"They're going to war with them?"
"The werewolves have laid low for thousands of years, but they're strong. Their power is ancient, more ancient that the vampires and it's rising again. Pete Young is meant to bring them together. They don't want to replace vampires, but they want to usurp them. And this guy is the equivalent of your vampire to their species."
A part of me was proud of Emily. "But what does that have to do with me?"
"She called him. He was going to her, fast. The second he got there he would've felt your power and tried to drain you from it. He wouldn't have been able to stop himself."
"Vampires can't sense my power. Why could he?" Pippa hadn't sensed my powers.
Saren sighed in frustration and paced up and down the alley. She was tense, ready for a fight. "We should be moving and not talking. He probably sensed your trail and could be coming after us."
"Stop!" I held onto her shoulders and made her stand still. "He's just a werewolf, right? Right?"
Saren shook her head. "He's not just a werewolf. He's got power, magic in him. He was created using the essence of the Immortal thread from a dead Immortal."
"Talia?"
"Her mother. The wolves took her mother after Lucan and Lucas had left her. They took the essence of the thread that was still in her body with magic."
I had no idea how to figure this all out. "What, huh?"
She rolled her eyes and sighed in disgust. "It's like a boat that makes waves in the water. They caught the waves that remained after the boat had left. Does that make sense to your little human brain?"
"Hey! Back off, fiery witch from hell! You think I like this? You think I like running from magical beings?" I snapped at her and then ran a hand through my hair. She wasn't the only one on edge. "You said that my friends would've died if we hadn't left. Why? What would've happened?"
"When he tried to drain you, you would've defended yourself. You still don't know your powers. Your reaction would have been stronger than you wanted and would have not only killed him, but your friends too. I stopped it from happening. I stopped him from figuring out who you are, at least until we can figure out how to blanket your powers to him."
"Oh! So I can go back?" At her dark look, I added, "Sometime?"
Saren rolled her eyes. They looked like sparklers waving in the air. Then she stalked off with her leather-clad legs rubbing against each other.
I took in the sight of her black hair flowing behind her, sleek and shiny with her blue leather outfit. "You look like a superhero right now. Did you go for that on purpose?"
She sighed in disgust. The blue leather transformed into a black-colored outfit. The fabric was loose and seemed to flow behind her, billowing in the wind. She kept going.
"Can I do that? Can you show me how to do that?"
She barked over her shoulder, "We have work to do."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Not to be a nag, but where are we going?" I followed behind Saren as we walked down another set of streets. We'd been walking in circles for the last hour. I wasn't sure if she was aware of the attention she was attracting dressed like a rich person in the back streets that accumulated the back street type of person. A few homeless. A few drunks. More than a few illegal activities were going on around us.
Saren kept trudging around and cursed underneath her breath.
She whipped back to me now. "What do you think I'm doing? I'm mixing your scent with all these other things. He's good. He's going to be able to pick your scent out of all these places, but I want him confused."
"I get that, but where are we going? Shouldn't we go?"
She rolled her eyes. "You are so human, it annoys." Then she grabbed my hand and we were whisked into another teleport. When we stopped, I looked around and saw only cement floors. There were no windows, just open areas in brick walls. A tree had grown in the corner of our room with vines that climbed up the wall and onto the ceiling. A few flowers intermingled among the vines.
"Where are we? Is this some magical place?"
"It's an abandoned castle, used by a coven that was killed off in the early 1800s." Saren left for another room.
I followed, wide eyed. "Castle? Are you serious? I didn't think we had castles in America."
She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. "We're not in America anymore."
My eyes went even wider. "What?"
Then she kept going, down some steps that looked like they had been put together with brick and cement by hand.
"Where are we?"
"It doesn't matter." She strode through another opening and then paused before an altar. A moment later, she lit candles on it. A banner hung from it with a sign that looked like a hand surrounded with weaving loops of rope. A tiny blade of grass grew out of the middle of the hand.
"What does that mean?"
Saren stopped and looked where I pointed. The hand seemed to turn till it was pointed at me. It looked like it was stretched for my hand to take it in a hold. Her voice was quiet. "It's the sign of the Immortal."
"The sign of me?"
"No. It's the sign of its creator, the true essence of the Immortal, what created it from the thread."
I swallowed. "You told me before not to talk to Blue. Then before that, I was told that Jacith wasn't the real creator. The vampires all think he is. They think he's some super powerful. I don't know, but Roane told me before that Jacith created the Immortal. What's the real story?"
