The Cold Forest

"Is it morning already?"

"You didn't happen to be smoking that weed the whole night, did you?"

"What? No, I mean, after fighting with my dad at night, I was driving around, and then I just parked my car here to take a breather. And now you say it is morning already."

"Throw that away, freshen yourself up, and let's go to the class; we are already running late."

"What? No. What about my sleep? You know it's important that a person should sleep for eight hours a day."

"I know that, but if I left you here, you would just smoke that stuff for the rest of the day."

"No, I don't think you understand the situation here! Bro."

"What about your new treasure you were texting about?"

"Yes, Bro. It's awesome! I just got my hand on a ritual book and it's awesome. Let me show it to you."

"No, we are getting late for our class. Why don't we complete our classes today, and after that we can talk about it? I will try to free up myself early today."

"That would be great! I was planning to perform one ritual tonight. Ok, meet me at our place."

Their place was a closed industrial site on the north side of the town, at least a mile from his home. It was closed due to the company's bankruptcy. There was news about some other big company buying this company but there hadn't been any official announcement.

"Okay."

After a few minutes both friends were walking in college halls. Suddenly a redhead came running toward them and before they knew it the redhead was giving Erik a tight hug.

"Oh, hi Alice." Henry recognized her.

"It looks like many things have changed since last time I was in the town."

"Oh, hi Henry. It's not what you think. We are just friends. Right, Erik?"

"Yeah, we are just friends."

Erik was really confused, not just about Alice's behavior, but her smell was different. It's like she was a different person then what she was yesterday.

Her flowery sent was replaced by that of soil and her perfume was different from her usual. Instead of strawberry and vanilla it was a chocolate flavor.

She was behaving like what happened between them yesterday was normal. Her body language was also different; while normally she had confidence in her posture, today he could notice arrogance in her body language that hadn't been there before.

And the strangest thing was, he didn't feel his instinct fighting him, which had happened the whole day yesterday. Even stranger was him observing such minor details that he himself had never noticed before.

Though it was really a great change. Yesterday, his whole day his body was having urges to just throw this redhead down and take her, while today it seemed like his lizard mind had shut itself down.

"You are not even famous enough to use that excuse! Bro."

"Where have you been? I was waiting for you; I was worried about you." He could see clear differences in her. She had never been so overly affectionate to him. 'Maybe it's due to what we did yesterday!?'

"Oh my, Bro! You definitely did something. You have to tell me everything, brother."

Irritation was clear on her face from the comment made by Henry, but she spoke to Erik again, ignoring Henry. Again, Erik thought this was strange, because from the very beginning she had been as interested to talk with Henry as much as with him.

"So, what do you say. Do you want to go out tonight?" After Erik didn't reply for few moments she asked him again, but Henry replied.

"Excuse me lady, you may be a top-notch beauty on campus but my bro, here, has plans for tonight."

"Oh, what would that be?" she asked him haughtily.

"No, that I cannot tell you. The only thing I can tell you is that tonight we are going to summon a demon from the depths of hell!!"

"Where you smoking weed the whole night?" Hearing that question, all color left Henry's face.

"Is it that obvious!?"

"From your talk, yes!" She once again faced Erik. "Then what about tomorrow?"

First priority for Erik was to convince Alice to speak with him and apologize to her but now she was standing before him asking for another date.

"Yeah, no problem. Tomorrow it is, then."

There wasn't any kind of instinctive behavior from him the whole day. It was like he was a different person. Even when he was in close proximity to Alice, he still never felt his body acting on its own.

After coming back from college he went into the forest again in search of the wolf's carcass or his knife. Searching for few hours and not finding anything he decided to have an early dinner and go to meet his friend.

'At least I won't have any issues getting my pickup back from Alice's House.' He was really afraid how Alice would react, or what may have happened between them, but spending the whole day with her had eased his worries.

It took him a walk of fifteen minutes and he was at the closed site of the construction industry. It has many building scattered across a few acres. Their secret place was in the basement of a storage room. He saw his friend's car parked in storage. He opened the basement door and went down.

"Hey Bro, you are here!" He saw his friend trying to draw some diagrams with some black chalk, a few small dead animals lying beside him, a bowl of blood, and some other recipe lying around. "You don't look well-rested."

"Yeah, it's the stuff. It's really awesome; you should try it."

"No, I am fine but I don't think you are even conscious enough to complete what you are doing."

"Just make sure that I am in my car if I pass out, because sleeping on floors really hurts."

"Did you bring the book I asked for?"

"Yeah, it's somewhere in my car. But why such a sudden obsession with the supernatural, bro?!"

"It's not obsession; it's just an interest to know about them, so I can be careful if I ever see one in the future."

"Trying to pull my leg, bro! And where are you going?"

"I am going to read that book, while you are doing your thing." With that he was out of the basement in storage area searching for the book in Henry's car.

He found it under the back seat of his car, just lying there. Like many of his other books, it didn't have any author on it.

Erik picked up the book and was about to open it. 'What the hell?' He heard some kind of sound coming from the basement. He wasn't sure what it was but he could tell there was something wrong down there.

He quickly ran back down, and the first thing he saw was a woman standing above his passed-out friend.

She was like teenage girl with a height around 4'5". She was absolutely naked, but a strange thing about her was small horns on her head and a tail behind her back. He saw her looking at his friend like he was some kind of prey.

He reacted immediately with intent to stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do. Even though her appearance was strange, from her size he knew he could easily outlast her in physical combat.

His hand was about to hit her but, like lightning, she took hold of his hand and threw him to the other side of the basement like he was a sack of potatoes.

His head hit the wall with a loud thud; empty boxes and debris were flying around which were hit during his little flight through the basement.

"Naughty Boy!! Don't worry, it will be your turn once I am done with this weakling." Those were the last words he heard before he lost consciousness.