Draven caught my wrist and stopped us in the middle of the corridor. There were few people around, mainly because GASP’s medical and magical advances had reduced the federation’s overall mortality rate. Disease was simply a technical issue we’d learned to overcome. From what I’d gathered, most of the patients currently hospitalized were expectant mothers.
My heart ached. “What?” I asked Draven when he wouldn’t say anything.
He smiled gently and caressed my cheek. “It’s going to be okay, Serena. We’ll figure this out together,” he said.
“How? Our daughter tried to kill her cousin. Our niece…”
“And we’ll find out why soon enough. If Isabelle wouldn’t speak to anyone else, you know she’ll speak to us. We’re her parents, and we raised her well. What happened today doesn’t change that,” Draven replied.
I realized that this had been one of the main drivers of my anxiety from the moment I’d heard about the incident. What had pushed my daughter to do such evil things? Had someone maybe put a curse on her? This was a living nightmare, and my soul was breaking into bits and pieces, making it harder for me to even notice the golden glow in my husband’s aura. His love for me was undying. Then there were the red tendrils emanating from him. Pain. This hurt Draven as much as it hurt me.
“Oh, babe,” I said, sighing, and wrapped my arms around him. I lost myself in the embrace, and he held me tight, giving me the second I needed to release a little of the pressure I’d been feeling. “Why is this happening? To us, I mean. We’ve been good parents, haven’t we? We raised Isabelle with nothing but love and the tenets of kindness and decency. Did someone work some evil magic on her?”
“Hold on, Serena,” Draven said, squeezing me in his arms. “Let’s talk to Isabelle. Let’s talk to Astra and the others who were present. It’s too soon to draw any conclusions.”
“You’re right,” I replied, holding back tears as I gingerly pulled back and took his hand to resume our walk down the hallway. “But it’s got to be magic at work. I refuse to believe otherwise. Isabelle would never…”
My voice trailed off as I remembered what Corrine had specified in her message. There had been no sign of magical interference. Even so, I wasn’t ready to view my daughter as the villain in this picture. No, it just didn’t make sense. “Let’s go. They’re waiting for us,” I told Draven.
By the time we reached the holding cells in the west wing, my anxiety had morphed into something closer to anger, though I wasn’t sure what or whom it was aimed at. Astra, Jericho, Dafne, Voss, and Chantal were all seated on a long bench outside Isabelle’s holding room. Rose and Caleb had joined them, along with Corrine, Phoenix, and Viola. The moment I saw my brother, I nearly broke down, but he was quick to hug me. Our sentry nature allowed us to be closer than most siblings, and I could feel his emotions flowing through mine.
“I’m here, sis,” Phoenix whispered in my ear.
“What is going on here?” Draven asked, looking at Corrine and Astra. “How… how did this happen? Is Isabelle okay?”
Corrine nodded. “She’s fine, Draven.”
“And my scratches have healed, so it’s nothing to worry about.” Astra was trying to comfort us, but the thought that Isabelle had caused any harm made me recoil.
I peered through the door’s glass panel to see my daughter seated behind a table. She’d been cuffed to the chair. She seemed calm. Perhaps too calm, given the circumstances. My stomach churned as I tried to read her aura. The colors were jumbled, and it was hard for me to make sense of what was happening to her, emotionally speaking.
“Are the cuffs still necessary?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Rose replied with a heavy sigh. “It’s for her safety more than for Astra’s, to be honest.”
“Serena!” Mom’s voice shot across the hallway. I spun on my heel just as she reached us and took me in her arms. Dad was with her, and he cupped my face affectionately.
“Are you okay, honey?” he asked, and I nodded slowly.
“I’m not the one we need to be worried about,” I said, then shifted my focus to Corrine. “What happened, exactly?”
Jericho cleared his throat and stood up, briefly pointing at Voss and the others. “We were with Astra in the training hall,” he began, then gave us a detailed account of everything that had occurred from the moment Isabelle had entered the room. The more he spoke, the harder it got for me to breathe.
