Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (80 page)

“
There
was no rendezvous of any sort last night?”
She was near to tears.

“
No. That’s what I’m
trying to tell you. We went to bed, so we could get up
-.”

Vanessa’s mother cut her
short.
“Wait a second. Why were you guys
going to the police department in the first place?”

“
To check on our friend,
to see if anyone reported her missing, so we could provide our
statements. You know, to see if we could help find her,” she
replied at once, having nothing to hide.

“
Why would the two of you
think she was missing?

“
Because neither of us
have heard from her since Friday.”

“
Oh my god, are you
talking about Juanita? Are you telling me she’s missing
too?”

“
Too? What do you mean by
that?”

“
Honey, that’s what I’ve
been trying to explain to you. When I got up this morning, Vanessa
wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t in her bedroom. She isn’t anywhere in
the house. My husband and I don’t know where she is. That’s why I
am calling you, hoping you could provide a shred of information, so
we can find her.”

Lynn sat on the bed,
immobile, her jaw hanging open as if it had become
unhinged.

“
I found her cell and
found your number. That’s how I was able to get ahold of
you.”

Vanessa gone?

“
Are you sure you don’t
know where she is?”

J.J. gone?

“
Honey, are you still
there?”

Lynn did not know what to
do, how pull air into her lungs, how to tell her mind that it was
time to respond to Vanessa’s mother.

“
Lynn, can you hear me?
Are you still on the line?”

“
Y-ye-yeah.” It was like
she was speaking from beneath a comforter.

Quiet sobs bubbling from
Mrs. Menendez shadowed an awkward pause.

“
You
don’t know where she is?”
It was a
question, but not worded like one. It was more rhetorical than
anything else.

“
No, I don’t
know…”

“
Ok
dear, sorry I bothered you,”
she
mumbled.

“
No. No. It’s ok -,” began
Lynn before she realized the woman had already hung up. She flopped
backward onto her bed, her hands at either side. She was about to
let go of her phone when it sang suddenly, with a ringtone that was
quite familiar.

She sat up as though a
bolt of lightning had struck her feet. Her fingers moving so fast
across the glass of her cell, it took her three tries before she
was able to answer.

“
J.J.! Oh my god, you
bitch, you had me scared out of my mind!” she accused, much too
harsh.

But the voice on the other
end was not that of her party-hardy friend.

“
Lynn! Lynn! This isn’t
Juanita. It’s me, Joyce!”

Joyce? Why the hell would
J.J.’s mom be calling me from J.J.’s phone?

“
By the
way you answered, I take it you haven’t seen my daughter
either…,”
implored the
woman.

“
No,” she said. She was
meek now. Inside, something died.

Why did it feel like the
devil himself was venting his wrath upon her?

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

~ 48 ~

Playmates

Day Five, Monday, 7:59
am…

She was lying down upon
the frigid rock within the cave. She did not need to be standing
upright to know she had grown yet again. She knew for a fact she
was more than a foot and a half taller. When she had first entered
the Melded World with Jätung and the boy, Andrew Ibarra, her
vantage was different. That had been only five days in the
past.

Her limbs were longer,
almost stringy. They had sinuous muscles and ligaments pulled so
taut they felt like they were going to snap at any moment. Her neck
felt awkward as well. It was much too long and thin to hold up her
ever-growing head. Her hands and feet had grown as well. Her
fingers and toes were inches longer than before. Her nails were
hardening, sharpening, more and more with every passing
hour.

There were other
alterations as well. Features she had seen on every other mature,
female creature, but never upon herself. They were aspects of a
growing being, the first inklings that marked femininity. Already,
there were twin swells of flesh upon her chest. They grew beneath
enlarging, sensitive nipples. Her hips were beginning to flare. Her
backside had started to round as her waist became more pronounced.
With each gut-wrenching bout of pain, lessons of agony transformed
her into an ever more bizarre creature. And she had come to this
fledgling plane a strange being to begin with.

Now, she was becoming
something not even she could comprehend.

Despite the rapid, if not
excruciating, changes in her appearance, none of them made her feel
uncoordinated or weak in any way. What she felt inside was quite
the exact opposite. She felt stronger, quicker and more solid than
she had ever felt throughout her six and a half centuries of life.
She was growing. For some unexplainable reason, she was growing in
more ways than she could count. Her body was changing, her
physiology was altering
and
her mind was being reshaped as well.

No, that was not the
correct manner in which to describe her mental mutation.

It was
expanding.

No, it was
flowering!

So much so, it was hard to
grasp the full reaches of the matter inside her head. As with the
rapidity of her physical metamorphosis, her mental capacity was
transforming too. But this was swifter and with such diversity, all
she could do was sit back and let it happen.

When she was able, she
took stock of what she was becoming. When the pain subsided, giving
her the chance to test out her new form, her new
abilities.

This last episode of pain
and agony had begun mere moments after she had ordered Jätung to go
outside the cave and see if the way was passable.

He had done so many times
to no avail.

No sooner than she had
given that non-verbal command had the breaking and melting of her
flesh had begun. She had bent double under the strain of
it.

The Isighünd, having no
desire whatsoever to be near her, had bolted out of the protection
of the cave into the elements. There had been no a second look
back.

Having experienced pain on
so many levels in the past, she had steeled herself against the
onslaught. She had endured Vallüm’s perverse tastes over the course
of many years.

