I didn’t know what was happening—all I knew was that we needed to get out of here before whatever they were, returned.

We raced around the dingy room, picking up any objects we could find that might help us break the boards covering the windows. But there was nothing we could do to get the wood loose. We’d need at least a hammer to have even a chance, and there was nothing close to that in here.

I had been afraid to try the door again, because it would make a lot of noise and draw their attention, but it seemed we had no choice. I hurried back to the door, Angie and Lauren right behind me, but we had no better luck than before in trying to pry it open. Not even a minute had passed when the sound of footsteps returned.

My chest constricted as I staggered back, instinctively gripping the arms of my friends and tugging them with me. Whatever those four were, they weren’t human. There was nothing human about that experience of being picked up like I weighed nothing, then flung through the air so fast I couldn’t breathe. Not to mention that unworldly heat that had coursed through me the moment he touched me. The rational part of me didn’t want to believe it, even though I knew it was true.

A bolt drew on the other side of the door, and it opened ominously. I wanted to look away, close my eyes, but I stood there, rooted to the spot, and stared. The tallest man—Navan?—entered first, followed by two other young men, all of whom we had seen just a matter of hours ago, outside, by the fields.

I blinked hard, realizing there was something different about them compared to when we had walked into that fiery room. I was sure, absolutely positive, that they’d had wings— the same kind of black wing we’d found down by the creek—but now there was nothing shadowing their backs. Nothing at all. They donned black shirts, and the only evidence proving that my initial vision hadn’t simply been a hallucination was their skin: it was still ashen.

“Wh-Why’s your skin that color?” Angie stammered, apparently hoping—like I still was, deep down—that they were human after all, and perhaps simply part of some weird cult.

Navan took another step toward us. His gray-blue eyes took us in, one by one, before settling on me. His lips tightened, and then he held out his right hand, palm up. Resting there were three small cylindrical containers, each about the size of my thumb. I had no idea what was inside them, because the walls of the little containers were opaque, made of some type of metal—and the fact that he was holding them out toward us, like I should know what to do, just made the whole situation even more confounding.

He continued to stare at me as though I were the only person in the room, a hard frown on his face.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said suddenly, startling me. He had been so still, I hadn’t even been sure that he was going to speak. “But you weren’t supposed to see this. We cannot simply let you go as you are.”

“As we are? What have we discovered?” Lauren croaked from behind me.

“Something I don’t think you’ll be able to comprehend. All that matters is you get out of here, right?”

“Yes,” Lauren, Angie, and I said in unison.

“Then it’s simple—each of you take a vial from my hand and drink its contents.”

I stopped breathing for a moment. “Wh-What? What is it?” I asked, recalling that allusion to something strange called Elysium. For all we knew, it was some kind of poison or dangerous drug.

Not that I had any idea why they would want to poison us, or give us dangerous drugs. Then again, I didn’t have any idea about anything in this scenario.

Navan’s intense eyes bored into me, and it felt as though everything else in the room fell away. I blinked, my heart pounding.

“You don’t trust me?” he asked, and to my surprise, the tiniest of smiles curved the corners of his lips. I really hadn’t been expecting that from this growly man, and I wasn’t sure how to respond for a moment.

“I-Is that supposed to be a joke?” I stammered. “Of course we don’t trust you. Who are you? Why are you keeping us captive like this?”

It was hard to read the expression on his face, though if I were honest with myself, there was a part of me that didn’t mind having to stand there and scrutinize him… he was undeniably handsome.

Stop it. That is completely not the thing to be thinking about right now!

But it was almost as if he could read my thoughts, because that curious smile deepened, just a little bit, and his eyes seemed to sparkle as he held my gaze.

“Captive? I believe you were the ones who broke into this house.”

“We didn’t break in,” I snapped. “The door was open and the only reason we were out there was because we could hear someone in pain and we thought maybe you needed help.”

“How thoughtful,” he replied, raising his dark brows and ignoring my initial question. “So let me return the gesture. Drink this and it’ll wash your memories of approximately the last twelve hours. It will knock you out for about thirty minutes, during which time we will return you to your beds, and you will wake up with no memory of entering this house.”

“N-No memory of tonight?” Lauren sputtered. “I’m down for that.”

“Wait, wait.” I held up a hand, frowning. I shook my head, trying to force my frazzled brain into some semblance of order. “Who are you, first of all? Why is your… skin like that?” I couldn’t quite get the question, And why were you wearing wings before? out of my throat, so I settled on that for now.

He sighed. “You have a lot of questions. Now, there are few things more attractive to me than an inquisitive mind, but in this case—you’re better off doing as I say.”

Attractive? To my annoyance, my brain couldn’t help but register the adjective, but I shoved the thought aside. I opened my mouth to argue back, but before I could, the guy I had guessed to be Navan’s brother spoke up from his right, and now I could place it as one of the voices I had heard during our eavesdropping. “Ladies,” he said, clearing his throat, his voice almost the same tone and depth as Navan’s. “You won’t be getting anything out of us, so if you would like to get out of here, I suggest you take up our offer. Rest assured, we won’t be letting you leave with memories of tonight.”

Navan stretched his hand farther, pushing the vials closer toward us. I heard Lauren gulp as she stared down at the silver tubes, and I had to admit, the idea of being let out of here made it tempting to just grab one and down it, but… that would be really stupid. That would be something I would do in a panic. And acting based on panic was never a good idea. Everything about this just felt so wrong.

