by B C Morgan
“You cannot be serious; how can you be so unaware?” He asked, clearly growing more and more irritated by me as the seconds ticked away.
“What am I unaware of, I don’t understand, all I know is that twice I have had a conversation with someone where they have left me wondering what the fuck they were talking about, with words like ‘different breeds’ and then you with your ‘my kind’ what the hell am I missing?” I practically shouted that last part at him as I flew to my feet and began to pace.
“I don’t know how to break this to you dear, but I am not human.”
I stood up and began to move away from him but he kept trying to break the distance that I had placed between us, he was stubborn that’s for sure.
“I am an Incubus and by the power radiating from you, I would say that you have been living a lie. Someone had definitely been misleading you because there is no way that you can be human either
Chapter Twenty
Unya
I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, all the while Malachi was shouting for me, but his words were no more than a whisper of air against my skin. He shouted that he would seek me out and next time I would not run from him.
I had the sense that he was not following me but I refused to take any chances, going down side roads and alley ways to draw off any scent from where I would finally end up.
By the time I reached the cottage the time had ticked on to half five and my legs were starting to ache, I flew through the gate and slammed it shut behind me, making sure that the dead bolt was sent home before I pounded my fist on Mihaela’s back door.
I could hear movement coming from inside the cottage and finally gave up on my incessant pounding, seconds before she pulled the door open and I practically fell through the doorway.
Her arms came out to grab hold of me and she led me into the living room, making sure that I was seated before she retreated back into the kitchen.
Not a single word had been uttered between us, but I was flooded with a sense of relief which I would have puzzled over if Mihaela hadn’t returned in that exact moment and stole my mind away from my incessant thoughts.
She placed the tray down onto the table, which had once again been ladled with biscuits and tea before she herself sat down in the other chair and just sat there staring at me.
“I’m ready to hear what you have to say now,” I stated, sounding rather meek to my ears, she gave me a sad smile before slowly nodding her head.
“Why the sudden change of heart Nipotina, I will tell you all that you seek, but you were so adamant that I was nothing more than a raving lunatic when we first met.”
“I don’t know if my opinion has changed, but so much has happened in the short time that has passed, and I didn’t know where else to turn.”
She asked me what had occurred and so I started to fill her in. I told her about what had happened when I went to Venom and the way Malachi had made me feel. I informed her of everything that Jackie had done, right up to the point where Martin had tried to strangle the life out of me before Lawson revealed the inside of his throat. Along with the miraculous recovery and how I hadn’t been able to feel anything since the death of my mother.
Once I finally finished, convinced that she would be calling me a lunatic this time, she just fell to her knees before me and pulled me into her arms. I could feel her tears soaking into my blouse as her chest heaved with the sobs until she eventually pulled away and returned to her chair.
“I apologise for my behaviour, I was just struck with so much sadness when you were speaking about the horrors that you have incurred, and it should never have been like this. You were never supposed to be left in the dark dear child, but my daughter filled her children with such fear that they were consumed by it.”
I asked her to tell me her story and with a heavy heart, this is what she told me.
Z
Mihaela
“I was born in Italy into a very devout catholic family, my mother would never contemplate a different kind of religion and her word was law.
When I turned sixteen my abilities started to develop, if I was injured it would heal practically before my very eyes. Of course, it depended on the type of injury that I had incurred, but a deep cut would be gone within sixty seconds of happening. I had also started to see people that weren’t there and they kept whispering to me to not shut them out. I had no idea what was happening and so I turned to my mother. She called me deluded and said that I was bringing shame to our family so I decided to prove to her that what I was saying was the truth.
I had gone into our kitchen and retrieved a very sharp carving knife, my mother’s eyes had grown so wide, and she screamed at me when I slashed it across the palm of my hand. It was that deep that you could practically see the bone through the gash. My mother had grown hysterical but I begged her to wait and watch, we saw the moment that the skin began to knit back together until all that was left was the blood that had coated my hand.
She marched me into the kitchen and made me clean it before she turned it this way and that way, her eyes grew wider and wider with fear, as she slowly backed away from me.
She said that I was evil incarnate, that I had been possessed by the devil and called for my father to restrain me, I tried to fight him off but I was a lot weaker back then.
I can still remember my younger sister with tears streaming down her face as my mother slapped me before she called for the asylum to take me.
She told me that they were going to rid me of the evil that was coursing through my body but I knew what it really was, she was terrified of me and wanted me gone from her sights.
I was holed up in that dreadful place for two years, all the while being visited by priests who tried to exorcise the demon from me and doctors who used barbaric forms of torture. They claimed that it was in the name of healing me of my ailment, but it was never going to work.
I was a husk of the person that I had once been, my body withering away until I was nothing more than skin and bones, until the day that a woman called on me with hair as striking as my own.
