Sons of Night

Mayden’s POV
“Come on I gotta show you something before we go,” Jinxx said as I finished eating. I looked up in surprised, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be alone with him. I turned to Andy for some sort of reassurance, when our eyes met he gave me a little nod. Part of me still wanted to cling to him like he was a security blanket. I trusted him more than I trusted the rest of the guys. I didn’t want to be with Jinxx alone, but I swallowed hard and stood and followed him. He lead me out of the kitchen and to my surprise, back up the stairs. I followed him warily He took me past Andy’s room where I’d slept the night before. Directly across from the top of the stairs was Andy’s room. The hall doubled back on itself and curved into three other rooms.
Jinxx opened the door to the room that shared a wall with Andy. Well not really a wall, more of a corner. The rooms made a ninety degree angle that was the turn in the hallway. Jinxx walked into the room that I supposed was his, I was reluctant to go in. He turned around his hand still on the door knob and beckoned me in. I took a deep breath and followed him. Jinxx’s room was nearly identical to Andy’s, just arranged a bit differently. In Andy’s room there was a bed on the left with a large wardrobe on the same wall pressed up as tightly to the wall as it could be. there was a window and another chest of drawers on the far wall when you walked in a and a fireplace on the right side across from the bed. Jinxx’s room had a bed to the left and on the far wall was the window and the fireplace. To the right wall was Jinxx’s large wardrobe that looked just like Andy’s.
Jinxx made his way over to his wardrobe. It looked normal enough. Crafted out of fresh wood and stained for longevity. The curling knots in the wood looked almost as they were arranged in a way that if you stood and looked at them at the right angle they’d spell out a secret code. Jinxx put his hand on the wardrobe and waited until I became comfortable enough with my surroundings to look at him without having to call my attention. I was a bit curious as to what he’d have to show me, it looked like he had something in the wardrobe to show me.
“Now you cannot tell anyone about what you see in here. You actually can’t tell anyone about anything you’ve seen out here, but absolutely under no circumstance can you say what you see in here to anyone outside of the people in this house. Understood?” Jinxx demanded.
“What will it take us to Narnia,” I said, not understanding his sudden serious tone and trying to lighten it.
“Understood?” Jinxx insisted.
“Yes, understood,” I relented, rolling my eyes at how tense he was.
“While this doesn’t take us to a magical land, it does take us someplace pretty fascinating, and something created over many years in the heads of some people who are a bit insane. It’s our best kept secret” He said with an edge of a smile. I had no idea what he was talking about, and I was a bit terrified that it was his killing chamber. He curled his fingers around the back of the wardrobe and pulled it away from the wall. He turned and pushed it until it stood at a ninety degree angle to the wall. Behind the wardrobe there was a patch of wood that looked a bit different, paler almost. Like the furniture had been there so long that the wood around it had gotten old and worn but directly where the wardrobe had stood there was protection. I quickly realized I was wrong when Jinxx pressed inward on the paler section of wood. It swung open into a dark room.
I thought back to last night, the light I’d seen coming from behind the wardrobe in Andy’s room when I’d been hiding there in the dark. They shared a secret room. Curiosity ached in my bones, I wanted to know what this was. I strained into the darkness, trying to see, but it was impossible, especially with Jinxx blocking most of the way. He reached back into his bedroom and grabbed a lantern of a desk next to the hidden door. As he moved, just the slight draft from our room that he’d been blocking drifted into the secret room and I heard what sounded like dead leaves rubbing together. The air in the room smelled decrepit, like when you put your nose up to an old book. There was a warm glow as Jinxx lit the lantern and walked into the room.
In the faint dancing light I could see what looked like turning bits of paper on strings. Next to the door Jinxx lit the inside of some sort of glass tube and suddenly light raced along the walls and up into the ceiling. It was yet another ingenious way of lighting a room without electricity. Some sort of flammable gas was inside tubes with a filament inside them causing a flickering burn to race all across the room safely and efficiently lighting the entire room with a warm glow. They had blown me away again.
