Alone.
Uncle Caleb and Aunt Claudia sit on the sofa across the room. They’re both still and awkward, their eyes everywhere but on me. I grab the throw pillow in the chair beside me, squeezing it against my chest. This has to be the most uncomfortable we’ve ever been around each other.
The clock on the wall ticks the seconds away slowly, each moment more drawn out than the one before it. I twist the fringes along the edge of the pillow around my finger until my skin turns purple before releasing and repeating. Across the room my aunt and uncle remain silent. Uncle Caleb looked like he might say something a few different times. But other than opening his mouth, closing his mouth, opening his mouth again, and then closing it a second later, no words have been said. I guess telling your niece you’ve been keeping a huge life altering secret from her for eleven years isn’t so easy to explain. He leans back into the sofa, running a hand over the scruff sprouting along his normally smooth jaw.
Beside him, Aunt Claudia isn’t doing much better. She’s usually put together so well, not a stray hair out of place, or a wayward wrinkle in her clothes. But now dark circles bleed through her makeup, her hair hangs limply over her shoulders, and her clothes are disheveled. Seeing her like this causes a burning pain to bloom within my chest. Aunt Claudia has been like a second mom to me, and it’s obvious by the state of her appearance what happened to Liv and me after the concert is taking a toll on her. Part of me wants to comfort her, tell her I’m okay, that everything will be fine. But the truth is I’m not okay and things aren’t fine. I’m confused and scared and angry and I feel betrayed by the two most important people in my life.
“Maybe you should just start from the beginning,” I suggest after several more minutes of watching Uncle Caleb open and close his mouth like a fish out of water. He’s clearly distressed—as am I—but I just want to get this over with. Learn the truths about myself and my past so I can figure out my future—providing I get to have one. Vampires have already tried to kill me twice now, and then there are the witches Sebastian mentioned who probably want to kill me too for whatever reason. “Start with the day I got here and go from there.” I toss the pillow to the side and lean forward in my chair, resting my elbows on my knees. “Just start somewhere. What happened the night of the fire, for instance? Or why do you think I’m in danger? Why did you hide who I am from me for most of my life? What is this huge scary thing you’re trying to protect me from?”
Uncle Caleb scoots to the edge of the sofa and clasps his hands together. He stares at them before he looks up, fixing me with sad blue eyes. “There’s no easy way to talk about that night, so I’m just going to lay it all out.” I nod with a twinge of guilt eating at my insides. Sometimes I forget it wasn’t just me who lost someone that night. He lost her too. “The night of the fire, Abigail called wanting my help with strengthening a protection spell she was weaving around you because of something that had happened earlier in the day. I could tell she was on edge, but she wouldn’t tell me what happened. Probably because I would have insisted she come here even more than I already had been, and Abigail was a stubborn one.” A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth ever so slightly before dropping away. “She always thought she could handle everything, and for the most part she could. Until the day she couldn’t.”
A tear slips down my cheek at the same moment it does Uncle Caleb’s. He wipes his away. I let mine fall to my lap.
He takes in a deep breath and then another, pulling himself together enough to continue. “She called me again later that night saying they’d found you. You weren’t safe anymore.” The emotion churning within his eyes tears my heart in two. There’s so much sadness, anger, and guilt. “She loved you so much, you know that? I think she was more excited for your sixth birthday than you were.” He half laughs with a slight shake of his head, lost in memories. “She had this whole day planned out for the two of you, which is why I think she tried so hard to stay. I should have fought harder when I insisted she come here when she called me about the protection spell. Maybe if I did, things would have turned out differently.” His face falls into his hands, his shoulders shaking. Aunt Claudia wraps her arms around him and I want to too, but I can’t seem to get my feet to move.
“What happened next?” I whisper. Though truth be told, I’m not sure if I can take hearing it.
“We agreed the fastest way would be to use a portal. It takes a lot of magic, but time was of the essence. The bounty hunter was already outside the house and it wouldn’t be long before he broke through the wards. I waited and waited, panic clawing my insides out with every passing second because I couldn’t help her. Not even I knew your location because Abigail didn’t want to put Jack and Olivia at risk. All I could do was wait, and by the time she opened the portal, the bounty hunter was already inside the house. She pushed you through, but he grabbed her before she could get herself through. She fought so hard, Indi, she really did, but with the fire raging through the attic she became trapped, and with the bounty hunter trying to get to you, she did the only thing she could do. She sacrificed herself and closed the portal.”
I was right to feel guilty all this time. It really was my fault she died. She sacrificed herself for me.
My heart falls to shreds inside my chest, each sliver raw and painful. I stare at Uncle Caleb, his teary eyes and sad face igniting a spark of anger that quickly turns to a raging fire from hell, burning through the devastating sadness weighing me down. Hands fisted at my sides, I stand with so much force; the chair slides back into the wall. “How could you leave her there? If the portal was open why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you try to save her? Why did you let her burn?” Before I can stop myself, I’m standing over him with only the coffee table acting as a barrier to my rage.
