“Elle,” Margaux whispered, almost as though she feared speaking up. “She’s a woman.” Her French accent was back in full force, speaking in her native tongue. She sat in a daze as she stared at the crystal containing her tormentor. She watched it as I watched her, sitting in Alina’s clothes with one of the arms tied off at the shoulder. I had a feeling that trousers weren’t her favorite item of clothing in the world given I had already seen the attire she had in her wardrobe in Paris. At the moment, however, she clearly couldn’t be bothered by the aesthetics of her clothing. She was just glad to be in clothes that weren’t charred and out of the cell.
“Well, she once was,” Margaux continued, allowing her gaze to fall away from the crystal. “She has possessed so many luxra that I doubt her spirit feels a preference. There’s little humanity left in her. She only needs a strong luxra witchling body.”
“Yes, Alina said something about that. How the grandmaster has been a woman and a man over the centuries. I assumed it was because the grandmaster and his sister were trading places.”
Margaux shrugged. “Perhaps. But they are much the same. They want strong and able bodies that will achieve their ends and provide what they need. They don’t care for details.”
She held a blanket tight in her hand, covering her skin as she tried to overcome the shock of being fully awake again and in control of her body. Her will was her own. And yet, she appeared almost hesitant. If not a bit shy. As if she had forgotten how to properly use her body and not bend to the commands of another.
My heart went out to her as she solemnly shook her head and let her eyes fall to the floor. I didn’t know her. I knew Adeline adored her and they were close, which was something. Adeline was picky about those she let in. The fact that Margaux was one of those people said something of her character. Her choice in lovers, however, was exceedingly questionable.
“I should have listened to Adeline,” she mumbled. “She tried to warn me. I thought I could handle myself. I… I never thought…” She trailed off, barely able to speak.
Rodrick got up and reached for his cabinet toward the wall. He pulled out some liquor to offer her. She took it gladly and savored the flavor as it rushed down her throat and soothed her. Hopefully enough to get her to talk some more. We needed as many answers as possible.
I peered over to Jake standing to the corner of the room. “Jake, did you get the notebook I asked for?”
Jake moved from his stiff stance leaning against one of Rodrick’s bookcases and dug into his trench coat. He handed me the notebook.
Lothar watched from the other side of Rodrick’s study with his arms firmly crossed over his chest. He kept a sharp eye on Margaux. Almost as though he wasn’t sure he could trust she wouldn’t try to hurt any of us. At least not yet.
“Margaux,” I said her name softly. “I wanted to return this. It belongs to you.”
I saw Rodrick sit back into his seat with a curious look on his face. Perhaps he didn’t expect me to have the manners to return what wasn’t mine.
Margaux stared down at the notebook in my lap. “How did you…?”
“We were inside your flat in Paris,” Rodrick answered her. “There was a fair bit of destruction. I believe we may have startled some members of your coven by our presence but it was necessary, I promise you.”
‘Startled? Is that what you call chasing us through the night and shooting magic into my back?’
“But that notebook was in, well, it wasn’t sitting on the bookshelf,” she said.
“Alexei did his best to make sure your flat looked like it had been looted,” I said. “Only he made the mistake of revealing your secret room. I promise I wasn’t trying to snoop. I just saw the title on this one and I thought it might help us. Or me, in particular.”
She let a soft smile cross her face as if she knew I wasn’t telling the whole truth. Perhaps she did. I didn’t possess the gift of subtlety.
“Yes, I suppose you would,” she said. “Being Dirk Blackburn’s sister.”
The room went silent.
Lothar leaned away from the wall and let his arms lower to his sides. Almost like he sensed a potential threat once she revealed that she remembered who I was.
‘Let’s face it. We were never properly introduced.’
“So you do remember some things?” I asked. “The luxra didn’t take all your memories?”
Her eyes darted back and forth. “I remember some things. Not all. Parts are a blur. Others are simply missing. Then there are those I wish I could forget.”
A rush of pink struck my cheeks as she eyed her shoulder with a missing limb. I swallowed hard and sank deeper into the chair, feeling a bit shy at the realization that she remembered enough to know it was me that maimed her.
“She wanted to know things,” she continued. “The people in my life. The details that would help her survive. She kept my mind alert just enough to look through my past. She didn’t realize I was doing the same to her. Other times I fought her. I fought her so hard. I’ve never felt so powerless.”
She reached for the notebook with her single arm and I let her have it.
“Perhaps you can fill me in on a few things,” she asked politely. “Such as Alexei and the current state of my flat?”
Rodrick offered her the important details, leaving out the part where he nearly seduced me in her bedroom. A look of relief washed over her face when he told her Alexei was staying with my father, along with the knowledge that Daniella put her flat back in order with the same spell I used to clean up the havoc we caused in Chatsworth.
“I’ll send for Alexei today,” Rodrick stated, trying to set her mind at ease. “He’s welcome to stay at the academy as long as he swears to do his hunting outside the lycan realm.”
“I’m sure he’ll be willing to accept those terms,” she said.
‘Are you sure? He already attacked me twice.’
“You read it then?” she asked me referring to the notebook.
