by Max Andren
Fatigue won the battle. I was pulled directly under and thrust straight into them. Despite their frequency, I wasn’t prepared for the emotional devastation of reliving those nightmares yet again and with such clarity…
I dropped right into the moment when a little boy had irrevocably changed the course of my life.
My adoptive parents were hosting one of their many charity fundraisers that night. I’d come downstairs to play the piano for their guests when a wave of paralyzing emotion had rendered me frozen in abject fear.
His fear, though, and not my own.
He’d come screaming through my mind and marked my soul indelibly with his. The dissonance of his cries continued to echo through my mind until I wept from the raw emotions.
Years later, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I had somehow failed that little boy—even though I’d only been a child myself.
As an eight-year-old child and even now, as an adult, it was incomprehensible the torture he endured. Overwhelmed with his pain and confusion, I screamed and begged for mercy with him.
Whether that mercy was for him or for myself, I honestly didn’t know. But I continued until my world fell apart and I eventually passed out from the empathetic overload.
I still felt that little boy deep within my soul, as if we’d remained connected—no matter the time or the distance. My heart whispered his name, when I chose to listen.
Rowan, it said.
Fantasy or reality? I had no way of knowing, but that was what I called him when he visited me in the dreaming. A little boy lost in confusion and soaked in pain.
It was that event that had caused my parents to have me committed. I’d been sedated and placed in Dr. Hanley’s loving care (cue sarcasm) and housed at his asylum. For years, I bounced around to various private institutions where the staff loved to remind me that I was less than nothing.
Once the will to live had been bled from my soul, I eagerly embraced death and ultimately died in the darkness of the asylum basement—alone and forsaken.
I felt a small hand on my cheek and my eyes flew open in confusion. My nightmares followed me out of the dreaming and chased me into wakefulness.
“Don’t cry, My Lady,” Violet whispered.
Using my dragon essence for illumination, I saw Violet hovering in front of me. Her brows furrowed with distress and tears glistened in her expressive, purple eyes.
She flew forward again and this time gently gathered my tears into her hands, as if they were rare and treasured. She brought her cupped hands to her mouth and drank of their emotion. A precious, though painful, gift from my heart.
“I can’t bear your pain, or Rowan’s.”
“You felt Rowan’s pain? The little boy in my mind?” I asked surprised.
“Yes,” Violet confessed, “I feel him whenever he visits you within the dreaming, but only when I’m as ink upon your skin.”
“I wish I knew where he was and what happened to him. I thought he’d be in the Amulet of the Dead when I destroyed it, but I never found him.”
“You will eventually, or at least I think so.”
“When I think of Rowan, there’s this pull within my soul—an undeniable need to run to him and rescue him from the hell he suffers.”
“I know, My Lady. I can feel your need and the compulsion. I saw you tether him to your soul and I think that is why you feel so connected to him. Just like you dream and feel Aiden at times, they will remain a part of your soul until you decide to release them.”
“You can see these memories as well as feel them?”
Violet bowed her head and simply replied, “Yes.”
What more could I say to that, Violet had been a witness to all my nightmares and all of my demons—and yet, she was still here. I was blessed the day that I found her and every day thereafter, because she chose to stay with me.
Violet landed next to me and sat down on a pile of my hair. She wrapped some of the red strands around her neck, like a scarf. Baffled, I watched as she then picked up a chunk of my black hair to wrap around her shoulders, like a shawl.
She shrugged and tilted her delicate chin when she saw my expression and said, “I’m cold.”
“How in the world did you get here?”
“I came with you when those Neanderthals took you from Everlasting. The shackles made me shift from your skin. I quickly grabbed ahold of your hair and hung on for dear life. The wind tried its best to pull the strands from my fingers. I couldn’t reach your shoulder to lay upon your skin—the wind was too damned strong to move. I almost blew away with the force of it.” She finished dramatically.
I could just imagine how hard that must have been for the delicate little faery.
“Lord, have mercy! I’m so glad that you’re okay. Violet, I know the others can’t see you, but I worry that they might sense you. Why in the world did you follow me?”
“How else would you get free? You’re too stubborn to call for help.”
“Pot and kettle.”
“Hmmff!” She sassed me.
We were peas in a pod, as the saying went—destined to meet and fated to bond.
“What is going on, do you know?” Violet asked me.
“I don’t know. They haven’t really said anything. But I’m sure they will.”
26
“Do you know why we took you from sanctuary?” Asked one of the three clansmen standing on the other side of the prison bars.
My cold stare conveyed what I wouldn’t. I refused to acknowledge them or their questions. They would either tell me or they wouldn’t. I knew how these games were played all too well.
We’d kept my past and all that I had endured, a secret from the clans so they had no idea who and what they were dealing with. I was horribly stubborn and more than a little determined to protect my family.
He continued to say, “It was for the protection of the dragon clans.”
