Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1

by L. A. Jones

  “Don’t you think the light might draw attention?”

  Ross shrugged. “I doubt it. The police have been in and out of here at all times of day and night. We’re in a commercial area. No nosy busybodies around. Besides, I don’t intend to stay long.”

  Aradia got the message. “Be thorough but quick," she translated.

  He made a clicky noise in the corner of his mouth.

  Aradia shrugged and looked a little deeper. She took a deep breath, then a few more. I guess it’s time to find the truth. Aradia closed her eyes and cleared her mind completely.

  Aradia wished the place hadn’t been cleared out of personal belongings, and also that she’d thought to sneak in sooner. The more the place changed and time passed, the cloudier her vision would be.

  She stood in the middle of the room, spread her arms out, feet apart, and readied herself. She extended herself into the essence of the building, rooted herself in its foundation, spread her senses into its wires and outlets. She probed back into the building’s memories. She knew that buildings can’t remember events, of course. She had no better way of wording what she was doing though. She’d found that if she became one with a location, she could essentially remember things that had happened there.

  Aradia opened her eyes and in a blurry blue-yellowish haze, she found herself on the night of the murder.

  A man stumbled through the apartment from the kitchen to the couch. She immediately recognized him as Mr. Stanley. He had a beer in his hand, and from his unsteady gait, she assumed it was not his first. He half sat, half collapsed onto the sofa. He gazed at the blank television. Aradia assumed he had been watching something, but her vision did not reveal what it had been. He leaned forward to the coffee table and leafed through a stack of papers which, from Aradia’s perspective, magically appeared from her vision’s yellow mist.

  Angrily, he threw the stack across the room and returned to his beer.

  His head jerked sharply toward the door. Aradia assumed he’d heard knocking. She could not hear it herself, for her ability only revealed surroundings and events. She could see people and move in her visions, but she could not hear the words or sounds.

  The soon-to-be victim kept his eyes glued to the ground gloomily as he shuffled to the door. When he opened the door and saw who stood there, he issued a weak smile and extended his arm, waving the newcomer at the door to enter.

  The moment the person at the door crossed the threshold, the atmosphere in the room changed entirely. The yellow faded and the blue disappeared entirely, being replaced by a heavy and ominous and almost opaque glare of red. The colors of Aradia’s memories were often very indicative of the emotions she was witnessing, and Dax, damn him, had been right when he’d said red was the color of passion.

  Aradia felt slightly gratified. She had been apparently correct in her hunch that the victim knew the killer. She angled herself to get a clean look at the killer’s face. What she saw made her feel as if she were the one who had been exsanguinated.

  Although the killer was walking right towards her, his face was blank. He or she showed no eyes, ears, mouth, or distinguishing characteristics of any kind. His face was a complete blank canvas. Even his or her form was so shrouded in cloudiness that Aradia could not tell whether she was seeing a man or a woman. She jumped back as the killer strode confidently past her.

  She was shocked and bewildered by what she was seeing. Aradia could not understand it. Her place-memory was shaky at best, as far as her powers went, but until then it had always either worked or it hadn’t. It had never given her a half measure like this. Why should this time, which mattered so much more than any other effort, be any different?

  The only detail she was able to make out clearly about the killer was that the person wore loose-fitting clothes and had a sack slung over his or her shoulder. Aradia had a bad feeling about that bag.

  Victim and killer began arguing. Or not, Aradia realized. The victim was arguing, heatedly it seemed. The killer was mostly just ignoring him, though, stalking through the apartment. Oh God, Aradia realized, he’s planning his kill.

  The faceless person’s body tensed up. Aradia tensed up too, sensing that this was the part where the killer finally became the killer.

  What happened next came in a blur. Mr. Stanley was bent over gathering the papers he’d strewn about. The killer pulled a heavy cloth from his jacket pocket and methodically soaked it from a vial. He stealthily advanced from behind upon the unsuspecting, drunk man. When Mr. Stanley stood, the killer pressed the cloth against his nose and mouth.

