Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  Perhaps she was overreacting. There were thousands of caves and castles in the world. Maybe Devin had gone to a bonfire in one that just happened to be strangely similar to her dream. But her head disagreed, it shook from side to side, and her thoughts could not change the truth. Something larger than coincidence was happening. Abby had slipped into a series of events that she could not escape from, down the rabbit hole – so to speak.

  She typed in 'Aubrey Blake' and another long list of hits came back, mostly ads for writers, business owners and lawyers. She tried again, but this time added 'witch' after the name. This changed the sites dramatically. She went from normal to fantasy, filing through lists of websites devoted to witches, black magic, love spells and other mystical creatures. The first several sites simply listed Aubrey and Blake among the varying names, no Aubrey Blake.

  Frustration edged in. She clicked on a site called A History of Magic. The screen flashed black, and lines of falling stars wove down the page. Someone had put a lot of effort into the site. As the black faded, she saw an image emerge. It was a large group of women and men standing in an open field. Their clothes were old-fashioned, deep, drab grays, but their faces were luminous. Their arms were interlinked and in the background hung a massive, white moon. Abby leaned forward, noticing a familiar face, ringlets of hair sticking from beneath a hood. Aubrey, Devin's ancestor who could have been her twin, stood in the group wearing a broad smile on her lips.

  Abby grinned, knowing that she had finally found something. She began to scroll the page, searching for names, but, just as they appeared, each letter traveling slowly as if from the gravestones of their bearers, the screen went black. The library door swung in, bringing a burst of sweltering summer air. Abby, too distracted by the darkened screen to notice the incoming patrons, stared at the computer in disbelief. She had seen Aubrey in the photo and now it had died?

  Crouching on the floor, she found the power button on the computer, pressing it repeatedly - no luck. The tower was dead. She started to wheel to the computer next to her and stopped - noticing for the first time the two people who'd entered the library. They were distinct, to say the least. Both had white blond hair, the girl's long down her back, the boy's short and spiky. They were dressed in jeans and black t-shirts, their skin shock white against their dark clothing. The woman might have been a movie star; her cat-like charcoal eyes were thick and hooded. They moved through the library purposefully and stopped in front of a rack of DVDs. They did not speak, but when their eyes met, Abby felt icy fingers tickle her spine.

  * * * *

  Sebastian moved quickly, stuffing papers and journals into boxes and sprinting them in loads to the car he had rented. It was a Camaro, "fast," the dealer said, and dark, so it could be concealed. His black curls stuck to his head, and he packed shirtless, sweating anyway. Abby still had not returned, and panic had given way to rage as he imagined her whereabouts. He had seen Detective Alva, followed him and watched his meeting with Tobias like a shocked bystander witnessing a car accident. He did not attack them like he wanted to, planned to. He only watched, shaking and nauseated as Tobias drifted back into the woods, a demon in disguise. Sebastian was a coward, and the reality of his choice, the choice not to kill, twisted inside his skull until he felt it would explode.

  He had heard only bits of their conversation, the rest muffled by distance and wind. He'd had to conceal himself from them, which meant not only hiding, but also blocking their ability to sense him, which he had read in Claire's journal was a faculty of very powerful Vepars. Mother Nature provided the best shield, and Claire had an entry that listed protection plants, two of which, ivy and fern, grew abundantly in Michigan. He had lain down on the forest ground, nestling into a thicket of ferns and straining to hear Alva when he spoke. He had not expected to hear the voice of Tobias, and when the empty sound reached him, he nearly cried out in shock. How could he have been so foolish? He should have known the moment that Abby found the body that the Vepars were near. But it had been two years since Claire's death. Two years of futile searching with little or no result. He had started to wonder if he was insane or Claire was insane and the whole idea of witches had been some elaborate way to deal with their parents' deaths.