I was shocked to meet someone with the same shade as me, seeing as my family had all been blessed with light brown hair.
She had pulled me to my feet and with her arm bracing my feather like weight, she pulled me from that hell.
No one tried to stop us, as the doctors and nurses looked on in a daze, she put me into a horse drawn carriage and with her palm placed on my head I suddenly drifted off into a dreamless slumber.
When I awoke, I was lying in luxury, with a mattress that sunk beneath my weight and satin lain upon my skin.
I pulled myself from the luxury of it all as I stood upon my weak and shaking legs and made my way out of the unfamiliar room until I came upon her sitting room and she indicated for me to take a seat.
She told me that her name was Alina and that she was a sister to my great grandmother and even though she looked no older than I am now, she was in fact a hundred and twenty years old.
I reacted in a similar fashion as you did, but unlike you I had nowhere to run too, so I stayed seated as anxiety clawed through me.
She told me how she too, could heal in a miraculously fast fashion. I asked her how she could even be aware of what I could do when she said quite simply that it was all in the hair.
She told me a story of love, betrayal and heart break. It was our origin story in a sense, it was what started the curse or blessing of the ebony hair.
She explained how we were descendants of the Greek god Zeus and how even though the blood line had been weakened over the many years, occasionally it would still affect a member of our family. Usually every second or third generation and how our abilities weren’t all the same.
She asked me to explain what I could do and I told her about how I could see people who weren’t really there, she seemed perplexed by this until she disappeared and returned clutching a book against her chest.
She told me to read a passage from a s
elect page and when I did, every candle that had been unlit was suddenly engulfed in a flame. I screamed when this happened and she helped to settle me down. She explained that I must have inherited my abilities from the Sorceress who had been betrayed in the very beginning and that my powers would continue to grow until I turned eighteen, where my powers would peak and my true strength would be revealed to me.
At that time, there was only two weeks until my fated birthday and my nerves were eating me alive.
I asked her how she had come to find me and she explained that when her powers had started to develop her family turned their backs on her, shunning her existence entirely. As far as they were concerned, she had never existed, she stayed close by keeping an eye out for any children that may be born with our ‘gift.’ She had almost given up hope when I was born, after that she kept an ever-watchful eye, knowing that my family would never be able to accept me, just like she wasn’t.
She had seen me being carted off to the asylum, but she had to plan the best way to free me from my confinement. It was only when she had gone to the asylum, two days before she had come for me, under the pretence of a relation that she was informed that I would soon be going under a drastic procedure to finally rid me or my suffering. In this day and age, you would know is as a lobotomy. She said that she was able to use her ability to convince the workers to let us just walk right out of the front door.
You see, Alina was able to bend people’s minds to her own will, she could control many minds at one time but it wore off rather quickly and she was limited as to what she could get them to do.
Anyway, when my birthday finally came, I was engulfed in a mind-numbing pain that felt like someone was drilling right through my head, it was truly excruciating. But after the pain had subsided, I was left with the ability to control the elements and wield any spell that I saw fit, I was also able to dream walk, which is how I was able to contact you.
There is a lot more to explain, but I think I should leave off here, in case you have any questions that you may feel the need to ask.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Unya
Mind completely blown. I mean seriously how could any of that be true, but as I sat there listening to her, I found myself actually wanting it to be true, as it would mean that I had not in fact jumped aboard the crazy train.
“What happened to Alina? do you still speak to her?” Those were the first things that I put to her and I noticed a wistful look appear on her face.
“In a way yes, but only because I am able to commune with the spirit realm on occasion, I can even walk amongst them, but it’s very dangerous and without an anchor to this realm I could lose myself there.”
I felt sad for Mihaela then, as it dawned on me that it must mean that Alina had passed on. I mean sure it makes sense, seeing as my Nonna had been seventeen when they met, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking how she died.
“With this gift comes a large longevity to our lives, we will never get sick and we will simply stop aging when we reach the appearance of fifty. If that isn’t enticing enough, our aging also halts once we reach twenty two, after ten years have passed, we begin to age slightly and that will continue every ten years until we hit the fifty mark. But we cannot evade death indefinitely, so once we reach the ripe old age of one hundred and twenty five years, we simply just stop existing. The year up to it we do start to wither slightly, our strength begins to fade as does our zest for life, but it is not painful. Luckily, we are spared that fate and we get to pass away in our sleep. I have at least twenty five more years ahead of me, as long as no one tries to end it prematurely that is. Just because we have a strain of Zeus’s blood running through our veins, that does not make us invincible, we are still predominantly human. Another thing that you should bear in mind, is Constantine was the very last man to be born into our family.”
“Nonna, what if I wasn’t, human I mean, then could happen to me?” I asked this because Malachi’s earlier words were ringing through my mind, and I could not shake them.
