by Carmen Caine
“Then, you are admitting you arranged for a Marchesi warlock to curse your lover’s new plaything?” Dorian asked, outraged.
The story of how I came into existence was starting to sound like a bad soap opera. Ok, a bad horror soap opera, I amended at the sudden mental image of myself trailing after my mother like a marionette.
“A Marchesi?” Dorian repeated, thundering in shock. He peered down at his sister in astonishment. “How could you think to betray the Terzi for a Marchesi? They will forever be our sworn enemies!”
I wondered how many factions the Charmed world had. The Terzi. The Rowles. And now the Marchesi. Each with their own circle of followers, their own warlocks. It was kind of a waste. I mean, at least for the vampires. With lives that spanned centuries, couldn’t they think of other things to do besides perpetuate blood feuds?
As Gloria and Dorian engaged in a shouting match, the door behind me opened.
Catching my mother’s scent, I turned in surprise.
Wearing her cream-colored designer suit, she stood there like a deer caught in the headlights.
Taking one look at Blair, Gloria clamped her mouth shut and turned her head sharply to the side. But not before I saw her nostrils flare.
So, it was a family reunion of sorts. I cast a querying glance at Dorian.
“Aye,” Dorian murmured, his eyes narrowing into slits as he spied my mother. “’Tis time we settled this affair.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “What do you mean?” I asked, coming to my mother’s defense. Granted, she was a horrible mother, but she was the only one I had.
Dorian waved a hand in his sister’s general direction as he said, “We’re on your side, Cassidy, both Gloria and I. We’ve a multitude of scores to settle with Emilio Marchesi for our own reasons. Join us. Surely you can see now that I speak the truth. Together, we’ll undo him.”
My mother couldn’t suppress a gasp.
Gloria flinched.
Great. I was trapped inside Emilio’s love triangle.
I wanted to go up to my mother and just shake some sense into her. After all of this, was she really still rooting for Emilio? Why? He was clearly a player. Professing his undying love to Gloria and then tricking her into hiring some Marchesi warlock to cast a spell which betrayed Gloria into biting his new plaything—my mother. He was really some piece of work.
Why couldn’t my mother see that?
It took me a moment to realize that Dorian had quit rambling. He was eyeing me, expectantly.
They all were.
Crud. I’d mentally checked out right at the crucial moment.
“Say that again?” I prompted with an apologetic smile.
Dorian wasn’t pleased. Not that it really bothered me all that much.
Expelling a long breath through his nose, Dorian moved to my mother’s side, and gripping her forearm, he threatened me. “If you refuse to recognize the wisdom in joining your own clan against your own sworn enemy, then maybe you’ll reconsider in exchange for the continued wellbeing of your mother, aye? ‘Tis treasonous, her pitiful devotion to a Marchesi. I shall not spare mine own sister, should she resume her filthy infatuation.” With that he sent a dark look to the petrified Gloria.
My eyes widened in alarm. How had we gotten from “I’m on your side” to deadly blackmail in the space of a few seconds?
“Tell me,” he thundered. “Tell me where they are, the bones of my kin!”
And back at the same, tired subject.
As I said before, patience wasn’t one of my strong suits. Especially when threatened. In retrospect, I’d have been so much better off simply keeping my mouth shut, or just politely repeating again that I didn’t know. Or just about anything other than what I did—which was to lose my temper.
But in my defense, I was tired, confused, and hungry. A bad combination for me.
“Maybe you should be out there looking for them yourself instead of hounding me about it!” I snapped in response. “You’re a minion of the powerful Terzi clan, right? Surely, you can ask one of their spell-finders to sniff them out for you, eh?”
His brows formed a single line. “Don’t try me, woman!” he warned in rising tones. “Just tell me and have done!”
“Then let’s have done.” Nobody called me ‘woman’; I had to hit him back where it would hurt. With a smile, I unloaded. “I suppose you’re not out there looking for them yourself because you’re scared you might run into Lucian Rowle—intimidated and unmanned by his superior power a bit, aren’t you? I can understand that.”
