The house was quiet and still. Enthrall walked through the house and into the bedroom. He looked into the bathroom, and then into the kitchen. His eyes narrowed when he noticed a kitchen drawer left half-open, and knives on the floor around it. He hurried over to the drawer and then spun around in a circle looking for anything else at all to give him a clue to what had happened.
“Shane?!” he screamed as loud as he could, realizing something wasn’t right. Shane and Deaumanique hadn’t just gone for a walk or out for the day. One of them had rushed for the drawer where they kept their cooking knives, yanking it open and spilling some of them on the floor where they still lay. The only reason for that would be to protect themselves. Something had happened to them. Enthrall rushed outside and into the yard, still screaming for Shane and Deaumanique. He eyed the birdseed spilled on the ground beside the birdbath again and hurried over to it, looking for anything else that would give him any information at all. There was nothing, not a single thing.
Enthrall ghosted away with only one location in mind, hoping that they’d gone to Aubreigne’s home for security, knowing that she’d protect them just as he would.
~~~
Aubreigne was in the garden behind her home tending her garden and simply trying to relax and enjoy the sunny fall day. She’d spent the morning with Evangeline and Lore. She’d had a difficult time convincing Evangeline that she’d be just fine alone, but Lore had seemed to understand and patiently steered his mate from invading Aubreigne’s life almost constantly for the foreseeable future. Aubreigne had known Lore to be many things, but patient wasn’t one of them. It had been a very interesting and entertaining thing to watch Lore gradually bring Evangeline around to his intention to leave Aubreigne alone as she requested. But finally, thankfully, she was alone and humming to herself as Rune lay nearby, keeping an ever watchful eye on Aubreigne.
She smiled as she paused to glance over at him. He was the perfect companion — stoic, quiet, fierce and ever watchful. As she turned back to her garden, she let out a screech at the sight that greeted her. Enthrall ghosted into position not two feet from her, the expression he wore telling her right away that something was wrong.
After catching her breath and scowling at him for frightening her, she stepped toward him. “What is it? Is it Amilanu?” she asked.
Enthrall shook his head. “Are they here?” he asked, looking around, then toward the house. “I can’t find them. I fear something has happened,” he said, starting to explain.
Aubreigne went on alert. “Them, who?” she asked, knowing before he ever confirmed it.
“The kids. Shane and Deaumanique are gone. There is evidence that all is not in order,” he answered. “I had hoped they’d come here.”
Aubreigne stepped close enough to touch him. She placed an arm around his neck and reached down for the collar of the wolf that had jumped forward when she’d cried out at Enthrall having startled her. “Take me to their home.”
~~~
Brannaugh arrived in the very instant that Enthrall and Aubreigne disappeared. He’d come the moment he’d heard her shriek, and cursed at having missed them. Thinking about it, he realized the only reason they’d move so quickly from her place, and take the wolf with them, was if there was a problem with their wed children. Brannaugh thought of the new home of Shane and Deaumanique and moved himself there in the blink of an eye. Sure enough, Enthrall and Aubreigne were already there.
Rune noticed him immediately as did Enthrall who gave him a silent nod.
“What is the problem?” Brannaugh asked.
“I’m not sure there is one. But, something is not right. And in the kitchen… well, you both see for yourself. Hopefully, you will not come to the same conclusion,” Enthrall said.
Aubreigne walked slowly around the yard where her daughter had created a habitat for all the wild things that lived nearby. She took in the empty bird feeders and the spilled birdseed on the ground beside the birdbath. “Perhaps they’ve just lost track of time,” she said, hopefully.
Enthrall shrugged slightly, not convinced of it.
Aubreigne went up on the small porch and then into the house with Brannaugh and Enthrall right behind her. She looked around the living room and found nothing out of place, then she walked into the kitchen, taking in everything with a critical eye. She went to the drawer that was hanging open, almost falling out of its place, and then down at the knives that had spilled out of it. She leaned over and picked one up before laying it on the cabinet top, and looking down into the drawer. There was nothing inside it but knives. “Why would this be the one drawer opened, with some of them spilled onto the floor?” she asked.
