Lee was carrying Florida in his broad shoulders and she was covered in blood and her clothes drenched in the crimson colour, I could get the smell of iron from where I was standing. Hoong was taking slow steps behind him.
Ruby and I immediately rushed towards them. Seeing Florida, Ruby tried to control her tears and said in an anxious voice, "take her to her room, I will be there in a while with my first aid stuffs". With this she rushed towards her private room.
Lee, Hoong and I made a bee line towards the stairs and took Florida to her room in the second floor. No one said a word. We entered her room and Lee carefully laid her in her bed.
Lee sat beside her and Hoong walked towards the window and stood their with his back facing us.
I walked towards the other side of the bed and stood with my back leaning against the wall.
Finally I couldn't control my anger and the words blurted out before I could even stop them, "what were you two fools doing, leaving her all by herself. Do I need to remind you guys twice, how dangerous it is out there. She has been attacked once, was that not enough? Do you guys have any idea what other complications might take place?"
Lee spoke up, "everything happened at once, we didn't even have the time to react according to our wits. Hearing a sound Hoong rushed out and when time passed without him appearing. I went to check out on him. Who would have thought it was all a trap. Taking this opportunity the ghouls appeared at once. And Florida fought with all of them. We both met at the at the end of the alley and realized something was wrong. So we went back to our meeting point only to find, Florida lying unconscious and six ghouls lying dead across from her."
"Are you kidding? We all know that she has no strength and even if she fights them off, how on earth can she defeat six of them all at once. Even we can't do that!", I shouted in annoyance.
Lee held Florida's hand out and rolled her sleeves, the mark in her hand caught me off-guard. There was a symbol of phoenix painted in her wrist. 'When did she get a tattoo', was my thought?
Lee again spoke, "I feel that when Florida was attacked by the ghouls and they bit her, this caused an awakening and her lost power revived back within her, this can only explain how she fought them. And about the mark, it was not there, all of us are aware of that. How did it get there and what does' it mean, I don't know. Henrik might know about it, but we can never tell him, about Florida. Even if later, not now at least."
Hoong who was silent all this while said, "I don't understand why did you accept his request Lee. Florida is just a liability, just look at how she messes everything up. Now if she ends up dead or something what..."
Before he could even finish what he was saying, Lee sped towards him and held his throat and said, "if you ever sprout these kind of nonsense again, you know better than me what can happen." He released him and then came and sat near Florida.
It was for the first time I saw him so angry. We have faced a lot of challenges, difficulties but never have I seen Lee loosing a nerve. He is our Uncle but he asks us to call him by his name because he feels calling him Uncle will make him look older. He is so frank and a fun loving person, but seeing him so angry, I knew that he was hiding something about Florida.
After this humiliation, Hoong left the room. Even I was angry at Hoong. So I kept quiet.
As, he shut the door, Ruby came in with all her things and said in a sharp tome, "all of you leave, I need to wash her wounds and change her clothes. shoo shoo".
No matter what the circumstances were when it came to her duty, Ruby was always the professional one. I was relived to see her back to herself. I watched Florida once more and then left the room together with Lee.