"But she's safe right now?"
"Yes, no, I think so. I'm scared Abby. I'm so scared that I haven't even really thought about how scared I am. When you found me in that crawl-space today, I'd been down there since last night. I slept down there. I just felt sure something would take me in the night."
Abby took Gwen's hand and allowed a rush of gratitude to flow into her.
"You're not alone, okay? I'm a witch and I have friends and we won't let anything happen to you or to Ebony." Abby grew stronger from her own words and, deep down, she believed them. She would get the others from the coven and she would stop blaming them for Sebastian and for Sydney and they would end this thing. Tobias would not steal anyone else that she loved and as for Dafne—Elda and Faustine would know how to deal with her.
"I want to see your journals," Abby said. "All of it, everything you've got. And I've pored over Sydney's stuff and only found a little bit about the curse. Is there more?"
"Yes, it's in the cottage–the one nearest the woods with the little iron rooster on top? We have a bookshelf in there with a secret compartment behind it. I stashed all of the material in there."
"Clever."
"Not really. I mean, considering secret bookshelves are basically the hiding place in every movie and book nowadays, but the guy who originally built the cottages created a bunch of funny little spots like that."
"I'll find them," Abby reassured her.
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. I'll show you right where they are."
Abby shook her head no.
"I'm going to take you to a bus station and get you out of town. You're right that it's not safe here. I have to return to Ula, but first I need those journals."
Gwen looked like she might argue and then nodded slowly.
"Okay, but please stay in contact with me? I have to know what's happening and my friends are missing, Abby. I can't just let that go. For Ebony's sake I'll leave right now, but I'm not abandoning this. The Asemaa began with Sydney and it won't die with her, you understand? I won't let it die."
Abby did understand and she knew in her heart that Sydney would want her to keep the group alive. It had apparently been her life's work and Abby had never known it existed.
****
After the lake, the trail moved south in a nearly straight line. The Vepar must have carried Lydie through the woods rather than driving, which hardly made sense. Vepars could move quickly, but not nearly as fast as a car, and surely he would have tired at some point.
This forced Oliver to abandon his car fifty miles into the trip and travel on foot so as not to lose sight of the trail. He ran as fast as his body allowed, but still he could see the stream beginning to fade. He had run for nearly two hours when the last remnants disappeared from the sky.
He approached a tree and laid his hands on the bark. He pressed his face close trying to catch the Vepar's scent, but found barely a trace. At the base of a very tall birch, he caught the first very subtle smell of something dark. He crawled up the tree and, strangely, found that the scent grew much stronger near the top. It was as if the Vepar had traveled through the trees or, he suddenly realized, above the trees. Somehow it had flown.
He jumped from tree to tree, painstakingly pausing in each one to see which way the scent moved. Twice he jumped to the wrong tree and had to backtrack when he lost the smell. Finally, it moved downward and he followed it to the forest floor. He stood only a few miles outside of Trager City. Somewhere along the way, he heard Faustine speaking to him. His thoughts were muffled, but Oliver understood that Helena had stabilized.
As he followed the Vepar's path, he perceived danger. He knew that he was close and sprang back into the trees to avoid detection while he searched the earth below. He nearly missed the cellar door, so concealed by leaves that it looked merely like another mound, but a small flash of silver caught his eye and he recognized a handle.
He watched it for several minutes, waiting to see if any of the vile things emerged, but the door stayed closed. Finally he crawled down and, treading softly, walked toward the door. He pressed his ear to the earth and listened.
Chapter 29
Sebastian went to the bus terminal near the airport with his last twenty-five dollars. The next bus wouldn't arrive for seventeen minutes. He sat down to wait, munching a bag of pretzels he'd bought from the vending machine.
He watched the terminal doors and studied the faces of every person who walked through them. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that he had dug out of an airport 'lost and found' to conceal his hair and face. He knew that Abby was in Trager. He felt her more strongly with each passing second, but he didn't know where.
