My father scoffed. “She’ll be a sitting duck at the academy. That’s the first place they’ll look for her.”
“It’s protected by a shield one of my ancestors made with very powerful magic.”
“That’s not good enough,” he argued. “She needs more than that. This Devon character was inside the academy, remember? And you say he’s the one who did this to her.”
“She’s safer there than she is here. Surely, you must understand that. My grandmother already made the necessary repairs and re-enforced the shield. Riley needs time to learn more about what she is and apply to join the Eastern Vontex. It’s the most logical way forward. Unless you have a better idea.”
“I can teach her!” he shouted.
“That’s not happening,” I barked at him.
“Don’t be foolish like your mother,” he snapped.
That was it. He had already tried to control me from afar. He told me which university to go to and what I would study. He inadvertently caused me to run. He wasn’t going to tell me what was best for me anymore. And he wouldn’t disrespect my mother’s memory.
“You made my mother run!” I hollered. “Not some burglar. You could have gone to her. You could have tried to talk some sense into her. And besides, I might not remember the robbery but I remember the arguments. You drove mum away long before you shifted in front of her. It was probably the final nail in the coffin. I could never learn from you. I don’t even trust you. You’ve given me no reason to. You hid things from me. Things a father should never withhold. This happened because you refused to be open with me.”
He stood there completely stunned. It was the first time I had stood up to him. Not just argued over the phone and done something against his will and waited for him to find out the truth. I actually stood there and told him off. And it was one of the most empowering things I had ever done.
“I’ve made many bad choices Riley.” He edged closer to me. “The worst being that I gave your mother reason to doubt that I loved her. You might not like my methods but I kept you alive. If you don’t trust me, then trust Adeline. She adored your mother. I might have asked for the favor of her watching over the three of you but their friendship was genuine.”
Adeline’s hand clasped over my shoulder. There was something about Adeline’s touch that I always found soothing. Now I knew why. It must have had something to do with her being a vixra witchling.
“Riley, I’ve been working with another vixra to try to find your brother. We believe he’s alive and in hiding but we couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want to give you false hope. There are few things worse in this world than believing that which isn’t true and holding onto it for years.”
My father rubbed his chin then walked over to the round wooden door at the back of the room. Just before he opened it and disappeared on the other side he turned to me. “I loved your mother, Riley. And I love you. I’m not a man of grand romantic gestures. Your mother knew that about me. Nor am I a father who coddles his children. But I did my best to protect you. I will continue doing what I see as necessary to keep you safe. Until we find Dirk and know he’s not in danger, you’re the only child I have left to protect.”
“By doing what you see as necessary do you mean that you’ll continue to lie to me?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He walked out of the room. I heard his heavy footsteps stomping up a flight of stairs. Adeline didn’t speak again until he was completely out of earshot. Which was a considerable distance given he was a lycan. It struck me right then and there that he probably heard me every single time I snuck out of the house to rehearse with my band. There were very few secrets around him.
“Riley,” Adeline said my name softly and sat back against the stone slab. Her pale skin flickered in the dim light of the candles around the room. It gave her an ethereal glow that only made me even more jealous of her beauty. She took my hands into hers and I let her. I wanted to pull away. I spent years loving Adeline as if she truly was my aunt and not just a family friend only to find out now that she was more like a beloved babysitter. Not just for me and my brother but for my mother as well. “This isn’t the life your mother wanted for you,” she said. “Or your father. He tried to keep you clear of it. Given your father is a member of the Blackatter ancestral line, my family was willing to assist him. But when your mother discovered what was in your blood and what your father was, she was convinced that keeping you from him was the only way forward. She couldn’t be talked out of it. In reality, it was the most dangerous decision she could have made. It nearly exposed you and your brother. I was happy to watch over the three of you. My biggest failure was discovering your mother had been murdered. I won’t see you meet the same end. I swear to you that I’ll do everything in my power to protect you and find your brother.”
I pressed my lips together. Her words stung my ears. My father let me believe my mother died of natural causes. Now I found out through his deception that she met an end that no one should face. My head fell. I couldn’t look in Adeline’s eyes. Grief washed over me as if I was experiencing my mother’s death for the first time all over again.
Adeline took my chin into her hand and forced me to meet her eyes. “Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t cower. Blackatters are the strongest of the lycan.”
Lothar’s words echoed in my mind. He told me the same thing. Not to cower. I straightened my back but still found it difficult.
“How did she die?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer but stupid enough to ask.
Adeline swallowed hard. She had to know the question was coming but she still didn’t want to answer it. In the end, she didn’t tell me with words. She brought her hand away from my chin and cupped my face. I felt the tingling of her green magic pierce through my skin. My vision wasn’t my own anymore. I was seeing through her eyes. A memory. One that haunted her and would now haunt me until the day I died. I was walking through the woods. There was no moon. It was dark. And Adeline was lighting the way through the brush of the forest with her magic glowing in her palm. She fell to her knees when she found what she was looking for. My mother’s body lying dead on the ground, looking as though it had been torn apart by wild dogs. There was blood everywhere. Random body parts were missing. Her flesh had been shredded apart with razor-sharp teeth. And her eyes were wide open, staring into the sky like she was begging for death from the heavens.
