Jean was laughing and clapping as if he were a child himself. It was almost fitting that he wore the body of one. I said almost, because the very evil of this was beyond most people’s comprehension, and should not be suggested even in jest.
I did not waste time but leapt at Oleander to grab her throat. I felt a burning sensation on the inside and knew that she was trying to kill me, as I had killed the attacking strigoi in the forest. I drew my own strength fighting back her powers. I felt tearing and the flesh on my arm started to split as an invisible knife slashed across and upward to my chest, close to my heart. Like burning ink brushes it swept through my body.
I released Oleander and held my chest before falling forward. Jean continued to laugh behind me, but it was not the gentle infectious giggles of Zeke. Zola was crying out in support, but for the wolf’s safety, she could not leave his side.
Jean stood over me whispering: ‘You know what is best about turning humans into wolves. I like to hunt them for they are more of a challenge. They seem to know what’s coming and their fear is my reward. Oleander agreed to it. She was worried they might try to return here and cause trouble. So imagine my disappointment when you killed one yourself. You killed a human soul in the form of a wolf. I thought I had them all. It must have hidden deep in the forest waiting for an opportunity for revenge.’ He leaned closer to me so that he was barely heard. ‘In time, after a little coaxing, Oleander will let me hunt Zeke also. That is why I love her. She humours all my desires.’
‘Enough Jean!’ shouted Oleander. ‘Step away. He is dying. Leave him here. The others can have him. He is no longer strigoi. He is no longer one of us.’
I heard their shuffling first and then their murmurings. They lined the dark walls, their eyes gleaming like fireflies, panting like dogs for my blood. This was my end.
‘Come, Zeke,’ called Oleander to the wolf. But he was reluctant, meandering back to me.
‘Go, Zeke, run!’ I whispered and it took every bit of strength to push him away.
My world was quietly fading. I shut out the sounds of my fate. In my head I was swimming in Gildoroso’s healing crystal waters: the island, and my salvation, just within reach.
Zola
I could not bear to see Marek so weak. I could sense that he was mysteriously free of his strigoi bond, and now just a witch. Blood poured from his wound pooling across the stone floor. Should I kill him so that the poor grotesque souls did not tear him apart, piece by piece in their ravenous rapture? Jean and Oleander were nearly at the door. But it was not just Marek who would be fed upon. Several creatures closed in on me, saliva dripping from their mouths, the hunger in their eyes stealing all other thought, so consumed were they by the smell of blood. I knew these strigoi but it counted for nothing.
I looked to Jean who stared back coldly. ‘Please,’ I begged, but he shook his head. Oleander watched on, remotely, devoid of any feeling. I was no longer worthy of saving.
One creature gripped me and I pulled away as a human would do. My powers were used up from my healing; my weakened state was no match for even its pathetic feral desires. Perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps this was a fitting end to be torn to shreds and live in darkness for eternity. I had let both Zeke and Marek down, and my feelings were no longer strigoi but those of my weaker human prey.
All at once there was a great roaring sound. The room was cloudy, thick with energy. Marek stood once more, the blood dripping through his shirt from his torso. At first I did not see his face for his head was bowed. Slowly he lifted his face and I saw that his eyes were shining, filled with fire.
Then one of the grotesque ones, whose teeth were sunken into my arms, exploded, his body bursting into a fireball, his screeches echoing through the room. The others ceased their feeding and scurried backwards. Another burst into flames.
It was Marek, powerful, his rage out of control. But how? He was only a witch now.
Both Oleander and Jean strode forward; heads bent in silent menacing charge, their combined forces launched across the room in lightning strikes to counter the attack. Light arced between the opponents, sending waves of heat to the corners of the chamber. At first the pair was driven back several steps, almost overpowered by this last attempt by the man I once loved like a human. For several moments they were locked and then the balance was returned. Marek weakened, falling to his knees.
