Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets) (45 page)

Just above the strange text
was a bracelet made of wooden beads. I picked it up inquisitively, carefully examining the antique artefact but accidentally ripping off one bead. It stayed clutched in my hand as the bracelet dropped onto the book. Yet,
again
, I was hit away by something I hadn’t seen. All I could see was the moving darkness above as I speedily fell back down to the others. Whilst they
gasped, I struggled to get up. My vision was blurry and I had been horribly stunned. But as I hurled myself to my feet, I saw him, the
reason
we embarked on this trip to avoid him, the one who prevented me from ever knowing my father.

Trailian.

He flapped down with his broad, inky-black feathery wings like a lost bird and finally landed sturdily. He was like an animal – a crane, stretching his neck out to examine us. He looked somehow crazed and he had a chin full of stubble. His hair was disoriented, messy (as if it had just been wet and didn’t dry properly), jet black with hints of grey here and there, and went mid-way down his back. His eyes had dark sagging bags resting underneath them and were large like coins, with purple irises that were going to keep me awake for days. But the man wasn’t hideous. In fact he wasn’t even terrible looking. He was charming. Unimaginably charming. But that’s the problem with the devil: his looks are deceiving. Trailian looked more like a youthful prince in his late twenties. He wore a long, thin, torn, black overall (that looked somewhat like a robe), over a long black shirt and black waistcoat. He reminded me of us
boys when we were ready for the Samhain ball. He had on dust-stained, pinstriped trousers that were tucked into his medieval black boots. He slid over the podium and stood at the top of the stairs, before finally resting a finger on me and another two on Jaden and Jade.

“
You three…” he croaked in a broken, superior, English-accented voice that sent backbiting needles piercing my skin.

“
You’re Trailian,” Jade said, spellbound and awestruck. We slowly moved back.

“
Not leaving already, are you?” he asked sarcastically; his eyes suddenly dimmed to a complete black that spread to all corners of his eyes.

“
You wouldn’t want to have come here for nothing,” he growled. He was suddenly joined by two women, both tall and elegant with blanched
skin. Margaret had hair like Mychaela’s, long and straight, that seemed flawless and dangled
just
above her waist, held in a tight ponytail and without a single strand out of place. She had on tight fitted black trousers with tears where her knees would be, and in addition, a plain black tank top and black boots that rose to her shins with silver straps. Her eyes were just like her husband’s, Trailian – purple and mystical.

The other woman, Fernanda, was dressed similarly to
Margaret and had a head full of black, frizzy hair, spiralling out of control down her back. Three other men then approached. One of them, Ricardo, having thick, black, messy hair like Jaden’s but dressed in a similar formal way like Trailian. Another (Alessandro) with long black hair; two strands tying the rest behind his back and two other strands dangling on both sides of his face. He had long black overalls with black trousers and a quiver of arrows behind his back as he held his bow. And the last, Allyn, looked devilish. His hair was cut short and he seemed bigger and more muscular than the rest. His jaws were very well defined and his staggering height made him resemble a brutish giant. His shirt alone defined the muscles of his chalk-white torso. His short dark hair contrasted completely with his face and his black trousers only made his stature look more muscular. None of them could have been above thirty.
Figuratively
speaking of course.

“
You’re the one who killed our father,” Jaden mumbled as we continued to stumble backwards.

“
Well,
don’t be surprised
!” he said enthusiastically. He seemed sadistically playful.

“
I’ve killed hundreds of people – your father shouldn’t be any different,” he said with a cheeky grin, showing his immaculate teeth. I noticed he had pointy canines like we had.

“
They were people
!” Tammy spoke back fiercely. Trailian stroked the stubble on his chin and looked down over the edge of his nose at Tammy, before playfully responding: “
Tamzine
!” He knew her name? “It’s been ages since you and the Roxeths ventured off to us, no?” he said gently.

“
Do you remember this place? Hm? Where you escaped from us the last time?” he asked, stroking his chin and squinting at them.

“
And, uh, how
is
the lovely woman? The one who helped you escape. Have you contacted her recently? Because if you have…tell her the armistice is
over
. We need
her. And we’ll be coming for her.” He glided down the steps and gently walked around Tammy, whispering in her ear, loud enough for us to hear whilst fiddling with her hair.

“
I have no idea who you’re talking about. And you’re lying, we never ventured off to you – it was against our will,” she replied, staying immaculately still with a disgusted look on her face.

“
Yes, but that doesn’t justify the fact you were once with us does it, Roxeth?” he said, uncommonly fast. I was stunned. The Roxeths worked for the Barons? That wasn’t accurate. It
couldn’t
have been.

“
You can’t hurt us,” Robbie spoke boldly.

“
Yes, yes, it
is
quite impossible now,” Trailian stopped and exhaled deeply. He moved back and stood at the podium.

“I’m not interested in you three at the moment. It’s all about the
daddy’s
babies,” he said, with another playful grin of horror. But his smile slowly receded as his eyes squinted at us.

“I know you people are supposed to be special, but could you have
actually
started your centuries of immortality and youth at
that
age?” he asked curiously as he leaned on the podium.

“Physically, y
ou can’t be more than fourteen,” he said yet again disbelievingly. Jaden, Jade and I looked at each other, hopeless. We had no clue what he was ranting on about. But there was no conning this man; he had seen our lost facial expressions and suddenly gasped wildly.

“You have no clue what I’
m on about, do you? So you might actually be fourteen,” he said, with his unprecedented eyes as large as mine, enlarged in terror with a grin growing below. I gulped uneasily. He was speaking more to himself than to us.

