by Petra Landon
Soon, a few comrades had joined the Vampire’s assault on Tasia’s shield. But this was no easy citadel. The shield had been enacted by a Chosen with power the likes of which their world had rarely seen. The Vampires seemed puzzled by the strength of the magic, but their glances at Nandini made it clear who they suspected was responsible for blocking them. Confident her defenses would hold, Tasia did not waver her attention from the two Shifters. Nandini, on the other hand, watched the Undead’s assault with an unreadable expression on her face.
“They’re slowing down” Nandini said, her splayed hand measuring the vibrations on the ground. Her snake could read the subtle clues that the earth provided.
The flow of Vampires into the clearing, never that fast to begin with, had slowed to a trickle. The Alpha demolished the last of the Undead around him, to turn his attention to the Vampires charging Tasia’s shield. Duncan re-adjusted subtly to take on the others, clinically mowing them down. Distracted by their attempts to penetrate the shield, the Vampires proved easy prey for the Alpha. As he made short work of them, Tasia dialed back her magic. Soon, a pile of Undead lay strewn around the clearing, the inert bodies piled haphazardly. They were not dead, Tasia knew, but they would take time to regenerate again. There was only one way to kill a Vampire to prevent a resurrection — the old wood stake through the heart. And of course, Tasia held a deadly power over a Vampire — a more agonizing death.
“Watch out!” Nandini screamed a warning, just as Tasia’s magic senses detected a Blutsauger presence behind her.
It was a straggler, staggering out of the woods to make a beeline for Nandini, only to find a distracted Tasia in his path. Tasia turned, just as Nandini scrambled up urgently from the ground. Tasia felt the whoosh of talons whiz by her shoulder, so close the air seemed to quiver, just as her legs gave way under her. The world tilted abruptly as she was swung physically out of the way. She heard the Alpha grunt softly as his back took the brunt of the Vampire’s talons, before he lashed out at his attacker. The Vampire went down with a thud at the well-placed blow. There followed the now somewhat familiar sound of crunching bone as Duncan stomped on the Vampire to put him out of commission.
The Alpha set her on her feet carefully. Tasia glanced up, to meet the gold eyes. He looked pissed.
“Which part of don’t let the leeches touch you is hard for you to understand?” he snapped.
Tasia swallowed. She’d sheathed her magic prematurely, she knew.
Duncan cracked his knuckles, kicking the last leech body away from them.
“That was fun” he announced cheerfully. “I needed that.”
The Alpha turned to Duncan. Tasia noted the almost boyish grin on the English Shifter’s face, his tousled locks giving him a younger and less staid air.
An answering half-smile flashed across the Alpha’s face. “It was” he agreed.
Shooting Tasia a gold-eyed glance that promised a reckoning later, he turned to the Ancient girl watching them silently.
“Nandini?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Raoul Merceau. This is Duncan, and I believe you’ve already met Tasia.”
“Yes.”
“Are you injured?”
Nandini shook her head.
“We’d better make for the highway. My Shifters await us there.”
Nandini glanced down at her bare feet. She wouldn’t make it through these woods without shoes. Human feet were not made for this.
“I’ll follow in my other form” she said.
“One of us would be happy to give you a lift” Duncan said matter-of-factly.
A slow smile flashed across her face, transforming her face from pretty to beautiful. “Thank you for the offer. In other circumstances, I might even take you up on it. Today though, I’d like to make it out on my own steam.”
“Fair enough” Duncan responded. “I’ll clean up and join you in a few minutes.” He flashed a glance at Raoul.
“Is Roman alright?” the girl asked Raoul as Duncan strode away in the direction of the gurgling stream.
“Black and blue, but otherwise okay.”
“My mother’s guards haven’t yet broken the news about Roman to her” she said with the remarkable composure that Tasia had noticed before.
“Now, they can give her the news about both Roman and you.”
Nandini studied him. “Tasia said you were looking for me?”
“I thought you might need assistance.”
She nodded, her eyes on the Vampire bodies strewn around the clearing. “I did.”
