by Gina Shafer
“Why what, Elijah?” Lincoln asks, tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair. He’s toying with me.
“Why did they take me? Why am I awake now? Why would you help us?” Why the fuck can’t I kill you? I leave that last part out.
“I’m simply looking out for my best interest Elijah, its not difficult to comprehend. They took you because you had information they needed, just like they would have taken any high-level Sicarri at the time. As for why you’re awake now, that’s something I don’t know.” While Lincoln speaks, all of us lean toward him, eager for information.
“And what did they do with me for the past twenty years?” My voice comes out only slightly less exasperated than I feel, but I take it as a success anyway. I don’t want Lincoln to know how much he’s actually getting to me.
“You slept.” He shrugs.
“I slept?” I say, purposefully letting sarcasm stain my words.
“Care to elaborate?” Marcel asks as he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest.
“You slept. You were asleep. You took a long nap, much more than forty winks. Any other way I can make that more clear? Why is it you Sicarri have to be so daft?” Lincoln’s voice drips with mirth and I want to beat the humor from his face. When we’re all silent for a couple of minutes, Lincoln gently pushes himself forward in his chair so that he’s leaning slightly closer to me.
“Spells can do much more than you all remember,” he says. For one second I see something flash across his face. Some type of emotion that he’s buried so deep that its become impossible to recognize. But, it’s there. I saw it. I also know it wouldn’t be wise to question him on it. Not now, not when there’s still so much more that I need to know.
“You’re saying I was under some sort of magical sleeping spell?” I ask him, though it only incites a shrug from him.
“Why didn’t they just kill me?” He’s purposefully giving me vague answers to bait me, but I refuse to fall for it, and stay calm while I wait for him to speak. The urge to ask all the questions at once is so strong that my body grows more and more tense with every second that lingers before Lincoln speaks.
“Because, Elijah. You’re special.” He points to Soren. “He’s special. Vara made it so.” The mention of my wife’s name makes my blood boil, but it’s Soren who jumps from his seat. Surprising all of us, he raises his voice. His face is red, angry, and I’m shocked to see him like this.
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother, Lincoln, I’ve told you a thousand times before!” Sheer pride rolls over me as I watch my son defend his mother.
“Calm down, Soren.” Marcel gently nudges Soren back into his chair with a hand on his shoulder.
“Lincoln, tell them what you told me earlier.” Karina’s eyes lock with mine and I’m momentarily caught in their depths. She really is distractingly beautiful, but I shouldn’t be looking at her. My eyes quickly dart away.
Then, Lincoln speaks, and when he does, I swear I hear the earth crack.
“As you wish.” Lincoln smiles that same sinister smile I’ve quickly learned comes more from the demon inside than my dear friend’s lips. “You two…” He points to Soren and me. “…Have demon blood running through your veins.”
What. The. Fuck.
The room is so silent that it feels like time has stopped in this moment, if only for a split second. I can hear the breathing of everyone around me, and when I look to Soren, his troubled eyes are already on me.
“You’re lying.” My eyes stay on Soren’s for a moment longer before I slide my gaze to Lincoln. “How could that even be possible?”
“I assure you, I tell only the truth, Elijah. You have been marked for a very long time, as your son has been since he was just a seed in his mother’s womb.” Lincoln brings his fingers to the hem of his shirt, picking at a piece of lint while looking awfully bored by this whole conversation. “It has been known forever… Honestly, I’m surprised no one here has learned the truth before now. Quite an incompetent team you have here, Marcel…” He lowers his fingers into his lap, curling them around each other in a tight grasp.
“Incompetent?” Karina growls between closed teeth.
“Karina, calm down.” Marcel shifts in his chair… always the voice of reason.
“How is that even possible?” I ask again. Soren leans forward beside me and I realize how tightly wound he is.
“Vara was a demon.”
For the second time since I sat in this chair, Lincoln drops a bomb in our lap and smiles as he watches it explode, destroying everything in its path.
No.
No. No. No. There is no way in hell Vara was a demon…
…Is there?
“Now hold the fuck on for a minute. I think I would know if my own sister was one of the things I’ve devoted my entire life to killing.” Marcel’s voice booms through the room. I had almost forgotten that Marcel was Vara’s older brother.
“Would you…? Even if she didn’t want you to know? Vara was careful.” Lincoln is delighted by our despair.
“Think about it, Elijah…” Karina’s soft voice carries across the table. My eyes lock with hers. I hear blood rush around my ears and my face feels hot, like I’ve developed a fever in the last five minutes.
“Vara was no demon spy,” I spit out.
“And you know this for certain, how?” Lincoln asks, his voice rising at the end like he’s speaking to a child.
“Because she was my wife, my partner, the mother of my child. I watched her give birth, for god’s sake. There’s no way she was a demon…she never would have betrayed the Sicarri.” I realize Soren hasn’t spoken a word since Lincoln dropped the demon bomb, and I peek at him from the side. His eyes are intense, boring into the wall in front of him. He seems completely lost in thought.
