by Melle Amade
“The Order is going to continue to rule over shifter lives and destroy them.”
“You don’t think there’s any benefits to having the structure of the Order?” Aiden asks.
“What?” My voice is low and incredulous.
Callum knows that tone. He holds up a hand to try and keep me in check. “All that Aiden means,” he says. “Is that the Order was developed to protect the shifters from humans and the deadliest humans are the Hunters.”
I glare at him. “Hunters are ghosts and rumors of ghosts as far as I’m concerned,” I hiss. “I’ve never seen one or heard from one. But I’ve watched El Oso destroy lives right in front of me.”
“Shae,” Aiden says, “I’m not against doing something about the Order, you know that. But I need to try and stabilize my father, first. The Order isn’t going anywhere.”
“Okay,” I take a deep breath. It hits me then. It’s in his eyes, in his skin, in his terror. His dad is dying. “Okay,” I say again. “All I was trying to say is that it might be easier to attack El Oso when he’s out in the world rather than in his stronghold in Mexico City. But we can talk about that later. I think you really need some rest, Aiden.”
As I let go of my anger I’m filled with compassion for him. My arms go around him and I feel him rest against me. His body is weak.
A shriek explodes from inside the house, and we bolt to the makeshift infirmary we’d quickly thrown together in the Parlor. Lord Van Arend lies on a table, his skin gray, bloated and inflamed.
“What are you doing to him?” Aiden pushes past Cooper to get to his dad.
Roman stares at the machinery he’s put together to try and control the lightening and rain storm raging inside Lord Van Arend. Roman’s eyes narrow, his body is stiff and focused. He’s concentrated and working on the dials and connecting wires to Aiden’s dad.
“It’s not working,” Roman says, his voice low. “The machine is working, but it’s not working on your dad.”
“It did it before,” Aiden says, reaching for the dials.
“Get him out of here,” Roman says to Callum.
“I’m not leaving,” Aiden says.
“Then get your hands away from my equipment,” says Roman.
“You have nothing to add to this right now,” I say. “Just hold your dad’s hand. Hold it and talk to him.”
Tears glisten in Aiden’s eyes, but he blinks back a grimace crossing his face as he struggles for control. He kneels and grabs his dad’s hand. “It’s going to be okay.” He chokes the words out, his voice breaking. I’m not sure anyone in the room believes him. It feels like it hasn’t been okay for so long.
My eyes meet Callum’s. He’s suffering, too. Lord van Arend was like a second father to him. He took him in when Callum’s mother killed herself.
“I’m not a doctor, Aiden,” Roman says. “And even Zaragoza wasn’t able to cure him.”
“Zaragoza is gone,” Aiden says. “We have no more warlocks. You and your science are all we have.”
Callum motions me out of the room. I slip out quietly following him. He keeps walking until he’s by the vehicles. “
“I think we should go and talk to Jacquelyn’s mom,” Callum says. “They have some kind of magic up there. It’s the only thing close to what Zaragoza had.”
“I agree,” I murmur. “But maybe I’m not the best person to ask for help?”
“We need to go now. And you’re the one she let in first.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” I say wishing we could just text and get rejected that way. But no, there is no service over the hill. We’re going to have to go up there ourselves and plead to their faces.
The golden light of the sun is spreading across the fields as we drive through the valley. The air is stiff with heat even though it’s October and you’d think the weather would be starting to cool down. It’s like the summer’s trying to cling to its life and not giving up until the land screams for water and change.
“How did I make so many mistakes?” Callum moans.
“I don’t think you’ve made any mistakes.”
“If I hadn’t made so many mistakes, then why are we here?” He asks. “A safe house of all places.”
“We’re staying with Zan’s family.” I try to make it sound like we came up here on vacation.
“We’re at a safe house, Shae,” he says. “Do you even realize what means?”
“Yeah, we’re outside of the framework of the Order.”
