Destroy, Book 2, Whispers From the Bayou

by Sandra R Neeley

  Lore realized where they stood, where he now was. Watching the men as they watched Carolena’s house. Lore sighed, “Ah, well,” he thought, at least it confirmed he had the right humans in his sights. He watched for a while longer, then heard their plan. The older one, the leader, said, “We sneak inside, drag her out of the house and into the yard. We burn her alive.”

  “You can’t do that,” his brother said to him. “There are others in the house, they’ll stop you, they’ll stop us. Better we should grab her when she’s alone.”

  “Do not tell me what I can and cannot do!”

  “Let’s think about this,” the third man said. “We know where she is now. You can go after her whenever you want. Why rush it? Take your time. Let’s be sure that we make no mistakes. Don’t want her to get away, ya know?”

  “We’ll hide, and then I’ll make her come to us. I am stronger than any of you realize. I’ll call her out to us. The stupid bitch will come,” Alexandru said.

  “How can she possibly hear you from outside? And what makes you think she’d just hand herself over?” Constantin asked on a smirk.

  Alexandru turned on Constantin in a split second. His voice, unspoken, though booming in Constantin’s mind, “Do you dare to question me?” gave the feeling of his very skull splitting in two.

  Constantin dropped to his knees, grabbed his own head with both hands, squeezing, trying to stop the pain and the voice echoing from side-to-side inside his brain.

  When finally he stopped whimpering and braved a look at Alexandru, who stood over him with a self-satisfied look on his face, Alexandru said, “Do not underestimate me.”

  Constantin said nothing, merely nodded as he climbed to his feet a much more humbled Constantin.

  “She will readily give herself up to save those she loves. She was always too soft-hearted. It will be her downfall.”

  Vasile said nothing. He was against everything that was happening here. It was so wrong, but at the moment things were spiraling out of control too fast, and he didn’t know what to do.

  “Let’s head back to the boarding house. I promised a few of the men if they helped us tonight, they’d be well rewarded. They are waiting for our return. We’ll come back later tonight, and we’ll prepare the house to burn while they sleep. She’ll see it. She’ll come to us,” Alexandru said.

  “Then what?” Vasile asked.

  Alexandru smiled, “Then, brother, we watch her burn.”

  Lore watched as the three men left their hiding place and slinked off into the night, their plan cemented. He did not follow, he had his own plans to see to, his own preparations to make. He looked back at the threesome as they faded from view. Yes, evil permeated the older brother in spades. His time on this earth was near its end. It would be a pleasure to relieve him of his insanity. Lore shrugged and his voice echoed in the emptiness, “What’s a little more insanity? In some circumstances one can never have quite enough.” A lilting peal of laughter bounced through the trees lining the drive as a faint purple mist faded into the sky.

  Chapter 26

  Carolena convinced Rowan’s family to spend the night there. It was after all, about to become Rowan’s home, and from the way it seemed, they’d be there to help her run the shelter.

  Rowan’s mother and father took one of the guest rooms upstairs, and Rowan showed her grandmother to the room that was directly across from the one she slept in now, that was adjoining the one that Carolena and Enthrall slept in.

  Carolena was washing up for bed and heard voices in Rowan’s room. She knew she shouldn’t, but couldn’t help but pause and try to hear what was being said.

  “I am proud of you, child. You have accepted your gifts. I can feel the magic lingering on your skin, it is as it should be,” the old woman said with pride.

  “I’ve not, Mamaie. I had to undo a wrong I’d done, but that is all,” Rowan said.

  “It is a start. Can’t you feel it? The energy pulsing through you? The strength, the power?” Mamaie said, her old voice crackling with age, but the excitement she described clearly still a very vivid memory for her.

  “No! I can’t. I don’t want to. It’s evil, Mamaie. Look what it’s done to us, to all of us! I won’t give it life. I won’t give it a chance to destroy any more lives, Mamaie. Please understand,” Rowan begged passionately.

