Endless Winter (Guardians of The Light)

by J Armitage

  “Now we have another little problem,” Aldric continued.

  She had a sinking feeling that he was using ‘little problem’ in the same way he had said ‘predicament’ earlier.

  “I checked Anais blood and conducted many tests on her DNA yesterday. I am pleased to tell you all that, as I expected, she has inherited The Light from her father. It was considerably less potent than it is in the rest of us but it is there nonetheless. I don’t know how it will affect her health but I suspect she will live many, many years longer than what is considered normal.” He spoke directly to Anais again now, “Tell me have you ever had any illnesses? Flu? Measles? Chicken pox?”

  Anais thought back and realised she had never really been ill in her life. She remembered her mother worrying about her never even having a cold and her father laughing, telling her it was ridiculous worrying about her daughter being so healthy.

  “No,” She answered wondering where all this was leading.

  “I thought not.” He paused before continuing. “Remember I told you that using our blood to devise a cure would not work?”

  “Yes.” remembered Anais “You said it would kill a normal person before curing them.”

  “That is correct. Now as I said earlier, you have a much less concentrated amount of The Light in your blood but unfortunately it was not enough. If I devised a cure using your DNA it would be harmless to use on a normal human. It would not be strong enough to kill them. However it wouldn’t be potent enough to combat the Jago virus. The mice I tried it on lived longer but in the end they too perished.

  Please also recall that I called you unique. Well that was true. The Light affected the Guardian women in that they could not have children. They were able to conceive normally but The Light somehow killed the foetus before 12 weeks in every case. My sister Ava and her husband tried many times to have children but to no avail. We know she could have babies before The Light because she delivered a daughter, my niece Audsley. This has not been an isolated incident. My own Winifred also lost many children as has Audsley herself. Alistair was the only one of the boys to procreate with a non Custor Lux. He wrote to me many times when he found out Sarah was pregnant, about how worried he was about the pregnancy and about Sarah’s health. As the weeks went on it seemed that the course of the pregnancy was running smoothly. The outcome is here sitting before me. A happy ending indeed.”

  Anais wasn’t entirely sure where he was leading with all this so she sipped her coffee which had now cooled considerably and waited for him to continue.

  “I am asking you to do a very important task for me and I wouldn’t ask if I could think of any other way. I need the DNA and blood of someone who has a higher concentration of The Light than yourself but lower than the rest of us. Only then will I be able to devise a solution that is potent enough to kill the virus but not so much that it kills a human being. Unfortunately there is only one way to do this.”

  Anais was now lost and wasn’t sure what was coming. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something good.

  “Nature works in mysterious ways and in this case I think nature is the only way to help us.”

  The light was beginning to dawn but Anais had to hear Aldric say it to believe it.

  “We need you to conceive a child. It is the only way.”

  Anais was stunned. She just sat there, not knowing how to react. Minutes passed in silence while she took in the magnitude of what was being asked of her.

  Eventually Aldric continued.

  “There is no one else. The women of The Light cannot bear children, you possibly can.”

  “Possibly?”

  “Yes well this is not an exact science. I do not know if you can bear a child. Perhaps you have enough of your mothers DNA to be able to have children. I simply do not know. I do know however, that unless I can find a cure for this disease then most, if not all of humanity will be wiped out. Jago has given us a year to make more of The Light elixir but as I said before I only brewed it once, over 600 years ago and it took a year to make. It is possible that I can brew some more but the odds are millions to one. August has kindly agreed to give up his kitchen duties and help me, but even with two of us working day in day out we would be unlikely to brew more of the elixir. Our best course of action is to start on finding a cure for the virus. We will, of course be working on both, whether or not you have a child but I’m pretty sure that your future offspring hold the key to the cure.”

  Anais thought for the first time in her life about having a baby. She was too young for this, she had imagined having children at some point in her life in a vague way but not at nineteen and not because she had to, because somebody told her to.

  “Can’t we find Jago and stop him? He’s obviously found us.”

  “Once Andrew has boosted defences of the manor and we know the rest of the family is safe, then we will begin looking for Jago. It is true that he found us but we were never really trying too hard to hide. We made a pact to change our names and not divulge our secret 600 years ago but since then we have not put much thought into being found. We didn’t know to hide from Jago until your father was killed. It would have been a simple task to find us if you really set your mind to it. Although many of us changed our first names, our surnames have remained the same as they were 600 years ago. I myself have always been called Aldric and your father was given the name Alistair at birth. Winifred has in the intervening years changed her name back from Astrid.

  Knowing he was about to attack us in this manner, it would be prudent to assume he is well hidden and goes by a completely different moniker.

  We will of course be trying many strategies but you bearing a child of The Light would be our best bet.

  “Best bet? You want me to conceive a child that you don’t know if I can carry and if by some miracle I can have a healthy child, you still don’t know if their blood or DNA will be the right consistency of The Light and then if it is, you still have to make the cure and we have to do all of this within one year?” Anais said the whole thing in one breath.

  “That about sums it up. August will be helping me, Andrew, as you know will be trying to locate Jago so Alex will be ah...doing the job”

  “What job?”