  “No!” Aradia cried out.

  She knew she couldn’t change the past, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t protest the brutality of it.

  The victim did not go down without a fight. He struggled against his assailant, and she saw his body grow tense. His skin rippled. She recognized the effect. She realized he was shifting into his werewolf form. Or he was trying to, at least. When Roy had changed, it had been fast. Mr. Stanley wasn’t changing, though.

  What’s more, though she could make out few details, she saw similar skin tightening and rippling in the killer.

  Then the scene changed. She had the impression that some time had passed and that she had missed some possibly crucial details. A wispy trail of red memory streamers led to the bathroom. She followed them there in a hurry.

  Aradia clasped her hand to her mouth to stifle her scream. In the shower of the guest bathroom, the killer had strung Mr. Stanley up by his feet and was bleeding him dry like a kosher cow. Blood pulsed from two small holes in his throat. His heart was still pumping.

  What truly shocked her most was the cold viciousness of the killer. He had removed Stanley’s shirt and folded it in a neat bundle at the sink. Calmly he adjusted the showerhead and turned on the water, rinsing it over the victim’s neck and head and helping the blood flow down the drain. He passed an ice pick through the water, rinsing the blood from it, then scrubbed it with a Brillo pad before drying it and putting it away in his sack.

  The way he moved he seemed more like a painter cleaning the paint from his brush than a bloodthirsty psycho committing a grisly crime.

  Thankfully, it was over soon.

  The scene jumped again, and Aradia rushed back out into the main living area. Mr. Stanley, or his corpse rather, was laid on the ground where the police had found him. His shirt was back on and he was dry. He was very pale.

  The killer stepped into the scene and surveyed his or her handiwork. Apparently satisfied, the faceless monster rushed out the front door, running right through Aradia in the process.

  That was all she saw. The memories faded back into the past, and Aradia was standing in the here-and-now again, with her father.

  She could not help but feel the faint hot pricks of tears in her eyes.

  Aradia awoke in her bed. She had no idea what time it was. Her tongue was dry, and there was an awful chalky taste at the back of her throat. She swung her legs out of bed and staggered to her feet. She saw she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on at the crime scene. She changed into her PJs, splashed some cold water on her face, then carefully made her way downstairs. She found her parents sitting in the kitchen as if they had been expecting her. Her father had a cup of steaming coffee. Her mother just looked relieved to see her.

  “We called in sick for you at school,” her father said.

  Her mother rushed forward and hugged her. Aradia felt too weak to return the embrace.

  “Twice,” Liza added. “We called you in sick twice. I did too.”

  She did some slow mental math. “So it’s Friday?” she croaked, realizing she’d been asleep over twenty-four hours.

  “Saturday, actually,” her father said.

  “Huh,” she replied, still not quite grasping the situation.

  “I gave you water and juice,” her mom said, “while you slept. You took some.”

  “Like after the house fire,” her father added.

  “Huh,” Ara
dia repeated. She looked at Liza and hopefully asked, “Mom? Maybe you could make me some toast please?”

  “Of course, Rai Rai.”

  Two pieces of toast later and Aradia was beginning to feel almost halfway decent. Her appetite was returning, at least. Two more pieces of toast, half a grapefruit, and a glass of milk after that, and she was ready to talk.

  Aradia explained everything her vision had showed her. She described the victim’s reaction to seeing the killer, the brutal slaying, and the murderer’s cold demeanor.

  “I don’t know why I couldn’t see the killer’s face,” she lamented. “It was the only thing I truly needed to see.”

  “Maybe that’s why you couldn’t see it,” Liza suggested. “This is a bit outside my specialty, but in cognitive psychology, sometimes the harder you try to force a memory, the deeper you end up burying it.”

  “My power has just never done this before,” she pouted.

