She nods, but doesn’t say anything more about it. “How are the hunters treating you?”
“We’ve had a major breakthrough just this morning.”
“Really?”
I nod. “Hunter number one said his first words to me on the way in. I think they might be softening up to me.”
Alesteria laughs, and it’s the kind of laugh that can fill a whole room. “I don’t know what’s funnier, you numbering them, or the fact that one of them actually spoke.”
Her laughter is infectious. “Well, I don’t know their names. Before this morning, I wasn’t even sure if they could talk. I set out plates for them last night since they didn’t want to eat with us, but they didn’t bother touching it. Are they vegan?”
I pray I’m right. I hate wasting food.
Alesteria tries to hide her smile. “Vegan?”
“Oh, right,” I say. “It’s someone who keeps a plant-based diet.”
“No,” she says with a small giggle. “They’re not vegan. They do eat strict diets though, sometimes fasting to build strength. It’s the standard practice of a lot of hunters from my time.”
My face pinches at the thought of not being able to eat to gather strength.
“I’m sure your invitation is appreciated, but they wouldn’t be doing their job if they were gathered around a table eating and talking, now would they?”
I look over at them, feeling like I’m standing on the outside of a cage looking in. Though I hear her words, I can’t help but feel like I did when I was kept under Clara’s watch. When my strings were being pulled left and right, and I didn’t have a tongue to speak with.
“This is what they’ve dedicated their lives to, Faye,” Alesteria says, as if she can read my mind. “I know this must be hard to understand, but they willingly signed up for this. They were in hard places when recruited and, this, for them, is a million times better than the lives they were leading when we first met them.”
I try to see them as happy. Their faces, different shades of yellow, pink, and brown, hold so many stories to the scars they wear. Stories I may never hear because of their training.
Alesteria pats me on the back and guides me toward the elevator. “Don’t be hard on yourself. They have the option to leave if they want to, but here they stand. They want to protect you. There is no need to know their names. No need to become friends. They are here to serve one purpose, and that is to protect you. Call them your…” She puts her finger to her lip. “Your Primeval watch dogs.”
Something about that last remark stirs a discomfort in me. “They don’t look hairy enough to be considered dogs,” I say, holding my gaze steady.
Her head tilts to the side, smile softening. “No. You will have to excuse me. I come from a time when everyone served a purpose. Everyone was put into a category. I’ve come to understand things aren’t as black and white as they once were.” She pauses, thinking, and then says, “Let me put it this way then: You don’t want to put a name to something or someone, because then it becomes known. Magic can find things like that. These men here, they are my most sacred, secret warriors. They are one with the shadows. Unknown to the enemy until their blade has already slit skin. All you need to know is he is the leader, and I have called on them to protect you. Cecilia foresaw a need for their presence in your life before we laid to rest. When that day comes, and your need is met, then they will have fulfilled their duty to you.” She points to Number One. “You want something done, you tell him.”
I swallow past the lump growing larger in my throat. “Okay.”
“But, if you feel they must have a name, a number will suit them just fine,” she adds with a light tap to my shoulder. She turns, heading back in the direction we were headed. “Now then, there’s something I want to show you. I think it will benefit you greatly when the time comes to face Mourdyn. I want you to see him for the man he is, and not for the rumors and lore told about him. He is just a man, after all.
“After our meeting, the idea came to me. What better way to defeat your foe than to learn everything you can about him? To lift the proverbial veil and peek at what’s underneath. It’s something…” She pauses, her eyes briefly flitting downward. “It’s something I failed to do not only as a Divine, but also as a… wife. I didn’t take the time to really get to know him. Not after…”
I wait, hanging on her every word, dying to hear more.
She stops in front of a door that has caution tape all over it. “Not after he started to… change.”
“Change?” I ask, hearing the desperation in my voice.