Saren watched me for a moment and then the air circled around her. It picked up speed and her eyes gleamed. Dust picked up from her feet and moved upwards. It covered her entire body until I couldn't see her through it. Then it stopped and everything fell back in place.
Saren didn't look like Saren anymore. The black hair was gone. The fire eyes had been replaced with soft almond ones. The black outfit was now a white robe wrapped around her body. Her hair was a golden wheat color, braided in crowns on top of her head. She smiled and I knew then this was not Saren.
"My name is Sireenia. I am a sister to Saren and Stepianhas, your last guide."
"Are you my new guide?" I wasn't sure I'd miss Saren.
She smiled again. It was a tender look. "No, but I will help you along the way. Saren is your guide for a reason. She will fight when you are unable to. No one will harm you and many will try. She is here to help you embrace your powers because you are very powerful, but you need to become your powers."
"Who is Jacith? How is my old sponsor involved?"
"You are ready for some answers. We can tell that you know more than you think." She gestured to the side where a chair carved in rock appeared. Another was beside it and we both sat in them. Sireenia folded her hands in her lap. All her movements were graceful. "Your empathic sponsor was assigned to you for a reason. She came from a long line of witches that worshiped their original sorcerer Jacith. Her attributes matched yours. You needed someone who was motherly, but aloof. She was that, but she also had a sense of purpose that you respected. She had humor that met yours. She was picked for you and her assignment was to bring you to Jacith when the thread went into you."
My eyes were wide and my soul felt like it had a hole in it. It was gaping open. Everything she said was true.
Sireenia had been watching me and then took my hand. I felt her calm enter me and the peace soothed over everything, all my agitation, panic, and even seemed to lick other wounds inside of me.
"You're very beautiful." She held my eyes. "They've told me of your will, your spirit, but they haven't shared your looks. Do you know how beautiful you are?"
I looked away. Then she squeezed my hand and I looked back.
"You're not normally bashful. Why are you now? You know you're attractive."
I had no idea. "You're so direct. No one's told me like that." I knew I wasn't ugly, but I never thought about my looks. I wasn't known for them. I was the carefree, funny one.
"Oh. Maybe they should've." Then she winked and sat back. "But you're right. We'r
e not here about your looks. I'm here because you wanted to learn about Jacith and Saren didn't want to be the one to tell you. She wanted me to explain it to you so here we go."
My fingers dug into the armrests of my chair and I braced for what I was about to hear.
Sireenia looked at me warmly. "Jacith used to be Jacob Withering. It's an old name with old roots and he wanted a new one. He didn't want ties to where he came from so he changed it to Jacith when he became a vampire. He lived and ruled under the normal hierarchy that each vampire does, with their Family that might be allied with other Families and so forth. This was all fine until Jacith met a witch one day. He fed from her and she turned him human. Jacith was fascinated by this. He loved the power it gave him and he had her turn himself back into a vampire.
This began his long fall into sorcery and dark magic, but he kept his darkness from his vampire Family. They thought he used his magic for good, but he didn't. Even then his Family strove to protect the humans; they felt it would restore their own humanity so they wouldn't forget their true beginnings. They knew if they did forget it would only be a matter of time before all was lost. Madness and chaos would ensue. The slayers were created for this reason and then the decree occurred and hunters now hunt their own. Jacith wanted to win favor with the ruling Queen. He wanted to use her power for himself. He could use it for more magic so he created the Immortal prophecy.
He had hoped the legend of the Immortal, which would balance all powers in the universe, would make her happy. It did. She fell in love with him and he's slowly been draining her of all her power. He only created the thread of the Immortal, which vampires could get power from. He thought this was the Immortal."
There was so much I didn't understand, but I asked the one question that burned in my mind. "Is he still alive?"
She smiled, saddened. "He is and he is protected still by the Romah Family, the most powerful of all vampire Families. The Roane family is second to them, but they protect the Romah Family. They are their guardians. It's an alliance that has never been broken. Your vampire is hoping to destroy that alliance, but it'll create a divide instead. The Romah and Roane Family will bind together against him and they'll never see reason. They believe to this day that Jacith is a good sorcerer. That he created the Immortal for balance and equality."
"Why does the thread only go from human to human?"
"The Romah Family felt humans were sacred so Jacith made the thread to remain solely in humans. If a vampire did take on the thread inside of them, it would jump to the first human they encountered. He didn't inform the Queen that once the vampire fed from an Immortal, that vampire would have enormous power. They found this out after the first human and then protected the Immortal from that day forward. Of course, Jacith said that he hadn't known it would do that. After a hundred thousand years, they entrusted the Immortal to be defended by the Roane Family, which is why Lucas, their best hunter, became Talia's protector."
