by Oxford, Rain
“The main use is to make its landing smoother,” Logan answered. “They also use them to scare other males from their territory.”
“Weakness is death on Skrev,” Rosin said, still snarling at the raduma. “An injury is a death sentence. Therefore, most of the top predators avoid fighting their own kind. Unlike the varug, raduma are solitary hunters. Usually, a display of wings and teeth is as far as it needs to go.”
“Then growl louder!”
The raduma glanced at Vincent, but quickly returned his eyes to the only one he saw as a threat. “That’s not going to work. We’re in his territory and it is mating season.”
“Then shouldn’t he be looking for a female?”
“Female raduma find the males who have the best territories. Therefore, the males claim their territories and only bother to fight if another male comes too close. Skrev has three moons, which affect the mating and spawning of the raduma. Thus, males can have multiple females. The females will usually fight for the top position until they have their cubs.” The cat made a fake lunge, but Rosin didn’t flinch.
“I believe you, Logan. Please get us out of here.”
Logan reached out slowly and grabbed Vincent’s arm. “You can take care of this, right?” Logan asked Rosin.
“Leave me here and I will claw your eyes out, shove them down your throat, and then chew your wizard staff into splinters.”
Logan grabbed his arm as well and darkness surrounded them, closing Vincent off from his surroundings. When the darkness cleared, they were standing in front of the tower. The door opened as Logan approached it.
* * *
A year later, Vincent was preparing for bed when his familiar appeared. He grinned brightly at the white cat. “Hello, Star,” he said.
The friendly cat purred. “I have brought a letter from the dark wizard.”
Just as Logan had planned, the council welcomed Vincent into their ranks with the “decimation” of the hellhound. This turned out to be one of the best decisions Vincent ever made. In just a year, Vincent brought about many changes in the way the wizards ran things. He was making progress in building a real community of paranormals. Logan was also invaluable in this matter. Between his innovative ideas, extraordinary skills in magic, and diplomatic approach, Logan was able to use Vincent’s position to sign more treaties and create more alliances between wizards and the other paranormals than the council had in the last hundred years.
“You really should stop calling him that. You know his name is Logan. He tries to be friendly with you.”
“That’s why I brought you his message instead of shredding his nose along with it. That man will be the death of you.”
“He’s eccentric.” Vincent gently yanked the envelope out from under the cat. Star had a sweet nature and could never stay angry with him, but she hated his friend.
“You were a better man before you met him.”
Dear Vincent,
The situation has become more urgent. Apparently, if a key is unclaimed, it creates instability between the worlds. I suspect you have had a recent increase in paranormal disturbances in the human community. This is a serious matter of mortal consequence. You must decide now whether or not you will accept the key.
Remember; to gain the key, you must sacrifice what is most precious to you. If you choose not to follow this path, I will understand.
Your friend,
Logan Hunt
He set the letter down slowly. Star watched him with sad eyes. “What is most precious to you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
She shook her feline head. “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. No power is worth sacrificing something you love.”
“This isn’t about gaining power; it’s about keeping that power out of the wrong hands. You know how many deaths there have been lately. I don’t have a choice. I will contact Logan tomorrow and let him know. You shouldn’t have to do it.”
“Please. Use your visions. This is wrong.”
“I know.” He turned out the light.
* * *
The burning sensation was extraordinary, yet Vincent thought that he sort of deserved it. Fire burned in a circle around him. When it turned blue, the young wizard tore his eyes from the designed burned into his palm. The fire died then and left him in Logan’s office in the middle of the day.
The strength drained from him suddenly and Logan barely caught him before he hit the floor. “It’s okay. The sickness will fade shortly,” Logan said, setting Vincent down.
“What did you lose?” Vincent asked him, sweating and holding his wrist. The pain was severe enough that he wanted to just cut off the hand.
“Nothing. I have vowed to never fall in love, marry, or have children, so nothing can ever be so precious to me.” He held out his hand to help Vincent back up and Vincent took it without thinking.
The vision of a woman screaming flooded his mind. He watched the panic fill her eyes when she stopped screaming and, after a moment, she closed her eyes and prayed. She prayed for several minutes while crying, bleeding, and dying.
Then a baby cried out, she gasped with relief, and was gone.
Vincent yanked his hand back, but the damage was done. He knew that Logan would lose someone precious to him. Someone he hadn’t met yet. The curse of the keys was not limited to what was precious in the present; he could lose something he didn’t have yet.
“I don’t want to be alone my entire life.”
* * *
Vincent wasn’t alone for long. He tried to protect his heart for many years. His only real friends were Logan and Star. The tower was their secret and Vincent never once visited the tower or the world he had access to.
He did marry a woman, but he learned that she was too interested in the power that being married to a council member gave her. Although it was fun for a while, it didn’t last more than a couple of years. He chalked it up to youth and didn’t let it leave a bad taste in his mouth.
