Birth of Jaiden

by Malone Wright, Jennifer

  “You will stop this!” Corrine yelled at the top of her lungs.

  “No! I will not; you will be the one to stop it when you give me the child back! Now let me go!”

  Corrine was inhumanly strong but Levine managed to get both palms flat against Corrine’s chest. She pushed. Corrine’s body lit up the entire room as she flew backward.

  Levine smiled when Corrine landed unconscious about ten feet away from her. Sister, you will never win against me, she said to herself and couldn’t help but laugh out loud as she watched her own sister convulsing on the floor.

  Several of the council members advanced on her. Victoria was still crouched over Deanna and Danielle rushed to attend to Corrine.

  Jeremiah stepped forward and started a spell with words she couldn’t hear. But, he was interrupted when the door behind her burst open and Michael charged into the house with about ten of his slayers in tow.

  “Get him!” Alex yelled at them.

  “Noooo!” Levine screamed and energy radiated off of her as her anger grew more intense.

  Screaming filled the room as more sparks erupted from the loose wires and sockets everywhere in the house. All of the windows suddenly imploded. Shattered glass blew inward on a magical wind and everything running on electricity exploded.

  My god, this young man has more power than I expected, she thought as she bolted for the doorway and left most of the council cowering in the electric storm.

  Once outside, she almost stopped as the sunlight beat down on the mortal body she had possessed. It was hot! She wanted to look around and see what was around her in the daylight. When she saw the slayers emerging from their trucks, however, she continued to run.

  The slayers did not attack her. They don’t know who I am. She laughed out loud as she yanked open the driver’s door of one of the hummers and praised herself for noting that Damion had left the keys in the ignition when they had arrived.

  Danielle and Michael ran toward her, yelling at the slayers and pointing at her. The slayers behind Michael shot several rounds from some weird type of guns which spattered the hummer with holes. Victoria stood on the porch with Jeremiah with her hands lifted, gathering energy for a spell. And Alex, along with Chris, stood helplessly inside the doorway away from the sunlight.

  She turned the key and peeled out of the driveway just as Victoria launched her missile of magic and missed the hummer by mere inches. When she glanced back, she saw them rushing to their respective vehicles; she also saw a tiny movement from inside the rear of the hummer, under a bunch of blankets. Stewart’s body had just enough power left to throw a little zap back there, just to be safe.

  Then, she sped forward over the dirt road and drove straight over any humps and holes the road offered up. She knew they were right behind her and they would catch her if she didn’t do something quickly.

  Completely out of clever ideas, Levine turned sharply and plowed into the woods. She scanned the forest ahead of her and saw it was covered with tiny thin trees and stumps everywhere. There were broken branches and piles of brush scattered all over as well. So she slowly maneuvered over the trees and around the brush piles and stumps and hoped they had not seen the spot where she had turned.

  “Mmmm,” she heard a voice in the back.

  What! She slammed on the brakes and brought the hummer to a premature stop. Whoever was hidden back there smashed against the back of her seat and then rolled backward against the rear door of the hummer.

  Who the hell is that? Levine wondered as she opened her door. She stomped through the brush to the rear of the hummer, yanked open the door and snatched the blanket off of the stowaway.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the very one I was looking for. What luck!” Levine shrieked with joy.

  Isabella stared up at her with fear in her eyes. She was still holding Jaiden, who was sound asleep due to the sleeping spell, firmly against her. She trembled, and with a shaky voice asked Levine, “You’re not Stewart, are you?”

  Levine grabbed her by the hair and zapped her.

  “No, I’m not,” she said as Isabella’s body thumped down again.

  I wonder how much of that her body can take, Levine thought as she reached down, took the spellbound baby out of Isabella’s arms and carried her to the front seat.

  Damn it, I’m going to have to take both of them. She knew Isabella could take the baby without actually touching her so she either had to keep her imprisoned, or kill her.

  When I get home, I will drink you dry, she silently told Isabella as she drove the hummer as far into the woods as she could.

  30

  “Nothing,” Damion told Alex when the people who had searched for Levine showed up.

  “We need to find them,” Alex replied.

  “I know that but we don’t even know if she has Isabella and Jaiden.”

  Alex paced the glass laden floors. “There is no other explanation. Isabella would have shown up by now, or at least contacted us.”

  He knew that he owed Damion an apology; he had been right about Stewart not being himself.

  “Don’t even worry about it,” Damion told Alex.

  Alex sighed. It was useless to try to keep everyone out of his head.

  Corrine showed up in the doorway, holding her arm across her bandaged chest. Alex was totally impressed that someone could survive an electric shock like she had.

  “I need everyone to come and sit down in the living room, please,” she told them, and then turned away.

  Alex looked at Damion and they both shrugged before they followed her into the living room. Everyone, except the slayers, who were outside, had found a seat somewhere.

  Deanna lounged on the love seat with her feet up on the sides. She had bandages everywhere from the chandelier. Alex had personally watched Jeremiah remove several large shards of glass from Deanna’s upper body. She was pretty lucky to have so few injuries.