She takes a key out of her jacket pocket and unlocks the door. “This was Mourdyn’s private quarters,” she says, pulling the caution tape off and pushing the door open. “No one has been in here since we laid him to rest in the Underground. And maybe that’s where we went wrong. We didn’t try to understand him. Didn’t care to know why he was researching the things he was, or what sparked the change in him from the persistent, curious man I first met and eventually fell in love with.”
It’s weird to hear her speak of loving Mourdyn. Odd to think anyone ever could.
“We only saw what we wanted to see—his perversions for experimenting on our kind. His closed-off demeanor that spread like a fungus around us.” She stops in front of a dust-covered desk and picks up a leather-bound book, wiping it off. “But he was every bit as alive as we were, and he did have feelings. I felt them. I just don’t know what… what went wrong.”
She hands the book to me and I take it, my hands slightly shaking from holding such an item. “And so this brings me back to my idea. First, we get to know our enemy. Understand him, so we know where his weaknesses are, other than the obvious replenishing need for power. And when we’re not studying every inch of this room, we will be trying to get your powers working again until you won’t need the protection of the hunters anymore.
“Now, I want you to dismiss them. Send them to the training grounds where they can train with your father and Sterling. I’ve already alerted them. After we finish here, you can meet up with them. I’m going to grab a few things. I’ll be right back.”
I nod, turning slowly, hesitantly, watching her leave. I don’t want to let her down, but I also don’t know exactly how to address them. “Number One,” I say in a weakly authoritative tone. “Can you please escort the men to the training grounds? You will be training with General Sterling and Watchman Middleton today. I will follow up with you later this afternoon.”
“Yes, Everlasting,” he says with a sharp nod. He turns and gives them a nod, and then they leave, heading to their destination.
I stand there, watching them for a moment, unsure of how to feel. Proud that it went so easy? Scared for the very same reason? I’ve yet to trust myself when it comes to overseeing things, let alone something as colossal as the men she’s left in my charge.
I jump when her hand slides over my shoulder. “Come on, let’s get this place cleaned up so we can begin our research,” she says. And, with two buckets and some rags, we begin the task of dusting and cleaning the room.
IT TAKES A SOLID TWO hours to get the room somewhat decent since neither of us has basic magic. We opened all the windows so the dust we kicked up could be carried away on the shifting breeze. His room held life to it, memories carved within the walls and the cabinets that we had to uncover. By the time we finished, we both fell exhausted into the chairs by the desk, staring at the leather-bound book sitting on its center.
“That holds his most private thoughts,” she says, her voice cutting through the silence. “He used to write in it all the time. It’s all he ever did. Once, he showed me a few pages. He had a very poetic mind. I think we’ll be able to uncover a lot within those pages.”
She stares at it as if the words inside it, once read, would become a living, breathing monster we might not be able to eradicate.
I open one of the drawers to a filing cabinet and find loads of audio tape labeled by sessions. Tapes just l
ike the one Mack had. He must have entered this room to get the information he did without anyone knowing.
I wonder what else he might already know.
“Where should we start?” I ask, eager to learn about the infamous Mourdyn.
“I suppose with the diaries, and then we’ll move to the audio from there,” she says. She pushes it toward me, indicating she wants me to read it out loud.
I take my time opening it, not wanting to tear any of the brittle and time-stained pages.
I keep seeing her face. In my dreams. On the faces of those I’ve come to grow fond of. Every time I turn, it’s like she’s a ghost attached to me. A shadow I can’t escape.
And I know it’s because of me… because I murdered her.
I loved her once. At least, I think I did. But how could a boy know the love of a woman, when the only woman who was supposed to teach him that tender affection died giving birth to a child doomed from the very first breath?
I saw it in my father’s eyes every time he looked at me. The bitterness for her loss. And then the fear of what shape she was taking within me.
WITCH.
I still think of him daily. I wonder what he thought when he found her rigid body on his doorstep with my note pinned to her chest. I wonder if he ran up to the attic to see if I had indeed taken my mother’s belongings with me when I left and never looked back.
But, mostly, I wonder if he was just as happy to be rid of me as I was of him.
