Inescapable (Eternelles: The Beginning, Book 1)

by Natalie G. Owens

  Relief crashed through her. “Help me get her to the car.”

  As the big Olympian god cradled her in his arms, Sera opened drowsy eyes and blinked.

  “I wanna go home,” she mumbled.

  Ares dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You will, Princess. Your mother is taking you home.”

  Chapter Four

  Adri sighed as she gazed at the shore of the small lake that stretched into a bay inside her private garden surrounding the Shadow Bridge castle. She hadn’t slept since they’d returned home in the early hours of the morning, and the fatigue was starting to take its toll on her.

  The soft lapping of the water against the grassy shore called out to her, her blood pulsing to the same rhythm as the waves. Pulling her in, ordering that she answer its call. Something she was loath to do, because it would mean letting her base nature win. Paying attention to the call of her heritage, the one she abhorred. Her father had pulled his power from water; she did, too. When the call of her maenad blood grew too weak to control her, the strength of any natural body of H2O won.

  A flurry of joyous giggles burst through the air, and she snapped her head toward the apple grove on the side of the lake. The kindergarten had called that morning, to ask if the children could come fly kites on the plain adjoining the orchard. How could she have refused them? The sound of that laughter would be too precious to squelch. Children, and their innocence, were her soft spots, and the cunning fae who taught the kids probably knew that. Adri smiled.

  Then her spirits crashed when she thought of her own child. The one she hadn’t recognized only a few hours earlier. The vampyre. Her worst fear had come true. Her immortal’s blood had not been enough to save the girl from that fate.

  What was she to do now?

  Fatigue and despair crashed over her, and before she could register what she was doing, she drew closer to the lake and crouched on the shore. The heels of her ankle boots sank into the silt. She paid that no mind. Instead, she reached out and dipped her fingers into the water.

  A surge of power coursed through her and expanded through every cell of her body. Behind her closed eyelids, she could visualize a burst of light. Sounds of revelry, like the string music from Dionysia festivals in Ancient Greece, flitted into her ear.

  Wait a minute. She’d never heard that before in such circumstances. Something was amiss.

  Adri pulled her hand back and snapped her eyes open. A thought ran through her mind. No, not possible. Her father couldn’t be close. But why else would the bond of their blood sing when she drew power like him?

  Heavy footfalls crunched the grass, and she snapped her head around to face the person who approached.

  He stopped in his tracks, usually-sleepy eyes growing wide. “Bloody hell, your eyes....”

  She blinked. Right—he’d never seen her right after she’d stocked up on power. No one had, except Zeus and Sera. Her irises would have turned into a solid, sparkling blue shade. Doll’s eyes, Sera had once said. Adri pulled the power bristling inside her into a ball that she then buried within the core muscles of her body. When she next glanced up, she knew her eyes would’ve returned to their usual blue-grey color. Deeper on the blue, but “normal,” nevertheless.

  She stood and dislodged her stiletto heels from the silt. “Craig. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

  Mortification ramped up inside her when she thought back to the call she’d placed a few hours earlier. What had gotten into her to ask one of the top agents of the New York FBI office for his help in unearthing information about Des Roxburgh? She’d been rash and impulsive, her younger, naïve roots coming through. Time, and experience, had taught her she better be patient and not give in to any rash impulse, but sometimes, her jump-the-gun nature won over. Like today.

  Yet, if Craig Tulane stood before her right now, that must mean he had information for her. “What have you found?”

  He shrugged. The massive shoulders courtesy of his latent were blood didn’t seem used to that movement, which made him appear awkward. She narrowed her eyes onto him, and picked up the rumbles of discomfiture that etched underneath the rough, stone-hewn features of his large face.

  What did he hide? She reached out and grasped his hand. Roiling emotions filled her. Doubt. Perplexity. A need to work out a complex puzzle. And on the edges of it all, the latent desire that simmered inside him. She released his fingers as if stung.