Then he got quite the shock one day when a young woman barged into his office and said that she was being stalked by a white cat that randomly appeared and disappeared. When it appeared in her shower, she said she had enough. Vincent could only stare in shock as the beautiful woman ranted for several minutes without stopping for a breath. She was really disturbed by the cat.
“Do I know you?” he was finally able to ask when she paused.
It turned out he did. Maria Williams, known as “Mary” to him, had been five when he first met her at Logan’s home. At twenty, the woman stopped men in their tracks. She had the soft complexion and innocent face that drove actresses to stardom and beyond throughout their entire lives. Iconic was the exact word Vincent used.
It took him five years to get her to marry him, but only because Star turned out to be the cat that had drove her to him in the first place. She was a hippy at heart, a diamond among glass in beauty, and had neither magic nor the desire for power. She seemed to enjoy listening to him talk about the problems he had on the council, and even went so far as to offer suggestions.
Logan also got his own wife, not to Vincent’s surprise. Recognizing her from his visions, he was unable to be happy for his friend and that drove a wedge between them. He wanted to tell Logan, but he didn’t want to ruin the few years they would have. He didn’t want Logan to kill himself trying to save someone who was fated to die. He didn’t want to deprive Logan of the sanity he needed to love the daughter that Emilia would have.
Unwilling to witness the demise of his own love, Vincent used the lessons he learned since becoming a member of the council, to effectively shut off his visions. He would regret that decision for the rest of his life.
On their wedding night, Maria was asleep in her new husband’s arms. Star appeared at the foot of the bed in obvious distress. “John is coming and he plans to take a position on the council.”
“There can only be thirteen members and every seat is full.”
The next morning, Luis Ster
ling, the most peaceful and clever man on the council, was dead. John arrived at the front door, all smiles, and settled himself right into the sudden vacancy. No one could say anything, whether by magic or just shock, Vincent never really knew. Within a few weeks, it was just a matter of fact that John was a council member.
But that wasn’t all John wanted. He set his sights on Maria right from the start. He blatantly ignored Vincent in the room as he flirted shamelessly. Maria, to Vincent’s horror, ate it up. Some part of him knew she was a victim of John’s terrible power, but his heart never got the message.
A furious hiss woke him from a light sleep in time to see Star attacking John. His younger brother had a knife, which he used to stab the cat trying to claw his eyes out. When Star fell lifeless to the ground, Vincent screamed her name, waking Maria. Vincent slammed into John before he knew what he was doing, wrestled the knife away, and aimed it as his brother’s heart.
A vision took him then of a little boy about three. The child was sitting in the back of an SUV at a gas station in the desert. When he tried to look up at Vincent, he had to shield his eyes. At that point, Vincent saw Maria asleep in the seat beside him.
“Juice,” he said.
“Not now,” Vincent answered.
The child’s bottom lip stuck out in a pout. There was something in the boy’s eyes that warned Vincent with every fiber in his being that this child had John’s power. The little boy could control minds.
The boy squirmed where he sat, not saying a word. His power was instinctual; if he demanded juice, no one could deny him. Instead, the child gave a lazy, wobbly nod and flopped over onto his stomach for a nap. He was self-aware enough at three to control his power. Vincent wanted to believe it was just luck, that the child would be as much of a nightmare as John. He wanted to hate the child.
He didn’t. The child was more Maria at heart than John.
He returned to reality in time to see John’s smirk. “Do it. Kill me; you’ll kill us both.”
As Maria was crying for him to stop, screaming that she loved John, Vincent studied the mark over his brother’s heart. Logan was right; it was blood magic. Their father had a curse, which he passed down to both of his sons. Despite that, he couldn’t kill John knowing he would be killing that child as well. It was Maria’s child.
Maria left him and married John. No one on the council said anything directly, though they had plenty to say behind their backs. The only thing that held him together was Logan. With his familiar dead and his wife in his brother’s arms, he no longer worried about doing any good on the council. To rub salt in his wound, the backlash of losing his familiar caused him to go blind in his left eye.
He decided then that it was him and Logan against the council and any other force that stood in their way.
* * *
It was a year later when he lost what little hope he had left. After returning from a stressful and unsuccessful attempt at making peace with some fae in the northwest United States, Vincent was feeling pretty useless, so the last person in the world that he wanted to see was his brother. Unfortunately, John barged into his room uninvited with a big grin that meant trouble for Vincent.
“How was your trip?” he asked, knowing full well how it went.
“Bad timing.”
“Is that so? Well, you know I can fix the problem in just a few minutes.” John’s voice was too innocent; he obviously wanted something from the fae tribe.
“A treaty created under mind control is not peace. Leave them alone.”
“If you insist. By the way, I’m going to destroy a vampire coven in Canada and the council will support me completely. You keep Logan Hunt out of it, or he will die with them. I know you’re friends with him, so it is in your best interest not to cross me on this.”
Vincent couldn’t really cross him even if he wanted to. “I’ll ask him to betray his own beliefs and let innocent vampires die.”
“There is no such thing as an innocent vampire. But don’t be depressed; I have a gift in return for your compliance.”
“I don’t want it.”
