Bound (The Grandor Descendant Series Book 3)

by Stoires, Bell

  Ryder’s eyes were wide and hopeful and he glanced at Ari, who quickly nodded enthusiastically.

  “Ryder’s right, there’s no knowing what is going to happen,” she said tentatively.

  “If the ancients or James Frater, or any Elder finds out what I have done… I’m dead,” said Patrick. “Blood hunting is punishable by the Final Death Laws.”

  “Well, they’re not going to find out,” said Ryder. “The only people who know what happened are in this room and were not going to say anything.”

  Ryder glared at Ari and Ragon, as if daring them to challenge him on this.

  “Ryder,” Ragon said, moving towards him slowly and placing an arm on his shoulder, “you’re still a young fledgling. There is so much of our world that you don’t understand. Those in power… they have ways of finding these things out. It might be safer for Patrick to leave.”

  “No!” Ryder exclaimed, shrugging Ragon away and leaning down so as to sit by Patrick. “Some stupid curse doesn’t define you. You are the most gentle, sweetest person I know. Killing Mark was the right thing to do and you know it. You saved me.”

  For the first time Patrick looked up. His eyes were heavy and there were large black bags forming underneath them which glistened with tears.

  “Ryder,” Patrick said, smiling lightly, “Ragon is right. You are my blood line. What if I hurt you? How would I live with that?”

  “The only way that you could hurt me is if you leave,” said Ryder.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Patrick, momentarily staring up at Ryder. “I should have trusted you.”

  A long pause followed this proclamation. Then, in an instant, Patrick stood, taking one final longing glance at Ryder, and raced from the room. The shock that followed Patrick’s exit lasted for only a second.

  Quickly Ryder moved to follow him but Ragon grabbed onto his wrist, holding him tight as he said, “Let him go.”

  Pulling hard, Ryder tried to break away, but Ragon’s grip was too strong.

  “I’m going to call Lea,” said Ari, hoping to find out if Patrick was a blood hunter, given the strange circumstances in which he had killed his maker.

  After she had tried several times to phone Lea, with no answer, she resolved to send her a text.

  “Well, she isn’t answering, but I’ve sent her a message,” she said, moving over to Ryder and hugging him. “Don’t worry. I promise you we will find a way around this. Everything will be alright, you’ll see.”

  Ryder nodded valiantly and made to move to the door; he had barely made two strides towards it when Ragon said, “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t stay here thinking about Patrick. I need something to distract me,” Ryder replied indifferently. “Maybe I’ll go hunting? Or try out for the hockey team.”

  “Just promise me you won’t do anything foolish until we have had a chance to speak with Lea,” Ari said.

  “What can I do?” asked Ryder, his hand on the door, “I’m Patrick’s fledgling, not his maker. I can’t find him the same way he can find me.”

  With that Ryder left, and Ari shared a long silent glance with Ragon.

  Ari had tried all night to contact Lea, messaging her and calling her constantly, but with no reply. Finally, when it was a little before midnight, Lea wrote her a message.

  The dull vibrating nose of Ari’s phone woke her instantly. She struggled against the sheets for a moment, until Ragon finally untangled her and she grabbed her phone. Looking down, Ari read the message from Lea:

  ‘Sorry for the late reply. Emily has gone missing. I’ve been with the circle for ages trying to find where she is but we have no idea what’s happened to her. You know as much as I do about the blood hunter curse. The only way to reverse it is to put the power into someone else, and I don’t think it matters how or why a vampire kills their maker, accident or not.’

  Ari frowned.

  “What is it?” said Ragon, moving closer to Ari.

  “Lea just wrote back. She says that Emily has gone missing.”

  “Emily?”

  “Yea,” said Ari. “She’s a member of Lea’s circle. She’s the tall girl who attacked you.”

  “Oh, yea, her.”

  “And,” Ari added, ignoring Ragon’s indifference, “Lea says that Patrick is a blood hunter, no matter how or why he killed Mark.”

  Ragon looked down at the blue sheets of his bed. Another vibrating noise distracted Ari and she reached for her phone again, seeing that Lea had written her another message:

  ‘Can you come and meet me now?’

  Ari looked at Ragon in surprise, saying, “Lea wants me to meet her now.”

  Reluctantly Ari got out of bed, throwing on a pair of jeans and one of Ragon’s jumpers. Silently the pair crossed the campus from Cruor halls towards Omega halls, and made their way to the first level where Lea’s room was. When Ari knocked on the door, Lea threw it open almost immediately.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, indicating for the pair to enter.

  “What’s up?” asked Ari, looking at Lea sideways.

  Lea looked tired. Her eyes were dropped and there were small purple bags underneath them.

  “I need your help; you know the spell I put on you, the one to make you open to the future, well-” Lea started to say, but Ari cut her off.

  “-yea, it definitely worked,” she said.

  “What? How?” asked Lea.

  “I didn’t see anything about the students who have gone missing, but I saw Patrick and the death of his family,” Ari supplied.