Thankfully, my musical shield had been reinforced before they arrived. They would have surely felt my incredulous emotions just then. These men couldn’t be serious. All I wanted to do was protect the clans, that was the whole point of Everlasting—protection for all the clans.
I had to force myself not to respond to that or to roll my eyes or smile at Violet’s mirth. She had shifted to ink when she’d felt the clansmen coming back to the cave and was on my side again. She always knew things before I did and would usually warn me, except this time she didn’t.
I wondered why, but before I could ask her, the clansmen began again. They each took a turn talking at me.
“We don’t trust you or your motives. All the clans are thankful they chose to wait to have their mated dragons come to Everlasting. We know what you’re planning. We know from bitter experience, what your kind has done to ours over the centuries, and we won’t stand for it,” said the clansman to my right.
“We told the clan leaders all about you. They know exactly who and what you are, but they’re blind where you’re concerned. They believe you,” he sneered, “are the clans’ only hope. That you’re the last true Phoenix spoken about in clan legend,” the clansman on the left interjected, derision dripping from his tone, along with the spittle from his lips..
“You’re not! Our clan legend would never have druid blood running through their dragon veins!” The last clansman screamed at me through the bars, “I see you’re not denying it.”
There’s no way they could have known I’d smeared that small amount of Hanley’s druid blood across my glyph—no way.
“Tell us about your druid father and dragon mother. An affront and an abomination to all dragons.”
This time the gasp escaped before I could censor it.
“Violet? How could they have discovered my secret? No one knows.”
“You will never lead our people!” The center clansman screamed at me.
“DeChadik, it had to be. He was at the estate when you learned the truth about your parents. He must have overheard,” Violet answered.
Regret and remorse left a bitter taste in my mouth. By not confessing the truth to Sterling, my brother, I had betrayed him and our family and placed him in danger. Our parents would be ashamed, something I was all too familiar with.
“Violet, we have to warn Sterling. I’m going to drop my shield and try to connect with him. He’s so hidden behind his own shield like I am, that he probably won’t hear me.. No, I can’t…I can’t do that because my family will hear me and I won’t put them in danger.”
“Let me go to Sterling. I can do it and these buffoons will have no idea that I was ever here or that I’m leaving now.”
“Please, Violet, would you go and warn him? But do not tell him where I am. And do not come back, little missy. I will not have you put yourself in danger for me.”
She didn’t respond except for a stinging sensation along my side, letting me know that she was moving.
“I mean it, Violet. Promise me that you will not endanger yourself!”
“I will do as you ask, My Lady.”
“Thank you, my beautiful little sister.”
“Thank you, My Lady, for loving me so well. You are the reason for my continued existence. My life is a debt that can never be repaid and I will be indebted for eternity and happily so. I will go now.”
“Wait!”
But I was too late, as I could feel Violet shifting from my skin and in flagrant disregard of the three stooges screaming at me. She materialized on the other side of the bars and behind them.
She looked contemplative, as if weighing several different options before she curtsied midair, snapped her fingers and disappeared before my eyes. We’d been together for years now and I had no idea she could do that.
We all had secrets.
I was alone with the three men screaming at me for existing and for wanting to save the dragon race. I remained laying on the floor, just where they had dropped me earlier. I still couldn’t move, but the effects of the Damascus were wearing off. It shouldn’t be too much longer before I was able to at least sit up.
The left and right clansmen turned and walked out of the cave without even glancing in my direction. I was clearly less than nothing in their eyes—been there, done that, and I’d died in the process. Their opinion meant nothing to me. The only hold they had over me was the physical one of being captured and imprisoned behind Damascus steel bars.
Central gave me one last parting shot before he turned to leave, “Enjoy your victory while you can because once DeChadik returns, your silence will be at an end. He will most definitely see to that!”
27
Here I was again—waiting for my captors to remember me. The last time I’d been left waiting, Hanley had thrown me into the dank asylum basement—where I’d died waiting!
Not one of my better days and yet—it was. I’d become Renascent that fateful day.
Eventually I would come to realize the full potential of my Phoenix Dragon, but not before a complicated and confusing journey from there to here. Some moments and lessons had been more profound than others, but every one valuable in some way or another.
The transition wasn’t painless but, along the way I discovered who and what I am—I found me.
The most astonishing and life altering moment had only come recently—my parents had loved and wanted me. Their love had created the last true Phoenix—their Mia.
“And that’s why you must die.”
I lifted my head and sat forward, away from the wall where I was sitting, to look towards the entrance from where DeChadik had spoken. He was leaning against the cave wall with a look of bored indifference. How had he heard me?
“Blood,” he answered, “It all comes back to blood. I’ve had yours, so I know everything that you know.”
Quickly, I tightened my shield making it impenetrable. I had to keep him out of my thoughts.
“I can feel you scrambling to kick me out, but it won’t work. We’re connected regardless of whether you want to be or not.”
