Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  "It's strange having had that relic," Abby murmured, remembering the tiny Goddess lighter that had forged a connection for Devin to stay in the world of the living. It also allowed her to see life through the eyes of a Vepar. "I could see through Vesta's eyes. I didn't have access to her thoughts, but I was right there. Now I'm in the dark again and, honestly, I prefer it that way."

  "Of course you do," Oliver assured her. "I have spent most of my life hunting Vepars, but I would never want that kind of window into their darkness. I need distance in order to destroy them. You're an empath, Abby. Had that relic stayed with you, Vesta would have become a doorway for them into you. That's the reality for some witches. You're a healer, you would have wanted to help her."

  Abby remembered the final glimpse that the relic had shown her of Vesta observing the corpse of her brother Tane. Black tears were smeared across Vesta's pale cheeks and Abby had felt her grief and loss.

  "So what exactly will I be learning?" she asked him, changing the subject and releasing those final images of Vesta.

  "For starters, how they operate. How their venom affects us, what their deeper motivations are, and how to sense their presence. There's a lot to cover, more than a day or even a year's worth of study, but we have to start somewhere..."

  A year? The idea of devoting a year to Sydney's killers made her hot with rage.

  "Why should I learn about them? Why should we spend any time thinking of them?" she muttered angrily, again ruminating on Sebastian's infatuation with the murderers.

  "Because they're learning about you right now. They're learning about your human history, the people that you loved, the places you might hide. They teach their recruits to hunt us, to kill us, to steal our power. You would be doing yourself and your coven a great disservice by choosing ignorance over knowledge."

  Abby felt a lump begin to form in her throat as she flashed on Sydney's dead face in the Pool of Truth. Her beloved aunt could never be returned, but other deaths could be prevented.

  Oliver saw the gleam in her eye and nodded.

  "That's it. Hold onto that feeling, Abby. That's the witch's power, the desire for justice at all costs. Not revenge," he quickly added, "but an end to evil."

  ****

  Lydie squealed in delight when Max pulled the silver cloak from an enormous golden cage in the center of the dungeon. Inside, a small orange kitten stood, his fluffy tail puffed in exasperation.

  Sebastian laughed, momentarily caught in the glee of Lydie's excitement.

  "Oh, Max, he's adorable. Is he mine?" She turned her big glittering eyes on Max and he looked briefly dumbfounded.

  He seldom got carried away by Lydie's girlishness because it rarely appeared. Since dropping the clichés, she had seemed to regress to a sweeter childhood self, a girl of seven or eight, and though it brought some trepidation in him, he enjoyed her innocence.

  The cat and all of the animals he had brought to the castle for the day's lessons were from an animal shelter on the mainland. He had cast phantom replacements in their cages, but intended to return them by the following day. However, her joy was intoxicating.

  "You can keep him," he said, resigned. "Though I'm not sure Kissy will approve of his new housemate."

  Kissy was the only pet at Ula. He had been wandering the castle halls for well over twenty years, searching for food scraps and belly rubs. Max did not actually know who originally brought the chubby gray cat to the island, but he felt confident Helena had a hand in it.

  Lydie rushed to the cage and pulled open the door, gathering the puff-ball in her small arms and clutching him desperately.

  Max had given little thought to such frivolities as kittens and toys during his years with Lydie. Though he had been her teacher throughout her time at Ula, from a very young age, she exhibited advanced powers and an aged cynicism that left little space for coddling.

  Helena and Bridget had still managed to baby Lydie during her first years at Ula. Grief and fear had rendered her, for a short period of time, quite impressionable. They cooed and pampered her but, within a year, a hardened shell seemed to encase her. She no longer entertained baby talk, refusing to speak to them in response. She used her powers to light her stuffed animals on fire during an especially stressful time at the coven when a witch had fallen at the hands of the Vepar Tobias. To Bridgett's dismay, Lydie even refused birthday cakes after her seventh year and would tolerate only witch-related gifts—few toys or girlish items.