“It’s as though someone yanked it open and rifled through it, causing some to fall,” Brannaugh answered.
Aubreigne’s heart began to thump wildly in her chest, she turned around to face Enthrall and Brannaugh. “We have to find them. This is not right.”
“It’s The Dark One. He’s started his vengeance for me not giving him sanctuary,” Enthrall said.
“It is not The Dark One!” Aubreigne snapped.
“Then who could it be?” Enthrall demanded.
“It’s not The Dark One. Amilanu has just left me. He’s not been gone long enough to have The Dark One weakened enough to venture back. It is Amilanu who returns to me, not The Dark One,” Aubreigne insisted. “Amilanu would never harm Deaumanique or Shane. He knows of my love for them.”
“I hope you’re right, Aubreigne,” Enthrall said, obviously not convinced.
Chapter 22
Ata’halne shoved the obstinate girl ahead of him on the overgrown path. The movement of his arm caused the gash on his bicep to begin bleeding again, which made him even angrier. “You couldn’t just do what you were told, could you?” he snapped.
“Why are you doing this?” Deaumanique asked, her voice quaking with fear.
“It didn’t have to be this way!” Ata yelled. “All you had to do was come along nicely. But no… you had to attack me! Now you’ve ruined everything!”
“All I did was try to protect myself,” Deaumanique said.
“From what? From a man that helped raise you? From a man who once acted as your father? What could you think you had to fear from me?”
Deaumanique’s eyebrows drew down over her eyes as she realized who she was dealing with. “Ata? Are you Ata? Why would you do this? How was I to know it was you beneath the hood? Why would you try to force me to go with you?” she asked, finally figuring out why the hooded man who invaded her home this morning seemed so familiar to her.
“All you had to do was as you were told! You’d have been found, you’d have been saved, and everyone, including your worthless mother, would have thanked me! Everyone would have recognized me for the value I offer to this community and all others!” he screamed. “All would have been as it should be, but you had to ruin it!”
“You’re insane,” Deaumanique said, tears streaming down her face.
“Do not speak to me with such disrespect!” Ata screamed, yanking the hood off his head and charging toward her, using his chest to shove her down the path.
“You will pay for this!” Deaumanique threatened, shuffling her feet backward as he forced her to the path, to keep from falling since her hands were tied behind her back and she couldn’t use them for balance or to even try to catch herself if she fell.
“You will pay for this. Not me!” he said, dropping the rope that was looped over his shoulder with one end tied to Deaumanique’s wrists to the ground before placing his hands around her throat. “You will pay! And your heathen of a mother! And Enthrall, with his holier-than-thou condescension. I cannot wait to watch his disdainful glares turn to fear and agony when he finds his precious, worthless, stupidly trusting son.”
“What did you do?” Deaumanique shrieked, using her own body weight to throw her self toward him, head butting him with her forehead. “Where is my husband?” she demanded, while Ata screamed and slapped both hands
to his nose that had started gushing blood when she slammed her forehead against it.
“Where is my husband?!” Deaumanique demanded again, trying to head butt him once more.
Despite the blood spilling down over his mouth and chin from his broken nose, Ata was quick enough to grab her by the face and shove her backwards.
Deaumanique’s head slammed into a tree root and momentarily stunned her. Ata was on her before she could recover her senses. He leaned close and snarled only inches from her, spittle covering her face as he spoke. “He lies in a pool of his own blood, too weak and worthless to even realize he was being stalked. Too stupid to see me as foe as I approached. I doubt he even knew he breathed his last as my blade sank into his flesh! Worthless. That’s what he was. Kindness gets you nothing. Strength… strength gets you everything. Strength and cunning, and there is none more cunning than I.”
“You are nothing!” Deaumanique said defiantly.
