The Ballad of Aramei (44 page)

“Where is my father?” I say.

Nataša licks the dryness from her lips in a slow, concentrating motion, never taking her eyes off me.

“Not here,
obviously
,” she mocks without having to let it show in her face; maybe just a little in the depths of her piercing dark eyes.

Something urgent is digging away at the back of my brain and then I realize…it’s Adria.

Thrown completely off balance and my game, I stagger backward, knocking over the small console table Beverlee used to display family portraits; the frames crash onto the floor, the glass shattering.

“He’s here! Isaac, he’s—.”
Her voice cuts off in my head.

My heart feels like it’s about to explode! The people in the town. Beverlee and Carl. Adria, who is over an hour away….

“I take it you know where he is,” Nataša says so coldly that I react in a flash, shifting into my mediate form and lunging for her.

All I see is furniture and picture frames and sheetrock wall zip past my line of sight so fast that it all blends into a seamless streak of color. Nataša’s back hits the fireplace mantle and the stone it’s made up with crumbles into a thousand pieces. The walls of the house shake and rumble. A white-hot pain spreads across my face and over the back of my head when Nataša jerks back and bashes her head into my face. I land in the center of the glass-top coffee-table; my legs and arms splayed, hanging over the top of the wooden frame the glass had been held in by. Nataša is on top of me before I can jump out; her black eyes swirling like a violent storm; her long, black razor-sharp claws cutting pieces of flesh from my face as she slashes at me over and over and over. I do the only thing I can do and pay her back with a violent knock to her skull with my forehead and it’s just enough time to stun her out of her advantage. She rises up from me and in that split second, I manage to pull back both of my knees toward me and plunge my feet outward into her chest. Her body flies across the room, but she catches herself before hitting the wall and rolls once back into a crouched position.

Carl and Beverlee are trying to crawl across the carpeted floor, Beverlee practically dragging Carl by his arm because he can’t move his own legs.

I defy gravity and leap up, latching onto the high ceiling to get out of Nataša’s way when I notice her barreling towards me. The second my hands and knees hit the ceiling, Xavier’s figure blurs right past underneath me and he spears his mother and they’re both sent crashing into the giant television. A bright spark flashes and a searing
pop
and fizzle hisses through the room as the screen is destroyed by their bodies.

I fall from the ceiling perfectly on my feet right in front of Beverlee and Carl; Beverlee yelps and cowers lower against the floor.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I say and just as I go to grab them both from the floor, the other six beasts, also in their mediate forms, rush me from all sides.

I lose my grip on Beverlee’s hand and see her face fall away from me as my body is hurled through the den; a crunching sound reverberates from my ribs and into my head as one foot slams into my side. And while Xavier fights his mother, I see that I’m left to fight six on my own. Blood slips into the corners of my mouth, my arms are prickled by shards of glass littered all around me from no telling what all has been broken in the struggle. As the brooding figures advance on me, I faintly hear the sounds of the other beasts in the town rise into a frenzy.

I spring and bound across the room straight for the ones coming at me and I take two down. I sit straddled on top of one, slashing away at his face and neck and chest much like Nataša had done to me just moments ago, until I’m dragged off him by the back of my shirt.

No…I can’t shift here.

I’m trying everything in my power to keep my beast inside, because I have to. I can’t become what I am here because I could very easily mistake Beverlee and Carl for the enemy in that violent, destructive, blood-thirsty form. I feel my ribs cracking as I’m dragged across the room, the pain in my skull starts at a tiny point right between my eyes and is beginning to spread towards the back of my head and widen as if a fissure is splitting right down the center of my skull.

I scream out in pain, trying to hold it back; not the pain, but my beast.

There’s a
crash
nearby and it jolts me momentarily back into my senses, making me more alert than crazed and on the verge of changing. I see Beverlee’s bare feet slipping around the side of the couch and Carl’s limp, heavy legs being dragged with her.

But the crash, I realize, came from the large bay window overlooking the front yard. Two familiar figures stand inside the den while two more burst through the front door, knocking it clean off its hinges.