  Craig had never been forward with her. There had always been an aura of understanding and kinship about their acquaintance. He’d been born to a were mother and a human father. An aberration, like her, created from two species that should never have produced offspring. Supernatural races couldn’t procreate across themselves, but sometimes, with a human involved in the mix, such children happened. One in a billion, literally.

  She could understand him, sometimes so totally it scared her. From the first time they had met, he a wayward teen dropped at the orphanage in Shadow Bridge, that sizzle of longing for her had threaded through each of their contacts. He’d never acted on it, though, probably knowing he wouldn’t stand a chance. No man would, except the one who had kissed her that fateful night of the masquerade ball, and then disappeared.

  Like Des had disappeared?

  Adri shook her head. He’d ruined her, that mystery man. Spoiled any chance for her to find something with a man. Not that many of them were worth the fight—they all lacked the spark, the thing that made them rise above the slush of lust and power-driven natures. Craig had that spark, making him one of the good guys with whom she couldn’t toil. They wouldn’t accept her “love ’em and leave ’em” attitude. Back in Sweden a century earlier, even Ulrick hadn’t accepted that she’d leave. She’d been forced to wipe his mind, make him forget he’d even met her. Him, and everyone in his household. That had hurt, because she had loved him, as much as she could love someone else, at least.

  “We have to talk.”

  Craig’s words brought her back to the present, and she frowned at his ominous tone. “What’s wrong? What did you find?”

  His left eye closed slightly—a tic that always gave away that something bothered him. Bad.

  “We need more,” he paused, “privacy.”

  No one loomed inside the garden; he could talk here. But using that “code” implied something dire, with ramifications far beyond what she could’ve imagined. Her heart clenched, and she steeled her spine. The power inside her thrummed, giving her the countenance she needed to forge on. She nodded toward the mansion. “Let’s go in.”

  He nodded, too, and fell into step beside her. They walked to the French doors in silence. Another bad sign—Craig always loved to rile her about her sky-high heels. The banter flowed easily between them, usually. What could be so wrong that his sardonic wit would be switched off?

  And... Oh, no. Sera. Did all this have something to do with her daughter?

  Once inside the cool and dark interior of the castle, she started toward the wing where she and Sera lived, where the girl would be asleep. But to do so would imply having to pass through the corridors of the main part of the dwelling, the one that housed the Fleur de Lys Academy—to all exterior eyes, a finishing school for gifted teens, that, however, brought together the crème de la crème of all supernatural races in order to forge them into the future leaders for their respective race. Adri might love kids, but on most days, she was wary of the hormonal, teenage hooligans that trolled the academy’s corridors while trying to, unsuccessfully, master their kind’s specific powers.

  No, she’d check on Sera later. The girl had been knackered, and Ares had left her in the safety and comfort of her bed inside the castle. With runes at all corners, spells warding off any unwelcome intrusions, and even sigils on all windows to keep angels and demons at bay, Adri could be at peace. At least, as much as possible, given that she still had no clue what brewed around the vampyric assault on her daughter the night before.

  Now with Craig not talking—

  She ne
arly tripped as a Siamese cat wrapped itself around her legs. “Bloody damn!”

  The feline purred, and arched its back to rub its silky fur against her naked calf. Two more animals joined the pack, twirling their lithe bodies around her feet.

  Great, the familiars were on a high again. She didn’t abhor the cats but had no love lost for them, either. Something had to be up, however, because the animals always flocked to her when something brewed. The witches said it was the familiars’ way of providing comfort.

  That such independent and haughty creatures as Siamese cats felt they needed to offer comfort—what on earth could be so wrong?

  They got into the lift. One of the cats sank its claws into her Diane von Furstenberg silk wrap dress and climbed its way onto her shoulder. Why didn’t it simply continue up, to wrap itself like a turban around her head?

  Next to her, Craig stifled a laugh behind a cough. She glared, and he grew serious again.