“I’m sorry, it’s just so hard to believe that… that Isabelle would do this,” I murmured.
“I know, Aunt Serena, and I’m sorry it happened,” Astra replied. “But I swear to you all. I did nothing. Isabelle and I get along well. There has never been any tension between us, and certainly nothing to warrant her unexpected aggression. I’m as stumped as everybody else.”
Viola stepped forward to rest a hand on Astra’s shoulder. “Corrine gave Isabelle a thorough reading. She didn’t find any signs of magical interference.”
“No charm, no curse. Nothing of the white witches’ variety, anyway,” Corrine replied. “I had Lumi do a reading of her own, as well. You know, just in case…”
“And?” Draven asked, his eyebrows raised. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and I knew he was having a hard time with all this. Isabelle was our soul, our pride and joy. Connecting her to such a violent incident seemed impossible—and yet here we were.
“And she couldn’t pick up any traces of swamp witch magic whatsoever,” Corrine said, looking rather disappointed. “Worst of all, Isabelle tried to attack me and Kailani, too.”
“Wha… what?” I breathed, the horror taking its time to settle in and make a mess of my senses. “Isabelle… Isabelle tried to hurt you? Kailani?”
Corrine nodded slowly. “She was cuffed both times, so there wasn’t much she could do, but yes. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. I honestly don’t understand what’s making her act this way.”
The more I observed the people around us, our friends and family and loved ones, the more I realized that they were as stumped as anyone else in this situation. I worried about what would happen if we couldn’t find the cause of Isabelle’s behavior, if all our questions went unanswered. What would we do with our daughter if we couldn’t figure out what had fueled this attack?
“Can I try?” Draven asked, watching Isabelle through the glass panel. He was doing a damn good job of keeping his cool. I almost envied him, because I was close to losing my mind here.
“By all means. Maybe you can pick up something,” Corrine said, pressing her palm against the silvery door lock. We all heard the familiar click, and Draven went in.
Isabelle didn’t even react. She just looked at him, then at me before lowering her gaze back to the table. Draven stopped beside her, taking a moment to study her. “Hey, honey,” he murmured, slowly reaching out to touch Isabelle’s cheek. She didn’t flinch or try to avoid his touch, but she stayed as quiet as a tomb. That worried me the most. “I’m told you’ve been acting… out of character.”
He moved his hand over her face, keeping a few inches between his palm and her skin. A faint green light glowed in the air between his hand and her face as his lips moved with the words of a Druid spell he’d learned as a boy. He was searching for Druid magic markers, but judging by the deepening frown between his sandy eyebrows, there was nothing.
“What compelled you to try and hurt Astra?” Draven asked, the green glow of his hands fading. Our daughter’s aura settled into a muted red. I could only interpret it as anger, though I had never seen a shade like this before on anyone else. Her gaze moved slowly but with intent as her eyes met her father’s. “And Corrine? Kailani? Why? I need you to help me understand, Isabelle. Where is this coming from?”
Isabelle didn’t say a word. My fears and confusion shifted toward anger again. I refused to let us all stand here, dumbfounded, unable to understand why Isabelle had gone into such a violently aggressive state.
“Serena, wait.” Corrine tried to stop me from join
ing my husband inside the padded cell, but I moved past her and walked in.
“Isabelle, I need you to talk to us,” I said firmly, though I could hear the faint tremor in my voice. “I need you to talk to us because we’re your parents. Maybe you didn’t want to say anything to your cousin or your friends or even the GASP seniors who have been trying to help you, but damn it, honey, you’re going to talk to us!”
She looked at me, and the coldness in her stare sent shivers dancing up and down my spine. I’d never experienced such a feeling from my own flesh and blood. Deep down, I had to admit it frightened me.
“Please, Isabelle,” Draven insisted. “We’re both here. We’re listening. No judgment whatsoever. We’re just trying to understand.”
A barely noticeable smirk fluttered across her lips a brief moment before she leapt out of her chair and brought her hands up in an attempt to strangle Draven. He’d gotten a little too close, but thankfully the cuffs were chained to the table, which stopped Isabelle from doing any real damage.
