Piper LeVine, A Gypsy's Truth

by Eris Kelli

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Apparently the best place for me to hide was in a barn full of barn animals. That’s where we stopped and Barthow was grossing me out. He was milking a pig and the pig along with all of its piglets did not like it.

  “You are doing okay?” Adriel asked. The pack had spread out throughout the barn and some were even outside keeping watch. “You’re all shaky and it’s making us nervous.” He cleared his throat. “You’re scared?” I opened up Angus’ journal instead of answering. “You’re still mad at Nicholas too aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” His shoulders slumped and he kicked at the dirt and hay mixture covering the ground. “He made a mistake but he really loves you. I’ve never seen him care more for anyone as he does for you.”

  “That’s nice of you to say, Adriel but we both know that’s not true. If he cared at all about me he would have shown up in the throne room.” I closed the book and hugged it against my chest. “He could have at least come to say goodbye. He’s another Rick all over again. I’m not what he wanted me to be so he’s just moved right onto the next best.”

  “Rick?” Adriel looked at me astounded. “He’s nothing like that pea brain.” He turned toward me looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “It only took one drop of Two Lips Abyss to make him forget you. One drop.” He held up one finger.

  “What?”

  “He was distracting you from Nicholas. So I gave him a drop of Two Lips Abyss that night on the terrace. I even had to tell him how to get home.”

  “That’s terrible.” I shoved him a step back. “What if you damaged his brain or something?”

  Adriel rolled his eyes at me. “He’s forgotten you. You didn’t want him anyway. It was the most pain free way to free him of your allure.” I sighed hoping it had not harmed Rick and feeling a little better about his forgetting me. “Nicholas would have done much worse if he’d been the one to find Rick there.”

  “There is nothing romantic about jealousy, Adriel. It only means that he loves himself most.”

  “You don’t know much about werewolves, Piper. We’re territorial by nature and we are the most ferocious over what we treasure most.” I opened my mouth to argue with him, but he kept talking. “You can’t understand or even guess what is going on with Nicholas right now, and I only wish I could tell you.”

  Barthow stood up shaking his head. He offered me the bucket of pig milk and I dry heaved when the warm fluid splashed a few drops onto my arm.

  “Yuck, drink it yourself.” I backed up as he followed me with the bucket.

  “You read it in the black book didn’t you? The pig’s milk will keep the Baobhans at a distance. We need all the help we can get. Drink it.” I had read that but I’d thought it was a farce. “Drink it.” He put the bucket in my hands, and I almost threw up into the bucket.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then how do you expect to survive this? I doubt the actual killing of the Baobhans is going to be less difficult than this.”

  I closed my eyes and took a swallow. It didn’t taste bad necessarily, but it was warm and it came out of a pig. The fluid stayed in my throat. My stomach refused to give the pig milk entrance. Barthow slapped my back and it finally went down. They passed the bucket around until it was empty.

  My mind was on Nicholas again when they loaded us all back into the car. Adriel gave me something he said would settle my stomach, but when my eyes grew heavy I knew he’d put me to sleep. I felt a blanket being tucked in around me.

  Then I wasn’t in the car anymore. I was standing outside of Madric’s house. Maybe I was there to confront Nicholas.

  What had Adriel meant I didn’t know what was going on?

  I opened the door and found the front room empty. The table where Madric had mixed his healing creams was bare. Continuing further in I opened the door to the bedroom and found the bed too was empty.

  Suddenly, there was a man I didn’t know with black, long hair that was striped with aged white. His face was pale and his familiar eyes bulging at me. I fell backwards out of the bedroom and then quickly rolled over and got back up.

  “Sibh thainig le maraigh iad. Nil lig iad scrios ar treibh,” he yelled frantically following me as I left Madric’s house. He circled around me and kept saying whatever he was saying with so much urgency.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” I yelled back hoping he’d stop.

  “Sibh thainig le maraigh iad!”

  He didn’t act like he was going to hurt me so I kept moving. I ran toward Nicholas’ family home. The man came with me still insisting on yelling at me in Gaelic. We had almost reached the house when I heard a low growl.

  I turned around and I found Nicholas in werewolf form. He towered over me, his body thick with black fur and his eyes were mostly black. His lips were curled back, and his long white teeth dripped with saliva as the growl got bigger and the earth trembled.

  “Nicholas. It’s me, Piper.”

  His jaws snapped at me, the hair on his back standing up.

  “Nicholas?”

  The houses suddenly went up in flames all around me, and I could hear people screaming. I was crying and the black haired man pointed past me. The Baobhans were coming. I could feel the heat on my face from the fire.

  I sat up and looked around the room, disoriented and confused. I was on the floor in a sleeping bag in front of a fire. It was the only light in the room, but it did manage to illuminate Blackbeard’s tired face. He was reading the journal and only he and I were in the room.

  “Bad dream?”

  “Yeah.” My breathing was still coming fast and I was doing my best to get control of it. “Learn anything?”