  Max had not brought up Lydie's change with the other witches. They were all so preoccupied and she was in his charge, after all. Moreover, he wanted to cultivate Lydie's innocence, bathe it in loving acceptance so that she might let it live for a while. He ruffled the fur of the cat's head and rather enjoyed the thought of another kitty in the castle.

  There had been a time when the coven was overrun with pets. They were both a necessity and a fancy. Faustine's cat Black was nearly thirty years old when it died while chasing a fireball produced by the witch Julian. Of course, that had been another time and Max rarely traveled into the past. The present was all that existed, but sometimes, on an especially sunny day, he could not help but remember a time of such intense light that it nearly brought him to his knees.

  ****

  "Sit still," Oliver barked lovingly, placing his hands firmly on her shoulders.

  Abby had been squirming since their so-called lesson began. She shifted in the chair, crossed and uncrossed her legs and tapped her feet. It was not the subject exactly, though the Vepars certainly made her antsy. Mostly it was a feeling that lingered in the room, a sense of something amiss.

  "Don't you feel it? Something's off," she said for the second time, but again Oliver simply shrugged.

  "Abby, you've been going at break-neck speed for weeks. That, combined with Sebastian's...well, you know. It's going to make you feel anxious."

  Abby bit her lip and let her argument die. He might have been right, he probably was, but still she couldn't shake the unease that crawled into her bones and made everything jittery and tight.

  She stood up and paced to the fireplace.

  "Okay, keep going. The Vepars venom," she told him, nodding that he should continue.

  "The Vepar's venom," Oliver continued, barely glancing at the book in his hand, "induces a nearly immediate state of unconsciousness. This occurs when their teeth make contact with flesh, puncture the skin and it enters the blood stream."

  "What is it, the venom?" Abby asked. She had felt the Vepar's venom first hand, but she did not understand why it appeared to have less impact on her than other witches.

  "Well, that's the thing. We don't know. Witches have been trying to collect Vepar venom for thousands of years, but it's virtually impossible. We can't find it. It's not stored in their teeth, gums or lips. When we try to isolate it in a witch who has been bitten, there's no trace of any foreign substance."

  "How do you know it's venom then?" Abby asked, pulling a chair closer to the fireplace and perching on the edge, still too anxious to fully relax.

  "We don't. The venom label has come from Vepar's themselves. It's what they call it. We don't actually know what it is."

  "Then how did you create an antidote?"

  "Trial and error. Not an easy process, to say the least. Bridget makes our antidote here at Ula, but the original creator was a witch in rural Ireland. He wasn't part of a coven or anything. A hermited witch, according to Helena."

  "A hermited witch?"

  "Yes, he lived in isolation, away from other witches. Apparently he was a genius chemist. Half of the elixirs in Bridgett's stores are from this guy."

  "Really?" Abby imagined a witch with long graying hair and tattered leather sandals staring intently into a boiling pot and seeing the future.

  "Yeah, we have books on him in here. But don't worry, Elda will send you there soon enough. For now let's talk Vepars."

  Abby shrugged and leaned back, letting her hands fall on the arms of the chair. A light shock, like tou
ching a low voltage live wire, ran up her forearms and she ripped them back.

  "What, what is it?" Oliver lifted her arm expectantly.

  She stared at the chair and tried to conjure the vision that had come to her. It was brief, nearly incomprehensible, but there had been a dark wood and a face lost, searching. Sebastian's face.

  ****

  "Shh..." Dafne's eyes darted around the cave, but no other presence appeared.

  She had traveled within her astral body to meet Indra, a witch from the coven of Sorciére, that she had been communicating with regularly.

  Dafne and Indra had met at an All Hallow's Ball two years previously and their painful pasts, combined with a general suspicion of all non-witches, immediately connected them. Indra, like Dafne, was a hunter and she thrived on the study and annihilation of Vepars.

  "I dreamed of him again last night," Indra whispered, when she felt confident that no other witches were present.

  "And?" Dafne did not enjoy drawn out conversations. Learning of Indra's dreams and visions often took more patience than she could gather.