  Aldric waited for comprehension to dawn. Opposite her, she saw Rafe glowering.

  She realised what Aldric was saying “Alex is going to be the father of the baby?”

  She really wanted to say “but we only just met” but in the grand scheme of things, it seemed a ridiculous thing to say.

  Alex couldn’t look her in the eye. He seemed really embarrassed by the prospect. His eyes stared at a fixed point on the table in front of him and he didn’t look up.

  Anais couldn’t wrap her head around what was being asked of her. She’d gone from being a normal teenager to being an immortal baby carrier in little more than a month. It was too much to take in. How could she do this to Aethelu? Their relationship was new and wonderful. She’d never had a real relationship before but she was pretty certain that telling your girlfriend you were having a baby with someone else when you’d only been dating two weeks was a big no-no. No, telling your new girlfriend that you were having a baby with her brother, was even worse. How was she going to break this to Aethelu? For that matter where was she and why were they holding this important meeting without her. Surely they should have waited for her.

  “Where is Aethelu?”

  Arcadia stood up

  “I can’t be around for this” She left the kitchen, sniffing as she went.

  Aldric shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable.

  “We all have important jobs to do. I have already told you what everyone will be doing. I needed Aethelu for another important job. My sister and brother in law are currently sailing around the Mediterranean Sea in a yacht and do not know of the danger they are in. Aethelu is travelling to the South of France where they last docked, to locate them and bring them back here where they will be safe. Their daughter Audsley has been
called this morning and she will be flying in from Arizona where she currently resides, once she has shut up her ranch.”

  “Why did Aethelu have to go? Couldn’t Arcadia go? Doesn’t she live in the South of France anyway?”

  “Arcadia is immensely clever at making money. She has a finger in a lot of pies, so to speak, and I have instructed her to make her deals over the phone and internet from here. We do live a wonderful lifestyle largely thanks to her but now that we are all housebound we need her money coming in more than ever. We will have more people residing here than we have had in many years and we need to feed them all. Besides my sister has a soft spot for Aethelu and will be more likely to be persuaded to come home with her than with any of the rest of us. It may take a few weeks to locate and persuade them to come back.”

  “A few weeks!” Now she knew what the shouting had been about this morning. Aethelu had obviously not wanted to go. Anais imagined Aethelu being woken up early and being told to leave on the first plane out. They’d not even given her the chance to say goodbye.

  “I thought it was unsafe for us to be outside the grounds – How can you let her go by herself?”

  “Andrew furnished her with a fake passport this morning under a different name entirely. August drove her to the nearest airport and saw her get onto the plane. He was very vigilant about being followed. He says that no one followed them.”

  “August! How could you!” Anais screamed at August who despite his size, cowered in his chair. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.”

  “I’m sorry” August spoke with such sincerity “I just did what I thought was best. She would not have liked you having a child with Alex. It would have caused her pain. I thought it best to spare her.”

  “She’s going to find out when she gets back! Being without me will cause her pain.”

  Anais had finally had enough. She’d not been so angry in her entire life, not even when her parents died. She couldn’t take any more. She wanted to scream abuse at the whole lot of them, looking at her in pity. Frustrated tears came to her eyes and she ran from the table, knocking her now cold coffee over and smashing the mug as she went. She ran up the spiral staircase, up the main stairs and then the second set of stairs to her bedroom where she slammed the door and threw herself on the bed.

  She laid there and cried at the injustice of it all. Hours passed but she couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed and face everybody. Eventually she fell into a fitful sleep where she was plagued by nightmares. The same theme ran through them, of having a baby who was made out of light and then eaten by a monster called Jago.

  Hours later she awoke with a jolt, covered in sweat and terrified that her light baby had been eaten before reality seeped back in. A reality which was just as bad as the nightmare.

  Her clock read 9pm. She had slept the whole day. Her stomach rumbled and she realised the only thing she’d consumed all day was a few sips of coffee. Her head hurt and her throat was dry. Getting out of bed, she opened her bedroom door, tripping over a package that had been left just outside her door. She picked the package up and brought it back into the room, closing the door softly behind her. It was a parcel, rectangular in shape and wrapped in red Christmas wrapping paper. There was a card attached which was written in a neat hand. She read the card first.

  Anais,

  I know you must hate us all right now. Please know that we are all as horrified with this decision as you are. You are too young to have this burden on your shoulders and if there was any way I could take your place I would. Even though we have not known you for very long, you are our family now and we love you. If you need a shoulder to cry on I’ll be there for you.

  Arcadia

  P.S. Lulu left this for you.

  Anais burst into tears again. She knew it wasn’t their fault this was all happening. She was being angry at the wrong people. She wiped her eyes and tore the paper from the parcel.

  Inside was the portrait Aethelu had painted of her the night they shared their first kiss. It was beautiful. Aethelu had captured her likeness so perfectly but at the same time given her an ethereal quality. Anais could now see why she’d been painted in a hot tub filled with gold water. It looked like she was floating in a bath of golden light.

