by Abbie Payne
purpose, but it was my dad’s.
Anything that was his was
automatically important to me.
“You can keep them if you want,” Uncle Sam told the two of us quickly, “I don’t need to know your dad is with me as much as you two are going to need to.”
Chapter Sixteen (Lily)
“Admit when youre wrong. Shut up when youre right.” – John GottmanEveryone has always asked why the Rizos never spoke out against my family and I
despite the “terrible” things we’ve done to them, but the answer was always quite disappointing in my eyes.
Daddy didn’t have those cameras installed in the interest of the security and well-being of the town. He installed them for his personal gain.
Our family has dirt on everyone and now because of those cameras we have proof. Kyan can even edit the videos to favor our side of the story– including the video one of our
cameras recorded whenWhat’s-hisface and Lazarus picked up that skunk whose name I never cared to
remember.
Besides the videos, the Rizos knew we had dirt on them that we weren’t afraid to have published in ever media source in the town at the drop of a hat if they didn’t keep their mouths shut.
Kyan didn’t break into their house just to break What’s-hisface’s wings. That old hag Hazel had potions in her lair that were vital to our empire – and our cause should she have chosen to turn us in.
The Watchers and Rizos might have once been business partners, but that was long behind us now.
Now the Watchers were into a different source of income: the black market.
Chapter Seventeen (Lincoln)
“Three things to keep private: yourlove life, your income, and yournext move.”–Unknown
The boys didn’t know it, but I was on the boat with them and Sam. I didn’t
allow anyone but Sam to see or hear me because I knew it would be better for the boys and Hazel if they lived with the idea they would see me only after their time was up, too.
Yes, technically I wasn’t dead, but when I decided to return to the Underworld I knew I wasn’t going to be able to return. I knew that if I let myself heal in the Middleworld I was always going to be at least mildly disabled and I couldn’t bear the idea of becoming a burden to my family.
So, I went to the Underworld and let them think I was dead so that I wouldn’t have to go through
explaining to Hazel and the boys that I would never physically be with them again. The only reason I still
communicate with Sam is the fact that he helps me keep an eye on the boys.
After the whole outing, Sam finally took my sons home and I quickly met with him in his office.
“I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time, Sammy.” I commented happily with the slightest smirk on my face.
Sam shrugged, “I’m just glad they’re starting to trust me and I’ve graduated from the title “Mr.
Caeruleus” to Sam.”
I smiled at his comment, but I knew we couldn’t carry on this conversation for all that long even though I wanted to. I didn’t come to praise him for doing so well tonight. I came to warn him of something I feared was
brewing under the surface.
A few hours before the trio went to dinner, I teleported to the Watcher family’s estate to see what they were up to and the results were much worse than I was expecting.
“Michael’s back, Sam, and he’s already gotten back with Gabriel. We cannot let them get near Hazel again. Michael already killed Sybil, I don’t want to know what he’ll do to Hazel when he realizes she hasn’t even given him a second thought,” I warned.
“That girl Bali is with her, Link. But if it’s that important to you I can send a few of my security guards to
Rockfell to look after her,” Sam offered. I shook my head, knowing that was a bad idea.
“Hazel’s tough,” I replied, trying to reassure myself as much as remind him of that obvious detail, “And we can’t send anyone to take care of her. We don’t want her to get suspicious.”
Sam furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to cultivate another plan. I interrupted his thinking as I continued on my tangent, “That’s not our only problem, Sammy. Michael and
Gabriel are getting back into selling Wicor potions. Gabriel has a whole basement full of them already and I think they’ve already sold more.”
Sam looked up at me in shock when he realized the significance of my second warning. The return of Wicor potions not only put Sam, Hazel, and I together, but also the boys.
Sam, Gabriel Watcher, Michael James, and I used to go to school together. Gabriel and Michael were the two richest kids at our boarding school and Sam and I were only going to the school so our parents could pretendwe didn’t exist.
Sam and I both had to get jobs at sixteen in order to pay for our own tuition, so when Gabriel and Michael came up to us with a proposition for a “unique business deal that would earn enough money for both of us to get through our junior and senior year” Sam and I immediately latched on.
Drugs were still a big problem despite law enforcement’s desperate attempts to cover up that fact and they had been come so normal for Sam and I we didn’t even think about it when we realized what it was they wanted to sell.
We “hired” Hazel (then Hazel Silverthorne) and her younger sister, Sybil, to create potions for us against their will. We gave them a room and food in exchange for their labor, but we assured them that if they tried to leave we would find them and kill them.
We were all in our late twenties (Gabriel and Michael ended up paying for our schooling) before we got any results and even then, Sam and I were oblivious to what Gabriel and Michael were doing.
We called our product the Wicor potion, but we still had no idea what it did.
We tested it on nuisance animals like rats for several months before it came out that Hazel was heavily pregnant with Michael’s son.