“I am your everything!” Ata spat at her. “If you live, I decide it. If you die, I decide it. If I make you my woman here and now, I decide it! Your entire fucking future depends on my whims! Do you understand?!” Ata screamed as the blood from his broken nose splattered her face.
Deaumanique didn’t answer, she knew he’d lost his mind and realized that maybe provoking him wasn’t the best avenue to take.
Ata gripped her hair in his hand and lifted her head before slamming it back against the tree root again. Then he scrambled back, gathering the loops of rope and crawling back to her just as she was managing to lift her head from the ground. He shoved her over onto her stomach and shoved her wrists up toward her shoulder blades before winding the rope around her neck and then looping it around her hands again. Ata got to his feet and yanked on the rope, causing Deaumanique to cry out as her shoulders were wrenched at the same time her head was pulled backward. “Get up! Get up and keep moving. If you try me one more time, I will kill you where we stand.”
Deaumanique nodded quickly, but had trouble getting to her feet.
Ata stood back and grabbed the rope, pulling her up amid her screams of pain. He smiled with satisfaction as he looked around the dense, tight space of the clearing and realized where he was.
“This is perfect,” he said, taking in the huge branches of the Dragon Tree as they snaked across the ground. His eyes followed the contours of the large dragon-head shaped limb that rested only feet from them. The rest of the heavy branches sprouting from the huge trunk rose high into the air, giving the impression of a huge dragon frozen in time, his chin, wings and legs bracing the ground as the bones of his mighty body rose into the canopy of trees that grew nearby and easily surpassed them in height.
Ata’halne forced Deaumanique toward the Dragon Tree as his mind worked to find a way to get her onto the tree and balanced on the ‘head of the dragon’. “This is where we’ll have our standoff. This will work,” he muttered with a crazed laugh. “They will bow to my demands or you will die. Simple as that. I’ll demand Enthrall’s death. Your mother will comply to save your life. I will rule Whispers, they will all beg me to allow them to stay and they will work to support me, or you will die. I will take you to wife so that you’ll be always at my side to keep your mother in line. I have the power in this situation, not them. I will prevail.”
“You’re insane. My mother cannot kill Enthrall,” Deaumanique whispered through tears.
“She can! She’s a Siren, and a Demon! She can and she will! Then I’ll mate you, and have her at my mercy,” Ata’halne explained, his mind long gone.
“She’s not strong enough to defeat Enthrall. Even if she was, I’ll never accept you,” Deaumanique declared.
“I don’t need your acceptance if you’re beaten into submission,” Ata’halne snarled in her face as he slapped her. Withdrawing the bloodied knife she’d used on him from his waistband, he pressed it into her chin until he pricked her flesh and a trickle of blood began to spill. “Start climbing. I want you standing there, atop the dragon’s head.”
~~~
“Where do we start?” Brannaugh asked, walking out of Shane and Deaumanique’s home with Enthrall and Aubreigne.
“I’m going to start following the path back to my home and see if she’s there,” Aubreigne said. “If I find no trace, I’ll start following each path until I find them.”
“I’ll go to Destroy, and ask him to go to Carnage and Murder, have them take to the sky, maybe they can locate them more easily than we can on foot. After they’re in the air, I’ll start calling on Shane’s friends. Maybe we’re just overreacting and they went visiting,” Enthrall said.
Brannaugh and Aubreigne gave Enthrall a look that said they didn’t think they went visiting.
“I know, but it’s worth checking into,” Enthrall said.
“I’ll go to my people. They can help us search the darker parts of the swamp. If anyone else is responsible for whatever is going on, they aren’t going to hide in the middle of the community. They’ll be hiding where they’ll have less chance of being found,” Brannaugh said.
“Makes sense,” Enthrall said.
As they stepped off the porch and into the yard, the bamboo at the far side of the yard shifted and Odin stepped out of it and into the clearing, holding an unconscious man close to his body.
