Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  Gathering her energy, she shoved the door open and lunged into the room, ready to confront the evil waiting for her. For an instant, she saw her. Kanti.

  Chapter 22

  The spirit dissolved just as she turned her black eyes on Abby. Abby stood rooted in place, frozen by the pure hatred that had shone from the eyes of the ghost. The tiny white birds above the bassinet swayed as if agitated by the presence.

  Downstairs she heard the door open and then slam closed.

  "Abby?" Sebastian called.

  She waited for another moment, finally allowing her breath to release. She fought the urge to race downstairs and tell Sebastian about the spirit. Abby didn't know why she preferred to keep the secret, but she feared revealing that Kanti had come into their home.

  ****

  Tall and thin with wiry dark curls, the woman moved through the terminal like she owned the place.

  "I think that's her," Abby whispered, elbowing Oliver and nodding her head.

  Abby and Oliver had driven to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to meet Lorna after Gwen had called Abby to inform her that she'd finally talked to the woman and set up a meeting.

  Sebastian had allowed Oliver to go in his place because he insisted that he needed to fix their furnace. Abby had almost argued with him, hating to leave him behind, but realized it would be an icy night if they didn't get it fixed. She also knew how important it was for Sebastian to take care of things around the house and she didn't want to strip him of that by insisting that he go.

  "How do you know?" Oliver asked from the corner of his mouth. He wore a long tan trench coat and a bowler hat cocked to partially cover his face.

  "You look ridiculous," she reminded him, yet again.

  "I look like a P.I.," he corrected her, still talking out of the corner of his mouth. "Think Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Gadget, you get the drift."

  He winked at her from the eye not covered by his hat and she sighed, exasperated.

  The woman stopped by the fountain in the center of the terminal and scanned the faces around her. When her gaze moved over Abby, she paused.

  Abby lifted her hand and smiled.

  The woman's eyes shifted to Oliver and she frowned.

  "She's going to freak out and run," Abby told him, reaching up to snatch the hat from his head.

  Oliver laughed and tried to grab it back.

  "Okay, you win, no hat," he told her, holding up his hands. "Let's go meet her."

  He grabbed Abby's hand and began to pull her towards the woman who watched them suspiciously. She did not run.

  "Lorna?" Abby asked, stopping in front of her and extending a hand.

  "I recognize you from Sydney's pictures," Lorna said.

  She shook her hand briskly.

  "But who are you?" She looked at Oliver distrustfully.

  "Oliver," he offered a hand and a huge smile. "Sorry for the outfit, Abby tried to tone it down, but I couldn't help myself."

  "You think this is a joke?" she hissed.

  "No, of course not," Abby insisted.

  "No," Oliver added. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. We've been under a lot of pressure. I was just trying to lighten the mood."

  Lorna studied him for another moment, her lips pursed in a thin line.

  "There's a cafeteria upstairs. I'm assuming you have some way to muffle our conversation?" Her words held an accusatory tone.

  Abby looked at Oliver questioning. She didn't know any magic to block their conversation.

  "Yeah, not a problem at all," he assured them both.

  They followed Lorna to an escalator. As they rose toward the second floor, the woman continued to scan the room. Occasionally her eyes narrowed on a person walking through a doorway or talking on the phone, but she didn't reveal her suspicions, if she had them.

  She chose a small table tucked into a corner and sat with her back to the wall.

  "Can I grab us a few coffees?" Oliver asked, gesturing toward the counter.

  "If you want an ulcer." Lorna replied coldly.

  "I'll take an ice tea, please," Abby told him, smiling.

  "Nothing for you?" Oliver tried again. "A soda?"

  She shook her head.

  "I don't drink from public places. Who knows what someone might slip into my cup."

  Oliver arched his eyebrows at Abby, but didn't say anymore.

  As he moved toward the counter, Lorna relaxed, leaning back in her chair.

  "Gwen said that you would bring Sebastian. I am familiar with him. This person," she flicked a hand toward Oliver, "is a stranger to me."

