by L.A. Jones
Chapter Thirty
Aradia sat by herself at a Starbucks, nursing her extra-whip gingerbread latte. Normally she’d hang at the SilverMoon, but after the recent events, she needed a little time to herself.
She was thus quite disappointed when Tristan, of all people, slid into the chair opposite her.
“Tristan,” she said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really don’t want to deal with you right now. Say whatever you have to say, and please go.”
“Okay,” he replied, surprising her. “I just wanted to tell you that Dereck wasn’t the lone wolf you and your little team make him out to be. At least, not by choice.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”
“I did some digging,” he replied. “He had a pack, once, a pretty good sized one. He even had a wife. They were systematically wiped out, Aradia, one by one, real genocide style. Dereck was the only survivor.”
“Oh, God. Who was responsible?”
Tristan shook his head. “That’s all I got. I do know he blamed vampires, though. I don’t know if he was right to do so. This all happened a while back, and you know our kind doesn’t exactly keep records of this sort of thing. Apparently he was always kind of on the crazy side. Even in the pack, he was something of a sociopath. I guess when they were wiped out, it pushed him over the edge.”
“I guess that explains some of his rage.”
Tristan nodded.
“When did this happen?”
“Over the course of several weeks, a little over six months ago.”
“Tristan, why are you telling me this?”
“Why are you so suspicious of my motives?”
“You don’t do anything for nothing. You don’t do anything good for nothing, at least. What do you expect in return?”
“Nothing. Just take the information as a gift. Maybe it can make up for some of the torture through which I’ve put you and your friends.”
Aradia replied, “Gasp, Tristan, was that an apology?”
“Not at all,” he said, grabbing the back of his chair and rising. “Just a gift.”
Aradia and Roy strode through Salem Woods. Unlike the last few times she’d been there, this time they stayed on a path and enjoyed the scenery.
“What was it like for you?” Aradia asked regarding being called to speak before the hidden tribunal.
“Weird,” Roy said. “They didn’t tell me anything or let me stay after they were done questioning me. There were four of them on the panel. They didn’t introduce themselves, but I could tell they were a werewolf, a vampire, a fae, and a shapeshifter.”
“Sense of smell?” Aradia asked playfully.
“I’m telling you, it’s really good,” he replied, smiling. “What about you?”
“Kind of just a normal human sense of smell. Maybe even a little worse than average, actually. I tend to go heavy on perfume.”
Roy burst out laughing. “Yeah, I’d noticed on the perfume thing.”
She punched his arm playfully. “Jerk.”
He smiled again, and said, “You know what I meant, though. What about the tribunal?”
“They told me a little more than you, but not much. I guess they take the whole ‘hidden’ thing pretty seriously. They said that the decision was that Dereck would be punished for his crimes, and that because his greatest offense was against vampires, the vampire leader would have final say on his fate. Some guy called the Sovereign.”
“Against vampires?” Roy bellowed. “He killed two werewolves, nearly killed a third, and assaulted a witch. How did they figure?”
“His goal was to frame a vampire for an ‘unapproved race-based event,’” she quoted with her fingers in the air. “Apparently they thought that was the worst part of it all. Beyond that I don’t know.”
“Unbelievable,” Roy muttered.
“Yeah,” Aradia said. “You know, I still think Mr. Dayton was right. Human courts and prisons just aren’t fit for a guy like Dereck. But after seeing them take him away for what was basically a secret tribunal, then almost totally shutting me out… I don’t know. It kind of makes me question whether I should put complete faith in any system of justice.”
“You probably shouldn’t,” Roy replied.
“I just hope Kaiser and all the other relatives of the victims can find some peace.”
“What’s happening with Kaiser, anyway?” Roy asked.
“He’s heading back to New York,” Aradia replied. “He’s moving back in with his mom. Apparently she really regretted kicking him out. Has him all enrolled in a nice private school and everything.”
“I guess there’s some silver lining to all this,” Roy replied.
“Yeah,” Aradia agreed. “Plus, we’re all friendly again, right? More silver lining!”