Enthrall turned white and ghosted to Odin, holding his arms out to take Shane from him.
Aubreigne began to tremble as she rushed to Enthrall and Odin with Brannaugh right beside her. Enthrall was bellowing with rage as he went to the ground with his son in his arms. Shane was unconscious, possibly even dead, covered in what appeared to be his own blood and soaking wet with muddy water having soaked through his clothing, with a hunting knife sticking out of his chest.
“I found him face down in the shallow waters. I gathered him up and brought him here,” Odin said, taking a step back away from Enthrall who was now very possibly out of his mind. Odin looked from Enthrall, who’d laid his son out on the ground and was stripping his clothing away to find the wound, and Aubreigne, who knelt beside him, pressing her hands against his throat as she checked for a pulse, to Brannaugh, who looked on silently.
“Who did this?” Enthrall demanded on a snarl, as he suddenly focused all his attention on Odin. Enthrall’s eyes were glowing, his fangs fully unsheathed, and he looked more a monster than he ever had.
Odin stood straighter, he lifted his pointed chin and glared back at Enthrall with his own ice blue eyes putting off a glow of their own. “I know not. I found him, just as I said. He’d been rabbit hunting, they’re still attached,” Odin said, raising a hand toward the string of three rabbits that were still attached to Shane’s belt loop. “His shotgun was still beside him in the muck. He must have known his attacker or surely he’d have defended himself. There was no other blood but his and the rabbits’ nearby,” Odin explained with a defensive tone in his voice.
“He’s alive,” Aubreigne rushed out. “Just barely, but I can detect a pulse.”
Enthrall turned his attention back to Shane. “Shane! Shane! I’m here, Shane! Hang on, I’m going to get you help,” Enthrall said, his voice nearly a shout as he ordered his son to stay alive.
“We don’t have time to get him help,” Aubreigne said. “You have to save him.”
Enthrall looked up at her with a confused expression before realization began to dawn on him. “I can’t! I can’t do that.”
“You have to. It’s the only way. You have to change him,” Aubreigne said.
“But… it’ll kill him. It’ll…” Enthrall stopped speaking, looking down at Shane whose blood was not even trickling from the wound in his chest any longer.
“He’s already dying. He will die, unless you intervene,” Aubreigne said. “You saved Felicity, and all was fine. Now, save Shane. You don’t have time to think about this.”
Enthrall, though seeming soul-shaken, nodded and leaned over Shane in preparation of sinking his fangs into his throat to drain what little blood was left i
n his son’s body. He paused and looked up at Aubreigne, then over toward Brannaugh.
“This is not like when you were turned, this is an act of life. You’ll be giving him life, not taking it,” Aubreigne encouraged.
Enthrall did not hesitate again. He simply stopped thinking and did what had to be done. He lifted Shane in his arms and bit into his neck, drawing what was left of Shane’s blood into his mouth. Once he’d swallowed that first taste of Shane’s blood, he could feel Shane’s life slipping away, he could actually feel Shane’s heartbeat in his own chest, and as soon as that heartbeat stuttered to a stop, he lifted his own wrist, biting into it and tearing it opened. He raised it above Shane’s mouth and allowed his blood to fall between Shane’s open lips.
Aubreigne shifted closer and took Shane’s head onto her lap, keeping his head tilted back and his mouth open as Enthrall continued to guide his own blood into Shane’s mouth.
It was only moments before Shane’s body instinctively swallowed. Enthrall pressed his wrist against Shane’s mouth, and let out an agonized moan as Shane began to take long pulls of blood from the wound on Enthrall’s wrist.
Aubreigne turned and met Brannaugh’s gaze. “Go, bring Felicity back.”
Brannaugh nodded and disappeared before her eyes.
Aubreigne looked down at the knife still plunged into Shane’s chest and wrapped her hand around it. She tried to pull it out, but just wasn’t strong enough. She looked up when she realized Odin stood over her.
Aubreigne Page 19
