8.

'Show him ... show him what you have learned ... show him what you can do ...'

Two ten-year-old girls have come together in a slum town of oddities, a gathering of strange dark entities under a roadway flyover. One has been here about four years and the other has only just arrived, hardly much more than hour by such a point when she asked, or rather instructed to show what it is she can do.

Both these girls are royalty here though only one is aware of such; the other will become aware in time. The newcomer has a lot to learn, in fact she has been learning over the past few days and more so since the evening prior to having arrived at this place.

Maxene had barely been aware that the gift she had was one rarely seen in the regularly world, it took this place to bring about her potential. Yeah, the woman she thought of as mum instructed her not to use her ability out in the open but other than that she knew nothing more until events changed and guided her to where she is, now another has been guided ... will be guided.

In the week or so before Maxene first came here she became aware of a darkness and in the four years since she has been learning under his supervision. She has become obedient to him and questions very little. She indeed believes this place to be home. Despite both girls having only recently turned ten years of age, Maxene not knowing much about what such a thing could mean, one girl is to become a teacher to the other.

Lonnie Turner has her own gift, one she has completely been unaware of until she had come here to this darkened slum town just that one hour or so prior. In fact, she has at least two gifts, an ability to generate huge amounts of electricity and an ability to at least alter her own appearance. And at that, it was only on the evening prior to arriving at this place that she used any kind of power for a first time. She managed to deceive a grown man into bringing her close to this place by indeed making him see her as an adult. And now in this place she is learning what her true power is.

In time Lonnie will learn who Darkness is, she will learn who Darkness is in relation to her and to the other girl, in time she will come to know Maxene as her sister even with the fact that she was greeted as sister upon arrival. For now, in this moment, Lonnie is to show off her new skill.

Glancing towards her new acquaintance, Lonnie clasps her hands together and holds them out ahead of her. She turns her hands on their side having her left hand on top with both palms facing the other. Slowly she raises her left hand keeping both her hands curved towards each other.

It starts with a spark. She may have only arrived in this place an hour ago or so before this moment, and she may not have known all so much of any of what she now is capable of, whatever it is she has been told, but she has caught on with her gift super quick.

The newcomer continues to separate her hands, a ball of blue and white light begins to form and spin, levitating between those hands, jerking, both moving erratically and with predictability to form a ball approximately six inches in diameter. Here in this moment, two daughters of darkness are about to combine their gifts in an exhibition like demonstration. Lonnie has created a small but powerful ball of electricity and Maxene, using only a wave of her right hand, more in demonstration mode than anything else, sends that ball of electricity flying with force sixty feet through the air and having it collide with a stone wall, taking quite the chunk out of it.

The impact creates a little cracking beyond the point it hits from which some dust falls. These powers are unlike what anyone or thing down here have seen or are capable of, and there are more than one or two entities here with disturbing abilities. Many entities move to give the display some room, could it be possible that some of these entities fear this power or rather to whom those abilities belong?

Darkness watches and smiles before laughing with joy when the display is done. His latest round of efforts is looking extremely promising, still he has some work to do before he is to bring all nine daughters to the same location at the same point in time. At this point in time, things are very much heading the way he would want them to.

The girls look at one another and smile. Lonnie may not have been or even had an ounce of evil in her personality before coming here, nor will she wholly for perhaps a little while at least, though things most definitely are beginning to brew.

***

It has been three weeks since Lonnie Turner has gone missing and mum Greta seriously is at her wits ends. With how the last eleven years have been for her, how can she face going forwards knowing that her ten-year-old daughter is out there somewhere? Darkness has taken a young girl from where she had thought of as home and has given her a new place to call home.

Darkness in another way has come for mum. If she could, she would call it a day and head to the great beyond such is how she is at her wits end. She cannot do that that and she cannot allow the thoughts of that to fester within her mind. The thoughts of getting her daughter back safe and sound is what will keep her going, at least for now. Still, over the next couple of years Greta will have her moments.

The months pass, Lonnie is twenty-two months away from home and Greta is finding that all too difficult to deal with. There is no sign of her daughter, no trail to follow, no nothing including no light at the end of any tunnel. To Greta it feels as if her daughter simply just vanished off of the face of the planet.

On a dull April evening in 2012 Greta comes face to face with the choice of checking out of her own volition. Thoughts that her daughter may have perished in the time she has gone has Greta feeling desperate to the point where she cannot take it anymore. She has found her way up onto a rooftop of a four-story building. There is a light hazy rain falling and it actually feels good to be lightly drizzled upon by Mother Nature.

Stepping up onto a ledge and not looking down, Greta holds out each of her arms as if to challenge the world to come take her right here, right now. The challenge however is not so much taken on as it is sending back a challenge of its own. A voice speaks out loud and Greta hears it clearly. There is someone else up here on this rooftop. How can there be? Greta was and is sure that she is alone or at least was alone and that she had not been followed.

The why's and how's don't particularly matter, the fact is that there is someone else up here, both near to her and well away from the ledge, a man of some sort from the sound of the voice. When it first speaks it does briefly startle Greta, though soon she doesn't want to know about it, she won't even want to turn around to see who it belongs to and she doesn't even want to acknowledge it despite having been startled by it.

'Miss, you don't want to be doing that.'

No one can tell her what she does or does not want to be doing. Would she be here if she didn't want to be? The rain still feels nice. She is ready to just let go and fall, if anything it is the rain, not the voice that has delayed her from having already let go. Just a few seconds more or maybe a minute or two more. It is rare to feel so free; there is no need to rush anything.

The voice, it is unrecognizable to her, and it speaks again but Greta does not hear it on this occasion. She has become lost to the rain and the soft breeze that comes with it, to the point that she doesn't even realize how cold it also actually is in this moment.

Before she can decide on her own accord to let go or not, she has been grabbed. He has her and he lays her down as her own legs appear not to want to hold her up any longer. Seconds pass before she opens her eyes and sees the owner of the voice for the first time.