“Tell me everything. Good, bad and even the supposition. I need to know every single detail the rest of you know. Then from there we can decide next steps.” I heard my pop take a deep breath then point to the chair before saying
“Sit down, this is going to take a while and you are not going to enjoy hearing most of it.” He waited for me to finally be seated and I watched as he ran his hand through his head then took another deep breath.
“We tried to tell you on the phone that the woman you were running around with wasn’t really your eternal heart. It was a Vaettir who stole her body” Before my pop could say another word I quickly interrupted and said
“What the hell is a Vaettir? Do you mean some kind of fairy? I thought they were make believe?” My pop shook his head and continued
“Vaettir are a species that we thought died out long ago. Pau could give you more details but what you need to really understand is the woman inside of Taini’s body is capable of large amounts of magic.”
He took a deep breath and I was just about to ask, if the Vaettir is in Taini body then where is Taini... when my pop held his hand up to me in a stop sign then he continued
“I need you to hold all your questions until I get out the basic details. So, anyhow Pau, Waylon and Gaho were able to locate Taini’s consciousness. However she is currently without a body and they just aren’t sure if they are going to find a way to resolve that. In fact, they believe, chances are, the best they can do is help her to find peace. I know that’s not something you wanted to hear, but it is what it is. You are going to have to go to Haiti and say goodbye to your eternal heart and help guide her out of this lifetime and into the next.”
Part of me knew that was what my pop was going to say. I suddenly remembered the conversation on the phone just before I was captured. He tried to tell me then too and that was over a month ago. He’d been trying to prepare me for her loss. I felt tears slip from my eyes and land unchecked against my shoulders. I’d never gotten a chance to know my eternal heart and now I never would. I opened my mouth to ask where in Haiti and to let my pop know that I would come back afterwards when he again put his hand up in an attempt to silence me. Then, he pulled a hanky from his pocket and handed it to me before he continued on a voice that sounded even more gloomy
“I am sorry for your loss Ulric but that’s not even the worse part. You see um…” He paused and cleared his throat and again fidgeted his hands in his lap before continuing.
“Not everything went according to the plan when we rescued you. There were some complications that were unforeseen… complications that are going to have a major effect on the rest of your life.” Pop took a real deep breath before pushing on with a voice that was laced with sorrow and pain.
“Seraphina agreed to be a decoy. We had planned on her using pheromones and getting the main bar in a fight. In her desire to help, she over did the pheromones.” I saw a tear slip out of my pop’s eye before he continued
“Oh hell, there’s just no easy way to say this.” Then to my surprise my pop abruptly shot from his chair and blurted the rest out.
“They hurt her Ulric. They hurt her in ways that will forever scar her. She’ll never be able to really get over what they did. Heck your mum and I aren’t sure if she’s ever going to be okay. The way we found her was bad. Even I’m having nightmares thinking about what they did to her. Docs haven’t given us much hope. We had to have her put into a home for her own safety. She’s with child Ulric and she tried to kill herself several times already. They think, the only way to save her is if you’re willing to comingle your essence with hers. Although the doctors said even that’s no guarantee.”
My animals started growling inside of me with pure fury at the thought of them using and abusing Seraphina. They still believed Seraphina belonged to them and was angry that I’d not been there to protect her. The moment my pop stopped speaking I knew I would need to try to save Seraphina no matter what it took. I looked at my pop and said
“Tell me where she is? I’m going to commingle my essence with hers and try to bring her back to us. She too is my eternal heart and deserves better than she’s gotten from me. I need to do everything I can to save her.”
I got the details from my pop and rushed over to the hospital. I was stopped by a doctor and was hustled into a private lounge. When I asked questions they said it was important that the doctor explain several things to me before I went in to see her. Finally after waiting almost a half hour a doctor came in and sat opposite of me. I could tell by his scent he was not only tribe, he too was a skinwalker. He looked at me with sorrow in his eyes and said
“How much do you know about her condition?”
I told him what my pop said and he nodded and made umhm sounds. When I finished he said in what I’d to guess was his best professional voice
“Well, your fiancé will be okay physically. Mentally however is a different story. As you may or may not be aware of, she lost her eye and her left leg, these body parts will not regenerate even for us skinwalkers. She will also need to live with the colostomy bag for the rest of her life. The scar damage to her vaginal canal and colon cannot be repaired. When the time comes we will take the baby via C-section.
I hate to be the one to tell you this but normal sexual relations will no longer be possible for your fiancé. The two of you will need to find creative ways to express your love for each other. Honestly, I have never seen anyone survive this kind of attack. Part of me wants’ to say that she was lucky but another part of me thinks it would have been a kinder softer way had she not survived. It's my guess that you’ve come here to commingle your essence with her so that she might fight for her life I want to urge you to reconsider.
Seraphina will struggle forever with what was done to her. She may fight to stay with you if you commingle your essence with her, but, she and her fox will never really be mentally fine. It would be better if you allow us to keep her restrained until she is ready to have the baby. Then we can release her and let nature take its course.”
