by Kade Cook
The moon peeks through the wall of clouds. A momentary sliver of dim light slips through the heavy cloak of darkness and reveals a break in the trees. She rushes for it—the means of her exit—as fast as she possibly can in the shards of moonlight playing hide-and-seek through the forest. It unveils long enough for Gabrian to shift left, avoiding near impalement in her fevered attempt to escape, but finds herself face to face with the demon himself. A scream escapes her lungs and turns her on her heels, searching for a detour.
There has to be another way out, she dialogues internally, retracing her steps.
“Gabrian,” he says softly, trying to enter her mind.
She feels the pressure of his probing but keeps running, searching—now thick in the tangle of trees that surround her with no end in sight—and pushes herself faster through the brush. She loses her footing on a fallen log and stumbles, hearing a snap as she falls. Burning in her ankle alerts Gabrian to an added strife and trying to stand only causes her limb to burn more fiercely. She knows rest is imperative for it to heal but there is no time. She fights through the pain, a temporary setback, and gets back up despite the growing ache. Glancing over her shoulder, she searches for a glimpse of what she is running from, only to see his mirage glimmering before her. She pinches closed her eyes and thrusts forward, passing through his translucent form. The surface of her skin tingles and causes her to shiver.
“Gabrian, please...” his voice calls out, a hint of sadness dwelling in it, pulling at her heartstrings. “I will not harm you, please stop,” Adrinn says as he reaches out his vaporous hand to reach her.
Gabrian slows her pace. Her instincts immediately yell at her to keep running, but she is not able to ease the longing tugging at her—the need to listen to his plea.
Seeing her pause, Adrinn’s lips twitch. He knows she will eventually stop. He has been inside her mind once before. Her compassion and her undying kindness will trump all other emotions and she will come back, she will listen.
“You know you came here to find something, maybe even someone, perhaps?”
She halts her half-hearted escape plan and stops—the throbbing in her ankle subsides in her pause. Narrowing her eyes, Gabrian’s night vision flickers and makes its return as if on cue. She grips her fingers tight, turning them into fleshy balls of contained angst, warm from the fire held within them, and exhales, peering over her shoulder at her ominous fiend of a friend, her fear replaced with annoyance of his games.
“So, what if I have?”
His face twists into an impish grin and his eyes swirl with delight in a yellowish haze casting an eerie glow against the darkness, and a sliver of dread creeps into her soul. “So, my dear little vampire, found me you have.”
53
HEART TO HEART
NERVOUS AND UNSURE of what to do, and being this close to her so-called accoster, Gabrian takes a step back, putting some distance between them, and pushes down some of the angst prickling at her skin. The sight of him in his ghostly form unsettles her. She only knew him in his mock-earthly form that Cimmerian had allowed him, not this wispy phantom she sees now.
“It seems like forever since we have spoken,” Adrinn hums, his eyes warming now, no longer bright and glowing in the alarming display they once were. “So, tell me.” He floats around her, leaving a dark smoky trail of aura behind him. “To what do I owe this great pleasure?”
Gabrian stands firm, his circling reminding her of a war-hound herding its prey and readying for an attack. “I came to...” She chokes on the words then finds the reason to go on. Straightening her spine, she narrows her eyes and stares him down as he makes his next pass in front of her. “I came here because I want to know if it was you who ordered those men to attack me.”
His winding journey halts for a moment and a grin surfaces, vaporous hand rubbing at the bottom of his chin, and he snickers out loud at her accusation. “Now why is it that whenever something goes wrong in your pitiful excuse of a Realm, everyone’s eyes turn to me?” He lets out a haughty chuckle then returns to his trek. “I do admit my talents are exceptional, but no, child. It was not me. I am not the greatest evil that dwells within your world.”