He looks up at me with acceptance in his eyes, like he’s expecting me to attack. Like he wants me to attack. My fists clench and unclench. An ache like nothing I’ve ever felt before tears through my chest at having just had my heart ripped out and handed to me, while the hole left behind festers and spreads. But I can’t bring myself to do anything other than stand there because the hole in his chest is just as big as mine.
“Don’t you think I wanted to?” Uncle Caleb whispers. His voice is anything but steady and cracks with every other word he says. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to help her Indi, but I couldn’t. Portals only go one way.”
I fall to my knees, a cold numbness seeping into my veins.
“We promised Abigail, if anything were to ever happen to her, we would protect you at all costs,” Aunt Claudia says when the silence of the room becomes too much to bear. “So Caleb and I decided the best way to do that would be to bind your magic and erase all your memories of ever having had magic. As a precaution, we erased the memories of anyone who ever met you before you came here too. I’m so sorry you had to find out about all of this the way you did. We should have told you sooner.”
I wipe my nose on my sleeve and dry my eyes the best I can. It’s pointless, the tears are going to come no matter what I do, but I’m trying to be strong—for her—for my mom. I’m nowhere near it, and I really don’t want to hear any more, but I need to know everything. I don’t ever want her death to be in vain, and if I die now because of whatever is after me, her death will have been for nothing.
“Why was there a bounty hunter after me? I was five years old. What could I have possibly done to warrant something like that?” Of all the things I thought they would say being hunted by bounty hunters wasn’t one of them. “Wait, are bounty hunters the same thing as chasers?”
“No. Chasers are more like guardians who’ve appointed themselves to protect humankind from dangerous or rogue supernaturals. They’re mostly made up of humans, though they have supernatural beings helping them out, too. The bounty hunter after you was… different. He came from a…” Uncle Caleb trails off as he runs a hand through his hair “… a higher power.”
“A higher power? Like heaven?” Ne
ither one of them says anything, which tells me everything. Every rational thought escapes my brain as the room grays around the edges and closes in on me. The sound of my heart pounds in my ears as my shoulders droop with a weight so heavy, I’ll never be able to get off the ground. Heaven wants me dead? I can’t think. I can’t…
I don’t even know…
How am I supposed…?
What’s wrong with…?
Am I…?
“Why?” It takes twenty years to move my head enough to look up at my uncle, and another twenty to hear his answer.
“Because…” Uncle Caleb and Aunt Claudia share a look containing a whole conversation before he turns back to me. He opens his mouth, hesitates, and then says, “Because of your father.”
“My father?” A hundred million questions form within my mind. I never knew my father. Never saw a picture. Never knew his name. Never knew anything at all about him. Mom would never say a word other than he moved heaven and earth for her and gave her me. I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead. “Why would they be after me because of my father? Who is he?”
Uncle Caleb and Aunt Claudia share another look before he says, “For your own safety, I think it’s best you don’t know.”
“For my own safety? You’re kidding me right?” There is no safe for me. Whatever protections they think they’ve got over me, aren’t working anymore. The vampire attacks weren’t a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time like they think. They were deliberate and I have a feeling there will be more of them. They can’t protect me, and if I’m going to be exposed, I need to know who all the players are on the board, and that includes knowing who my father is. It also means at some point I will need to come clean with Aunt Claudia and Uncle Caleb about everything. Eventually they will need to know supernaturals are showing a deadly interest in me because what if one of them tries to get at me through them, or through Liv and Jack? I’d never forgive myself if that happened.
I flick my eyes between them both. “I need to know who he is.”
“You don’t. Trust us, you’re better off not knowing,” Uncle Caleb says in his this is no longer up for discussion voice. Yeah, I don’t think so.
“This is bullshit.”
“You know how I feel about cussing in this house,” Aunt Claudia scolds.
“Seriously?” I slam my hand down on the coffee table. “I don’t give a rat’s ass how you feel about cussing. If I’m in danger because of my father then I deserve to know who he is and why his problems have become mine. It’s only fair you tell me.”
Uncle Caleb leans over the table, reaching out for me. I pull away. “Indi, please calm down. We’re only trying to protect you.”
“Protect me?” I push away from the table and climb to my feet. My hands involuntarily form into shaking fists at my sides. If they tell me they’re trying to protect me one more time, I’m going to scream. “Protecting me isn’t lying to me and erasing my memories, or the memories of anyone who may have ever met me. How is it even possible to do that, anyway? And what gives you the right? My memories are mine. They’re not yours to take.” I stare up at the ceiling, gulping down breaths to keep from crying. “My memories are all I have left of my mom. Every day, I’m afraid I’ll forget her. The way she looked. How she would twist her hair around her finger when she was bored. How she would read Goodnight Moon to me before bed. And here you are, taking them away in the name of keeping me safe. What did you take? How many did you take?”
Uncle Caleb walks around the table, approaching me with open hands, like I’m a ticking time bomb that’s about to explode and he needs to be as gentle as he can so I don’t detonate. Well, tough because the fuse is already lit. “Indiana, please. You don’t understand. Everything we’ve done, everything we’re doing, it’s to keep you safe. It’s to keep us all safe. We had to suppress certain memories along with your magic to keep the bounty hunters from being able to track you. As for your father, knowing who he is will only put you in grave danger. Abigail gave her life to keep you hidden. Don’t let her death be in vain by endangering your life now.”