“I need a dunking myself” he said, his eyes on the dried blood on his torso. His chest and back were covered with half-healed scratches and bloody gashes where the Vampires had gouged him.
Raoul turned to go, before something seemed to strike him.
“The Chosen believe Tasia to be an L2 Wizard” he directed at Nandini.
The Ancient girl was no fool. She shot a sidelong glance at Tasia. “I didn’t see her work any magic.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know anything about it.”
Raoul met her indigo eyes, studying her for a moment before turning away just as Duncan strode back into the clearing. His shirt was in tatters, but Duncan wore it elegantly, Tasia noted with affection.
“How far are we from the highway?” Nandini inquired.
“Forty minutes should do it.”
“I’ll follow you.” Her glance encompassed both Duncan and Tasia.
She glanced down at herself and the only thing that covered her modesty. “Could you …?” She looked at Tasia.
“I’ll make sure the tee makes it” Tasia assured her.
“Thank you. It would be nice to have something to wear after another trek through the woods.”
No kidding.
When the Alpha returned, his hair glistening and his torso damp, Duncan and Tasia awaited him at the clearing. Tasia had his tee slung around her neck like a towel. Of Nandini, there was no sign.
“Shall we?” He arched an eyebrow.
They walked for forty minutes, single file through the woods, Duncan leading them this time. An exhausted Tasia, her rush of adrenaline now depleted, followed along listlessly. Her denims were caked in mud and her shoes ruined. She was in sore need of a shower, and hunger gnawed at the pit of her stomach. But despite the physical exhaustion, she felt exhilarated. They had rescued Nandini — the second sister from The Prophecy. And, she had played a small part in it. Above all, she knew how overjoyed Sienna would be.
The noise from cars greeted them as they neared the highway. They halted at the edge of the woods and the Alpha whipped out his cell to contact the others. Soon, Nandini came slithering up to change back into her human form. Tasia handed her the Alpha’s tee and she slumped on the ground again, gasping after another trek.
“I stink” Tasia said with disgust, sniffing herself delicately.
Nandini looked startled. “Wait till you get a whiff of me.”
“You probably smell of the forest” Tasia countered.
“No, I smell of caked mud and much worse. When I lost my senses, I had to resort to some creative methods to hide myself from the Blutsaugers. Some very creative ways” she reiterated pointedly.
Tasia grinned. The girl was smart. She’d blunted the Blutsaugers’ sense of smell by giving them something that wouldn’t be out of place in the forest, something so innocuous the Vampires would not give it a second thought.
“How long have you been with the Shifters?” Nandini asked, choosing her words with care.
“A few months.” For once, a weary Tasia did not pick up on the subtle cues.
She slumped wearily down on a wedge of hard interconnecting roots that gave her some respite from the ground. Vaguely, she could hear the Alpha giving directions to someone on the phone, telling them where they were. Nandini seemed to realize that more Shifters would swarm them soon. She attempted to make herself presentable, plucking some of the twigs and pieces of leaves tangled in her hair, before giving up with a gr
imace.
“It’s a futile task” she sighed.
Tasia, fascinated by the sudden flurry of activity, merely grinned in response. A car screeched to a halt behind the thicket of bushes that hid them from the highway. Tasia struggled to her feet just as Atsá, Luis, and Jason, followed by Stefan Simeonov and Elisabetta, came into view. Duncan strode forward to greet them. At a gesture from the Alpha, Nandini walked to him. As Tasia watched, another man strode into the clearing. It was Hawk. He paused, his eyes searching the clearing to zero in on Tasia. His eyes lit up, as he caught sight of her. Ignoring the others, he strode to her eagerly. Tasia smiled at him, warmth flooding her, weariness forgotten.
“What happened?” He frowned as he neared her, his nostrils flaring.
“What do you mean?” She was puzzled by Hawk’s urgency.
“The leeches, Tas! Did they get to you?” he asked urgently. “I can smell Alph on you. His scent …” He stopped abruptly, as Tasia went scarlet, bright red surging up in an unmistakable wave.