Upon hearing this news, Michael became very open about what he did to Hazel and Sybil every night despite their constant protests and described everything to do to every last
gruesome detail.
Sam and I wanted to turn him it, but Gabriel and Michael threatened us when they found out what we wanted to do. They didn’t allow Hazel to get rid of her child either.
Sam and I both knew they had an ulterior motive, but we also knew there was nothing we could do.
If we helped her, we would be dead and she would just become a baby machine until she died, too.
Nine months later, Hazel became a mother. Out of spite, she named her newborn son a name that was
common used to refer to the demon king that was vanquished decades ago.
She tried her hardest to protect him, but the day after she gave birth to him she was shoved back down into the basement with Sybil and Leviathan was left unattended for almost
eighteen hours every day of every week. Concerned for the safety of her newborn child, Hazel appointed the only two people that were available that she trusted to take care of him: Sam and I.
I feel in love with that baby from the very first time I held him in my arms. It made me feel like I had a purpose in life and for the first time he really opened mine and Sam’s eyes to how truly despicable Gabriel and Michael were. I vowed to protect this little boy to the best of my ability and I upheld that promise to the best of my ability.
Little did I know at the time, but Sam was even assigned to be
Leviathan’s guardian angel.
When Hazel succeeded in making the potion that would become the first Wicor potion, we had a chance to prove our loyalty to Levi to his mother.
Up until the point the Wicor potion was finally invented, we had only tested our potions on rats and other nuisance creatures. However, Gabriel was well over these futile tests and he wanted a new test subject that he believed would grant us better results and bring us closer to success. What did he want?
A baby. Gabriel knew he would neve
r get away with using a pure-blooded baby for these experiments. Gabriel was no stranger to unethical practices, but he did try his best to at least
acknowledge the strict guidelines that the New World Science Bureau tried to protect to the best of their ability.
He found a loophole. The NWSB never specified what kind of babies we couldn’t use and he knew the perfect way to work around that rule.
He came to us one day when Sam and I were sitting in the living room feeding Levi. He closed and locked the door behind him as his lips curled into a smirk. He moved as close to the two of us as he dared to come when we had the kid with us and reached out to touch his head.
“What’s the only thing in the world that nobody could give two angel feathers about?” He asked with a deep growl erupting from his throat.
The light of the overhead chandelier reflected off of his pearly white fangs as he grinned at us.
We didn’t have time to guess before he reached for the baby again. Sam and I both got to our feet within a heartbeat and Sam got in between Gabriel and I.
That was the first time I ever saw Sam reveal his wings for any reason other than to fly.
He stretched the downy white masses out and lifted his chin slightly to make himself look twice as big as he already was.
There was a hint of something menacing in Sam’s voice as he narrowed his eyes at Gabriel and hissed, “You won’t touch him as long as we’re here.”
Gabriel let the whole idea go for a little bit after that incident. Sybil loved her nephew more than anything else in the world (even chocolate, and that said a lot for her) and so when she found out what Gabriel wanted to do, she immediately volunteered herself for experimenting.
Sybil Silverthorne became the first person to be administered the Wicor potion, but she was also the first person to lose her life from it.
But what kills me the most is that her sacrifice was almost entirely in vain.
Gabriel and Michael insisted we kept going like nothing happened, but Hazel held them back from that plan.
Sybil was the only family Hazel had left– the rest of her family was either dead or had disowned the two sisters
– and so her death left her in shreds.
Gabriel kept a lot of secrets from Sam and I during our time as business partners, but the first secret we ever called him out on was when he didn’t tell us he had hired another witch to “get the blood circulating again”, to use his exact words.
This witch was hired to make one thing and one thing only: an
extremely complicated potion called the Forget-Me-Not-Not potion. This potion invaded the nervous system and completely destroyed whatever memory it was that it was created to destroy, but if it wasn’t used
responsibility it had dire
consequences– including but
certainly not limited to death.
Gabriel fully acknowledged this fact, but still gave it to Hazel and within a matter of forty-eight hours, Hazel was spending hours upon hours in the basement she previously kicked and screamed in order to never return to.
Hazel crafted more potions and when she refused to let Gabriel use her son the second time, he hired that same witch to create another potion: the Testabantur Inflictam potion. Hazel fell to her knees at the sight of Gabriel after that second potion and agreed to do anything that Gabriel desired. That included giving up Leviathan to tests.
The Wicor potions were created to work in two ways. If it was
consumed, it strengthened and sometimes even gave you new powers. If it was injected it weakened and sometimes even completely eroded your powers.
In Levi’s case, it was mixed into his milk formula. Levi ended up getting the first– and only– potion that was made to last forever even after one use. Gabriel found out about the permanent effects, but he wanted money and if someone was only buying it once it wasn’t making him money. So, he figured out a way to make the potion wear off over time while also increasing how addictive the potion could be.