“The framework of the Order is everything my family has fought, paid, and struggled to uphold,” he says, the sound of his voice sounds like he’s being torn into pieces. “And now my Lord is in a safe house and he’s dying.”
“You can’t keep beat yourself up over this.” I insist. “It doesn’t help anyone.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he says. “This wasn’t supposed to come to an end with me. I was supposed to uphold my family name, my honor, and now it’s all just going to crash and burn.”
My fingers stretch out and touch his arm.
“You have to let it go,” I say.
“Let it go?” He says. “Let it go?”
My shoulder sag with uselessness.
“I have no idea what you are going through,” I say. “I have no title, no house. Heck, I don’t even know if I’m a Ravensgaard or a Passief.”
“You’re a Ravensgaard.”
“I’m nothing,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m here with you and we’re going to do the best we can to try and help Lord Van Arend.”
I wrap my fingers in with his, pulling them in tight.
19
Henry is lying limp and asleep in Uncle Steve’s arms when they troop up the front stairs and into the house late that night. They’ve been at a livestock show over in Sacramento checking out some of the competition. My brother has started to get so excited about farm life and Mom has been indulging him, letting him to go the shows. Now he probably thinks he’s going to become a farmer. He doesn’t yet realize how tenuous is our likelihood of our stay. Especially now with the arrival of Lord Van Arend.
Cooper has already warned his parents of the unexpected guest and I can see by the set of Aunt Emma’s shoulders as she enters the living room that it hasn’t gone over to well. Being the host that she is, she checks in on Aiden and his father first, but then ushers us all into the backyard.
The night is actually cold and I grab blankets out of the wooden chest, handing one to Mom and snuggling under the other one with Zan.
Aunt Emma is too agitated to sit down, instead, she paces the back porch, a series of precise taps marking her repetitive pathway. “You can’t just have Lord Van Arend dying in the front parlor.” She keeps her voice low and an eye through the glass doors in case Aiden decides to join us.
“We don’t know he’s dying,” Aunt Natalie pulls at the sleeve of her sweater.
“Have you seen him?” She asks her sister-in-law. “What if somehow we are discovered by the Order?”
“Years ago, we made the decision we would not live in constant fear of discovery,” Uncle Steve says. “The Van Arends are our benefactors. We will not close our home to them, no matter the outcome. And that is final.”
“But what if the Order comes? If they notice he is not in Topanga and they somehow track him here?” Aunt Emma stops in front of her husband. “He’s not some random shifter looking to lay low for a little while. The Order is going to miss him and will demand to know where he is.”
“Iona told Polaris that he went back to the Netherlands.” Callum offers quietly.
Uncle Steve sighs and put his hands together. “There is a chance they will not question his absence at all. Maybe they are focused on this quest of El Oso. But, Emma, I have been thinking about the dangers of Lord Van Arend staying here and I think you need to go back to the Midwest. Take Natalie, Cooper, Roman, Zan, Shae and her family. We should empty the house.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
&
nbsp; “Yeah. What she said,” Cooper says.
“I mean, if you’ll let me stay at your ranch,” I nod differentially to Uncle Steve.
“You can stay,” Cooper says. “I agree, Mom, needs to go to the Midwest and take Aunt Natalie and Shae’s Mom and Henry, but we’re not going anywhere. I’m not going to leave Lord Van Arend alone with his son in our house. They don’t just need a roof over their heads, they need help.”
“I will stay to help them,” Uncle Steve says. “And Callum as his Ridder will stay also. Two people is enough. There’s no reason to put the rest of you in danger.”
“He came here to get my help,” Roman says. “There’s no way I’m leaving.”
“None of us are leaving,” Aunt Emma says with a finality that tells all of us the conversation is about to end. “You are right, Steve. We need to carry on as usual. The livestock show is day after tomorrow and everyone is expecting Spotswood Ranch to be there.” She holds up the local newspaper, which has a front-page article of Cooper showing one of their prize cattle. “Cooper, I’ll get somebody from Valley View to show your cows. You need to stay here.”
