The night was pure ink, a dark weight looming over the earth.
Lief piloted Fenrir, devouring miles of winding asphalt.
The roar of the engine was the only thing breaking the world of darkness.
He kept his gaze fixed ahead. On the sides, the trees illuminated by the headlight were just a blur of shadows. The hours of travel were beginning to weigh on him. It was time to find shelter for the night.
Unconsciously, he glanced at the rearview mirror.
A familiar face looked back at him. Airam's face had appeared out of nowhere, watching him silently.
"What's wrong?" Lief asked without the slightest trace of surprise.
Airam looked at him reproachfully, "You seem to be having a great time. You already forgot that someone is waiting for you at home. What's wrong, did you find a new love?"
Lief's eyelid twitched. Where the hell did she get those lines?
"If you're referring to those three deformed cannibals, then yes, they were quite 'new'."
Airam shook her head, laughing, "Since when do you have such extreme tastes?"
"A road trip surprise. I just cleaned them up a bit." Lief summarized the afternoon in one sentence. There wasn't much more to say.
"Alright, then come back soon." Airam's smile became mysterious, "A surprise awaits you when you get home."
As soon as she finished speaking, her figure in the rearview mirror vanished like fog.
"I hate being spoken to in riddles," Lief muttered. He accelerated again, continuing his journey.
After driving another stretch, the glow of a campfire among the trees by the side of the road caught his attention.
In such a desolate place, deep in the night, a fire was too conspicuous.
An invitation or a trap.
He thought about it for an instant. Afterward, he turned the handlebars and pulled off the road, heading into the forest.
…
Soon, a campsite appeared before him. Just two solitary tents and an agonizing campfire, reduced to a few faintly flickering embers.
The camp was empty.
Lief got off the bike and took a look around. The air smelled of rust... of blood. It didn't take him long to find the proof: a few drops of dried blood on the canvas of one of the tents.
"Great. What movie set did I just walk onto?" he muttered with resignation.
He wasn't going to waste time tracking footprints. Concentrating for an instant, he rose into the sky.
From the air, his view encompassed everything. Not far away, nestled in a fold of the mountain, he saw a small town.
A few lights flickered there, a solitary island in the darkness.
He flew directly toward it without hesitation. He landed silently next to an old wooden sign that read "AMBROSE" and entered the town.
"..."
The streets were eerily empty.
Under the yellowish light of the streetlamps, his shadow stretched over the asphalt. The storefront windows were covered in dust.
Nothing could be heard.
The stillness was absolute, the kind that gives you goosebumps.
Then, muffled screams broke the silence somewhere down the street.
"Carly! Where are you? Carly!"
Hearing it, Lief walked in the direction of the voice.
Turning a corner, he found two guys. One was looking around anxiously, calling out, while the other followed him, visibly nervous.
Lief approached with the smile of a clueless tourist. He already had his excuse ready, "Hey, what's up? Quick question: do you know if there's a repair shop around here? I'm on a road trip, and I just blew a tire."
The guy who was shouting, Dalton, was visibly stunned when he saw Lief. He stopped yelling abruptly and replied:
"We... we came to see a college football game. We got late and camped nearby. Then... the car broke down. A guy with a tow truck took Carly and her boyfriend, Wade. He said he was bringing them to this town, that there was a shop here, but... they haven't come back—"
"Dalton!" the other guy, Nick, cut him off.
He was sizing Lief up and down with complete distrust. For a guy this calm to appear out of nowhere in a town like this was, at the very least, goddamn weird.
Lief perfectly understood the distrust in his eyes, but he simply shrugged indifferently.
He waved his hand in a dismissing gesture and turned, heading down another street as if he really were nothing more than a simple passerby.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Dalton watched Lief walk away and complained discontentedly to Nick: "We could ask him to help us look for Carly and the others; one more person is more strength."
Nick, however, frowned deeply, fixing his gaze on the silhouette disappearing into the shadows. "I don't know why..." he murmured, "but I feel like he's very dangerous."
Lief, of course, heard the entire conversation, which caused a slight smile to curve the corner of his lips. He slipped into a dark alley and, without making the slightest sound, ascended again to the roof of a building.
From there, like a lurking owl, he dedicated himself to observing everything happening below.
Under his watchful eye, Dalton and Nick seemed to briefly argue before splitting up to act on their own.
After a brief moment of doubt, Dalton ended up pushing open the door of a place called "Trudy's House of Wax" and disappearing inside.
"House of Wax, huh?..." Lief murmured from his elevated position, shaking his head slightly as if he had already dictated that poor guy's sentence. "He's basically beyond saving."
Nick, meanwhile, headed toward the mechanic shop on the other side of town. Upon arriving, he ran into a man named Bo. They exchanged only a few words before Bo assured him, lying, that Carly and the others had already driven away after buying a belt for the car.
The answer didn't convince Nick, who, full of doubt, started to turn away.
It was in that precise instant that a murderous flash crossed Bo's eyes, who raised the heavy tool he held, ready to attack from behind.
"Brother!"
The anxious warning shout unexpectedly erupted from the metal sewer grate, right at his feet.
Nick spun around abruptly, finding himself face to face with Bo's feral look and the weapon descending toward him.
His reaction was instantaneous: he dodged the attack sideways, and both engaged in a tense struggle. Although Bo was corpulent, he was clearly no match for Nick, who completely overpowered him after a few exchanges and forced him to flee disastrously.
However, Nick didn't have time for chases. He rushed to lift the heavy grate from the ground and, from a basement that reeked of a nauseating stench, rescued his kidnapped sister, Carly.
The terrifying account from his sister, which included the description of Wade already turned into a wax figure, made Nick understand the truth: the entire town was a huge trap.
His face paled, and desperate, he shouted toward the empty street: "Dalton! Dalton!"
His only answer was the whistle of the night wind.
From the roof, Lief observed the entire scene unfold. Only when everything was over did he calmly descend and begin to walk unhurriedly toward the house of wax.
His path crossed Nick's right at the entrance; the latter was holding his sister Carly, visibly shaken, and was preparing to go inside to look for his companion.
Recognizing the mysterious man from earlier, he placed his sister behind him, adopted a defensive posture, and glared at him with a look full of alertness.
Lief, for his part, simply stopped. He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged slightly:
"I'm just a traveler passing through."
________
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