The others paused their conversations to stare at them. Though Hawk had spoken softly, the Shifters had all heard him.
At Tasia’s obvious discomfiture, Hawk belatedly attempted to fix matters. “I only meant that ...”
“Plenty happened with the leeches, Hawk.” The Alpha interrupted coolly. “As for my scent on her, I sacrificed my tee for her last night.”
He gestured at the Ancient beside him, who wore his tee with a regal air.
“Nandini is the latest recipient” he said.
“For which, I’m suitably grateful, Alpha” Nandini acknowledged.
“The woods are crawling with leeches. Though Nandini bore the brunt of it.” Duncan adroitly moved the attention back to him, away from a clearly discomfited Tasia and a struggling Hawk.
Atsá glanced at the Alpha. “Probably prudent to talk in the car” he suggested.
Raoul nodded. While Luis led the way to the parked car on the sloping shoulder of the highway that skirted the woods, Hawk mouthed a silent apology to Tasia, his eyes contrite. Hawk realized that his thoughtless words had inadvertently made her uncomfortable. Tasia directed a tremulous smile at him, letting him know his apology had been accepted. She knew that Hawk was not at fault. It was she who had reacted badly; her confusion and conflicted feelings about the Alpha had spurred an instinctive response to Hawk’s innocuous query.
As they turned to go, she met Elisabetta’s eyes. Instead of following the others, the female Were-Alpha waited for them, her eyes full of speculation. Tasia pulled herself together to meet Elisabetta’s eyes with composure.
“How’s Roman?” the Alpha inquired as they piled into the car.
“Raring to go.” Jason grinned.
“I hear you missed the leeches last night?” Duncan queried.
“Yeah” Luis acknowledged. “Alpha Tlizilani’s Shifters met us a few miles in, before we hit the highway. They’d been looking for us. It was sheer blind luck that they caught us. There were enough of them that the leeches decided to let us be.”
“What about you, Alpha?” Atsá inquired.
“Duncan led them around the woods in circles all night.”
“Duncan?” It was Elisabetta who had picked up on the cue.
“The witchling and I spent the night in a cave while Duncan had all the fun.”
“For which I’m eternally grateful to Raoul” Duncan added with heartfelt emphasis. “I haven’t had this much fun in a while.”
Jason shot Duncan a strange look but Tasia noted that the Shifters seemed to understand Duncan just fine.
“In the morning, I went back to the cave to keep Tasia company while Raoul went looking for cell service” Duncan continued.
“I made contact with Luis and read Nandini’s message” Raoul took up the tale. “She planned to slip away while her mother’s leeches were distracted and asked for someone to meet her where the woods meet the highway. Roman’s absence had been discovered, and the leeches were in a panic.”
“So, Lady Bethesda isn’t back in the woods yet” Jason remarked.
“Who’s Lady Bethesda?” Nandini, quietly listening to the conversation, inquired curiously.
A sudden silence descended on the car. Nandini was crucial to The Prophecy, but, as yet, no one knew her story — how much of her mother’s murderous past she was aware of, or would be willing to believe, and what had caused her to walk away from her mother.
Raoul turned to meet Nandini’s eyes.
“That’s the name your mother went by, twenty-five years ago” he said.
“Her Magick Facade, you mean?” Nandini, an Ancient, knew exactly what such a title implied.
“Yes.”
Nandini frowned. “But I was told that she’s a Wizard.”
The practice of using Magick Facades had originated with the First Ones, who believed that a Chosen invoking the name of a powerful First One was able to access some of his magic. It was common practice to use a Magick Facade, once a First One was considered to have accomplishments under his belt. The only other Chosen to use the practice were the Wizards, who had borrowed it from the First Ones they revered and tried to emulate. But in their case, it was less common. Only the very powerful adopted Magick Facades, in the case of Wizards.
“Your mother was a Guardian before she disappeared” Jason explained.
“A Guardian?” Nandini looked startled. “I thought she was an L3.”
Suddenly, the rest of his words seemed to strike her. “Disappeared?” she questioned.
