At Faustine's urging, Oliver had ventured to Sydney's house to see if the Vepars still lurked nearby. Perhaps they would lie in wait for Abby and Sebastian to return there.
Oliver had watched the woman with blonde hair climb from the lake. She pulled a towel from a chair back, drying off naked beneath the luminous moon. She was older than him, in her forties at least, but a beauty nevertheless. Her breasts were too large to be natural and they tapered down to a smooth, flat stomach and shapely legs. She was short and her blue eyes were piercing, even in the dark. She was related to Abby, he could see that, but there was something darker in her, a shadow that hovered just beneath the surface.
He knew from Elda that Abby's aunt was supposed to be on vacation, but he had no other explanation for this woman, clearly acting as if it were her home that she traipsed around so confidently. He glanced back toward the house, watching each window, but detected no movement inside. Her husband was either sound asleep or gone. Gone, Oliver thought, because he could not detect any other presence there.
The woman strode across the porch and slipped on a sundress. She began to turn toward the house and then paused, meaningfully. She stepped into a stream of moonlight and faced Oliver , staring at him directly as if she could see him clearly despite the leafy shroud of the tree that he waited in. His throat constricted and he bit his lip against the urges that washed over him. He usually had such control, but something about her made his pulse quicken. He felt the blood surging into his temples and he shook his head with a jerk from side to side.
The woman lifted a hand and beckoned to him with a single finger. She turned and disappeared inside.
"What the hell?" he asked out loud. He understood as surely as he knew the earth beneath him that he should not move toward that house. Every fiber in his body was pulling him towards her, but the energy that existed in a realm beyond human desires cautioned him to stay away. Without thinking, he started to move out of the trees toward the house and then caught himself, surprised.
"What are you doing?" he whispered and retreated quickly, hoisting himself into a tree and scampering to the top.
He chewed on a switch of pine, which grounded him. When he felt stable, he turned to gaze at the house. He could see her moving from room to room, turning off lights. She stopped in an upstairs room, drew the curtains wider, and then began to light candles. He saw bits of her as she moved around the space, but already his jaw tightened and he felt his heartbeat grow more rapid. He fought it, calling forth his element and communing with it deeply. In his mind, he softened into the tree, feeling his legs melt into bark and his torso grow strong and sturdy like the trunk. He fixed his eyes on the ground far below him and waited.
Hours passed in silence. Oliver sensed that the woman lay awake in the house waiting for him. He should have left, gone searching for a scent in the woods, but he had been unable to shake the feeling that the woman's home held the answers that he needed.
When her scream pierced the silence, he nearly plummeted to the ground below. A fat branch that he caught with his hand, rather painfully, stopped him and he clutched it only briefly before climbing quickly and silently to the ground. He moved across the yard near the beach, ready to slip into the water for concealment. Nothing raced through the darkness and when he lifted his nose to the air, he did not smell a Vepar nor did he sense the tar-like energy that they oozed into the space around them.
The door was unlocked and, as he crept into the house, he pulled the steel dagger from his pant leg and held it firmly in his fist. He had left his bow and arrow in the forest, knowing that anything he encountered within the house would be a close-range fight. He might not have sensed a Vepar, but they were master concealers and he would show no mercy if one came upon him. He wanted vengeance for the young witch Devin and, more so, for Abby. He wanted to return to Ula and triumphantly tell Abby that he had saved her aunt.
He took the steps two at a time and kicked through the door to the bedroom that the woman had gone into. She stood in a corner, her dress clinging to her body, her blonde hair cascading over her shoulders.
"I called for you," she breathed.
He watched her and tried to maintain control of his body's desire. Something inside of him let go.
He strode across the room and scooped her into his arms, tossing her onto the bed. She released a low guttural moan and he grasped the back of her head, lifting her face to meet his. She kissed him desperately, releasing his belt and forcing his pants down. When she parted her legs and he moved inside her, his entire body trembled with pleasure. His lips sought her breasts and she dug her fingernails into his back as he thrust into her.