“But that’s impossible, you couldn’t have been born fourteen years ago if your father died –”

“Don’t you
dare
speak about him!” something forced out of me as I stepped forward, with my hair blazing red and my eyes glowing ruby. Jordan immediately grabbed a hold of my warm body and reeled me back. Trailian looked down at us in severe examination.

“Tell me, boy, have you heard of the Revolution that took place; the event that l
ed to our demise and misery in this place?” he asked with his hand to his chin. We kept silent and all we could hear was the damp dripping of water.

“ANSWER ME!” he yelled.
We jumped as his voice amplified throughout the entire cavern and as it overlapped with whispers and different pitched tones. His eyes were a lifeless black, through which we could see nothing. His face was in a vicious snarl as he bent towards us from the platform. Our hearts all skipped a beat and I felt as if mine had just been cut out.

“Yes,” Jade then answered
in a small voice. Trailian stood upright and resumed speaking as if nothing of his malicious outburst occurred.

“Right,
good. And do you know how long ago this was, my dear?” Jade stammered and looked at Tammy and Robbie. They shrugged hopelessly.

“I don’t remember,” Liam
said mind-numbingly, as if it was an abomination or impossible for them to have forgotten. Trailian took a hollow step down the crumbling granite stairs.

“Two thousand –” his heel click
ed on another step.

“–
Six hundred –” he took one last step and faced us from his higher-up position.

“And fourteen years ago,” he calmly ended.

“And why should we care?” Jaden feistily responded. Trailian suddenly threw his head back in a cold, menacing laugh that sent spiteful cracks through the columns.

“My dear child, I hope you’ve been told
I
killed your father in the revolution, yes? ME! SIR TRAILIAN! And if so doing – which was two thousand, six hundred and fourteen years ago, I must add…” he left us on edge, on severe suspense.

“Then how could you three be alive if your father died two millennia
ago? Unless of course…you were born
then
.” Our faces froze. Hell. We had no idea of how long this war had taken place. It never occurred to us to ask. But he couldn’t have been saying what I think he was – that was
beyond
impossible. This was taking the alien excuse way out of context. All of the others were now looking at us as if we were something they couldn’t believe. Jaden, Jade and I looked at each other disbelievingly.

“N-n-no, no, no. You’re delusional. We’re
fourteen
, she’s
sixteen
!” I retorted.

“No, boy,” he said sternly.

“You-are-precisely-two-thousand-six-hundred-and-fourteen-years-old!” he rambled in a strict breath.

“Well
, technically your sister’s two years older than you two but what baffles me, is how you’ve been alive all this while. I mean, I knew we would have had to break out a hundred years after the Resurrection. But it never occurred to me that you three fools had been alive all this while…unless…” he drifted the sentence off to himself. He took five rapid steps down and circled us, moving around my siblings and me like mist, centimetres from us.

“You all still smell like magic too,” he said disgustedly.

“So, the great mage survived,” he muttered to himself. I huddled with Jaden and Jade. How could this have been real? Why couldn’t I remember any of this – any of my two thousand, six hundred and fourteen years of living? Worse yet, mum. She hadn’t told us. She knew. She lied.

“I have no clue, however, why you can’t remember this nonsense,” he said as he walked back up to the podium and somehow psychically answering our questions.

“You sick liar, Trailian!” Liam hissed.

“
Only three of you are to die today,” he spoke coldly. My heart was stabbed with terror and Jaden and Jade seemed just as petrified as me.

“
Well you aren’t going to touch them,” Liam immediately said, stepping in front of us.

“
Foolish boy, you have
no
idea what you are doing or talking about!” he then maliciously snarled, causing all of us to take a few paces back. “You have not even a
brain
cell of the mess you are so willingly
DIGGING
yourselves into…if these three don’t die,” he spoke, as he so languidly slipped down the stone steps again. His eyes quickly rested on Tarmo, whose misty eyes began to glow.

“
My dear boy, do not even bother.
That
future is unpredictable, yet imminent. Fire will fall and the Earth will fade. I am telling you, if you knew what I meant – you’d permit them to die.”

“
They’re completely innocent!” Tarmo and Jordan then stepped up.

“
Innocence doesn’t justify the forthcoming future. I kill, yes. But there is ALWAYS A REASON! I’m not here for any of you except them!” he spoke viciously, his dark eyes fixed on us and saliva hungrily dripping from his mouth as he shouted. My heart began to thunder in my chest. “So you all might as well return to your homes and leave me my prize!”

“
You’ll have to go through us if you want them!” Mychaela spoke, joining the others in front of us. Trailian’s playful smile receded as he saw Mychaela, his eyes squinting as he examined the princess.

“
And
who
…might
you
be?” he asked, his eyes completely narrowed as he tried to figure her out.

“
None of your concern.
You’re not touching them
!” Trailian exhaled deeply and rested on the podium, tapping his nails against his teeth.

“
You don’t want help? Fine,” he snarled underneath his breath. He simply looked towards the distant Grinners.

“
End them,” he spoke. From afar, all the way at the back, the Grinners took off in flight. What were we to do now? Aemilia took in a long deep breath and blew at the wings of the Grinners. They were instantly clipped together and they fell with thuds. Jordan rushed to them with all the speed she could muster and let out her fury against them, swift and exceedingly fast. Mychaela quickly joined in, using her acrobatic and offensive combat skills like a deadly weapon whilst Aemilia fought alongside her.