His words scratch at the back of her skull. Something about how they sound rings a knowing within her, one that assures her it is not he who ordered the assassination. Her eyes dart to the left, pondering her next question, but is interrupted by her host. “So, you are gathering quite the collection of gifts, or so I have heard.” He glances at her and then turns to focus on his nails, holding them out in front of his face, then flips it back over, making the smoky remnants of his fingers wash out in the mist then slowly reappear. “It was quite impressive to see you switch between them with such ease, I especially liked the ending.” He laughs but continues on with his retelling. “I didn’t think you were going to listen, but you did. You did, indeed.”
Gabrian gasps at his open confession, his knowing of how things took place. Her fists ball up as the sting of heat pulses into her own fingers. A violet haze makes its appearance within her palms as her aura shifts, switching around her, and glows in an array of layered colours. “It was you!” she yells out her implication.
“Pardon me?” he says, half surprised at her interruption, and glances at her, eyes narrowed in his humour.
“You were there. You were the voice in my head that told me to do it.” She stares at him, almost pleading with his phantom form. “Did you know if I was going to survive?”
He looks away and refocuses on his nails again, inspecting them more thoroughly. “No, not for certain, but I did have a hunch though.”
“What? You had a hunch.” Gabrian’s eyes swirl in a blue firestorm just beneath the surface and her face flushes across her cheeks in her anger. “Why didn’t you do something? You could have helped me.”
“Oh, I did help, my little youngling,” Adrinn says, redirecting his eyes to fall on her disgruntled face. “I encouraged you to do what was necessary, it was the only way. To be completely honest, I was rather curious about how the whole thing would turn out. I have always believed that one must stand alone sometimes in order to unveil their true path in this world—true potential is faulted when others impede their experiences. And I longed to see what kind of fire ran through your veins.”
Shaking her head in disbelief, she pulls at a strand of hair draped across her shoulder, twisting and wringing it, wishing it was his neck instead. “You are such a jerk. I could have been obliterated.”
“Yes, I suppose you are correct...on both accounts but yet here we are.”
“I can’t believe, out of all the beings in this Realm, you are what I get to call father,” Gabrian mumbles and grits her teeth, walking away from the spot where Adrinn is perched. Her eyes hurt from looking at his smug face.
“Um...sorry,” the fiend stutters, his blasé attitude replaced with confusion. “I don’t believe I heard you correctly. Would you mind repeating that last bit?”
Dropping down on a moss-covered rotted log, Gabrian rests her elbows upon her knees and runs her fingers through the top layer of her ebony hair, gripping it in her hands at the back of her head. She huffs out a loud groan and repeats her words in disgust. “I am Cera’s daughter.”
Adrinn’s face is stripped clean of expression. His mouth hangs open, unable to construct the hoity-toity grin that usually resides there. The wheels in his head turn in the silence, gathering memories from the past, and he feels the pain resurface of a long-ago time where something more was at stake—his heart. She had never once given him a reason to believe there was another life involved. Even after he found his way back from the depths of Erebus, and rushed to find her, to beg for her forgiveness and to tell her he understood she did what was expected of her and pressured into sending him away, she mentioned nothing.
Adrinn gathers his composure and softens his approach as he opens the silence between them. He recounts the love story of her mother and himself in the way his eyes remember it. The d
arkness he is betrayed as is the version they, the Covenant of Shadows, want her to see—the way they know she will be influenced and abide by their rules.
“Even when she cursed me to the Darkness, I never stopped loving her.” He confesses to Gabrian in such a soft tender voice she has no choice but to believe him. “I dwell within confounds of Erebus and in every measure of this world, within nature, there is always a way around the quest of man. They thought they were rid of me.” Adrinn laughs out loud and shakes his head. “Such arrogance rules the Covenant of Shadows. They have no idea just how deep the rabbit hole really goes. The Darkness of Erebus holds many truths for those who would see it for what it truly is and once I discovered what they are, I returned. I needed to find Cera. I needed for her to understand so I went looking for her, but on that journey, not many nights after I escaped, instead of finding her, I found you.” His replay goes on to explain that his questioning Gabrian when she was a child was to seek information and the possible whereabouts of his beloved.