The doctor waited for his statement to penetrate before he cleared his throat and continued
“Let me take you to her room. You will have plenty of privacy to do whatever it is you believe us best. No matter what or who comes out of the room you have the tribe behind you.”
Even after the doctor told me what to expect when they opened the door to room Seraphina’s room I was still shocked when I looked at her. The sight of her damaged body caused a ripple of pain to shoot through me hard enough to knock me to my knees. My beautiful Seraphina had shackles on both wrists and her one undamaged leg. The stump leg had a strap running across it that I could only hope was for medical reasons. I took in the sight of her empty eye socket, her cleanly shaved head and felt vomit in the back of my throat.
I continued to look at her and realised the eye she had left shone with a kind of insanity. Her lips were peeled and showed me an almost completely toothless mouth. I could also see the various tubes and needles hanging out of her arms, legs and one even coming from an incision in her stomach. The amount of pain and horror Seraphina must have endured floored me. I took a deep breath and moved closer to the bed.
She looked up at me and growled. I could see her body shaking and I know she was desperately trying to shift into her fox. Her body was swinging from side to side and the bed was bouncing from the force of her movement. She looked insane and dangerous. I knew it was nothing more than a defense mechanism. I leaned down so that my lips were touching her ear and whispered to her
“I love you Seraphina. I am so sorry this happened. This is my fault. We should have married in Vegas and avoided all of this. I will never let anyone or anything harm you again. You have my word as your eternal heart.”
Then I tore open my wrist and pushed my blood into her mouth. I could hear her heart beating erratically and her breathing was ragged and irregular. Once my blood filled her mouth and she was forced to swallow she immediately began to calm. Whil
e she was distracted I bit down on her shoulder and drank her blood while leaving my mark. The moment our blood commingled so did our essence. I could tell Seraphina felt complete and had become still and almost serene. Our bond slipped easily into place and I knew immediately that my animals and Seraphina had been right all along. Seraphina was my eternal heart.
Our emotions flared as we become one. I pulled away once I finished my mark and looked into her eyes. She appeared almost coherent for a moment before her eyes clouded over and closed. I could hear her heart beating steadily and assumed she had slipped into a deep sleep. I chalked it up to a drain of emotions from the past few days and from the commingling. I felt tears slide down my face as I removed the shackles from her wrists and ankles and prepared to take my eternal heart home.
XXXIII~~ Taini’s Perspective
I could hear Gaho on the phone with my eternal heart and I wished that I too could say something. I’m not sure what I would say I guess I would have to start with some kind of lame apology. It was after all it was one hundred percent my fault. I couldn’t hear Ulric’s voice through the phone but I could tell that the conversation wasn’t going as Gaho had hoped. She was in the process of explaining the different options. I watched as she walked farther away so that I couldn’t even hear her side of the conversation. I figured it was probably because she wanted to tell him the back-up plan.
They think I don’t know, but I’ve known about the backup plan that they were desperately trying to keep secret from me almost as long as they’ve been coming here. I’m not sure how much time had passed since the first time Pau had come back with Gaho firmly in tow but the two of them continued to come back day after day. I was able to communicate with Gaho and that made things so much easier. In some ways despite the fact that I was stuck in a marble statue the past few days were the best I’d in many years.
Being with Gaho and Pau reminded me of the years we spent together as a family after the war. I’d been so bitter and allowed good times with good family to pass me by without ever once just appreciating what I did have. I knew that Pau, Gaho and even Waylon were all working very hard at finding a solution to my problem. Each and every one of them had their own set of complications and issues that needed to be worked out. I knew the details of each and every one and thought that pigs would fly before any of their plans came to fruition.
The back-up plan was basically setting my heart free and allowing me to pass from this world to the next. The plan seemed to scare the bejesus out of Pau and Gaho but to some extent it seemed the most plausible and least complicated of all the plans. I knew Gaho and Pau would exhaust every possibility before agreeing to set me free. They would stop at nothing to chase down every possibility. They would turn over every rock and shake every tree before shifting to the back-up.
Pau’s plan focused around getting my body back and restoring me to my rightful place. He wanted to use the same Vaettir magic that stole my body in the first place. Making it happen however seemed like insurmountable odds. Too many things would need to fall into place. First, they would need to be able to capture and contain my body. That might sound easy to achieve however; there is a very clever and also very Vaettir in residence, which also seems to have the ability to perform big time magic that should be impossible.
Pau has applied pressure and called in favors to every one of his known allies. He has them on high alert to find and capture my body. He initially asked favors from some of his skinwalker friends as well then changed his mind since the skinwalkers tended to attack first and ask questions later. Despite hundreds of strong, smart people searching for her she continued to keep them all guessing at every turn. Each time someone thought they had her trapped she would pull a new rabbit from the hat. Truth be told I almost admired the fucking bitch. She proved to be more elusive than the infamous unicorns.
