“Is that a bad thing?”
“Tell me, what has Sinai revealed to you so far?” he asked.
I didn’t even want to think about the horrors I’d seen on the hike to this point. “You know good and well what I’ve seen.” My tone was sharp, annoyed.
He just kept on sitting there with peace and serenity. “What if I told you that you were on the cusp of getting a choice? That a new path is about to form for you?”
Him and his riddles! I didn’t even have time to process it when everything began to shift. The kids ran by us and back into the house. “I think you will find the need to follow.”
He was right. We got up and followed Vic into his parents’ house where the rest of the family was gathered around the table. There was an older man sitting there and smiling at the young Red wolf. “Vic,” he said, a slight accent touched his voice. “Are you ready for your big night?”
“Yeah, grandpa!” he said enthusiastically. “I can’t wait to run with the wolves!”
God, this was breaking my heart. The joy in his eyes and his voice full of love, it was too hard to watch. “We need to leave.”
“This is most surprising, Isa,” The Teacher said. “You have seen some of the worst moments in history, and yet this is the time you wish not to be a witness.”
I couldn’t explain why this was so painful to watch. He was right, of course, I’d seen death, betrayal, and so much worse! When I didn’t answer, he answered for me. “It is funny how the world works. What starts as a simple plan to get back at a daughter who betrayed you and left you for dead turns into something so beautiful.”
“What are you going on about?”
He jabbed his finger at the exact spot on my chest where my heart was. “The power of love is infinite, Isa. You claim to know so much, yet you are so cold when it comes to God’s greatest gift.”
I swiped his finger away. “I’ve loved before. Don’t talk to me like I’m some waif.”
His laugh this time wasn’t the amused kind. It was the type of laugh of someone who is so annoyed with you that they have no other reaction to give. “You call what you had with the monster Drakel love? I call it servitude.”
I was shocked at the way he dismissed my deceased husband. “Don’t you dare speak of him in such a way!”
“I will talk any way I like, Isa.” The severity of his tone dropped. “I do not mean to push you so hard. I am just trying to show you the difference.” He took a step back. “I will leave you to your thoughts for the time being. I leave you with this question though – can you honestly say anyone has brought you this much joy?”
The Teacher was true to his word. As soon as the question was asked, he was gone. He left me to watch all the family festivities the rest of the afternoon, from the cake to the jokes that the Inglewoods shared. I got caught up in the moment, not even realizing that it was well after dusk when everyone got up.
Callum called his family to order. “It’s time everyone. The pack is gathering.”
This time as we left the house, the giant backyard was full of Red werewolves. The Full Moon pack was ready to accept their newest member. I stayed as far away as the situation would let me, on the back edge of the deck. That’s where The Teacher rejoined me. “This will not be easy.”
“You have no idea.”
“Have you thought about what I left you with?”
I had. “What do you want me to do? Say that in the midst of all of this I fell in love with Vic? That my true intention was just to destroy my daughter and the council, yet this happened? Is that what you want?”
His only answer was to gesture towards what was happening in front of us. As the moon took its place high above, the pack waited in anticipation for Vic to go from thirteen year old boy into an adolescent wolf. Yet what was starting to take place seemed off. I wasn’t a werewolf and I knew something was immediately wrong. He dropped to his knees, grabbing his ears and instantly began yelling. The boy was writhing in pain.
Callum and Vic’s grandfather, who had been in their wolf forms, immediately shifted back and ran towards the young boy. Vic’s eyes were wide, this must’ve been the moment the world became too much for him to take in. His grandfather tried to console him, but the boy was beyond help at this moment. The wolves around, knowing this wasn’t right, all started coming back into human form. There were murmurs in the crowd, a hushed buzz forming.
“Momma!” Vic shouted. “Why are they calling me a freak?”
“What are you talking about, dear?” she asked gently.
“I can hear them, hear them all.” I felt my heart break in two as he pointed out towards his fellow wolves. “The pack thinks I’m a freak! I didn’t transform like I should’ve, Momma!”
How his mother held her emotions together with her son in such pain is a true testament to her strength. She picked him up and rushed him back into the house. It looked like this was where my adventure came to an end, but before it did, I heard something the grandfather told Callum. “I cannot believe Oberon’s Curse is real…”
I felt sick. His family knew about the curse? From everything I knew, it wasn’t until he met a witch years later that Vic found out about it. How could Callum and his grandfather keep this from him? Damnit, why did I have to hear that? I didn’t need another secret to be attached to me.
Turning around, “Teacher, I’ve had enough!” I was ready to go, but he was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 15
One moment I was watching Isa run off into the darkness, the next I was in the cave. The rain was still coming down hard against the dark sky. I was breathing hard, not really sure what to do next. Isa seemed to still be out of it, if only momentarily. Her eyes began to blink; she too looked very lost.