My eyesight snapped back to reality. I jolted away from Adeline and backed into the stone wall behind me. I thought I knew despair. I grieved for my mother and my brother. For the future I thought might be but would never come to pass. The knowledge that my mother wouldn’t be around to help me with my kids. My brother wouldn’t take them out on adventures or get married and have kids of his own that mine could play with. All that was stripped from me. Only now I knew it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t natural. It was a form of evil that I had only ever read about in fairy tales.
“Who…” I whispered through gritted teeth. “Who did that to her?”
“I don’t know. But I swear to you, we will find out.”
“How?” I asked, gripping onto the stone wall with my fingernails and desperately wanting to break something. The aggression inside of me was rising. I could feel the building blocks of rage wanting release. I took deep breaths and tried to hold it in. Adeline was the last person in the world I wanted to harm. Not to mention that I knew now that she was a witchling. A powerful one. She could probably kill me easily without ever touching me.
“Go back to school,” she said. “Learn everything you can. Then apply for the Eastern Vontex and come serve my family in Hungary. We will look out for one another. Then you and I will find your brother and hunt down the man who tried to destroy your family.”
“He did destroy my family. I have nothing left.”
“Yes, you do. The Vontex are like a family. You’ll learn once you join. Your pack will become your family. And I am your family.”
She closed the gap be
tween us and embraced me. I slowly brought my arms around her, unsure if I was ready to receive affection after what I had just seen. A part of me wanted to pull away. To reach for something, anything, and tear it apart. But Adeline’s touch got to me once more. She calmed me in an instant and before I knew it I was holding her as tight as she held me.
She let her hand come up to the back of my head. And she stood there with me for what felt like minutes, making sure I knew that I wasn’t alone.
“Learn all that you can. Then come to Hungary. We will find this monster. Together.”
6
Adeline escorted me out of the room and up the stone steps outside the door. I discovered quite quickly why this was the one room that I had never seen in my father’s large house. It was hidden. As we reached the top of the stairs the doorway opened up into my father’s private study. A bookcase opened as if it was a door and I stepped out to see where I was in an instant.
‘More secrets. Why am I not surprised anymore?’
When I reached the foyer my father was nowhere to be seen. Which honestly, I preferred. Our little reunion wasn’t my idea of quality family time. And it wasn’t Alina’s idea of a proper greeting.
When we got to the front door I discovered Alina standing in the doorway with a massive blood stain on the side of her head running down her front.
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked. She looked like she hit her head on something hard. I peered behind her to see the passenger side door on the car was shattered. Someone slammed her head right into the window.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she said.
I glanced at my reflection in a mirror to the right of the door. I was a bloody mess from my dad having slammed me against the marble slab inside the tomb.
“My dad?” I asked her.
“He has a strange way of saying hello, doesn’t he?” Alina clenched her fists. “Tell him he needs to work on his manners. I did bring his only daughter here for a visit on my own time.”
He probably thought she was the one who broke into the family tomb. Then he knocked her out the same way he did to me.
Adeline stepped forward and offered her hand. “Allow me to properly introduce myself given Kenneth failed to do so.”
Alina took her hand with a bit of hesitation.
“I’m Adeline Prescott.”
Alina’s eyes widened. She knew who she was. Or at least what family she was from.
“Oh. I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Don’t worry. I’m well aware of Kenneth’s incivility. I take it he knocked you out before entering the tomb to find Riley.”
Alina nodded, still in a bit of awe that she was speaking to a vixra witchling.
“Thank you for bringing Riley back home to say goodbye to her father. Please get her back to the academy safe.” With that Adeline walked passed Alina and stepped onto the gravel of my father’s driveway. She lifted her finger and carved a line through the air. I watched as green light broke through her skin. A tunnel appeared before her as though she had sliced the air open with her magic, creating a strong breeze that swept over the driveway.
“I’ll see you again soon, Riley,” she said. “In the meantime, focus on your studies. It’s very important.”
Then she stepped through the opening and disappeared. The magic holding the space open closed up and she was gone.
“What the bloody hell was that?” I walked toward the space and tried feeling the air for remnants of her magic. Whatever it was, it was gone.
“A vixra tunnel,” Alina said with a smile. “The vixra created magical tunnels for ease of travel but it takes a great amount of magic to open them. Most witchlings are forbidden to even go near one. Lycan as well. Except for the Blackatters, of course. I imagined you’ll learn how to use one in time.”
“I’m not sure if I like the idea of disappearing into thin air.”