It’s Viktor and Ashe, the two we shackled with them back at our house and a handful of others I’ve never seen before.

Viktor races over to me with burning anger and intensity in his eyes. I prepare for impact, to be in battle with my father’s greatest enemy, but he stops just inches from my face. His mouth is twisted into an unbreakable scowl; his black eyes bear down on me as if they contain all of the world’s hatred in their depths. “You remember, Isaac Mayfair, when you see my face again it won’t be to help you.” I only allow him to get away with grabbing my shirt and pulling my face towards his because I’m confused by what he’s saying. I feel his hot breath on my skin; so rank and deadly. “I want the Sovereign dethroned,” he goes on like the madman he knows he is, his voice low and harsh, like the most extreme sort of whisper.

And as he slowly leans away and releases my shirt, I understand why he’s here: he feels he has a better chance at Sovereignty defeating me than my father. He’s not here to help me; he’s here to help himself.

I accept it and move quickly to the side as he and Ashe and the others with him clash with the six who were about to tear me a new one. I race through the den and into the back room where I saw Beverlee finally manage to drag Carl. I scoop them up, one in each arm and propel myself through the room and to the back door, bursting through the screen and out into the night. Beverlee screams against me even though I’m trying to help her and I feel the dead weight of Carl’s paralyzed legs swinging all around me since he has no control over their movement. I run as fast as my not-so-human legs will take me until I make it far away from the werewolves scattered and fighting throughout the town.

I set Beverlee and Carl down behind an abandoned building that smells like water damage and old air. With my bare hand, I rip the rusted padlock from the door and the door creaks open.

“Get inside and hide,” I say quickly, “don’t come out.”

Beverlee, still in shock and staring up at me from the ground wide-eyed, finally understands and goes to help Carl inside.

I leave them there and watch the lights of traffic and stars and houses flash by me as I speed toward Sugarloaf Mountain. I’m fastest in my mediate form and know that if I have any chance of getting there in time, that this is the only way I’ll make it.

But already I feel my heart breaking because I can’t hear Adria or feel her emotions. She has been blocked from me and I know….I know that in a time like this she would never do it on purpose….

HARRY

33

“YOU COULDN’T
WHAT
, CAMILLA?!” Daisy screams, but I know she already knows what Camilla is having a hard time getting out. We all know it. Daisy roars at her, “DOES FATHER KNOW?”

Camilla nods furiously, tears shooting continuously from the corners of her eyes. “I-I tried to keep him out of my head, but I couldn’t! I couldn’t concentrate; his link is too strong for me.”

Daisy told me when we were alone in our room one night that Camilla was the weakest of them all when it came to controlling and safeguarding her thoughts. It was why she had always sought other means of mental and emotional discipline by practicing Yoga and all sorts of other human activities.

I start to lower my head in defeat, until I think better of it and try to shape up, suck it down and figure out what I’m going to do.

I start to pace.

“Oh you can’t be serious!” Rachel cries out, popping completely off of the table like a snapped rubber band.

“WHERE IS HE, CAMILLA?” Daisy shakes her body violently by the shoulders.

Camilla sobs even louder, her cries shuddering out of her pathetically. When Daisy sees how freaked-out Camilla is, she pulls her toward her chest and holds her there, cradling the back of her head. “We’ll figure it out, Cam, don’t worry.”

Adria is the opposite of Camilla. Camilla’s hysterical display nearly made me forget that Adria was even in the room. She stands off to the side, staring down at the floor and no visible part of her body is moving.

I think she’s in a sort of shock and Alex rushes over to her, wrapping her arms around her.

Daisy and I look at each other.

“What do we do?”
Daisy says to me telepathically as Camilla sobs into her shirt.

I was going to ask her the same thing.

And as is if God, or whoever it is up there watching all of this unfold, hates us, Shannon and Elizabeth burst through the entrance, screaming: “THEY’RE COMING! FATHER’S HERE! THEY’RE COMING!”

I can’t tell which of them said what, maybe they both said it at the same time, I don’t know.

Adria finally looks up.