  Indra took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  "I am walking in a dark forest and the leaves are whispering a warning of danger. My skin, hair and eyelids prickle with fear, but I do not waiver from my path. Where am I going? I know not. Only that in my palm, I clutch a tiny red flower and I must deliver the flower for healing. From the shadows to my right..."

  Indra crouched as she spoke and waved her hands to the right.

  "A venomous whisper steals the wind for his own. He tells me that his transformation is nearly complete. That he, the Great One, will soon rise, and all of the witches of Gaia will cower beneath his gaze."

  Indra shuddered and took another deep breath.

  "I look into my palm and the flower is your coven of Ula, smoldering and ruined. The man steps from the brush and I see a hint of blue eyes and then...nothing."

  Dafne let out a long breath and bit the knuckle of her right hand. Indra's dreams were coming more and more frequently. They were prophesying a great change. Dafne's dreams were much more gruesome, but foretold of similar catastrophe.

  "Did you tell your coven?" Dafne asked, but she knew the answer.

  No, Indra did not tell her coven. She had become estranged from them and spent all of her hours in the dungeons casting out for Vepars. She hunted them at night, alone, and when they fell, her coven celebrated, but she refused to participate. Instead, she returned to her solitude, her dreams and her visions and, more than all of that, her obsessions. Vepars had stolen more from her than the earth might ever replace. Her lover, her children and her closest friends had been sacrificed on their altar of blood lust.

  Dafne knew a similar tale of anguish and, though she had never revealed the details to Indra, Indra had dreamed of them in pieces.

  "Have you begun?"

  "I have." Dafne reached into her robe, her ethereal body shimmering and pulled out the enchanted scroll that carefully bound her spells. Indra leaned eagerly toward it, her eyes widening. Dafne felt a strange sense of satisfaction knowing that the witch, superior in many ways, appeared enthralled by her casting.

  ****

  Abby returned to her room to retrieve a wicker basket of tinctures she had made. Part of her lessons with Bridget involved mastering human healing.

  For a week, she had pored over worn texts and journals searching out remedies for a list of ailments provided by Bridget. If she had mixed everything correctly, she now knew how to develop medicine for nausea, PMS, paranoia, headaches, diarrhea, and the flu.

  Bridget taught her in the healing room, where many of the coven's tinctures were stored. Two walls rotated to reveal shelves of potions that could help mend broken bones, clot the blood, and protect against the venom of Vepars. Abby longed to sit on a stool before the shelves and read every title. However, time rarely permitted such investigation. Between lessons, practicing her power, and Sebastian, she was amazed that she remembered to eat amidst the constant shifting.

  "Forgot the prickly lettuce here in the premenstrual syndrome tincture," Bridget told her.

  "Oh, shoot," Abby moaned, remembering the green thorny plant sitting on the workshop table. She had taken it down, two days earlier, to add to her pestle, and then Sebastian had arrived hungry. They went to the dining room and she completely forgot about her final ingredient.

  "Don't worry, doll," Bridget bubbled. "We're only on round one."

  Abby looked forward to learning about remedies, but the upcoming party at Sorciére still consumed most of her thoughts. They only had a week before the party and Elda, who promised to give her details, had left to visit a coven in Canada where an old friend of hers was nearing death.

  "Any news on Elda's return?"

  Bridget looked up with a sly smile. "Excited about the party?"

  Abby sighed and nodded.

  "Yes, and nervous. It's just Sebastian is worried so..."

  "So you're worried."

  "Yeah."

  "Well, let me help you," Bridget pulled a bottle from the shelf and set it in Abby's palm. The glass bottle, only half full, contained a mint-colored liquid.

  "What is it?" Abby tilted the bottle on its side and the light green amoeba inside broke into tiny balls and floated along the glass.

  "For your worries."

  Bridget did not let on much. Though always friendly, chipper in fact, Abby knew little about Bridget who kept to the kitchen and greenhouse most of the time.