Not that her escaping capture is our biggest problem. Even if they grabbed her today we don’t have the actual spell. When she bolted with my body she also took her spell with her. All we have is a vague memory of the spell Pau claims he saw performed once while he was still in the claws of the Nazi’s. He honestly believes he could recreate it if given the chance. No one else however including me has his level of confidence. We are praying that Amada will have the spell in her possession when we catch her.
If she does then we have the biggest of all our problems. How we are going to get her to agree to vacate my body. The entire spell is predicated on her giving her permission for the spell. Amada can’t possibly be fooled. Pau’s answer of course is mind control and or torture. He thinks he is strong enough to make her do anything he wants. Failing that, he believes even a small amount of physical pain will make her cave. Waylon and Gaho aren’t nearly as confident.
They think the Vaettir will be resistant to his mind control and strong enough to push through any pain we’d be willing to commit. She’s too smart not to realize the torture would be limited to things that wouldn’t create permanent damage. She has my body and will know that I want it back in perfect condition therefore has the advantage. I disagree and pointed out our best chance of getting her agreement was if we could offer her a suitable alternative. Perhaps if we were able to fool another chupacabra into vacating his or her own body Amada might choose theirs instead. That however created its’ very own list of issues that we would need to overcome.
Issue one, who would be willing to trick a fellow chupacabra out of their body? None of the three people currently in the crappy burned down warehouse with me. I would, but only Gaho can see or hear me. Issue two, even if we could find a chupacabra willing to trick his fellow chupacabra out of a body which chupacabra would we trick? Issue three, let’s say we all lose our conscience and manage to steal a suitable body for the Vaettir what’s to stop us from cutting off its head as soon as we finish the spell? Nothing and that’s what the darn Vaettir is going to think. Which brings us back to the insurmountable problem of getting her agreement?
Bottom line, I agree with Gaho and Waylon that Pau’s ideas of getting Amada to agree are slated for failure and no one is even willing to try my idea. Not that I think any of their plans or even mine will really work. Gaho’s is with Pau right up to getting Amada to agree. She has her own ideas of how to get her out of my body. If she can actually find the spell she needs I think her plan has a little more merit than Pau’s.
Basically, Gaho’s idea picks up once we have Amada trapped. From there Gaho recommends we utilize a shaman skinwalker spell that would trap Amada’s consciousness. The major issue is Waylon can’t get access to the details of the spell. According to Gaho, before the war, she could recall a female in the camp that performed the spell. Gaho explained it as something similar to the genie in the bottle concept. It basically forces a person’s essence to attach to an inanimate object, then when you destroy the object the person essence dies with it. In this case, leaving a perfectly healthy body behind for me to re-inhabit. That however is where the problem comes in. No one has any idea how to get me back in there without the Vaettir spell.
Waylon however has a completely different take. He thinks we need to bargain with the Vaettir and come to different terms. He suggests we allow her to keep my body and promise to never pursue or try to kill her in exchange for a copy of the spell. He believes if we have the spell he can replicate it and place me in a new human body. Basically they would find someone that just died and whose essence has already been released, then through magic and medicine they would revive it so I could have the body.
Waylon believes his approach is the best possible solutions. He has even listed out multiple reasons why it has more value than recovering my own body. He cites the skinwalkers’ reaction to hunting me even as a favor to Pau as the case in point. Even when they know that I am sorry for my past actions and intend to make up for my past they still tried to kill first. The skinwalkers will never believe my intentions are anything but adversarial. The years my body have left are marked. I have caused too many problem
s for the skinwalker tribes to forgive and forget. He believes a new body could be a new start for me and my eternal heart Ulric.
I think he just might be right but I don’t want to die. Any human will only have eighty years at best. Even with Ulric feeding me his nagual blood I will eventually grow old and die. No matter how long I have it will still feel too short. When I press Waylon about the human body he always answers in a voice that clearly has hidden sorrow laced deeply within it
“It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Trust me Taini; you will want to know Ulric’s love even if it is only for a few years.”
I think to some degree Waylon might just be right. As much as I would love to have forever I think my choices are probably just a few years with Ulric or no years. I looked over at Gaho and was surprised to see her sobbing. Her eye makeup made large black smudges and I could tell that she was in high distress. I watched as Waylon and Pau ran to her side. I watched them all begin conversing adamantly before I watched Waylon begin to cry as well.
I couldn’t hear anything they were saying and was starting to panic on what they could have learned. I knew it had to be about me since they kept glancing in the direction of the statue. Finally after what felt like hours they slowly started making their way back towards me. The moment I knew Gaho could hear me I immediately demanded
“What is it? What happened? Did she manage to get my body killed?
I watched as Gaho began to cry in earnest all over again before finally saying in so quietly I could only pray I misheard
“He’s already commingled his essence with his skinwalker fox Seraphina.” Her sobbing got louder and between large breaths she continued her voice filled with sorrow and regret
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