“Sweetheart, your mother was very much human, she was not even blessed with our gift, so why would you ask such a thing?”
I took a deep breath as I tried to get the words right in my mind first before I dared to utter them.
“I didn’t tell you everything earlier on, as I was on my way to you, I took a little pit stop at the cemetery. I wasn’t sure how you would feel about me just turning up on your doorstep so I thought I would steal a few moments and clear my racing mind.
While I was there Malachi approached me, he was curious about me after we had met in Venom and even though I had been blonde at the time, he was still able to recognise me.
I tried to evade him, but when he tried to grab hold of me, I sort of let my mouth run away with me and blurted out that I knew he was doing something to me.
He got hold of me and blasted me with a euphoric feeling, but I managed to break our contact by promising to tell him how I could tell he was trying to manipulate my emotions. I kept to my words and explained my greatest flaw to him and he seemed almost humbled by that. But skipping over some of the other conversation he ended up revealing to me that he was an Incubus and he said there was no way I could be human either, something to do with the power I radiate.”
Mihaela sat there looking completely dumbstruck before a dark look flashed in her eyes.
“You said earlier that you couldn’t feel anything, yet when you first arrived here in the manner that you were hammering down my door, I honestly thought something had frightened you, are you sure you are still numb to your emotions.”
I pondered her question for a few moments, thinking back on the odd occasions where I thought maybe I had felt something before I quickly dismissed it as no more than wishful thinking and I informed her of this.
“An Incubus is a very dangerous creature Unya, it could be he has unwittingly kick started your body into feeling emotions again. But do not let him lead you blindly down a path you cannot run from, just like their counterparts the Succubus, they seduce their victims into falling into bed with them and while they are having their way, they are also draining them of their life force and once the act has reached its crescendo, their victim is left as nothing more than a corpse. You must stay away from him Unya, being around him will not lead anywhere good. But the fact he doesn’t believe you are human is most strange, the Incubus are very quick to pick up on the power that a being possesses, and from the one encounter I had with one many years ago, there is no reason for him to suspect you are something unhuman.
As I said earlier, we are more human than god or sorceress, and an incubus would be able to sense that.”
“So, what does that mean for me then, am I something else entirely?” I asked, almost pulling my hair out in frustration, and this time I definitely picked up on it, I tried to cling to the sense of feeling, but it soon floated away into nothing.
“This is most peculiar, but if you were of a different breed, then it may explain why it took so long for me to find you in the first place, I always sensed that something was blocking our blood connection. Maybe it had been you, unwittingly of course, all along. Let me convene with our ancestors for a moment, and I will try to shed some answers on this strange turn of events.”
I watched as the whites of her eyes completely engulfed all other colours, until they were nothing more than white orbs. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn’t make sense of any of the words that she may have been saying, so instead I just say there and waited for her to return to me.
Z
It was close to an hour later when she finally roused from her rather creepy looking state and the colour completely drained away from her face, as she set her eyes on me as though she was seeing me for the very first time.
I slowly stood up, trying to figure out what was going on, as she continued to do nothing else but stare straight at me, as though she was looking into the deepest recesses of my very being.
“The an
cestors say that he speaks the truth, he does not know you are a form of demi god, because there is more to you then that. The ancestors wouldn’t tell me what else resides in you, but they say your father was not a human, that he came from Hades or the underworld if you’d prefer.”
“So, what does that mean, I don’t understand.” I couldn’t help but pace the floor, but it was when I almost punched the wall that Mihaela spoke again.
“Please keep calm Nipotina, there is much that has been left unclear for me, but they did speak of a prophecy that was predicted by the Fates themselves. Our very first ancestor suspects it may be speaking of you, and this has the spirit realm very agitated.”
“What do you mean by the ‘very first’?” I inquired, hating how her answers just seemed like riddles to me.
“There has been one ancestor that has always eluded me, the one who started all of this, but for some reason she reached out to me two weeks ago and aided me in finding you. She added to my witchcraft and It enabled me to enter your dreams and to try to convince you to find me. I had been wondering why she chose that moment to come to me, but it’s starting to make a lot more sense now.”
I don’t know what came over me, but one minute I was standing there and the next I was throwing her table across the room, where it smashed into the wall and shards of wood flew off in every direction.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” I said wishing I could feel my regret and shame at the moment, as that was the least I deserved for my reaction.
“Do not fret Nipotina, it is a lot to handle, I do not blame you for what is beyond your control. Now I have a proposition for you if you would be so kind as to humour me for a moment. I have a spare bedroom upstairs that you are more than welcome to use, and I will tell you the story that Alina once told me, the one about love, betrayal and heartbreak. But that must wait until tomorrow, convening with the spirits has left me tired, but even if you choose to not spend the night, I will still tell you tomorrow, I promise.”
