“Borvil, our boss, struck a deal with the Lamia. They have the elemental lasso.”
Lily groaned. “Oh no. Malcolm, it’s the girls—Lina and Arana. They’re back.”
Malcolm looked at his wife and then back at the goblin. “Tell me where to go.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Kyla
Arana had a hell of a punch on her, I had to give her that. By the time she’d given me a slap or two, my nose was bleeding and my head was ringing.
I hadn’t yet revealed that I was loose. When Borvil had turned his back, I had tried to loosen the rope around my neck but all it did was burn my hands. I was pretty sure I could have withstood it enough to get the damn thing off, but that would have damaged the fragile relationship I’d managed to piece together with Borvil.
When Lina finally stumbled to her feet, I had to bite back the smirk threatening to take control of my face. Stupid cow. Who bends down in front of a captive right next to their feet? It was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
When Arana knocked me backwards though, I fell off the chair and my unrestrained status was soon out in the open.
“How the hell did you get free?” Arana said, staring at me.
I stood in front of her, defiant as ever, and replied, “You think you’re the only one who can make deals?”
Arana looked around her, no doubt wondering where the traitorous goblin had vanished to.
I had no doubt he’d hidden himself well away from our brewing fight. “You can’t blame him. He’s only trying to survive. You brought trouble to his doorstep.”
“Because of you,” she said, all but hissing at me. She looked like a pissed off lioness. “All of this is because of you.”
“Actually, it’s not. It’s all because of your piece of shit father.” I stopped myself for a moment. “Actually, scrap that. It’s all because of his piece of shit father.”
Arana ran at me, but Lina grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back. “Wait,” Lina said. “We need to hear why she did what she did.”
“No,” Arana said, rounding on her sister. Spit flew out of her mouth in her blind rage. “She just needs to die.”
“I said wait.” Lina glared at her sister. The flat stare pouring from her empty eyes would have stopped a charging bull.
Arana stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest, sulking like a petulant child.
“What do you want?” I said. “A sorry? Because you’re not going to get one.”
“See?” Arana said, point a finger at me. “I fucking told you she didn’t care. Can I kill her now?”
“No,” Lina replied. “Tell us why. Tell us everything,” she said, looking at me.
“Your father and I used to date. He was my first love, as ashamed as I am to admit that. I met him when I was seventeen. By the time we’d been dating for a year, I fell pregnant. It was an accident. The doctor had messed around with my contraceptive pill and we hadn’t been careful enough. It was our fault.”
“So?” Arana said. “Are you saying there’s another one of us out there somewhere?”
“Ha! You obviously don’t know your grandfather. He refused to have an illegitimate child born into the family. He demanded an abortion. I refused.”
“Then what?” said Lina.
“Tony got desperate. Threw me down the stairs a few times. When that didn’t work, he got real desperate. He drugged me and then carried out a home abortion with a coat hanger. When he realised he’d fucked up and I was all but bleeding to death, he took off, taking my mother with him. They’d been having an affair for months behind my back.”
Silence fell inside the tree trunk. Lina looked at her sister. Arana looked back at her and then glared at me.
“That still didn’t give you the right to subject us to what you did. It was horrific. And now we’re stuck like this—because of you.”
“Do you have any idea how painful it was, still is, to look at you? You’re a constant reminder of my past, of that bastard and my bitch of a mother.”
“They were good parents to us,” Arana said. “It doesn’t matter what they did to you. What mattered is us. We’re innocent in all of this.”
“Yeah, I guess you were. I admit I was being selfish and watching out for myself, but you dare say you’d have done any different and you’re lying. I could have killed you two that day. I didn’t have to make a deal with Lucifer.”
“You used us to save your own ass! If you’d have killed us, you’d be down in Hell already, burning away with the rest of the demons.”
“You think my grandad would have allowed that?” I shook my head. “You’re delusional. I did you both a favour.”
“Pah!” Arana said. “How do you figure that?”
“Well, for one, you’d currently both be in an orphanage probably being molested by the local priest when he comes to do his Sunday sermons. You wouldn’t have graduated puberty in three months and you wouldn’t have all the supernatural abilities you currently have.”
“So you expect some kind of a thank you?”
“Well, no. Even I know that’s pushing it.”
“We want to kill you,” Lina said. “Surely you, of all people, can understand the anger that’s inside us.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m quite impressed with the lengths you’ve gone to in order to get me where you want me but killing me isn’t going to bring your parents back.”
“Killing our parents didn’t bring your dead baby back either.”
That was it for me. It was like a red rag to a bull. I lunged for the pretty Alice lookalike, throttling her with everything I had.
“I didn’t want the damn baby,” I screamed. “I was going to give it up for adoption. But you know what? Now I can’t even have kids because he scraped out my insides with a piece of wire. He needed to know how that felt.”
I was lying. I could now have children, thanks to my gran, my own abilities, and several hours of pain piecing my muscle and tissues back together.
