Straightening, I turned in a slow circle. There was nothing. The cell was completely bare. Sighing, I bent to try and pick the first body up when a sound caught my attention.
The heavy tread of booted feet on the stone floor.
“Someone is coming.” A girl's voice sounded from behind me, and a fresh wave of almost hysterical sobbing filled the room.
“Shh now.” Leaving the bodies of my dead students behind, I went back to the ones I could protect, positioning myself in front of them. “Stay behind me and stay quiet.”
I didn’t need to look behind me to know that they had done as I asked. A group of terrified teenagers huddled together crying softly and me as their only protector.
There wasn’t much I could do. But I would not let them down again. I would protect them. Even if it cost me my life.
Fixing my eyes on the corridor beyond the bars, I inhaled sharply as a figure came into view. Tall and cloaked in shadows, it trudged towards us with sure even footsteps. A black hood and cloak covered every inch of it.
Behind me, someone screamed.
And I couldn't blame them. I wanted to scream as well when two pale hands wrapped around the bars. The fingers looked abnormally long, grotesquely long, like something out of a horror movie.
“I don’t know who you are, or why you have…” The words died on my lips as the figure in front of me tugged the hood back from his head.
And this time I did scream.
Someone was screaming. Loud, eardrum bursting screams that echoed around the stone room and drowned everything else out.
And it took me a moment to realise that person was me.
The man in front of me, because the creature on the other side of the bars was vaguely man-shaped, stared at me with yellow eyes, slit horizontally like a reptile. My gaze settled on them, and I couldn't look away.
Contacts. They had to be contacts. This was all some elaborate prank by the senior class. And when I found out who was responsible, they were going to be in a world of trouble. Squaring my shoulders, I forced myself to stop the pitiful crying that was falling out of my mouth.
“Look, you scared us, you got what...” My words faltered as the man blinked. His eyelids came from the side. No human being blinked like that. Our eyelids moved up and down, not side to side.
Swallowing down another scream, my voice came out a croaky whisper, “What are you?”
Cocking his head to the side, the tips of his golden hair brushed against his shoulder. When he finally spoke, his voice came out thick, like he was struggling to form the words around too many teeth. And maybe he was. I couldn't be sure in the gloom, and I wasn’t about to ask. For all I knew the guy had a lisp.
I clung to the illusion that he was human, even when deep down I knew he wasn’t. I might not have known what he was, but I knew he wasn’t human.
“You are teacher.”
I blinked at him in surprise. “Y-yes.” I stuttered. “But that’s not an answer. I asked who you are?”
“You askedwhatI was, teacher woman, not who…” His words slipped out more easily now, like he was getting used to speaking a foreign tongue. “I am Acco, at least that’s what you may call me. I do not believe you could say my name in...” He blinked again, and a sneer curled his impossibly full lips. “Your English.”
“Acco.” I tried his name out. “Acco, why are we here? Did you bring us here? Why?”
“So many questions.” The sneer was replaced with a smile, a genuine one that crinkled the corners of those strange reptilian eyes. “I like questions.” He licked his lips. My eyes fixed on his tongue as he swiped it across his bottom lip. It must have been my imagination because I was pretty sure his tongue was forked like that of a snake.
“Questions are delicious. Are you delicious, teacher woman?”
“What? N-no.” I stumbled over my words.
“You smell delicious.” His tongue flicked out, tasting the air like a snake. “Yes, delicious, like apples. I think I shall keep you.”
Wrapping my arms around my midsection, I glared at him. “You can’t just kidnap us and keep us here. It’s against the law.”
“Yes.” He carried on without pause. “The others will go on, but you, I will keep you…” His eyes glinted with malice and something else. Something that looked oddly like lust. “You, I will train to be mine.”
I backed away, stumbling over my feet in my haste and falling back with a thump onto my ass. “You can’t just train someone like that. You can't own a person. We...I am not a slave.”
“No, you are not. You will not be slave. You will be wife. No longer teacher woman. Acco’s wife instead.”
