Her dad swung around to look at her in disapproval. Even in the once again dim light of the living room, now the door to the hall had closed, she could see his eyebrow raise. Aero held her breath but let it out once her dad’s stern but expressionless face showed he wasn’t going to stop her voicing her concerns.
“It’s no use us all pretending everything’s okay. Something must have happened to them. They should have been back hours ago,” Aero said.
“Perhaps they’ve just got delayed. You know what your mum’s like,” Lilly offered up optimistically.
“So, you don’t think she’s in trouble then?” Aero asked with a sharp tone to her voice. Then remembering none of them had her magical sense said, “I can feel it, you know. It just feels wrong. It’s like Andrew all over again.”
Aero noticed how Fred and Lilly looked at each other, their looks lingering on each other far longer than just a cursory and innocent glance. It seemed silly to be jealous of their closeness at a time like this, but Aero couldn’t help it. Seeing them have an almost secret language gave her a feeling of exclusion all over again. They were all silent.
Aero felt a mixture of emotions running through her head. Fear held her back from telling them how it felt to be so worried. How could she let them know the terrifying thoughts of being killed and letting everyone down which plagued her thoughts? There was no desire to offer up her meagre talents to go chasing after her family, but her heart told her sitting around just waiting for the terrible news to arrive wasn’t an option either.
“So, what do you have in mind?” her dad asked. “I hope you’re not thinking of chasing after them, Aero. If anyone is going out there to find them, then it will be me. I’m not losing you as well.”
Aero gasped. Her dad, not unlike Fred, was always the one bringing fun to their family. His lightheartedness was one of his finest qualities. Yet here he was, measuring each word out upon his tongue. Cautious with his movements, nervous of her reaction. She bit her teeth together attempting to hide the despair. He thought of them as already lost. Already dead.
There had never been competitiveness between them. Yet, if he thought of them that way, if he had given up hope already, then perhaps she would have to be the one to fight after all. Even if it meant fighting him too.
“I don’t have any plan, Dad. I just know this isn’t right. Us sitting here, when they’re out there. We all know they aren’t simply late. The Shadow Creatures have been plucking us off one by one.”
Her dad moved away, heading for the door to escape the tension. Aero thought him as brave as anyone, braver than them all put together, but now there were scores of secrets between them. Too much doubt and fear and private shame on both their parts. If Aero were the sort of girl who thought crying would help, she would have let out Niagara Falls. Instead, she pushed down her emotions and swallowed hard.
As soon as the door closed there was just the three of them sitting in uncomfortable silence together. Aero realised she was the third wheel.
Like always, though, Lilly surprised her. She looked up and said, “Seems it’s a good job we came over when we did, hey, Fred?”
“I should do this by myself. I don’t want to put anyone else in danger.” Aero’s face was resolute but there was no way to hide her fear.
“There’s plenty of cookies in the tin, you know. More than enough for all of us. You’re not alone, Aero,” Lilly said.
“Thank you. But Mum left me in charge and with all this cooking and washing to do, I think I’d better stay here for now. I’ll catch an earful if it isn’t done. Oh, and I’d better make sure Aunt Louise’s herbs are tended to as well, just in case they need them when they get back.”
Aero decided the small lie to her friends was justifiable. Her mum had asked her to do the cooking and the washing, but those chores were done hours ago, used to while away the long stretch of the anxious wait. As for the herbs, there was a chance her loved ones would need them, but if they did, she intended to give it to them in person.
“I’ll be certain to make sure they get a cookie, though, Lilly. The second they’re back, I’ll let you know, and if they’re not back by tomorrow then we’ll think again. Okay?”
Her friends regarded her with mistrust, but from their expressions her excuses had left them no wiggle room. Almost as an afterthought, Aero added, “I’m glad you’ve got Fred to look after you in the meantime. I wouldn’t want you to be alone.”
That night, Aero dreamt of her mum and aunt. Through the flicker of the purple mist of her dream, she saw again the Shadow Realm. Enchanted with the wonder of it, time froze and put her into a trance-like state, but her lips were smiling, and her heart felt full of joy. In the vision, she felt jubilant too and pictured herself as a great bird swooping and flying over her grandma’s cottage.
Suddenly her wings began to grow stiff, weighed down with large balls of ice built up on them. On the horizon, there were black clouds ahead. Tumbling, falling, then desperately flapping harder, she pictured transforming before hitting the ground. Instead, its approach accelerated. Just before the final thump on the solid floor and the finality a knock like that would bring, Aero looked up and saw an immense castle.
There was a faint ball of white light glowing ahead of her. It was coming from one of the windows, which she realised was glassless but too small and high for someone to escape from. Yet it was impossible for her eyes to see something so clearly from such a great distance.
The great turrets of the towers reached upwards, searching for the silver sky. The longer she observed them, the more they crumbled around her. Aero thought there were almost sounds of voices but calmed herself. It must be sounds on the wind, she thought. Moaning and cold. The noise nothing more than the eerie gale gusting around her.
