T E N
Shots of Vodka

"THERE'S BEEN OTHER times?" Minnie gasped, eyes round as basketballs as she stared questioningly. "How? How did no one know of this, then?"

Lucius scowled deeply, his handsome features crinkling as he sneered. "Are you stupid enough to not figure that these guys aren't human? Monsters tend to have more than one victims. He's killed plenty before."

"You sure know a lot about them for someone that is actually human." I threw back, folding my arms across my chest, a single eyebrow raised as I eyed the three guys.

The look on my face was one of plain and pure accusation, but Lucius seemed to not take offense. Instead, he sighed, breathing out slowly as he glanced around the spacious room. It almost seemed as though he was afraid that someone would hear him. That was a ludicrous idea simply because even if someone did, the chances of them living long enough to escape this hell hole and rat him out was as good as zero.

In other words, there was nothing for him to worry about.

"That's because he's not," his friend answered for him.

The man had light brown hair, the color of summer's harvest mixed with soil. His eyes were a bold evergreen that stood out in the dark. Much like the other guy, both men had eyes that shone brightly like a thousand different constellations cluttered into one.

Honestly, the shock that was already coursing through my veins was enough to allow this little bit of information to barely even faze me. I could only nod mockingly, tilting my head to the side as I took a wary and quick glance at the clock. As of now, we had 25 more minutes of 'safe time' to find somewhere to hide for the night.

"And you are?"

"Cassiel. An old friend of Lucius's and of those four that are currently hunting you down, unfortunately." He replied with a slight frown, his bold eyebrows furrowed before slightly nodding towards his friend. "And this is Gabriel."

Gabriel nodded once in acknowledgment but otherwise kept quiet.

"What are you three, then? I don't believe that only Lucius is some other-world freak. What are they?" Bella, on the other hand, was practically exploding with questions. Her arms were flying about, voice a hushed version of a shout as she glared up at Lucius, her former friend; our formal friend.

"Those guys are a type of celestial beings." Sighing, Lucius perched himself on the bar counter, his hands fiddling around with the bands of gold on his fingers. "They are one of those myths that had been in existence for as long as time had prevailed. They are literally stories straight out of the bible. Ever heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse?"

"Who actually reads the damn thing?" Bella snorted, eyes rolling sarcastically as she attempted to keep her voice in a softer tone. Cassiel snorted slightly at her statement, and that brought a small grin to Bella's face. To Bella's statement, however, Minnie shot a disapproving look.

"Don't make such an insensitive comment, Bella. Many people do actually read it. It is a religious item."

"Yeah, but you and I are both not one of them," Bella grumbled indignantly. Minnie, who stuck to her previous statement, only deepened her frown but said no more to argue.

"The four horsemen of the apocalypse." Murmuring under my breath, I began to pace back and forth, my mind in a whirl.

The names seemed much too familiar and having read the long dictionary-like piece from cover to cover as a child, I can safely say that I was better acquainted with the story as compared to my two idiot of friends.

Nodding once, Lucius shoved a hand into his blond hair, tousling the perfect immaculate curls once more before he spoke. "I will tell you more, of course. But right now, we need to find somewhere safe enough to hide for the night."

"For the night?! I have 48 hours in total to find those damn orbs. I can't waste 12 hours sleeping away." I frowned, groaning slightly as my eyes darted to eye the clock once more.

19 minutes.

"Regardless, you will need rest if you are going to run around this entire place searching for those things. If those four horsemen appeared again, you are done for, as good as dead before they even touch you." Bella commented, a small worried frown creasing her beautiful features as Cassiel silently offered a nod of agreement from where he stood beside her.

"Oh no those things were not the four horsemen." Lucius cut in, eyes darting back and forth amongst us. "The four of them stay in human form. That's how they are. These are just the projections of their powers. That over there you saw just now was the projection of Famine."

"Or better known as Fabian," Gabriel spoke throatily. As quickly as his voice came, he shrank back into silence as I turned my attention back to Lucius.

