by Rye Brewer
“Why are you even still here?” I spat. “You’re not in danger anymore. Your sister’s out there somewhere. Why don’t you go looking for her and leave us all alone?”
She frowned. “I don’t think that’s totally your call, Philippa.”
“No? I’m acting head of the clan now, and I could have you out of here in no time. A snap of my fingers. I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to.”
She cocked her head to the side. “I think you’re the one who’s forgetting.”
“Excuse me?” I had never seen that side of her before, and I didn’t like it.
A slow smile crept over her face. “Your brother wants me here, Philippa, so this is where I’m going to stay. I’m sorry if you don’t like it—maybe if you grew up a little and faced facts instead of being a brat and stomping your feet, you could get over it.”
“How dare you? Who do you think you are, talking to me that way?” I bared my fangs and lunged at her without thinking about it.
I needed to hurt somebody and she was the closest thing to me just then. It would feel good, making her hurt as much as I did.
Then, something happened.
She raised her hands before I could reach her, and the room light up bright-white, as what looked like bolts of lightning shot from her fingers.
I gasped, stunned.
I had never seen anything like it before. In the blink of an eye, I was in a cage made of sizzling, crackling beams of pure electricity.
I froze in place, afraid to move a muscle.
“What is this?” I whispered.
That same smile sat frozen on her face. “Not so feisty anymore, are you? Doesn’t take much to take the fight out of you.”
I looked around. The bolts crackled and jumped, alive, ready to fry me if I touched them.
My heart raced double-time.
Who was she? How did she do it?
“From now on, I want you to back off, Philippa. I mean it. Don’t force my hand.” Her face changed, until it was a mask of pure fury, and her normally dark eyes flashed with an golden yellow glow.
I felt like I was in the presence of something much stronger than a young vampire. I realized I knew nothing about her at all.
Scott’s door opened, and the bars vanished just as quickly as they had appeared. Her face changed, too. Her eyes were dark again. She smiled as she turned in Scott’s direction.
I, on the other hand, was sure I had to be hallucinating.
“What’s up, you two?” Scott looked at me, then at her.
She slid an arm around his waist.
“Oh, you know. Girl talk.” She grinned at me like we had a secret.
Well, we did have a secret. Just not the kind my brother would ever guess.
I still didn’t know what to say or what to think. It was like she had a split personality. One second, she was casting bolts of electric lightning and threatening me, and the next, she was the sweet, smiling, affectionate girl my brother was falling deeper in love with every day.
He looked at me. “Did I hear you call me a few minutes ago?”
“Huh?” I felt like I was going crazy. What was happening to my family? Who was staying here with us? “Oh.” I snapped out of it. “Yes. I did.”
“What do you need?”
Both of them looked at me with the same wide, innocent eyes.
Except one of them wasn’t so innocent.
It was like she was silently daring me to tell him what had just happened. Come on. Tell him. Tell him his girlfriend shot lightning bolts at you and see how long it takes for him to tell you you’re insane.
She knew I wouldn’t, because there was no way he would believe me.
I could hardly believe it myself and I could still feel the electric charge in the air. I had almost been electrocuted, but there was no way I could tell him. Especially not when she was standing right there.
“Are you feeling all right, Philippa?” She injected just the right amount of concern into her voice,.
I could see through it.
I wished my brother could—instead, he looked at her like she was a saint. He couldn’t know anything about what she was capable of, not if he looked at her that way.
“Me? Oh. Yeah. I feel fine. I mean, you know, considering.” I was babbling. I knew I was, but I couldn’t help myself.
Sara nodded, then looked up at Scott. “I could use some air. Come with me?”
“Of course.”
I could only stare, speechless, as the two of them walked outside. I had been surprised before—seeing my father for the first time in decades ranked up there—but this came close to topping it all. It was like night and day, the change in her.
And I couldn’t tell Scott. I didn’t have the words.
It only hit me then, after they were outside, that I never even got the chance to talk to him about leading the clan.
Then again, did I want him to, while she was by his side?
6
JONAH
A moment after stepping through the portal, we were back at the cemetery. I had started thinking of it as a sort of home base, since it seemed like Fane was so comfortable there.
No matter how much time passed between one visit and the next, it never changed. It was always dark, almost pitch black. The sky was starless and moonless even though there were no clouds to block it. Where were we?
“Is this a real place?” I asked Fane.
The air didn’t seem to move, I noticed, even though fog rolled along the ground at my feet. Sound didn’t carry the same there as it did elsewhere, I realized. When I spoke, the words sounded flat. Deadened. Like I was in a padded room and the padding absorbed the echo.
Only we were outside. Weren’t we?
The tombstones looked real enough. The monuments and mausoleums were crumbling, but they were real. Or were they? Which part of the world were we in?
“It’s a real place,” Fane confirmed. “A real cemetery, though ancient. I wonder if you would believe me if I told you just how ancient. It’s called Duskwood.”
“Is it part of Earth?”
