by Kade Cook
Gabrian searches for the way back out but the light to the opening in the trees is no more. With no other real choice, Gabrian covers her face, hiding it from the razor-sharp points, and pushes her body forward, trying to break free from her entanglement and follow the path as best she can. Feeling the sting of all the scratches taking effect, and now wanting nothing more than to forget about following Cera and crawl back into bed, Gabrian presses once more against the thick brush—falling forward onto the ground through its final tangles without resistance.
In a quick pounce, she recovers from the tumble, up and battle worthy—scouting her surroundings and eyeing the trees behind her with a hateful glare. Gently rubbing at the soreness in her bare arms from its sharp claws, she is happy to be free and in open space, no longer confined. Taking a glance around for the woman, Gabrian brushes at all the broken bits of branches and forest debris still stuck in her hair and clothing, but there are no signs of Cera to be found, only what looks like the edge of a precipice mere steps from where she stands. Diamonds sparkle on the wake of the water as if from a midday sun. She breathes in the scents and the sounds of the waves breaking below her.
A familiar swooshing of ebony wings draws her attention, drowning out the ocean’s whispers from below. Gabrian twists her head to the side to greet her friend as he lands on a borrowed branch nearby. He tilts his head, inspecting with a rumble in his throat and then exhales a coo of contentment once her safety is confirmed.
“I would be careful of where you sit, Theo,” she warns, looking down at the red tears upon her flesh—her own reminders of their nasty temper. She starts toward him to close the distance between them but her feet seem to be stuck, glued to the ground without an inch of give.
Gabrian’s legs strain as she wills them to move but it’s futile. They refuse to respond to her demands. A loud cackle erupts from her Raven Guide in response to her sudden distress—a warning. “He’s coming.” Her mind’s voice picks up from the bird as the sky above them becomes plagued by the menacing dark clouds hungrily devouring any of the day’s light.
Gabrian struggles harder to get free. The grass beneath her feet crackles and hisses as the life of each blade is sucked out, turning them brown before charring them into mere fragments of dust. The once green earth that surrounded her is now nothing more than blackened soil and the ocean’s sweet scent succumbs to the stench of death as it stifles the air around her.
Her eyes rush to the sound of flapping and urgent caws as the tree moves to lash out its spindly branches around her feathery friend—wrapping its deceiving ends tightly around him. Theo’s shrieks echo through her as she watches without means to help as his ebony body becomes imprisoned by the wood he sat upon.
A low rumbling soon drowns out his calls and the ground at her feet begins to tremble and shake, splitting into tiny fissures and fractures beneath her. She pulls and tears with her thigh muscles, screaming at her lifeless feet. “Come on. Just move!” Her stomach flips as the ground gives way and swallows her up.
In a painful stop, Gabrian’s body crashes against a cold surface in a loud smack and her head aches from the sudden impact. Her skin pimples from the coolness of the stone beneath her but she slides her arms under her and presses down, leveraging her body upward and lifts her head, eyes straining in the darkness. She slides her left foot underneath her crouching body and pushes up into a standing position, relieved to be in control of her appendages once again. Instantly, she is rocked backward and pressed hard against a stone chalice that immediately confines her movement again, this time her entire body from the neck down is rendered useless.
Unable to move anything, she wrenches the muscles in her arms to move but they remain still. Her eyes recklessly gather bits of shapes around her as they adjust but all she can see is a rainbow of colours in the distance, a dimmed iridescence of flickering shadows, and the sudden tightening and binding of her gift around her—definite confirmation that she is now within the walls of the Covenant of Shadows and imprisoned on the very chair that she sat upon not so long ago.
She searches for the wall of light that normally allows natural brightness to penetrate through the shadows of the sanctuary, but all she finds is darkness—a darkness that seems to mock her. She glares at it and her eyes widen when she catches movement in front of her. Her mind envisions thousand-legged creatures slithering through the darkness, venturing toward her, and her heart pounds in the realization that she is not alone.
“No, my dear Gabrian, you are not alone. Not at all.”
Her heart leaps into her throat at the recollection of the voice. An eerie glow begins to form in front of her from the center of a table, revealing the owner of the voice whose face is lit with delight fused with a cynical grin—Adrinn. Behind him, with the help of the luminescent glow, Gabrian is able to see what is moving on the wall. It is not the creatures she had imagined before, it is much worse.
There are people.
Not just people—it is a wall decorated with the bodies of all the Covenant of Shadows Elders. Their bodies lie motionless, bound tightly to its surface. Their eyes are open but empty and unresponsive as if caught in a suspended state of dreaming.
“I would like to thank you, my dear,” he begins.
Tearing her eyes away from the wall of bodies, she gapes at him. “Thank me, for what?”
“For helping me make all of this a possibility.” He congratulates, waving his arm across the collection of Elders spread behind him. “Without you, none of this would be happening.”
Gabrian grapples for words, her mouth gaping in shock. “I didn’t, I mean I didn’t think...”
“You did not think what, that these vile creatures would go unpunished for what they did?” he says, leaning forward into the light, and folds his hand on the table. “For what they do.”