  As soon as the doors slid open, she shot out and turned to him. They were in as private a place as someone could get on this planet. Even the Pentagon with its dozens of subterranean levels that, officially, “didn’t exist” had nothing against the underground floor at the Shadow Bridge castle. Spells, runes, witchcraft and wizardry, fae magic, sigils—all of these, and more, kept it impregnable and running with the latest technology. From here, the Fleur de Lys Society, that humans believed to be a champion of human empowerment and feminine liberation, ran with its true purpose: to seamlessly bridge the supernatural and human worlds, and keep homeostasis inside the sup world, between the different races. Last but not least, the society was responsible for the protection of the portal inside Shadow Bridge—the connection to a world of evil closed off a long time ago, in a time no one alive today, not even her, could remember.

  Adri set her hands on her hips. “Private enough for you? What is going on?”

  “Susan Gregory is dead.”

  She breathed out. Not something terrible about Des. Thank goodness.

  “I know.” The reply shot from her mouth before she could process it in her brain.

  Craig drew closer, and grabbed her arm. “How?”

  The cat on her shoulder hissed. She shrugged out of his grip. No way out of a confession now. If Craig knew about this murder, that might mean he had additional information he could impart. “I was there.”

  “But no witnesses mentioned—”

  “They don’t remember my presence.” That’s as far as she’d go.

  “Damn it, Adri. If you did that, it means something supernatural is at play here. How am I going to explain that to my boss?”

  Outstanding deductive powers. They’d done well when they’d signed him up to join the FBI. Nothing better than having one’s own eyes and ears in official circles.

  And explain to his boss? “Since when does the FBI investigate petty murder?”

  He sighed. “Murder that happened at the Met, not to mention the disappearance of The Arles Bronze. They brought in the art theft team on that one.”

  That Egyptian artifact? The bronze statue of the Egyptian goddess, Sekhmet, found in Arles, France in the nineteenth century, but its real provenance unknown—a woman’s body with a lioness’ head, sparkling rubies for eyes, and an amber, flame-shaped stone set into her chest.

  Adri remembered seeing it among the Met’s esteemed collection of ancient Egyptian art, and reading speculations that it may have been brought to Europe on the same ship occupied by Mary Magdalene, who left from Alexandria, Egypt for what is now France after the crucifixion of Jesus. Sekhmet’s trademark sun-like crown, denoting her heritage linking her with the sun god Ra, was a missing feature in this statue, replaced instead by thick, carved bronze waves and curls for hair. Another unusual detail—the smooth face and neck of the foot-long statue was untidily streaked by what looked like red paint, as though a child had slapped it on.

  “The Arles Bronze? That’s a gaudy piece for show.” Or not. Which spelt something really, really bad. “And how did the killer manage to kill Susan and make it all the way to the Sackler Wing without—”

  Of course! The mist. No one would see him if he traveled through the ceiling pipes to his intended target.

  “The Met is no small playground. This was well planned in advance….” she thought aloud.

  “We’re still determining whether the art piece was stolen before or after the murder. Susan could have caught the thief escaping with it and he killed the witness,” Craig offered, sounding quite unconvinced.

  “Why would the killer cross all the way to Gallery 522 with the object, which is where Susan was found, rather than make straight toward an exit?”

  And to carry the heavy piece in his hands—much heavier than the vials with Susan’s blood—he most likely had to be in his human form.

  “No,” Adri said. “He had to have killed her beforehand and taken advantage of the museum teeming with people to carry out his other crime. That’s if he was working alone….” She let the last words linger in the air.

  Craig looked at her suspiciously. “How do you—”

  “Well, look at that,” a soft voice crooned behind them. “If it isn’t the crazy cat lady.”

  Adri froze at Sera’s spiteful tone. She turned toward her daughter, to find her throwing daggers with her eyes. If looks could kill, she’d be six feet under right now.

  Seriously, what was her problem? Anger flared inside her, and she threw caution to the wind. “You’re growing catty, ma fille.”

  Sera shrugged. “Are you surprised?”

