Inescapable (Eternelles: The Beginning, Book 1)

by Natalie G. Owens

  The very first time it ever occurred, though, was the time she’d seen William, her beloved, sink to the darkest ocean depths, swallowed by the unforgiving Atlantic. A vision too ruthless to bear repeating, and in fact it hadn’t.

  This now, however, didn’t feel good.

  This felt like a slow drawing and quartering.

  The brush pressed into the palette, as if someone was guiding her hand, and indeed, her choice or intuition seemed to sit on the sidelines as she drew out her vision. She soon realized—it was either let go, or resist and feel the pain a hundredfold as it sliced through her poised muscles.

  The canvas a blob in her mind’s eye, she gave in to the whirlwind that raged inside her, for if she didn’t, she feared that torture would win and crush her.

  Time, action, sensations, thoughts—all whisked about in a separate dimension of sorts, splashing themselves like flying cake mix in a faulty food processor, away from her physical body. Who was she? The sum of all parts that now went in all directions, or a puppet on a string led by an invisible master?

  Blood, blood red everywhere. Fire. Terrified screams. Black is the night. Death everywhere. Murder….

  A distant groan.

  Then the world spun on its axis and she floated back, flailing, screaming….

  Nagging whines sounded at her ear and a panicked voice tore through the cloying haze.

  “Sera! Sera, mon trésor, wake up. Please, dear gods above, wake up!”

  Slowly, the veil got thinner and thinner until it cleared, revealing her mother’s beautiful, tear-streaked face. Her mother, who was on her knees by her side.

  “How—what are you…doing here, Mom?” she asked in a raspy voice that sounded as though she’d just awoken from a long, deep sleep. She licked her lips, bringing some moisture back to them.

  “You okay, darling?”

  She nodded, needing to hear an explanation.

  Her mother took a deep breath. “After our argument, I figured you’d be here. I heard Will barking and whining and found you on the floor. Sera, what on earth happened?”

  “I—I had a vision. But not a good one, Mom. More like the one I had after William…after William…” And she broke down in desperate tears.

  “Visions?” The one word rang with incredulity.

  Oh no, she’d let the cat out of the bag. A whimper escaped her, and that’s when Adri gathered her in her arms, shifted her onto her lap, and rocked her like a babe.

  “Shhh, mon petit coeur, tout ira bien. Everything will be fine. Shhh….”

  The soft rocking, the endearments called out in lilting French—they all broke the little composure she still struggled to cling to. Sera stopped fighting.

  “It was horrible! Please don’t leave me,” she begged. She was nothing but a lost child calling for Mama—a wandering soul seeking purchase.

  “Come now, I’ll stay with you as long as you like.”

  You know I’ll never leave you, Adri could have said, and at that moment, Sera couldn’t ask for more.

  “Cry. Let the tears flow. Je suis là, mon amour.”

  She gave it all she had, cried like she never had, not even when William died, not even when Rafe turned her world upside down.

  She hung on for dear life, inhaling her mother’s flowery perfume as though it were a balm to her soul. That waking dream had been too horrific for words, even though she couldn’t understand it. The images, crude and bloody, would scar a sensitive soul for life. How would she get them out of her head?

  Luckily, her second sight came with a self-cleaning mechanism. After she’d seen William as a corpse in her visions, the experience hadn’t transferred to sleepless nights and horrible nightmares. It had simply dissipated within her, like the fleeting shivers and goose bumps on a cool morning before the first cup of coffee kicked in, and the warmth of a wool sweater seeped through layers of skin.

  The incident with Rafe and now this—Second Sight. What the hell?

  Within twenty-four hours of a trauma, here was another curse she lived with presenting itself—a curse that didn’t bother her too often, but when it did, left her drained. Not as much as when she caught fire and needed sustenance to bring the life back, but her body gave in to a week-long lethargy unless her painting foiled the process. If she was able to channel the visions in her work…

  Her work! The painting…

  “Mom?” she murmured into Adri’s neck.

