Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  "Where did the flowers come from?" Lydie asked, giggling.

  "I didn't want to miss all the fun," Oliver said from over her shoulder, startling Lydie and Abby both.

  The waiter, finally noticing that his hat was smoking, held it to his face and gave it a distrustful sniff. Abby, Oliver and Lydie burst out laughing.

  ****

  "This is the place," Victor agreed, looking at his smart phone.

  Madame Lucinda's Wild Wares occupied a crumbling stucco house painted in vibrant greens and orange. The hand-drawn sign included skulls to dot the I's and little pitchforks pointing toward the open doorway. The smell of incense and cigarette smoke wafted into the already fragrant street.

  Sebastian looked back the way they had come. He scanned the faces of people walking the sidewalks, but saw no one watching them. Still he couldn't shake the feeling of eyes. The hair on the nape of his neck prickled and he looked up into dark windows.

  "Now or never," Kendra muttered, slipping her hands into the pockets of her jeans. Sebastian knew that she kept concealment stones in her pockets, as did Victor. They hoped to remain incognito while they got a feel for the place.

  Kendra walked in first. Her long blonde hair hung in a thick braid down her back. She wore jeans and a plain red t-shirt. To Sebastian, she looked like any other human. Victor stood out a bit more. It was his eyes. They were dark, nearly black, and his dark hooded sweatshirt, paired with dark jeans, only added to his mysterious image. He wore his hair, also dark and long, tied at the base of his neck.

  They had all tried for the casual look. Sebastian didn't own anything else so that simplified things. He also wore jeans and a well-worn Van Halen t-shirt that had belonged to his father. He had kept most of his dad's clothes, even the stuff he hated like pleated jeans and polo shirts. Not that his dad had often worn those things. Many of the clothes sat in a storage unit in Ohio. One day he would go back and clean it out, though the thought of it made his stomach knot.

  Inside the shop, skeletons dangled. Colorful beads hung around their necks and funky hats were perched atop their gleaming skulls. Shelves, jammed with glass bottles, hand-sewn dolls and an assortment of magic supplies from tarot cards to leather-bound journals, lined the walls. Behind the glass counter, filled with elaborate looking jewelry and huge geodes, a tall, dark-skinned woman read from a book titled The Wild Woman's Guide to Potions and Poultices. The woman wore tiny dark sunglasses, despite the dim lighting, and had rows of braided hair woven with little orange beads. She did not look up from her book when they entered.

  Kendra glanced at her and then wandered to a shelf of candles, picking each one up and holding them to her nose. Sebastian looked at a tattered book about shifter spells and mildly flipped through the pages, keeping an eye on Victor from the corner of his eye.

  "Hi there," Victor said to the woman at the counter. "I'm looking for a friend of mine who may have stopped through here. She's been missing for a month now and we're pretty sure she came this way."

  The woman set her book down and watched Victor with a bored expression.

  He held out the photo of Dafne that Oliver had supplied them.

  The woman took it and squinted at the image.

  "Never seen her," she said, but even Sebastian could see the lie in her face. He knew that Victor and Kendra saw it as well. Subtle, well-practiced at deception, but still a flick of her eyes toward a dark beaded curtain and a tightening of her jaw.

  "Is there anyone else here, who might have?" Victor asked, gesturing toward the curtain.

  "Nope, just me," the woman lied again.

  Sebastian walked over and smiled.

  "We really don't mean to bother you," he said. "But this person is important to us and we need to find her. It's life and death here." Sebastian chose his tone carefully. The thinly veiled threat was not obvious, but it was there. He placed his hands on the counter.

  Kendra shot him a questioning look and then joined the two of them in front of the woman.

  Victor bored into her with dark eyes, imploring her to open up.

  She frowned and glanced openly at the curtain now. She was human, but she had begun to sense that they were not.

  "I told you, I've never seen her," she said again, and this time her voice shook.

