A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

A little taste of power seemed to have driven Liam half-mad. He felt like nothing else mattered anymore. With this power, he could do whatever he wanted!

Laws were pointless! All would bow before him!

Naturally, reality was very different, but he would only find out about that later.

Seeing Liam continue to advance on her and her sister, Emily realised he had lost all reason, meaning both her and Emma's fates would be truly pitiful if he caught them.

She quickly turned around, wanting to run, but seeing Emma, she realised her sister had barely noticed anything of her interaction with Liam as she was clearly still in shock over their parents' fate.

But she had no time! Liam was taking his time walking up to them as he was drowning in the arrogance that came from gaining a little bit of power without knowledge or wisdom, but he was still getting closer.

So Emily did the only thing she could think of. She slapped Emma across the face and yelled, "Em! We need to run! Now!"

Feeling the sharp pain and noticing her sister's urgency, Emma blinked once and then just nodded, causing Emily to grab her hand and pull her along in a sprint to the door.

Liam gleefully watched their actions as the idea of chasing these scared girls only excited him.

After all, the mansion was big; they were relatively far away from the front door, and most of the windows here were far too old and large to be able to open.

Not to mention that, even if they did get outside, it would still be at least another few hundred meters to reach a place where there might be other people.

There weren't even any other people in the house. The Ashcroft family only employed a gardener and some cleaning staff, none of whom were live-in servants and had already gone home for the day.

Besides, he was invincible now!

However, he couldn't let the girls go without giving them a taste of his new power. He curled his lips into an evil grin and reached inside himself to mentally touch the strange symbol that had been etched into his… whatever it was.

He instinctively knew what it was meant to do, but that didn't make it any easier to control as he pointed his right hand forward, and an earthen brown magic circle appeared floating in front of it.

He felt power flowing from somewhere in his body towards the circle as he tried to will it into taking the shape he wanted it to.

Luckily for the sisters, he failed miserably.

An earthen pillar shot out of the floor, shattering the floor tiles, but instead of appearing in the sister's path like he wanted, it appeared under one of the sofas, launching it in the air and nearly causing it to land right on top of Liam, who quickly jumped back in fright.

His face twisted in anger as he was quick to put the blame for this squarely on the power and the sisters rather than his own inexperience, "Damnit, come back here, you bitches. I'll teach you not to distract me!"

But the sisters didn't even look back.

They heard the crash, and while Emily wondered what was going on but simply focused on running, Emma barely even registered it, as she was currently following her sister on autopilot while her mind was still having trouble catching up on recent events.

Emily's heart pounded as she reached the door with her sister in tow and crashed through it before considering where to go.

She had two choices: either head for the front door and run to the street, hoping to find someone to help them or head upstairs to the panic room, where she could lock Liam out while alerting the security company the Ashcroft family had entrusted their safety to.

Hearing Liam's footsteps behind her, she had to make a quick decision and decided to go for option two, for the simple reason that her eleven-year-old sister simply couldn't run very fast, considering her age, size and current mental state.

In other words, the chances of Liam catching up to them were far too high if she and Emma had to run all the way to the street.

So she tightened her grip on Emma's small hand and sprinted through the extensive and opulent hallways toward the closest stairs.

Seeing the sisters run in a direction other than the front door, Liam was momentarily confused before he seemed to have a thought and grinned knowingly, apparently unconcerned with their actions as he followed them at a leisurely pace.

While following them, he continued to cast his earthen pillar in an attempt to become more accurate with it, causing pillar after pillar to shoot out of the floor, smashing into the walls and furniture all along the hallways.

This time, some of them actually managed to obstruct the girls' path, forcing them to swerve around them. Emily felt forced to look back in astonishment as she didn't understand where all these pillars were suddenly coming from, "What the fuck is going on!"

However, all she saw was Liam's disgusting grin and a strange earthen brown circle floating in front of his outstretched hand.

Shaking away her astonishment, she quickly refocused on running as she decided to think about this later.

Finally, they reached the stairs and ran upstairs, where they weren't bothered by Liam's earthen pillars anymore as Liam was still making his way to the stairs and had lost line of sight to them.

Pulling Emma along, Emily quickly reached their parent's bedroom and crashed through this door as well.

She released Emma's hand before running to the mantle across from the luxurious bed, where she tore a painting from the wall, revealing a keypad. She quickly punched in the code her parents had drilled into her brain many times.

After all, kidnappings, break-ins and home assaults by professional and dangerous criminals were real concerns for people like them.

Seeing the keypad accept her code and a wall panel nearby sliding open, she sighed in relief, somehow having half-expected it not to work.

She grabbed her sister again and rushed into the newly opened room, where she hit a big red button that would not only close and secure the door but also send an alarm to the security firm.

Seeing the heavily reinforced door slide closed just as Liam entered the room caused her to sigh in relief as she stuck up her middle finger and yelled, "Fuck you, you dickweed, just wait for security to get here!"

She felt concerned, however, when she noticed the eerie smile on Liam's face as if all her efforts were for nought.

Feeling anxious, she turned around, looking into the luxuriously decorated safe room, complete with paintings and furniture, but ignored it all. Instead, she ran to a security station and quickly activated a camera that monitored the situation outside the room.

What she saw made her blood run cold.

Liam took out his phone and called up some kind of file before he started typing a code into the keypad.

For a moment, she feared the door would actually open, but she sighed in relief when it remained closed as the keypad gave an error sound.

However, Liam didn't seem deterred as he simply looked at his phone and began filling in a second series of numbers, causing another error sound.

Emily grew a little more confident now as she pressed a button next to a microphone and used it to contact the man,

"Stop playing around, you walking cliché! Did you pick up that sinister act from a B-level horror movie?! That code has way too many numbers for you to simply guess! You won't scare me!"

In response, Liam curled his lips in a wicked grin, his words carried to Emily through the sensors in the room, "Oh, I'm not playing around, my cute little Emily."

He pursed his lips with diabolical amusement, "You see, a few weeks ago, I tricked your parents into signing a little document that would assign me as guardian to you and your sister in case of their very unfortunate deaths."

Then he shrugged in resignation, "I mean, it would be hard to hold up in court, but I have plenty of friends in high places, talented lawyers and resources to burn."

He smirked at the world's broken laws, "Combined with the fact that I am a known friend of your parents and you don't have any direct family that could take care of you, I would have won that case, even if you two would resist it. Not only would that have given me control of the both of you, but also of your inheritance!"

He laughed maniacally, "So I've been planning to kill your parents for a while now!"

He waved his phone in the camera's direction and continued, "What I have here is a list of various codes currently used by your family's security firm, which an informer got for me. I don't actually know which one is yours, but I know it's on here, and there are only about a hundred codes on this thing."

He looked straight at the camera as his grin widened, "So sit tight. I'll be there soon!"