  Adri was caressing her curls and massaging her scalp now. It felt so, so good.

  “Oui, mon coeur. What is it?”

  Hating to stop the tender ministrations, Sera lifted her head and turned it toward the easel. “Look,” she said meekly, too weak to raise a hand and point a finger at it.

  Adri’s gaze followed hers and a gasp escaped her lips.

  “Dieu du ciel!”

  It was far different from anything she’d ever painted before. In fact, it seemed like an entirely different hand had created it.

  Adri held her tighter as they stared, transfixed. A frisson of foreboding slid down her spine, like a half-dozen ice cubes dropped with haste inside her stretchy shirt. From the way her mother stiffened, she’d felt it, too.

  Two figures waddled in a blood-red ocean that reached to waist level. In the distance, people fell from a precipice into the unknown and a fire tore through the land and the mirror surface of the water. A bloodied sword in the hands of one of the women separated the two females who advanced, center stage, their faces flat gold and waxy, as though in trance.

  Tears of blood fell from both their eyes, but from their detached expressions, it was as though they weren’t realizing the desperation and destruction around them.

  One had doll-blue irises, the other glowing crimson—shades that stood out from the rest.

  But the most terrifying part for Sera and Adri alike lay in the likenesses, because both of those faces that looked back at them from the square of canvas were their own.

  *

  Adri dislodged the soft, curvy body from her arms and stood. She took one step toward the easel, then stopped.

  “What in heaven’s name is this?”

  “I...I don’t know.”

  She whirled to face her daughter, who had a lot to explain. What was she doing painting such disturbing pictures and inserting their likeness in there? She’d gone ahead with the whole crazy hobby of painting when Sera took a course in Venice and claimed art was what she wanted to do. She’d humored the girl—after all, being able to paint counted for some finishing accomplishment, especially given how Sera could not hold a note to save her life or hit a piano key without turning anyone around her suicidal.

  But the girl did have outstanding talent for bringing a canvas to life. So she’d agreed to let Sera pursue pastoral landscapes and bucolic Impressionism that would literally look like rainbows of soft color. Later, she didn’t bat an eyelid when her daughter showed a growing interest in the evocative Surrealist style, back when the artistic movement was still in its infancy in popular culture.

  Not this kind of sickening renditions of loss and chaos that would make Renaissance painters look like amateurs at portraying suffering. The heavy brushstrokes also gave the work a rough and unsophisticated appearance that betrayed nothing of Sera’s usual style.

  Her jaw trembled when she opened her mouth. “How can you not know?”

  Sera lowered her eyes. That was when the answer not spoken flitted into her mind.

  Visions.

  Adri braced her shoulders. “So now you have Second Sight?”

  Her daughter didn’t look up, meaning she had something, or more, to hide.

  Anger hissed and rolled in an ebbing tide inside her. Before she could realize what she was doing, she moved to Sera’s side and clasped the girl’s upper arm. Bringing her to her feet like a limp rag doll, she then tugged the body with the reluctant legs to the canvas and shoved her in front of it.

  “I bet this isn’t the first time.”

  Sera stil
l refused to meet her gaze. She reached out and clasped the chin, forced the girl to turn and look up. In the tears that coursed down the alabaster cheeks, she found the confession.

  How could she have done this? How could she have kept it all a secret? Didn’t Sera know what could be at stake here? The very nature of her arrival into this world made her vulnerable, then look what Harcourt had done to her. But Second Sight? Only a select few could boast that talent, something they kept hidden as revealing that could make them prime targets for those bent on power.

  Like the Vampyre Federation, who’d licensed one of their overlords to attack Sera that very evening.

  As the realization and the horror slashed through her, Adri gasped. How could she? Sera had put her life, and that of everyone around her, in danger by keeping her in the dark. Unbidden, her hand rose and slapped the tear-stained cheek.