Mentioning Lucian is what tipped it off. I should have zipped my mouth shut. What was that phrase about gaining weight? Something about a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips? This was: A moment on the lips which brought Apocalypse. Not the greatest of rhymes, but it illustrates my point.
It really was an Apocalypse.
White fury descended over Dorian—blazing, white-hot fury of immeasurable proportions. His entire body went rigid. He was beyond furious.
Tossing his head back, he roared a name which sounded like Dougie or Dougall or something like that.
A moment later, a new Chosen One burst through the door. I don’t remember what he looked like. I just noticed that he was holding some kind of long, wooden spear.
Dorian whirled on me then, shouting a series of threats along the lines of, “Tell me now, or your mother dies!”
My mouth dropped open.
It all happened so fast.
I leapt for my mother. Yes, I was fast, but they were faster. Very much so. I think my mother broke free of Dorian’s grasp. I helped her a little, but she escaped mostly by her own effort.
She was almost through the door when Dorian raised his hand, yelling some Gaelic battle cry that I didn’t even begin to understand.
Gloria screamed for him to not provoke me. Something about a beast that slumbered inside and that she’d seen it before right after I was born. I didn’t understand that, either.
But then Dougie or Dougall, or whatever he was called, let the spear fly.
In slow motion, so slow I felt like I should simply be able to pluck it right out of thin air, I watched the glistening wooden shaft sail straight for my mother and right through her heart.
With a gargling gasp, she fell with it to the floor, writhing in torment.
Somehow, I was there by her side, holding her hand. Her fingers clenched onto mine in a feeble grip. It lasted only a moment before they went limp.
Her eyes turned glassy.
Lifeless.
My throat convulsed. I don’t know what came over me then.
If logic had ruled, I would have calmly waited for the storm to blow over and then creep back to pluck the stake out of my mother’s heart, help her to her feet, take her shopping to buy some new clothes, two plane tickets, and bop back home with her to Philly.
But logic didn’t rule.
Outraged shock, pure astonishment, and unfathomable anger filled me—washed over me. Raged through every cell. A bloodlust of the most complete kind.
No one was allowed to harm my mother. No one. No one could even insult her—except me, of course. I mean, really! Did they think I’d simply stand by and do nothing after they’d driven a stake right into her black little heart?
Someone grabbed my shoulder, but a superhuman strength came over me then.
Whirling, I extended my hands. It was instinct. I knew what to do. I felt like I’d done it a thousand times. One palm went straight for the solar plexus chakra. The other clamped over the forehead seeking the third eye.
I latched on.
It was a final connection—one that drained all life force, all mana, in less than a second. It would destroy. Completely. Utterly. Permanently.
Annihilation? Is that what Lucian had called it?
It could annihilate even a Chosen One, the Immortals of Death.
Primitive instincts controlled me like a puppet. There was no tempering the flow this time. No pra
cticing of moderation. No giving my victim even the slightest chance of survival.
I consumed his mana in one fell swoop. Dougie, Dougall or whatever Dorian had called him, was no more. In under a second, he’d turned gray. Then black. And then he simply crumbled into dust.
I really was a Monster—one of the Damned.
Caught in some deep, dark fury I didn’t comprehend and had even less hope of controlling, I turned on Dorian. But as I stepped forward, Gloria dove to block my path. It was easy. I just tossed her away like a ragdoll.
“Halt!” Dorian cried, lunging for me instead.
I waited until just the right moment and then delivered a lethal kick. I felt the sickening crunch of bone beneath my booted heel.
Dorian swore in pain, clutching his leg.
Had I really just done that to a Chosen One?
He flew back, landing next to my mother still impaled in the doorway, and reaching over, he then wrenched the spear out of her heart.