“I know what they are and that their ways are selfish and cruel but this,” —Gabrian’s eyes leave him to stare at his collection, shaking her head she returns to her captor, “—what you are doing isn’t right either.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” Adrinn sneers as he rises from his perch and stalks closer to the wall, admiring his collection of Elders as if he were at a fine museum of art. “This is what I would call exactly right.”
Gabrian pulls against her invisible restraints, trying to break free, but she is still bound tightly to her stone slab.
“So, now that I have them, what ever shall I do with them?” He pulls at the edge of his chin, continually petting the remnants of a beard that hasn’t fully grown in and paces, deep in contemplation. “Exile? No, too easy. Torture? Hmmm, now we are getting somewhere—maybe a mixture of the two.” He halts his walk and drops all his attention on his captive guest. “Perhaps you can help me decide, hmm? Since you were the one to help deliver them to me, it would be rude of me not to include you in on the fun.”
Gabrian glares but he only stretches his smile wider and returns to his celebratory plans. As he continues to pace in front of his prizes, she notices a couple more faces have been bound to the wall. Shane and her uncle, Tynan, are now a part of the party, pinned tightly in their comatose state in between Ethan and Orroryn. Her eyes water at the thought of losing the last of what she has for family and her heart explodes with a mixture of fear and hatred for this man, this thing they call her flesh and blood—her true father.
“Nooo...” she screams until her throat refuses to push out the violent noise any longer.
Adrinn’s head turns, revealing a sly gaze but is no longer his face. The conceited glare of control is now the pretentious smug illusion of Caspyous. Her eyes hungrily search the wall for him but his body is not among the other Elders; how could she not have noticed this before?
“Oh yes, little girl. You see all of this?” Caspyous hisses at her and waves his arm over the lot of bodies hung before him on the wall as she stares in disbelief at him. “Do you?”
Her ears ring in the wake of the bellowed question, every word filled with hatred tow
ard her existence. “Yes, yes, I see it.”
“This is all of your doing. Their ruination will be your fault. Every drop of their spilt blood will be on your hands.”
“No. I didn’t do this!” Gabrian screams, struggling under the invisible constraints, and her fingertips warm in her distress. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just wanted to stop the pain.”
“Nevertheless, it is your burden to carry now, and you get to spend all of eternity knowing that you are a monster—just like him.”
Gabrian’s fingers, now burning past her comfort level, spark at the ends, causing a bright burst of light to eject from them that steadies into a constant flare against the stone below, changing the molecular structure under its intense heat.
“You are helpless to stop it, all because of him and what you have done,” he continues with conviction, “all of these souls have been sentenced to death. I would even dare say that your wicked ways were to blame for the deaths of your beloved caretakers, Sarapheane and Jarrison.”
In the last vicious words spit out of his mouth, Gabrian’s heart shatters into a million shards of pain.
It’s your fault, echoes over and over again in her head, growing louder and louder. Unable to shield her ears, the words tear into her soul without remorse. A crimson ring appears around her wrists from where the magical binds wear at her skin as she struggles to break loose.
Cera’s slender form appears at Gabrian’s side in a blurred haze. Lifting her arm, she rests her hand upon her daughter’s wrist, causing it to still, slowing the intensity of the flare surging within her fingers and the disintegration of the stone constraint beneath.
She whispers to Gabrian in a calm, lyrical voice, “Let them go.”
Gabrian doesn’t hear her. Her attention is glued to her family pinned up, being readied for sacrifice.
“Gabrian, let them go.”
Hearing her this time, Gabrian glares at the woman—appalled by her absurd suggestion. “No! I can’t. I won’t.”
With a firm grip, Cera wraps her hands more tightly around Gabrian’s wrist and steps in front of her, blocking her view of the hostages.
“I can’t, I can’t. They are all I have left!” Gabrian screams at her, bobbing her head to the left then the right, trying to see past her.
“Gabrian, you have to let go. None of this is your fault, save yourself or you will drown holding onto the guilt,” she pleads, not removing herself from the line of sight. “Gabrian, Gabrian...”
With one last attempt, Gabrian rips back her arms and tears free from the binds that had held her. Throwing her body forward and away from the stone captor, she ignores Cera’s interference and pushes past, blinking to clear her sight and strains to find the wall. But all she sees are eyes the colour of a Mediterranean Sea glued to her, riddled with concern.
The scent of summer wafts gently through her nostrils, clearing her mind from sleep’s tormenting wrath. The echoing voices that called to her from beyond are no more—just the low familiar hum of her guardian’s voice calling her name is heard, sheltering her ears from the sharp accusations haunting her from within.
19
TEMPTING DAYDREAMS
AFFLICTED AGAIN BY the demons in her mind, Gabrian tries to assure Shane that she is fine even though the wide-eyed, frazzled expression she woke up with still wore on her face when he returned her home that morning and she left for work.
Between the nightmares, the Covenant’s twisting of words, and her squeamish stomach when it comes to feeding lately—not to mention the inability to sort out any of the truth behind what happened with Adrinn—her energy is dwindling and setting her off in so many directions that she always feels unsteady.