  “Hey, Aradia,” her father mildly chided. “Your, ah… powers. They’re still new to all of us really, and they’re constantly developing. You haven’t used this one much in the past. The fact that it didn’t show you exactly what you were looking for does not mean you failed.”

  “If you use this power again,” Liza began, then stopped herself. “When you use this power again, relax and don’t force it. It could be that you pushing yourself to remember details is what landed you in bed for two days straight.”

  She chewed on that for a moment before nodding. “I still can’t believe it took so much out of me. And we don't even know anything."

  Her mother shook her head and said, "Not so, Aradia. We know a great deal."

  "But," Aradia sputtered, "we still don't know who the killer is."

  "True," her father conceded, "but you’re mother is right. We know much more than we did. We now know that the victim knew his killer. Stanley made some effort to show him financial information regarding the store, which reinforces the notion that it might have been a business associate. We know that the murder was premeditated. We know what the murder weapon was and how the victim’s body was drained of blood.”

  “And,” Liza added, “based on what you saw, it seems as if the killer was also a werewolf.”

  “Are we any closer to solving it, though?” Aradia asked both her parents.

  “What do you think?” Liza replied.

  Aradia thought it over. Excitedly she said, “I can tell Roy and Kaiser and everyone the truth and they’ll all stop fighting!”

  Ross shook his head and said, “I don’t think it will be that simple, honey.”

  Aradia asked, “Why not?”

  “Because Rai Rai,” said Liza, “Roy might take your word for it, but Kaiser is hurting. Even if he believes you, he’ll want revenge, and your father still has no suspect.”

  “It’s true,” Ross said. “I’m not opposed to you telling Roy and Kaiser what you learned. But don’t expect the violence to end just yet. This could still get worse before it gets better.”

  Aradia groaned, ran back up to her room, and threw herself onto her bed. She was tired and frustrated. It drove her nuts that her parents did not seem to realize the magnitude of hatred between the hidden races and how likely the situation was to explode into war.

  Well, I won’t let that happen, Aradia vowed to herself as she lay in her bed. Dad has his leads he’s following. I’ll follow mine.

  “You think it was a werewolf who perpetrated the Vampire Murders?” Roy asked incredulously.

  “I can’t be sure,” Aradia said. “It sure looked like the killer was getting ready to shift.”

  Roy thought it over. “He might have just been reacting to Stanley shifting. It’s kind of like dominos with us, sometimes. Especially during conflict. How did you get this vision, again?”

  Aradia took a deep breath. You knew what you were getting into when you came over to his house to talk about this. No going back, Rai. “I can get visions, when the circumstances are right. See things that happened in the past. Sometimes see things that haven’t happened yet. I don’t really understand it.”

  “Tell me exactly what you saw,” Roy said. She left out some of the gory details. She didn’t see any benefit in providing him more fodder for his fury. But she mostly gave him an accurate description.

  “When the killer came up behind Stanley, you said it looked like he was trying to change, but couldn’t?” Roy sought confirmation.

  “I don’t really know,” Aradia said. “I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing. That was the impression I got.”

  “And the killer held a cloth to Stanley’s face?”

  “Definitely. He’d poured something into it just a moment before.”

  Roy replied, “Succs.”

  “To say the least,” Aradia answered.

  “No, it’s a chemical. SUXAMETHONIUM chloride. It’s used in surgery on werewolves, and sometimes on humans. With humans it’ll put you under. For us, it keeps us from changing while we’re unconscious.”

  “That can happen?” Aradia asked.

  “I guess. I don’t think it’s common, but if a werewolf shifted while in surgery, it wouldn’t be pretty.”

  Aradia shuddered at the thought. “So that’s why Stanley didn’t shift to fight his attacker. Would that knock him out?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Aradia?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who else have you told about this?”

  “Nobody hidden, if that’s what you mean.”

  He paced the patio. “I think you probably shouldn’t repeat any of this until you know more. Or can prove it.”