I throw my hands up in the air. “Why don’t you just erase my memories again then? Make me forget any of this ever happened?”
“We tried, but your magic is becoming too strong for Caleb and I,” Aunt Claudia admits. She may as well have just slapped me across the face. I was being sarcastic when I’d said they should take my memories. I snap my jaw shut as she comes around the other side of the table, boxing me in between her and Uncle Caleb. “We’ll need the power of the circle to suppress you now, along with your permission.” Her voice softens on permission, and all I can do is stand there and blink, while the reality of what she said rips another hole in my chest, leaving me raw and doubly betrayed.
“You’ve already tried? When? When did you try to wipe my mind?” My nails dig into my palms. “You know what, no. Just no. You do not have my permission. You’re not taking my memories. Not ever again. If I’m really in as much danger as you think I am then maybe I shouldn’t be suppressed at all. Maybe I should have my magic and know everything so I can protect myself.” I lock gazes with Uncle Caleb. I want him to tell me everything I want to know. No more excuses, nothing but the truth. His eyes glaze over, becoming slightly unfocused as I get closer, almost like he’s enthralled by me. “Tell me who my father is.” It’s not a request this time.
His mouth opens slowly, like he’s trying to keep the information I seek locked up tight, but can’t. “He’s an angel of death.”
12
Okay, that I was not expecting, nor do I know how to respond. An angel of death? What does that even mean?
“What does that make me?” I continue to stare into Uncle Caleb’s eyes, willing him to tell me the truth.
“A nephilim. But you’re a witch too, which makes you dangerous. A union between an angel and a human is frowned upon, but a union between an angel and a witch is forbidden because of the power over heaven and earth it instills in the child. Because of your parentage, you have dominion over life and death from your father, and over the elements from your mother. You became a target to be eliminated the moment you were conceived, and Heaven won’t stop until they’ve neutralized you.”
“Caleb!” Aunt Claudia brushes by me. She takes hold of Uncle Caleb’s arm, forcing him to face her. “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be telling her any of this.”
He shakes his head groggily. “What? I…” he trails off with an air of confusion weaved through his voice.
She turns toward me. “Indiana—”
I turn my gaze on her. “My father. What is his name?” I demand, hoping whatever mysterious power I have over my uncle works on her too. She blinks slowly, her eyes glazing over, her expression in direct contempt to the words tumbling from her mouth. “His name is Dean. Dean Brighter.”
“Thank you.”
She blinks rapidly as she shakes her head and turns back to Uncle Caleb. Similar looks of confusion cover their faces. On a hunch, I call their names and when they’re both looking at me, I say, “I want you to forget you told me about my father, along with the truth about what really happened to my mother and what you had to do to protect me. Now, you’re both going to weave the most powerful protection spell in existence to cloak both of you, Jack, Liv, and the house from any harm. You have already protected me, suppressing my memories of the vampire attacks and my emerging abilities once again and no longer need to worry. Do you understand?”
“We understand,” they say in unison.
“Good, then I am going to my room and you’re going to get started on your spell, and everything will be fine.”
“Everything will be fine,” they both say.
I run up to my room, ignoring the pounding headache forming behind my eyes while swallowing down the nasty taste in my mouth at what I just did. I shut the door and lean back against it.
I compelled them. I compelled my aunt and uncle.
I race over to the vani
ty. In front of the mirror I rip off the bandages covering my fake wounds, looking at my smooth flesh with new eyes. Rapid healing. Compulsion. How is this possible? I press my hands over my heart. It thumps steadily against my fingers, not a beat out of place. I bite my lip, my stomach doing somersaults as I slowly lean in toward the mirror. My hands start to shake, the contents of my stomach inching up my esophagus. With the tips of my fingers, I pull up my top lip and immediately close my eyes.
You can do this. You can look. Just a quick peek to make sure…
My heart kicks into high gear, beating so hard, pain follows every thud against my ribs. A hot prickly sweat forms along my hairline, my body heating up from the inside. I crack open one eye, gradually lowering my sight down to my teeth. All the breath in my lungs halts and then releases in one big sigh.
They’re normal.
I slump down onto the bench seat. They’re normal. But to be doubly sure, I run my finger over my gums to make sure I don’t feel anything out of the ordinary. I let out another sigh before all the questions come charging back into my head and I’m panicking all over again.
What is happening to me?
Am I a vampire?
Am I not a vampire?
Am I some kind of fluke who only inherited partial vampire qualities when I’d died for those few minutes after being bitten and ingesting some of Seth’s blood?
Am I now some weird witch, nephilim, quasi vampire hybrid?
Whatever’s in my stomach finally makes it all the way up. I dash for the bathroom down the hall, barely making it to the porcelain bowl before everything is spewing out. On my knees, I rest my head on my arm draped over the toilet seat. The pressure in my head relents a little, but the rest of me still feels icky for having compelled my aunt and uncle. I flush and lay there until my leg goes numb and I have to move.
What am I going to do?
Maybe Liv and Jack will have answers?
Of Blood & Magic: Blood Descent Book 1 Page 13