  "I'm sorry about that," Abby said. "But you're a stranger to me as well and Sebastian couldn't make it. Oliver is my friend and he's a good..."

  "Witch?"

  Abby nodded.

  "Are you in hiding?" Abby asked.

  "Yes."

  "Do you have any reason to believe that they're after you? The Vepars?"

  Lorna's eyes darted around the room.

  "The problem Abby is that I don't know what I'm looking for. I don't have the gifts you have. One of them could sell me a bus ticket and I'd be none the wiser."

  "Well I hardly think..."

  "Of course you think that's ridiculous. So do I, but the truth is that I am powerless against those creatures. Powerless!" Her voice began to rise and Abby looked desperately toward Oliver.

  He paid the cashier and returned to the table.

  "Now I see why we need to shield our voices," he joked, but Lorna gave him an acid look. "This will just take a minute."

  He walked in a circle around their table, pretending to look for something that he'd dropped, but actually whispering an incantation under his breath.

  He took the seat next to Abby.

  "We're all good," he told them.

  Abby sipped her tea and continued.

  "I can see that you're scared Lorna and I get it. I'm not going to lie and pretend that it's unjustified. The truth is that we don't know what the Vepars are up to either."

  "But they killed Stephen?"

  "Yes," Abby admitted. "Oliver saw his body."

  "You?" she narrowed her eyes on Oliver.

  "Yeah. I recognized him from his pictures."

  Lorna closed her eyes as if trying to regain her composure.

  "They were my family. The Asemaa. Sydney, Gwen, Stephen, Karl and Meghan, and of course, Ebony. Now they're gone. Dead or scattered. Our lives have been stolen. We can never go back."

  "I'm so sorry." Abby took her hand and Lorna started to pull away, but then stopped.

  "Can we help?" Oliver asked. "Help you find a safe place? Cast protection spells around your home?"

  Lorna sighed, defeated.

  "I never thought I'd want out. I believed, like Sydney, that the Asemaa would be my life's work. Without them I am nothing, the work is nothing. I never realized how much the group meant to me."

  "What about Gwen and Karl and Meghan? Can't you go to them?"

  Lorna shook her head.

  "It's not safe for us to be together. We're sitting ducks. Gwen and Ebony have separated from Karl and Meghan. Maybe someday..." She looked far away and Abby waited, allowing Lorna her reverie.

  "We've been reading your material. It's kind of mind blowing, the volume alone."

  "I'd say," Lorna agreed. "I remember a Saturday night years ago, sitting on Sydney's porch, drinking wine and reading one of those journals. I thought, 'who knew this is how I'd choose to spend my Saturday nights.' But I loved it, we all loved it. It made us special, which you can understand, of course."

  Abby smiled sadly.

  "Be careful what you wish for, huh?" Lorna asked.

  "Exactly," Abby agreed.

  "A lot of it's anecdotes, tales from the road for those tobacco traders. It takes a lot of reading to find the juicy stuff. We didn't know about the curse until a few years ago. That's when we started going back through and searching for links, but we all had lives. We never got around to organizing it."
>
  "We're so grateful that you collected it to begin with."

  Lorna offered a short, dry laugh.

  "If I could do it all over again, I'd have taken those boxes out to the woods and set the whole lot on fire."

  "Why is that?" Oliver asked.

  "Isn't it obvious? They're dead. Sydney, Stephen, they're dead because they knew about the curse. If I were you, I'd get as far away from Trager City as possible."

  Abby felt Oliver stiffen. She wondered if he thought about the night that Sydney had died, the night that he had killed her.

  "Why do you think it's isolated to Trager City?"

  Lorna threw up her hands in frustration.

  "I don't know why. It's all there though. And yet we're drawn back to that place, knowing full well that something terrible is waiting, still we return."

  Oliver looked at Abby and she sensed his anxiety about her and Sebastian living in the lake house.

  "Why was Stephen writing about a vampire cult in Trager? It almost seemed like he was luring the Vepars to him," Abby asked, changing the subject.