  As if the person behind the curtain sensed her distress, a man swept in from the back room. He wore a long navy robe with buttons running high up his neck. His white blond hair, cropped close to his head, was streaked with silver and black. Intense blue eyes, catlike, stopped on the three of them.

  "How can I help you?" he asked, not bothering to conceal his hostility.

  "When was she here?" Sebastian barked, jabbing his finger at the picture.

  He knew that both Victor and Kendra were taken aback by his forwardness, but something urged him on.

  The man barely glanced at the picture.

  "Never seen her," he said.

  "Mitchell? It is Mitchell, right?" Sebastian could not say how he knew this man's name, only that it appeared in his mind like a block of black text on a white screen.

  The man recoiled and his eyes turned to slits.

  Sebastian leaned forward and seized the man's wrist.

  "My name is Sabre," the witch said, through clenched teeth. He tried to jerk his arm away, but Sebastian held tight, daring him to react.

  "Your chosen name, sure, but I'm talking about the name your parents gave you. You know, the people who brought you into the world?" Sebastian continued, unperturbed by the witch's growing anger.

  Sebastian knew things about this witch. He could feel the energy snaking off him, crawling over Sebastian, inspecting. An air element, he thought.

  The woman behind the counter stood and disappeared into the curtain.

  "We're not looking for trouble," Victor chimed in, though his voice too held a note of warning. "But we've come a long way for this information and one way or another, we're going to get it."

  Mitchell, Sabre, glanced between them and smiled an angry-looking grin. One of his front teeth was pierced with a small blue diamond.

  "You're way out of your league if you think you're bringing trouble to my store."

  Two more people emerged from the curtain. A man and a woman. The man was short, stocky and reminded Sebastian of a feisty jungle cat. The woman, also short, but slender and silver-haired, looked like a much older, much wiser witch. She cast her light eyes upon them, and the title of a book that Sebastian's father had kept in his study popped into his mind "Something wicked this way comes."

  Sebastian dropped Sabre's arm and the older witch nudged Sabre aside.

  "I do apologize for my associate's reluctance to assist you," she said in a soft, breathy voice. Her greenish eyes regarded them with false kindness. "Please, join us in a more comfortable space."

  She beckoned toward the curtain beyond them.

  Kendra looked alarmed, but Sebastian nodded. They followed the three witches into the back room. The woman with braids returned to her seat.

  They walked along a dark hallway. The silver-haired witch pushed open a doorway that led into a small alcove with a spiral staircase. They followed the witches up the stairs and through another door that opened into a cavernous space.

  The room, or bar, was dimly lit with red string lights that hung like garlands from the bare beams of the ceiling overhead. A long polished bar, carved from the enormous trunk of a twisted oak tree, stretched along one wall. Behind the bar, dark bottles lined the glass shelves, lit from behind by a bluish glow. Couches and plush footstools surrounded knee-high glass tables. Several other people, all witches, Sebastian thought, occupied seats around the room. Some of them looked up when the silver-haired witch entered, but their gazes did not linger.

  "Have a seat," she suggested, beckoning toward an empty table. "Sabre, some drinks?"

  Sabre nodded and walked away without argument.

  "My name is Ethel and this is Maze." She gestured to her companion. "And you are look
ing for the dark-haired witch from the north? The fire witch?"

  "Yes, Dafne," Sebastian responded.

  Ethel narrowed her eyes and regarded him slowly. His skin prickled as her stare traveled from his face and down over his body.

  "Interesting," she concluded, but did not say more.

  "You're the L'Obscurite then?" Victor asked, curiosity getting the best of him.

  Ethel laughed, but Maze continued to watch them, unblinking. His face was a mask of neutrality. He made Sebastian nervous.

  "We go by many names, dear child. Such young witches you are. Babies really."

  Victor stiffened, but did not retort.

  "Exactly," Kendra agreed. "And we need all of the help we can get. You must understand that? This is our friend and she has disappeared."

  Ethel turned her eyes, now a milky blue, on Kendra. Sebastian realized that the woman's eyes were beginning to look like Kendra's.