But they didn’t need to know that.
Arana grabbed my throat with her hands, squeezing the life out of me as much as I was her. “And you know what you need to feel? The warm spray of your mother’s blood hitting your face, blinding you in one eye. The petrifying fear of seeing your dad being stabbed to death. And the pissing yourself kind of horror when you’re damned to Hell with the devil himself.”
I grinned. “Good luck with that. My mother is dead, and my dad is the MD of Hell. Any moment now, you’ll be meeting the wrath of my grandad, too.”
Arana screamed in my face and punched me into darkness. I quite welcomed it. It was peaceful there at least.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Spencer went straight to his car, and on a hunch, drove over to the abandoned house that had once housed a happy family.
When he got there, despite darkness greeting him, he still felt a strong desire to get out and take a look around.
Gun in one hand and a torch in the other, he carefully tiptoed his way through the long grass waving gently in the cool early morning breeze.
Figuring it was worth a shot, he tried the door handle and found himself rewarded with an open door.
Silence met him. Not the normal night time quiet where insects are busy and owls are hooting, but just a stone-dead silence.
When he stepped on a floorboard and inadvertently made it creak, he jumped and then cursed himself for being so spooky.
If he admitted the truth, his head was foggy and his face was aching beyond any pain he’d ever known.
He suspected a fractured cheekbone, which is what the paramedics had suggested also. They wanted him to get X-rays, but Spencer needed to find Kyla and her two mysterious sisters.
Stepping further inside the house, Spencer flicked his light around, glancing over the dirt ridden walls.
Then he stopped.
He strode over to the hallway wall on his far right, keeping his light fixed on the patch of dirt it had caught sight of.
Spencer frowned. “What the…?” He reached out and gently swept a finger over the rusty coloured dirt.
Peering at it closer, he realised it wasn’t dirt. It was blood.
He fumbled through his pockets, searching for his phone. He opened his emails to find the case details that William Wilkins had sent him earlier in the day.
Spencer clicked on the photographs of the house that had been taken as part of the missing persons investigation.
Everything was immaculate. The house looked like a well-kept family home. Nothing was out of place. Yet, here was a great big blood stain right next to the front door. What the hell was going on?
A flap of wings startled Spencer, making him drop his phone. He turned around, flashing his light around the empty house looking for the culprit.
There, in the doorway, stood a huge owl. Two tufts stood up on the middle of its head. It’s mottled black spots blended in with its tawny coloured feathers. It stood, head cocked to one side, staring at Spencer. Its two bright orange eyes bored into his very soul.
Spencer shivered. His heart raced into a new beat. He loved birds. In fact, birds of prey were a speciality of his and this Eurasian eagle-owl was not something to be trifled with.
Being the biggest owl in Britain, and the third biggest bird of prey in the country, Spencer took one look at its huge talons and gulped. Looking at the size of this one, it was without a doubt, female.
Suddenly, his few fun falconry days where he’d handled birds like this with a professional seemed like irrelevant happenings that provided him with no good stead now.
“Hello, girlie,” he said, easing his gun into his back pocket with slow, steady movements.
She moved her head, cocking it to the other side, still regarding him with the same interest.
“Easy now.” He lowered his light, not wanting to blind her.
They watched each other for a few tense seconds until Spencer felt brave enough to take a step to the side, into her direct path. Still a good six feet back into the house, Spencer had not closed the gap any further towards her.
But he had stepped into the moonlight that gleamed through the open doorway.
As soon as the lunar light fell onto his body, the silver chain around his neck glistened like a lost jewel through his open necked shirt.
The owl launched herself at Spencer. Her huge claws dug into the plastic doorframe, screeching through the flimsy material as she used it as a launch pad.
Spencer was like a deer caught in headlights. This was a magnificent bird he’d admired so much for so many years, and yet, here one was, seemingly coming to attack him.
He crouched down and covered his head with his hands but forgot the one crucial point that any bird of prey goes for—the neck.
Swooping around behind him, the owl landed on his neck, her sharp claws scratching into his soft skin.
She shrieked before bending down and attacking the back of his neck with her beak.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Spencer had never felt fear quite like it. As soon as the graceful killer came around behind him, he knew he was a goner.
He cowered down, holding his head in his hands, praying for a quick demise.
When he felt the pinch of her powerful beak against his flesh, he cried out, anticipating the pain that was to follow.
The owl flapped her wings and released her pray.
Spencer, now trembling from the frightening interaction, dared to lower his hands to his neck to find that, despite a few scratches, he was fine.
He turned around, still not daring to stand up in case the owl perceived it as a display of aggression.
As he did so, the tinkle of metal sounded through the air, followed by the metallic clink of something hitting the floor.
Looking around him, Spencer was horrified to see his silver chain beneath him, broken in two pieces. The owl had split one of the solid links in two.