  On the lake, a sailboat drifted, its tall, white sails flaccid in the still air. He kept his ears perked for Abby but heard nothing. He had driven around for an hour after hearing Alva and Tobias, sure that he and Tobias searched for the same girl and that her life depended on his reaching her first. But he did not find her and began to convince himself that she had returned to Lansing, to her family, and maybe would be safe, at least for a little while.

  He rented the Camaro and returned to Sydney's to pack his stuff and plan his attack. If Abby returned, he would take her and they would run. If she didn't, he would attempt to kill Tobias and Alva. He might die, he knew that, but the fear did not deter him. Death would be a welcome respite from his crusade for vengeance, so long as they went down first.

  * * * *

  Abby's hands grew cold; her whole body grew cold, as if someone had just cranked up the air conditioner. As she stood, the girl shot a single glance in her direction, raking her eyes over Abby. Something was wrong. All of the flesh on Abby's body crawled, and she searched her brain for understanding, trying to get a sense of the irrational fears pummeling her. She could see that neither person was looking at the DVDs. Instead they both had their eyes trained downward, focused. She followed their gaze to the girl's slender pale hand, to the middle finger where a white pearl shone from a familiar silver ring. As Abby watched, the pearl flashed black, white again and then stayed black. The pair's eyes shot up instantly, locking on Abby.

  She stumbled backwards, her legs hit the computer chair and it spun away, knocking gently against the desk. The ring from her dream, the ring on the hand of the cloaked figure who was with Tobias, was on the hand of the woman in front of her. The woman whose eyes looked dark, black, even; they were inhuman eyes.

  Abby watched them, their set jaws, unmoving lips. They did not speak, but she heard them, only for a moment, as clear as if they'd whispered in her ear. "We must lure her out." It was the voice of the woman, low and throaty. The man, just a boy really, gave the smallest nod, almost nonexistent.

  Chapter 13

  Sebastian slammed the trunk and cast a final, fleeting glance at Sydney's house. Would he ever return? He doubted it. Tonight he would kill Tobias, which made every sight more beautiful, more meaningful than it had ever been. Sydney's house had been a place of joy for him and Claire as children. It would be a place of triumph and perhaps of death that night.

  He intended to do a final search for Abby in the city and pick up a few, last minute, items at the store. He did not know how to kill a Vepar. In all of Claire's journals, she did not have a single entry about this one, vitally important, subject. Claire's guide, the witch Adora, had disappeared before Claire's death and most likely had not had ample time to teach Claire to defend herself. Sebastian resented the witch for this single fatal error that might have saved his sister's life.

  He laid his gun on the seat beside him. It was loaded, but he did not feel adequately armed. He doubted that guns did much in the world of witches and Vepars.

  * * * *

  Abby jerked her head toward the librarian, who read a newspaper, obliviously. She straightened up, brushed a hand through her hair and hurried toward the door. They did not immediately move behind her, but she felt their eyes piercing her back.

  She burst into the bright sunlight and broke into a run, wrenched her car door open and dived inside. She turned toward the library door, which was slowly swinging shut. She caught only a wisp of the girl's hair as they disappeared around the corner of the building. They were after her. She shoved her key in the ignition and turned - nothing. She tried again, pumping the gas pedal, but not even a growl emitted from the engine. The battery was dead. She'd left her car lights on often enough to know that lack of sound, but this time it was
n't her headlights that had killed the battery. She stayed low in her seat, peeking over the dash in search of her pursuers.

  She could stay in the car, doors locked, and try to wait them out. But what if they lingered until darkness fell and there were no witnesses to stop them attacking her?

  The police station was on the other side of town, too far and too risky with Detective Alva. The closest building housed a string of downtown boutiques. Surely, they would not attack her if people were around. She was separated from the building by an open parking lot. If she ran through it, they would have ample time to get her. Across the street stood the woods that snaked back to the lake. Of course if they got her there, they'd have cover to do whatever they wanted. She felt that time was running out - she had to move. She opened her door, crouched low, and slipped onto the pavement, careful to keep her head below the windows. She had only to sprint across the street. She counted the steps it would take, twenty maybe.

