by Bethany Knox
“I think we threw them off,” Dad said. “But they’re obviously in the area, they’ll find us here pretty soon.”
“How?” I asked him. “If we stay out of sight for a while they may think we’ve left.”
Megan smiled bitterly. “If only it was that simple it would be fine. But they will be here. They can smell us.”
Of course, I remembered the powerful sense of smell that both the Amstrydae and the Medusans possessed. I hadn’t noticed that I had acquired it yet, but maybe it would come to me as I grew older. I wasn’t too sure about that, what about bad cases of body odor? “So, what now?”
“We’ll have to move as quickly as possible,” Dad said. “We’ve always known that if they found us we’d have to leave.”
“So what are you saying, we have to go and live out in the boonies for the rest of our lives? I mean, my life.”
“Yes, it may well mean that. Or at least until they give it up and accept things as they are, which obviously they haven’t yet. I’m sorry, honey, but we have to keep you safe.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I left them and went up to my room. I set up my new laptop and found a good connection to a WiFi network. At last, I was back in touch with the world. I scanned Google for news of Andros, there was a lot of stuff to do with the earthquake but nothing new. Then I pulled up a map of Canada, it was depressing in its enormous emptiness. I decided to do my damndest to eventually find somewhere else to go and live, the middle of a Canadian forest didn’t seem like a picnic for a girl who had yet to experience her sixteenth birthday. Dinner was a quiet affair. We were now living the lives of hunted fugitives, always looking over our shoulders and for the next place to run and hide. At that moment I had a terrible thought, that instead of trying to irradiate them we should have nuked them. I mean, I just wanted them to leave me alone, that wasn’t much to ask, was it?
“Is there any word from Ethan?” I asked them.
There was a deathly silence at the table. I felt a dawning sense of dread. No!
“What, what is it? What’s happened?”
“We don’t know,” Ulysses said. “He went to visit his family, he was supposed to be back by this morning but we haven’t heard from him yet. I’m sure he’s ok.”
Bullshit! He didn’t realize that you don’t grow up to be a fifteen year old girl without acquiring a powerful bullshit detector. You didn’t need to be a vampire to have one of those, or an Amstrydae or whatever. Just a teenager that knew what crap the world could throw at you.
“Where could he be, what do you think has happened?”
“We don’t know, Claire,” Dad said. “There’s no reason to panic, he’ll probably be back before long.”
Bullshit number two. I snapped at them. “Look, with all that’s going on, you know he could be in trouble. We need to do something to find him.” Then it struck me, whatever had happened, wherever he was, he could always get in touch.
“Dreams,” I said to them.
They gave me that ‘have you lost your marbles?’ look.
“No, really, Ethan contacts me in my dreams. If I was asleep, he could get in touch with me if he wanted to.”
“But you’re not asleep,” Megan said practically.
“You need to help me get to sleep, and then I might get something from him. How do I get to sleep quickly? How do you do it, Megan, when you can’t sleep?”
“I have a couple of stiff whiskeys,” she smiled.
“Then that’s what I’ll do, give me a couple of drinks.”
“That’s illegal,” Dad said. I just smiled at him. Really! As if that was the only problem we faced right now.
I had my first drink, then a second, they were both pretty stiff ones. Yuck, did people actually pay money to drink this stuff? It hit me pretty hard and they had to help me up the stairs to my bed and they left me on my own. I got changed into my nightclothes and into bed, but sleep eluded me, I just felt dizzy. I saw the door open a crack, it was Megan.
“I thought to look and see if you’re ok.”
“I’m not, it hasn’t worked. I need another drink.”
“Are you sure?”
“Megan, bring it to me, this is an emergency.”
She brought me a glass almost full to the brim with whiskey. I downed it in one gulp and nearly choked. After a few minutes the room started to spin, then I was gone.
“Claire.”
I could see Ethan standing next to my bed.
“Ethan, where are you?”
“They took me, I’m being held on a boat here in New Orleans, it’s in the harbor on Lake Ponchartrain. I got back from my trip, got off the airplane and into a taxi. But it was their own taxi, a fake, they just fell on me and put me in handcuffs.”
“Are you ok, I mean, did they hurt you?”
“No, I’m good. But there were just too many of them to fight and this cabin I’m in is impossible to get out of from the inside, it’s like a strongroom.”
He described the vessel and the location and I made sure I had it memorized. “I’ll need to wake up now and go and tell the others, they’ll want to come and get you out.”
“Claire, no, just let’s spend a few minutes together, if that’s ok?”
He got into my bed. Like before, he was fully dressed, but like before, I could feel his body against mine, warm and reassuring, it was almost like he was naked. I started to feel embarrassed, then I remembered that he wasn’t actually there at all. But it was a strange feeling, a wonderful feeling. A feeling I wanted to have with me forever.
“Now I have to go,” he said after a few minutes. “Believe me, I don’t want to, but I must give you time to tell them where I am.”
“I don’t want you to go either.”
“We’ll be together soon, Claire. I know I’ll see you later, I’ll wake you now.”