  "Your friend? The witch that I met had no friends. She had passion yes, purpose maybe, but no friends. You have some other reason for being here. Why don't you enlighten us and then perhaps I can help you."

  Kendra noticed the witch's eyes and looked at Victor, startled.

  Ethel shifted her gaze to Victor and her eyes began to darken, blue giving way to brown, now almost black.

  Victor stared back at her.

  "Neat little trick you have there," he sneered.

  Ethel only smiled and continued to watch him with his own eyes.

  "I didn't know Dafne," he admitted, with a shrug. "But she was part of a coven that I do know and they are my friends. I am here to help them."

  "She was part of a coven? Has she been removed then?" Ethel asked.

  "I couldn't tell you," Victor replied, looking impatient. "What does it matter to you anyway?"

  Ethel folded her hands on the table and regarded him.

  "How am I to know what does and does not matter if I only have pieces of the truth?"

  Sabre returned with a tray of cocktail glasses, each filled to the rim with amber liquid.

  "Apricot brandy. A specialty of mine," Ethel told them.

  Sebastian looked at his glass. The liquid turned in a lazy circle around and around. He watched as the golden swirls moved hypnotically. The spinning grew faster, creating a cone in the center of the glass that seemed to extend beyond the glass, beyond the floor of the bar, somewhere... He brought the glass closer to his face.

  Chapter 12

  "The humans are too weak." Dafne heard the words through the veil of unconsciousness. She swam somewhere between waking and sleeping. Days passed in such a state and then she might get a few hours of complete awareness. As complete as oblivion would allow. She had no concept of night or day, of hour or month. Somewhere in the time before this moment, she had attempted to count the days. Whenever she found a lucid spell, she would scratch her fingernail into the dank wall of her prison. Then one day as she brushed her hand along the wall, searching for her markings, she found nothing. Scraped away? Had she been moved? No way to know.

  But those words, "the humans are too weak," lingered in the fog of her mind. She clung to them and like a lifeline, she crawled up those words, hand over hand, until her eyes started to open. Her eyelids, as heavy and dry as sandbags, lifted until she could see the space before her through the tiniest of slits. Light. The first light she had seen in ages and shadows moving across the room.

  Her eyes, too heavy to hold open, closed. She focused instead on sound.

  "The other witch is dying, nearly dead I think. The witches are wasted on her trials." The same voice again, familiar. Dafne fell and fell into the vacuum of her memories. Endless sinking, but she kept a hand clasped around the rope of those words, the sound of that voice. Somewhere in the eternity of her life, she found its source. Dark and tall and beautiful and he had loved her, but then he'd hated her and she'd hated him more. Tobias.

  The thought of his name sent a spasm of pain and grief through her body, and she jerked in her bed. It didn't feel like a bed though. It felt like a hard metal table. It felt like a morgue.

  "Is she waking up?" Another voice now, and this one also familiar. Alva. Dafne found the name quickly this time. They went together after all. Tobias and Alva. Two parts of the same evil.

  "They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky. They're all together ooky, The Vepar Family." The song, modified, ran through her head and she snorted laughter.

  Again, she focused on her eyes and the lids lifted. She saw the shadows, the Vepars, closer now.

  Tobias walked to her bedside and looked down into her face. His black eyes, rimmed with red where white should have been, roved along her body. He smiled and revealed his glistening white teeth, sharper than she remembered.

  "Just a taste," he told her and lifted her wrist to his mouth. He punctured the skin and she saw that tiny red wounds dotted her entire hand and trickled down her wrist. He had been biting her. That was how he kept her unconscious. The venom in his teeth. She tried to jerk her hand away, but found no strength to pull and then no strength to keep her eyes open. They closed and she began to fall again.

  ****

  "I'm going to take a walk," Abby told Lydie as she slipped out the door.

  Oliver napped on the couch and Lydie sat at the dining room table reading a book. They still had not heard from the others, but decided that might be hopeful. Perhaps Kendra, Victor and Sebastian had managed to find out something after all.