Oleander raised her hand and Marek fell on the floor, as if a giant mallet had knocked him forward. She went to strike again when rumbling sounded beneath us and the ground trembled. A storm was raging somewhere deep beneath our feet and the candles flickered wildly without breeze. The thundering grew steadily louder whilst the earth shook violently before suddenly ceasing. There was a moment of silence and I turned to the crackling sound of heavy stone only yards from where we stood. Part of the floor crumbled inwards and broken marble fell into an open hole. More pieces shattered further into fragments, and dust then swirled upwards from the cavity.
Something clothed rose from the centre of the dust storm, a tall creature covered in pale sandy earth. But it could not be?
‘Lewis!’ I gasped with shock.
But he did not look my way, his focus on one alone: Oleander. He walked towards her.
‘Oleander,’ he said, scrutinizing her changed appearance. ‘I see that you are much altered. Pity… I liked you better as you were.’
Lewis’s voice was deep and slow, and spellbindingly calm as I remembered. His long raven hair was streaked with silver, a short beard, and a long imposing nose extending from a high angular brow. Even in his aged years he was magnificent. ‘I trusted you. I knew you were intelligent but what I did not see was that you are also very calculating. I should have seen those early signs of rebellion when you experimented with the transferral of souls between animals, even after I banned you from the practice.’
‘It is impossible,’ said Oleander. ‘You are meant to be sleeping for a hundred years.’ Jean hid behind her cowardly.
‘You have misunderstood the power of the old strigoi – those closest to our origins. You tricked me into sleep. You said you would take care of things, but now I see you haven’t. This boy’s blood,’ he pointed to Marek, ‘has seeped into my resting place and awoken me and I have read his recent memories. I know what you have done, Oleander. You have broken code. And as much as I would love more sleep I am somewhat renewed from these past seven years and I must lead once more until the coven is back in order.’
‘You were bad for the circle,’ said Oleander, her commanding voice back again. ‘You were stuck in the old ways. The messages are clear in your manuscripts. Youth is the key. You failed to see that. You are responsible for letting our kind shrivel with age, their souls lying in the ground wasting time.’
‘Like all the youth of today, you are too eager for a quick solution. The key is patience. You do not need so many body changes. As soon as the body ages it is time for sleep. It is a natural course for the strigoi. It can be for a decade, it can be longer, whatever the strigoi wants and needs, however many years he or she may want to reverse. Many of these whom you have trapped in the basement should have been buried so that they may rebuild themselves. Degeneration is a sign that it is time to rest.
‘You take a soul each time you kill yet I taught only to take the blood. Taking just one soul is enough to complete a witch’s immortality. Anything more is greed. Souls make us powerful, that is true, but they are a drug. The more you take, the more you crave, and the quicker your body ages. You knew all this, which is why you encourage the body transferrals, so that none of your loyal flock learns the consequences; so that none of them have choices. And it has got out of control for your hosts are getting younger.
‘I told you years ago that body transferral is to be used in times of necessity only. It is important for our kind to sleep, to give other strigoi a chance. Too many of us roaming the earth at the one time is bad for conservation across the species. There would not be enough humans to support
us in the way you have bred our kind.’
‘You could not handle change,’ said Oleander, fiercely. ‘The strigoi must evolve and adapt. There are wars coming. There are signs. I am the strigoi of the new generation to lead the battle for our circle. We must stay young and strong.’
‘I know the signs are there but we are strong enough, Oleander, and we can fix things intelligently without a war, as we have done before.’
‘You are wrong. You would see our circle destroyed with your generation of weaklings.’
‘Still, you do not listen,’ said Lewis shaking his head sadly. ‘You have left me no choice. I am in charge now to fix what you have done.’
‘You are still an old man. What can you do?’
At this the grotesque ones stepped closer, surrounding Lewis and Oleander. ‘We have no burial to replenish – she banned the practice and punished us,’ said one.
Lewis’s jaw was clamped hard, his eyes fixed upon Oleander, who raised her chin defiantly. Jean had already slipped away from the room unseen, leaving Oleander to fend for herself.