Filling my head with loud music, I hid behind a wall of distortion. When did he have access to my blood? I didn’t give it to him, that’s for sure. It was hard to think with the distortion screaming through my mind.
“I’ll tell you a little secret and one guaranteed to make you abandon your defiance.”
Hulbetto had licked the bloody sword dripping with my blood within that flipped memory.
“I’ve known who and what you are for some time.”
That was just a horrible nightmare within the dreaming. It wasn’t real—was it?
“Cipriano just happened to reach you before I had the chance.”
Had he orchestrated the whole nightmare to gain access to my blood?
“Pay attention,” he said, snapping his fingers.
Was DeChadik the Morpheus Dragon? No, he couldn’t be. A vision of his clansmen and women hanging from the old Oak tree flashed through my mind. No, he wouldn’t do that.
Sconces, scattered about the cave, sprung to life at his snapped command. They illuminated the cave in a soft, comforting glow that was at odds with the claustrophobic confinement of my cell and the hovering menace that he projected.
DeChadik had masqueraded as Hulbetto. He murdered his clan, but to what end? So that we’d stop wearing the amulets? Surely he wouldn’t have done that. But, it just figures, I exchanged one anagram for another.
Hulbetto/DeChadik had licked my blood from the sword, that had really occurred. Just like the injuries I sustained—they were real and had hurt like hell.
The light caused DeChadik’s blonde hair to glow with a halo, but the effect caused him to look more demonic, than angelic. When he turned in my direction, at first I thought he looked like Hulbetto, then morphed to look like Sebastian, my adoptive father.
I hadn’t seen Sebastian in years, not since he and Helena had sent me back to Hanley and his asylum. They were under the impression I had died in a fire that swept through the institution.
I always planned to go back and check on them, just to see how they were doing. I don’t know why, they couldn’t have cared for me, considering they consigned me to the hell that was Hanley. If I manage to get out of this situation, I’ll go find them, just to see that they are okay. I couldn’t talk with them because they thought I was dead.
“You missed your chance. They’re dead.”
Breaking my silence, I whispered, “What?”
“I told you I’d win. I killed them years ago. Anything and everything connected to you will be eliminated!”
Snapping his fingers again, DeChadik proceeded to decimate my heart with the vision he played upon the cave wall. I couldn’t escape it, even if I wanted to, but I deserved to be tortured. I believed Hanley and not Sebastian and Helena. They had truly loved me…
The vision was of Sebastian holding an unkempt Helena. I had never seen her in any way other than put together and beautiful. Her midnight-blue eyes were distraught and filled with tears, which flowed in a river unchecked down her pale cheeks. Sebastian’s hair was more grey than brown now, and deep lines bracketed his solemn grey eyes and mouth, just like Helena’s.
She looked so tiny in his arms, a shell of the vibrant, larger-than-life mother I remembered.
“I don’t understand,” she turned and cried against Sebastian’s chest, “how can she be alive? They told us she died in that damned asylum!”
“I don’t know, love,” Sebastian told her, pulling her tighter into his arms and against his chest.
Sebastian turned and looked away from her and addressed someone else in the room with them, “DeChadik, tell me what you know about our daughter and her whereabouts.”
No, no, no! I was pleading in my mind knowing it was futile.
“She killed Hanley, her guards and al
l the other patients that became trapped by the fire she had set to cover her tracks. She’s a mass murderer and has been on the run ever since. I work with the government that’s been tracking her movements and we have noticed that she has been visiting your home routinely.”
“What?” Sebastian exclaimed, “We haven’t seen her at all. She has not been in contact with either one of us.”
“That’s good to know. We wondered if you might be aiding her in avoiding us and therefore, her capture and rightful punishment.”
“We have not seen her since…since we took her back to Darren Hanley,” Helena said. “Why did we do that, Sebastian?” she asked, sitting in his lap and looking into his equally confused eyes. “Why did we send her back? I know we didn’t want to. We had decided to take care of her ourselves. We shouldn’t have listened to Darren, he would be alive today and we would still have our daughter. Our Sarah, our beautiful Snow White.”
She threw herself onto Sebastian sobbing, her delicate shoulders shaking with the force of her grief and remorse.
I could feel their emotions, despite this only being a vision, the residual pain was evident...
“We are worried for you and your wife’s safety,” DeChadik told them, as he walked into view, “which is what brought me here today. She’s targeted you, that much is clear. Maybe she wants to make you pay for the abuse she suffered while at the asylum, but specifically at the hands of Hanley—he was the worst of the offenders. But surely, you must have known how he loved to abuse his patients, after all, you were on the board.”
Sebastian paled to a greyish-green and Helena sobbed as if her heart had truly just shattered.
“We would like to place you both in protective custody, so if you would gather your things and come with me, we can get the process started. We want to set a trap for your daughter here. She’s a danger to herself and to the community at large, but especially to the both of you.”
