.

“I’ll leave you to get cleaned up, okay?” The redhead caressed her cheek tenderly. She glanced around the room, then she placed the unused first aid kit back into the medicine cabinet and took the bloodied towels with her when she left the bathroom.

Finally alone, Evelyn allowed herself to inspect the damage on her body but other than the bloody dress, there were no other signs of the attack from just now. Her throat was completely unscarred and her wrist had its full range of motion without causing any pain. She closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief, briefly pondering whether this was all just a bad dream. When she opened her eyes, she was in her bloody dress standing in front of the mirror. She decided that she needed to clean up and then get answers.