“I’ll stay also,” Uncle Steve nods at Cooper.
“People will ask questions if you aren’t there,” Aunt Natalie says. “We should take Kathleen and Henry as well.”
“Right,” Aunt Emma agrees. “We’re going to make it look like everything is normal in our world, just a couple of out of town visitors.”
“Perhaps it’s a little reactionary?” Roman broaches the topic cautiously. “All we’re trying to do is keep Lord Van Arend alive. Nobody has found this place in over a hundred years. They’re not about to find it now.”
I don’t say what springs to mind at his words, but the one thing I’ve discovered in my life is that everything can change in an instant.
The night quiets down. Cooper and Zan go for a run. Roman goes back into the library to work on something, anything he can think of that will help at least one of us. Callum goes in to sit with Aiden, but I think maybe he’s been doing too much sitting lately. I follow Callum in and reach out to Aiden.
“Come on,” I say. “I’ll show you our new hangout spot. You’ll like it. It’s just far enough away from the barn so you won’t smell the cow poop.”
Aiden looks up, his face drawn and haggard. “I shouldn’t-” his voice croaks.
“You need to,” Callum says. “You can’t take this all on yourself. Take a break, go for a walk. I’m not telling you to relax but...” He shrugs and pulls Aiden to his feet, gently shoving him towards the door.
It’s a nice night outside as we walk towards the straw bales. The moon is up and waning now, but still rich and casting an opaque light across the farmyard. Aiden walks like a guy in a dream next to me, so quiet and just going through the motions. I want to say something like “it’s all going to be alright” or “we’ll figure this out together,” but when I think of the bloated, swollen skin of Lord Van Arend and his blackened fingertips where the lightning is singeing them…I don’t have any answers.
I have no idea if he’s ever going to come back from this.
“How are you doing?” I ask instead. Another completely stupid question, but sometimes you have to say something. You have to start somewhere.
“I have to pull it together,” Aiden says running his hands through his brown hair. The gold highlights look gray in the moonlight.
“No, you don’t,” I offer.
“This is my last chance to save my father. We have tried everything. If this doesn’t work, I have to be prepared for the worst, and I’m just not ready.”
“There’s no way to prepare for that,” I murmur, my heart sagging in my chest. I have no idea where my father is or how he’s doing. It’s impossible to imagine what it would be like to be in Aiden’s shoes.
“You don’t understand, Shae,” he stops and turns to me. “It’s not just preparing for his death, for losing him. I have to be him the minute he dies. I have to be Lord Van Arend. I am not prepared for that any more than I am prepared to lose my father.”
I gulp, my breath a lump in my throat.
“We can help you with that,” I say. “Well, Callum, Zan, Shanahan, Balthazar…they will all help you. You have a ton of support. I can’t help you get through anything. Not banished.”
“You know you always help me get through stuff,” Aiden says. “Even when you’re far away. Just thinking about you makes me calmer. I imagine that cooing sound you make. And I think of how you always see the bright side of things and bring us together.”
“I don’t know about that,” I smile wanly. “I’d probably try to kill some evil guy or do some other dumb thing I didn’t tell anybody about.”
“You’ve never done anything dumb,” Aiden’s eyes are on me, like he’s thinking about our kiss. But he doesn’t move towards me.
“I’ve done a lot of dumb things,” I say. “But I don’t regret any of them, Aiden.”
“Me neither.”
I start to walk up a pile of straw bales, but he stops me.
“Can we just, I don’t know, walk around the house or something?” he asks. “I don’t really feel comfortable being too far away.” His gaze goes to the windows of the parlor.
“Yeah, of course. Whatever you need.” We fall into step easily next to each other. My arm slips naturally through his and I lead him towards the flower garden at the front of the house. “Did you get my message about Thunder Beings?” I broach the topic carefully. I’m not about to freak him out and tell him I am one, but he needs to be aware they exist first.
