Shade's muscular, charcoal gray coupe screeched to a stop beside the alley, it's idling breaths bellowed deeply through twin exhaust pipes. She got out after popping the trunk from the inside and reached into the trunk for a first-aid kit and an old dirty towel that she used to clean up with after performing routine maintenance on her ride, then she shot over to Chris in a blur.

    Quickly, Shade field dressed Chris' wound with the kit, then covered him from the waist down with the towel. He held his breath to manage the pain as she helped him up, but exhaled in grunts as she gingerly guided him to the car, where she helped inside to the passenger seat. Closing the door, Shade zoomed into the alley and collected every bit of evidence she could find that could prove they were there. She rummaged around in the darkness where Chris had fallen until she found the remains of his jeans, which luckily still held his wallet, then she retrieved her first-aid kit, tossing it along with Chris' bag into the trunk on her way back to the car.

    She threw a concerned look over at Chris' condition before putting the car in gear with a rev of the engine and popping the clutch for a hasty, tire squealing departure. Chris writhed in pain as he rolled his head around to the window in search of something to distract him from his torturing wound, but he so was bleary-eyed from the anguish consuming him that he just closed his eyes and tried to lose himself in the eight cylinder howl of Shade's coupe as she ripped through the gears.

    When they finally reached the highway leaving Ridgeville, and the motion of the car steadied into a speeding line without the constant turns and acceleration of escaping downtown, Shade reached to the center console for her cellphone. Chris rolled his head toward Shade when her heard the sound of her voice talking to someone.

    "Hey, it's me!" She said excitedly. "Listen, I don't have time to explain, but I've got someone with me who's in desperate need of your help, and you're not gonna believe who I think he is. Let's just say I think Lydia's been right all along. I'll be there in about ten minutes."

    Shade dropped the phone back into the console, then focused on the fast approaching  road ahead after checking on Chris with a  fascinated glance, wondering if he could really be who she thought he was, hoping for it against all her doubts. The white bandages covering his stomach were losing their purity as they absorbed the red blood seeping from the wound. He was managing his state with  a constant grimace and fighting the pain with clinched fists. Shade urged the car on by flooring the accelerator.

    The outside lights that illuminate the pillared stoop of Allender Manor were on and waiting for Shade when her car flew up the manor's drive, coming to an immediate stop as close to the manor's entrance as the concrete drive would allow. Shade got out and rounded the car in a blurry zip. She had Chris out of the car, hanging on to her for support, when the front door of the manor opened and Gale rushed out to help her bring him inside the great house. Together with her blond-haired, blue-eyed, majestically beautiful sister, Shade draped his arm across her shoulder and the two drug him inside to a guest room which Gale had made ready after Shade's call.

    Chris moaned from the pain in his gut, which made him oblivious to his surroundings and what was going on around him when he was taken into a brightly lit room, then lowered carefully down onto a large bed with the covers pulled away. He writhed in agony when the two sisters released him.

    "I dressed the wound as best I could," Shade confessed, looking at the damp red bandages around Chris' waist.

    "He'll be fine, you did well," Gale assured hastily as she took a pair of scissors from a nearby nightstand and started to cut the bandages off.

    Gale observed the seeping cut in Chris' stomach when she finally removed all of the tainted wrapping, then after placing the scissors off to the side, she gave Shade a look that told her exactly what to do. Shade went to the opposite side of the bed, leaned over and pinned Chris down by his shoulders while Gale sat beside him on the bed and placed a hand over the wound, causing a painful groan from Chris. Then Gale bowed her head and began a low hum that within seconds grew into an ethereal melody which filled the room.

    Chris' writhing worsened under the firm placement of Gale's hand on his wound, then he snapped his head up to look for the origin of the angelic sound flooding his ears. Shade pushed against his shoulders to keep him still. "It's okay guy, you're gonna be fine," she assured him. His tortured eyes roamed the room for any comfort they could find.

    As Gale's song lengthened, the cut under her hand stopped bleeding, the flesh around it began to close up until the wound disappeared without any trace, even a scar. Chris' writhing weakened and he relaxed under Shade's restraint as his delirious eyes rolled back and closed, taking him into a deep, healing sleep. Gale's song ended after he drifted off. She rose beside the bed and removed her bloody hand as she examined favorably the result of her effort, then studied Chris' features intricately. Shade was already making her way back around the bed to her sister's side. They shared a look at the half naked, bloodied person resting peacefully before them.

    "Well, what do you think? Could it actually be him?" Shade asked with hopeful expectations.

    Gale observed Chris intensely for another moment, then walked over to the nightstand  where a stack of hand towels stood next to a basin of warm water; items she usually needed when Shade called late at night. She dipped her bloody hand in the basin, then grabbed a towel from the stack to wipe it dry from the sticky blood clinging to it. She was about to offer Shade an answer when another voice entered the room from behind them.

    "It is him you know. I told you I would find him," the dainty voice of a young girl proclaimed from the open doorway. 

    Gale and Shade both turned to find their young teenage sister, Lydia, peeking into the room. She was in her nightgown, half hiding behind the door frame with a leaning stance, so that her shiny black hair fell down past her shoulders and swung out away from her head a little. She stared past her sisters with a timid eagerness in her brown eyes for the person lying on the bed, then she went and stood between them, keeping her eyes on Chris.

    "We have to help him remember, so that he can be a part of us again," Lydia urged.

    "Lydia dear, if it is him, and we're not sure yet if it is, then we'll certainly welcome him with open arms; but first we have to be sure. Then we have to find out how it's even possible that he's alive after all these years," Gale reasoned, interested in the mystery of the person lying on the bed, but trying to temper her own joyful expectations in case they were wrong about his identity.

    Shade turned to her sisters with the hint of proof in the shadow of her face, then she teased their curiosity with an alluring tone in her voice when she said: "Wait until I tell you what happened tonight, then decide if it's him or not." 

    Shade regaled her sisters with the events of the alley and her encounter with the Beast as she and Gale used the towels with the warm water from the basin to wipe the prints of blood from Chris' abdomen while Lydia watched, hanging on every syllable that left Shade's lips. To anyone else her tale would have seemed too outlandish for belief, but these sisters knew very well the possibility of Shade's account.

    When Shade finished, Gale openly admitted to her belief that the young man lying in the guest bed, now clean from his missing wound's marks and sleeping soundly under the warmth of the bed covers, was somehow the brother they had lost nineteen years ago in a terrible accident, or so they had thought. Shade's encounter with him in the alley, along with the growing resemblance on his face to their beloved mother convinced her. Then, as Shade gathered up the damp towels and Gale took the basin so they could make leave of the room in order to discuss matters further in another part of the manor, Gale's memory prodded her with an undeniable indicator of their joint beliefs.

    Gale sat the basin of murky water back down and went to the bed as her sisters exchanged a bewildered look at her actions. She carefully brushed the hair on Chris' forehead back until the sight of his tiny scar revealed itself. Shade and Lydia strolled over to the bed to examine what Gale had found with an overwhelmed smile of joy on her face that summoned tears around her eyes. When she turned to show her sisters what she had found, her smile broadened, forcing a tear down her cheek. Shade stared with a remembering smirk on her face while Lydia looked in astonishment at what removed any lingering doubts about his identity, not that she had any, but she knew he would once he awoke.