Not just the lighting system blew me away though, the room itself was spectacular. Pictures hung from the ceiling on different colored ribbons and strings. They littered the entire ceiling between the tubes like moss hanging from trees. Some of the pictures were new, freshly taken, but those were near the back of the room. Closer to the doorway the pictures hung some of them black and white, others cut from yellowing paper. They were pictures of families, mug shots, bloodied crime scenes, just about anything you could think of. They turned and rubbed against each other making harsh, soft scraping sounds. I took a step into the room. The walls where lined obsessively with newspapers. Different slices of history pinned to the walls with frantic marks and notes all over them in different colored pens and markers. Frustrated red Xs marred some of the newspaper clippings. Words jumped out at me, murder, serial killer, suspect, victim. These words splashed across nearly every page and the room was lined with them from floor to ceiling. Strings tied to tacs connected the clippings to each other in a spider web of speculations.
I suddenly understood what Jinxx meant by something insane created from years in their minds. I could see them all in here, especially Andy. Standing pacing round this room, hands running through hair, angrily marking out the impossible solutions. I could see them standing silently together reading over everything repeatedly, trying to make a connection. Trying to solve a puzzle when they were missing half the pieces. Trying to solve a puzzle with the wrong pieces. The room felt both charged and exhausted. Like when you get so angry at attempting an impossible feat that you give up and cry. The room seemed to have its own consciousness it reached out and grabbed me with hanging photos as I made my way to the back where Jinxx stood staring at the black and white wall.
Some of the other newspapers had the word solved written on them. Each section of these walls was for another crime and these guys were trying to solve them before the authorities could. To make up for the bad that they had done. The back wall, was entirely covered with newer newspapers. I recognized pictures of my school, pictures and names of people I knew. People who went away for a weekend and never showed back up to school. Different suspects lined the walls too, people I knew by name, people I had never seen before. Even hand drawn floor plans of the school. Anything that could lead to a killer.
Then I saw something, a punch in the gut that took me by surprise. And old repressed memory that I’d shut away because it was too painful. The page with the words the first victim scribbled next to the picture of my best friend, Mackenzie. I hadn’t seen her in so long, but I hadn’t forgotten her face, and I could never forget what she’d done for me. She had been my protector, she had been brave enough to stand up to the bullies for me. She had been at my house nearly every evening and we got along perfectly. I hadn’t had a best friend since, barely even someone to call a friend at all. Yet there she was smiling back at me her face black and white. At least she was happy then. Her picture blurred and my nose stung. I looked to the ground and tried to hide that I was crying, but Jinxx saw. I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, pulling me into a side hug. When I looked up his blue grey eyes were concerned.
“Are you okay?” He asked gently.
“She was my best friend,” I said, placing my finger on the ruffled paper.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, awkwardly rubbing my shoulder. I was suddenly angry.
“Jinxx, you have to find out who did this. She was the only best friend I ever had,” I choked out.
“Well, we’re a bit stuck at the moment, but you can help,” he said.
“How could I help you, I know nothing,” I said miserably
“Well, you’re in the school for one thing. We’re not even sure if we have the right layout of the building so we’ll start there. Anything can help. If we try to get into the school and we have the wrong layout it could be disastrous,” He said picking up the hand drawn layout, he spread it out on a metal table in the center of the room, the only place without anything all on it. Even the wooden counters that ran the length of the room had not a square inch of empty space. We sat next to each other at the table and I looked at the paper. It took me a while to get it all sorted out in my head. Where everything was facing, and what floor was what. After a few minutes of silence I was able to point out a few doors that were in the wrong place, and where new security cameras where and things of that nature. Jinxx sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“That may not seem like very much, but it’s hugely helpful. We’re thinking of getting in there and stealing some security tapes and taking a look at them for ourselves,” Jinxx said.
“I don’t think that will help at all. All of the footage that the police have gone over always show nothing. I don’t think that the girls are being taken from the school directly, they could just be girls who go to the school,” I said, “ or someone is messing with the tapes,”
“I wonder if we could get our own cameras in there and see if someone’s messing with the tapes. It could be that simple,” He said tapping his fingers on his lips.
“What could be that simple?” Andy said from the doorway, Jinxx and I both jumped, we had been so intent on the conversation and the contemplating that we hadn’t notice him walking up.
“Mayden thinks that someone could be messing with the security tapes at the school. We could get our own cameras in there and see if someone is messing with the school tapes,” Jinxx explained. Andy leaned on the table, and looked at the changes we’d made to the school drawing and read over the notes Jinxx had made as we were talking.