Somewhere, somewhere very deep, a small part of me noticed her fingers twitching back to life. If they had waited a few more minutes, I like to think that I could have calmed down on my own, soothed the insanity racing through me, returned to the normal Cassidy, but Dorian wasn’t about to take a chance.
Leaping to his feet, he launched the spear.
This time, straight at me.
The Nether Reaches
The heavy wooden spear sailed straight through my heart.
Agony. Pure misery.
He’d thrown the spear with such force that it caught me in its grasp and carried me to the far wall, pinning me like a beetle on a card.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I could scarcely think.
At that point, I guess I was dead. Technically. Maybe. Kind of. I really don’t know. A detached part of me felt pain, eye-watering, crushingly devastating pain. My entire chest cavity burned where the long stake had immobilized me.
Even though my eyes weren’t blinking, my vision still functioned. I saw the room. Dorian struggling to his feet and my mother slowly sitting up, her face expressionless with shock. Gloria was covering her mouth with both hands. But they were all in shadows. I could barely see them. It was like night had suddenly fallen, and I’d just managed to catch them in the last glimpse of twilight.
But even as the world around me grew dark, another one came to the foreground. Murky. Gray. Like fog. I didn’t see any shapes. Just swirling mist.
As if from a very great distance, I heard Gloria speak. “She can’t die. She’s not dead any more than she was alive. She has a foot in both worlds, Dorian. I couldn’t even kill her as a babe. I tried, believe me, I tried so many times.”
That startled me. Was I some kind of zombie?
And really, the freckle-faced Gloria looked so … well, innocent. She didn’t seem the type to experiment with different ways of murdering illicit vampire offspring.
A cold wind blew against my face. I looked around, surprised that my vision seemed to have expanded. It was getting chilly.
Where was I? Was this death after all?
Dimly, I could still hear Gloria’s hysterical babbling. “—and she can access the Nether Reaches, Dorian. You know what that means! She has a foot in both worlds.”
A foot in both worlds. I’d heard that before. The Night Terrors had said that.
But, I’d never heard of the Nether Reaches before. What was that? A real place?
The fog eddying around me grew thicker. Whiter. I could smell dampness, like the comforting, earthy smell of wet leaves.
Someone shifted my Earthly body, removing it from the wall. Dorian. With a loud crack, he broke the spear but left the stake embedded in my heart. The movement jostled me about, sending fresh bouts of pain coursing through every limb. And then he tossed me over his shoulder, and with a marked limp, carried me out of the room and back up the steps.
It hurt.
Unbearably.
I wanted to scream for him to stop, to just hold still, but I had no control over my mouth.
Lights were beginning to swirl in the mist reaching for me. It was getting harder to focus on Dorian. Maybe Gloria didn’t know what she was talking about and I was dying, after all.
Shouldering the door open, Dorian carried me back into the room and laid me down right next to Ricky, who was still snoozing as a little black puddle with two eyes.
The fog and churning mist had grown significantly thicker again, almost obliterating everything else. For the briefest of moments, I felt strangely free. And in that moment, I glanced down and saw a hand—white, ghostly fingers wriggling … it was my own.
My own?
And then someone pulled the wooden shaft out of my heart.
The fog and mist vanished at once.
Agony arrived, full force.
The unholy amount of mana that I’d consumed from Dougall was gone, as if I’d never taken it. In fact, now I felt faint with hunger. Instinctively, I curled into a fetal position. It was several interminable moments before I managed a long creaking pull of air that sounded like the last gasping breath of a dying human. And then the agony washed away, and all at once, I was back in the bright, earthly world again.
But I felt drained—stiff, sore, and aching beyond belief.
Remorseful? I couldn’t even begin to think of what I’d done to Dougall. Yes, he was a Chosen One, most likely he’d taken many lives. But still, I’d … turned him into dust. I pushed the memory away, down deep, and hoped it would stay buried.