  Carolena didn’t hear Mamaie say anything and thought the conversation over, then just as she went back to washing her face she heard the old lady say, “You are a fool. You have more power than any other I’ve ever seen. You are not evil, not an evil bone in your body, so there is no way that your powers can be evil. Evil begets evil, good begets good.”

  “But the others…” Rowan started.

  “The others reaped what they had sown. I told you, evil begets evil! They brought down their own destinies, not you,” Mamaie spat at her.

  “But they hunt us still, we can never find peace, Mamaie!”

  “Humans hunt us, not magics! Not any other but human. Do not be a fool, girl! Accept who you are and revel in it. Only when you do this, will you ever find peace and truly be happy. You deny your birthright, Rowan. Why?” Mamaie pressed.

  Rowan clearly frustrated by the conversation said, “Have you forgotten the creatures that came to me, that always surrounded me, never too far away, always wanting something, anything?”

  Mamaie laughed, “Oh, yes!” she laughed heartily, “I remember. I remember well. Do you truly not understand?”

  “Understand what?” Rowan asked.

  “They weren’t drawn to evil, child. They were drawn to light. You are so full of light, of life, of everything good in this life. That is what they were drawn to. Any one: creature, human, or any other you claim to have attracted to you, is only wanting to bask in your light, your warmth. They didn’t want to harm you — they just wanted to be near you.”

  Rowan didn’t say anything further, and Carolena finished her washing and climbed in bed.

  A moment later Carolena heard Rowan say, “Do you believe that Gargoyles are real?”

  “Oh! Indeed, child! And such noble creatures!” Mamaie responded without hesitation. Then Mamaie asked with curiosity in her voice, “Have you met one?”

  Rowan giggled before she answered, “No, ma’am. I’ve met two.”

  “Blessed you are!” Mamaie singsonged and clapped her hands together as she crossed the hall to go back to her room, “Truly blessed, child.”

  <<<<<<<>>>>>>>

  Carolena sat up with a start, looking around the room, realizing she was still alone. She smiled, Enthrall must have been able to connect with Felicity. She was so happy for him. He deserved so much happiness.

  Then she heard it, a scraping sound outside her window, or maybe in the hallway, she wasn’t sure. That must have been what had awakened her. She listened, but didn’t hear anything else. The rest of the house was quiet. Carolena yawned, settled back into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

  Rowan woke from an unsettled sleep, tossing and turning, voices murmuring in her head. She had the feeling that someone was standing in the room with her and opened her eyes warily. From her vantage point, she could see no one. She risked turning over and… no one. She sat up and looked around, still no one. But the sensation of being watched still weighed heavily upon her. Rowan got out of bed and padded over to the window, squinting to better see. There, just out of comfortable viewing range, there was something. Then she heard it again, felt it again — a nudge to her subconscious, “Come to me. You know there is no escape.”

  Her blood ran cold. She knew that voice, after all these years, she knew that voice still. Alexandru, and he’d found her. But this was impossible! He did not have magics, he could not possibly be speaking to her? Surely her mind must be playing tricks on her. But what if he wasn’t?

  Her heart pounded in her ears. She thought of her family asleep in the house. Her friends. Then she thought of Destroy. His smile when they argued, his lips as they pressed to hers. S
he raised her fingertips to her lips to feel the tingle just the simple memory brought to them.

  Then she heard Alexandru’s voice again as it echoed through her mind, “I see them. I see them all. They will die, all of them. Or you will. Choose.” As these words rang in her mind, he stepped further into the open at the far end of the grounds. She could now clearly see him in the moonlight. Rowan stood transfixed, fear filling every ounce of her being.

  “Your life for theirs… a fair exchange, I think,” Alexandru’s voice echoed through her head. Then he was sending her pictures. Flashes of doorknobs, their keyholes jammed with wooden shims so that they wouldn’t turn, tree limbs and brush strewn against the outside of the house and up against the now useless doors, and flashes of himself and other men splashing kerosene over the outside of the house. Two of those men walked up behind Alexandru, kerosene lanterns in their hands, flames turned high.