“But they told me that you had crossed the line, given in to unforgivable sins of the fever, and had to be done away with.”
He slinks in closer to Gabrian and rests his bodiless form down beside her. “The hands of the righteous are more often than not stained heavily with blood of innocents. Do not let yourself be fooled my, dear. Before I became this” —he motions his limb to swipe over the remnants of his humanly form— “there were rumblings within the Covenant. Some members had begun to think Markim, your grandfather, to be old and useless. They wanted control for themselves. The Silver Mage had been in rule for far too long and the high table was in need of cleansing. They fed Markim lies about his daughter’s suiter, me, to upset him, and make him unable to see me clearly for who I was—making me a distraction. Markim became obsessed with keeping us apart. Not able to talk with Cera, I confided my troubles to a young friend of mine, Symone. Your mother became confused by Markim’s pressing accusations, especially about the girl, and judged me fiercely by every action I did.”
Gabrian’s recall of the history her parents told was quite a different account of what happened. Her eyes narrow as she questions his delivery of the story. “But they told me that Vaeda saw you in the city. She told Cera she saw you take life and discard the lifeless body like it was trash.”
Adrinn’s soft thoughtful expression altered at these words. The revelation of who had ratted him out to Cera causes his face to harden around the edges as he makes mental notes of the new findings. He refocuses his attention back to the matter at hand and intends to rectify what the Covenant has done. “My dear girl, that story Vaeda spun so willingly was only built of half-truths. I had gone to the city to find work to secretly build a life for your mother, to secure a future for us. I was being hunted in the city by the Covenant’s Peace Keepers—given the green light to do away with me on sight—in the honour of Cera’s standing. I was merely defending myself upon being attacked.
“As well, the night Markim died. It was the night I planned to go to Cera, to convince her to run away with me, but Markim intervened before I could reach her. He saw what I had planned in my mind and went mad with rage about my intentions. He tried to destroy me. So, my only choice was to defend myself the only way I know how, and tragically, the old man fell. Knowing that no one would believe me, that it was self-defence, I fled.
“The Covenant quickly told lies to cover any evidence of involvement on their part, filling your mother’s mind with doubts about me. I tried once more to convince her to leave, but it was too late, she had already been fed enough trickery that she could no longer see the truth in my confession. I loved her with all my heart,” he said, barely more than a whisper escaping his mouth. Gabrian feels the sadness reek in his confession. “I still do. All I wanted was to be together. But,” he offered, tone changing to a solid sound. “...the venom of the Covenant runs deep. It is deadly to those who would swallow down the poison, constructed truths, and the lies they are painted with.”
“But they said...”
His eyes, which were warm and sincere for a moment, are now covered in a layer of ice, smothering out any measure of kindness that had lingered there before. “We can sit here for centuries discussing what was said and what was not,” he chimes out and glides upright, slithering forward, hands tied neatly together behind his back. “If you wish for the answers you came to seek, I strongly implore you to look well within the conscience of your own righteous leaders for the truth. For it is within, the true colours of what they truly are will be revealed.”
His eyes dance over his shoulder at her in a quick knowing glance. Finding a word breaching the wall of silence within her mind, a word screaming so loudly within her thoughts he was unable to ignore, Adrinn allows Gabrian some advice. “An abomination,” he says clearly, her eyes jumping at him from her squatted position below. “It is a name given by weak minds—poisoned and compelled—a name given by the cowards who would have the weak believe as much and rid the world of this labeled evil. But to those who understand, an abomination, my dear, is a beautiful phenomenon—a precious flower that should be loved and adored for the magic that dwells within its petals,” Adrinn riddles, looking out beyond the edge of Thunder Hole, his eyes holding a new sadness as he stares into the dimming fragments of light. “It is a travesty, but some would cut it down mid-bloom, deny it life’s journey, and let it turn to dust rather than see what it becomes, or the beauty it could bestow on the world around it.” The cryptic tale ends with an abrupt stop. His eyes, now filled with a cautionary cue, rush to meet Gabrian’s. “Wickedness flourishes deep within the almighty Covenant, so heed my warning and mark my words, little vampire. Seek your answers from your Boragen Elder, Ethan. He will see it before anyone else because he has dealt with it before.”