  “He was a wind-whisperer and earth lurer same as you.” Barthow rubbed his eyes.

  I asked, “Where is everyone?”

  “We’ve got ourselves a full moon.” I looked out the only window and the moon was in the upper right corner. It was a huge shimmering silver round moon. “I let myself be ruled by my fear. Forgive me?”

  “Yes, of course I forgive you. Anything else in that journal?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, so far he just goes on about what he can grow and how he’s developed his wind-whispering to mind manipulation. I’m glad to say he at this point has chosen not to practice it.”

  “Well, what was he growing?”

  “Bushes and healing herbs thus far. Why? Do you think he grew something to kill the Sith with?”

  “Anything is possible.” I watched him read and prayed he would suddenly light up with an answer. We could hear the werewolves outside, they were howling. Whenever they drew near the tiny house we could hear the low growls and sometimes ferocious snarling.

  “Oh, ho, ho.” Barthow sat up taller in the only chair in the room. “Now this is something.”

  “What is it?” I got up and stood next to him. The writing was still all in Gaelic but from my studying the black book I was able to recognize a few of the words.

  “Angus ventured out one night and he was sure he saw a group of Baobhans. A group, he says there were more than five. All of our records only tell us of four.” He was right, there were only four mentioned in the black book. “Of course Angus is but fifteen here. He might have been mistaken.”

  “What else does he say about them?”

  “Well, here, I’ll read the entry to you.”

  “This last night I ventured out after the setting of the sun despite the warnings of the clan. Rumors have been going round about the Baobhans. I did not believe this rumor. I should have. I was not more than a kilometer or so out when I saw them. More than five but I cannot say for certain their exact number as the night was dark. They moved like normal men, but I knew them for what they were, for I saw them creating a slave, a black Sith and its eyes shown like an animal’s eyes at night.

  “He was fifteen when he wrote that? He sounds so mature.”

  “He’s daft, going ou
t after the Baobhans.”

  “Well, clearly he learned how to kill them from observing them. What does the next entry say?” Barthow turned the page and started reading. “What does it say?”

  “We’ve moved twice and I am beginning to think that I may be the cause of their following us. Perhaps they are angered that I observed them. I have not spoken of this to the clan for if I am the cause they may wish to turn me over to the Baobhans to spare themselves. If we should have a need to move again I will have to tell them.”

  He looked down at the page and then turned the page back and forth. “This next entry is three years later. He is eighteen at this point.” My shoulders slumped as I waited. Three years? Why had he stopped writing? What had happened with the Baobhans when he was fifteen?

  “This day I will celebrate as the one of most meaning and purpose for all the days of my life. I have wed Sarae and am going to strive to be the husband she deserves. Her beauty is unparalleled and her voice is like summer warmth. She will be the best queen for our people.”

  Barthow handed me the book. “He stops writing in Gaelic. This is old English. I suspect you can decipher it while I rest?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I can.” I took the book and was relieved to see words that I could understand. “If he knew all this time how to write and speak in English, why did he write in Gaelic?”

  “Gaelic was his people’s historic language. Perhaps he was not ready to let it die out. We still make certain our young know the language. It preserves many things that would otherwise be lost.”

  “Like the black book?”

  “To name one thing.” Barthow stood up from the chair. “Trade me places, would you?” I got up and left the sleeping bag for him.

  I read about many decisions that Angus made as the king of the gypsies. He also talked a lot about the traditions of the gypsies and though I didn’t always understand what the big deal was I did come to respect that there was a reason for all the rules and order in the gypsy way of life. It wasn’t for another two years and two children birthed by Sarae that the Baobhans came up again in his writings.

  5 March 1888

  The Baobhans have come back into our Scotland and they are killing without cause. They are unstoppable. They are full of power and think nothing of butchering innocents. The murders have been accredited to a mad killer that is combing the countryside for victims. I refuse to stand aside as they poison our home soil with their black Siths. They are the walking dead and I make it my mission to find a way to bury them for good.

  I turned the page feeling my heart pumping.

  Come on Angus. Find something amazing. Tell me what I can do.

  12 March 1888

  Sarae is furious. Last night I set a trap hoping to catch a Baobhan and failed in that my bait, a lowly drunken Gaje, was taken by the Baobhan and my trap shredded into wood chips. Clearly a wooden cage is nothing to the strength of a Baobhan.

  21 March 1888

  The trap worked this time and I used much stronger materials but I failed to lure in a Baobhan. A black Sith is all that I caught and come morning it was dead from the exposure to the sunlight. Unfortunately, the sun did not rise in time to spare my bait, another drunken Gaje, and now I will have to find another. Sarae is refusing to speak to me.

  Thunder blasted out almost on top of us and I dropped the journal. “Stupid thunder.” I picked up the journal and saw a shadow of a man cross the floor when lightning lit up the night. I looked up at the window ready to scream but there was no one there.