Lately, I find myself wondering if I was wrong for killing her. If I hadn’t been so blinded by Alesteria’s beauty, would I have taken her life? Would she still be by my side, helping me understand our kind by using scientific ways the others fear? A part of me thinks she would. She craved blood and knowledge the same way I do.
Or did I crave it the same way she did?
She taught me everything I needed to know when there wasn’t a single soul in the world who could help me. Opened my eyes to the world of witchcraft my father had shunned me from.
But I betrayed her.
I fell in love.
At least, I thought I had.
And, in return for my betrayal, she cursed me.
I must live with this. I must accept that I will never know love. Never know trust. They are words that don’t circle my atmosphere. The curse she bore on me lives within my veins. It should have died with her when I took her life with my bare hands, but she lived just as much inside me as I did in her.
Blood magic—the most ancient of magics—bound us together for an eternity.
And so, my curse remains—no woman would ever remain faithful to me as retribution for my own betrayal of her.
But even knowing Alesteria’s betrayal is of my own doing, because of my curse, I still cannot forgive her. Had I never been enamored with her beauty, Sanura would still be here. Had she not chosen… him… then maybe I could find some forgiveness in my desolate heart.
But, no matter. They will pay in due time. They will see that I know better. That my tactics are for the better of the witching world.
Hunters are the angels cast down from heaven by the Gods, and we, the witches, are their army meant to eradicate them. They are the core of evil.
They raped my Sanura.
They stole my Alesteria.
And now they will be erased from this earth as if they never were.
I look up from the pages to find Alesteria staring out the window at the ghosts of her past. I don’t know if I should keep reading. I don’t know what to think. He killed someone long ago because of a curse, and then, in turn, placed a curse on Alesteria’s child.
“I know of Sanura,” she says, her voice almost a whisper.
I don’t say anything. Just wait for her to continue.
“She was a slave. Mourdyn’s father worked as a slave trader back when America was first established. That was the time before our Coven, when we were so young and naïve. He told me about her. Very little, but just enough so I understood she was a dangerous woman who practiced voodoo magic, or blood magic as he put it, that brought demons to your doorstep.”
She turns to look at me, her eyes dull and glassy. The color has been bleached from her skin.
“I saw her once, outside my window just before we left in search of hunters and witches to establish our Coven. I remember her face as if I had just seen her a moment ago. Eyes as dark as a starless sky. Skin the color of charcoal. I never knew what hatred looked like until I gazed into her eyes. I never knew fear until she opened her mouth and spoke words in a language I had never heard before. She was like a banshee. A demon. A harbinger of evil.”
“And he loved her,” I state, trying to wrap my mind around it all.
Her head snaps in my direction, eyes slanted at an angry angle. “He doesn’t know love, Faye. Even then, I’m sure his infatuation had more to do with power than with matters of the heart.”
I look down. Scratch at my neck, searching for my voice. “Still, she haunted him,” I say, circling around reasoning. “You said we need to find a weak link. Maybe she is it.”
Alesteria chews on the idea for a moment, and then points to the diary. “Maybe. There’s only one way to find out. Keep reading.”
MY EYES BURN AND MY throat has gone as dry by the time Alesteria tells me to stop reading. Script writing still passes before my eyes in a tangle of words and emotions that forms a barrier between the present and past. It feels like a lifetime has passed within the hours we’ve spent holed up inside these four walls. Like we’ve been looking in on someone else’s life through a clear pane of glass, unable to speak or move or prevent the known future from happening.
We made it through a quarter of the diary, but none of the pages spoke any more of Sanura. Only of his growing hatred for Alesteria and the time she spent with Wistar. Hatred—a six-letter word that took on the shape of daggers. That carved and chipped away at his heart until there was nothing left but a cold piece of muscle beating behind a cage of ribs.
