by Rye Brewer
“Allonic?” All the fight left me. “What are you doing here? And since when do you sneak up on me like that?”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I knew I would lose a finger,” my half-brother muttered.
“I didn’t bite you that hard.”
“You have fangs, in case you forgot.” His eyes glowed bright, and his gaze seemed to cut through the darkness and burn straight into my very soul.
“Sorry, I guess. You didn’t have to surprise me like that.” I looked around—he was otherwise alone. “So? What are you doing here? Isn’t it dangerous for you to be out here? You don’t exactly fit in.” Even in New York, I doubted he would escape unnoticed with his supernatural amber-gold eyes and long robes.
“It’s not difficult for me to find your location. It might have to do with the blood we share. The portal I used led me to this rooftop—just in time to see you gliding over here.” He shook his head with something that looked like a smile. “That was pretty remarkable.”
“You think so?” I couldn’t help feeling a little pleased with myself that somebody like him—half-vampire, half-Custodian—would be impressed with me. “What’s so important that you took the chance of coming here to find me?” Custodians were shades who kept the world’s history in the form of memories—like from the very beginning of time—and lived in a hidden lair underground. Which is where I happened to discover Sara and I even had a brother.
“I have news.”
Hair stood up on the back of my neck. News wasn’t necessarily good. In fact, as of late, it was generally not good at all. “What is it?”
“Our mother wants to see you.”
I wished I could be completely happy about that. Who didn’t want to see their mom after years of thinking she was dead? All this time, longing for her, wishing she was with me. And I still wanted her. Part of me was still a little girl who wanted her mommy.
Then there was the part of me that had other things to worry about. Specifically, Jonah, who had dropped me off with my father as though I was a piece of baggage he couldn’t be bothered to carry around. For example, where he was going with that other vampire, and why I couldn’t tag along.
I was worried for him, traveling around with another vampire doing who knew what.
Not to mention Sara, who’d changed and was a woman I barely recognized now.
I shook my head. “I want to go. I want to see her. I do. But there are other things I have to take care of first.”
He scowled. “Like what? Isn’t seeing her what you wanted?”
“Of course, and it still is, but she did keep me waiting for a long time.”
“She had her reasons.”
“And I have mine. She’ll have to respect that and wait a little bit until I get things in order.” I chewed my lip. “Do you think she’ll understand? I mean, you’ve spent a lot of time with her.”
“I think she will. Though, you can’t blame her for being impatient. She’s wanted this for so long.”
An idea hit me. “I think I know a way to make things go a lot faster.” I smiled.
He read it right away. “Oh, really? You want me to help you now, after you almost bit off my finger?”
“Because you snuck up on me, but that’s not the point. The point is, Jonah’s doing something, and I think he needs help. He dropped me off with my father and disappeared.”
“I’m sure it was for the best. He wants to protect you.”
“I want to protect him, too. Why does it only go one way? Because I’m a girl, he thinks I need his protection and I’m not allowed to know what he’s doing? Allonic…” I stared away, across the hundreds of rooftops. Jonah was out there, somewhere, far away. “I love him. If he’s doing something important, I want to be there with him. I need to be. Do you know anything about it? Anything that would help me?”
“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. I’m a memory keeper. There are certain things I’m not allowed to divulge.” At least he seemed sorry when he said it.
I could believe he meant it.
“I thought it was at least worth a try.” I slung the backpack over my shoulder. “See you sometime… eventually.”
He sighed, rolling his eyes like I would imagine a put-upon brother would. “Wait a second. Don’t go alone.”
I looked him up and down. “Oh? You want me to wait? You want to come with me now?”
He shrugged. “Yes, if I can’t help you in any other way, I want to at least make sure you’re not alone. Our mother would want me to.” Again, with that put-upon air.
I bit back a smile.
“Thank you.”
For the first time, I felt like he was really my brother. Maybe it was the way he’d mentioned our mother.
I wished I could hug him but wasn’t sure how comfortable he’d feel with that.
5
Philippa
I paced back and forth, muttering under my breath as I wore down the flooring in my room.
They think they can leave without me?
I didn’t matter? I wasn’t good enough to go with them? I wasn’t valuable?
I didn’t know if I wanted to tear something apart or cry, or both.
All those years without a father and it was like no time had passed at all. He always used to tell me how smart I was. He would even come to me every once in a while and ask if an idea he had sounded good to me.
And yet, otherwise, I was just a girl.
Jonah and Gage were the oldest boys. It had long been predetermined. Jonah would lead the clan, and, if he couldn’t, Gage would. They got most of our father’s attention. The three of them would go off to talk about clan business while I sat at home with nothing to do.
They got to have all the fun and all the attention.
I got to be pretty.
Lucky me.
I would never forget the way he’d pushed me away from him, as though I wasn’t allowed to hug him anymore.
He was Fane.
I rolled my eyes.