“You saw what Vara wanted you to see, Elijah. A demon’s body works much like that of the body they inhabit. Vara’s host was a woman of childbearing age, therefore she bore your child.” Lincoln explains as his eyes flick toward my son. He loves this, lighting the match and watching everything burn. My entire body feels hot now, so hot that it truly does feel like I’m on fire. The pain of it is so real that I have to check my arms for flames, recalling the dreams I once had where I was burning alive.
“But why…how?” Marcel asks, and my head pops up at the sound of his voice. In all the years I’ve known him, I have never seen Marcel get emotional over anything, but now the tears that fill his eyes and the emotion I see radiating off of him are enough to make this whole room crumble.
“King Abe… It was King Abe all along. Long before he made deals with the Sicarri, he infiltrated them. Vara wasn’t the only one, but she was the best. If anyone got suspicious, we would have our spy “die” in battle only to quickly assume another identity.
We placed one of our own inside Vara long before she met Elijah.” Lincoln speaks and I sit motionless next to my son. My eyes lock eyes with Karina and I see sorrow and sympathy in her face. My body twists and turns on the inside, but on the outside I sit, still as a statue.
God. If this is true…
“What will happen to them… with the demon blood?” Marcel brings voice to the question I know we’re all thinking. What would demon blood even do to us? And how the hell did it get inside me?
“As for you two… it won’t do much unless you practice with your magic regularly. It will make you stronger, more powerful. But your lust for the flame will also grow stronger. And those tiger’s eye relics you all hold so dear, they are pretty much meaningless for you two. No demon can possess your body, the hold you have is much too strong for that. It become solidified the moment that blood entered your veins. Demon blood is a powerful thing. One that demons have only just begun to toy with. Although, most of us older demons have known its magic for a long time. It’s how we’ve built up our ranks. We used to convert many more people before everyone stopped practicing their magic.” Lincoln’s voice is filled with sorrow for the drop i
n ranks. I had no idea that demons had been practicing with their blood all this time. It makes me wonder what else we don’t know.
I remember the day that I left, using magic to find Cormac. That day it was particularly hard to control, was it because of the demon blood?
“Always lingering beneath the surface, isn’t it, Elijah? Gets more and more difficult to control whenever you practice?” Lincoln says with a knowing smile and my stomach fills with the weight of his words. When I glance at Soren, I see the same weight, hanging heavy in his features.
“You’ve had twenty years to make this known. Why are you only telling us now?” I ask, changing the subject. It makes no sense that he would reveal something like this without motives behind it. What are your motives, Lincoln?
“Maybe I have my reasons, reasons I have no desire to share with you now. Or maybe I just like to watch you all squirm.” He smiles again.
“Why didn’t the demons kill Elijah?” Karina blurts out before I get the chance to speak, her face stricken with worry.
“They’re under orders not to,” Lincoln answers. Why? Who told them not to kill me? My head is swimming. I’m under water, but no one can see that I’m drowning.
Why can’t they see?
By whom? I want to say… By whom?
“Even if that were true, it makes no sense that my dad would have demon blood running in his veins,” Soren finally speaks up, his voice hard and rigid. I wondered the same thing. I close my eyes for a moment, digging deep within my memories, like I’m unearthing the ground. I search for something… anything that could shine light in the dark that surrounds us right now.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I register that someone is speaking. But I can barely hear them. I’m already lost to the memory…
The demons appeared out of nowhere this time, but the Sicarri were prepared. There was one, particularly hard to take down. His sharp blackened fingernail pierced between my ribs as I plunged my knife into his esophagus. I knew Vara would be concerned, and I worried about her the entire ride home. Cormac dropped me off at my house after I refused to let him take me to the Sicarri healers. I wanted to be with my wife.
“You sure you’ll be alright?” Cormac asked for the thousandth time.
“I’m sure, man, Vara will stitch me up.”
My wife had spent time as a healer before setting up intel for the Sicarri… That’s where I met her in the first place. She’d know what to do. I clutched my hands to my side as I walked the path leading to the front door. Vara must have watched from the window because she pulled open the door and rushed out to help me inside.
“Elijah, you’re bleeding!” she shouted.
“I couldn’t wait to make it back to you.” My voice came out in a strained whisper. Shit, this wound was worse than I thought. She rolled her eyes, but I didn’t miss the hint of smile on her lips as she dragged me inside and closed the door.
“Lay on the couch, baby, I’ll take a look at it.” Vara guided me inside and sat me softly on the fluffy sky-blue couch, tucking a pillow beneath my head. I closed my eyes, allowing her to investigate the damage. She pulled my leather jacket back, revealing the button-down flannel I was wearing underneath, saturated with blood.
“Oh, Elijah… you’ve lost so much blood.” Vara’s bottom lip trembled as she peeled my shirt from my body; it stuck to my skin and caused me to cry out in pain.
“I’ll have to give you some of mine. We’re the same, you and me, and you’ll feel better after,” she said, this time much more composed, and I could tell she’d gone into work mode, the way she used to when she worked as a healer. She disappeared into the kitchen, then came back in seconds with a tray of medical equipment and got to work.
