by N Gray
During the day, we would leave the basement for fresh air and sunshine. Ralph took me to all the places that he thought I would recognize and that he hoped might bring back pieces of my mind. Some places were vaguely familiar, while others I just couldn’t place, but he didn’t stop trying.
I asked Ralph why Ulysses Assassins didn’t have an office anymore, and he said it was for security reasons and that our number had to keep changing. I suspected he was trying to hint that it was because my daughter had almost been kidnapped, but I didn’t feel like talking about it yet, so he didn’t bring it up again.
He showed me how we ran the business. It was mostly via the Internet, which was a smart move, according to him. We were sitting ducks if we stayed in the office. There were crazy nuts who didn’t approve of our business and who had tried to harm us before. He explained that our contracts came from private clients via Slayerbody, or from the police. He used the term ‘officially/unofficially’ and confirmed that contracts sanctioned by the police were reserved only for those cases where they couldn’t catch the monster themselves.
Fortunately for me, Ralph knew the bank where my safe deposit box was kept. Desperate to access my daughter’s information, I tried the remaining two keys on the hieroglyphics key chain to see whether they would open it, but none of the keys worked. That meant that I was still in possession of two keys that would open locks somewhere, but I had no idea what they would open, where they were or who had given the keys to me. It was just another mystery that, right now, I couldn’t solve.
One afternoon, Ralph and I were going through the photos we had had developed, and when we put the blurry photos together and arranged them in a certain way, they formed an obscure, blown-up picture of my face. It creeped us out—me more than Ralph, admittedly—as we realized that someone had to have taken the pictures of me at close proximity. Yet another mystery I didn’t have an answer to.
The two witches, Désiré and Seraphine, came back to me like they said they would. Désiré asked for the identity of the witch responsible for the curse on me, but I claimed that I didn’t know. I told her that the man who attacked me had confessed and begged for forgiveness, and as a result, we were cured. She didn’t need to know the whole truth; after all, I might need a favor from Seraphine one day.
Désiré had consulted one of her covens’ oldest books and located two paragraphs that explained the ‘gift’ that she thought I had. It wasn’t common at all, and as she had predicted, it enabled the human recipient to absorb power, syphon it and then use it as and when required. She said that the fact that my aura glowed pure white was a very good sign, and she promised to help me. We could meet up once a month so that she could help train me in my new ability and all things witchery.
Seraphine also shared with me one of her covens’ books. It started out explaining what my ability was, and although the description was similar to Désiré’s definition, there was one difference—the witches who uncovered humans with this particular power were to be sacrificed. No wonder there weren’t that many of us around.
I had red flags screaming in my head when I heard this.
This was possibly the reason why I had kept my ability a secret, but I had no idea how to hide it now, as I once had done. Wouldn’t the brightness of my aura give me away?
I asked Seraphine why the other witches killed humans who had this ability. “Once a human syphons power from a witch, that power can be used against all other witches,” she answered. “It is like taking a curse, reversing it and lashing out at all the others, but the difficulty comes when the human doesn’t know how to control their power.”
I asked her if she would help me to understand exactly what I was capable of and to teach me to harness my ability. She agreed on one condition; she would teach me only for as long as my aura stayed white. If I began to learn of my power and my aura was to change, it would mean that I was changing into something else. A white aura was something sacred, Seraphine said, as pure as I was going to get, and it would enable me to stay connected to the spiritual world. In her coven, a pure white aura was a sign of good intention. Yay for me!
Now, I had two witches who would teach me all their spells and incantations so that I could use them to defend myself. I had no interest in using them to hurt others, and I made a promise to myself to only use these powers when necessary. We scheduled my training to start next week.
After a week of silence from Marcus, we started to worry about him, so Ralph started an intense search and got a ping off his cell phone. We found him in an alley; he was in a worse condition than before, but we brought him home to my basement to recuperate. We were able to nurse him back to health, and when he could talk, he did.
Marcus told us that he had met a fellow were-lion, a scientist named Melinda Cromwell. She had been trying to cure them both of their inner animal. When she had thought that he had overdosed on her latest batch of ‘cure’, she had dumped him in the alley to die, like trash. He cried, even though he had only known her for a short time. He said that he loved her and that he wanted to be cured. He reasoned that if she wanted to be cured, then so did he. I wanted to tell him that if she loved him, she wouldn’t have dumped his ass, and that nothing could cure him of his animal, but I didn’t say any of that. I think he understood what had happened to him, and he had paid the price. He had lost two fingers from his left hand to gangrene because he hadn’t been able to shift into his animal form and heal himself.
Every other day, I went to the shooting range and practiced shooting with different guns, or I went to the gym, where I would spar with some of the fighters. My strength was improving, and my scars were healing better than they should in such a short time frame. I guess I had the vampire/were-animal mark to thank for this little gift. I still wondered about the second mark and whether it would change me, but I didn’t want to know for sure. I didn’t know how much it would change me, and that was what scared me the most.
I experienced enough change in the last month to last me a lifetime. And I planned to take things one step at a time.
Sebastian called often, but I answered none of those calls.
I now understand why I had such a strong attraction toward him, but I had no way of knowing if it was the mark that made him attractive to me or if it was him as a person.
So, for now, I was avoiding him.
Ralph said that I was being stupid and that I should meet up with him; that I only lived once, and I was still young, yada, yada, yada …
I would see.
I first needed to fit the pieces of my own puzzle together before I could even think about seeing anyone.
FROM THE AUTHOR
DEAR READER,
I hope you enjoyed this book as much as I loved writing it. It’s my first full-length novel which took me ten days to write, but I left it to simmer in the folder on my PC for a month while I wrote the second book in the series.
When the second book was written, I started editing Ulysses Exposed and then sent it off to the real editor to make sure there were no gremlins.
While you read this, I am busy with the finishing touches on the second book in the series. You can expect more insight into Blaire’s life, more romance, and a case to solve; and we all love a mystery.
I would love to know what you thought of Ulysses Exposed. You are welcome to either leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
If you would like to be notified the moment the second book is released, you are welcome to sign up for my newsletter via my website.
Until the next book, stay safe and keep reading.
www.ngraybooks.com
Email [email protected]
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Other books written by N Gray:
Short stories:
What’s for Dinner?
The Hunter
Creature Features
https://www.amazon.com/N-Gray/e/B0736SC
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