Was being Fane so much better than being Dommik Bourke? Did it mean he wasn’t our father anymore? Blood didn’t mean anything? Or all the memories we’d made together?
I should’ve demanded they let me go with them. I should’ve forced them. I should’ve ripped them both apart. I should’ve done something, anything—it would’ve been better than feeling the way I felt now. Like I didn’t matter.
Somewhere else in the suite, I heard Scott talking.
He would give good advice. He always did.
I only wished I could tell him about Fane, or our father. Or Fane.
I didn’t know what to call him anymore. No matter the name I used, I couldn’t give up what I knew. But I could still tell him I saw Jonah and he was well and going after Gage.
I laughed to myself; Jonah thought I was going to sit home and wait for him? No way would I let him go alone, especially when I had already seen Gage for myself. I could still remember how anguished he’d appeared and sounded when he told me Lucian set the Great Fire.
I wished I had asked Fane about that before he pretty much patted me on the head and told me to go play with dolls.
The sensible part of me spoke up: No, that wasn’t what he did. He told me to lead the clan, which was still a big deal.
I couldn’t lead the clan. I had other things to do, as in finding Gage. I would have to rely on Scott. He could lead.
I walked out to the main room and glanced around. The fire was still burning, and the lights were on, but the room was empty.
“Hello? Scott? Where’d you go?” I turned to go down the hall to his room. Sara was just coming out. “Hey.”
She didn’t seem mousy and nervous the way she used to. She looked glad to see me, as though we were old friends.
She had picked the wrong time to act that way. “What are you doing, walking around here like you own the place?”
“What?” She stopped short, and her eyes went wide. “I was talking to Scott.”
First, I lost Jo
nah to her sister Anissa, and now I’d lost Scott to Sara. She was one of the reasons I felt separated from Scott. It was like he was somewhere else, in a different world, all because of her. He had no time for what he needed to prioritize on.
I felt so alone. It was all her fault. If I were to go searching for Gage, could I trust Scott to run the clan while she was in the picture? Would he be able to focus on what was really important?
“Why are you even still here?” I spat. “You’re not in danger anymore. Your sister’s out there somewhere. Why don’t you go looking for her and leave us all alone?”
She frowned. “I don’t think that’s totally your call, Philippa.”
“No? I’m acting head of the clan now, and I could have you out of here in no time. A snap of my fingers. I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to.”
She cocked her head to the side. “I think you’re the one who’s forgetting.”
“Excuse me?” I had never seen this side of her before, and I didn’t care for it.
A slow smile crept over her face. “Your brother wants me here, Philippa, so this is where I’m going to stay. I’m sorry if you don’t like it. Maybe if you grew up a little and faced facts instead of being a brat and stomping your feet, you could get over it.”
“How dare you? Who do you think you are, talking to me that way?” I bared my fangs and lunged at her without thinking about it. I needed to hurt somebody, and she was the closest thing to me just then. It would feel good, making her hurt as much as I did.
Then, something happened.
She raised her hands before I could reach her, and the room lit up bright white, as what resembled bolts of lightning shot from her fingers.
I gasped, stunned.
I had never seen anything like it before. In the blink of an eye, I was in a cage made of sizzling, crackling beams of pure electricity.
I froze in place, afraid to move a muscle.
“What is this?” I whispered.
That same smile sat frozen on her face. “Not so feisty anymore, are you? Doesn’t take much to take the fight out of you.”
I looked around. The bolts crackled and jumped, alive, ready to fry me if I touched them.
My heart raced double-time.
Who is she? How did she do this?
“From now on, I want you to back off, Philippa. I mean it. Don’t force my hand.” Her face changed, until it was a mask of pure fury and her normally dark eyes flashed with a golden-yellow glow.
I felt as though I was in the presence of something much stronger than a young vampire. I realized I knew nothing about her at all.
Scott’s door opened, and the bars vanished as quickly as they had appeared. Her face changed, too. Her eyes were dark again. She smiled as she turned in Scott’s direction.
I, on the other hand, was sure I had to have been hallucinating.
“What’s up, you two?” Scott glanced at me then at her.
She slid an arm around his waist.
“Oh, you know. Girl talk.” She grinned at me like we had a secret.
Well, we did have a secret. Only not the kind my brother would ever guess.
I still didn’t know what to say or think. It was like she had a split personality. One second, she was casting bolts of electric current and threatening me, and the next, she was the sweet, smiling, affectionate girl my brother was falling deeper in love with every day.
He eyed me. “Did I hear you call me a few minutes ago?”
“Huh?” I thought I might be going crazy. What was happening to my family? Who was staying here with us? “Oh.” I snapped out of it. “Yes. I did.”
“What do you need?”
Both of them stared at me with the same wide, innocent eyes—except one of them wasn’t so innocent.
She was silently daring me to tell him what happened. Come on. Tell him. Tell him his girlfriend shot lightning bolts at you and see how long it takes for him to tell you you’re insane.
She knew I wouldn’t, because there was no way he would believe me.