"Regardless, I say we rest, but not for the entire night." Minnie's words gained a chorus of agreement, all nodding as they eyed their surroundings. I, on the other hand, could only deepen the frown on my face.

We will only be wasting precious time if we rest for too long. And yet, we couldn't possibly go two days straight without any sort of rest.

A wail echoed down the corridors, reverberating around the central room as we all simultaneously raised our heads to scan the surroundings. The loud noises were without a doubt one of the four that was out hunting us, out hunting for me specifically. Time was ticking, and yet we were still wasting it by fighting out in the open where anyone could attack.

"Quick, Addison, read the next clue. Maybe we can find the orb on our way to hiding." Minnie gestured to the piece of paper sticking out of my pockets before turning around and leaping onto the bar counter, swinging her legs over the table and out of the bartending area.

I automatically reached for the paper, walking around the counters instead to get to the other side. The whole time, my eyes scanned the new words that appeared on the paper, eyebrows furrowing as I began to read it out loud.

Three hundred rooms, and yet I belong in the first you see. Thirteen chances to help thee.

"What does that mean?" Bella voiced out my thoughts, eyes scanning over my shoulders to read the words out loud.

A thousand possibilities flooded my mind, but I knew that there could only be two answers to this question. Since we were limited to this damned boathouse, there could only be two places the next orb could be. Either in this very room where the dance floor is or in the room I had woke up in.

If Death had placed the next orb in this very room, it would've been too easy to solve. And if he wanted me dead so badly, why would he put the solution so out in the open? If it was somewhere easy for me to find, wouldn't that simply defeat the purpose of hunting me down?

And also, what did the thirteen chances mean?

"Well," I started slowly, eyes scanning the area to make sure my assumptions were right. "It means that it would be in the first room I see. There could be two different possibilities. Here, in the main hall where we first stepped into the party, or in the room I had woken up in."

"But it would be too easy if the orb was in this room." Lucius clicked his tongue, thinking hard as he bit onto his lower lip. "He wouldn't make it so simple for you. Though, Death did always like to play with his food before actually consuming it."

I gulped a little at Lucius's statement. His shouldered shrugged, looking totally nonchalant as if we were standing in the middle of some carnival instead of a haunted building.

Oh, the irony of how haunted houses are usually found in funfairs, though.

"Besides, I don't think that it is possible to find the room that you woke up in, Addison." Minnie pointed out. "The whole place is like a giant labyrinth. Each hallway looks exactly the same as the last we've been in. Also, we woke up in different rooms. Only you know the way back and judging by how frantically you were running when you knocked into us, I'm going to bet that you were not looking where you were headed to, much less remember the way you came."

"Well, we have to try. The thing glows, right?" Bella asked, her face filled with determination.

In all honesty, I had never seen Bella so serious before. Before all of this back in high school, she had always been a more 'go with the flow' sort of girl. If trouble came knocking at her doorstep, she would just punch it right across the jaw before moving on with her life. If she was met with nothing but smooth sailing, Bella would also rather not go out of the way to do something else. And yet, at this very moment, she was so filled with drive and positive energy that I couldn't help but feel warm in the heart.

Bella had broken out of her lazy ambition-less shell for me.

"This place is practically an open book. Every corner can be seen and all the tables are in fact empty." Cassiel commented, eyes darting around the scene. He seemed to be thinking hard, eyebrows furrowed and arms folded across his broad chest. "So even if the orb is in the first room that Pilediah had awoken in, we should still check through here just as a precautionary move."

As Cassiel spoke, I quickly took another look at the time. The position of the clock's hands made my blood run cold with anxiousness.

12 minutes.

"We have to check all the cups of drinks left on the table, though I seriously doubt that it would be here. And we need to go soon. Time is almost up."

With us all nodding in confirmation, we sped off to separate corners of the room and began to tip the contents out of each cup, each bowl, and each decoration. Cassiel and Gabriel stood front and center, assessing the bar and DJ booths respectively for any hidden objects or even clues.