It was a trick question. She knew the notebook was spelled with magic to make it unreadable. She also knew my magic could potentially break it.
“Yes, I did,” I admitted freely. “Like I said, it was a great help to us. I suspected the twin theory too but your work helped me to confirm it. The grandmaster and his sister are trying to find permanent homes for their bodies. They’re done leaping from body to body every century. But why?” I asked in the vain hope that she might fill in that gap for me. I wasn’t sure how much help she would be willing to provide to the girl that sliced her arm clean off. Regardless of the circumstances.
Margaux set the notebook down and took another sip of the liquor Rodrick poured for her, allowing her thoughts to come together slowly. We waited as she began speaking and I tried exercising as much patience as possible.
“This is a different era from the previous century,” Margaux started. “It’s an age of technology and surveillance. Cameras filming every day and night, satellites tracking phones, and dissidence made nearly impossible. The inner circle of the Dolch Erbe know this. They sense the time to finish their work closing in. Witchlings are a dying breed, lycan are keeping more and more to themselves, and the hunt for our kind is getting more difficult. The grandmaster sees our demise as nearly complete. They want to finish their work within the next century before their window of opportunity closes.”
“The war,” Rodrick chimed in, successfully grabbing all our attention. “Many vixra witchlings believe that the time for secrecy and anonymity is coming to an end for our kind, witchlings and lycan alike. And once it does, humanity will wage a war on us.”
I couldn’t help but blink a few times.
‘Did I hear him properly?’
“But why?” I asked, a bit bewildered by the idea.
“How often does mankind need a legitimate reason to go to war?” He scoffed. “The grandmaster wants the honor of defeating the lycan before such an event can occur. If witchlings and lycan are exposed in an age of technology it leaves
the door wide open for anyone to attack us. He doesn’t want that to happen.”
“Précisément.” Margaux finished her liquor and set the glass down with an audible clank on Rodrick’s desk. “He will not be robbed of he honor to strike the final blow.”
It took me several seconds to allow Rodrick and Margaux’s words to sink in. A war? One that might end all supernatural beings on Earth? Why would humans do that? Why wouldn’t the grandmaster just let humanity wipe us out if that really was going to happen?
I shook my head in confusion. I wasn’t about to try understanding the loathing one man might possess to devout so much energy to ending the lycan by himself rather than waiting for humanity to do the job for him.
I took a deep breath and leaned forward in the chair. “Then we don’t have a choice. We have to break the curse as fast as possible.”
“There’s a problem,” Margaux interrupted my train of thought. Her tone of voice changed in an instant to one that immediately made me nervous. As if the night hadn’t done enough to completely shred them. “I see you didn’t take much time to do more exploring of my things,” she said to me with a lift of her brow. “You didn’t discover the variables around the curse and it’s formation.”
She watched me like she was offering a pop quiz just to see if I might rise to the occasion. This woman had a certain amount of natural sass that I immediately envied.
“I learned some things,” I explained. “What’s needed to break it and the location.”
“Yes, but did you read what’s required of those needed to break the curse?” She asked.
I felt my tongue twist. She knew I hadn’t read the entire notebook. Now I was wishing I had.
She opened it and let her bright blue magic float over the pages. I watched as the ink moved about the page and formed new words just like it had for me. Only when she flipped to the back of the notebook, there was more written. Pages I previously thought empty were filled with scribbles.
“Confused, mademoiselle?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
“Bon, as it should be.”
Clearly, there was more magic infused in the notebook than I was aware of. Even some that my magic couldn’t break into.
She flipped through the pages and handed the notebook to Rodrick.
“How is your French, monsieur?” she asked him.
“Passable,” he answered.
“Try to read and I will provide context,” she said with a hint of sarcasm as she twirled one of her long locks of hair between her fingers. She was enjoying knowing more than the two of us a little too much. Perhaps it was a solace to her after so many weeks of being under someone else’s thumb.
Rodrick slowly read through the pages, searching for clarification and suddenly finding it. His brows pushed together in a strange expression. Tension spread over the room. I glanced behind me at Lothar and Jake as they stood nearby watching and listening. Lothar gave me a nod as if to say ‘stay focused.’
I looked back at Rodrick as he slowly set down the notebook and clenched his jaw. “Are you sure?” he asked Margaux, refusing to make eye contact with her.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m afraid so.”
“What?” I asked eagerly.
Rodrick gave me a once over with his eyes, not wanting to speak the words but forcing them from his mouth. “The inner circle used blood magic to cast the curse in Paris.”
I shifted uncomfortably, knowing that if Rodrick was uneasy that meant I needed to worry. “What does that mean?”
“It means they conjured the magic needed to cast the curse by using the blood of the lycan and witchlings that were killed during the Communard uprising. Then they sacrificed their blood. Their own lives. The combination of the two cast a curse to bring about the perfect match for their permanent bodies to inhabit through the mating of Blackatters for as long as they need to conquer the lycanthrope for good.”
His words jumped around in my head as I tried to make sense of them.
Blood magic? Sacrifice?
‘No… He can’t mean… he’s not saying that…’
I stood up from the chair. “You can’t be serious.”