“I didn’t ask if you wanted it. You seem depressed lately, so I’m giving you what you want more than anything else in the world.”
“You’re going to kill yourself?”
John smirked. “Do you think Maria is happy? She’s not. She smiles because I tell her to. She sleeps with me because I tell her to. But I can hear her thoughts. When she’s in bed, where she belongs, she begs me like a bitch in heat. She wants me to be rough and hurt her, because she wants to be punished. The self-loathing grows every time she sees you. She spends all day imagining ways to kill herself.”
“Stop.”
“Never. I’ll ask her sometimes if she wants me to kill her. It makes her so happy. And then, when I tell her I never would… oh, Vincent, the agony she feels as her hope is crushed… it’s the most wonderful emotion. There is really nothing better. Unfortunately, she has come to expect that from me, so she no longer gets so excited. I even had one of the servants attempt to kill her, just to cheer her up. It worked, and she was bedridden with misery for three days when I saved her, but now I need something bigger. She wants you even more than she wants to escape me. That’s why I’m going to give her one last night with you.”
“To make her feel guiltier or to crush her hope?”
“Both. As well as to hurt you, of course. You’re going to have her for the night, and I’m not even going to force you. You’ll take her into your arms because you love her and you honestly think that one more moment with her, only to lose her all over again, is better than not having her at all. And while you do, I will be in my room laughing, because tomorrow, you’ll realize it wasn’t worth it.”
“Why?”
“Because I already broke her, and now I’m going to break you.”
Vincent did exactly what John had planned that night, but his spirit didn’t break, and he never regretted it. He knew then that Maria did love him, no matter what John did to her. He would never have her as his own again, but he would make sure she escaped. The plan was simple.
Unfortunately, John heard the plan in Vincent’s head before he could follow through. John sent her away to hide her and told Vincent he killed her because of Vincent’s plan. At first, Vincent believed his brother. Then he had a vision of Maria and her child, Devon.
When the council found out about her and Devon, they tried to assign Logan to kill the boy, but Logan was with Vincent one hundred percent. John was no longer interested in his wife, so the order didn’t faze him in the least. Vincent and Logan took Devon and Maria away. Rosin drove, since between the computers in the newer vehicles and the development in their magic, neither Vincent nor Logan could drive without risking the truck stalling out in the middle of the road.
On the drive, Vincent told his friend that he really didn’t know why he was so keen on saving his brother’s child, who had the same malevolent power. Logan just patted his back and smiled warmly at Devon. “You feel this way because that is not John’s child. He should have been yours and your heart feels this too. I will always think of him as yours, which makes him my nephew.”
He reached out to rub Devon’s cheek and the child promptly bit his finger, eliciting a shout of shock from Logan and laughter from Rosin. “You’re excited about being a father, aren’t you?” Vincent asked. “I thought you didn’t want children.”
“Ema did and she has a knack for getting her way. I never wanted them before, but now… This is my chance to be better than I am. Remington Hunt will have everything she needs, so Ema and I will never have to yell at her. She will have a sweet and calm nature, never argue with us, and find a–”
“Please stop,” Rosin said stoically. “I might die of laughter. She’ll be a stubborn, vengeful brat, just like her father. Keeping her out of trouble will be a full time job that no one is prepared to handle.”
Logan just laughed, not believing it at all.
The drive took sever
al days, which gave Vincent plenty of time to think. Logan frowned as they pulled up in front of the small house in Sedona, Arizona. “Joseph used to be a good friend, but he can be quite rude when he gets drunk.”
“Maria will kick him where it hurts if he treats her wrong. I want her to forget about me.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? I don’t want her to have any regrets. She hasn’t even agreed to come here. Make her forget about me and make her feel comfortable here.”
“I can give both Maria and Joseph the memories of a fairytale life… but you must understand that no one can live in a dream indefinitely.”
“At least give them a chance. She deserves a good life. She’s a strong, loving woman who should never have gotten involved with me. I’m cursed to be miserable because of who my father was.” He was interrupted as a tiny hand landed on his shoulder and he turned. Devon put his arms around Vincent in a hug. Vincent hugged him back. “At least he doesn’t have to be.”
“Everyone wakes from their dream eventually,” Logan muttered, facing the window.
Two weeks later, Emelia died giving birth to Remington. Logan lost part of the light in his eyes and when he did smile, it was fake. He tried to push Vincent away, but Vincent and Rosin were the only ones who understood him. It was all Logan could do to let Remy go to school, for he feared that she would be taken from him too. Over time, he learned to trust Rosin to protect her, and that changed their relationship drastically. Logan no longer played pranks on his familiar or taught his own classes at his schools.
* * *
On Vincent’s fiftieth birthday, Logan asked him to take care of a wizard who was trying to poison the minds of his students. The wizard hounded the schools, carefully studying the students without getting close enough to Logan to get caught. Logan himself was busy protecting his daughter, who seemed to attract every power-hungry psycho in the country. The matter was supposed to be simple and it only took him fifteen minutes to destroy the wizard.