“I ask that we keep this between us until we have finished our search,” Alesteria says, looking me straight in the eye. A memory of my mother replacing a pot I knocked over and broke while running from her during a game of tag dances through my mind. It was a pot my rigid aunt had given my mother as a birthday gift, something she would look for whenever she visited. My mother told me it would remain a secret between us that it wasn’t the original. That sometimes, secrets were for the greater good. I felt like we had shared something sacred. Something special.
I fervently nod, swearing this will remain between us. Feeling that same connection with her.
Her lips pull together in a slight grimace, eyes shadowed with a rainstorm of emotions no amount of buckets could collect. “I didn’t… I guess I didn’t know how much pain he was in. How much my affection for Wistar had twisted what little bit of humanity he had.” I hear the guilt in her voice. See it etched in the lines carved by pain on her face.
“He knew the difference between right and wrong,” I say in her defense. Seeing her, maybe for the first time since I’ve known her, as more than just a Divine. As a real person. One with hopes and dreams and regrets.
She looks at me, brutally. “Did he?” Standing, she clears up what we touched and puts the diary on the center of the desk, running her fingers over it a second too long. “Can I tell you something… something private?”
“Yes,” I say, sitting forward.
She pauses for a beat, as if she’s considering whether she wants to go through with telling me. “You have to understand, I come from a time when formalities were everything. We weren’t often left alone with boys. We were also groomed to never be too forward with our emotions and desires,” she says, looking at me earnestly. “The Divine Owen, the one Mourdyn…” She breaks off, unable to finish. “Owen was my very best friend. We grew up together in a privileged town, with parents who lived close to one another and hunted together. He was like a sibling to me. An older brother who was always looking out for me.”
She smiles as memories surface behind her eyes. “He’s the one who set me up with Mourdyn, so you could imagine my excitement when he told me how this charismatic and intriguing mystery boy was coming to one of our parents’ parties with the sole intent of meeting me. Everyone always felt that way about Mourdyn when they first met him. Easily taken in by his passionate words and deeply constructed dreams.”
Another beat stretches between us.
“I still remember seeing him across the room. He had a dark air about him, unlike anyone I had encountered before. Almost like he knew things I could never dream of.” She looks up at me. “Looking back now, it’s obvious he did.” She pauses. Shakes her head as if she’s trying to rattle memories loose. “After that night, he courted me in good fashion. Did and said all the right things. He was truly interested in the training I did as a hunter. He accepted me as I was, and there was never a moment when conversation was dull.
“I promised myself to him under the moonlight after our first kiss. After we came up with a solid plan to build this coven with four others.” She looks to me. “I was young, stupid, and desperate for love. Desperate to feel what it felt like to be held and looked at with secrets shared that others didn’t know. Desperate to do great things with my life. Radical things that could change the world. But I know now that was never meant to be with him. There was always someone else in the back of my mind.”
“Wistar?” I say, thinking back to what I know of them.
She nods. “I… I knew Wistar before I ever met Mourdyn. There was a time, when I was fifteen, I was sent to help his family with a problem and thought I had fallen in love with him. I was sure he felt the same way, but he lived in the north and never admitted his feelings before I had to return home, so you can imagine how I must have felt when, after promising myself to Mourdyn, Wistar was invited by Owen to be a part of the Coven we were trying to build.”
My skin heats for her.
“I was nervous and scared, and when Wistar walked through that front door,” she says, almost reaching out to her memory, “I suddenly felt I had made a huge mistake. But we were so close to finally making the idea of the Coven happen, and Mourdyn was so insistent on us pairing up, hunter and witch, to show unity when we left to recruit members. Wistar and I were both hunters. How could I throw a wrench in those plans over something as trivial as the matters of the heart?” She braces against the desk, as if it’s taking all her strength to stand. “I should have said no when he proposed. I should have said no after spending all those years traveling with Mourdyn while thinking of the next time I’d see Wistar again. I didn’t have the courage, Faye.” She looks up, her eyes two full bowls about to spill. “I didn’t know how to tell him no.”
Evermore (The Night Watchmen Series Book 5) Page 9