  “But…” Lea said, her words trailing off in confusion.

  “Ari saw the past,” Ragon explained. “That’s why she was messaging you about the blood hunter curse. Patrick killed Mark, his maker, because Ari had a vision of Patrick’s family being murdered by him.”

  Lea looked from Ragon and back to Ari, her mouth open in surprise.

  “What!” Lea said finally, “That’s, that’s crazy! I have never heard of someone capable of seeing into the past. But, but don’t you see what this means?” Lea looked from Ari to Ragon; both had blank, vague expressions on their faces. “Maybe you could see the past of one of the students that has gone missing? You might be able to tell us exactly what happened to them.”

  “I don’t know if-” Ragon started to say, but Lea had already grabbed Ari’s hand and was directed her to sit down at her desk, where a large cardboard box sat waiting.

  “-here are some of the possessions of the students that have gone missing,” Lea said quickly, taking out some of the items and handing them to Ari. “Just touch them… maybe we will get lucky and you will see something. This is Emily’s book of light,” Lea added, handing Ari a small leather bound book. “Look, I’m sorry to have called you over here so late but the spell I put on you, it won’t last that long, and if there is a chance that you can help find Emily, well, I really need you to try. The circle… we think that whoever is responsible for the missing students might have taken Emily as well. I really need your help.”

  For an hour Ari sat at the table, her legs crossed as she concentrated on the objects in the cardboard box. After failing to have a vision from Emily’s book of spells, she had tried focusing on a gymnastics trophy owned by a girl called Charmaine who went missing four weeks ago, and then a diary owned by a girl called Felicity, all without having the slightest hint of a vision. After focusing for ten minutes on an old jersey owned by a boy called Simon, Ari placed the shirt down in frustration.

  “I’m sorry,” Ari said finally; she had started blinking furiously, trying to keep herself awake and remain focused, but it was no good. “I can’t do anything right! This is why I wanted that book of your grans. I am sure that if I could only have someone teach me… or maybe if I could learn more about what it meant to be the Grandor Descendant, maybe I would be able to-”

  Ari stopped speaking abruptly when Lea raced to her wardrobe. She swung the wooden doors open and began fumbling inside for something. Finally she re
trieved a brown paper wrapped box. There were at least six stamps covering the top right corner of the package, while in the centre, in small cursive writing, was Lea’s name and her address on campus.

  “My Gran express posted it to me,” she said excitedly, “I completely forgot.”

  “Express posted what?” asked Ragon, straining his eyes as Lea tore away the brown paper to reveal a large old book.

  Lea held out the book for Ari and Ragon to see

  “Is this it?” she asked, looking at Ari.

  Ari reached out her hands to take the book. The moment her fingertips touched the leather, she let out a scream and quickly withdrew her hand.

  “Ari!” said Ragon, racing to her side. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

  Ari looked down in horror at her hand, flipping it over so that her palm was face up. It burnt red hot, as if someone had pressed a brand to her skin, and she saw with a pang of terror, that a symbol had begun to glow there, etched into her flesh.

  “It’s the same symbol,” said Ari, holding her hand out so that Lea and Ragon could see.

  Lea and Ragon looked down at Ari’s palm. Now the symbol had turned black; thick lines curled the full length of her palm, resembling a gothic sun. In the centre of the sun was a strange circle. It twisted on itself, making it difficult to discern where it started and ended, appearing almost as if the lines it formed could not end. Dotted around it were four stars, one of which held a slightly greenish hue.

  “But,” said Lea, her mouth open and her eyes wide, “that, that must be your family crest, the Grandor family crest. Whenever I perform magic, really powerful magic, my family crest appears on my palm. It means that you are drawing from your ancestors powers. And you said you have seen this before?”

  Ari nodded and said, “Yea, when I was at your grans house and she was telling me about the Grandor Descendant, and then again when Ragon and I were called to trial by James Frater.”

  “What does it mean?” asked Ragon, looking at Ari, his face lined with worry.

  Eagerly Ari tore the book open, glancing for only a moment at the front cover. It was an old heavy book, it’s binding and cover made from some sort of dipped leather, where the words ‘Known Immortals’ was etched on the front. Ari flipped through the first few pages, until finally she saw the symbol of the gothic sun. Looking down at her hand, so as to compare the two, Ari gasped; the image on her hand had disappeared.

  “It’s gone,” she said, showing her palm to the others, “but it looked exactly like this,” she added, holding out the image in the book so that Lea and Ragon could see.

  Placing the book open on the desk, Ari began to read, seeing out of the corner of her eye that Ragon and Lea did the same.

  Legend speaks of an immortal, born before the birth of vampires, witches, wraiths and waeres; an immortal whose powers were imbued to him, not brought about by curses, infliction or family lines. From this immortal, all other immortals came, nestled and thrown into this world from the loneliness of more than a thousand generations of solitude. For the first immortal was, and will always be, the only true immortal. This gift, the gift of living forever and being unsusceptible to mortality, cannot be duplicated, though vampires with their unnatural life force try, they are still subject to the light. For in nature all things must come to an end, all things but Grandor.