“I thought you said the Covenant was tainted and evil.”
“Not all, my dear. Everyone has evil within them. It is a choice to be wicked.”
54
RESPECT
GABRIAN’S EYES FLUTTER open in the dimly lit room, the diminished amount of light failing to tell her the correct time of day only that it is on the edge of darkness, which side she is unsure of. She pulls in a slow breath, replaying her trip to Thunder Hole, and tries to untangle the truths Adrinn had woven into his warning. The stories the Elders have fed her and the tragic tale her friend, father, whatever he is has spun for her are at complete opposite sides of the spectrum. Gabrian’s head starts to ache as she tries to figure out who is lying. But she senses the odium for her around the High Table from those in attendance—especially two Elders in particular.
Cimmerian and Caspyous.
Their open show of distaste for her presence makes her wonder just how far would their contempt push them...how far would they stretch the law to protect the few?
All she knows is that Ethan is the key to unlocking the answers. Adrinn is not telling the whole truth, she can feel it, but if there is anyone she can trust, it is Ethan so she must find a way to get him to open about his past. It is a burden he has tried to hide from her, to protect her from knowing the dark truths of her kind.
The angles of the furniture’s shadows begin to mesh. Instead of her room getting lighter, it seems to be doing just the opposite. Her eyes jump to the ticking menace on the wall and a rush of adrenaline stings her flesh as the clock strikes the hour.
“Crap!” Gabrian spits out, jolting her torso upright in a panic. “The Covenant!” Jumping to her feet, still dressed and covered in dirt from her forbidden visit to her father’s, she hurries to the shower. Cranking the lever to the left, Gabrian disrobes and jumps into the frigid spray of water with no time to waste on comfort. Somehow, she has managed to waste an entire day. Tynan no doubt is waiting downstairs to escort her to the meeting and he is all about the rules. Even though he loves her to no end, for a Guardian, being late for an official Covenant of Shadows meeting is not an option.
INSIDE THE BINDING walls of the Covenant, Gabrian feels the m
agic as it constricts her essence around her. She scours the crowd edging its way toward the High Table, all of them bubbling with curiosity of what is to become of the wild youngling, the notorious trouble maker that has entered their Realm undetected and ever since caused havoc at her every turn. But she can’t be bothered today with all their mind rumblings. She is on a mission to find Ethan. She must talk to him before the meeting starts. Maybe he holds the secret that will explain everything, one that will give her a leg to stand on before the fangs of the Elders come out to bite at her throat.
Warmth on her arm distracts her in the hunt for a moment. “Gabe, honey, the meeting has started, and we are late.” The fact is, their tardiness will wear on him, a show of lax in his dedication—to him it is a show of weakness. Tynan rubs his chin, eyes narrow and hovering over all those seated at the High Table. He huffs and returns his focus on her. “Well, I can’t change anything now. What is done is done.” His strong warrior stance falters and he shifts uncomfortably in his own shadow, unsure of how to comfort her, how to protect her.
“It’s gonna be all right.”
Gabrian nods, pressing her lips tight, and hopes that he is right. Her eyes well up at the corners from the sincerity in his voice. “Okay, Uncle Ty.”
“Just stay tough, don’t let them tear you down. You have support at the table who believe in you so remember that, okay? You are not alone up there even though it may feel like it. Put up your defences but tell the truth as you know it. It will all work out.”
Gabrian gives him a forced smile for his sake. For a big tough guardian that has probably seen more horror than she will ever know, his heart is gentle—at least where she is concerned.