“Yeah, Zan sent it to me. I didn’t really understand.”
“Well it’s, you know, it’s the Native American tradition about Earth magic We’ve seen it up here. There’s a quail clan living in secrecy over the hill. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to tell you, so pretend you don’t know. But they have a thunder being living with them. It’s like a person who can do Earth magic. I was asking them about it and they said it’s people who can make storms and lightning and things.”
“Like my dad?” Aiden asks.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, but I don’t think that’s my dad. He’s not Native American.”
“Not unless all your careful breeding went awry,” I say. “Your dad is special and ancient, but they have been telling me there are two different types of magic, Earth magic and the magic of man. When I described to them the magic coming out of El Oso, you know, the green energy, they said it couldn’t possibly be Earth magic, it has to be made from the magic of man.”
“The magic of man?” Aiden asks.
“Yeah. Like spells. We’ve been trying to piece it together, but Zan hasn’t found anything. My dad sacrificed himself and said he would provide El Oso with the chalice and himself.”
Aiden frowns at me. “In one of my dad’s deliriums he told me some strange stuff.” His voice is low and hangs heavy in the air between us. “He told me- well, I don’t think he was really telling me, he was just saying it out loud. He was saying he betrayed his people for her, that he gave them up for my mother.”
“Gave what up?” I ask.
“The way he told the story was really fragmented. But it sounded like he gave some valuable objects to El Oso. I guess El Oso has been looking for these things for a really, really, really long time. Like decades. My mother had risked her life to collect them all and keep them in safety, but El Oso was tracking her. My father was supposed to keep them safe for her, but…I don’t know. Something happened to my mom and dad gave all the magic objects to El Oso to save her.”
“And he used them to somehow get that green energy?” I murmur.
Aiden shrugs. “Maybe?”
“But, I don’t get it. If he had them all before, why doesn’t he have them now?”
Aiden shakes his head. “I don’t know how he lost them, but he certainly has magic now. We all saw it when he nearly killed you and Roman.”
“He didn’t nearly kill me.”
I put my hand on Aiden’s shoulder. The last thing he needs to think about right now is the potential death of someone close to him. “He didn’t come close to killing me.”
“That’s not what it looked like from where I was sitting,” Aiden says.
I let my hand drop off his shoulder because it doesn’t matter how comfortable and close we are. Nothing’s ever going to happen between Aiden and me. Besides, I’m with Callum and unless something has grossly changed, Aiden is still betrothed to his cousin, Mathilde, in Holland.
“What if something happened?” Aiden says. “What if he had all the objects, did the spell, got the magic for himself but then lost one of the objects?”
“But why does he need them again?” I ask. “He already has magic.” But then it strikes me…I have magic and if I wanted more, I would want it for all my friends. “The Berzerken,” I murmur.
“I don’t know about that. From what I’ve heard, Patch and Polaris are kind of running the Order now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were planning to rebel against El Oso at some point. With a bit of luck, we may not have to do anything about him. The Berzerken may implode on their own.”
“That’s not going to save my father,” I murmur.
“Yeah.” Aiden’s eyes move to the windows of the parlor where his father is. We’re back at the front of the house. I motion my hand towards the front of the steps.
As the door to the house opens, I hear Callum’s voice. “You’ve got to make sure Shanahan runs them through all of their drills,” he says.
I stop in my tracks, my heart racing. Is Iona here? Glancing over at Aiden, he looks a little puzzled but not particularly shocked. We step around the corner and I see Callum is on the phone.
“I have to go, Iona,” he says and hangs up.
Tightness ripples across my face and ice crackles under my skin. My collar stings and I gasp for air as the raven tries to claw its way out from inside me. My body collapses forward, but I clutch at a chair, just catching myself before I hit the ground.
“Shae!” Callum exclaims, reaching for me but I right myself and step back.