His mind had shut down. The witch Oliver, for those several minutes, ceased to exist. When a sharp pain pierced his right side, he barely noticed, so lost in the carnal pleasures of her exquisite body. The second time, alarm bells sounded in his head. He pushed away from her and looked at the blood gushing from the wound below his rib cage.
The woman held his dagger in her hand and her eyes glowed with malice . She sprang from the bed and the knife clattered to the floor. Oliver, dazed, reached for it, not fully grasping that this woman he'd been making love to wanted to kill him. She snatched a bucket from her bedside table and threw it in his face. He recoiled and sputtered as gasoline burned his eyes and coated his lips.
He saw the small box in her hands and her fingers closed on a single red-tipped stick. She started to slide it but, before she could set the match on fire, he thrust his blade into her chest. It went in so easily. It slid through her delicate breast bone. She cried out and dropped her match. Her eyes locked with his and now, again, they were blue and innocent and terrified. She fell to her knees, both hands grasping at the blade.
He reached forward, holding her shoulders as she crumpled back to the floor. Blood began to ooze from the wound and tears fell in thick streams from her eyes. She put a bloody, trembling hand into his and, when he heard her sob, his own throat constricted and he started to pull the knife from her chest, thinking irrationality that he might save her.
As he found a solid grip on the slippery handle, a booted foot slammed down on the blade from behind him and drove the dagger through the woman. Oliver heard it hit the wood floor beneath her. He started to twist around, but the flames caught him first. He felt the fire lick the back of his shirt. He stood and dove through the open window into the night. He hit the roof and rolled.
Above him, the mysterious Alva, the Vepar who created Tobias, lifted another bucket of gasoline and flung it out over Oliver as he plunged to the earth. The fire seemed to eat him alive. The pain was blinding and deafening and he rolled and twisted, but through it all, he saw the woman's pale blue eyes and the deep sorrow etched into her irises as she faded away.
Oliver stumbled blindly. He screamed and raked at his clothes, trying to pull them away from his skin where the fire consumed him. When he saw Alva moving across the porch towards him, he shut down his senses and he fled. In his confusion, he went in the wrong direction and staggered through woods. He dropped and rolled in pine needles until the fire was extinguished, but still he burned. The blisters on his skin already felt like balloons, expanding outward and ready to burst.
He knew that Alva drew close and with a single, silent thrust, he drove himself towards the water and splashed in. He swam clumsily into deep water. To his horror, a hand grasped his ankle. He looked down to see the dead woman, a gaping hole in her chest and her eyes blazing. She pulled him under the water. He fought her, but her small hands dug into his calves and held until his vision started to fade. A thousand dead things writhed beneath her, waiting to pull him into their pale, almost fleshless arms. He closed his eyes and allowed the darkness to swallow him.
"Ollie...Ollie." Lydie's strained voice came to him and Oliver blinked and then rubbed furiously at his eyes where the image of the woman was still fading away.
"Sorry, hon," he told her. "Got lost in my thoughts, I guess."
Dafne watched him curiously, but said nothing.
****
"Well, she's in tip-top shape," the man told Abby, kicking the tire with his sneaker-clad foot and wincing slightly. "Never died on me once."
Abby surveyed the burgundy two-door Saturn and pretended to consider. In truth, she didn't give a damn about the car so long as it started and got her down the road. She needed a vehicle if she was going to get around the city without creating a rumor of a wild woman living in the woods. Her own car sat in the warehouse near Lake Superior, unavailable to her without the assistance of the coven.
The man, Darcy, had posted the Saturn for sale in Trager's free weekly newspaper and she didn't want to arouse his suspicions by handing over a wad of cash without, at least, appearing to weigh the decision.
"Well, I've been saving for a while and it seems like a pretty good fit," she said. She pulled a stack of hundreds from the Pure Michigan beach bag she had purchased earlier that day at a downtown boutique.