Spencer pursed his lips. The silver chain had been a gift from his absent father, according to his mum anyway. It was a family heirloom that the man had wanted Spencer to have, apparently.
As it was old, he’d had strict instructions to never take it off. It would stand the test of water for bathing, but the clasp would not stand being opened repeatedly for it to be removed all the time.
Spencer had debated several times getting the clasp renewed but it was one of those things that he never seemed to have time for. Maybe, if he admitted it to himself, he was being a touch sentimental.
Now though, as he looked at the broken piece of jewellery, a haze of water glistened over his eyes.
“Fucks sake,” he muttered, scooping it up.
He put it in his pocket and scooted back across the floor towards the open doorway.
When he reached the doorway, he slowly stood up, regarding the beautiful owl as she sat poised on the post of the stairs.
She blinked and screeched at him.
Spencer widened his eyes. In that moment, everything in his world changed.
His heartbeat suddenly pulsed through his vision. With each pulse, the world around him seemed to become more vibrant with colour.
The owl had a rainbow of colours around her outline, all swirling together in a steady mix of pastel colours.
Looking at the house around him, Spencer could see the bright red blood splatter from what was obviously a horrendously bloody murder.
Dazed, confused, and figuring he’d had some kind of a real head trauma, Spencer stumbled outside the house.
Even out here, everything around him seemed to be outlined with some kind of colour, like an aura.
But that was spiritual crap that Spencer didn’t believe in.
The owl shrieked and flew outside. Spencer turned to look at her in flight, wanting to marvel over her exquisite beauty, but he tripped over his own feet and fell onto his back.
The last thing he saw was the six-foot wingspan of a screeching owl covering his vision.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
When Spencer opened his eyes, he found himself stood up. Looking around him, he was exactly where he’d last been—at the Wilkins house.
But for some reason, everything here seemed wistful, a sweeping image of reality, as if he was in some kind of lucid dream. If he touched something, it would ripple away from the effects of his touch.
“Hello, Spencer.”
A deep, booming male voice had Spencer spinning around on the spot, looking for its origins.
When he turned back to where he’d originally faced, a huge man stood inches away, staring at him.
Spencer took one look at the man’s intimidating presence and took several steps back.
Nearly six and a half feet tall and with shoulders broad enough to carry boulders, the man possessed an imposing stature. Thickly muscled arms, hands the size of bowling balls, and dark shadowy eyes, this guy was not to be taken lightly.
“Who…who are you? What is this? Why is everything so weird?”
A deep chuckle emanated from the man. “I’m your father, Spencer. My name is Abaddon. Perhaps best you address me with that rather than ‘dad.’”
Spencer’s mouth dropped wide open. “What? No.” He shook his head. “My dad skipped out on me when I was a kid. Mum said he was a druggie…”
“Your mother lied, Spencer. I’m afraid you’re the product of a rather passionate one-night stand.”
Spencer reached into his pocket and pulled out his chain. “But…but this was my dad’s.”
“No. That is a family heirloom from your mother’s lineage. She needed to have you wear it, constantly, hence the little lie.”
Spencer looked back down at the chain in his hands and turned it over. He didn’t know quite what he was looking for, but he hoped an answer might suddenly pop up and answer his questions.
“But…why?”
“You come from a long line of powerful witches, Spencer. Power such as yours needs to be kept hidden from the world until you’re ready to face your
destiny. That time is now.”
A screech from an owl sounded in the distance. Expecting another attack, Spencer ducked, covering his head and neck.
Abaddon laughed. “Do not fear the owl, Spencer. She is your familiar. You are psychically linked to her. She’s here to aid you in your new life.”
In a daze, Spencer looked around him, still off balance somewhat by the strange wistfulness to the world.
“Where are we?”
“We’re in the astral plane, Spencer. It’s the only place that demons and witches can meet without big ears catching conversations they really shouldn’t be hearing.”
“But…and you’re my dad?”
“Yes. And Kyla, your profiler, she is your half-sister. Her powers were awakened not too long ago. She can help you from here.”
“Wait, what?”
“You heard me, young fellow. Find Kyla. She’s still alive. I cannot intervene without my actions being traced. I’m afraid your lives are too precious to risk that. You have the power of the elements, Spencer. Whatever you will to happen shall happen.”
Abaddon started fading at the edges, turning fuzzy like an out of focus picture. “You’ll be just fine. Don’t forget to name your bird. It’s the first step to an unbreakable bond.”
“Wait! Will I see you again? What do I do if I need to speak to you?”
“I’ll come to you, Spencer. Don’t worry.”
Abaddon disappeared completely, leaving Spencer alone in this cold, eerie in-between world.
Just as he started to wonder how the hell he could get back to reality, his owl screeched and flew at him, flapping her wings in his face until he stumbled backwards and fell on his back.
When he hit his head and darkness took over, Spencer prayed his bad dream was at an end.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kyla
Unleashing Vampires: A paranormal revenge novel (Unleashing Series Book 2) Page 10