  "Stephen had a strange sense of humor and, honestly, something of an underdog complex. I think he believed that they would seek him out and he could get close to them."

  "Close to them? For what?"

  "He had this notion that he could reveal their lair to Adora. It was a crazy scheme that he went back and forth on. A lot of days, he knew it was nuts and abandoned the plan."

  "Was he in contact with Adora then?"

  "Yes, they talked on the phone once every couple of months. I had hoped to hear from her after he disappeared, but we couldn't wait around. It wasn't safe. Are you in contact with her?"

  Abby's face fell.

  "She's dead, too?" Lorna shrieked, not bothering to lower her voice.

  Startled, Abby looked around, but no one had heard her, apparently Oliver's concealment spell had worked.

  "We think so," Oliver answered her. "But the Vepars didn't hunt her down. She went to their lair. I'll spare you the details, but we all went in knowing that we might not make it out alive."

  Lorna put her face in her hands and shook her head.

  "Do you know what Stephen found in Houston?" Abby asked, gently.

  "Yes," Lorna admitted, her voice muffled by her hands. She looked up and her eyes appeared watery and close to tears. "He came to me a few days before he disappeared. Showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night. He'd literally gotten off the plane from Houston and driven directly to my house. He met a man that knew about Kanti."

  "Knew what?"

  "He knew that she had existed, for starters. He was involved with a group of men that dug up her body more than fifty years ago."

  "Dug up her body?" Oliver asked, surprised.

  "Yes, at the time, the man believed they were digging up the grave of a wealthy tribeswoman. The men had been told that the woman was buried with gold and jewels. However, when they uncovered the bones, the only treasure was a gold amulet. The man who organized the dig, insisted that they bury the body at the base of a tree or she would haunt them for the rest of their lives. That night he disappeared with the amulet."

  "The man who organized the group to dig her up?" Abby asked.

  "Yes, according to Stephen's contact the man who set-up the dig was named Ira."

  "Ira?" Oliver asked.

  "Ira who later became Alva," Abby finished. "A Vepar."

  "But why would he organize human men to dig up Kanti's body? Why not just have Vepars do it?" Oliver wondered.

  "The man in Houston, his name was Jack, told Stephen that Ira acted very strange. He wouldn't touch the bones himself. He started off digging with the group, but then retreated into the woods. When Jack pointed out the amulet, Ira insisted that he hand it over, but first asked Jack to wrap it in a black cloth, like he didn't want to touch it."

  "How did Stephen find this guy?" Oliver asked.

  "Believe it or not in a chat room about Native American History. Stephen has been posting for a few years. Every month or so, he'd go in and write a request for information about a Native American girl named Kanti. He never had a hit until last August. Jack sent him an email and said that he would tell him a story, but Stephen had to fly to Houston and receive the information in person."

  "What's the significance of the amulet?" Abby wondered out loud.

  "Stephen believed that the amulet was the key to breaking the curse. Destroy the amulet - end the curse."

  Chapter 23

  Sebastian trudged through the snow watching for the gnarled tree that Abby had described months earlier. He barely distinguished the knotted gray tree from the drifts of snow as he lumbered along. Fortunately a raven, perched on a tenuous branch, caught his eye. He gazed at the misshapen trunk and found the symbol embedded in the wood.

  He turned west and moved on, noticing that the trees looked different. Many were misshapen, either abnormally large or shrunken and withered. As the snow started to thin, he spotted the crimson weeping willow looming over the white landscape.

  He gaped at the tree in dreadful fascination. He had never seen anything like it. He doubted that another existed in all the world. He touched the blade that Oliver had given him, sheathed beneath his jacket. In another pocket, a pouch held the berries of the belladonna plant.

  He crouched beneath the willow and scooped a handful of the stinging red moss into the glass jar he had brought with him.

  The root stairway that plunged into the earth left little room for his large feet. He pressed his hands into the dirt walls to keep his balance as he descended. The dank hovel smelled of rot. He saw the table piled with putrefied food. Despite the cold, maggots crawled along the rotted fruit and meat.