“Duskwood exists in an alternate world—dimension perhaps, you might call it—with laws similar to—but not the same as—those of Earth. There’s no day here. Only night.”
“I guess that makes it safer for you to be here,” I murmured. No day meant no sun.
“Exactly. It’s become my refuge over the years, when there was no safe place for me.” He made his way between the stone monuments, and I followed. He walked with a sureness I couldn’t quite copy. His feet were used to the terrain, the rocks concealed by fog.
I had to keep looking down to be sure I wasn’t about to break my ankle or go sprawling face-first.
“Did you stay here with Mother? Did you hide here with her?” I looked at his back as I asked the question and noticed the way he tensed.
His shoulders practically touched his ears from the tension he was carrying.
“No. She was never here. Duskwood came after her.”
“Do you live here?”
“Not exactly.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You’re full of questions.”
“You have no idea the questions I have for you.”
It didn’t seem fair, the way he almost seemed to make fun of me for asking. Did he think he could just walk back into our lives with no explanation? I loved my father, even if he had become Fane, and left behind so much of what made him who he was in his former life. Was I supposed to forget the strong, wise vampire I had looked up to over my entire existence?
“I hope we have the time one day to clear everything up—but that time is not now.”
I told myself to suck it up and trust him to tell me everything in time.
“Why are we here, then? Can you tell me that, at least?”
We came to a towering marble mausoleum that had to house the remains of hundreds, if not thousands. It was roughly the size of one of those supermarkets the humans were so crazy about, and
three stories tall.
“This realm has become a refuge for more than just me. There are a number of us who use this dimension as sort of a meeting place—witches, mostly. We need Sirene if we’re going to get anywhere.”
“Wait. Sirene?” The witch? Why did we need a witch? “I thought she was just one of your contacts.”
“She is one of my contacts, and she has skills I don’t. We’ll need those skills if we’re going to proceed.”
“Like what skills? Wait a minute.” I stopped walking around the perimeter of the structure.
Fane turned to face me.
“Just hang on. What is it she can do that you can’t? What else are we going to need? You can already throw portals and travel through the passages. What else is there? How much more involved is this going to get?”
He was impatient, if the scowl on his face meant anything. “I only have those skills because Sirene gave them to me. She has others that she can’t give to me. Those are ones she has to implement. Like the power to cast spells, for instance. That’s not the sort of thing a witch can simply transfer to another creature. It’s innate, born in them, though they often have to be trained in them. And those powers of hers might come in handy—if we have access to them, why shouldn’t we use them? We’ll need all the help we can get.”
He seemed to know a lot about her.
I frowned. “What else can she do?”
He shrugged. “She can access creatures who have the Sight. It’s a very powerful tool, the Sight. Seeing through others.”
“What? I don’t understand.” I remembered how it felt to be taken over by the spiritwalkers and wondered if witches did something similar to those with the Sight—taking over their minds, seeing through their eyes.
“I couldn’t say,” he replied. “I don’t know the all specifics of witches. They’re a mystery to me.”
“As they should be,” I reminded him.
“Excuse me?” He looked askance at me.
I was sure it wasn’t my words, but rather, my tone that sent his eyebrows high up on his forehead.
I forged on. “Witches should be a mystery to us because it’s against the law to consort with them. Or did you forget that, being away for so long?”
“Who said I consort with witches? Sirene is my contact, as I already told you.”
I took a step toward him, then another. “You might be Fane now, but you’re still my father—and I still know how you look and sound when you’re telling me a half-truth. You wouldn’t know so much about her powers, and she certainly wouldn’t have given any of her powers to you unless you were more to each other than contacts. I’m not a child. Don’t go thinking you can satisfy me with a few excuses.”
“And don’t go thinking you can speak to me that way and get away with it,” he warned. “Do not forget who you’re talking to.”
“I don’t know who I’m talking to. That’s the problem. Are you my father right now, or are you Fane? Either way, you’re someone who left me for a long time, and forced me to take on a responsibility I wasn’t ready for. But I did it. I held onto the clan even when Marcus Carver did everything he could to rip us apart. We grew, and we flourished, and I think that earns me a little bit of respect and a little honesty.”
He looked me up and down, thinking. “So what is it you’re asking me, Jonah?”
“I’m asking if you’re consorting with a witch, even though it’s taboo. Is that what you’ve been doing all this time?” I couldn’t keep the disgust and disappointment out of my voice. When I thought about my mother—my beautiful, sweet mother—it seemed unreal that he would ever stoop so low.
Instead of answering me, like I expected, he threw himself at me and pushed me against the hard, cold marble.
With his face inches from mine, he snarled. “Who are you to judge what I do when you consort with a half-blood fae?”
When I was a kid, years earlier before he went away, he might have been able to get away with that. But I was much stronger by then, and I shoved him away from me with my own fangs bared.
“Don’t you call her that,” I warned.
“Why? It’s who she is.”
“She’s more than just a half-blood. And it’s not her or me we’re talking about right now. It’s you, and the choices you’ve made.”
