Slamming the potions room door shut behind her, Eva quickly moved and set Shalise down on the couch. Her white tee-shirt had splatters of blood covering it. Luckily, it was just the purple blood. She looked whole and hearty aside from being unconscious.
Eva decided to secure the alternate women’s ward before attending further to Shalise. She finished checking all the rooms with her own eyes to make sure there wouldn’t be any sudden surprises and then secured all the doors. That done, Eva made her way back to Shalise.
With her potions room in shambles, Eva had nothing magical to help wake Shalise up. She settled for lightly smacking the girl’s cheeks. Her light slaps turned harder and harder as Shalise refused to return to consciousness, though she took care not to injure her.
Just as Eva was about to leave to find a glass of water to dump on Shalise’s head, her eyes snapped open.
For just a moment, she stayed on the couch and pressed herself farther back into the cushions.
Recognition surfaced as she blinked. Shalise flew off the couch to wrap her trembling arms around Eva.
For her part, Eva went stiff as a board. “It’s alright,” Eva said once the shock of suddenly being grabbed wore off. She placed a few hesitant pats on Shalise’s back. “Can you tell me what happened?”
A long moment of silence passed before Shalise pulled back from Eva. “I-I was out walking along the beach as I do every morning,” she said.
Eva nodded along when she failed to continue.
“I saw t-them out there, on the beach. I thought they were dogs at first. Then I saw the tentacles and thought they were demon dogs. They were walking along the beach as well, occasionally nipping at each other.
“When they n-noticed me, they glanced at one another before letting out a terrible howl.” She shuddered. “It was like a high-pitched whine, a sudden silence, and then a cannon going off right next to my head. Around that time, Prax started shouting at me to run.”
Eva frowned. If the enigma creatures looked at each other before attacking, did that speak of some intelligence? She didn’t know enough about pack animals to say one way or the other, but it almost sounded like something humans might do to reaffirm their position with each other and ability to attack.
“Does Prax know what they are?” Eva asked.
Shalise shook her head. “Just that he got an intense feeling of fear from them.” She glanced off to one side, eyes narrowing. “Not that he is admitting it.”
“I’m glad you’re okay.” Eva patted her on the back another two times. It was a stiff action, but Shalise was one of those people who would be comforted by it. “I think I’ve decided to call them enigmas since no one else knows what they are either.”
“Is someone else here?” she asked, looking over the back of the couch to the rest of the room.
“No, just me. But Zoe and I saw one back in the mortal realm. A few others too.” Eva waved the tangent off. “Anyway, you made it back here and barricaded yourself in then killed the two of them? You were passed out in the potions room on top of the cabinet.”
Shalise nodded. “I’m glad the other one didn’t get me. I didn’t even notice I was feeling lightheaded until Prax pointed it out. Another second or two of heavy breathing had the world swirling around me.”
“Other one?” Breaking off eye contact with Shalise, Eva started scanning the room. Every corner, floor to ceiling. “How many did you see on the beach?”
“Three.”
Eva tensed. The blood started orbiting her at a high speed. “I only saw two corpses.”
Once again, Eva ran a quick search through every room in the women’s ward. She took the extra time to check beneath her bed, in cupboards, and anywhere else a dog sized creature might hide. Her blood sense was turning up nothing, but these things were strange enough. If they could hide from her while alive, she wouldn’t be surprised.
Shalise trailed behind her, looking every which way. Her muscles were slowly bulging out with Prax’s magic. She didn’t help much in the actual searching, but that was fine with Eva. If Shalise could provide a lookout while Eva was hunched over under a bed, she was being more than useful.
They found nothing. No sign of another forced entry. Nothing in Eva’s blood sight except herself, Shalise, and one corpse–the other having been drained of blood.
“Alright,” Eva said, “we’re going on a quick run around the island. I’ll not suffer an enemy running free in my domain.”
She wasn’t expecting them to be difficult to kill either. Shalise managed two on her own. Catherine hadn’t killed hers, but Eva didn’t think she had much trouble containing it based on her story.
Besides, she was in her domain. While she might lack the absolute control that Willie had, Eva was confident in its desire to protect her.
Shalise gave a shaky nod of her head. Her eyes were still darting all around the common room as if one of the enigmas would jump out at her at any moment.
“Stick close,” Eva said as she threw open the main door.
There wasn’t all that much land to cover. The alternate women’s ward, its small courtyard and walls, and then the beach surrounding it. There was nothing else within Eva’s domain. Even the beach didn’t extend too far. Perhaps just far enough that Eva had to move to keep the entirety of the island within her blood vision.
The lack of anything on her island had been the cause for some concern. When Eva first built up the alternate women’s ward, she had been worried that the showers and sink would flood. Water was created from her runic arrays, but the drainage pipes didn’t lead anywhere.
After leaving the water on for a long while under her watch, Eva came to the conclusion that the drains simply disappeared the water because that was the apparent effect of the real life version. She never thought about or cared about where the water was going so her domain didn’t either.
She actually hadn’t checked to see if the water drained off into the ocean, though she doubted it did. If Eva were to take a shovel all the way around the building, she doubted she would ever find a pipeline leading out.
But unless the enigma had crawled down the pipes, the point was moot anyway.
Eva and Shalise stuck to the surface. They walked around both the building and the exterior of the walls around the beach. Eva even jumped up to the roof just in case the enigmas could hide from her blood sight while they were alive.
The only two living things they could find on the island were Eva and Shalise.
There weren’t even prints in the sand. Not even from the two that Eva had seen with her own eyes.
“Could you have been mistaken about the number?”
Shalise shook her head. “There were definitely three. Prax saw them too. Maybe one wandered back into the waters?”
“Maybe,” Eva said, not really meaning it. That feeling of wrongness she had when she first stepped into her domain, the feeling of something uncanny that did not belong, whatever it was, she was still feeling it.
She walked out onto the largest portion of the beach, directly in front of the gateway of the alternate women’s ward wall. As she walked, she closed her eyes and focused on that feeling. The moment she felt it weakening, she stopped and took a step backwards. Moving side to side, Eva came to a stop on the point where the feeling felt the strongest.
Opening her eyes, Eva looked around.
There was nothing special about the location. It was a spot on the beach. No markings, no discolored sand. The spot wasn’t lined up with the gateway, but slightly off to one side. There was nothing above her but the pitch black void that encompassed the entirety of her sky.
With a frown, Eva turned back to Shalise. “I–”
Eva jumped, leaping with all the might that her version of Arachne’s legs could provide.
It wasn’t far enough. She felt something clamp down on her ankle. Something with sharp teeth.