  Sera clasped a palm to her face, her big eyes wide with surprise and disbelief. Adri couldn’t believe what she’d done, either. Oh yes, she had swatted that behind more times than she could count when the girl was growing up, but she’d never hit her. Not out of any strong emotion, and Lord knew Sera had the power to bring up the biggest upheavals into her feelings.

  Today, Sera had gone too far. She’d just proved Adri couldn’t trust her. How did anyone live with that kind of disturbing certitude?

  “Why?” her daughter asked on a cracked whisper.

  And she had the guts to ask that? Adri shook her head and pressed her closed fists against her hips. “Do I really need to spell it out?”

  The chastising seemed to hit the young woman stronger than the slap. She flinched as shadows flitted through her eyes. “It’s because of the visions.”

  She nodded. “Were you ever planning to tell me?”

  Sera lowered her head and laid a supporting hand on the easel frame, as if too weak to stand on her own. Adri fought with herself to stand her ground and not rush to her aid.

  “Or would I have discovered about them once I figured out why the vampyres attempted to kidnap you last night?”

  The head with the flame-red hair shot up. “You think they know?”

  “Putain de merde, Séraphine! Of course, they know. Why else would they come get you? No one in the world at large knows where Second Sight possessors thrive, and you know why?” She paused to glare at her wayward child.

  Sera shuffled from one foot to the other, removing her hand from her source of support, and hugged herself, as if that would keep the reality at bay. “Because they’ve been shepherded away?”

  As simple as that? No way. “Because we here at Fleur de Lys know who they are, and have taken every pain to protect them from prying sup megalomaniacs.”

  She shook her head and turned to face a window. The sight of all that red on the canvas made her sick. They had more pressing matters to attend to now; the “vision” and whatever it conveyed would have to wait. Like the hundred other things happening right now and which no one understood, least of all, her. The not-knowing drove her crazy, put her on edge. An uneasy prickle had started to dance down her spine the minute she’d left the castle to come see Sera. Could that have been because her daughter was in the throes of a Sight occurrence back then?

  The fight suddenly died out of her as she faced the mire they were getting sucked in. “You should’ve told me.”

  Sera snapped from her subdued state and went into attack mode. “So now it’s all my fault, right? How like you to sling the blame onto everyone but yourself.”

  Bon sang, not another argument. She was tired of them. There were more important concerns vying for her attention right now. The first of them being to get Sera to safety.

  She nodded at the door. “Back to the castle. Now.”

  Sera crossed her arms again in front of her chest and lifted her chin. Color was returning to her face. “And if I refuse?”

  Adri narrowed her gaze. She didn’t have the patience for that. “Then I’ll break your kneecaps myself and drag you back if I have to.”

  Her daughter glared in mulish rebellion. She held the furious gaze. “Don’t push me, Sera. Not now. You know this place is not safe. Until we’ve worked in all the protection possible, you are not to set foot here again, you hear me?”

  “Of course, it’s always your word and what you want. Can’t you think of others for a change?”

  Sometimes, she wondered why she’d ever loved motherhood. Days like this were just not worth the pain.

  “Like you’ve been thinking of only yourself so far?”

  Blue-grey eyes flared with fire. “Fine,” Sera bit out.

  The girl brushed past her and grabbed her coat on the way to the door. With her a few steps ahead, Adri stepped out of the cottage and closed the door on the image of that unsettling painting. Will trotted between them, soft whines coming from deep within his throat as he repeatedly bumped his nose against Sera’s thigh.

  Will. She’d forgotten about him. Catching sight of Old Jim, the stooped, centuries-old fae who brought gardens to life like no magical creature ever could, she called out to him.

  “Can you take the dog for a few days—”

  “You’re even taking Will from me? How could you?”

  “The familiars are acting up at the castle. He wouldn’t be safe there.”

  “It’s all your fault,” Sera screamed as she threw herself onto the dog and buried her face in his neck.