“We could do that while we’re in town getting CC better,” Andy said, Jinxx nodded.
“That’s the thing about us not being with the police. No one but us knows what we’re doing and no one can blackmail us because we have nothing to lose,” Andy shrugged.
“You always have something to lose, even if you think you have nothing someone can blackmail you into doing something stupid and then you can go the rest of your life regretting it,” Jinxx spat. I was surprised, it was the first time I’d heard anything remotely threatening or harsh come out of his mouth. He stood quickly and left the room. Leaving me and Andy alone again.
“What was that about?” I said.
“Jinxx has a history, I don’t know much about it, but he has a lot of regrets I think. I lot of bitterness, it doesn’t come out much but I think he still wrestling with it inside,” Andy said shaking his head.
“Don’t all of you have histories though?” I asked Andy. He snorted, and nodded I caught a hint of sarcasm.
“Hopefully if we solve this we can be forgiven for what we’ve done. None of us hurt anyone on purpose, or in Jinxx’s case he was blackmailed into it, or in Ash’s case it was self defense,” Andy said shaking his head.
“So that’s why you all are doing this, to make up for the bad,” I said.
“Yes, but now we have to go, we need to get you back home, and figure out what your cover story is,” He said. I stood and walked past him around the table and I was about to get out the door when his voice stopped me.
“Mayden wait,” He said. I turned to look at him. He stood in the middle of the room, his head just about a foot and a half from the ceiling, it was a small room. The golden light from the fiery contraption gave him the same wild, and almost beastly glow that I had first seen when I met him. I swallowed hard and he lifted a finger to beckon me to him. I took a wary step back into the room and up to him.
“I genuinely don’t know how to thank you, you may have just given us the break that sets us free,” He said.
“Andy, you saved my life, gave me food and your own bed, and beat up one of your best for me, I don’t need any thanks,” I said. I started to walk away again when I felt his hand clamp around my wrist and pull me back. His other hand circled my waist and pulled me close to him. My heart was pounding.
“In that case I did all that for you, and you only did one thing for me, I think you owe me something and we’ll call it even,” He mumbled his blue eye half closed.
“What do you want?” I asked even though I was pretty sure I knew what he was hinting. He didn’t answer he just pulled up my chin and bent down. I choked on my breath, I’d never done this before. His lips felt different than I’d imagined when they met mine. Softer, but more grabbing of my attention for some reason. My hands found their way to his shoulders his hand on my chin joined the other at my waist drawing me even closer. Suddenly the kiss deepened and I felt an energy from him that I hadn’t felt from anyone before. It scared me a little, but it also made me curious. I was surprised when suddenly his arms tightened and he lifted me up. I was forced to wrap my legs around his middle to keep falling. He turned with me and I felt the hanging pictures brush past us as he went and sat me down on the table that Jinxx and I had been working at. His intensity frightened me as his lips moved for more and I felt a little nibble at my lips.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop,” I said, turning away from him to break the kiss. I had to keep repeating myself because every time I had tried to pull away he’d gone for more. Finally he stopped when I started pushing at his chest, but he stayed close. His forehead rested on mine, his lips parted, eyes closed, both of us breathing heavily. Here we were I’d been scared of him the night before, and now I was sitting on a table with my legs around his waist breathless from my first kiss.
“I’m sorry, I moved too fast,” He said after a while.
“That was my first kiss,” was all I managed to gasp out.
“It was?” He said looking up surprised, I nodded. He shook his head.
“I’m sorry, first kisses should be like that. If it means anything I wouldn’t have thought that was your first kiss. It was amazing,” he said. I didn’t know how to respond, but I could feel myself turning red. Luckily I heard Jake calling for us.
“You guys coming? We’re waiting on you,” He yelled from the bottom of the stairs. Andy took a step back from me and I slid shakily to floor. Again, just like that. Now I was leaving my first kiss behind and I was never going to see him again, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to turn around and ask him to let me stay with him. That couldn’t happen though so I didn’t ask. I just left the room attempting, for the second time that day, to hide my tears.

Notes

So the prequel is going to happen, I don't know when or how but it will happen and I'll let you know. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.