He advanced on me again, like he was going to attack, when the fog swirled around us.
I felt another presence—calm, peaceful energy surrounded me.
I turned, as Fane did, to find Sirene walking toward us. With the fog around her ankles, it almost seemed like she floated.
“Jonah. Please, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what? Ask my father what he’s doing with you?” I glared at her. “That’s a little too much to ask.”
“It’s never been my intention to take your mother’s place in Fane’s heart,” she murmured softly in reply.
“No, only in his bed.”
“Enough,” Fane snarled, cutting off anything Sirene was about to say.
It didn’t matter, because something else registered on my senses.
Another presence.
It couldn’t be—I looked around, but there were only three of us standing there. I cocked my head to the side and listened hard.
That was when I heard it. Another heartbeat. Small, fast, but strong. There was only one place it could be originating from.
I turned to Sirene. “You’re carrying a baby.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, but she didn’t tell me I was wrong.
I turned to Fane. “It’s your baby.”
They looked at each other, then at me.
Fane nodded.
It felt like the world came crashing in around me. Not so much the baby, but the knowledge of all that had happened between knowing him as my father and meeting him again as Fane. He was a totally different being, no longer someone I felt I could trust.
What’s worse, he was a hypocrite, which was never who he’d been before.
I wanted to yell at him, and accuse him, and reduce the monuments around me to rubble.
Instead, I scowled at him. “And you have the nerve to call Anissa a half-blood. To think I left her behind to help you find Gage.”
I regretted it bitterly as I stood there looking at him. He was a stranger. A stranger I couldn’t trust.
“I’m outta here.” I turned to leave—how I would get out, I had no idea, since I didn’t know how to throw a portal. I just needed to get away from him, and her. I couldn’t stand her eyes staring into me anymore.
“Jonah.” Fane grabbed my shoulder, stopping me cold. “Have you forgotten the brand? What about the danger it could pose to your girlfriend?”
When he mentioned it, I felt the stinging on my arm, radiating up and all through me. It was like the brand pulsed along with my heartbeat.
In my anger, I had almost forgotten it.
I turned toward him, but couldn’t bring myself to look at him again. He disgusted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother and what he was doing to her memory by being with a witch.
How could he? He had told me he and my mother were in love, that their love was strong enough to destroy a lifelong friendship with Lucian and change our destinies. How could he forget all of that?
And he had the nerve to act like he had the moral high ground. Calling Anissa a half-blood when his own half-blood baby was growing inside its mother’s womb—a witch’s womb.
“Jonah. Look at me, please.” Something in Sirene’s words, or maybe it was her gentle tone of voice, made me raise my head to meet her eyes.
There was kindness there. More kindness than I had seen in a long time. Peace washed over me.
“Your father loves you,” she said in that same soft, gentle voice. “He loves all of you. Let him, let me, let us both help you with your brand and to find your brother. Don’t let what’s happening now, between us, make you lose sight of what’s important.”
“And what’s important?” I asked.
“Valerius. He’s a powerful vampire. There’s a reason he’s put the brand there, and we need to find someone who can translate it.”
She was starting to get to me, untying the knot of anger and betrayal deep in my chest.
I felt it loosening, softening. I wouldn’t forget it—there were too many questions unanswered—but I was willing to let it go for the time being.
She was right. There were more important, immediate concerns.
I nodded grudgingly. “All right. What do we do now?”
7
PHILIPPA
I went back to my room and locked the door before Sara could come back. Was I going crazy? If I wasn’t, I would be pretty soon, if things didn’t start making sense.
I had never felt so alone, not even in the days after our parents disappeared. For all I knew, Sara had cast a spell over Scott and he would never be able to help me.
There were vampires like that, ones who learned how to control the minds of other vampires. I had never met one as far as I knew, but they existed. Was she one of them? It was possible—her sister was a half-blood, after all. Who knew who else their mother had consorted with?
I shuddered at the thought of exactly whom I had allowed into my home, the heart of my family.
And here I was supposed to be leading the clan and taking care of us all. What a joke. I had never felt so out to sea, with nothing to hold onto, and nobody to help me. Jonah was gone. I had no idea how to find him. Scott might be a lost cause. And Gage. Where was Gage? I was no further along with finding him than I was before, and I couldn’t risk leaving the clan now. Could I?
My head spun with all the different conflicting thoughts.
And Fane. Our father. Whoever he was. I could’ve used his counsel just then. I could’ve used anybody, someone to listen to me and help me understand. I wasn’t ready for any of it, but there I was, right in the middle.
I threw myself on the bed, wishing I could sleep. I missed sleep. I always used to feel better after a good night’s rest, even when I was young and human and my problems had seemed so monumental. They always did seem monumental to a kid, didn’t they? Like the world was ending because my hair wouldn’t curl properly or the boy I’d set my cap for didn’t return my affection. I chuckled half-heartedly when I remembered the quaint terms we used to use. So much time had gone by since then.