Isa was the first one to make a move. Without even saying a word, she came over and wrapped me up in the tightest hug one could give. It was odd, part of me wanted to push away but another part recognized this as a caring gesture. Talk about a conflict. From what I just saw, Isa was as cold and calculating as they came. But would someone that cold be able to show affection the way she was right now?
When she let go, “I’m so sorry, Vic. I didn’t know.”
It was fair to assume that since I’d seen something in her past, she’d have seen something in mine. “What didn’t you know?”
“Just how bad that night was.”
That little line told me where she’d been sent off to. “What happened that night, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“We can both lie,” she told me. “I know where you were and I could easily say those events don’t mean anything to me.” She looked towards the ground and kicked a rock away. “I lost my husband and my daughter that night. You lost your pack.”
I was a bit surprised she was willing to talk about this. “So, we’re going to clear the air?”
“That’s the point of this exercise.” When I raised an eyebrow, “The Teacher joined me on my trip. Lucky me, to have a tour guide into your past.”
I would’ve loved to have a tour guide. She didn’t look that happy; probably due to those previous interactions she talked about. “So, what do you want to know?” I asked.
“There’s not much to ask.” Ehhh, something was off. She wasn’t budging, however. “I just learned that you are one of the strongest people I know.”
“I also was a cop for a number of years.” It was time to level with her. “You’re hiding something, that much is clear from the way you’re addressing me. What happened that night you’re not willing to tell me?” I asked with a bit more force.
She was conflicted, it was easy to tell. She started to say something and then stopped. “Vic,” she started up again, “what I’m about to tell you, it can’t be taken back.”
Could something have happened that night that I really didn’t know about? She was trying to protect me, but I needed to know what she knew. “In a few moments, the shoe will be on the other foot. Do you want me keeping anything from you?”
“They’ve known for all this time?”
She kept going. “Your grandfather told your dad that he couldn’t believe that Oberon’s Curse was real.”
I didn’t know what was worse – knowing that Isa wasn’t lying to me or finding out all these years later that your family knew about something so bad. “Wow,” was all I could muster. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
“I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, you did what I asked.” It was hard to keep my anger in check. This wasn’t the time to lose it. “It’s just hard to know that you, of all people, have been the most honest to me.”
She winced when I said that. I’d hurt her feelings. “What does that mean, Vic?”
“Let’s be honest. You were a terrible person back then.” Pushing out what she just told me and looking back on my time in the past, “You were ready to turn humans into cattle, Isa. Tell me I shouldn’t be worried about that,” I pleaded with her.
She went from conflicted to pained over this. “What do you want me to say? That I was influenced by my late husband and Cesar Alexis? I can’t lie to you about that, Vic.”
It was truly hard to see the lady in front of me as this cruel and shrewd person. She looked so… innocent. This was her turn to explain, so I didn’t say anything else, I just listened. “It was a different time. Vampires were hunted by those who found out about our existence. We were bitter, stupid.”
My experiences in humans going after our community went immediately to Warren Tucker, the crazy pastor who went on a supernatural killing spree over thirty some odd years. If he would’ve been able to see his plans through, I can only imagine the resentment at humans a lot of fellow wolves would’ve had. “Two wrongs have never made a right, Isa.”
“I never claimed I was in the right.” You know what? She’d never tried to justify any of her past actions. “All I can do is be the girl you met on the island. The one who has stuck with you and protected you whenever I could.”
Damnit – was this a test to prove that I’d changed from the jerk that once hurt Liz over omitting facts from me? Having a clue who someone used to be and seeing it up close, man that was a tough one. “You know what, Isa? You’re right.”
She was hesitant to smile at my acceptance. “I’ve been guilty of pretending to be holier than thou one too many times. It’s high time I start accepting people with their baggage and not judging them on stuff that’s no longer relevant.”
“Not that I’m not happy you said that,” she opened with. “It just seems so easy. What you saw, Vic, it shouldn’t be that easy to process.”
“Why not?” I asked. “When you find out your grandpa and dad both lied to you, it changes your perspective on things.”
That was the hardest part of it all. I’m sure that if my grandpa was still here and I could confront him about it, he’d say they were just trying to protect me. As a kid, I get that, but when I became an adult? No, my dad had a responsibility to tell me what happened and give me a choice to look into things.
Shrugging my shoulders, “If I haven’t been lied to, I haven’t been truly accepted by those who claimed to love me, your daughter included.”
Isa’s face turned dark. “I know what you saw in the past, but please don’t believe Elizabeth was innocent in the whole ordeal. There was just as much blood on her hands as there was on mine.”
That was easy to believe. Liz, always trying to portray this innocent vampire who was just caught in a bad spot. The same vampire who turned her back on me when I could’ve used her support the most. “You’ve never once looked at me funny or discounted me because of what happened to me on my thirteenth birthday or the fact I chose to keep the Warg.”
