Lexi

Unable to sleep, I threw the sheets off in frustration and moved over to the window. There was the smallest hope that the passing cars under might provide some semblance of serenity. Even from my bedroom of the high-rise building, I could still see the little people below all moving around like ants. One after another, the little car lights moved up and down the streets, never lessening. With a quick look at my alarm clock, I couldn't imagine how people were still out and about at midnight on a Tuesday. Looking back down at the street, I nearly smacked my face against the window as the people, cars, and everything else moving completely disappeared. "What the hell?” I rubbed my eyes, but the streets below were still completely empty.

Unsure of what was happening, and unwilling to wake my parents in case I was hallucinating, I quickly changed out of my pajamas and headed down to the lobby. Walking up to the front desk, Peter was nowhere around. Okay, maybe he's making his rounds. "Ugh, who am I kidding? He's probably dead cause there's an apocalypse going on outside." I dragged my feet towards the exit, peering through the glass doors to try to see anything from the safety of the lobby. After a few minutes of not a single person in sight, I slowly opened the glass doors and stepped outside. Moving down the steps, I took heed looking the deserted city street up and down. "Oh, wait. Let's see if I'm just dreaming," I said checking out my hands. "No extra fingers. Let's try another." I peered back at the apartment building and found the address placard. "Nope. I can read it clearly. Well, that is very much in the realm of unsettling." I turned back around to the street and noticed that there seemed to be a faint blue hue on everything around me. Craning my head back to find the source, I nearly fell over when I found the moon in the sky. It was completely blue and much larger than possible.

My breathing started coming in short and fast. “Okay, securing a therapist today was definitely the right choice.” I took cautious steps down the sidewalk, working my gaze left and right. After clearing a city block of not seeing a single living thing, I sat down at the edge of the street. “Seriously, this has got to be the weirdest hallucination slash dream slash whatever I have ever had.” While trying to come up with some kind of logic, I heard something. It was low at first and undistinguishable in origin. I listened closer and the sound became a clear growl. As it grew in volume, the realization hit me that the low guttural growl was coming from a storm drain. The one I was sitting on.

Quicker than anyone would think possible, myself included, I bolted to the other side of the street. Don't do it, Lexi. Don't do it. You don't want to know. Another growl became too much for me to just walk away from. I turned my head a little just to see if my peripheral caught anything. From the side of my vision, I saw not one, or two, but easily seven to nine claws creep out of the storm drain. I stifled a scream and speed-walked away. Every few seconds, I looked back to see if I was being chased. When far enough away not to see the storm drain, or anything else, I stopped under a street light to take slow concentrated breaths.

After a little while, my heart felt like it was done running a 10k. I navigated a way back to my apartment building, but down a different street in order to avoid the storm drain full of night terrors. "Alright, memo to self. Next time, we wake the folks because we are not as brave as we think we are. Wait, am I talking to myself in the plural?" I moved down the street, but as I turned the corner, my entire body became frozen as if I was suddenly paralyzed. What the hell?

From behind me came a familiar voice full of contempt. "You cannot seriously be here."

No. For the love of everything good, please tell me it isn't so.

Sabine walked into view and stood in front of me. "Why are you everywhere?" Her eyes leered into me expectantly, even though I couldn't move or speak.

Another, much more pleasant, voice also came from behind me. "Sabine, if you don’t let her go, I swear to--."

Sabine rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers. I could suddenly move again and stepped away from her. "How did you do that?" I turned around to see both Fox and Dorian walking toward me.

Fox looked me over with one eyebrow arched up. "Are you okay? You aren't hurt or anything are you?"

I shook my head from side to side, but my eyes stayed wide. "No, she didn't hurt me.” My words made Fox share a confused expression with Dorian.

Sabine stepped in between me and the boys while putting her hair into a ponytail. "He wasn't talking about me."

Now, with a look of confusion to match Fox's, I moved away from him to get a look at all of them. "Wait, what are the three of you doing here?”

Fox swayed back on the balls of his feet and started fidgeting with his fingers. "Lex--."

Sabine put a hand up to cut him off. "No, don't even think about it." She stepped back to address everyone. "She is the one who isn't supposed to be here,” Sabine seethed through clenched teeth before turning towards me. “I don't care what you’re doing here, or how you got here, but we are going to wipe this fun little memory and then send you back. Fox, enough with the coddling. This girl is not our priority and is only going to get one of us hurt."

Well, that’s about as much as I can take. "Let's get something straight right now," I said getting in Sabine's face, "you don't decide what I do. Ever. And I am sick of you talking to me like my very existence bothers you."

Sabine's eyes went wide as I finished laying into her. Fox grabbed her by the arm and led her away from me. "Enough, Sabine."

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She pulled herself from Fox’s grip. "Seriously? This is so minuscule compared to literally everything around us." Her hands waved towards the still vacant city streets and buildings. "I’ll even repeat myself for the brain-dead. You," she said turning to me and pointing a finger in my face, "are not supposed to be here. I don’t know if you just aren’t capable of mentally processing that, or are willfully ignorant, but the fact that you can’t seem to comprehend those simple string of words is bringing me to a level of crazy that I didn’t think possible."

You want crazy? I squared my shoulders and reared up to Sabine. “I don’t know what crawled up your ass and made a home in there, but you don’t know anything about me. So, back off and shut the hell up!”