“Come on,” she said, stomping away over the gravel road and back to the car. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I couldn’t argue. I didn’t want to spend one more second near my father. That didn’t stop me from looking back at the large house before I got into the car. I saw something move from the third window to the right on the second floor. It was my father’s room. The curtain moved from side to side as though someone had just let go of it and walked away. He was watching. And he would probably continue watching. Suddenly, the idea of moving to a foreign country to be closer to the vixra wasn’t so unappealing. As long as it put a safe distance between me and my father. He might have thought he was protecting me. He might have even thought his intentions came from a good place. But in the end, I had to decide what was best for me. And right now, that was getting in the car and not looking back.
Hours later I was in my dorm room at the academy. I had a hot shower, a rare steak, and a long nap. None of it helped. A sharp pain sat inside the pit of my stomach and refused to let go. I didn’t know if it was residual pain from what Adeline did to me so she could see my memories or if my old foe grief was revisiting me once more. Only this time it was finding a cozy home to nestle in tight. I was overwhelmed. The vision of my mother’s body torn to pieces on the forest floor was seared into my memory like the brand on my skin. There was no getting rid of it. If anything, it created motivation. Just the right amount that I needed to push me to find my brother and join the Vontex. If that was what it took to find the ruthless person who did this to my mother, I would do everything I could to be worthy of the Vontex.
I rolled out of bed and heard a knock at my door. When I opened it, no one was there. A note was left behind inside the small box to the left of the door. I unfolded it to find it was my class schedule.
LYCAN HISTORY (ANCIENT TO MEDIEVAL) - 10 PM
BEGINNERS CONTROLLED SHIFTING - 1 AM
BEGINNERS HUNTING - 4 AM
My first class was in the same room Devon took me to when he wanted me to shift. I remembered it clearly. The way the ceiling was bound by a spell giving it the power of moonlight. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it.
I grabbed my trench coat and headed out the door. When I exited the tower of my dorm and entered the main courtyard, I was shocked to find that people didn’t point or stare at me anymore. Well, at least not as much. I had passed the trials and I was one of them. Just a student going to class. Almost as if I really wasn’t lying to my bandmates. I did find a university to attend. It just wasn’t a normal one.
When I got to the trap door leading to the class it opened up for me as though it knew who I was on approach. I ventured down the stairs and through the long hallways to discover my class was lit up in bright sunlight, not moonlight as I expected. I sighed a little in relief.
‘I guess Devon was right. That’s more for advanced students.’
The room was already full of other students. The two young men from the ceremony along with a few others that I had never seen before. I gathered that they had to wait a while before new classes could start. Not enough students passed the recent trials.
I hung my head at the thought and went over to sit at an empty desk. The class started filling gradually with other students who I guessed were on different rotations for the classes because some definitely were recent graduates of the trials. And the only reason I gathered that was because by the time the seats filled up and the one next to me was the last one left, a single face waltzed into the room that I didn’t want to see. It was McKenzie.
She groaned and walked over to a guy seated close to the door. I listened in to hear what she was whispering to him. Naturally, she was begging him to trade places with her. He refused. Quite adamantly. Apparently, I had already created a reputation for myself because no one wanted to sit next to the Blackatter. Who knew what I might do?
I saw her jaw clench once she realized no one would trade places with her. She begrudgingly came over and sat down at my table, making sure there was a fair amount of distance between us even though the desks we
re seated for two.
“Good morning, class,” Alina said as she walked into the room and flipped a switch by the podium. Everyone groaned as the room started to grow darker. Soon, it was lit up by a pale crescent moon. I could feel my body embracing its light. Maybe even gaining a little strength from it. I wasn’t a lowly werewolf anymore. I was a lycan. I could tell my body no. And I did. I rejected the urge to shift. I even soaked in the moonlight with a smile.
I saw one young man try to lift the hood of his trench coat.
Alina pointed a finger at him. “No, no, no. Keep it down. Embrace the moonlight and it will learn to embrace you back.”
He set his hands before him on the desk and cursed under his breath.
“I heard that,” she said as she pulled down a tarp for a whiteboard and uncapped some markers.
‘Why is Alina teaching? I thought she was just in the Vontex.’
“I’m Alina Sokolova. I’m a member of the Northern Vontex stationed in London. I was born in Russia, raised in Scotland, and bitten at the age of seventeen. I passed the exams for the Vontex two years later and for my commitment to the academy, I teach two separate courses, including this one. Lycan History, Ancient to Medieval and Intermediate Damage Control.
‘Great. So does that mean I’ll have to teach someday if I join the Vontex?’
“Some professors here like to start with the good and get to the more challenging aspects of our existence later. But I’ve never been an optimist. So today, you’re going to start the course by learning about the Dolch Erbe. Also known as the Dagger Heir society.”
Whispers exploded throughout the room. I had never heard of the society. Not that it mattered.
Alina shot a very quick glance in my direction. A shiver ran through me when her eyes met mine. Somehow, I knew this lecture was for my ears in particular and I needed to pay close attention.
Restrike: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 2) Page 6