  Adri sighed. “Yes, it’s always my fault, isn’t it?” she said on a defeated whisper.

  Sera murmured something in Will’s ear, then she stood and turned her back on them before stomping toward the castle. The dog whimpered, until Old Jim petted him on the head.

  The craggy face turned to her with a gentle smile. “Don’t let her get to you. Children always act up.”

  She gave him a weary smile. “Don’t I know that. Mark my words, she’s thinking of a way to make me pay as we speak.”

  “She’s a good girl, at heart.”

  Adri nodded. Too bad her daughter couldn’t be a good girl on the surface, too. At least with her. Perhaps it was her fault for not treating her daughter more as the adult that she was. Was she too hard on Sera? She was, after all, a grown woman who’d been through Hell and back in her lifetime.

  No. After what had happened, and Sera failing to confide in her, she had no alternative. Her mother’s heart brooked no argument.

  After rubbing Will’s head in goodbye, she trudged up the path toward the castle, Sera firmly in her sights. She had to make sure the girl was inside and in the lower level as soon as possible. After that, she had a lot of work to do to protect the latest secret about Séraphine Dionysios.

  The air positively crackled with electricity the closer she got to the castle. Restless energy surged into her muscles, hurting like the trickling flow of lactic acid build-up in the body after a frenetic workout.

  Anxiety materialized to wrap itself around her heart and squeeze. Something not right waited at the house. What could it be? There wasn’t a place on earth more protected than that residence.

  Sera nipped into the interior from an opened French window. Adri sighed. Of course her daughter would go in from the north library and sitting rooms. The corner farthest from their living quarters, from where she could hope to dodge her mother’s vigilance by getting lost in the maze of corridors.

  Not on my life, you don’t, you cunning rascal. She forged into the north wing, passing from one room to the other in their Versailles-style enfilade structure. Catching sight of the bright red hair as Sera took a turn left, she accelerated her step, only to stop dead in her tracks at the sight that greeted her.

  Energy bristled around her, the same electricity that had prickled her skin outside. No wonder, given who was here.

  “Grandpa!” Sera squealed and jumped to wrap her arms around the neck of the tall, huge man who had stood to greet her. The girl nearly disappeared into his barrel-chest once inside his embrace.

  As he released her, Sera turned fo
r a fraction of a second to throw Adri a sly look. Oh yes, her daughter would make her pay. Starting with the over-enthusiastic welcome to the man she’d never wanted to see again.

  Zeus. Mighty god of Olympus. The one who had thrown her out on her arse two thousand and eight hundred years earlier.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  Chapter Six

  He had the gall to chuckle. “I should’ve expected that.”

  Adri snorted. Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she cocked her right hip and narrowed her gaze onto him. “What are you doing here?”

  He wrapped an arm around Sera’s shoulders and pulled her to him. The girl all but burrowed into his side.

  “Can’t a man come see his family when he misses them?”

  “You are not a man.” And we stopped being family the day you repudiated me.

  “Gosh, Mom. Do you have to be such a bitch?”

  “Watch your tongue, young lady,” Zeus said softly.

  The girl had the decency to look chastised. No wonder, given how she idolized the creature she considered her grandfather, and hero-worshipped her uncle. Bloody damn, she shouldn’t think of him. If he popped in here, they’d be in even more of an awkward relationship mess.

  As if summoned by the devil himself, Ares materialized in the sitting room.

  Adri closed her eyes. Oh, great. Just what she didn’t need. These two men couldn’t be in the same room without the Apocalypse breaking out.

  She opened her eyes and turned toward her brother. “Now, what are you doing here?”

  He shrugged. The massive shoulders rolled under the thin silk of his shirt that lay opened to the middle of his smooth, muscled torso.

  Sera giggled as she released Zeus and went to embrace Ares. “Where are you coming from? The eighties?”

  “Ibiza.”

  “Eighties in Ibiza? Is that a new clubbing trend or something?”