I felt the blood pumping through me, swirling in my veins, circulating through my body… the steady thrum of my heartbeat like a metronome in my ears. I closed my eyes and succumbed to the darkness… Vara’s voice was the last thing I heard. It was so quiet I’m not even sure if she really said anything, or if it was just part of my dream.
“I’m sorry, Elijah…”
“She gave me a transfusion once, years ago,” I say, dragging myself back from the memory. I feel the sludge of the past stick to me and I have to work through it to speak. “That’s how I have demon blood in me. She put it there and it never left.” I stand up, unsure of where I’m heading, but I know I have to leave this room. Everyone is quiet as I look to Soren.
“I’m so sorry, son,” I say, my voice tight with emotion. I cross the room, closing the door quietly behind me; I put my feet into motion, still without an inkling of where I am going to end up. How many times am I going to apologize to him?
So much of myself doesn’t want to believe that what Lincoln says is true. There’s no way Vara could have been a demon. Why should I believe what he said, anyway? I know Vara. She could never do something like this.
And then, I remember. I remember the many times she begged me not to go on my missions, the million times she didn’t remember things from her past, things from her childhood. The memories flash through my mind. Little things, suspicious moments that seemed small… but as I put them together the pieces build enough to cover the world in a puzzle. A puzzle I could have solved a long time ago if I had just paid closer attention.
Anger.
I feel pure hot fury. I’m so fucking angry I can’t see straight. My eyes glaze over, and the only way I can tell I’m still walking is the feeling of the air brushing against my cheeks as I move. I’m blind with rage, and hatred. How could I have not seen what she was? What she did?
I stop when I reach outside of the warehouse. My anger transforms into sadness when I look up at the night sky.
I’m so fucking sad. My anguish spins around inside my head, forcing its way out through my tears. I feel broken, betrayed, I feel empty. I turn and crack my knuckles across the nearest thing I can reach. I’m sure I’ve hurt myself when the pain starts to slowly seep in from my knuckles. I let myself feel it, I’m happy to feel it. I understand this pain, and the reason for it. I can’t even begin to understand why Vara did what she did. How could she do this to me… to Soren?
Soren…
I immediately regret leaving Soren alone to digest this news. I’ve missed out on twenty years of his life, and the first thing I do when things get tough is high-tail out of there. But, I was never good with this stuff… It was always Vara who dealt with emotion. Suddenly, I’m angry at Vara all over again. I was such a damn fool.
I’m not sure how much time I’ve spent out here, but I know it’s more than enough. I’ve gone from angry to sad, confused and then back to angry again. I’ve worked myself up and down to the point where I feel nothing. I spin around, determined to find Soren, when I bump into a wall of flesh that grunts out an expletive. Karina. She smells like fresh mint and I inhale deeply, filling my lungs. It’s a welcome change… the pleasant, clean scent that comes from her.
“Did you just sniff me?” she asks incredulously as she looks at me from under her eyelashes.
Shit. I’ve been caught in my idiocy and I stare down at her, wide-eyed. How ridiculous is this situation? I learned only moments ago that my wife, the love of my life, was a liar. Why am I standing here smelling another woman’s hair like my time with Vara meant nothing?
Because it did mean nothing. She lied the entire time. She was evil, manipulative, everything that I thought she wasn’t.
“Uh, no.” I ignore my thoughts and answer Karina’s question. I lie. I pull myself back, helping her straighten before dropping my hands to the sides. She rolls her eyes, which is incredibly rude, but somehow I’m not offended.
“Listen, I know you’re probably having a hard time after everything you just learned, but I thought you might want to know that Soren is planning a movement against some of the shadow-walkers we know were involved in your ambush.” With that she turns on her heels and walks toward the entrance of the warehouse.
Damn it, Soren. Don’t do anyt
hing stupid.
“Wait, Karina!” I call out and she stops, her back still facing me. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to stop her. I don’t even know her. But when she turns to face me and I get to look in at her eyes once more, I see something: a hurt… a loneliness, a brokenness inside her that I feel inside myself. Her soul mirrors mine, and I can’t help but crave the odd sense of comfort I have when she’s near.
“What?” she asks while spinning around and frowning at my studying eyes. She’s so much like me, barricading herself inside her own mind, where she thinks she’s safe.
“Don’t presume to think you know anything about me, because you don’t,” she says and crosses her arms over her body. She’s right, I may not know a thing about her, but I know that look when I see it. I see that look every time I watch myself in the mirror.
“Then why do I feel like I’ve known you forever?” I surprise myself by asking this. It’s odd to me that I would feel so comfortable asking her such a personal question. I search inside myself for any feeling of awkwardness, but I feel nothing of the sort. Only curiosity. Her jaw is still hanging open, and it occurs to me that no one has gotten past her barricade in a long time.
“You’ve known me for less than a day,” she recovers. And she’s right, but there’s no mistaking the ease I feel in her presence. My emotions are all over the place after learning about Vara, but I can’t deny that I want Karina to stay out here a little bit longer with me. It doesn’t seem as bad with her here. But she’s right. I shouldn’t be talking to her like this.
“I know, I’m sorry… I’m not sure why I said that.” I take a calming breath; I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable.
