"..."
Jennifer stood immobile, her eyes traveling the space bathed in lights.
Her brain struggled to process the abrupt change.
One second she was on a deserted road, and the next, in a private sanctuary that smelled of leather and tobacco.
She extended her hand with hesitation and brushed the cold metal of the supports on the wall with her fingertips, needing a physical confirmation that she was not hallucinating.
The icy touch of the silver told her that all of this was real.
In front of her, hanging like a work of art, the monster's mutilated torso still had occasional nervous spasms, contracting against the shackles and to the sides, those enormous bat wings, now inert and nailed with silver crucifixes.
And the architect of that was sitting behind his huge desk with a disconcerting calm, observing her with an arched eyebrow.
"Well?"
Lief reclined in his chair, intertwining his fingers behind his head. "If you are going to be my first official employee, you have the obligation to understand the scope of our business and, more importantly, know how to evaluate the targets."
And immediately he made a gesture with his chin toward the pool of dark green blood dripping from the hanging torso.
"Let's start with that thing. Tell me, what do you perceive? I do not mean what you see, but what you feel."
"..."
This sudden evaluation left Jennifer stunned for a moment, but she quickly got into the situation.
Since her transformation, her senses were no longer human. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and let the office fade away, focusing only on the energy that emanated from the remains on the wall.
"It feels... old," she murmured searching for the exact words while a grimace of disgust crossed her face. "It smells of hunger... an insatiable hunger for blood and flesh."
She opened her eyes and stepped forward.
"Its body makes no sense... I feel multiple auras in it, all colliding with each other and uncoordinated... It is as if it were a puzzle made of stolen flesh, pieces of different people sewn together by force to keep functioning."
She paused, turning her head toward Lief.
"And it smells of fear... I can feel it all over its body. The fear of the kids on the bus... for it was not just an emotion, it was like a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. It feeds on that." She looked at the monster again. "But... right at the end, it was afraid of you. The moment you took out that halberd, its hunger disappeared... and the only thing left was pure terror."
"..."
Listening to her analysis, Lief nodded satisfied. Jennifer's perception was sharp; she had hit the nail on the head on every point without needing training.
"Excellent analysis," he said with a smile of approval. "That thing is called the Creeper. It is an ancient demon, a biological plague that wakes up every twenty three years to feed for twenty three days. It is a collector: it smells fear to identify what parts of its prey it needs to replace its own worn out ones."
His tone was so casual, but the brutality of the information made a chill run down Jennifer's back.
"He..." She looked at the torso that twitched slightly on the wall, with a shadow of concern in her gaze. "Can he wake up again?"
"Not anymore," replied Lief with total certainty. "I destroyed its heart before bringing it and separated the main limbs. Without the vital core pumping, what remains there is only dead flesh with muscle memory."
He sighed and looked at his trophy with indifference.
"Now, its only value is to serve as a trophy in my collection."
".."
Jennifer kept looking at his calm profile under the light and her heart, which had barely calmed down, accelerated again, but this time for a very different reason.
That power... handled with such indifference and control...
"You are incredible..." she whispered, without realizing that she had said it out loud.
Lief smiled at the compliment, and stood up from the chair.
He walked toward a small vintage style mini fridge in the corner of the office and opened it.
He took out two icy cold bottles of Coca Cola and tossed one to Jennifer, who easily caught it.
"Consider this your payment for the overtime," Lief joked, pulling up a tall stool and sitting down across from her. He uncapped his bottle with the edge of the desk, and taking a long drink. "There is no base salary, but the free beverage bar is included."
He looked at his watch and then at her.
"Drink it slowly. There are still a couple of hours until dawn and we have to wait for the sleep spell on the bus to wear off before we go back."
...
Early the next morning, the first ray of sun sneaked through the broken windows and the open gap of the bus.
People began to wake up slowly, shaking off the mental fog.
"Ugh... how could I fall asleep like that?"
"My head is pounding... What the hell happened last night?"