I could hardly believe it myself, and I could still feel the electric charge in the air. I had almost been electrocuted, but there was no way I could tell him. Especially not when she was standing right there.
“Are you feeling all right, Philippa?” She injected just the right amount of concern into her voice.
I could see through it.
I wished my brother could. Instead, he gazed at her like she was a saint. He couldn’t know anything about what she was capable of, not if he looked at her that way.
“Me? Oh. Yeah. I feel fine. I mean, you know, considering.” I was babbling. I knew I was, but I couldn’t help myself.
Sara nodded then peered up at Scott. “I could use some air. Come with me?”
“Of course.”
I could only stare, speechless, as the two of them walked outside. I had been surprised before—seeing my father for the first time in decades ranked up there—but this came close to topping it all. It was night and day, the change in her.
And I couldn’t tell Scott. I didn’t have the words.
It only hit me then, after they were outside, that I never got the chance to talk to him about leading the clan.
Then again, did I want him to, while she was by his side?
6
Jonah
A moment after stepping through the portal, we were back at the cemetery. I had started thinking of it as a sort of home base, since it seemed Fane was so comfortable there.
No matter how much time passed between one visit and the next, it never changed. It was always dark, almost pitch-black. The sky was starless and moonless although there were no clouds to block it. Where were we?
“Is this a real place?” I asked Fane.
The air didn’t seem to move, I noticed, even though fog rolled along the ground at my feet. Sound didn’t carry the same there as it did elsewhere, I realized. When I spoke, the words sounded flat. Deadened. As if I was in a padded room and the thick layers around us absorbed the echo.
Only we were outside. Weren’t we?
The tombstones appeared real enough. The monuments and mausoleums were crumbling, but they were real. Or were they? Which part of the world were we in?
“It’s a real place,” Fane confirmed. “A real cemetery, though ancient. I wonder if you would believe me if I told you exactly how ancient. It’s called Duskwood.”
“Is it part of Earth?”
“Duskwood exists in an alternate world—dimension perhaps, you might call it—with laws similar to but not the same as those of Earth. There’s no day here. Only night.”
“I guess that makes it safer for you to be here,” I murmured. No day meant no sun.
“Exactly. It’s become my refuge over the years, when there was no safe place for me.” He made his way between the stone monuments, and I followed. He walked with a sureness I couldn’t quite copy. His feet were used to the terrain, the rocks concealed by fog.
I had to keep looking down to be sure I wasn’t about to break my ankle or go sprawling face-first.
“Did you stay here with Mother? Did you hide here with her?” I stared at his back as I asked the question and noticed the way he tensed. His shoulders practically touched his ears from the tension he was carrying.
“No. She was never here. Duskwood came after her.”
“Do you live here?”
“Not exactly.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You’re full of questions.”
“You have no idea the questions I have for you.”
It didn’t seem fair, the way he almost seemed to make fun of me for asking. Did he think he could walk back into our lives with no explanation? I loved my father, even if he had become Fane, and left behind so much of what made him who he was in his former life. Was I supposed to forget the strong, wise vampire I had looked up to over my entire existence?
“I hope we have the time one day to clear everything up… but that time is not now.”
> I told myself to suck it up and trust him to tell me everything in time. “Why are we here, then? Can you tell me that, at least?”
We came to a towering marble mausoleum that had to house the remains of hundreds, if not thousands. It was roughly the size of one of those supermarkets the humans were so crazy about, and three stories tall.
“This realm has become a refuge for more than just me. There are a number of us who use this dimension as sort of a meeting place—witches, mostly. We need Sirene if we’re going to get anywhere.”
“Wait. Sirene?” The witch? Why did we need a witch? “I thought she was one of your contacts.”
“She is one of my contacts, and she has skills I don’t. We’ll need those skills if we’re going to proceed.”
“What skills? Wait a minute.” I stopped walking around the perimeter of the structure, and Fane turned to face me. “Hang on. What is it she can do that you can’t? What else are we going to need? You can already throw portals and travel through the passages. What else is there? How much more involved is this going to get?”
Traveling through passages—a series of interconnecting paths which occasionally use portals to connect—was such an asset.
He was impatient, if the scowl on his face meant anything. “I only have those skills because Sirene gave them to me. She has others she can’t give to me. Those are ones she has to implement. Like the power to cast spells, for instance. That’s not the sort of thing a witch can simply transfer to another creature. It’s innate, born in them, though they often have to be trained in them. And those powers of hers might come in handy. If they’re available to us, why shouldn’t we use them? We’ll need all the help we can get.”
He seemed to know a lot about her.
I frowned. “What else can she do?”
He shrugged. “She can access creatures who have the Sight. It’s a very powerful tool, the Sight. Seeing through others.”
“What? I don’t understand.” I remembered how it felt to be taken over by the spiritwalkers and wondered if witches did something similar to those with the Sight—taking over their minds, seeing through their eyes.