“Nothing like combating a sociopath maniac to bring people closer,” Roy joked.
“Not just us,” Aradia replied. “I’ve seen how you and Dax have been interacting recently. If I didn’t know better, I might even call you guys friends.”
“Good thing you know better,” Roy replied gruffly. Aradia just grinned.
“You know,” Roy said, “since you bring up Dax…”
“Yes?” she asked.
“If you did want to date him… well, you could do worse.”
“Why, Roy!” she exclaimed. “Did you just give me your blessing to date a vampire?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he replied. “And he still lied to you for a long time. I can’t forgive that. But he showed his true colors in there with Dereck.”
“So did you,” she said. “Besides, unless Dereck decapitated him, he wasn’t really at much risk.”
“Rai, Dereck is a werewolf.”
She didn’t see what he was getting at, so he continued. “The bite of a wolf form werewolf is toxic to a vampire. It can really mess them up, even kill them.”
“Oh my God,” she said.
“And since he can basically live forever, more or less… he risked a lot facing Dereck like that. He earned some points in my book. I thought you should know. That’s all I’m saying.”
She nodded. “Well I really appreciate that, Roy. Now, about your love life! There is a girl I sit next to in seventh period World Studies who I think would be perfect for you.”
“Yeah? Who’s that?”
“Lisa Renier.”
He growled softly. “Lisa Renier. You think she’s into me? I wouldn’t mind studying her world.”
She punched him again. “You dog!”
“It’s difficult,” Ross admitted to Aradia over coffee. Well, he was drinking coffee. She was drinking hot cocoa with extra marshmallows. “Pretending I don’t know what happened to Dereck. The police are still looking for him. They’re investing time and money in a search which I know will bear no fruit.”
“I know,” Aradia replied. “The hiddens at school got the memo, but the humans are still talk talk talking about Dereck Caradoc, the Vampire Murderer, and when he’ll strike again.”
“I was a little miffed the tribunal didn’t even want to question me.”
Aradia smiled. “You didn’t miss much.”
“This whole situation is like one of those damned police dramas I hate,” Ross said. “The worst part is not knowing how Dereck’s story ended.”
“Yeah. We don’t know much on his punishment. But I do think I’ve mostly put the whole string of events together leading up to it,” Aradia said.
“Oh?”
“Dereck became a lone wolf, but it wasn’t always that way. He’d had a family, a pack, one which was taken from him.”
“Taken from him?”
“Wiped out. He thought it was done by vampires.”
“Ahhh,” Ross said.
“I think there’s more than that. You showed me some files, and Kaiser showed me some ledgers. I don’t think this was his plan from the start. The Vampire Murders, I mean. I think originally he’d been trying to swindle Mr. Stanley.”
“Invest to get a stake in the business, watch it fail, sell the property.”
“Yeah. He never thought the business could succeed. He was basically just buying out a big chunk of the property at a discount price. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d engaged in a sketchy financial investment.”
“That was more or less why the police ruled him out as a suspect,” Ross said. “Because he had nothing to gain by Stanley’s death. He actually lost a lot, monetarily.”
“I think his plan changed. I think even when he had a family, he was still a sketchball and borderline criminal. I think this was his way of financing his lifestyle.”
“The financial thing,” Ross replied, “it just doesn’t sound very werewolfy.”
“Cash goes a long way, Dad. Werewolves like nice things just as much as humans do. Money could get those things for him and his family.”
“And help his pack avoid trouble with authorities,” Ross added.
“Sure. But then his pack was murdered. He didn’t need the money anymore.”
“You know, this is making sense,” Ross replied. “One of our researchers issued me a report saying that the business partner, Dereck, disappeared for a few weeks, just about six months ago.”
“That’s right when it happened,” Aradia replied.
“Then he came back…” Ross said, putting the pieces together.
“He came back with a new plan,” Aradia supplied. “One that had nothing to do with earning a living.”
