Insidious Winds (32 page)

Vincent, too, was more open and friendly, but I kept
remembering my test, and the doubt my subconscious had. Although I could have
asked Vincent about it, I didn’t want to risk losing progress we were making.
Thus, I went to Hunt one day after my classes.

“Come in,” the headmaster said.

I did and closed the door behind me. We were alone.
Good
.
“Vincent slept with my mother nine months before I was born. I found out last
semester, when I had a flashback using his book.”

Hunt nodded thoughtfully and folded his hands over
the book on the desk. “He did tell me what John allowed him to do.”

“Nine months. Yet he’s absolutely certain he’s not my
father. There must be something I don’t know.”

He sat back. “And I take it you have not spoken with
him about this?” he asked. I shook my head. After a moment, he sighed. “Vincent
has always been a very repressed man. I was always… not. In fact, I have been
known to be rather devious on occasion. It was one reason we were such good
mates. I know there is much that went on in that family that you do not know,
such as that his mother had quite a few miscarriages. After everything that he
had to put up with, he developed quite the phobia of failure. Unfortunately, or
fortunately, really… it depends on how you look at it… his phobia became a fear
of failure as a parent. It actually took quite a lot of therapy to get him to
that point.”

“So he just never wanted me?” I hated that my
subconscious was right.

“Oh, no, that is quite incorrect. When I told Vincent
that he would have to give up the one thing he treasured the most, he was
paranoid that it would be a child. He was so terrified, in fact, of being a
failure as a father because of the key that he asked me to do something very
horrible. I was his friend, though, and I thought that meant allowing him to
make his own decisions. I was wrong, of course. I soon learned that being his
friend meant stopping him from making horrible mistakes.”

“You made it so that he couldn’t have children?”

“I gave him a potion, told him what it would do, and
begged him to rethink the decision. He took it and has deeply regretted it
every second of every day since the moment he knew you were on the way.”

I was quiet for a moment as I let that settle. “I did
a paternity test using a cup of tea he left at my apartment. It was positive.
He is my father, so your potion must have failed.”

“Did it now? That is interesting.”

I nodded and turned to leave when his exact words
struck me and I froze with my hand on the door. “He asked you to make him
infertile and you gave him a potion.” I looked at him. “You didn’t say you gave
him what he asked for. You were arrogant even then and I highly doubt you ever
did anything to him you didn’t think was in his best interest. The potion you
gave him didn’t do what you told him it would, did it?”

He grinned knowingly. I turned and left.

*          *          *

I still couldn’t quench the doubt, however, so I made
a stop at my room, where Darwin was making out with Amelia. From her flushed
face and the way she fingered his shirt when he pulled away from her, I figured
she had recently absorbed the energy of some frisky student. Normally, I
wouldn’t interrupt, but I needed to get it over with.

“Darwin, have you ever lied to me?”

He nodded. “Yep. Probably once a week. I switched out
the regular coffee with decaffeinated yesterday and when you spit it out and
asked if I knew why it tasted bad, I lied. Oh, and it
was
me who put
catnip in your laundry basket, but I was trying to get Li Na interested in your
scent, not Micah.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, I’ll kick
your ass for that later; Micah is still sniffing me every time I try to get
coffee and if you fuck with my fuel again, I’ll bury you alive. Did you lie to
me about the paternity test?”

“I have no idea.”

“What? What do you mean you don’t know if you lied?”

He shrugged. “I knew if it was negative, you would be
upset and if I lied then, you would read it in my mind. So I didn’t look at the
test. I just read the name and said it was positive. Thus, I don’t know if I
lied or not.”

“I hate you.”

He stuck out his tongue.

I stepped into Hunt’s office and froze. Aside from
Remington arguing with her father, I rarely encountered anyone else in the
headmaster’s office. This time, however, there was a young woman sitting on the
leather couch. She was blond with light green eyes and a softness to her, like
she never had a dark thought in her life.

She was also crying.

“I will come back later,” I said, taking a step back.

“No, Devon, come on in,” Hunt said, standing from the
chair he had set across from her. “I asked you here to meet Elizabeth Vegas.”

I shut the door behind me and approached her without
sitting down. Normally, I tried not to tower over crying women, but I felt like
sitting next to her would be a bad idea. She sniffled and looked me in the eye.
There was something oddly familiar about her.

“You’re the one who…” She cleared her throat and
tried again. “You know what happened to Reagan?”

I gaped before realizing how rude I was being.
“You’re her mother?” My half-sister’s mother came to ask me for the details? I
looked at Hunt for help, advice, or anything.

He nodded. “Tell her what happened. She can handle
the truth.”

I highly doubted that. Nobody should be told that
their child was killed because she wasn’t powerful enough to be useful.

“Please!” Elizabeth shouted, trying desperately not
to cry again.

I nodded. “In late August of 2015, I was approached
by John Cross. I’m a private investigator— a good one— and I said I would find
her. I did. I found her in a rotting house in the woods. She was dead with
signs of a vampire attack. I left and tried to call the police, but my phone
was gone, so I returned. By then, her body was removed. I didn’t call the
police. Expecting trouble, I accepted a job here, where I soon learned that
John had hired me with that very intention. He killed Reagan to get my
attention and also… according to him… she wasn’t powerful enough for him to use
to his advantage.”

Anger changed her face drastically. “He killed her
because she didn’t have magic?!” she snarled.

I nodded. “I killed him shortly after he confessed
that.”

“Did you make it painful?”

“Not as painful as he deserved. I stabbed him in the
heart.”

“That bastard didn’t have a heart!”

“I take it Reagan wasn’t born of love.”