“I’ll face him,” Adria says suddenly, scared but as calmly as I’ve ever heard her say anything. “I know he’ll kill me, but we all know I’m the one he’s here for and I’m not afraid to face him for what I did.”

“SHUT
UP
!” Alex roars in Adria’s face; clearly she’s petrified of Adria getting killed. “Screw that! Don’t pull that dumb movie hero drama bullshit!” She tries to grab Adria, but Adria pushes her away.

“What do we do now?” Shannon screams at the exit; she’s bouncing around nervously like she’s trying to keep from peeing on herself.

“We fight him,” Daisy says and her gaze falls solemnly on me.

“You know what Isaac said, Harry,”
she says in my mind,
“Don’t let Adria out of this cave. Don’t let her shift.”

“I’m not letting you fight him without me,”
I say.

“Harry…you have to stay in here with her. PROMISE ME!”

I grit my teeth and hold back my dispute.

I’ll think of something….

Daisy looks around at everyone and they all know what to do. In a blaze of movement, they burst through the exit and head down the long, narrow tunnel that leads outside; the sound of their bones snapping and teeth gnashing and screams of pain ricochets off the cave walls and fills my ears with terror.

I stop Adria before she gets around the stone table.

I shake my head carefully, regretfully. “I can’t let you go. I’m sorry.”

“MOVE OUT OF MY WAY, HARRY!” She goes to push past me, but I grab her by the arm and swing her body around crushing her back into my chest and I hold her here.

I feel her start to shift under the weight of my arms.

“Calm…,” I whisper into her ear. “Calm, Adria.”

“NO! DON’T DO THIS!”

My lips move along the arch of her ear and softly I shut my eyes to better delve deeply into her mind. “Just calm down,” I say, letting each word roll seductively off of my tongue and into her mind, letting my power to dictate her emotions overwhelm her.

“
HE’S HERE, ISAAC, HE’S
—HARRY…please….”

And she’s practically comatose, except that her eyes are wide open and she stares up at me with a drunken look on her face. I lift Adria into my arms and run with her through the tunnel behind me, which snakes around and deeper into the mountain, far past the room where Trajan once hid Aramei.

And I hide Adria there, in the pitch darkness of the cave, behind a recess in the stone just spacious enough to fit her body.

I run fast back toward the main room and dash past it, covering as much tunnel ground as I can with my long longs and I don’t stop until I make it out of the mouth of the cave and into the early morning air. The sun is barely rising over the top of the mountain, bathing the gray morning in pale light. I smell smoke. I inhale deeply to catch the scent and practically choke on it, only now realizing how thickly it moves through the forest. As far as I can see through the dense trees, the smoke leaves a heavy blanket of gray lingering in the air. I look up to see the first searing flame crawling up the trees on the hillside.

They’re setting the forest on fire. They’re trying to smoke Adria out!

A series of thunderous howls rips through the atmosphere and I take off running toward the sound. Trees and bushes whip by, snapping me on the face as I run. But I don’t stop; I have to get to Daisy and I don’t give a damn that she’ll probably never forgive me for leaving Adria alone.

But Adria will be fine; this is the only thing I’m sure of. At least until Isaac can get here and I know he’s coming because I saw him in Adria’s mind just before her link to him was severed. She can’t hold a mind link when her thoughts and emotions are being manipulated and controlled. But I don’t know how long I’ll be able to sway her…or how long I’ll be able to do everything else I’m about to do.

I run right through a blazing flame ten feet high devouring the landscape. The flames are spreading outward around me in a horseshoe shape. I see Daisy and her sisters out ahead, not too far off in the distance, surrounded by dozens of other Black Beasts. And there are more…at least eighty or ninety, appearing over the top of a ridge and from the tree-filled hills and some even from the trees. My head is spinning with indecision! I know Daisy’s beast form to an extent and can pick her out of the crowd, but I can’t tell the others apart. I can’t tell us from the enemy.

A forceful roar tears through the air. And then another. And another, until all of the Black Beasts are standing tall with their heavily-muscled arms pulled back and their teeth-gnashing heads are pointed upward toward the sky. Their howls send chills all over my body.