  With a final breath, she ran. Her sneakers smacked the pavement, hammering in her ears. She strained to hear movement behind her, but caught nothing. Running at full sprint, she darted into the woods, heading straight for a giant mess of bushes. She ducked behind them, burrowing deep into the branches for cover. At first, she thought that they weren't coming - that perhaps she had imagined the whole ordeal - paranoia at its finest. Then she saw her. The girl moved stealthily along the tree perimeter, her eyes scanning the forest. She stepped into the woods, the sun glinting off her blond hair. Abby could not see the boy. She held her breath, feeling the burn flowering in her chest, but fighting it. "I am not here - I am not here," she repeated it in her mind until she almost believed it.

  She gradually became aware of a rustling behind her, but dared not move. Praying that she'd adequately concealed herself, she watched in horror as the boy moved into her line of sight. He didn't appear to see her, but stood close enough that a single breath would not escape his attention. She clenched her eyes shut and imagined a game that she used to play as a child. It was called Statue. She and her neighbor, Cassi, would stand in front of the mirror, both of their eyes trained on the other. The first to move, even a twitch, lost. Abby lost a lot, her patience rarely spanned more than two minutes. Abby reopened her eyes as the boy moved closer to the road; the girl came to meet him.

  "She's gone," the girl hissed, her venomous voice ringing in Abby's head.

  "I hear nothing," he replied, a look of exasperation crossing his face. "Could she have doubled back to the road?"

  The girl shook her head furiously, glaring into the trees around her.

  "Your ring is white," he said, grasping the woman's hand in his own and moving it from side to side.

  "She's not in here." The woman sounded angry, but also frightened, like she had failed.

  "But we can still find her, Vesta. Let's go back to the library and wait at her car."

  "You fool," she hissed. "You think she'll return to her car after we chased her?"

  He said nothing.

  "Tobias was right, of course he was right." She spoke more to herself than the boy, her right eye twitching angrily.

  A loud buzzing interrupted them and the boy took out a slender black phone.

  "We lost her," he told the caller, running a pale hand through his hair. "Yes, she is aware of something, but I don't know what. We can keep looking... are you sure? Okay we'll be there."

  "What is it?" the girl asked, moving closer to him.

  "We have to leave. He's being followed, he's sure of it now."

  The girl's face contorted in rage, and she raced from the trees, the boy close at her heels.

  Abby waited, the seconds crawling. A slow aching had spread from her feet, up her legs and into her lower back. She longed to shift, even just a bit, but could not move. Her fear left her immobilized, like an ice sculpture, frozen inside and out. They could be trying to trick her. As she waited, she heard an engine roar to life. Through the trees she saw a flash of red as a car whizzed by.

  Was it them? The minutes crawled. The bushes became stifling and Abby felt her tank-top clinging to her back. She let out a long, slow breath of air and waited. Nothing. No pounding steps through the woods. She was alone.

  Pushing branches to the side, she ducked low and then back up, disentangling herself from the brush. They hadn't seen her; she could hardly believe it. Her car was dead, and if they were laying in wait, they would see her leave the woods. She knew the way to Sydney's house on foot. If she followed the path of the woods closest to the beach, she'd be near tourists, but still out of sight. Walking slowly, each foot carefully placed for the least amount of noise, she moved back toward the beach.

  * * * *

  Sydney's house came into view, and Abby leaned against a tree in relief. She'd been walking for over an hour, and even the shade from the forest could not dull the boiling sun. The air was still and wet, the humidity causing what remained of her hair to frizz and the soft short hairs on the back of her neck to kink into a matted ball. She slid to the ground and lifted her shirt, wiping the bottom across her sweaty forehead.