  When the windows had imploded, they had all gotten injured, but Deanna and Corrine were by far the worst off. The slayers were all kicking themselves for not having noticed what had happened but Damion and Corrine had assured them that it was ok.

  Corrine cleared her throat. “Ok. So by now you all must realize Stewart’s body has been taken over by Levine.” She hung her head. “What you don’t know is that Levine is my sister.”

  Alex gasped. Her sister.

  Corrine continued, “Many, many years ago, she was a good and powerful witch like me but then she was bitten by Malcolm and became one of our greatest enemies.”

  Alex listened closely.

  “Levine is extremely powerful and when she was bitten, it created a new kind of vampire. Even more powerful than any witch, more powerful than Malcolm and more powerful than maybe even she knows. She is one of the only beings I know of who is able to possess a human being, aside from spirits, that is.”

  Corrine and Levine were sisters. Alex couldn’t believe it.

  “I am afraid we need to be more concerned about Levine having Isabella and Jaiden than Malcolm; Malcolm is a fool and a control freak but Levine is pure evil. She will kill Isabella in an instant.”

  Alex spoke up. “What about Jaiden?”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about Jaiden; they need her,” she answered.

  “They need her? I thought they wanted to kill her,” he said.

  “Ok then, on to the next piece of this puzzle.” She went to the massive bookshelf which held huge, old, almost decaying books. “This,” she pulled a large book with a stone cover off the shelf, “is the lock.”

  “Excuse me.” Alex didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “How many times have you heard someone tell you that this child is the key? Well, she truly is the key. And this book,” she held it up, “is the lock.”

  “It couldn’t be,” Danielle breathed, bringing her hands to her mouth.

  Alex watched Damion creep toward the coffee table where Corrine set the book down. He reached out and moved his hands acr
oss the gray stone.

  He looked up at Corrine. “Liber Daemonorum?”

  Corrine nodded.

  Confused, Alex asked, “What does that mean?”

  “It’s Latin for ‘The Book of Demons’.”

  “Where did you get this?” Damion asked her.

  “Oh,” she waved her hand in the air and then cringed from the pain in her chest, “I’ve had it forever; the council members long before you gave it to me.”

  Alex and a few others gathered around the book. The cover bore a sunken hand print in the center and what looked to Alex like a tribal design covered the entire area around the hand.

  “What is this?” Alex asked.

  Corrine answered softly, “This book holds demons captive. Many centuries ago, when the worst of the Devil’s dark angels attacked, the elders of the very first great council fought them and they won. However, they could not destroy the demons; but, they did find a way to keep them confined for eternity.” She looked at Alex. “Or until someone lets them out.”

  Alex was confused. “How is this,” he motioned toward the book, “a piece of the puzzle?”

  “The legend says that only one hand shall fit; a child will be born who will possess the power to reveal the secrets that are hidden within the book. A child who will have to choose from the sides of good and evil, for she will be born more powerful than any creature that roams this earth. If she chooses evil, and follows the path that this book will take her,” Corrine paused and took a deep breath, “then she will have control of the devil’s army, the demons that have been kept captive for so long. They will be hers to rule.”

  Danielle turned to Alex. “Now do you understand why I told you she must grow up surrounded by love?”

  Astounded, Alex could not speak. He could feel the anger of his vampire within begin to flare. Who would create such an evil thing? Why would they make a way for the demons to get out? Why?

  Without a second thought, he grabbed the book and threw it into the fireplace.

  “What are you doing?” Danielle asked him. “It cannot be destroyed.”

  Alex ignored her. “Jeremiah, I want you to burn it.”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “It’s true, Alex, it can’t be destroyed.”

  “Burn it!” Alex screamed at him.

  Jeremiah went to the fireplace and, with his eyes wide with concentration, he lifted his shaky wrinkled hands. Each hand produced what looked like a string of fire, then the two strings joined together to create a half circle.

  He turned his hands palm out toward the fireplace and sent it straight at the book. Alex watched in awe as the flames he threw actually bounced off of the book and flew back at Jeremiah.

  Anticipating this, Jeremiah had formed a cup with both hands, held them out and let the flames absorb back into his palms. “See, something or someone has protected it.”

  “I don’t care!” Alex stormed forward, grabbed the poker beside the fireplace and slammed it into the book. Nothing happened; it only made him angrier and each strike of the poker only made it worse.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and whirled around to see Danielle beside him.

  “Alex, calm down,” she whispered to him.

  “No. No! I will not calm down.” He pushed her away, reared back and struck the book again. “There has to be a way to get rid of this thing.”

  “Alex, stop it.” She moved herself around till she stood in front of him. “Stop it,” she told him calmly.

  As angry as he was, he would never hit Danielle. With raging frustration, he threw the poker into the fireplace on top of the book.

  Danielle wrapped her arms around him. “All we can do is keep that book safe from others, find Jaiden and Isabella, and kill Malcolm and Levine.”

  He returned her embrace with urgency. Already, he thought. Already, they have been taken away.