Lothar must have been on the same page because he moved away from the door to the back of the room to stand directly behind me.
“There’s no way I’m allowing anyone to kill themselves to break the curse.” My voice shrieked across the study. “I won’t let people die for me! I have enough blood on my hands already.”
Adeline, Margaux, a kruxa witchling, Alexei, and my father would all have to sacrifice themselves just like the inner circle of the Dolch Erbe did to break the curse. The brilliance of it wasn’t lost on me. The inner circle sacrificed the bodies they inhabited in Paris that fateful night over a century ago at Palais D’Orsay to ensure anyone interested in breaking the curse would be dissuaded from doing so. The sacrifice meant nothing to them. They had already possessed several bodies and then lost them only to find new ones. Their spirits would survive. But for anyone else, the sacrifice would be too devastating to try breaking the curse.
“Don’t panic,” Margaux said to me, waving a hand at Lothar to back off. “I’m the last person in the world who would be willing to die for a Blackatter. Make no mistake. Your kind are intriguing and occasionally useful but I’ve yet to meet one that wasn’t a bit…shall we say…aggressive.”
‘You took up with Alexei and you’re calling my kind aggressive?’
Her eyes studied me, waiting to see if I would get her meaning.
‘Oh, I get you. Dirk made a pass at you and you said no.’
“Sit back down, Miss Blackburn,” Rodrick insisted. “Hear what Margaux has to say.”
I reluctantly did as Rodrick ordered, watching as he shot Lothar a nasty scowl and waited for him to back down.
To my surprise, Lothar didn’t move. He placed a single hand on the back of the large chair where I sat and waited for Margaux to spill the details. And for whatever reason, I didn’t mind him staying there. I spent months getting agitated by the people constantly treating me like I was a bubble that might pop if anyone got too close. But at that moment, I desperately wanted all the reassurance I could get that someone was on my side.
‘I already slaughtered a grave keeper. Don’t make me complicit in more bloodshed, Rodrick. I won’t have it!’
“As I said,” Margaux began speaking again. “I’m the last person in the world who would be willing to die for a Blackatter. But Ellinor Prescott requested my help. I’m smart enough not to reject a vixra that sits on the council. And mon Dieu, I have suffered from the workings of the Dolch Erbe to have sufficient motivation to see them destroyed. Long before I was ever possessed by one of them. So I spent the last several years brewing potions late at night to discover a way to break the curse but not have those involved sacrifice themselves in the process.”
She took the notebook into her hand and opened it up to one of the last pages inside, letting her magic reveal the hidden words on the page. Then she handed it to me. I read through it to see a long list of strange ingredients. Things I knew she must have had to ask for help in retrieving. A mixture of vampire blood, vixra blood, a drop of Black Sea water, the tip of a shark fin from the left side, and many bits of randomness.
“So what does this do?” I asked.
“Read more,” she told me.
I came closer to a paragraph at the end describing the intention of the potion. As the person consuming it loses more and more blood and edges to the point of death, their body would go into a deep sleep. The bleeding stops, the mind rests, and the drinker of the potion would awaken in two to three years.
I jerked my head up and looked at her. The doubt creeping around inside my mind must have been visible on my face because she smirked at me.
“Would you rather have them die?” she gloated as though I was neglecting her brilliance. “It’s a small price to pay if you ask me. Especially if it frees Blackatters and breaks the curse. I
f we manage to permanently destroy the inner circle to the Dolch Erbe, so much the better.”
“What is it?” Rodrick asked when the color drained from my face.
“The potion will put those who drink it to sleep for two to three years,” I said weakly. “People have to lose at least two years of their life to stop this mess. For me.”
“Not just for you,” Margaux scoffed, snatching the book away. “You’re not the only one whose life has been changed by the viciousness of the Dolch Erbe. I’ve lost many friends. Members of my coven have fallen. Including me. I want their reign of terror to come to an end. As does Ellinor Prescott. She’s been useful in helping me acquire everything I needed for the necessary experiments with the potion. And last Spring I finally got the mixture right.”
I let out a breath from deep inside me and tried to remind myself that others had been working on this long before I even knew witchlings and lycan were a living and breathing reality.
“Are you sure it will even work?” I asked.
“Yes, of course, I’m sure. Why do you think I spent several years working on it. I had to make sure I got the formula right.”
“And did you?” Lothar chimed in. “Or can those who partake expect to go into a heavy sleep and never wake up?”
If there was one quality I was already beginning to see in Margaux it was vanity. She had an ego to go along with her air of sophistication. She didn’t like her skills being questioned. She shut the book closed with a loud thump of the pages smashing together and sat back in her chair. If she had the use of both her arms I imagined she might pout and cross them over her chest.
“The potion works. I’ve had test subjects.” She stared up at Lothar as though he was nothing more than a wet dog who had just marked a spot outside her expensive Parisian flat. “Do you honestly think I would sacrifice myself to such a cause and drink the potion if I didn’t trust my own brewing skills? Besides, Adeline Prescott has offered her blood to make the potion stronger. With any luck, the magic in her blood will make the healing process faster. She’s likely to heal within a year.”
Resummon: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 6) Page 3