Draven moved back, and I whimpered softly. This was real. This was happening.
I heard the murmurs outside. Everyone else was baffled and scared, and it broke me a thousand times over that it was my sweet, sweet daughter who’d caused them to feel this way.
“Are you okay, Draven?” Corrine asked from the doorway.
“Yeah. She didn’t…” He paused and took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment, while Isabelle settled back into her chair, silent as before. “Why is she doing this, Corrine?”
It wasn’t the kind of question that required an answer. My husband understood that Corrine didn’t have one. But it was the only question he could voice as he struggled to process the shock and the dismay of being a target of his own daughter.
Astra sighed, shaking her head slowly. “This is the fourth time she’s gone after someone with magic.”
That statement instantly got our attention. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well. She attacked me first,” Astra replied. “I’m half Daughter, so there’s ancient Hermessi magic in me. Then Corrine, a white witch of the Sanctuary. Kailani, a swamp witch and servant of the Word. And now Draven. A Druid. I can’t help but notice the pattern.”
“Yeah, and she isn’t even acknowledging you, Serena,” Phoenix said, eyeing my daughter carefully. “Maybe this… affliction, or whatever it is that’s taken hold of Isabelle, is making her react against magical creatures.”
“What affliction are we talking about, though?” Draven asked, a pained expression settling on his face. I hadn’t seen him like this since he confronted Azazel many years ago. He looked defeated, and I had no idea what I could do to make the sadness and the suffering go away.
“That’s the issue,” Mom said. “We’ve run all the physical tests on Isabelle, too. Bloodwork, brain scans, everything.”
Grandma Rose nodded, while Grandpa Caleb checked his phone. “From a medical and biological point of view, Isabelle has a clean bill of health. Every test came back normal. There is absolutely no anomaly whatsoever, not even in her CT scans.”
“Yeah, initially, I suspected there might be an issue affecting her brain,” Caleb added. “Perhaps an aneurysm or a small tumor or even a nerve degradation somewhere affecting her behavior and decision-making processes. But there is absolutely nothing. Isabelle’s problem isn’t medical. That much we know for sure.”
Unless Isabelle decided to tell us herself, I wasn’t sure we’d ever find out what had caused this sudden change in my daughter. It dawned on me that her behavior wasn’t the part that scared me the most. No, what truly terrified me was the idea of never knowing what had triggered it.
As Draven put his arm around me, and we both glanced at our silent, brooding daughter—her hands cuffed to the damn table—I wondered how I could possibly cope with the rest of my life if my daughter didn’t return to her normal, loving self.
Tristan
Mortis was unchanged. That didn’t come as a surprise, considering it had been Death’s home for a long time. She liked this world exactly the way it was, with its sprawling bamboo forests and snaking rivers that stemmed from the central plateau where Death had built her palace.
The bamboo trees were surly giants, their slender green leaves dancing in the midnight wind beneath a pearlescent moon that seemed to see everything and keep it all to herself. I heard water nearby, murmuring streams making their way through the woods and spreading outward, breathing life into the ground beneath our feet. Thanks to Unending, I could see the spirits wandering through this place, spirits that had been drawn to Death’s heavy, undying presence.
They paid no attention to us. They merely lingered in the veil between life and death, aimless and oddly serene as they gazed to the north, where her palace rose proudly atop the giant stone plateau. Unending held my hand as she brought us up above the forest. We hovered in the air, watching the waterfalls pour into the rivers below.
“I wonder what her first response is going to be,” I said, imagining Death in her throne room, the palace chambers filled with the spirits of people she’d considered special and too precious to leave her for the afterlife. Unending had said that Death eventually let her companions go, replacing them with others over time. I’d thought it was still selfish and a disservice to the spirits themselves, and I’d wondered what Order had had to say about it. Apparently, Order didn’t know. What happened outside her realm remained a mystery.
“If she demands that I remove the seal, it’ll be obvious she wants to get back at me,” Unending replied. “That seal is the only thing standing between her and my vampiric creation. It’s the only thing that stops her from killing all of you.”