Sam and I never saw our first
payment. We took Levi and Hazel and moved across the country from
Crystalhills to the small coastal town of Rockfell. We didn’t see Gabriel nor Michael for years after that, but we heard plenty about them. Within weeks, the two had become multimillionaires and within months, multibillionaires.
The Wicor potions became more addictive than any drugs humans ever knew about, but it killed a lot of people, too.
Eventually, the potions were outlawed, butthat didn’t stop people from selling them. Rehabilitation centers were made specifically for the potions, but that didn’t stop people from consuming them faster than they downed a glass of water. Everyone knew Gabriel and Michael were the creators of the potions, but that most definitely didn’t render any damage to their popularity. Only to Sam’s, Hazel’s, and mine.
Chapter Eighteen (Hazel)
“ You mustdo the thing you think you cannot do.”–Eleanor RooseveltIwasn’t necessarily happy
about having to leave Bali at home alone (especially when it was at night), but I didn’t really
have a choice. The witches of the
Council called for an emergency
mandatory meeting at the courthouse
where the trial (now called the
Hybrid’s Trial by the residents of Rockfell that were oddly excited for this whole ordeal to take place).
I was honestly expecting the worst when I got to the meeting and
unfortunately what I thought was going to happen became reality.
I walked into the courthouse to see the seven other witches standing in a circle whispering about something that I couldn’t quite catch. I wanted to assume that it was about me
considering as soon as they saw me open the door they all stopped talking, but I learned a thing or two about assuming things over the years…
Sarah, the witch that had been on the board almost as long as I had (since Taz was a baby), stood with them with an oddly hostile look in her eyes and her arms folded across her chest. She was normally the friendliest one of the group, but you definitely
wouldn’t know it if you looked at her now.
“Hazel, we’re glad you could make it on such short notice. We all know these past few weeks must have been hard on you.” Freida, another long- time member, mused as she moved to stand in front of me and placed her hands on my shoulders
empathetically.
I didn’t buy their behavior one bit. The Council members– even though I got along with all of them– were never known for caring others more than they cared about themselves.
Even so, I held onto that small sliver of hope I had that they truly felt sorry for me.
That glimmer of hope faded as soon as Sarah opened her mouth. “We’ve already voted. We’re suspending your membership with the Council. You’re going through so many hardships at the moment that we don’t feel that you are currently fit to lead of our group, nor do you currently possess the mindset required to guide our city to success,” she mused.
I knew what she really meant by that comment even if she wasn’t going to actually come out and say it: I was a liability and they didn’t feel like dealing with the controversy I brought to the table with my two sons.
“Either that, or we request that you relinquish your connection with Lazarus and Leviathan for now and forever.” Jennifer added calmly.
I stared at them for a moment before going to reply.
“Which do you choose, Hazel?” Sarah growled. She handed me the binder that I used during every meeting. It had every note and every piece of
information that was ever recorded about the Council. I reached out as if I was going to take the binder from her before quickly shoving it back into her chest as hard as I possibly could.
I started to turn to leave before turning back to look at the witches. “I choose my boys. I will never not choose my boys no matter what they did or didn’t do.”
Chapter Nineteen(Bali)
>
“You never know how strong you are until being strong isthe onlychoice you have.” –Unknown
There are things people don’t know about me. There are a lot of things
people don’t know about me.
And I prefer it stayed that way. Peo ple knew I didn’t talk much and that I liked being ignored and that was plenty for them to know, but I don’t know what people would do if I told them that wasn’t the truth.
I used to be outgoing.
I used to light up a room just by walking into it.
I used to love being the center of attention. But then my whole world as I knew it came crashing down and everything that I thought was real turned out to be fake.
I ran from that reality and lived on the streets for months before the Rizos found me.
I thought I was away from who I used to be, but this clearly wasn’t the case.
The star of my nightmares was back for a cast reunion and this time he wanted much more than recognition in the credits.
He wanted to rewrite the entire script.
Chapter Twenty (Bali)
“Do n’t believe everything you hear… real eyesrealize real lies.” –Tupac Shakur
Ipromised Hazel that while she was gone I wouldn’t leave the safety of the
basement, but little did she realize that this was the first time I was ever going to lie to her (and hopefully the last time).
The promise didn’t technically start out as a lie, but it quickly became one. At first, I was going to stay in the lair, but then I got to reading Hazel’s hundreds of books and I discovered something that I thought wouldn’t necessarily help me, but it would help the boys tremendously.
I knew there was no way the boys were going to win this case without something short of a miracle.
My discovery was a Veritas Potion, which I learned loosely translated to Truth Potion in Latin - a long dead language. The Veritas Potion made everyone that had the potion
administered to them see the cold, hard truth.
Just the premise of the potion was enough to make me want to craft it, but I knew Hazel would never let me use it if I told her about it.