Darcy grinned and Abby tried not to stare at the chocolate smeared across his front tooth. When she'd knocked on his door, he had been scarfing the last of a chocolate doughnut and she saw now that some of it had also made its way to the front of his Fish Whisperer t-shirt.
"Well, you two seem like the perfect pair," he added, taking the money and quickly shuffling through it. She saw that he no longer looked at her at all. Money did that to people. She waved a quick goodbye and got in the car.
She set off down the road, grimacing at the pungent aroma of the air freshener called Black Ice hanging from the rear-view mirror. She plucked it off and shoved it into the glove box, vowing to pick up something a bit less abrasive, like strawberry.
She circled Rod's building twice before she cut the engine a block away and pulled her hood tight over her ball cap. She knew that the outfit was a bit extreme. Hat, sunglasses and hooded sweatshirt, all at once like some paranoid celebrity hiding from crazed fans, but Trager made her uneasy. It wasn't her own near death that unnerved her, but the murder of Sydney and the attack on Oliver that made her skin crawl.
She didn't want to think of Oliver. She knew in her heart that killing Sydney had been an accident, but still, was there no way to avoid it? And why all of the lies? In a coven of witches who supposedly valued honesty, the truth seemed strangely absent.
Next to the car, a group of older women, clutching wine bottles, laughed and moved down the street. They represented the last of the autumn tourists, visiting the wineries outside of Trager and frequenting the downtown shops and stores that had not yet reduced their hours for the coming winter.
She stepped from the car and stuck close to the building, listening keenly to every voice and sound. Her gaze, behind her sunglasses, darted across the street and peered quickly into parked cars, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing aroused her suspicions and, when she finally slid the key into Rod's door and stumbled across the threshold, the vice on her lungs loosened and she sucked in a deep breath of stale air.
The windows were closed tight and the space held an aura of abandonment. The loft's disarray was likely a combination of Rod and Sydney's trip to the Cayman Islands combined with the later police investigation, though Abby had the impression that when Vepars murdered, no real investigation occurred.
She paused and took in the enormous photo collage of Rod and Sydney that hung on a brick wall opposite the door. She felt the flower in her chest bloom and immediately wither. She slid down the closed door and gripped her knees, her eyes spilling over with tears of grief. Sydney was dead and Sebastian was dead and, in her despair, Abby wished more than anything to join them. She hiccuped and wailed and her nose ran into her sweatshirt. She didn't care if other tenants in the building heard. She had only to jump out the window and run like hell to be gone in minutes. She realized that it was sort of like being a superhero. Right then, she understood their tragic stories much fully than when she'd read comics as a child. They were always plagued by some misfortune that brought loneliness and isolation into their lives. She could feel the pit of that loneliness deep in her stomach.
"Screw them," she whispered aloud. "Screw all of this."
She flung her sunglasses across the room where they landed with a crack on the wooden floor.
She wrung her hands and pressed her face into her knees and sobbed for the loss of the people that she loved. Sydney had been her lifelong comrade and one of the only people in her world that ever truly seemed to understand her. Then Sebastian appeared—that mated soul whom Sydney, somehow inadvertently, had brought into her life. Now they were both gone, their brilliant flames snuffed out by an evil that Abby had not even known existed. Her desperation to find answers suddenly felt pointless and without hope.
Elda had spoken of the witches' burden since Abby first learned of her powers, but she hadn't understood. Those haunted looks that all of the witches seemed to possess, the horrific story of the Lourdes, all foreshadowed that which Abby had refused to recognize. Now she got it, the power, the gift, came with great suffering and she feared that she could not withstand it.
"I don't want this," she cried into the empty room. "I don't want this!"
She slammed her fist onto the wooden floor and a tiny web of cracks appeared beneath her hand.