The doors opened and, with a gust of cold air, a petite woman with short golden hair blew into the terminal. She looked frazzled and upset, clutching only a handful of cash in her hand as she made her way to the ticket counter. She paid, took her ticket and then turned to the row of seats, her eyes lighting for a moment on Sebastian before she turned away, but then slowly she turned back and stared.
Sebastian broke the stare, tucked his hood lower over his face and started to get up, but already the woman began to approach him. Before he could escape through the door, she grabbed his sleeve and turned him towards her.
"Sebastian?" she asked, and he wondered suddenly if maybe all of his memory had not returned because he did not recognize this woman who spoke to him.
He started to shake his head no, but as he looked into her eyes, he felt her pain and also a deep need to know that yes, he was Sebastian.
He nodded.
"Oh, my God, you're alive! Abby told me you died, she thinks that you are dead," the words poured out of her and she looked like she might begin to cry.
"You've seen Abby? Where is she?" he asked her urgently.
The woman looked around anxiously and then she looked back into his eyes and stared at him for a long time.
Seemingly satisfied, she said "Abby has gone to the stone cottages by the lake. I should have gone with her, I'm sorry."
"Wait, what cottages?"
"The circle of stone cottages past the woods north of Sydney's house."
Sebastian vaguely recalled them. He immediately turned to leave and then remembered his bus ticket.
"I'm sorry to ask this, but I have to get to Abby and I'm out of money. I need you to help me."
"Here," the woman thrust most of her money into his hands. "Yes, go now," she said anxiously , and threw her arms around him, hugging him tight. "I'm so happy that you're alive."
He didn't wait to hear more. He rushed from the bus station and ran across the parking lot to a grubby little car rental agency that boasted rentals as low as ten dollars a day. Without a credit card, Sebastian had to pay the kid at the desk nearly two-hundred dollars to take the rustiest car on the lot. He squealed out of the parking lot, trying to outrun the sense of doom growing within him.
****
Oliver opened the door easily, knowing that leaving it unlatched may not have been an accident, and stared into the black hole below him. Vepars lived in squalor. They played at a certain sleek humanness in the above-ground world, but in their lairs they resided in filth. The walls on either side of the tunnel were dirt, but wet-looking and slimy to the touch. Before entering, he'd sprayed one of Helena's scent neutralizers over his entire body. Vepars did not always smell witches, but the more powerful ones had the capacity and, in their dungeons, they were much more likely to catch the scent.
The floor moved downward steeply and then leveled off. The walls became smooth and small oil lamps lit the tunnel. The silence grew thick and unease began to set in. Oliver did not spook easily and, beneath the earth, literally embedded in his element, he could not have been stronger, but still he knew a trap and he was walking right into one.
****
Abby used Gwen's key to open the door to the cottage with the rooster on top. The musty odor of mothballs greeted her and she saw a light film of dust on nearly every surface.
She maneuvered around piles of furniture and boxes stacked with tattered books and ancient-looking picture frames.
Gwen had told her that they used the cottage for storage, which was why she had chosen to hide the journals there. In the sea of stuff, most people would quickly give up and look elsewhere. Abby found the built-in book shelf. She knelt on the floor and sought the small lever Gwen had described. The simple metal hook jutted from beneath a rug and Abby pulled up on it hard, jumping out of the way as the shelf swung out. The bookshelf lurched into a stack of lawn chairs and they crashed to the ground, startling Abby and dislodging several books.
"Relax," she whispered and took a couple of deep breaths. The space behind the door was roughly the size of a broom closet and, stacked within it, from floor to ceiling, were journals, binders and accordion files. She grabbed a stack and walked them to the trunk of her car, carefully closing it between each trip and returning the key to her pocket.