  Rowan stumbled back; they meant to burn them all alive. She started to rush from the room — she had to warn them, had to get her family and her friends out of the house. Then Alexandru’s voice stopped her in her tracks, “You come, they live.”

  Rowan let out a single sob, thought of Destroy once more, whispered a quick, “I love you,” to him on the wind, and lifted her bedroom window, climbing through it to meet her fate.

  <<<<<<<>>>>>>>

  Destroy lay in Rowan’s bed in Enthrall’s extra bedroom. His emotions mixed. He’d had a good day, a good week. He’d earned respect, made friends, proven to others that he was a male of quality. But that week had been spent without his Rowan. There was a hole in his chest where his heart should have been. She’d taken it with her. He wondered if she missed him as much as he missed her. He gave up trying to sleep, got up, got dressed and headed outside. He’d spend the rest of the night wandering Whispers, insuring that all who lived there were safe in their beds, or wherever they may be.

  He stood a few feet from Enthrall’s porch, lifted his wings and prepared to take flight. His face pursed up into a grimace, his heart pounded, and his head snapped this way and that, searching in vain for the female that had just whispered, “I love you, Destroy.” He was terrified, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin — only he wasn’t. It wasn’t his terror, it was hers!

  He broke into a full run and seamlessly took flight, “Lore!” he bellowed to the night sky. He had to find Lore; the Ancient could surely take him to Rowan within a matter of moments. Little did he know, Lore was on his way to Destroy this very moment.

  <<<<<<<>>>>>>>

  Rowan’s bare feet moved silently through the damp, dewy grass, slowly taking her to face her fate. The winds were picking up as she walked, the leaves rustling on the trees, sounding much like the waves on a beach with the strength of their movements, still not strong enough to carry away the scent of the kerosene they’d doused the house with. The scent still clung to her hands and toes where she’d touched it coming out of her window. Her heart pounded, she thought of all the things she wished she’d said, wished she’d done. Funny, none of the things she’d actually done came to mind, only those she never got a chance to do.

  As she approached Alexandru and the men waiting with him, she saw their plan, a large pile of kindling had been gathered and standing up in the middle of it was a wooden post with chain wrapped around it. They meant to burn her alive.

  “Welcome, Witch,” Alexandru sneered at her.

  “I’m not a Witch,” she answered shakily.

  “Really? Then you claim that you killed my family, all the other families, with your own hand?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t kill anyone,” she said.

  “You did! I saw you! I watched them die. I watched my mother die a horrible, painful death after having been burned by lightning. Your lightning, the lightning you called from the sky! I watched my friends die, I watched our entire kumpaniia fall apart, only a few sorry members left to seek vengeance for the evil done to us. I am that vengeance!” he screamed at her. Then he stalked over to Constantin, snatched the lamp from his hand and hurled it into the kerosene soaked kindling. Immediately the kindling went up in flames, spreading and growing faster and faster as they licked from one strand of dried wood to another.

  “You are wrong. I didn’t call the elements, they came on their own. You hurt me, you frightened me! If you’d just left me alone… If that girl had just left my charm in place, you’d have been safe. It was her fault, your fault! She ripped it from me, and all the power spilled out. It was for your protection, not mine!” she shouted at him.

  He stalked to where she stood just a few feet from him. She bravely stood her ground, not flinching as he approached. His hand came up and shoved something in her face, “This charm? This one?” he demanded. He grabbed her, threw her to the ground and fell on top of her, shoving his knee into her back to keep her from getting up. He tied the charm about her throat tightly, so tightly that it was cutting into her flesh, then snatched another tie from the back of his waistband and lashed her hands together.

  “Yes, I figured it out. The charm held back your magics. So, now, that’s exactly what I’ll use it for.”