I looked to Angie, wanting to gauge her thoughts, and, assuming I read her frown right, she was having the same doubts as me. Sensing Lauren was close to snatching up one of the tubes, I clutched her hand, and pulled her closer toward me, drawing the attention of all three men to me directly.

I glared back at Navan, trying to infuse my posture with confidence.

“We’re not going to agree to drink some random substance,” I stated, attempting to keep my voice even. “And you can’t keep us here—that’s a criminal act. I suggest you let us out now, or believe me, you will get into trouble. We have friends and family who will notice our absence very quickly, and there are only a few people in this complete wilderness who could be culprits. Given that you literally just arrived here, it won’t take long for the cops to narrow it down to you.”

I realized, as I stared into Navan’s rugged yet very humanlike face—save for the gray tint of his skin—that I was talking to him as if he were a normal person who would be scared of such things as the police force. Given that my brain hadn’t offered a better alternative yet, I was going to have to continue that hopeful train of thought… Which was probably a good thing for my sanity.

There was an agonizingly long pause as the men looked back at me with unchanging expressions.

“Guys,” Angie ventured, her voice shaking slightly. “You really just need to let us go. Please. We have family who love us and—”

“I would hate to have to force you to drink this,” Navan cut in, once again completely ignoring what Angie and I had just said—and I became suddenly very aware of just how imposing he was. From the hardness of his stubbled jaw to the lines of his torso showing through his thin shirt, I realized he could easily follow through with that threat. His companions were not exactly pushovers either.

And yet, despite the threat in his words, there was something about the condescension in his tone that made me want to reach out and slap him. Whoever the hell he was, he had no right to thrust some arbitrary rule upon us, when all we had done was come here to see if they were all okay. They’d refused to answer even a single question of ours, and he expected us to just drink whatever crap he shoved beneath our noses?

“Sir,” I began, planting my hands on my hips. Anger was rising in my veins and making me feel suddenly bolder, stronger. “There is no way we are drinking anything in this house, and there’s nothing you can say to change that. It’s not like you’re exactly trustworthy, either. You told us you were workers, come here to fix up this property—and yet, it doesn’t exactly look like you’ve been doing much fixing up around here, does it?” I gestured around the dilapidated room. “Why the heck have you boarded up the windows? That doesn’t sound like fixing something up. Why were you all… crouched around that fire? What was that guy doing lying on the floor, groaning? Why is your skin gray, and why were you wearing wings?” There, I finally said it, and I could tell from the exhale Angie gave that she’d been hoping someone would finally voice that too. It hadn’t just been our imagination, I was sure of it. “What are you, really? What you doing here? And why the hell is this house the temperature of a sauna in the middle of freaking summer?” My pitch rose at my last question, as I became aware of just how horribly hot I was. My clothes were drenched in sweat—which had been cold at first, from the panic and the adrenaline, but was now as hot as my temper.

As Navan and his companions stared back at me, I realized that I probably should’ve been more strategic in my questioning, and not spat out a barrage of questions at once, but my temper had gotten the better of me.

“I assure you that it’s safe,” Navan replied evenly after a moment, his hand still outstretched. “It is, as I say, a memory potion.”

“A memory potion?” Angie cut in, her voice also stronger than before. “Seriously, what do you take us for? Kindergartners?”

Navan clenched his jaw, and although his face remained mostly controlled, there was the odd muscle twitch that told me we were testing his temper too. But I could hardly care anymore. This whole situation was absurd.

Now that I thought about it, they hadn’t even asked us why we had come in here in the middle of the night in the first place. All they seemed to want was that we drink this potion that would knock us out. Ha. No way. It was dodgy as hell, and I was becoming more and more convinced that they were druggies who were members of some weird cult. That didn’t explain the superhuman strength with which I’d been thrown into this room, but then again, maybe the drugs they used gave them such power.

“Yes, a memory potion,” Navan replied, and I could tell from his expression that he believed what he was saying—and fully expected us to believe it too. “As I thought I made clear already, we do not wish to harm you, simply to expel you from this place. Think of it as us doing you a favor. A big favor. Because my next move is going to be something a lot less pleasant than this scintillating conversation we’ve been having.”

“Look,” I said, frowning. “I apologize that we barged in here—but I assure you, it was only because we heard someone yelling and we thought one of you might need medical assistance. You seem to not want any help, so let us go now, and I give you my absolute word that we won’t tell anybody, not even the pol—”

Before I could complete my attempt at negotiation, Navan’s outstretched hand suddenly retracted, withdrawing the vials, which he stowed in the pocket of his pants. His shoulders convulsed, and there was a ripping sound, and then something rose behind him… wings. Large, black, hooked wings shot out from behind his shoulders, and then…razor sharp claws emerged from his fingertips. He bared his teeth, revealing a pair of white pointed fangs. His very skin seemed to darken, along with his eyes, as his whole being turned into what I could only describe as a beast.

We were so stunned that it took us a few seconds to remember to scream. Lauren’s went off first, then Angie’s, followed by mine. We rushed to the back of the room, pressing our backs against the wall as if we could sink into it and emerge on the other side.

The creature before us growled so deeply, the noise rumbled through my very core, before he spoke, in the same voice that… Navan had just been speaking in.

“I told you this was going to be a lot less pleasant. So we’re going to have to do this the hard way, it seems… Perhaps a night in here will help you reconsider.”

He remained standing before us a moment longer, as if he wanted us to drink in his monstrous form and burn it into our brains. Then his wings, claws, and fangs retracted as suddenly as they appeared. He turned, revealing the shredded back of his shirt where the wings had burst through, and stalked out of the room, the others following him silently. The door slammed shut and was bolted once again.