She wrapped her arms around her stomach and stared at
the floor. “She was. In my tiny town, prom is the highlight of our lives. I
never wanted to leave or explore or anything. It was the freakin perfect place
to grow up and start a family. But…” She swallowed. “My boyfriend and I had a
fight a week before prom. I was pissed because I thought he ruined my life. I
thought I was going to be made fun of. So I got online and tried to find a sophisticated,
older man to show Chase up.”

“And you found John?”

She nodded and then shook her head. “He found me.
Without a word online, he showed up at my doorstep. My mom tried to stop him,
but he told her to leave. She did. She just walked away. He took me to dinner
and shopping. It was really okay at first. I thought he was just very
charismatic. I didn’t even know what that meant, but everyone always did what
he said. I did, too. He told me to love him and I did. I wanted to do what he
told me. When prom came, I forgot all about it. He said what we had was better
than prom. I was seventeen, though. I was sure someone was going to call the
cops.”

“Did you realize then what he could do?”

She started crying again and shook her head. “When I
turned eighteen, I told my mom I was pregnant. She yelled at me for an hour
before John sighed, stood up… and told her to go and kill herself. And she did.
She slit her own throat right in front of me. I screamed until John told me to
shut up. My dad came in then. John didn’t have to say anything. He just looked
at my dad and my dad walked out of the house. He never came back.”

“Were you afraid Reagan was going to have the same
power?”

She shook her head. “John wasn’t interested in
raising a child, so he just said he was bored with me and left. He left me
crying on the floor, covered in my mother’s blood. The police thought I’d done
it because the neighbors called the cops when she started yelling at me. My
fingerprints were on the knife because I’d made dinner with it and the coroner couldn’t
determine anything about the angle. I was arrested. Reagan was born in prison.
After that, I was released and all charges were dropped because John made them
let me go. Everyone in town wanted me back in prison except for Chase.”

“He was okay with Reagan?”

“Not at first. That’s what started all this to begin
with; Reagan wasn’t John’s daughter.”

I grimaced and sat next to her. She immediately
rested her head against my chest. “And John never found out?”

“No. I knew he could read minds, so Chase and I came
to Mr. Hunt to make us forget that she was Chase’s daughter. Chase and I got
married and tried to live our lives like it never happened. We didn’t even
leave town. Then John came back. Reagan was four and he wanted to see if she
had magic. He determined she didn’t and he was obviously sickened by it. He
turned his frustration on me. He… made me want to sleep with him. It wasn’t
until Reagan was killed that Mr. Hunt’s spell broke and I remembered the
truth.”

A knock on the door nearly made me jump. I stood just
as a big, burly man with auburn hair, sun-tanned skin, and brown eyes entered,
followed by two twin boys. The boys were about three and identical with dark
brown hair and dark brown eyes. They were ominously familiar.

“Reagan wasn’t John’s child,” Elizabeth continued,
“but Jason and Jameson are.”

The young twins climbed up on the couch on either
side of their mother. One of them took Elizabeth’s hand, hugged her, and stared
nervously at my feet. The other twin crossed his arms and glared at me. I could
feel him trying to invade my mind, but since I had learned many skills from my
uncle, it was easy to keep him out. Instead, I focused on the boy who wasn’t
looking at me. He had “help me” written all over his face… and down his bruised
throat.

“Don’t look at him,” the angry brother snarled.

Someone was following in his dad’s evil shoes.
“Please tell me John hasn’t done this to others,” I said. Hunt frowned deeply.
“How many?”

“There’s no way to be sure.”

Rain Oxford is a teacher who has been writing for more than half of her
life. She does most of her writing in a secluded cabin in the woods with a
four-pound Maltese as a companion. When she’s not teaching or creating worlds,
she usually enjoys cooking, playing the piano, or photographing exotic wildlife.

Facebook Page:
www.facebook.com/rainoxfordauthor

Website:
rainoxford.wordpress.com

Amazon Page:
amazon.com/author/rainoxford

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I ignored the oppressive sense of death. The warm
tingle in my palm reminded me that I had all the power I needed to free myself.
At this point, I actually wanted to be purified by the fire elementals again so
that the creatures of the black abyss couldn’t touch me. Or… at least until I
entered the shadow pass again.

Yeah, I didn’t think that one through
.

I sensed them moving all around me, remembered the
horror of their eye-less faces, and was glad there was no light. Hunt insisted
I learned to use the shadow pass on my own and, unfortunately, he was a “sink
or swim” person. With the wisdom of “feel where you want to go,” he dropped me
into the darkness and vanished.

Although I knew I didn’t actually have to travel in
the shadow pass to reach my destination, it made me feel more accomplished to
walk. Well, stumble. It wasn’t easy to walk on soft, uneven ground in absolute
darkness with extra gravity.

I focused on my uncle’s mind. Although it was usually
blocked, I had been in his mind before, so I could do it again.

Or not.

I sensed it an instant before I hit the ground hard
and light returned to the world. I dusted dirt off my jeans as I stood, then
groaned. “What the hell am I doing here?” I asked aloud. I was standing before
the tower. Light came from four torches surrounding the tower, which were
always lit if I was correct.

And I was alone.

Why would I arrive here when I’m trying to find my
uncle
? A harsh yowl made me look down, where Ghost was glaring at me. “What
the hell are you doing here?”

Instead of answering, he turned and vanished.

Elemental
Book 1:
Dark Waters

Elemental
Book 2:
Hungry Earth

Elemental
Book 3:
Furious Flames

Elemental
Book 4:
Insidious Winds

The Guardian
Book 1:
The Guardian’s Grimoire

The Guardian
Book 2:
The Dragon’s Eyes

The Guardian
Book 3:
God of the Abyss

The Guardian
Book 4:
The Demon’s Game

The Guardian
Book 5:
The Wizard’s War

The
Awakening