  Her vantage point revealed the front, right corner of the house, the bay window jutting out of the pale blue siding. She could see the long porch that wrapped around the lakeside of the house, the black, wrought-iron lounge chair that Sebastian had sat in just a day and a half earlier. She had hoped for Sebastian's car, but the driveway stood empty. Somehow, in all that had happened, she felt that Sebastian was an ally. She did not understand how he came to have Aubrey Blake's stuff, but Abby could not forget the confusion on his face when she fled. He seemed genuinely confused and not at all threatening.

  She waited and watched. If the two strangers had followed her to the library, they might know where she was staying. She pulled off her tennis shoes and massaged her feet. A blister had formed on her left heel and throbbed dully. Even Sydney's tennis shoes were built more for fashion than function. She wanted to wade into the lake, allow the water to cool her down, but of course she couldn't. Even in areas where the stretch of beach was thin, she couldn't risk being out in the open. So, what, then?

  Wait, wait and hope.

  After a half hour of observation and no discernable movement near the house, Abby decided to go in. She sprinted from the woods to the door, her feet clacking on the wooden planks of the porch. She pressed against the house and slipped forward, shooting a final glance towards the empty driveway.

  Fishing her keys out of her pocket, she turned to the house lock. It was broken, the entire knob smashed out. A gaping hole revealed the interior of the house, splinters of door littering the floor. She stifled a scream, an automatic reaction to the invasion before her. They'd been to Sydney's; they might still be in the house. She pulled away from the door, flattening her body, and waited, but no noise sounded, there were no muffled voices. She crept to the kitchen window and peeked inside. The kitchen was empty, but a mess. There were open cabinets, coffee dripping off the edge of the counter, a bottle of wine smashed, leaving long maroon streaks across the small white kitchen mat. She continued around the house, peering in windows, searching for any movement, alert to any sound.

  After biting her lip until it bled, she decided to go in, at least to call the police and arm herself with something other than her car keys. She slipped her shoes back on; they felt snug on her swollen feet.

  Lamps were smashed on the hardwood floor, books strewn across the living room and nearly every shelf was tipped on its side.

  Her hands shook, and she had to balance against the wall to face the destruction upright. Terror unfolded anew as she plodded over shards of glass, images of her childhood staring back at her. Sydney's wall of memories had been annihilated viciously, and for what reason? She bent and ran her finger along a silver-edged frame. A spider web of glass blocked most of the image, a picture of Abby dressed as a fairy for Halloween. She must have been ten.

  The living room phone was ripped from the wall jack and lay tangled next to the shattere
d television. She winced at every crunch of some valued possession beneath her sneakered feet. Sydney kept another phone in her study. This room was not nearly as ravaged as the living room and kitchen. The desk drawers were pulled open and a bookshelf lay on its side, otherwise it was untouched. Abby lifted the phone from the cradle to a dead dial tone, and her stomach dropped again. But even as she faced the dead air, she knew that calling the police was futile. Who would they send but Detective Alva? And he had some corrupt hand in the whole mess, Abby was sure.

  She missed her mother, not for the first time that week. Her invasive, overbearing mother, who, in a moment like this, would have some iron clad plan that could not fail. Like the "family fire strategy" that her mother created after a news broadcast about the frequency of dryer fires. Not only did her mother coordinate the plans with their next-door neighbors, she typed them up, laminated them and stapled them next to every door in the house.

  Her mother's tight-lipped smile rose in her thoughts, and Abby knew that her mother was not equipped to face the violence that Abby stood in, ankle deep. People wanted to kill her. They were not normal people and they had already killed once, maybe more.

  Abby clicked the dial but there was still no tone. She turned, searching hopefully for her cell phone. It was dead, but maybe if she could get enough time to dial...someone. Her hands flew across the desk, scattering papers, and her eyes roved over the room, but she could not find it. Lowering to a squat, she pressed the heels of her hands deep into her eyes. Everything wanted to pour out.