  "These look just about perfect?" Bridget chirped, inspecting the contents of each bottle with a large magnifying glass. The glass was held in place by silver taloned claws that extended to a long spiraled handle. "Wanna see?"

  She held the glass out to Abby who took it and peered at the contents of her headache remedy. Through the magnifier, the liquid became thousands of tiny particles zipping around the bottle, their colors and shapes each distinguishable.

  "That is amazing," Abby whispered, staring harder as a heart shaped lavender speck jetted by.

  "Yes, you can see every feature. You come to know how the energy dances. If the dance is off there is something missing from the potion."

  "That makes the remedy useless?"

  "Not useless," Bridget replied, placing Abby's tinctures on the shelves and making her heart swell considerably, "but not useful for the ailment. They can also be dangerous, which is why I check them myself."

  "You've checked all of these?"

  "Yes, every one."

  Abby's eyes scanned the rows of tiny bottles, there were thousands of them. She shuddered at how long it must have taken for Bridget to examine every one.

  After meeting with Bridget, Abby left the castle, welcomed by a fat, full moon dangling overhead. She wanted to wander the grounds. She had already spent a good deal of time getting acquainted with the large island that Ula inhabited, but the coven's grounds were deceptively large. She entered the cherry blossoms and veered off the path, stepping over the remnants of leaves and blossoms turned brown and brittle.

  She pulled the tincture from her pocket and lifted the rubbery dropper from the top. Squeezing the tip, a small blob of sour liquid plopped onto her tongue and she swallowed it with a grimace. It tasted like rotten fruit.

  From the blossoms, the castle looked as tall as the sky itself. The windows were small, orange orbs of light drifting in the low hanging clouds overhead. Abby had not been to any of the castle's highest turrets. They were used, as far as she knew, by Faustine and Elda only.

  Sebastian had grilled Helena about them, but she pretended that nothing more significant than loud snoring went on in their high walls.

  The thought of Sebastian made her heart hurt and she licked her teeth and gums and swallowed, wanting the entire worry potion to work its magic.

  ****

  The days leading up to the Ball were harried and exhausting. Between last minute lessons, costume preparation, and Sebastian's concealment, not a single moment of down tim
e could be found. Helena and Bridget were non-stop designing, sewing, plucking, and forcing all of the witches into their costumes again and again until everything fit perfectly. They had chosen to outfit Sebastian as a dragon, to complement the mythical Melusine's many figures, and Elda had spent a great deal of time casting the spells that would conceal his human identity. Abby had participated in nearly all of the spells since she would be the one most likely to give him away if something went awry.

  Abby collapsed into bed each night with aching eyes and sore limbs. Her brain was full to bursting and she slept the sleep of the dead, having made an agreement with Sebastian that they would retire to their separate rooms for the week before the party to be fully rested.

  On the morning of the Ball, Abby found all of the witches, save Dafne, in the dining room talking excitedly over plates of fruit and pastries. She grabbed a Danish and pulled a chair next to Oliver whose bronzed skin had been sprayed with a sparkly sheen by Helena the night before. He looked like a handsome Greek statue.

  "You like?" he asked, leaning in and pecking her on the cheek.

  She grinned and nodded.

  "California girls, eat your heart out," she laughed, rubbing a finger along his forearm, but nothing streaked away.

  "What? You think this is fake?" He shook his head, blond hair falling over his forehead. "This is the real deal baby. No tan in a can for me."

  "Tan in a potion," Helena teased, miming a spraying motion.

  "I think it looks awesome," Lydie said, shoving a handful of raspberries into her mouth. "I wish I had colored my skin."

  ****

  "Don't be afraid," Helena told Abby and Sebastian as they stepped toward the mirror.

  For a moment, they surveyed themselves in full costume. Abby's long darkish curls shone with bright red and green scales. Her cascading red dress revealed the black serpent's tail beneath and behind her, huge black vellumous wings rose from her back, casting her in shadow. Sebastian wore her counterpart—the dragon. He held the dragon's head mask in his hand. It covered his face, only from the nose up, and Elda had enchanted it to breathe fire when he coughed.