Magic Awakened: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by K.N. Lee

  Chapter 12

  Early the next morning, Anais awoke to the faint strains of somebody having an argument. She couldn’t make out who it was or what they were saying, but it ended with the front door slamming and a car being driven away down the driveway.

  Deciding her massive hangover was more of a priority than finding out what the shouting was about, she turned over and went back to sleep. When she did finally get out of bed it was way past breakfast time. Normally, she would have felt guilty missing breakfast, but she assumed the rest of the household would all be rising around the same time and in the same state.

  One glance in the bathroom mirror convinced her to put off breakfast for a few more minutes and have a quick shower. She’d gone to bed the night before without taking her makeup off, and now she resembled a panda. The sultry eye make-up had travelled all over her face in her sleep, and she now had black streaks all down her cheeks. Her eyes were red and her immaculate hair from the night before, now resembled a bird’s nest, a very untidy bird’s nest at that. She stepped into the shower, still bleary eyed, and did her best to wash away the evidence of the night before, along with the panda make up. Choosing a grey jumper, which probably matched her skin tone after the excesses of the day before, she teamed it up with some black trousers and comfortable shoes. She brushed the knotty mess that was her hair before making her way down to the main part of the house. Hearing voices from the kitchen, she made her way down the spiral staircase to be confronted with a worrying scene. Aldrich sat at the head of the table with a grim expression on his face. Winnie to his right had been crying and held a tissue in her hands that she was using to mop up the tears.

  Arcadia sat with her head in her hands, and both Rafe and Alex were lost in their own thoughts. Andrew sat on his own at the end of the table, so Anais guessed Judith must still be in bed. Only August paid her any attention. He busied himself making coffee and thrust a steaming mug of it into her hands. It was way too hot, so she rested it on the table.

  “I will not do it!” Andrew looked wretched. Anais looked at him more closely and could see that he too was on the verge of tears. Despite that, he had a defiant look on his face as he looked at Aldrich. Winnie only sobbed harder at this, and Alex gave her a look. It was impossible to read his expression, but it almost looked like he was pleading with her.

  “Why don’t we ask Anais herself, Father?” Alex dropped his gaze down to the table.

  This sounded ominous.

  “Please sit down, Anais,” Aldrich said.

  She did as he asked and took a chair nest to Andrew at the other end of the table.

  “I’m sure you recall what I told you last night.”

  Anais nodded her head

  “Well, things have developed, and the time has come to tell everyone the predicament we all face.”

  Anais almost laughed at the word predicament. It was such a trivial word. She thought calamity or catastrophe would be closer to the mark. She nodded and then sipped at her coffee. It was hot and burnt her mouth.

  Aldrich continued in his gruff tone “I gathered the household here and told them all what I told you last night. The reason I did this is because of a letter that I received this morning. It was hand delivered and left here on the kitchen table which means, not only does Jago know where we live, he also knows how to defeat our numerous defences. It was a warning. Another nudge, if you will. He showed Anais the letter. It was typed just like the last one, but this time it was much shorter. It read

  1) Alistair

  2)?

  Who will be next? Do as I ask, or there will be another death.

  Jago

  “He is threatening the family,” Rafe said pointlessly.

  Aldrich ignored him and carried on his speech, directed at Anais.

  “Andrew has agreed to step up the defences around the manor, and, unfortunately, for the time being, we are to have a lockdown. That means we all have to stay within the grounds of the manor, including Arcadia, who will have to let Hollywood run itself without her for now.” He shifted his gaze from Anais to Arcadia giving her a knowing look.

  Arcadia looked miserable at the thought of it, but she kept silent.

  Anais took another sip of the coffee. Everyone was looking at her now. She knew she should be more scared that Jago had been in the house, but instead she was just angry. He had killed her parents. He had robbed her of her whole family, taken her entire life away from her, and now he was threatening to hurt her new adopted family. No, she wasn’t as scared as everyone else seemed to be. She just wished she had stayed awake long enough to see him. She didn’t know what she would have done if she had come face to face with her parents murderer, but the sharp knives on the kitchen counter were giving her ideas. Besides, if Andrew was half as good as Aldrich made out, then he would keep them all safe. The thought of spending the next few weeks stuck with Aethelu and her new family in the manor didn’t sound too bad at all. She certainly was less upset about the prospect than the rest of the family seemed to be.

  “It’s just threats, though,” Anais said.

  “Anais. The man is dangerous. He’s been inside the house,” Winnie sniffed.

  “He did get in here, yes, but he didn’t actually do anything beyond putting a letter on the table. We were all a bit drunk last night. We were sitting ducks. He could have hurt any one of us, but he didn’t. He’s just trying to scare us.”

  “Don’t underestimate him, Anais. Look what he did to your parents.” Aldrich looked at her intently.

  “From behind the wheel of a car, in the middle of the night. He’s nothing but a chicken.”

  “The brakes on my car didn’t just fail,” Alex said.

  Finally the enormity of the situation sank in.

  “They were cut?”

  “Yes. They’d been cut halfway. We were lucky that they lasted as long as they did and only snapped when we were going slowly.”

  Anais slumped in her chair and was silent. She looked to Aldrich who gave her a small sad smile and then continued where he had been interrupted.

  “Now we have another little problem,” Aldrich 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 T
he 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 you, 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 Aldrich 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, Aldrich 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 mother’s 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 and 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 Aldrich 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?”

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

  She realised what Aldrich 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.

  Aldrich 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 enou
gh. 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 lay 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.