  Adri winced. No, she wasn’t. “Shouldn’t you be in your room, resting?”

  “Oh, I have had all the rest I needed. Thanks to you.”

  Did she imagine the stress on these last words? Bon sang, non! Sera remembered....

  “What did you expect me to do?” she asked on a whisper.

  Sera snorted. “Anything but that.”

  And let you die? How could a mother kill her child, even after a monster had emerged?

  “I have classes to teach.”

  She reached for the girl on the doorstep of the lift. “Over my dead body. You need to be kept safe, and Craig here will make sure you’re protected at all times.”

  “Huh? What?” the confused man asked.

  Sera glared at her. “Over my dead body!”

  *

  A silent war waged between the two of them.

  Perhaps it was a blessing that FBI Special Agent Craig Tulane insinuated himself in between as they exchanged a barrage of invisible arrows laced with venom.

  “Sera, please, something bad has happened. It isn’t just your ordeal. Susan Gregory has been murdered.”

  So her mother had given Craig the lowdown of what had happened. Shocked by this other news, she sheathed her inner anger and shifted her attention to the man. “Susan? You mean Mom’s friend at the Met?”

  Craig’s expression was grim and hard, his lips pursed in a thin line as he gave an abrupt nod. Behind him, her mother looked like a woman stepping up to the gallows—anxiety and uncertainty scrawled painfully on her pale face. She swallowed before saying, “They came for you around the same time that the beast killed Susan. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “Beast?” Both Craig and Sera said blankly.

  All eyes fixed on Adri.

  Sera stepped back from the elevator. “Are you going to tell me what this mess is all about? I knew Susan but you guys were definitely chummier.”

  She couldn’t help a hint of accusation in her tone, even though it was unfair to suggest her mother had anything to do with triggering what had happened.

  Adri frowned and bit her lip on what surely must have been a smart retort, but the prickly attitude didn’t mask the terror and worry in her eyes.

  She crossed her arms in self-defense, tired of the hostility. Feeling just a tad guilty, and also afraid. “I just—” She sighed. “Goodness, what happened to Susan, Mom?”

  “It was…a soul stealer.
He took her life, and her blood, too. He spirited some away in vials….”

  Craig muttered a foul curse. “So this means—”

  She looked from one to the other as one of the familiars wound itself around her legs and purred. Her body went hot one instant and then wracked with cold shivers. A sense of foreboding tip-toed up her spine, telling her—no, screaming at her—this was no coincidence. She raised her hand instinctively to her chest, searching for her pendant, but found nothing. Then she remembered—she’d taken it off earlier and placed it in its velvet cushion in the jewelry box on her dresser. Why would she need to wear it when staying here, in her safe haven? Safe—a relative term.

  “Please, I need to know. What are soul stealers?” She was afraid she already knew….

  Perhaps picking up on the helplessness in her voice, Adri rushed to her side and put an arm around her shoulder, drawing her into an embrace. Sera stiffened, but when she felt the quiet but desperate sobs that came from her mother, the ice around her heart melted. If the formidable Adrasteia Dionysios was reduced to tears, this was bad. Really bad.

  She returned the hug, her arms finding comfort around the slight frame, in the honeyed floral scent of the long, flowing dark hair. She thanked Nature for her height that allowed her to press her nose into the fragrant comfort of those soft tresses and even kiss them. Tears threatened to fall but she held back—the strain of doing so hard on her body. Her throat ached and her heart wanted to beat out of her chest. It had been a long time since they’d touched affectionately like this—so long she could barely remember. She allowed herself the luxury of enjoying it like she had as a little girl. Like she had before the world had come crushing over her.

  The cat slid to and fro between their legs in smooth figure-of-eight movements, its purrs intensified, while the other familiars pattered around them in some sort of protective circle. Craig stood impassive some distance away, seemingly contemplating the complicated rococo curves of a sconce on the wall. Meanwhile, Sera’s heart longed to reach out to her mother—yearned for her to express the raw emotions that rocked her.