Instead, I turned my thoughts to anger. Yes, this whole thing had only happened because I’d been threatened. Growing only angrier by the second, I sat up and shoved Dorian back.
“You threw a stake at my heart! You killed me!” I gasped in outrage. “And my mother! Where’s my mother?”
“I’m here, Cassidy,” my mother called from the door.
I glanced back to see her standing there, her face far whiter than her cream-colored suit. She watched me in complete horror, like she didn’t know what I was.
I guess that was justified, but it hurt to see. Salt on the wounds.
Rounding on Dorian, I accused fiercely, “You killed my mother, and you killed me!”
His green eyes flashed. “Ach, you’re both fine. Can you not hear yourself blather, lass?” He tossed his chin a bit angrily himself. “Your mother will never know death. Aye, and neither will you. ‘Tis nothing to get riled up about now.”
It was logical, in a very twisted way, and I knew he had a point, but I wasn’t in a mood to grant him that at the moment.
Holding onto my fury, I spat indignantly, “You didn’t know for sure I was going to live!”
I knew that much had to be true. I was one of a kind and I’d never died before.
He rolled his eyes and nearly shouted his response. “Ach, but you gave me no choice. You had to be stopped or else none of us would have lived, now. You’d have done to all of us what you did to Dougall.” His voice dropped and he added in a hushed tone, “Aye, Dougall. Because of you, he’ll no longer walk on this Earth, and I don’t even know if he’s walking in the Nether Reaches now. Do you?”
I froze, recalling the Chosen One turning into dust under my hand. Feeling sick, I turned my face away. So much for burying the memory.
Surely, it had to be some ghastly dream, but I knew that it wasn’t. No, I’d really destroyed someone—maybe even completely. Granted, I’d been caught up by some Incredible Hulk-like experience outside of my control, but there was no denial of the fact that it had still been me.
I wanted to vomit.
“Aye, it happens,” Dorian said, shrugging matter-of-factly. “You did it. ‘Tis done.”
Yes, it was. But I didn’t feel like I should carry the entire blame. “You gave me no choice!” I defended myself in a low tone.
Dorian just watched me for a time, rubbing the stubble on his jaw.
Finally, I broke the silence with, “I want to leave. I’m done will all of you.”
At least for now
I needed a break from this insanely complex Charmed world.
And as far as Emilio went, well, if I’d learned anything the past day or so, it was that I needed a better plan in going after him than three knives tucked in my boot.
I needed to regroup, and I needed to rest.
Reaching over with a finger, Dorian trailed it up my jawline. “Ach, you’re too valuable to throw away now, lass,” he murmured. “Now, I’ll never let you go.”
And with that, he rose and, still limping, left the room.
Helped by a … Portrait
I don’t know how long I lay there with my cheek pressed against the splintering, rotting floorboards. I was shattered. Broken inside. My thoughts caught in a mire of confusion.
Where had I gone? Had I died? Were the gray swirling mists the Nether Reaches? Had it all been my imagination? Part of the process of dying? Could I die or not?
And what had I done? How had I known to tap mana from the solar plexus chakra and the third eye at the same time?
Where had I learned that?
Everything had spiraled into chaos so quickly. I couldn’t account for what I’d done. I’d morphed into something hideous, and I still didn’t understand how or why.
Depression threatened—not something I’d ever thought to battle.
“It’s safe now,” a tiny voice whispered in my ear.
The third time it repeated itself, I focused my eyes.
Ricky stood in front of my nose, looking bright, chirpy, and anything but under-the-influence.
Almost mechanically, I asked weakly, “Aren’t you drunk?”
With his trademark giggle accompanied by a roll of the eyes, he tittered, “Allow me to introduce myself once again, eh, doll? The name’s Richard Thaddeus Mavromoustafakis. Imp, culinary artist, and thespian extraordinaire! But you, love, you can just call me Ricky.”
So, he’d been acting?
Really?
Or was he lying now? Or acting now?