“Yeah, Death’s intentions would be painfully obvious in that case. But do you think she’ll even want to help us? Seal removal included in the deal or not.”
Unending stared at the palace from afar. I followed her gaze and noticed dim lights flickering in the window. To anyone unaware of who lived there, it looked like a lively evening unfolding behind closed doors. Perhaps a cocktail party or a group reading. The truth was far more sinister. “I doubt we have a better option,” she said. “It’s worth a shot. We agreed on this.”
“We did. So let’s go, my love,” I told her. “Let’s see if we have a chance of starting our own family, somehow.”
Within seconds, we’d reached the plateau’s edge. The water rushed down beneath, rumbling as it crashed over the rocky walls. It was quiet up here. Barely a breeze’s whisper could be heard. But as soon as Unending took her first step toward the palace, two Reapers appeared out of thin air, accompanied by their ghouls. To differentiate between the wild ones and the tamed, Reapers had begun putting diamond-studded collars around their unlikely assistants’ necks. The end result was eerily grotesque—precious gems gleaming beneath their deformed faces. I wished for a better existence for ghouls in general, but most of them had brought this upon themselves by eating the souls they were supposed to reap. The exceptions were, of course, the ghouls of Visio. But even then, Death had proven herself useless. The spiritual decay that led to the evolution of ghouls was a process she’d sworn she couldn’t reverse. Sometimes, the universe simply refused to budge.
I’d learned that long ago, which made my presence here all the more ironic, since I was helping my beloved Unending find herself a human body in order to bear children—a seemingly impossible task, according to that same universe.
The Reapers made it clear that they were here to keep unwanted elements out. “You cannot go in there,” one of them said, raising his scythe at us.
“It’s forbidden,” the other added. “Death does not wish to be disturbed.”
“Death and I are way beyond this kind of protocol minutiae,” Unending replied dryly. “Please, step aside. I must speak with her at once.”
The first Reaper chuckled. “What part of what I said wasn’t clear? No one can enter the palace. You’d best be on your way.”
“
Something tells me they don’t know who you are,” I muttered.
“I think you’re absolutely right,” Unending whispered, then smiled at the Reapers. “Brothers. I am your elder sister, Unending. Surely, you understand that I wouldn’t be here unless it was necessary.”
The second Reaper smirked. “We know exactly who you and your mortal pet are,” he said. “That doesn’t change the rule. Death specified that she is not to be disturbed for the next few months.”
Unending crossed her arms, suddenly intrigued. “That’s an oddly specific timeframe. Why?”
“That is for her to know, and for the rest of you to accept,” the first Reaper shot back. “She tasked us with keeping everyone out, and that’s what we’re doing.”
“And you think you’ll earn some kind of special favor if you blindly obey?” Unending asked. “You think it’ll elevate you above the others? Rest assured, brother, it will not. Death uses all of us however she desires. There is nothing about any one of us that makes us special or better than our siblings.”
The first Reaper pointed an angry finger at her. “You’re the wayward child. The one who caused all the trouble on Visio. Thanks to you, many of our siblings have perished or been doomed to ghoulish lives.” His contempt was obvious. “Spare me your condescending garbage.”
“The Spirit Bender did that. I only wanted to be free and on my own,” Unending replied, the air cooling around us. They’d made her mad, and I knew it was only a matter of time before she’d put them back in their place. She didn’t like arguing or fighting with other Reapers, but we’d come here for an important reason, and there was no way she would allow them to interfere. “Now, the two of you need to step aside.”
“Typical First Tenner attitude.” The second Reaper scoffed. “Your arrogance is disgusting. Yeah, the Spirit Bender did a lot of bad stuff, but you basically helped him, didn’t you? Death told us the story. We know about the magic Spirit stole from you. About the seal you left inside our maker, just to make sure she doesn’t mess with your precious living toys! How dare you come up here and talk to us like we don’t know who is truly responsible for the way things are. How dare you think you’re better than we are!”
A Shade of Vampire 87: A Shade of Mystery Page 8