The air surrounding me took on a purple glow that moved with my words and slammed Sabine into a nearby light pole. Another glow of purple light appeared midair before chains materialized and wrapped themselves around Sabine, covering her completely from head to toe. Too bewildered at first, no one moved as Sabine's muffled screams came from under her metal bindings. Dorian was the first to go to her aid, quickly followed by Fox.

I just stared wide-eyed in shock before a shiver suddenly moved down my spine. As the boys tried to pull the chains from the pole and free Sabine, I turned around to survey the area. From a dark alleyway across the street, a large, shadowy outline moved towards us. Its feet were the first thing I noticed, mostly because they filled up the entirety of the alleyway.

A black, claw-like hand the size of a car reached out from the darkness towards me. Voices ranging from screechy to guttural ran through my mind. “Let us rip her. We want to feel her flesh in our hands. Our teeth burn with hunger.” Unable to move, I became frozen by the terror working its way through my body. The giant hand drew closer, and everything became very quiet. Darkness slowly surrounded me.

A silver ring of light appeared around the hand's enormous wrist and kept it from coming closer. My eyes were still on the silver light when something knocked the wind out of me by shoving me a few yards back. Fox ran up to the hand and stopped just a few feet from it while waves of golden light pulsated from his body. The shimmering light moved towards not only the hand but the entire entity.

From my right, Dorian, with his hands raised up and glowing a bright silver, called out to Fox. “I can't hold it much longer."

Fox pulled both of his hands back and yelled before thrusting them forward. A wall of golden light the size of a building shot out of him, causing the monstrous thing to wail and retreat before disappearing altogether.

It didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t breathing until everything around me faded away and I blacked out.

Someone was calling out to me. “Leeeeexiiiii.” They were getting closer and louder with each syllable. “Leeeeexiiiii.”

My eyes shot open before my vision processed three faces staring down at me, with Fox bent down by my head. "Lexi, try to sit up slowly." Fox put his hands under my back to help me stand up and regain my composure.

My head was still spinning a bit. "Not to go all Dorothy on you guys but either I was having a weird-ass dream or--." I trailed off as I took in the vacant New York city streets. "Shit."

Sabine stepped toward me with a bored expression. “You fainted.”

Leaning up against a light pole, Dorian cut in. "Which is more than normal. Anybody else would have run off screaming and probably put themselves in even more danger."

Fox was grinning ear to ear. "Huh, if my memory serves correctly, that's exactly what you did, Sabine."

Sabine whipped her head in Fox’s direction to leer at him. "I was thirteen, jackass. And,” she said turning back to me. “I should take away your senses for chaining me to that pole."

Fox snapped his fingers at Sabine with a look that said he wasn’t playing around. "But, since it was an accident and since Sabine used magic on you first, even though we took a vow to never use it against an innocent, I'm sure Sabine will consider the whole matter forgotten."

Sabine cocked her head back and crossed her arms. "Innocent? Really? Nothing innocent ends up here. Which brings me back to my original point. What the hell are you doing here?"

Magic? Innocents? What the hell kind of freaky-ass nightmare is this? I looked down at my hands again but still only saw the normal number of fingers.

Dorian pushed his way between me and Sabine. "It’s not a question of curiosity. We really do need to know how you got here. Cause if you got in, then something may have gotten out."

I took a step back, breathing slowly to calm myself down. "I don't know how I got here. I don't even know where here is. I was up in my bedroom looking down at the street and all of the sudden, everyone disappeared. So, like a complete idiot, I came down here to see what was going on." Dorian, Fox, and Sabine all shared a look between them, frustrating me even more. "You guys have got to stop doing that and tell me what the hell is going on."

Fox lightly took me by the arm and turned me to face him. "Alright, take a deep breath cause what I'm about to say might make your head explode, and don't you dare interrupt me." He made a sharp glare at Sabine who was a second away from inserting her own comment. "You know, as well as I, that we have no choice now." He softened his gaze and looked back at me. "Lexi, this place may look like New York City but it's actually a prison. A supernatural jail, if you will." My eyes went wide for a moment as I peered over at Dorian and Sabine who looked as if everything Fox was saying was just fine. "A long, long time ago, it was created to keep some scary-ass shit locked away from the normal world. It's called the 13th hour and the only people that can enter it are me, Dorian, and Sabine because we're its guardians. The only time we can enter it is at midnight and time moves differently here. Once a full hour passes here, a second passes in the real world and we are sent back."

My knees were so close to buckling, that I had to pull all of my focus to keep from falling to the ground. "So, because you all are guardians,” I said using air quotes, “you can do those things with the lights and that's how Sabine was able to paralyze me, or whatever?"

Fox looked up for a moment. “Yes, and no. You see, we're guardians, yes, but that involves a lot more explaining. The lights and everything are because the three of us are, well, witches. That’s a pretty broad term but explaining all of that now will just confuse you. Especially since I'm almost a hundred percent sure you might be a witch as well."

I put my hand up to stop Fox for a moment. "Hold up. Run that by me again."

Dorian cut Fox off before holding up his watch. "I don't mean to cut this short, Fox, but we have less than a minute left."

Fox glanced at Dorian’s watch before grabbing me by my shoulders and looking me right in the eyes. "When the 13th Hour ends, we all go back to the exact spot we were at when we entered. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow but you cannot tell another person. Promise me."

I processed Fox's fast words and fervently nodded my head. "I promise. I do. But you have to promise to give me way more detail tomorrow and-" My body jerked upwards and moved alarming fast towards the sky. I was too in shock to even scream. My speed increased as the moon’s blue light grew brighter and brighter until I hit my head on something hard and blacked out.