  She wished Aethelu was here right now. She really wanted to tell her how much she loved the painting. The tears fell again but she smiled as she recalled the one night she spent with Aethelu.

  She fell back to sleep holding on to the painting, not waking until early the next day.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Anais stayed in her room for three days, only leaving to use the bathroom and kitchen and then coming straight back. She timed her visits to the kitchen when she thought it might be empty, taking only what she could eat in her room. Rolls of bread and cuts of meat became her staple meal. She had managed to not see a single member of the household in the full three days, although she did narrowly miss Rafe heading up the main stairs at just past midnight on the third day. She wondered what he was up to. She managed hide in a dark recess as he walked past. He looked like a man on a mission.

  She felt like her heart had been ripped out right where she was standing. Aethelu’s absence was palpable; she could barely take the pain of it.

  How would Aethelu ever forgive her? Not only was she going to have to have a baby, she had to do it with Aethelu’s own brother.

  She prayed for Aethelu’s safe return but she didn’t know where she was or how long it would be until she got home. Aldric seemed to think it could be weeks. She didn’t even know if Aethelu was safe and that was the hardest part.

  She spent the days in bed alternating between crying and sleeping.

  The irony didn’t escape her that she had now imposed a kind of self-exile on herself in the very same room that, only a few short weeks ago she had been desperate to escape from.

  Thoughts of Jago finding Aethelu and hurting her plagued her dreams and made her feel sick and the lack of proper meals did nothing to help.

  She ignored everyone knocking at her door, preferring her own company, although the reality was that she didn’t trust herself not to scream at any of the family should she see them.

  Eventually there was a knock at the door that wouldn’t stop. She dragged herself out of bed to answer it. It was Alex with a tray of food.

  “Mama asked me to bring this to you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I told Mama you’d say that and she instructed me not to come down until you’d eaten it all.”

  Despite the misery she was feeling she gave a small smile. She could well imagine Winnie say something like that.

  She left the door open and retreated back to her bed which Alex took as an invitation to enter the room. He laid the silver tray with the cooked breakfast on the bed next to her.

  Anais took a bite of bacon which stuck in her throat. She took a big gulp of coffee washing it down.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t come to check on you before. I knew you were upset but I’m kinda embarrassed.” Alex held a sheepish look on his face as he sat on the bed at the other side of the breakfast tray.

  Anais realised that poor Alex was in this just as much as her and she began to feel bad for being so angry with him.

  “It’s ok. I just wanted to be left alone. How about you?”

  “Put it this way, I went for a very long run in the grounds yesterday and almost thought about not coming back.”

  “You did come back though.”

  “Yes. I realised I was being selfish. I know it’s harder for you. I don’t have a girlfriend to answer to for a start. Plus I’m not the one who’ll get stretch marks”

  Anais made a face at him.

  “Or bloated ankles, or a giant fat belly.”

  Anais laughed. He was teasing her. She hit him with a pillow.

  “Not to mention Morning sickness.” His voice was muffled under the pillow.

  “And then a baby.” S
he stopped laughing

  “And then a baby.” He was momentarily as sombre as her but then he smiled.

  “It won’t be so bad.” He was trying to console her “Everyone is on your side. I’ll do everything I can to help and if you’re worried about Aethelu, she’ll come around. She’ll know it’s not your fault.”

  “Thank you.” Anais didn’t know how he could be so calm about the situation but she was grateful for his warmth and understanding. Feeling slightly better she hugged him tightly, thankful that she had at least one person who understood what she was going through.

  Finally they broke apart. Anais ate the food from the tray, ravenous after all. Once the first bite had gone down she realised how hungry she really was. It was Winnie’s cooked breakfast, guaranteed to make her feel better.

  Alex waited patiently until she ate the last bite.

  Then he spoke.

  “We should really get to know each other if we are really going to do this,” he said. “Would you like to spend the day with me?” He suddenly seemed very shy but brightened up considerably when she accepted his invitation.

  Sitting in her room was a pointless waste of time and she felt better after eating. It would be nice to be out for a change.

  “Ok, I need a shower. I’ll meet you in the entrance hall in half an hour ok?”

  He smiled a huge smile and almost skipped to the door taking the now empty tray with him.

  She had been wearing the blue striped pyjamas for three solid days and she felt disgusting. The shower refreshed her and just the act of getting dressed made her feel more human. She wore jeans and purposely picked out a red sweater which made her feel closer to Aethelu.

  She did her best to brush through the rats tails of hair and make herself presentable.

  Alex was waiting for her when she descended the great stairs and he smiled when he saw her.

  “I have a surprise for you,” he said excitedly.

  She’d had enough surprises to last a lifetime but she followed him anyway. She was expecting to be leaving the house so was surprised when he led her back up the main stairs. He took her back up to the second floor and past her own room to a door she had not been through before. She vaguely remembered Aethelu telling her that it concealed a set of stairs which led to the attic but she had never ventured up there. A bare light bulb lit the way up the uncarpeted stairs. At the top was a huge attic room, bigger than any she’d ever seen before, filled with either the junk or treasure of times past.