  She trailed her fingers along the wrought-iron fence and pushed out of the gate and onto the sidewalk. Romantic, sprawling mansions towered amongst the subtropical landscape. She marveled at their size, their beauty, but most of all their presence. Each house seemed an entity all its own. Some of them hulked and glowered while others seemed to smile as she passed.

  She turned the corner and continued down another street and another until she came to an older neighborhood with houses in disrepair and abandon. She stopped at a massive structure. In the same style of the house they rented, with giant beams extending between the roof and ground, the house seemed to sink into the black soil around it. Looking at the house, Abby felt something akin to terror. It started at her hands, clasped on the iron rail, and crawled up her arms like tiny spiders. She took her hands away and shuddered, staring at the black windows, and almost expecting a figure in white to rush forward from the darkness.

  "Haunted, that one." The voice startled her and Abby stumbled back, tripping on a split in the sidewalk and landing hard on her butt.

  She stared up at a tall, slim man wearing a moth-eaten suit and a top hat. His gaunt face surrounded two bottomless black eyes that watched her with interest. He did not offer to help her up.

  "It looks abandoned," Abby added, struggling back to her feet and wincing at her tender backside.

  "Oh no," the man disagreed. "No one ever leaves that place."

  They both stood and watched the house. The man turned to her suddenly and leaned close to her face.

  "Have the sight, do ya?"

  She recoiled at his hot, sour breath.

  "I can see her, you know?" he accused. "The brown-skinned woman in fur."

  "Kanti?" Abby asked, suddenly unnerved by the strange man.

  He nodded and shifted his gaze over her shoulder.

  "Spectral, dark witch," he spat, continuing to watch over her shoulder.

  Abby turned, expecting to see Kanti's spirit hovering in the street, but only the desolate neighborhood returned her gaze.

  "Can't outrun the dead ones," he whispered, shifting from foot to foot as if agitated. He dropped his voice even lower so that Abby had to lean close to hear him. "Leona French, she knows what to do."

  He stood abruptly, turned and shuffled back down the sidewalk. Abby watched him until he turned the corner.

  She gazed back at the house for another minute and then turned away, hoping that she would not run into the strange man a second time.

  ****

  Sebasti
an blinked. In his hands he held a pile of roses in the early stages of soft decay. Their sweetness overpowered him and he shoved them away. They toppled off his lap into a heap on the concrete. He looked around. He sat on an iron bench in a deserted graveyard. Both Victor and Kendra sat on the grass, leaning against a large concrete tomb heavy with moss. In their laps lay mounds of spoiled roses.

  He felt dizzy, and when he stood a wave of nausea forced him back to his seat.

  Victor stirred and then yelped in surprise. Sebastian watched him fling the roses away, disgusted. His movement startled Kendra, also lost in a strange reverie. She turned slowly to look at them both.

  "Where are we?" she asked and then in slow motion tilted her head to look at the flowers. She lifted one to her face and wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, they smell rotten."

  "Does anyone know how we got here?" Sebastian asked. He tried to stand a second time, holding on to the bench for support.

  Victor frowned as if searching his memory.

  "We were in the bar. I didn't even take a drink..."

  "Neither did I," Sebastian said, "but I looked at it."

  "It was moving, the brandy, like a whirlpool," Kendra said.

  "Yeah, I saw that too."

  "Me too," Victor agreed. "But how? I mean how could that have led to this?" He motioned toward the cemetery.

  Tall concrete tombs stood in rows along the sparse grass. They could not see an entrance or exit, only endless tombstones.

  "Ethel Myers," Kendra read, pointing at the tomb that she and Victor had been leaning on.

  "Same Ethel?" Victor asked, still disoriented. He heaved to standing. "1856 to 1906."

  "Do witches fake their deaths?" Sebastian asked.

  "Some do, sure. I mean once you live past a hundred people start to ask questions," Kendra responded, also studying the gravestone. "But usually they change their names."