The Otherworld doesn't look like anything Rachael expected, well she didn't know what to expect. The moment they walked through the doors of the apartment they found themselves at a train station with a few others.
They all look normal except for a character who has horns. His horns reminds her of the devil pictures she would see on the internet with red skin and a pitchfork when she was a child.
She doesn't know what to expect as everyone waits silently.
"Is this the Otherworld?" she asks Samuel with a slightly disappointed tone, "No, we aren't there yet," he says.
They still hold hands as they wait while Rachael watches with uncertainty.
After some minutes of waiting a train arrives and its doors open, "Come on," they all go in.
The exterior of the train looks like an old junk barely staying together but the inside is something else. Inside of the train is lit with blue lights and a dark theme.
The seats are comfy as Rachael sits down and she can't understand how the outside is nothing like the inside.
The cold air makes her rub her elbows and close her legs together.
"Come here," Samuel sits beside her and draws her close. She cuddles up to him for some warmth, "This feels awfully familiar," she says. "Hmm, I wouldn't know" he says and looks up and sees Gabriel looking straight down at him.
"What? Don't haunt me right now," Samuel says.
Rachael raises her head from his shoulder and looks at him, "Is Gabriel here right now?" "Yes, but don't worry. He knows you need the heat," the way he speaks, it's almost like he wants it hurt to Gabriel.
Rachael puts her arms around him as he suddenly gets warmer, "God, you are so warm," she mumbles.
"This what it feels like to be alive," he says softly as he holds her.
It takes only but a few minutes for Rachael McQueen to slip into the gentle arms of slumber. Caressed and warm she feels safe under the watchful gaze of Samuel, but she knows it is not his gaze alone but also that of the ghost who watches from the sidelines of the living world.
"What are we going to do?" Amanda asks, "Dracula's castle is at the edge of the underworld. Just away from the walls that separate the underworld from the Otherworld," Samuel says.
"I've never been there," Elma says, "Neither have I," Amanda says.
"I haven't been there but I know where it is but getting there will be tricky," Samuel says.
"How so?"
"We will have to go to Mount Nagas and find the river that connects to Acheron. From there we will divert to the forest of dead cries. At some point we won't be able to pass, that is where we will find the gates of Locus, the hellhound.
The gates will lead us to a portal, one said to have been created by Dracula or Lucifer depending whose tale you know. It will lead us to the edge of the underworld," Samuel says.
"You seem to know a lot about the routes to a place you've never been before," Elma says.
"Of course, I am still a sphinx and the World Knowledge is open to me. When I need it at least," "World Knowledge? What's that?" "Access to the knowledge of everything in the world except we can't control it if not sphinxes will be running the world," Amanda says.
"It is the only upside about being a scapegoat protector of our treasures," she adds.
"What is that? Treasures. I heard the guy back there, at the door say something about that too. Treasures," Elma asks and she sees the Sphinxes share a glance.
"Don't worry about that," Amanda says, "It is no concern of a vampire,".
Elma folds her hands as she gnashes her teeth. Even after all her time with the twins they will never take her serious. She is nothing but a plaything to them, which makes her wonder what is so special about the fragile creature in his embrace.
What is so different about the lowly human?
If anything, she is nothing but a liability.
If it were in her younger years as a vampire Rachael would have been dead long ago and the twins probably wouldn't care but she never took the initiative to kill her and now she has become something of importance to them.
Even so more than the vampire who has been by their side for a longer time.
Personally she doesn't hate Rachael but she gradually hates what her presence means.
That I will be nothing but a plaything to them.
Rachael is lost in a world of bliss. Quiet as a graveyard but as beautiful as ones mind could imagine. She is spirited away from the current events of reality as she sleeps like a little baby.
She feels the rays of the sun upon her skin and the hardened feel of wood against her body. She wiggles and turns as the gentle touch of Samuel's body eludes her and her eyes flicker to life.
She finds herself lying on a bench in a park she recognizes from her childhood.
Her face lights up at the sight of a man with a bunch of flowers in his hands and a rumpled blue shirt on his torso. His bearded face does little to cover his smile as he sees her smiling face light up like a candle in the dark.
"Dad," she says, "Rachael," Frank McQueen says and his daughter jumps off the bench and runs to embrace her father.
Tears stroll down her cheeks as her head meets his chest and his hand hold her head.
"I miss you so much, dad" she cries, "So much has happened that I wish I could tell you," she says.
"I know baby, I know but it isn't over yet baby girl," he says.
"You have done a very bad thing. The story of the McQueens is supposed to have come to an end but you are still here. Running towards a future with a much more terrible end," he says.
Rachael's heart slowly sinks like a broken ship. She knows this must be a dream but his words no longer sounds like the words of her father. Even when she was wrong he would find a way to make her feel loved and true but this time it felt different.
He feels different.
Rachael frees herself from his embrace and takes two steps backwards, "You are not my father," she says, "Very perceptive of you, Rachael" he says.
She clenches her fists and uses one hand to touch the back of her pants.
"You won't find Nightmare here," he says and a little bit of fear begins to grow in her heart.
"I can't reach you right now but you will come to me. All that lives eventually does," he says, "Who are you?" "You know who I am. The sphinx saved you from my grip and he will pay the price for it but so will you. All he has done is to buy you some time," he says.
The sun slowly disappears behind the clouds and the light of day begins to run away as the night comes. The small green grass of the park swiftly dry up to sandy floor of famine and the people going about their activities begin to drop lifelessly on the floor.
Frank slowly walks towards her as she walks backwards.
"You will not escape me, you will not escape death," his voice becomes rigid and husk. And the fear in Rachael's heart becomes a full blown tree, she runs but he chases after her.
She is quick on her feet but he is quicker and her fear only makes him faster as he draws closer with each breath she takes. He pounces on her and turns her around with her back to the ground.
He wraps his hands around her neck and tightens his grip, choking her as hard as he can.
"Die, die, die" he screams.