Though she forces herself to feed on dark energies to satisfy the hunger, it is never enough to dissolve the craving of what she truly lusts for—Gabrian knows she is different now. Something happened to her the night she was kidnapped and though it is wrong, she still longs to feel the rush of pure light as it sears through her veins.
Every client she books that walks through her office door is just one more temptation at her mercy—she knows it—but what she doesn’t know is how long she is going to be able to continue to resist and is just fooling herself thinking that it will get easier.
Ethan makes regular drop-ins in between clients to ask how she is feeling and each time she lies, telling him she is fine. She wants to tell him she needs his help, even just to seek his council for advice on how to deal with her new dilemma, but guilt reminds her he has enough to deal with. He does not need to deal with her problems as well. Truth be known, she does not want him to see her as any less than an equal. Not in his eyes. It means too much to her and so she will learn to suffer through.
She’s good at it.
After lunch, Gabrian sits silently in her trusty brown leather chair listening with as much attentiveness as she can muster to her one o’clock appointment, Mr. Jones. The man’s weathered voice fills the room with a soft hum as he retells tales of his troubled youth and all the horrors of it. She knows that within his words she will find the triggers she needs to look closer into his subconscious mind and locate what the true issues are, but today, she is not doing well to focus on anything. Last night’s nightmare keeps re-surfacing, fighting for attention over her paying client’s time.
It had drained her more than she expected.
Letting her mind relax so that she can try to focus on the hidden messages needed to breach the surface of her client’s blathering, she finds herself watching more than she should. The enchanting way his life essence swirls and dances around him in wisps of light of eggshell white has her utmost attention. The strands mix every few seconds with streams of beige and brown but she suspects that these are the lies his memory offers him from some darkened fantasy he conjured up as a child to make his boring story more believable, mixed in with the partial realities that keep him coming here to see her.
Feeling the angst within him building, she focuses on the dark energies like Ethan has taught her to do to replenish herself, to feed—also serving another purpose. It removes and relieves him of the darker strands of energy that plague humans—the unnecessary stress they seem to suffer from. Once she ingests them, it allows the host’s mind to settle and begins a healing process within, hopefully docking one more session he would need to attend with her.
Inhaling with less than an enthusiastic effort, she coaxes the dark energies to fragment, breaking away from the strength in the bond of its host. It snaps and sparks as it leaves and slinks toward her. Her lips part ever-so-slightly to allow the dim light to enter her mouth—instantly tasting it on her tongue as it does. The bland and bitter energy works its way into her system, filling the void of her lingering hunger, but it does not energize her like it should, and she imagines that it must be what eating sawdust must feel like to an animal that craves the supple texture of flesh.
Reaching her fill of the tasteless sustenance, enough to keep her somewhat functioning and alive, she exhales a less than satisfied breath that should be filled with a wave of charged elements—the exchange of feel-good chemicals, much like endorphins, that are absorbed back into the host and registered by the brain as a good trade.
Today it is only mere fragments of her lent Borrower Magik but the small trade is instantaneous. Mr. Jones’s aura still surges into a bright flare around him as the transaction settles—completely undetected by him except for a change in attitude.
His stories change direction, shifting from tragic little traumas to quirky and adoring memories and moments of sheer joy. Gabrian’s lips curve upward at the expected results but her body shivers with hunger—more than just hunger.
Since the night of her kidnapping, her insides ache and claw at her like she is starving all the time—always gnawing at her even after she has spent days of constantly feeding on dark strands of energy. But the need to feed never seems to stop now. Before, she could contain it and somewhat stifle it with the bland food, but no
w it constantly claws within her, wanting to be continually fed and pleading like a wanton beast that is denied nourishment.
Watching Mr. Jones’ delight, her eyes dilate. She becomes lightheaded and drifts back to the memory of when she had felt alone and filled with emptiness—a time when Ayden, or Adrinn, had found Gabrian and befriended her while the world around her seemed to be on fire with pain. It was a time when he had showed her how to make it all go away—to suppress the pain and how good it had felt afterward.
As she replays her nostalgic outings in her mind, the memories of only using miniscule strands of forbidden life essence, she falls deeper within the daydream and is disconnected from where she is. Mr. Jones sits oblivious to her mind surfing as he continues his session of rambling endlessly in his new elated state of mind, certain that he is making progress—the swirls of his amplified white aura sway and twist playfully around him. The two sit in their own little fantasies of the past while the fragile strands of light begin to twitch, changing direction and fragmenting again, only now drifting their way toward Gabrian.
Burning and sparking from its taunted disconnection from its host, the light lingers closer and closer in her direction. Still caught in the exhilarating remembrance of how the energy tasted on her tongue, her mind shifts into a much more vivid recall of how the experience delivered her from the mundane existence she had suffered and sends her reeling into euphoria, leaving her guilt behind as the white life dances upon the sensitive flesh of her lips.
Somewhere within her, a warning goes off, something alerting her to the fact that this memory feels much too real—the recollection of the taste is much too sweet to be but a mere daydream. Gabrian, in a brief moment of clarity, forces herself to pull back, mentally retreat and refocus as to where she is just as the taste of pure life essence trickles over her tongue and explodes into her mouth.