He got out of my bed and walked towards the door, gradually his form started to fade and disappear. I felt a jolt and abruptly came awake. I put on my robe and hurried down the stairs.
“It worked, Ethan came to me.”
They looked up and I told them what he had told me.
“Can you describe the boat, Claire?” Ulysses asked.
“Well, I…” It occurred to me that I wanted to be with them when they went for him. If I told them about the boat, they would probably refuse to take me because of the risk.
“I’d recognize it if I saw it, I know I would, but I don’t know the name.”
They argued strongly with me, of course I knew they would, but I also knew they had no choice. In the end, we set out after dark for Lake Ponchartrain. First of all a decoy limousine arrived at the house and a party climbed in, including one of our people dressed to look exactly like me. It was one of the lighter moments that night. The only one who faintly resembled me, in build and looks, was a young man in his early twenties. His name was Jason. As I helped him into my clothes and coat, I knew that they were all smiling broadly when they thought he wasn’t looking. I passed him my purse, then said, “One second, there’s something you’re missing.”
“What’s that?”
I took back my purse, got out my lipstick and painted his lips a pleasant shade of pink. “There, that should do it, you look just like me.” I handed him back my purse. ‘His’ purse.
“Thanks a bunch,” he snarled.
“That’s no problem, Jason, you look very pretty,” I said sweetly.
He left with four of our people as escorts. The fun was over, now it was down to business. We left by the tunnel, walking through to the Pet Supplies shop and out into the street. A minivan was waiting there for us, we climbed in the back and the driver headed to the lake. It was a short journey and we drove in silence. The van stopped and we got out, the men were armed with a selection of crowbars and baseball bats. I could only pray that they wouldn’t be necessary, that this would be painless, especially for Ethan. The harbor was crammed with boats, we walked along and I soon picked out the boat that Ethan had described to me.
It was about forty feet long and appeared to be deserted, the men walked confidently down the gangplank and boarded the vessel and I followed. A door in the cabin opened and a Medusan walked out and spotted them. He opened his mouth to shout but Ulysses swung his bat once and the guy fell to the deck unconscious. Ulysses turned to me.
“Do you recall where Ethan is being held?”
“Yes, the cabin is right at the front of the boat, it’s a storage locker of some sort.”
“Right, let’s get him.”
It was almost too easy, another Medusan guard appeared and joined his friend, falling victim to Ulysses’ baseball bat. I felt like cheering, yes, sock it to these bastards. We went to the front of the boat and found the strong room as Ethan had described to me. There was no key necessary to open the door of Ethan’s prison, it was secured by heavy bolts on the outside. They simply slid back the bolts and opened the door and there he was, Ethan. His expression brightened as he saw us in the open doorway.
“You’ve come, thank God. I have a lot to tell you. The Medusans know where the house is in the French Quarter, they are on their way there now to mount an attack.”
“How many of them?” Ulysses asked.
“At least a hundred, too many for us.”
“Right, we’ll go back in the way we came out. I’ll warn them what to expect.”
Ethan pulled me into his arms and I enjoyed the warm security of being reunited with him. I saw Ulysses pull out his cell and speed dial the number.
“You need to prepare, they’re coming. What? Already? Ok, we’re on our way back.”
He looked at us. His face was grim. “They’re already there, the house is surrounded. They saw Jason dressed as you and our people were forced to make a run for it, they had barely left the house, they’ve gone back there now.”
We ran back to the minivan and the driver hurtled back into the city. He parked outside the Pet Supplies store and we hurried back through the tunnel and into the house. We went straight to the front and looked out of the window. A crowd of people were milling around in the street, about twenty stood directly in front of the building. Medusans. In front of them, staring directly at us was the loathsome figure of the Grand Master.
“I’m going out to see what they want,” Ulysses said.
“We know what they want, it’s Claire!” Dad told him angrily.
“Yes, but there has to be some way of delaying them, we need time to get our people away from here. I’ll give it a try.”
He went to the front door and out onto the top step. Dad joined him.
“Ethan, what’s to stop them taking Dad and Ulysses prisoner?” I asked him.
“We’ve got two of our people in the upstairs windows with rifles. They know that if they try anything we’ll shoot, although rifle bullets wouldn’t kill them. As long as they don’t try anything, we’ll hold our fire. Apart from that, we have, well, other powers, at least to slow them down.”
I remembered that moment when the strong wind had helped me escape from Father Ryan and Stella, a wind in the shape of Ethan. Yes, that was impressive.
We heard them talking loudly outside the front door.
“We are not leaving without her, you may as well hand her over now. We will kill the lot of you if you don’t give her to us. It is the only way, you fools, otherwise we will wipe you out, every last one of you and we’ll get her in the end.”
“Why would you want her?” Ulysses asked him. “Have you checked your sperm count lately, don’t you realize she’s no use to you, you are all sterile, you know you can’t breed children?”
I heard the Grand Master’s sneering voice. “Yes, that was a clever stunt, a lot of our people have a score to settle with the Amstrydae for that one. But what you do not understand is that many of us are immune to radiation, we are more powerful than you could imagine, my friend, much more powerful. Now hand her over and you will all live, otherwise we will take her by force and you will all end up with stakes through your hearts. I’ll give you twenty-four hours, and then we’ll take what we want by force.”