Those three other-worldly beings moved with explainable lightness, their feet barely even kissing the wood planks of the ground as they moved quickly and swiftly across the sections they were in charge of. Regrettably, it was sad to say that time after time, they were met with empty pockets and vacant hands.

I, on the other hand, had been assessing a rather curious table flooded with items. Although it would seem normal to have multiple snack choices on one single table, the way the bowls and plates were arranged was so that it almost seemed to be hiding something. They were stacked like a giant pyramid, balancing on the bottom layer. The whole thing was arranged so precisely that it would probably only take one simple push to tip the whole thing over with a tumble.

And that would have been a party foul.

With my heart palpitating wildly against my chest, I dug my hands into the stack of items, carelessly flinging them onto the ground as I emptied cup after cup, bowl after bowl. The grease of the crackers began to coat my hands, followed by the sticky booze but I paid no attention.

True enough, shoved within a bowl of salty crackers was a single white painted handheld pistol. The weapon was as beautiful as it was deadly, with gold intricate designs on it as well as a carving on the handle written in ancient relics in which I could not even begin to dream of deciphering. Instead, I made the smarter choice, pocketing the pistol to the pockets of my jeans after dusting the crumbs off of it.

It felt almost like a sin to shove such a beautiful creation into a bowl of party snacks.

However, as I made such a movement, the paper Death had left for me had fallen out, slowly floating to the ground as I naturally bent down to reach it. When I took a glance at it, though, my eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

"Guys? You might want to look at this."

One by one, the three boys as well as Bella and Minnie made their way by my side, peering over my shoulder and surrounding me in a small compact circle to take a look at where, or what, I was looking at.

On the white slip of paper, the first two riddles were gone and instead replaced by a third riddle, one that made even less sense than the two others before. The words were erased slowly, dissipating into the white piece of parchment before new ink took its place. It curved around intricately as if Death was the one writing the riddle in real time in his handwriting. When the period was placed on the riddle, the ink darkened its color as if to signal its finality.

But the new riddle wasn't what that had confused me, oh heavens no.

"Where did the second riddle go?" Lucius asked, pointing at the third riddle with a hint of panic in his voice.

"It's gone. It started to change after I picked this up from that bowl of crackers." Pulling out the weapon, I allowed the gold ink to catch the light coming from the strobe lights, the design sparkling as it reflected each colorful ray. "There's an inscription on it. Think one of you can crack the code?" I faced the carvings over to Lucius and his friends, who scanned the symbols quickly before frowning.

"Why would you just assume that any of us could understand the inscription?"

I raised my eyebrows, giving them a deadpanned look as if daring him to prove otherwise. After receiving a pointed look from my end, the man sighed once before he took a closer look at the words.

"It writes Weapon of Light." The words were simple, and this made me frown. I had been so sure that it would be more than a pretty decoration.

"Weapon of light? What does that even mean?" Minnie scrunched her nose, looping her arm around Bella's as a gust of cold air blew in. "There seems to be a lot of unsolved questions and mystery surrounding this place and I am sure that it is not a good sign. The odds are not in our favor."

"I don't know but I do not want to stay here any second longer. This place is too open and there is nowhere for us to hide properly if those things do come back after us." Bella shook her head frantically, nudging my shoulder. "Quick, read the next riddle."

Before I could reply, though, a huge wailing sound appeared, one that sounded closer than the one prior to it. The walls of the room began to frost just the slightest, and I could feel my throat closing up. Whether it is from the cold or from fear, I didn't know.

Undoubtedly, there was another one of those ghoulish and dreaded projections heading straight towards us and I doubted a single pistol would be enough to take down a damn celestial being. One thing was for sure; this time, there was nothing that could help us now.

[A/N]:

This chapter is dedicated to the lovely @ableize for this beautiful cover. Thank you so much!

xx aurora

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