Then she knew. In an instant, recognition flashed through her. The voices were those of her mother and aunt. The unnerving whispers turned into a vast crowd of clamouring and screeching, crying out, Help us, Aero. Only you can help us. With a start, she awoke.
What had occurred in the dream stayed in her mind long afterwards. Unlike a normal dream, whose edges fray and memories fragment into pieces you can no longer recall, the dream had been a vision, prophetic, urging her into action. Leaving her with a feeling of fear as fresh and as fearsome as anything a person had ever felt.
Chapter Six
Megan
Not yet completely convinced her nightmare had passed, Megan wiped the mascara from underneath her eyes with a tissue from the bedside table. With a half glance in the mirror to check if it was gone, she managed to control her breathing this time. On other occasions when the dream of her parents had come, she had awoken to find her bedroom in carnage and been on the verge of a panic attack. Age had at least brought with it the ability to steady herself.
Through trial and error, surrendering to the moment and breathing through it had proved a far more effective tool than fighting against it. This private pain was a part of her makeup, it drove everything in her life, and by now, she knew herself well enough.
Feeling more confident, she chanced a longer look at her reflection. When the sunlight from her bedroom window hit her face, it lit up her large dark eyes in shades of auburn, and they burned with a flickering flame. But the dusky circles beneath them betrayed her lack of sleep. For a second, her stare became vacant, almost looking through the glass. Her breath hitched once more as a lost part of herself tried to resurface. As always, it was hidden. Something far beyond and unimaginable.
Megan had very few scraps of memories of her time as a child. Amongst the treasures was a photograph; Mum, Dad and her smiling. Megan didn’t remember the place it was taken or had since forgotten it. She knew nothing of what had put the smiles on the faces of her parents or her, but the photograph had told her something. Her eyes were the same as her mother’s.
The first time the nightmare had hit her, it had not been so easy to squash, to waken and be confident in the world around her. It occurred a little after her ninth bir
thday. Paralysed but awake, the bright scolding light of the now routine visions had blinded her back then. With her body demanding she gripped the sheets in fear, pearly beads of sweat breaking out on her skin. Get up, her body had screamed with a silent voice.
Staring up at the ceiling from her bed, the murky features of her bedroom had come into focus. The crystal drop shade on her lights, the walls which needed a fresh coat of paint, all were familiar. But her limbs had responded with no comprehension of her demands to get up. Her body was frozen stiff, with the light coming ever closer. Time suspended itself, endless and unbearable. Until eventually the scream which had been trapped inside her throat was released, and the nightmare was over.
The dreams were an understandable by-product of her having suffered unbearable trauma. Understandable did not make it more manageable, but Megan had learnt life was hard. Her faith in the goodness of the world around her had been destroyed. As a witness to her parent’s death, she’d been given counselling and years of therapy, but none of it counted.
No matter how hard she pushed for the full memory of that day, it eluded her. There was only ever the recollection of the blinding white light, giving rise to a yearning for understanding in her which never came.
None of it helped in a way that was wanted or needed. There could never be peace. Where in the dream she thought she could remember the sound of her parents’ voices, when she awoke they were wrenched from her, leaving her to feel the raw pain of their loss as acutely and vividly as the first time it had happened.
It was as if a shadow came over her mind whenever she thought of what had happened to them. Or even her parents at all. There had never been a recollection of their faces or their voices. When they died, they ceased to exist. Since then life had been darker and there was no real understanding of who she was or what it meant to be loved.
Being an orphan left you alone in the world, but she’d always had a sense that the agony she suffered from her parents’ death ran deeper in her than others who experienced such loss. It was the type of pain which left an unfillable hole in her heart.
Since that moment, there was a difference in her. She stuck out like a sore thumb, or rather a magical detector. Whatever had happened to her and her parents that day had made her aware of the existence of magic. Whilst a curtain existed in her mind about the events, pulling shut on any type of resolution for her, a veil had lifted on the realities of this world. So her pain turned into a weapon, hardening her against the roughness of the world around, protecting her against those who might come too close, and seeking out magic, with one sole aim.
As with the nightmares, the thing with her ears started soon afterwards. At first, her foster parents thought it safe to assume it was harmless, a virus or some other childhood thing. They were experienced enough to know kids got another one every other week.
She’d tried to tell them it wasn’t, but how does a nine-year-old describe something so unexplainable? There was no illness which could cause ringing in her ears, and then leave her in peace when she was alone.
They didn’t listen. Grown-ups never listened to her pleas. Like most things to do with childhood, life was primarily about the optics of happiness. The reality was no one wanted to have to deal with things outside of the normal.
Countless visits to the doctors later gave her a diagnosis of tinnitus. It was laughable now. The noises in her ears had always been so much more than just bothersome. The annoying ringing wasn’t even so much the issue.
It took her a while to realise what it really signified. At first, she’d just accepted it; it became the new normal, like being an orphan. She figured it out with the copious time spent alone in the playground, the only place she found peace. Withdrawing from others became the way for her to find some relief from the miserable existence of life with her gift. And so, isolation too became her new normal.