Then her bones began to
break of their own accord, her body began to stretch and contort as
it had many times in the past few days.

In the end, she had
relented to it and screamed. She had wailed and cried until her
throat was raw and bleeding. Still, she could not stop, for the
misery had not ceased, the rending and reshaping of her body went
on. She felt herself altering in places she had long forgotten.
Private, personal places she had only experienced on a child-like
level, but this was more. It was never on the scale she was
experiencing now. Something… odd was occurring within the confines
of her person. It was something she could not quite put a finger
on, but it was definitely something new.

I am becoming a
woman…,
she had thought to herself as she
writhed and twisted upon the ground.
No
more am I a helpless little creature, forced to receive the
attentions of the vile and the cruel. They suck power from me. They
succor into themselves the vitality and strength that is mine by
right.

I am Inghëldir.

No longer will I be
anyone’s toy.

She had not known where
the thoughts had come from. Anguish filled her to overflowing. She
had thought herself incapable of conscious thought. Yet, somewhere
deep down was a part of her that remained calm and rational. It was
a new part, a new fortified center that could separate itself from
the pain and maintain a degree of control. Though she had no
control over her body, she had a modicum of herself within this new
central place. While she continued to curl and uncurl upon the
half-frozen ground, writhing.

It was where these notions
of her reality emanated, seeped like smoke through cracks in solid
granite. They found a way.

I will refuse him. I will
not let him take me as he has every day since he created me. I will
not let him have me again.

I will… fight.

The thoughts came forth,
bubbling from that middle place like water gurgling forth from the
earth to create. It was a tiny stream, a trickle that would bring
new life to everything around it. She knew, as time passed, from
this new, hidden bastion within, a new person would grow as
well.

Thus, she had pulled the
shredded remains of herself into this armored core and huddled
within. She left her body to itself and the suffering. She had been
helpless against the agony anyhow. There was little else she could
have done. She had gathered all that was Inghëldir and began to
mend what she could. She began to piece herself back together, one
torn and mangled shred at a time. Given enough time, she had
figured she might be able to remake herself whole once more. How
she was to look and feel afterward was anyone’s guess.

I will fight him. With
everything I am, I will fight him. He will not use me
again!

She had watched, detached
and aloof. It was as if she was another person altogether and not
the deforming Nixy twisting this way and that upon the rocky floor
of the cave. When her body had gone rigid with the strain of so
much torment, she had almost lost control of her inner
sanctuary.

Instead, she regained her
mastery and forged on. She had watched as her body bent back, her
spine arching upon itself. Her head and neck pulled as well, a
grotesque rictus upon her face. Her arms reached out as far and
wide as they could go. Her heels smacked gruesomely upon the
unyielding rock. The top of her head had scraped across the rough
surface of the ground, leaving a wide trail of hair, skin and blood
in its’ wake. She had heard her spine break with such force. The
sound had reverberated throughout the small cave. She screamed.
Even from within her protective mental fortress, the intensity of
the torture was immense. All at once, her body had gone limp, as
flaccid as a balloon punctured by a needle.

She had gone still at
last. The tremendous woe passed. She had felt her spine realign -
lengthening, broadening, calcifying. From within the new-made
reinforced core in her mind, she was aware she had grown again.
Yes, she would be taller when she stood. When she was in fact
capable of attaining her feet, she would tower.

Now, a minute later, it
had stopped – the pain, the unmaking and remaking of her body. She
burst forth from that internal place she had hidden within. She let
her consciousness refill her body, her new, more womanish form. She
breathed in a great drought of icy air, feeling the oxygen nourish
her blood.

At once, she felt the
strength, the raw power thrumming within her flesh. She could feel
the tingling newness of places that had not existed moments before.
The meat and skin about them burned in the frigid confines about
her.

She glanced down at
herself. From her prone position on the floor, she saw what had
once been her pristine white dress, did not cover her at all. It
was now a tattered remnant, her ribbons were long lost to her
changes and the weather. She could see bits and pieces of herself
through the now sheer material half-cloaking her body. She could
see the swell of her somewhat larger breasts, the ripples and
ridges of her ribs on either side of her narrow torso. She marveled
at her rock-solid abdominal muscles. Her midsection had grown long
and flat. It leading down to her pubis, matured beyond her wildest
imagination. For it now sprouted the first dewy hairs she had ever
seen down there.

Her body had
developed!

She was no longer trapped
in the body of an eight-year-old girl, no longer was she in the
permanent stasis. She was no longer just a Nixy. She was something
more now. She was something beautiful and frightening at the same
time.

The thought made her smile
with a mouth that was larger and wider than it had been a few
minutes ago.

I am Inghëldir.

I am onto myself, of my
own accord, free of bondage and abuse.

I am Inghëldir.

She breathed
again…

…
And let loose her
mind.

Almost at once, she was
aware her consciousness had grown by leaps and bounds when compared
to what had happened to her body. She could
feel
everything,
touch
everything and
see
everything in her
mind. She felt the wind, the cold, the snow, the leaves, the
bushes, the trees and the earth of the Melded World - all. In an
instant, she could taste it, smell it and know it for what it was
as if all about her was in exact tune with her mind. She could feel
the wind, she could taste the air and she could touch the bark of
the trees. She could run her mind over the frozen branches of the
underbrush, pick up the icy froth of the ground and run it through
the ghost-like fingers of her brain.