  Rowan opened her mouth to answer, to call a curse down upon him, but he slammed her face into the ground, knocking her unconscious at once.

  When next she woke, she was surrounded by flames. She tried to move and found that she’d been chained to the wooden post in the middle of the pile of kindling and tree branches Alexandru had set fire to.

  The winds had died down, the swaying of the trees a much calmer rocking now. She looked around, realizing that Alexandru had been smart about this. He’d made a circle of branches and kindling, then a smaller circle, and a small cleared area with only a few branches laid across the clearing to connect them to the largest pile, which she now stood on, having been fully soaked in kerosene before they tied her to the post. She would die slowly, watching the fire gradually approach; there would be no quick flame to wash away her sins.

  Motion from her right caught her attention, and she just barely managed to move her head enough in spite of the chains she was bound with. There was Vasile. He saw her looking at him, and his eyes met hers with such pain, such guilt. She couldn’t speak. There was a kerosene-soaked rag stuffed into her mouth and halfway down her throat, but she beseeched him with her eyes nonetheless.

  But Alexandru had seen, too. “It won’t work, Witch! Do not waste your time. He saw our mother and friends die as well.”

  “I didn’t,” Vasile said quietly.

  “Of course you did!” Alexandru bellowed at him.

  Vasile looked from Rowan to Alexandru again, “She just looks like a girl to me. She’s not what I expected. And I don’t remember anyone dying. I was two months old!” he raised his voice while addressing his brother.

  “Shut your lying mouth!” Alexandru screamed at Vasile. “You were there. You saw! And if you think she’s just a girl, perhaps we’ll just burn you with her!”

  Vasile turned then to the task at hand, which was soaking the ground around her funeral pyre with more kerosene, though he mumbled under his breath the whole time. Sneaking looks at Rowan with sorrow-filled eyes.

  Rowan realized that there would be no coming back from this. She closed her eyes, pressed her head against the post she was chained to. It would be okay. It wouldn’t last forever, and once she was gone, her family and Destroy would be safe. Her life for theirs; that’s what he’d said.

  Suddenly someone was right in front of her, their nose pressed to hers as his putrid breath spread across her face, “Are you making your peace? Do you think that it’s all going to be okay because at least you’ll save your friends?” Alexandru taunted. “Of course it won’t. Do you know why?” he smiled sweetly at her. Then his eyes went stormy, and he bellowed less than an inch from her face, “Because I lied! They will all die, just like you are. Every. Fucking. One. They will die!” Then he grabbed her by the hair on top of her head and slammed her head into the post behind her.


  Her ears rang, her eyes became unfocused, and the outer ring of kindling around her started crackling as the flames began to grow. She lost all hope. She stood, chin held as high as the chains would allow, tears flowing freely as she met her fate head on. What she didn’t expect was that as soon as her flames started, one of the other men with them sprinted to the house and threw the other lantern at the back wall. Flames there started to grow, too. She shrieked as much as she could around the filthy rag stuffed down her throat, but it was no use. She couldn’t warn them. She’d been such a fool to think Alexandru would keep his word, her life for theirs. She struggled against the chains, trying to jerk this way and that to loosen them to no avail. She raised her eyes to the heavens, called on the winds, the rain, the very flames themselves, but she got no response. The charm her grandmother had made for her all those years ago was still doing its job far too well. She looked around herself, flames had fully engulfed the outer ring of kindling. And the flames at the back wall of the home Carolena had meant to be used as a shelter were beginning to grow as well. They would all die in the fire. Alexandru had made sure to seal the doors — no one would be able to get out. All because of her stupidity, her fear of the very thing that made her, her.

  Chapter 27

  Enthrall woke with a start. He looked around, realizing that he was in Felicity’s home still. He looked at the soundly sleeping woman on the sofa, got up, tucked her in, made sure her door and her windows were locked tightly before ghosting back to Carolena’s house.