Halfway through the pile, she caught a shift in the air around her. Her senses sharpened. Every sound and movement grew distinct and separate. The water lapped the shore, washing over each tiny grain of sand, and she heard it all with acute clarity. In the woods, not far away, something rustled. She breathed deeply and tried to get a sense of the thing. An animal? Not exactly, but not human either.
All at once her skin began to crawl and her pulse quickened. She wanted to run to the water, but even as she thought it, she detected something beneath the surface, some darkness that lay in wait for her.
She slammed her trunk and ran to the woods, hoping to escape into a tree, but found the trees bare of their leaves and hardly a good hiding place. In her terror, she discovered that, despite her sharpened faculties, the world seemed distant as though she watched the scene unfold on a movie screen instead of in real time. Her eyes scanned gnarly branches and heavy stones, searching for a suitable weapon.
Abby started to run and in her mind's eye she saw the thing sense her movement and begin to follow. She fled, moving fast, faster than ever before, but still it gained on her. She could not see it or hear it. It seemed to come from everywhere. She ran into a bush and screamed, pushing the branches away, hurling her body through and into another space only to again run full-faced into a sharp bush of thorns. They caught and held her and she fought them, furious and terrified and crying now. She ripped out of her jacket and the thorns released her. She ran into a field. It lay empty and enormous and she hated to run across it and expose herself, but the thing behind her still bore down. Halfway across, she struck a log hidden in the high dead grass and toppled over it. She swore and struggled to her feet.
It seemed to fall from the sky, the black oily monster with fangs barred. It landed on Abby's back and, before she could fling her body to the side, its long fingernails sank deep into her shoulder, warm blood spurting from the wounds as its teeth sought her neck. She reached back and found its hair and, with all her strength, tried to rip the creature from her, but already her power had begun to drain as the teeth broke through the skin and the venom found her blood, racing like wildfire to her heart and her brain. She started to collapse beneath the weight of it and then the heaviness vanished, lifted from her by some unseen force.
She fell, first to her knees as her legs buckled beneath her. She made a feeble attempt at throwing her hands out to break her fall, but none of her limbs obeyed and she hit the cold ground with a thud and felt her head snap to the side.
When she saw him, she knew that she dreamed or had died because Sebastian could not be beating the evil thing that had fallen upon her. In the pale light of the moon, she watched him lower blow after blow upon the black figure at his feet. The creature suddenly reared back and Abby thought it would envelop Sebastian in its huge hair wings. Instead it took to the sky, rising up and away before Sebastian strike it again.
She opened her mouth to call to him, but made no sound. She closed her eyes and thanked the Gods for a final glimpse of her love, knowing in some broken part of her that he was merely an illusion and, if she ever woke up, she would be alone again.
****
Lydie sat cross-legged on a pile of dirty pillows and blankets streaked with blood. She held a rough-looking gray puppy in her lap. The dog whined fearfully when Oliver entered the room.
"Lydie!" He ran to her, reaching down to scoop her up, but the puppy snarled and bit viciously at his outstretched hand. She looked up at him with glassy eyes and frowned.
"You shouldn't be here, Oliver."
Oliver? She never called him Oliver.
"Lydie, I'm here to spring you, hon. You've got to put the puppy down."
It didn't look like a puppy anymore with yellowed bloodshot eyes and a jaw hanging slack, but ready to spring closed at any moment.
She shut her eyes tight and shook her head no.
"They're coming back today. I can't leave until they come back."
"Who's coming back, sweetie," he asked, trying to keep the alarm from his voice. She looked catatonic. He inched a little closer to her, with every intention of snatching her and racing from the room the moment he could get within arm's reach. His ears were perked for any sound, but again, maddeningly, only silence greeted him, and every part of him knew that he'd walked into a trap and that Lydie, sitting alone in the room, was bait.
Lydie ran her mostly limp hand over the dog's matted hair and rocked slightly back and forth.
Oliver took another step.
"Who's coming back, Lyds?"
She looked at him as if she'd forgotten he was there.