  So consumed with the curse of living forever alone, the first immortal took from himself, and fashioned beings that might comfort him throughout the ages. Centuries ago, Grandor had allowed himself to love but had committed this first true love to the ground, and so he took from himself his heart, and placed it with hers. But she was already dead, long dead and though his heart was a powerful magical thing, it could not grant her immortal life, only a second chance at life. In time it was obvious that the humanity inside her was not complete, and more than life she clung to death and the grave she had been for so long. And so she became the first wraith- Narsissa, with greater affinity for death than life.

  Unable to bond with his wife whom he loved, the immortal next decided to make another being, this one not a partner but a child. Already without his heart, he took his blood and in the dead of night drained himself of every drop. Placing this blood into a spelled chalice, he made a child. The child was not like any other. For one it grew fast, growing and growing until one day, mere months after its creation, it looked just like an adult and stopped aging. Never again did the child grow, and so Grandor created the first vampire- Sabbine, only able to maintain the immortality of her father by consuming the life force of others by drinking their blood.

  In time, though she had her mother and her father, Sabbine grew weary and lonely, condemned to the same faith as her father the immortal. When she fell in love with a man, Lyall, she did as she had always done and bit him, only just managing to stop before killing him. She took the man to her parents, begging them to save him. Lyall was almost dead, clutching to life with the few drops of blood he had left. The immortal Grandor had already given up his heart and his blood to create his family, and so he took from himself again, this time taking the only thing he had left to give- his soul. But it was not enough to keep the man alive, and so Narsissa used her wraith magic, taking not just the Grandor’s soul to bind the spell, but also the soul of thirteen animals. When Lyall arose, he was more than the man he had been; with the souls of the animals inside him he became the first waere, capable of taking on the form of the animals, in whose soul he shared.

  And so, Grandor, the first witch and immortal, brought into this world all the beings of magic- the wraith his wife Narsissa, the vampire his daughter Sabbine, and finally Lyall the waere, his son-in-law. All are tied together, all bound by Grandor.

  When Ari had read the last words, she looked up at Lea and Ragon. Both were frowning, their eyes oddly dazed as they considered the text.

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Ragon. “Surely it’s just a story!”

  Lea, who was shaking her head in confusion, looked from the book and Ari, her eyebrows furrowed as she said, “What we need… is to do a séance.”

  “Excuse me?” said Ragon, looking sceptically at Lea. “As in using a Ouiji board? Isn’t it a little late to be playing games?”

  “Yea, isn’t that something you do when you’re like twelve at sleepovers?” said Ari.

  “It’s not playing and it’s not a game!” said Lea. “With a séance we can contact those who have passed over. You said that you needed to find out how to control your magic. Who better to ask than your ancestor, Grandor? But we would need a circle of thirteen witches and-”

  “-but there is only twelve of you,” Ragon pointed out quickly. “With Emily missing, you don’t have a full circle.”

  “Not if you count Ari,” said Lea.

  “But, don’t you remember what Chris’s dad said? He told us that my magic wasn’t good or evil,” said Ari.

  “For a séance it doesn’t have to be good or evil, you just need to have magic,” Lea explained. “And we will also need someone to contact the other side, a wraith. We will need Chris.”

  Both Ari and Ragon looked at each other nervously. Neither had spoken to Chris at all since he had attacked Ragon, not unless you counted the letter which Ari had written to him when she thought she and Ragon would have to leave the Pasteur Institute.

  “What’s wrong?” Lea asked, seeing the concerned look the pair shared.

  “Um, Chris,” said Ari, trying to choose her words carefully; they had not told Lea what Chris had done. “Chris might be a problem. I don’t know if he will help.”

  “What, why?” asked Lea.

  “Because,” said Ragon, snarling low under his breath, “the last time we spoke to him he attacked us.”

  Ragon delved into the story of his fight with Chris. He left out certain unpleasant facts, not mentioning that Ari had kissed Chris, or that Chris had been a half-bloody mess when he had fought back.

  When Ragon had finished recapping the incident, Lea
looked pale and said, “What! I can’t believe he would do that.”

  “Yea,” Ari admitted, “I don’t think he meant to, but, I sort of haven’t spoken to him since.”

  “Well, we can’t do it without him and we don’t know any other friendly wraiths-” said Lea.

  “-friendly?” asked Ragon, curiously. “If by friendly you mean an ass-”

  “-maybe I should talk to him,” Lea suggested.

  “No,” Ari said quickly, ignoring the perturbed look on Ragon’s face. “I should be the one to talk to him. I need to make things right between us.”

  Ragon had refused point blank to let Ari go alone to see Chris. Ari had been certain that Chris would not talk to her or help them if Ragon came, and only managed to convince Ragon that she would be safe, by reminding him that she could stop time if anything happened, which she assured him would not.