* * * *
Abby pulled the cork from the bottle of Merlot and poured a heaping portion into a white coffee mug. Sydney and Rod had an entire cupboard of sparkling goblets, but they felt much too festive for Abby's dour mood. She sipped the wine and walked the apartment, silently observing her surroundings.
Elda had told her to shut off her brain and see with her senses.
'Our brains are so efficient," the Elder Witch had explained. 'They create neural pathways to remember things. These pathways are like deep ruts that our thoughts flow through again and again. We stop seeing the tree outside our window and how uniquely beautiful it is every single day. Instead, we see a familiar object and pass it by. We fixate on our lover's flaws because we've trained ourselves to see those patterns rather than acknowledging how gently he's holding the baby or how, today, his eyes are filled with wonder. To see the world through a clean lens, Abby, you must take thought out of the equation. Don't name it or judge it, just see it.'
Abby glanced over pictures, books, artwork and let it merely exist, not allowing any associations or memories to sully the impact.
When she moved into Sydney and Rod's bedroom, she closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the pain of their rumpled sheets and then releasing it.
"There's something here for me," she said to the room. "I can feel that I've been drawn here. Please reveal yourself."
She repeated the words as she walked the perimeter of the room and then into the bathroom. Nothing jumped out, but the hairs on the back of her neck began to tingle. High heels and paperbacks and half smoked cigars, one of Rod's guilty pleasures, slid into focus and then out again. Doorknobs, a wall mural of a Malaysian pool, ceiling fan, wooden floor, black shag rug, ankle weight... She paused, her mind backtracking and she shifted her gaze to the black shag rug. It was small, round and sitting just beyond the foot of the platform bed. Abby had been to the loft several times and she had never seen the rug. On top of the rug stood a small, three-legged table with a mirrored surface. It held two candles, melted nearly to their bases, and a small rock with something etched into the surface. She lifted it close to her face and saw a crudely carved heart. She considered the heart and looked at the rug again, thinking.
She crouched down and slid the table and rug aside and stared at the wooden floor boards. Everything looked right, but something was off. She traced her fingers along the boards and noticed that the grains differed slightly. The variation was barely perceptible, but she began to force her fingernails along the board edges, prying and pushing until one of the boards gave. She lifted and a large square of floor rose up to reveal a trap door.
She sat back on her heels and chewed the end of a fingernail. Rod's body had
never been found and the thought of discovering him rotting in the loft floor petrified her. No smell rose from the darkened space.
She took a deep breath and got on her hands and knees, peering into the hole. A wooden ladder led down from the opening. The total drop was no more than five feet and only an empty plank floor greeted her. She could not see what lay beyond the shafts of light illuminating the opening. She grabbed a box of matches and lit one of the melted candles from the table and climbed down.
A secret room existed beneath Sydney and Rod's bedroom. It was rectangular in shape and filled mostly with colored storage totes. Abby had to hunch to keep from hitting her head on the ceiling. A small table stood along one wall and, above it, Abby could see several battery-operated push lights. She clicked three of them and scanned the table. It held a jumble of items from newspaper clippings to keys. She lifted one of the newspapers and gasped at the cover. A picture of a smiling Devin, beneath a headline that read 'Young Trager Artist Found Dead in Ebony Woods,' stared back at her.
"Ebony Woods," she murmured, remembering the name, but not immediately pinpointing where she heard it before. Slowly it dawned on her, the newspaper clipping of Devin's Aunt Aubrey who burned to death in 'the Ebony Woods'.
As Abby studied the dates on the newspaper, her hands began to tremble. The clipping was dated three days after Devin's body had been found. Sydney and Rod had already left for the Cayman Islands.
She spun around, convinced that someone stood behind her, but no one lurked in the shadows. Rattled, she hoisted several boxes out of the hole and closed the trap door.
In the apartment, she set to casting spells over each window and across the door. No spells were absolute, Elda had been clear on that point, but all of them offered some form of protection.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 45