“She was accused of murder. When the Guardians confronted her, she destroyed a few blocks of Chicago with a few hundred souls in it” the Alpha said bluntly.
Raoul wanted to trust Nandini. She was the second sister from The Prophecy, and she had proven herself by helping to facilitate Roman’s rescue. But in either case, he was done with the secrecy. Secrecy only benefitted Lady Bethesda. It was time to bring her crimes, former and current, into the open, so the Chosen could judge for themselves how close to the edge they stood. If Russian Hill had taught him anything, publicizing crimes and their perpetrators was the best solution to prevent further injustice, especially when the criminal had influential peers determined to whitewash his crimes. Public opinion was a powerful weapon. It could hold powerful Chosen’s feet to the fire. From now on, Raoul was determined to suppress his own tendency to isolation and secrecy, to force Lady Bethesda’s misdeeds and ambitions out into the public sphere.
Nandini’s eyes went wide with shock, but she remained silent. Whatever her suspicions about her mother, this had not come completely as a surprise, Raoul realized.
“She was believed to have died in the explosion until a few months ago, when word started pouring in about sightings of her” he continued. “The First Wizard, believing her Guardians to be compromised on this, asked Faoladh for assistance in digging up the past. My team and I have been investigating her for some time now.”
“Roman said that I’ve a sister” Nandini whispered, confusion, disbelief and shock warring in her. “A half-sister.”
“Sienna.” It was Jason who responded to Nandini. “Her father was killed in the explosion. She’s part of the investigation and has been waiting to meet you for a long time.”
Nandini tried to clear her head. “You knew about us. My family?” Nandini glanced from Jason to the Alpha.
“For a few weeks now” the Alpha acknowledged. “Faoladh’s investigators eventually traced her to India. But before we could contact you, your father passed away. That is when Roman joined the investigation and told us about meeting you in Portland. But it was too late by then. You’d been persuaded to join your mother, and we had no way of warning you. So, we reached out to SivoTar.”
“Roman” she muttered, suddenly understanding how the chain of events had come about. “You sent Roman to warn me?”
“Yes” the Alpha assented. “Roman told me that you might not believe him. But we had no one else that your mother would allow to meet yo
u.”
“He said some fantastic things about her, crazy things. I couldn’t believe them.” She shook her head. It was all too much to take in. It was one thing to be suspicious of her mother, but another to be told such an impossible story about her.
“He had to be very careful to not reveal to your mother what we had on her, while, at the same time, tell you enough to put you on your guard. We were afraid she would listen in.”
“Her minions did” Nandini confirmed. “The Vampires that follow her everywhere.”
Raoul noted the dazed expression on her face. “This is probably too much for you to take in right now, but when you’re ready, I’ll fill you in on everything we know about her.”
For a moment, she was silent.
“If you’re investigating her, you must know this. Did she have anything to do with my father’s death?” she asked.
“We believe so” Raoul admitted. “But we don’t have all the evidence yet.”
“But why? Why kill my father? She abandoned us a long time ago. Why go after him now?” There was anguish, mixed in with confusion and disbelief in her voice.
“Because she’s not done yet. She’s tying up loose ends before she moves on.”
As a silent Nandini stared at him, Raoul continued. “You and your sisters play a huge part in her plans, Nandini.”
“Sisters?” She gaped at him.
“She started a third family after abandoning you. There’s a daughter from that union, too.”
“I …” Nandini paused. “This is fantastic … It’s too much to take in.”
“There’s more to the story. Much more. Come join the investigation. We could use you, Nandini.” The gold eyes held her gaze.
For a moment, she was silent, grappling with everything she had been told. Nandini didn’t know what to think. Then, she remembered that the Alpha had not waited by the edge of the highway for her, as requested. He had come looking for her, even with his Shifter senses blunted. Without the Shifters’ assistance, she might not have made it out of the forest.
“I will, Alpha” she said. “But first, there’s something I must do.”
“What?”
“Meet SivoTar and explain all this to him. He’s been very kind to me and I’d like to square matters with him before I join you.”