  "Shhh......," the woman hissed from the floor. Sebastian stumbled back as he saw her.

  She sat on a bench, facing the wall, and rocked back and forth. Her slender back looked delicate and soft, but he could see the drooping gray flesh in the profile of her face.

  "You'll wake my daughter," she hissed with a rasping voice that felt like furry legs scuttling through his ears.

  He backed into the earthen wall, not allowing his eyes to flick away for even a moment. Though she appeared helpless, something malevolent lurked beneath her wasted body.

  "I've brought something for you," he said, ignoring the thumping of his heart.

  She stood in a jerky spasm and picked up a spider-webbed mirror. She watched him through the broken glass, but he did not look into the reflection.

  "Your potion." He took the belladonna berries from the pouch and dropped them into the jar. Withdrawing his blade, he sliced along his forearm and allowed his blood to drip into the container.

  The Lourdes drew hungry breaths as she watched. Her long gray fingers fluttered along her vanity table. They settled on a long knitting needle.

  Sebastian moved to the hole and sprinted up the roots. The Lourdes screeched in agony behind him. He placed the jar on the ground, just beyond the reach of the willow branches, and returned to the burrow.

  "I will bring it back to you on one condition."

  She turned and glared at him. Her flinty black eyes held hatred and longing. She licked the scaly flesh of her lips. Her face was a pool of gray tissue that drooped and pooled. Though she looked ancient and decrepit, her eyes made Sebastian uneasy. Dark black holes filled with wickedness and knowing. He could feel her gaze surpassing his body with those eyes and reaching into the mysteries of his soul.

  She tilted her ruined face back and let out a long gritty laugh. The laugh grew into a howl and echoed on and on, even after she'd closed her mouth and turned away from him.

  "Those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it," she spit, taunting him with her words. "The dead are dead, whether they walk again or not."

  "What do you care?" he challenged. "I have what you want. You obviously know what I want, so give it to me."

  She picked up the knitting needle and plunged it into her ha
nd. Blood, red but nearly black, spurted out and ran over her moldy pink dress.

  "I am dead, dead and decayed, rotted and ruined. The worms dance on my grave, pitter pat they go, how do they dance with no legs?" She cackled again.

  "If you're not interested..." Sebastian shrugged. He turned as if preparing to leave.

  "Stop," she growled and Sebastian froze, suddenly convinced that the Lourdes had somehow scurried up behind him and was about to plunge the sewing needle into his back.

  "Bring me the potion."

  "No."

  The Lourdes shrieked and clawed at the walls with her pointed nails. She ripped away dirt and roots and bugs.

  Sebastian waited.

  "In the corner, there's a chest. Bring it to me."

  He moved deeper into the hovel, turning back again and again to ensure she did not follow. He found the trunk and swiped the cobwebs away as he dragged it across the room to the Lourdes.

  He wrinkled his nose as he neared her. The smell of decomposition was heavy and pungent.

  She fumbled open the metal clasp and sifted through the contents. Finally she emerged with a tattered leather-bound journal. She flung it on the floor at his feet.

  He picked it up and flipped through it quickly. Pages of directions and diagrams. He saw lists of ingredients. Near the end of the book, a picture fluttered out. A black-and-white photograph of a young girl wearing a pale dress with ruffled sleeves. Big dark eyes stared at the photographer, and the curve of a smile played on her lips.

  The Lourdes gasped at the picture and lunged toward Sebastian. He darted away and ran out of the lair, clutching the book in his hand. As he left the willow, he stared at the jar and almost stooped to take it with him. Then he heard the woman's maniacal laughter and fled for the woods.

  ****

  "She said that Alva has the amulet," Abby told Sebastian.

  They sat in the kitchen, eating Thai takeout that Abby picked up on her way home. Oliver had returned to Ula to tell the witches about their discoveries.

  "And she thinks the amulet holds Kanti's soul?"