"My God! Look... It is the Coach!"
The first students to regain consciousness stumbled upon the Coach lying in the aisle. His missing leg, and the blood stains all over his body.
Immediately afterward, the horror of the night before returned to everyone's mind. The bone darts, the tire blow, the screams of the teacher being dragged...
Chaos seized the place again.
The screams and hysterical crying mixed with the sound of retching and unanswered questions.
"Silence! Everyone, calm!"
Right in the middle of the pandemonium, Lief's voice sounded.
He and Jennifer were back in their seats, looking impeccably awake and calm, as if they had been there all night without being disturbed.
"Last night it is possible that we were attacked by a wild beast, probably a bear or a large local predator," he began his official explanation without being disturbed, "Coach Davis and Mr. Henderson were seriously injured while trying to protect us. The most important thing now is that we remain calm and conserve energy to look for help."
His words, pronounced with that certainty, seemed to carry a subtle resonance. The terrified students gradually fell silent and although their faces were still pale, their hands were trembling, at least they had stopped screaming.
The driver, who was still visibly in shock, shakily took out his cell phone and crawled to the broken window to try to reach a service bar.
But it was the same, total isolation.
Despair wrapped around them again, feeling that they were trapped in the middle of nowhere.
Fortunately, not long after, the sound of an engine approached.
A large RV appeared, and the owners, a kindhearted couple traveling through the country, stopped upon seeing the destroyed bus on the side of the road.
They immediately called 911 and used their complete first aid kit to stabilize the coach's horrible wound.
The state police and the ambulance arrived with sirens wailing, finally breaking the isolation of the road.
They took away the seriously injured coach, recovered the scarce "remains" of the missing teacher and cordoned off the scene to start an official investigation.
Faced with police interrogation, the students' account was surprisingly consistent: they were attacked by some kind of giant, unknown beast.
Nobody mentioned the winged humanoid figure, the face with fangs or the bone dart.
It was as if that central memory had been collectively erased, leaving only some vague images.
This was, of course, the merit of the subtle psychological suggestion that Lief had applied with telekinesis, making sure that the story stayed within the limits of unusual, but manageable.
Finally, after they changed the spare tire, the school bus resumed its journey, escorted by state police patrol cars.
It crossed the last county sign and finally arrived at its destination, just at noon: the sunny city of Shadyside.
Given the severity of the psychological trauma suffered by the students, the school board did not want to take any risks. They announced the immediate cancellation of the academic competition, reserved rooms for the whole team at the best hotel in Shadyside and sent a team of crisis counselors to provide emotional support.
Already in the hotel room, Frank lay sprawled on the bed, massaging his temples hard as if trying to get the headache out.
"Lief, I swear to God that that was the most fucked up nightmare I have had in my life," he murmured, with his voice still thick with confusion. "That monster... I could feel it breathing right in my ear. I do not know at what moment I fainted, but if I had not fallen asleep, I think I would have gone completely crazy."
Lief threw him a cold bottle of water from the minibar.
"Drink it. It is all over, Frank. We are safe now."
"Yeah... I guess," sighed Frank, taking a sip before sinking into the pillow and covering his head with the quilt. "Now I just want to sleep for a whole week and erase all this from my head. Do not wake me up."
"..."
Lief observed the lump under the sheets and decided not to say anything else. He knew that rest was the only thing that could help settle the false memories.
He turned toward the door and exchanged a look with Jennifer, who was waiting leaning against the wall. With a subtle wink, he signaled the exit and both slipped out of the room, closing the door silently behind them.
The hotel hallway was quiet, muffled by a thick carpet.
"Well?" asked Jennifer, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. "Where are we going now?"
"Shopping."
A mischievous smile lit up Jennifer's face. Without hesitation, she intertwined her arm with Lief's and pressed her entire body against his possessively.
"At your command, my dear master~" she purred in his ear.
Twenty minutes later, both were walking side by side under the bright lights of the largest mall in Shadyside.
________
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