  The hard knock at the door scared me so badly I screamed and threw the book at it.

  Barthow didn’t stir at all. I shook his leg, but he still didn’t wake. A second knock sounded and I tapped Barthow’s cheek, but he didn’t stop his snoring. I heard a click and looked back to the door in time to see the door opening, and I grabbed a poker from the fireplace and the book from the floor.

  “It’s okay.” The young man said as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “Stay back.” I pointed the poker at him wondering if he was trying not to laugh at me. He had to be someone of significance if he could reach the house past all the werewolves. “Barthow, wake up.” I kicked him in the leg and he slumped to the right still snoring.

  “He’s under a sleeping spell, Kellan. He won’t wake until the morning.”

  I concentrated on him and told him to get out, on the wind hoping it would scare him but he just smiled at me with perfect white teeth. His skin was tan and his hair was sandy blond and long enough to hang over his ears.

  “I’m going to take off this shirt, it’s wet.” He pulled off his black sweatshirt and I just watched knowing there wasn’t a whole lot I could do.

  “If I scream the werewolves will come.”

  “Yes they will. They’ll kill us all if you do.” He turned and hung the sweatshirt next to the fire and that was when I saw the tattoos. There were three eyes on his arm they all blinked in turn and I griped the poker tighter.

  “You’re Daniel?”

  Nina’s boyfriend was here?

  “That’s right. Seraph told you about me?” He was smiling brightly at me until I shook my head. “No, of course not.” His muscles flexed and I took a step back. “So who did tell you about me?”

  “Nina.” I forced my shoulders to go lower though my muscles did not relax in the least. “What do you want? You’re dating my best friend and treating her badly, for what?”

  “I have not treated her badly.” I just continued to look at him so he continued. “I’m your brother.”

  He was the name crossed off.

  “I’ve been cursed with Marime and I’m not allowed to see anyone of the clan. I wanted to see you. You’re my sister, so I started dating Nina. She was supposed to introduce me to you two weeks ago but she refused. She thinks I like you. I couldn’t tell her that you’re my sister.” He was staring at my hand and his eyes widened. “That’s Angus’ journal?”

  “One more step and I scream.” I raised the poker level with his neck. “Why were you cursed with Marime? Doesn’t that mean your gypsy blood was changed into that of a Gaje?”

  “You must have had the reception of a queen when you went back to the community.” His eyes didn’t leave the book. “Seraph must have been ecstatic to have you home. She’s been waiting and watching for…” He made an exasperated sound. “My whole life.” He finally brought his eyes back up to meet mine. “You’ve got the key. She’s got her successor. Congratulations.”

  “Why was your name crossed off of the family tree? Morgan Castlerock still has his name there but you were crossed off.”

  “Well, that was because our father left before his blood could be changed. I wasn’t so lucky.” He glanced over at Barthow. “Half of what you’ve come to know are lies. I wouldn’t let them get away with that and that’s why I ended up on the outs.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. You need to leave.”

  “Hey, why should you? I’m just your brother.” His nostrils flared. “Everything is secrets and they use them to control you. Tony and Johnny had no problem lying to you your whole life, doesn’t that tell you anything?” He watched me, but I did not let myself react. “Did they tell you that Nicholas is at this very moment chained to the ground?

  “He’s consumed with jealousy. Nicholas is like a wolf under a full moon twenty four seven until he can get control of himself, if he can.” He grabbed his sweatshirt, squeezed it with his huge hands and water poured out of every fiber. “One, maybe two more nights that way and he’ll be like that forever.” He pulled the sweatshirt back on over his head. “Nicholas is very vulnerable to being killed by the Baobhans all staked out like he is.”

  “They wouldn’t do that to him.” My hand was shaking with the poker and he could see it.

  He shrugged, letting out a long breath. “I bet once he was wounded Seraph didn’t want you to marry him anymore. She would want a strong p
rotector for her successor.” I didn’t say anything but my face must have because his expression was triumphant. “If he’s killed by a Baobhan it will be considered an honorable death.”

  He was making me so confused. “Daniel, why are you here?”

  “I just don’t want you to go through what I did. You deserve to hear some truth. Why don’t you ask Barthow or Adriel about it? While you’re at it consider this, the Baobhans are powerful enough to kill millions in a day but they don’t. They are immortal and I’m willing to bet that they didn’t hurt you when they were fighting with Nicholas. They want to give you your own piece of eternity. Do you think they couldn’t just pick someone else if they didn’t actually care about you?”

  Obviously my Baobhan loving brother had crossed over a line that I had no intention of crossing. “They’re responsible for Duncan’s death and they almost killed Nicholas.”

  Daniel laughed. “Wow, they’ve blinded you quicker than I thought possible. Let me just ask you one last thing. What if you found a lost member of your family, let’s say, Sidney and she was being kept from you by werewolves. If you had it in your power to fight for her, would you?” He opened the door and then nodded toward Barthow. “Ask him. You’ll see.”