“So Stanley was the first victim because he was a werewolf, Dereck knew him, and Dereck knew he wouldn’t be a suspect in Stanley’s murder because of the investment scheme.”
“Right,” Aradia agreed. “The police would rule him out, then look everywhere but at him.”
“He turned a plan to finance his family into a plan to avenge his family,” Ross noted. “Very industrious.”
“Then Mr. Hitzig, another werewolf, figured it out, or at least got suspicious. He was the first vic’s lawyer, so it stands to reason he might have had concerns he wished to discuss. Derek was looking to kill a werewolf, why not one who’s sniffing around in his business.”
Ross said, “Hitzig basically handed himself over.”
“Right. Then when Kaiser and I started investigating, he figured Mr. Hitzig’s son would be the perfect candidate for the third Vampire Murder.”
“I’d been wondering about that,” Ross said. “Why didn’t Derick kill your friend when Kaiser went to him wearing the wire?”
“Because Kaiser was brilliant,” Aradia said. “He knowingly walked into a deathtrap because he figured he could outplay the killer. He let Dereck implicate himself before he ended the call to the police. You might have noticed Kaiser hung up just as Dereck was starting to talk about hidden matters.”
“I did notice that,” Ross replied.
“To any human, it just sounded like more crazy rambling. He was already impersonating a vampire in his murders, after all.”
“So what happened after he hung up the phone?”
“He pretended to beg for his life, and offered Dereck a trade.”
“What kind of trade?”
“Kaiser told him there was a new, exotic hidden in town who was dating a vampire and a friend of werewolves.”
“He gave you up?” Ross asked, suddenly furious.
“No, no,” Aradia said. “He just wanted it to look that way. Think about it. I’d have been a great choice. The werewolves would blame the Daytons, and the vampires would blame the Moraleses.”
“But what was the plan?” Ross asked.
“Call me, warn me Dereck was coming so I get out of the house, then call the police.”
Ross shook his head. “That’s an awful plan. The police found Kaiser unconscious in the warehouse where they traced his cell call.”
Aradia nodded. “Dereck planned to keep killing. He bumped Kaiser to spot four in his lineup. Kaiser never got the chance to warn me.”
“He could have gotten you killed.”
“Yeah, that part of his plan didn’t work so well. Dad, don’t be mad. No harm, no foul.”
Ross fumed, but Aradia was insistent. He drank some coffee and somehow managed to let it go.
“And Dereck’s ultimate goal?”
“To start a war,” Aradia replied. “It’s a hidden kind of goal. He was angry at vampires for killing his family, angry at werewolves for not protecting his family. He was angry at everyone.”
“Aradia, well done,” her father said. “You solved your first murder. Murders, actually. The shame is that we can never tell anybody. But well done.”
“Thanks. Oh! I spoke to Dax. After I was safe at the Dayton house, he came back here, to our house, to see if he could find anything to implicate the attacker. Dax found the rag Dereck carried.”
“What did he do with it?”
“He bagged it up in a zippy and gave it to his father. Mr. Dayton just got the lab tests back on it. They identified three different substances. Hold on a second, I wrote them down.”
While she fished through her pockets, Ross asked, “Sodium thiopental, mivacurium chloride, and succinylcholine?”
Aradia finally found the scrap of paper and checked over the list. “Um, yeah. I think. How’d you know that? Wait! Don’t tell me. You found the same chemicals in Dereck’s warehouse?”
“Well, the police did,” Ross replied. “But yes.”
“That just about ties it up, then,” Aradia said.
Ross squinted and studied his daughter. “I know you, Rai. You’re still thinking something.”
“Well, there’s one thing that’s still bugging me,” Aradia said.
“Hmm?”
“It’s something Dereck said to me and to Kaiser. He said that history would regard him as a visionary, anointed for a higher purpose.”
“Crazy talk, yeah,” her dad replied. “There are people out there who… their minds don’t work like the rest of us. Their minds are different. I’m so sorry I let you get wrapped up in this all, Aradia.”
“No, Dad, that’s not what I meant. Yeah, he was full-blown mad-ape crazy, but he wasn’t irrational.”