When Ursule of the Shadow Creatures had sought her out, she didn’t know how they had come to know of her or why he had come. Even without her sense it would have been easy to recognise his power, and so this meeting was navigated with the caution it required. But her care for this creature only extended as far as it did for any human.
After the conversation with him, though, everything changed. Megan understood why he had sought her out. Her interrogation of him involved a battery of questions and for the first time since the death of her parents, someone had the answers she so craved.
When the pieces began to fall into place, it wasn’t like the satisfaction of placing the final piece and seeing the whole picture. There was no sense of pleasure for her in hearing the truth.
Instead, it felt like drops of water tumbling one after the other, turning into a waterfall. It kept on pouring until there was nothing left inside her. So many things made sense but many more didn’t.
From that day forward her sense of self would be readjusted. It wouldn’t be something she could just do in the simple space of a moment. It would take her a lifetime to fully come to terms with it.
There was something to fill the hole in her heart with, though. Revenge. She’d accepted what Ursule told her because it felt like the truth. Even her dreams had changed since his revelation. Now the vivid night of her parents’ death played as if it were a movie. Raw and fresh. At last the identity of the culprit had been revealed to her.
Whilst it wasn’t possible to get her claws into the murderer, the next best thing was possible. This gave her life a renewed purpose. Megan would make them all pay.
The buzzing of her phone momentarily startled her, and the fear of the nightmare tried to push its way through to the surface once again. But with a slow breath of relief, she relaxed, knowing who it was on the phone. Jason. He was like a brother, loyal to a fault. Faithful in a way life had not been to her.
Megan picked up the receiver. “Jason, excellent. I’m glad it’s you. How are you dealing with things? Everything ok?” She would have screamed at some for interrupting her at this hour in the morning, but there was always room in her heart to forgive him.
“Yes, it’s all good. I’m just checking in. I thought you sounded a little… concerned yesterday, so I wanted to reassure you everything is on track.”
Megan knew what concerned really meant. It was easy to know he was completely in love with her. There were no reciprocations on her behalf, but it had been her experience with men that they needed to feel a closeness in order to succeed.
It was his love for her which had allowed him to risk everything. He’d even infiltrated the MI-S unit on witches and usurped their leader, Maxwell Campbell. Jason proved to be quite an expert at stabbing people in the back.
He was now in a prime position as a double agent. A soldier placed to execute her plans. Which until now, she would be the first to admit in the presence of her own company, had been disorganized. Sure, they’d got lucky with a few random attacks, moving pawns to see what fell their way.
There was no doubt in her mind she’d pushed him to extremes. Further than even he’d thought possible. But allowing him to lean on her and be vulnerable helped her to achieve her goals.
Some people took liberties when you gave them the illusion of closeness. They would feel obliged to comment on your failings and point out how your opinions were wrong, but Jason grew stronger in his love for her. Like a well-meaning puppy, he sacrificed and risked with a willing heart, provided she gave him some nuggets of attention.
“I’m thrilled, this is fantastic news. Perhaps we should celebrate later?”
Megan kept her mouth closed about the recent turn of events in her life. Jason didn’t need to know her motives went beyond their group’s missions. Nor would she tell him about how these factors might finally be going in her direction. Instead, he was a useful resource to keep on her books. It was always handy to keep a fish on the hook, until you were certain you didn’t need it for dinner.
Megan led the Realworlders with the sole purpose of extinguishing the threat of witches to her world. Her bel
ief system rose from a simple ideal. Humans were the species entitled to the planet and therefore allowed to continue, all others should and would be terminated. In effect, this was her moral code and her mission statement: keeping the world untainted by freaks of nature. To restore the order of the world to the clean and pure.
But now there was more, Megan had every right to hate the Westwoods. Her anger extended to all those who possessed magical abilities, but her hatred went further and was felt deeper still when it came to them.
The Westwoods were a family, a unit. To them, it came with ease and without work. Without effort, there could be no realisation of what they even had, or what they had taken away from her. How she envied those Westwoods and their easy love but how she planned to relish her revenge by taking it away from them.
There had been no time wasted in putting Jason to work, placing him in charge of a new mission, reporting directly to her, as always.
There was a great deal to do before her revenge could be completed. To strike too soon would take away her pleasure at avenging her parents’ death. Nothing but payback was on her mind now. It was almost a case of too many plans to act.
A quick painless death was out of the question. Far better to watch the Westwoods tremble in fear. To tear each other apart and strip away their happiness one piece at a time, until they were nothing more than dust. Then she would sprinkle this into the wind. Knowing the justice the universe owed her would finally be had.
Chapter Seven
A Rucksack Can Be a Comfort
Aero thought about her knowledge of the Shadow Creatures. Umbria, for all his help in saving them from the clutches of the Realworlders, had terrified her. The carelessness at which he’d taken on Joanna’s form, the reluctance in his words with regards to their rescue, all added up to whatever the favour he had owed to her grandma was something immense. Powerful enough to compel him to aid them, despite his nature. His darkness was easy enough to sense.
A Sorcery of Shadows: The Westwood Witches 2 Page 5