Oleander took a step back.
‘It was only temporary, until they yielded to my rules.’
Lewis raised his arm and I felt his power in the room. The walls were moving; stones shook from their resting places. I could only imagine what the full magnitude of his power could do. Oleander once said that he was one of the oldest and strongest of our kind.
‘You were my shining light and more beautiful when you looked like your mother, before you chose this bland, sickly cover.’
‘Stand back or I will…’
‘What, Daughter? You will kill me?’
Daughter?
‘There is nothing you can do,’ said Lewis. ‘And if only you knew how this pains me so.’ I felt a burst of energy from Oleander. Lewis stopped for just a second but then he walked forward again. Her strength depleted, she had used much of her powers tonight. In full power she was still no match for Lewis.
‘You failed to understand in your impatience for perfection to care for the rest of your circle. You did not build them tombs to protect them, to allow them to rejuvenate. You have failed miserably and under the code of the strigoi you must be imprisoned.’
‘But Lewis...Father…’ pleaded Oleander, now abject.
Lewis turned to the grotesque. ‘I am back as master of this coven. Some of you need to rest peacefully and grow stronger. For some of you, your time is not yet to sleep but to feed. I will set you free but whilst in your hungry states you must still show caution.’
‘We are too weak to hunt,’ said one of the grotesque and the others agreed with murmurs and cries. Lewis took hold of Oleander and pushed her into their arms.
‘No! You cannot do this,’ she threatened, punching her fists at her fellow strigoi. Their greedy claws reached for her, grasping strands of her golden hair.
Lewis turned away.
‘Please…’ she begged as she sank and disappeared amongst the festering bodies.
It was at this point that I thought he would falter and not hand her to that horrendous fate but then the others had begun dragging her deep into the dungeon. Her screams caused the candles to flicker, the sounds eventually fading into nothing down the halls.
Lewis noticed me as if for the first time and nodded, before walking towards Marek.
‘No,’ I said, ‘please do not hurt him.’
Lewis turned to me instead. I felt in awe as I always had in his presence. In the past I had witnessed the strength of his craft.
‘You seem quite fond of the witch,’ he baited. ‘He has rejected our kind and killed some of my circle. I cannot allow an adversary to live. He could prove dangerous in the future.’
With that he turned back towards Marek.
‘He is Marissa’s boy,’ I blurted quickly, fearing Marek could be dead in an instant. ‘You can trust him.’
The words stopped Lewis short.
‘I did not see that in his thoughts. There are no images of Marissa.’
‘He never knew his mother. She died shortly after he was born.’
Lewis’s eyes were distant and there was only silence. ‘Oleander didn’t tell me she had a brother.’ He stood over Marek, searching for something, perhaps a likeness to someone he loved long ago. ‘I will heal him and then he must leave here. I do not condemn those witches like his mother who refuse the blood magic. We have choices. Marissa taught me that at least.’
Lewis placed his gnarled hands on Marissa’s son and light poured into his body. Marek cried out during the repair, his body in spasms on the stone floor.
When the healing was complete, Lewis did not shift his gaze immediately. There was a thick scar across Marek’s chest like a piece of rope twisted and hard. It was a mark he would have for life but his heart was beating strongly again. Marek lifted his head to look around him, flinching slightly at the hands that had just released him.
‘Jean is gone,’ Lewis said, perhaps reading Marek’s thoughts. ‘You could spend your life looking for him but you will never find him. In time he will return for there is something here he wants.’
I did not question how he knew these things; his knowledge and understanding was old and beyond many of our new generation.
Then to me: ‘Send this man and the wolf away from here and keep a watchful eye on the castle. Tomorrow I will return to my library but there are others I need to attend to now.’ He looked towards the empty passageways where the grotesque ones had taken Oleander.
‘Will you stay, Lewis?’
‘Yes, Zola. For as long as it takes to repair the circle.’ And these words comforted me.