“Go to hell,” I heard Ulysses say. They came back in, I had seen better negotiating tactics.
“I’m sorry,” Dad said. “You heard him? It didn’t work.”
“Yes, it seems that we underestimated them,” Ethan replied. “What’s next?”
Ulysses joined us. “We need to leave here as soon as possible. Tomorrow would be best, at first light. We will travel light, we can employ people to dispose of the furnishings and house afterwards, I shouldn’t think we will be coming back.”
He looked at Dad. “Isn’t it time now for the ceremony, it might be our last chance for a long time?”
“Yes, I believe you are right. You mean tonight?”
Ulysses nodded.
“What ceremony are they talking about?” I asked Ethan, after they had left to begin arranging for our departure. They were keeping something from me, as usual, and I didn’t like it.
“It is for you, Claire. All of us Amstrydae go through it. It is a sort of induction that, well, makes you fully one of us.”
I felt a trembling in the pit of my stomach. Yes, I knew now that I was one of their people and yet I still wasn’t, not completely. I was still Claire Winter, small town schoolgirl, I had a home and a mom. Not many friends and my mom had become my enemy, it was true, but I could live with that. I always did. Somehow.
“What happens in this ceremony, is it anything nasty? I mean, will it hurt?”
“No,” he smiled. “Really, it’s nothing much at all, more symbolic than anything, but it is an important step to take. You must do it.”
“Very well, if you say I should, I will. I trust you, Ethan, with my life.”
“I won’t let you down, Claire.”
There was no evening meal, we waited until ten o’clock, which was the time they had fixed for this ceremony. It took place in the living room, all of the drapes were pulled across and the lights were out, but I could see fine, we all could see. I was told to sit in a chair at one end of the room and the others formed a kind of horseshoe-shaped half circle around me. Ulysses chanted an endless litany of strange phrases, I didn’t understand a word of it but I had been warned that he would be speaking in Ancient Greek. After about half an hour, he stopped speaking and picked up a goblet from the table. Dad came up to him and picked up a knife that lay on the table.
I held my breath, watching him wield the knife while Ulysses chanted more phrases. Then to my horror, Dad made a small cut in his hand and drops of blood fell into the goblet. The cut was tiny, but it was pretty gruesome to watch it happening. My horror increased when he went around each of the group in turn and made similar nicks in their hands and let a couple of drops of blood fall into the goblet, he finished up with his own blood. Then Ulysses brought the goblet to me.
“You must drink this if you are to be one with us.”
“I can’t,” I whispered in horrified fascination.
He said nothing, just stood there and waited.
There was silence in the room. They were all frozen, waiting. Waiting for me! Then a peculiar thing happened. I began to feel drawn to the blood in the goblet. It was drawing me towards it, as if it had a message for me. It lost its dreadful repulsion and to my surprise, I realized that I actually wanted it. Almost as if they were not a part of me, I saw my hands reach out and take the vessel. My hands brought it towards my mouth and try as I might I could not stop my mouth from opening. My hands brought the goblet up to my mouth and I tipped it. Was this me, was I really doing this? Surely not!
But I tipped the vessel a little more and the blood trickled into my mouth. At first, I recoiled, but then I had second thoughts. It tasted good, no, more than that, it was wonderful. It was, both warm and cool, refreshing and reassuring, like a meal I had been waiting for all of my life. They all looked at me, the atmosphere in the room had relaxed.
“Welcome, Claire,” Ulysses said. “Now you truly are one of us.”
>
I felt like one of them now, much closer to each, and every one of them. And now we had to get back to the fight. One of the guards came into the room.
“They are massing outside the house, the Medusans, even more of them. We think they are about to start breaking through the door.”
“They’ve obviously decided not to wait for twenty-four hours,” Dad said. “We must start preparing to leave, before it’s too late.”
We left the room and I went upstairs to pack my few things, most importantly my precious new laptop. I went down the stairs to hear the telephone ringing.
“Would you answer it?” Ulysses asked me.
I picked up the phone, “Winter residence,” I thought I sounded really classy.
“Is that Claire?”
I hesitated. It was a foreign accent,I had heard it before, but where? Then I remembered. It was Najat. She was the woman who had helped us in the tunnels on the island of Andros.
“Najat? Why have you phoned, are you ok?”
“There is talk amongst the men, they are beginning to tire of waiting to take you. Some of them want to take direct action in revenge for what your people did to them, some of them even want to steal a plane and use it to attack the house you are in, like a missile.”
Images of 911 leapt into the forefront of my mind. No, surely not.
“You mean they’re going to mount a suicide raid on this house, to fly an airplane into it?”
“Yes. Exactly!”
“Najat, I have to go and warn them, how long do we have?”
“I do not know. I think they are on their way as we speak. It may only be minutes.”
“Najat, thank you, I owe you everything. Take care with your people, I don’t want them to find out and hurt you.”
“They already have,” she said somberly.
I put down the phone and ran to warn the others. There was immediate uproar.