  Alex released Danielle and threw himself into a chair. While Danielle had been embracing him, Chris had retrieved the book.

  “Well,” he said, “it looks like we have some time before they actually need this.” Alex watched Chris run his fingers over the hand print. “It looks like she will be grown when her hand fits this.”

  Victoria nodded. “Enough time for them to teach her their evil ways if we don’t get her back.”

  “What’s this?” Chris asked as he looked intensely at the hand print.

  Alex got up and went to look at it too. He saw that Chris was examining a slot in the center of the palm about an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide.

  Corrine shook her head. “We are not really sure; the legend doesn’t say, but after many, many years, we have come to the conclusion that you need to insert something in there, as well as fitting the hands to actually release the demons.”

  Cautiously, Alex opened the book. The pages were thick parchment, yellowed from age. The first page was blank but as he flipped through the rest of the pages, he discovered that each of them showed a picture of a demon, a description, and their name at the top. And the worst part was that the book had hundreds of pages.

  Lord help us, Alex thought.

  “What do you put in it?” Chris asked.

  “That is another thing that we aren’t sure of,” Corrine told him. “That is why it is still a puzzle. The only thing we know for sure is that we cannot let Malcolm or Levine get their hands on this book. Even more so, we can’t let them have Jaiden and the book together.”

  “But, they would still need whatever goes in this hole to complete it?” Alex asked.

  “That’s what we think,” Corrine replied.

  “How in the world would we find that? We don’t even know what it is,” Chris asked her.

  Corrine grazed her eyes over the entire group. “We think Malcolm has it.”

  Just great, Alex thought.

  Damion slammed his fist into the coffee table. “We need to move; we have to find them. We have three people to save now.”

  “Damion, we don’t know where they are,” Alex responded.

  Deanna cleared her throat. “Yes, we do.”

  Alex had never seen so many heads swivel at once. “What?”

  “I put a tracking spell on Jaiden.”

  Alex ran to her and, without regard to her injuries, yanked her up and hugged her. “You should have told us before.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. We need to know where they’re located so they need the time to get there.”

  “Deanna, you are the best.” He let her go roughly. “How do we find her?”

  “I will need maps, one of the world and one of the U.S. We will see if we need another one after that.”

  Alex glanced at Corrine as she rushed off to get the maps.

  When she returned with them, Alex moved the book so that Deanna could use the coffee table for a flat surface.

  She unfolded the map of the world and laid it out across the table. Then, she reached into her pocket, fumbled around for a second and withdrew what looked like a purple marble.

  The entire council formed a circle around Deanna so they could watch her perform her magic. She set the marble in the center of the map and held it steady until it stopped threatening to roll away.

  When she let go, she said softly, but firmly, “Find Jaiden.”

  The marble started rolling, at first hesitantly from side to side and then in a more distinct direction toward the United States, and stopped in the upper left hand corner of the nation.

  “Get me the other map, please.”

  Corrine gave her the other map. Deanna removed the marble and then unfolded the new map while Alex removed the world map.

  She laid out the new map and repeated the procedure. That time, the marble rolled right up into the corner of Idaho. “They’re here,” she whispered. “They have been living right on top of you all this time.”

  Corrine’s eyes were wide and, for the first time since Alex had known her, he saw fear in her eyes. “Did they know you were here?”

  “I don’
t know.”

  Deanna looked at her. “We are going to need a map of Idaho.”

  Corrine slowly left the room and soon returned with yet another map. Again, they all watched curiously as Deanna let the marble roll.

  “It’s a mountain.” She pointed to where the marble had stopped, close to the border of Canada.

  She looked up at Damion. “Stewart told us that it was caves. Could they be inside a mountain instead of underground?”

  “If all this is right, then, yeah,” he told her.

  “Damion, that hurts my feelings. Just trust me; I know what I’m doing. My spells always work.”

  Alex watched him rub the top of her head like a father would a child. “Let’s go get’em, then.”

  31

  Levine sat in her throne and filed her fingernails.

  After having been in a man’s body for so long, she felt like she needed to embrace her femininity.

  “How could you do that?” Malcolm screamed at her. “I sat here for days watching you in that chair looking like you were dead, only every so often you had a seizure to let me know you were still alive.”

  He ran up to her throne and pounded the arms of it with his fists. “Listen to me!”

  Bored with the whole thing, she looked up at him and threw her nail file in his face. “Shut up! I did this for you. I brought you two council members and the baby and all you can do is yell at me. Well, screw you, then.”

  “Levine, I was beside myself. I had no idea what was wrong with you, and then, you just show up here, only not as you. How am I supposed to act?”

  “Grateful!” she screamed at him and stormed out of the throne room with her clicking heels echoing in the dank caves.

  Levine slowly navigated the narrow passageways. She knew that Malcolm would get over his anger soon but nevertheless she didn’t want to be around him.

  How could we not have known that Corrine was right under our noses this whole time? she thought as she followed the stairway down to where they kept Stewart and Isabella. We could have done away with her a long time ago.