She wanted to reach over to me, to have our bodies come into contact. When I gazed at her, I saw a woman with a bad story that she just wanted to let go of, for good. “If you can see my baggage and not blink, I can look at yours and do the same.”
“Is it okay if I kiss you now?” she asked softly.
Grinning, “I don’t see why not.”
She took two big steps forward and we embraced once again, with our lips meeting together. With both of us having seen the other at their absolute worst, a lot of lingering doubts and possible suspicions were put to rest. When we broke free, leaning on her forehead, “There’s nothing on this mountain we can’t overcome together.”
“If we stick together through everything, Vic, the end of this tale will have a very happy end for the both of us.”
I loved her confidence. “I won’t let go if you won’t.”
“How could I? You’ve given me new motivation to accomplish my goals.”
We interlocked our hands and as we walked out of the cave this time, there were no side trips into each other’s past. We walked out into the rain and began our ascent of Mount Sinai.
Chapter 16
“Does the sun never come out?” I asked seriously.
We’d been following this path for some time up the side of the mountain. The rain let up, but the sky was still as black as the darkest night with the occasional flash of lightning to add to the ambiance. Isa’s mood had improved tremendously after everything; she claimed that the daemons and pictures of Hell were gone – replaced with ordinary natural rock formations.
“He was right,” she said more to herself. I wasn’t about to press for more information, yet.
After our first shared test together, I felt like Isa and I were a hell of a lot stronger than we had been when we entered the cave. There wasn’t much more that needed to be hashed out, so it was onward and upward. She gave a small laugh at my observation. “We’re intruders on this peak, Vic. This is the mountain preparing to fight back.”
Ahh, that was a realistic way to look at this. Of course the mountain wouldn’t want us here, so it was going to do everything in its power to send us back. I wondered just how much influence The Teacher had in this. Something in the back of my mind guessed that we wouldn’t see him again.
There was another participant who was very reluctant to keep going farther. The Warg had tried over and over again to get me to engage him in conversation, but I needed my full focus to continue onward. Finally, it just got to be too much. “Isa,” I said as we paused on a bit wider of a ledge. “If I don’t give the Warg a few minutes, he’s going to drive me crazy.”
“Understood,” she answered. “Take your time, I’ll watch over us.”
Feeling safe with Isa beside me, I closed my eyes and let the Warg show me the way to his den. There, I came face to face with the large black hellhound. “It is about time you answered my call, werewolf,” he said as I entered.
“You’re really annoying at times, you know that?”
“I lend you my power to perform your pathetic transformations and you have the nerve to address me in such a way?”
This was our thing. We bantered back and forth with insults before getting down to the real business. Today, he seemed in much more of a hurry. “I have no time for your games. We are treading on dangerous territory.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
He fought back the need to give me some more crap over my glib. Instead, “The vampire is old and forgets a great many things. I have not.”
If he knew something, he needed to spit it out. “What do you think you know?”
“Mount Sinai is home to one placed here by the Avenger himself.” He scoffed at the name. “Did you think that this would be an easy walk to get the crystal keeping an Old God in his prison?”
Well no. “Who’s the Avenger?” I asked.
“How you have survived in such conditions is a miracle.” He sat down, still towering over me. “Names have power. The beings y
ou will deal with here will not willingly give them to you.” And he added, “Neither will I.”
“Thanks for looking out for me,” I replied sarcastically.
“What do you think I am doing?” he roared. “You ungrateful child, if I give you the name, you will be in great danger. For once, your ignorance is preferable.”
I was getting tired of being abused by this furball. “If you got nothing else to add, I’m out.”
“Wait.” His voice still was full of malevolence, but his tried to contain himself. “When the time comes, you need to turn yourself over to me, completely.”
“I do now and then.”
“No, not like that. You must allow me to bury your subconscious and do the fighting.”
That didn’t sound like a good recipe for me. “If you do that, couldn’t you just keep me buried, never to be seen again?”
He didn’t even stutter on the answer. “Yes.”
Honesty from a daemon, I was getting it from the strangest places today. “So what’s my incentive for letting you do that?”
The Warg’s teeth were just showing under that massive mouth of his. They were constant reminders of just how dangerous a creature I was housing. “Believe it or not,” he started, “I am the most honorable creature in your life. If I give you my word, I give you my word.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“If you allow me to do battle against the guardian of the mountain, I will pull back once it is over.”
I reached out with my hand. He lifted his left paw and they connected. “Call me stupid, but I’m going to trust you.”
****
As my eyes opened back up, Isa was standing over me in a stance that dared anyone to challenge her. When she saw I was back, she pulled me to my feet. “How did everything go?”
“I made a deal I don’t feel too comfortable with.”
“How so?” she asked.
So I explained what the Warg had said, the clues he dropped. At the mention of the name Avenger, she winced a bit. “Does everyone know who this is but me?”
The Daemon Within Page 8