"Mom and Dad." She gazed into the dirt wall as if she could see something beyond and a small smile lit her face. "Coming back today." She sang it and Oliver hated the sound, wanting to clamp his hands over his ears because Lydie sounded insane. He feared that if he spent another second in the room with the snarling dog and the bloody sheets he would go insane too.
Finally, close enough, he reached for her. As his hand brushed the sleeve of her soiled jacket, the dog clamped its teeth onto Oliver's wrist. He muffled his yell and went to jerk his arm away, but the jaws sunk deeper into his flesh and the venom burned as it oozed into his bloodstream. Impossibly, the dog started to thrash and convulse. Its face grew a long snout that warped into a gargoyle-like head with tiny black eyes and a gaping mouth. The dog's spine twisted and popped and wings flapped out for an instant before they were sucked back in, and the skin of the thing ripped open and a larger being started to emerge, all the while holding Oliver's broken and bleeding arm in its mouth. Oliver had dropped to his knees and wanted to beat at the thing's head, but his whole body began to lose strength and his other arm felt like an anvil resting on the ground. The face now looking back at him belonged to Tobias. Black eyes grew larger and white skin streaked with blood as the carcass of the animal fell away from the Vepar's body.
Tobias released Oliver's arm and smiled, moving to a squat beside Lydie who looked at the dog's corpse with the same dazed expression she had offered to Oliver.
Oliver fell onto his back, his arm gushing while black spots dotted his vision. His head struck the earth, but his body no longer seemed solid. Instead, he fell into a bottomless black pit. As he plummeted, Tobias and Lydie and the scene in the room grew further and further away until they vanished completely.
Chapter 30
"Sebastian." His name barely sounded from her parched lips. His beautiful perfect face peered down at her, but her visits with the dead had made even her great love suspect as he leaned over her.
"You're nearly healed beautiful, " Sebastian told Abby as she began to come to. He sat in a chair pulled to the edge of the bed, his hands clutching one of hers as it lay mostly lifeless on the sheet.
She wiggled her fingers and gazed at the room. They appeared to be in a tiny cabin.
"How are you alive?" She took her hand from his and reached to touch his face. She rubbed her thumb across his prickly chin and then over his soft lips, all the while staring incredulously into his achingly fami
liar blue eyes.
"I am. Right now that's the only thing that you have to know. I'm alive and I've been dying every day that we've been apart."
She nodded and, leaning in, he kissed her mouth and then her wet cheeks, pulling her head into his shoulder.
"Where are we?"
"The Chateau," he whispered, nuzzling his face into the palm of her hand. "My dad brought me here when I was a kid, although back then this place was filled with bunk beds, card tables and an old wood-burning stove. I guess the owner's remodeled."
Abby glanced around the room. It was sparsely finished, but tasteful. A tiny alcove held a sink and mini refrigerator, but otherwise the bed and two wing-back chairs were the only furnishings. A single painting of a Lake Michigan sunset hung over the fireplace where Sebastian had built a crackling fire.
"There's so much that we have to talk about. So many questions that I have, and that you have. I can already feel them dying to get out, but let's save that for tomorrow? Okay? Let's just be together tonight because I swear it feels like it's been an eternity..."
She smiled and pressed one of his hands against her cheek. It felt too good to be true. In the weeks since his death, she'd slowly assembled a wall around her grief and encapsulated it in a tiny dark room. In that room lived the impossibility of him ever holding her like this again, but he was, and she could barely stop from biting and clawing and mashing against every piece of him just to prove that he was not a figment of her mind.
He tilted her face up and crushed his mouth against her. They were not careful as they pulled her shirt over her head, ignoring the bandage that covered her left shoulder. She didn't even grimace at the flash of pain, but instead relished it as she tugged at his pants, which he kicked off with a grin before burying his face in her neck. She pushed the blankets away and ripped open his ugly Hawaiian shirt, laughing as the buttons skidded across the floor.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 56