‘And Oleander…’
‘I will let the others feed on her a while but she will live. I will see to that. These strigoi are not strong enough to kill her soul but she will need a new host body, and what else happens to her here is best not talked about.’
‘Why was I not told that Oleander was your daughter?’
‘Before she returned to me… from her time with her mother…I had a messenger come to me in a dream to tell me that a child of Marissa’s would lay claim to all the covens across the lands. I asked my loyal strigoi to keep the secret of Oleander’s origins from any new blood who joined our coven, fearing that no good would come from such knowledge. If someone else received such messages, Oleander’s life would be in danger and perhaps our coven also.’
‘Could the child they referred to be Marek?’
He frowned at this and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. When I turned, he was already gone.
Marek leaned on me heavily as I guided him up the stairs. He appeared disoriented and kept asking where we were headed. I did not answer. I was too busy digesting Lewis’s final words: Many will die by a hand more powerful than my own.
I wondered what foretelling was this and whether he spoke of Marek or Oleander; and if the prophesy had now passed, or had not yet begun.
Chapter 14
Marek
I was aware of things happening: the brush of cold stone against my shoulder, Zola’s arms around my waist, and Zeke sniffing my hand, which hung limply by my side. But it was like walking in a dream. I know I had come close to death, yet I did not feel unwell, just my sense of reality seemed damaged. It was not until we were out of the dungeon and in the main hallways once more that I felt a weight lifted from my mind and soul; and the feeling that my thoughts were once again my own.
Strigoi stood in doorways looking lost. They all sensed what had happened and let us pass. Their futures would take a different path, and perhaps the days of the feasts were over. Some, possibly those loyal to Oleander and afraid of retribution, had left, seeking a life for themselves elsewhere.
Celestina was crouching on the great hall stairs like a cat, with her eyes narrowed. ‘You will die, both of you,’ she said sharply. ‘Jean and Oleander will come back and kill you.’ This one remained loyal to Oleander. She spat at us as we passed. A weak strigoi, and a lower order, she knew s
he could not fight us.
Zeke sniffed the air, perhaps seeing if there was any trace of Jean. I wondered if he understood what had happened or whether he was just living on animal instinct and in the moment.
‘Can we track Jean, is it possible?’
‘Marek, Lewis explained that you would be wasting your time. Jean is long gone and clever, and his power and strength comes from his soul, not the young shell he is in now. He will hide, perhaps for years, perhaps even amongst humans. One day though, if he comes back…’ Zola looked at the wolf. ‘I am hopeful, but it is all I can be at this stage.’
Once back in Oleander’s library, Zola explained some of the events and I turned, wishing to seek out my sister, despite all she had done.
‘Marek, there is nothing you can do for Oleander now… nothing.’
Zola’s expression was steadfast and I relented. She assured me that Oleander would live. This, I understood, was a different world, a different order. Things would be dealt with in strigoi ways.
‘I have something to show you,’ said Zola. ‘Follow me.’ She led me over to the dollhouse at the far corner of the library. A faint humming came from this corner. Zeke whimpered slightly, then growled at the house.
Zola opened the tiny doors and windows of the house. I looked inside. There were hundreds of small figurines on the stairs, in rooms everywhere.
‘What is this place?’
‘It is Oleander’s experiment. It is the house of souls.’
The noise increased slightly and the sound was becoming more distinguishable, more like wailing.
‘They are crying,’ said Marek.
‘It is not so much a cry, as a vibration, their energies reverberating from their ivory casings. They do this when they hear someone standing next to them hoping someone might hear, especially when Oleander is not in the room.’
‘They are just dolls,’ I said incredulously.
‘No, Marek, they are the souls of people trapped whilst their bodies are being used by the strigoi. This began shortly after Lewis disappeared. Oleander first began the process using animals for body transferral, but stopped for fear that they might hunt her down. She ordered Jean to track down all the host animals and kill them. She thought this was a safer way to dispose of souls. Zeke was the exception. Perhaps she was more fond of him than we think.’
Marek (Buried Lore Book 1) Page 23