Her dad shook his head. “No, that kind of psycho tends not to be. They see some things that aren’t there, and don’t see other things that obviously are. They make wild claims about the world, but their thought processes and actions make sense once you understand their fundamental beliefs.”
“Right,” she said.
“What are you getting at, Aradia?”
“He called himself anointed, Dad. You didn’t make him to be the religious type, did you?”
He shook his head.
“No, neither did I,” Aradia agreed. “So if he was anointed, then he had to think somebody had anointed him, and if he didn’t think it was a god…”
“Oh crap,” her dad said.
“Yeah,” Aradia replied. “I think somebody killed his family to manipulate him into these murders. His boss is still out there.”
Epilogue
“Did you acquire it?” the Sovereign demanded.
Keon and Saul were on their knees in his throne room, with Aradia's torn bloody jacket in front of them.
“Yes, Sovereign,” said Keon. “We have acquired the item that your Demoness needs to determine if this girl is indeed the last witch.”
“How did you obtain it?” the Sovereign asked, sounding curious.
Keon proceeded to describe how Aradia had managed to solve the murders that took place in Salem, how the murderer had confronted her, and how Aradia had battled and defeated him.
Afterwards, the Sovereign was silent until finally he muttered, “Incredible. How else did you test her?”
“I released a werewolf on the night of a full moon,” Keon replied. “The wolf is one who is very fond of Aradia, a friend and would-be lover. I intended for their paths to cross.”
“That was quite a risk,” the Sovereign replied.
“A calculated one. If she
were the last witch, she’d survive the encounter. If not, she was irrelevant. Needless to say, she survived.”
“How did you gain entry to the mortal dwelling?”
Keon smiled crudely. “I have long since had free entry to that particular household. One of it’s residents and I share a history.”
“You summoned me, Sovereign?” Morgan asked as she suddenly appeared.
“The Night Shadow clan has provided the sample you need, but it is no longer necessary.”
“Not necessary?” Morgan repeated suspiciously. She had not yet told the Sovereign of what she had recently felt.
“Why, Sovereign?” Keon asked.
“Because I declare it,” the Sovereign replied. “Unless you hold me accountable to yourself, Keon?”
“Of course not, Sovereign.”
“What would you have us do with the witch?” Saul asked and received a jab from Keon's elbow.
The Sovereign walked to the window, and after exhaling a long deep breath, he finally said, “Spread word about her living in Salem.”
“Why?” Saul asked once more.
Apparently the Sovereign was in a good mood, for he explained, “I’ll not waste any more of my precious time or soldiers trying to deal with her. She’s already annoyed me more than I can tolerate. When other hidden creatures hear about her, there are many who will seek her themselves for their own ends. She will be buried in the crush of it.”
“But what if they acquire her for their own ends?” Keon asked, “A witch’s blood is the most potent and powerful substance in the world.”
“Exactly what will draw others to her,” the Sovereign said, “but I doubt this girl will be an easy captive.”
“But what if she cannot defeat them? Whoever captures her will most likely drink her blood and become very powerful!” Keon pressed.
Amazingly, the Sovereign laughed and said, “As much as it concerns you, I suspect she will not be an easy opponent, and if some foe does seem on the verge of besting her, then I can intervene.”
“The more challenges she faces,” the Sovereign continued, “the stronger she gets and the more potent her blood becomes. And the more potent her blood...”
The Sovereign slowly licked his fangs as he finished, “The more delicious she will be when I drain her dry!”
End of Book One
Read Tales of Aradia: The Last Witch Volume Two to find out what happens next. Feel free to contact L.A. Jones on her google blog https://lajonestheauthor.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter @LAJonesauthor, and Like the series on Facebook at the Tales of Aradia The Last Witch fan page.
Also feel free to check out the editor’s blog or contact him through his website www.harrisonbradlow.com, follow him on Twitter @Harrison314, and Friend him on Facebook.
Both Harrison and LA like that kind of stuff.