  “Roy, I can protect myself.”

  “Aradia, this is bigger than that. If a vampire found out a werewolf was trying to frame vampires for murder, it would be very bad.”

  “Oh,” Aradia said, realizing what he meant.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I am frightened, Xan,” Dax stated. He and his brother were in their somewhat ironic ‘living room.’ He was standing near a window while Xan lounged on the couch reading a Maxim.

  Xan glanced up at his brother scornfully. “You could at least make an effort, you know. At being a man. Even if that’s where you’re going, being afraid, you don’t need to lead right out with it.”

  Dax rolled his eyes and said, “What I mean is I am afraid that my approach with Aradia is not working out.”

  Xan raised an eyebrow.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “It just isn't, Xan. I don't want to do this anymore.”

  Xan slammed the magazine down and stood up to face Dax.

  “You are afraid to get too close to her,” stated Xan.

  Dax did not reply, which was all the confirmation Xan needed. He raised an eyebrow, but before he could say anything else, Dax had already gone from the room.

  For the most part, Dax’s bedroom looked like any other guy's bedroom. His simply boasted a few modifications. His room’s single window was covered with thick boards of black wood. There were no mirrors at all. Oh, and instead of a bed, there lay a large black coffin with red velvet cushions.

  Dax threw himself into his coffin and rolled onto his back. He reached over and grabbed his headphones from his bedside table. After jamming them on, flicking on their noise cancellation, and pumping up the volume, Dax folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

  Aradia’s face haunted him. He imagined her smiling at him, throwing her head back in laughter, and flipping her long red hair behind her head when someone called her name. He thought about her green eyes and how they sparkled in any light, her thin rosy lips moving as quick as lightning, and her pale skin shimmering in the sun. He could almost hear her shrill voice cracking sometimes-clever jokes, inevitably followed by either groans or roars of laughter. As much as he didn't want it to, a happy grin crept onto his face as he pictured her slender body, her quirky, Pollyanna-like personality, and the small little smiles she threw so freely at her friends.

&nb
sp; He pulled his right arm from behind his head and grabbed a fistful of dirt that lay on the bottom of his coffin. It was taken from the soil of his mortal grave, as was the coffin itself. He held the precious dirt in his fist and squeezed the contents.

  As he listened to the crunching sound of the dirt he reminisced onto the times he had spent with Aradia. They had gone to their favorite coffee shop where they’d sat and talked for hours. They had taken long strolls on the beach together. Even though it was already October, the cold didn’t bother him, and she never seemed to notice. They’d discussed everything from Wall Street to their preferred shampoo.

  Dax had to admit that Aradia was not like any other woman he had ever met. She was so honest, non-judgmental, caring, considerate, perceptive, insightful, and sweet. Even with the secrets between them, they’d formed a bond. The more time he spent with her the stronger his feelings for her grew. He did not know if he was falling in love with her. He didn’t think he’d ever truly fallen in love with anyone. Whatever it was he was feeling for Aradia, he knew that if he kept seeing her, the emotion was bound to get deeper.

  Moreover, he thought to himself, it is bound to make things difficult.

  “This Dereck character seems suspicious,” Aradia insisted, trying to get her dad to talk to her. Ever since the crime scene, he’d been extra reluctant to talk about the case with her.

  “Sure. He is,” her father finally replied. “He was an early person of interest. The police didn’t find anything on him, though, and neither did the DA’s office.”

  “What about money?” she asked. “That’s got to be like, one of the top five reasons people have ever been killed.”

  He nodded agreement. “It’s a good hunch, Rai. But there’s not a shred of evidence to back it up.” He briefly considered his options. “Ah, to hell with it. Come here.”

  She jumped onto the couch next to him. He popped open his laptop as he explained, “I could probably lose my job for showing you this, so please keep it between us?”

  “Cross my heart,” she replied.