But I was the Immortal. I didn't have the thread. Jacith didn't intend for a true Immortal to ever come. The first guide had told me that.
She held my hand and squeezed it. "Jacith thought that a human with the mere thread of the Immortal would be the Immortal. He never realized the thread would take a life of its own and become an actual entity. That is what you are. You have been infused with the essence of life; this is why you make the undead alive. You take away their death."
I shook my head. There was so much information. I couldn't understand all of it. Then Sireenia whispered, "You will in time. You will know all. You will understand all."
"Why are you telling me this now?"
Her hand cupped my cheek. "You are so beautiful. You need to know this because Jacith is going to be your enemy. He is going to try and take the Immortal out of you. He will try to destroy it all."
"Why?" I felt gutted.
"Because you are not what he created. He cannot control you. He cannot control us. And he will fear you once the Romah and Roane Elders realize what you really are. "
"What do I do then?"
"You will fight him. You were created to destroy him. We were created to help you. He is too powerful for the world to have. He is the unbalance, not you."
When she put it like that, I wanted to crap my pants. "I'm not ready for that! I'm not ready for him! What if he comes tomorrow? What if he already knows? What am I going to do?"
My heart started to race and everything swirled around me. I tried concentrating on Sireenia, but she looked as if she were swimming around me. She flailed her arms at me. When I asked what was happening to me, my voice sounded in the distance and a baritone tone had taken root in my throat. Then my body felt like it was falling backwards…
I heard Saren in the distance, "Snap her out of it, Sire. We need her with us, not in the Orca."
"If she goes, then Stepianhas will calm her down."
A burst of energy zapped me. I felt like my insides had exploded, but I jerked upright from the chair, gasping and pounding my chest. My heart had stopped. When I didn't hear the constant beat again, I looked up, terrified. "What—what—what just happened?" I fell off my chair and scrambled to my feet. I pounded on my chest. "My heart stopped. My heart isn't beating. I don't—"
They stood before me. Sireenia had her hands folded in front of her. Saren had her hands on her hips. Then she snapped, "You're immortal. You're not going to die. Ever. Your heart is the least of your problems right now."
"Wha—but—my heart!" I gasped with each word. They didn't understand. They weren't human anymore. "I need to be normal. I need my heart to beat!"
They glanced at each other and a look was shared between them.
"Stop that! Stop looking at each other about me. Do something. You're all magical things. Make my heart beat again. Please." I nearly sobbed the last word. It felt like my world had changed. It was irreversible. Everything shifted in that moment and I didn't want it to happen. I didn't want to fight this guy. I didn't want to have to deal with the fact that my heart didn't beat like Emily's, Brown's, or Pippa's.
Then Saren stepped forward. She spoke with authority, "You're doing this to yourself. You stopped your heart. Only you make it start again. Calm down. CALM!"
Everything stopped.
I stopped and I felt my body jerk upright. I stood at my highest height.
She took my shoulders then in her hands and looked me straight in the eyes. Her fire was mesmerizing. "You stopped it. You can make it start." Then she kept repeating that until I found myself mouthing the words with her. After a few minutes, I felt my heart start again.
Thump…thump…thump
"It's okay!" I exclaimed. "I'm okay. I'm going to be okay." But I wasn't. I had so much more to do and I wanted to cry. I wanted to bury my head in a pillow and make everything go away.
"I think that's enough for sharing time." Saren released my shoulders and sat in my vacant chair. She threw a blue-leathered leg over the side and pursed her lips.
"Hey, you changed your outfit back."
She shrugged. "It's my favorite. I don't care what you think."
"Oh."
Sireenia watched me during our exchange and glided forward now. "Are you okay, Davy?"
I jerked my shoulders in a casual shrug. I could be casual about this. They were. I could be one of them. Then I broke. "No! No, I'm not!"
She sighed.
Saren waved her away. "She'll be fine. She's a fighter. Besides, I have to work with her now."
"Are you sure that's a good idea? She seems fragile right now." Sireenia bit her lip as she watched me.
"She's fine. Go. Brood up something so we can disguise her power to that wolf. The sooner we can get her back, the better."
"Okay." But Sireenia glanced at me over her shoulder as she left.
"Catch!" Saren called out to me as I looked back at her. Something slammed into me and I flew against the wall.
I glared at her. "What was that about?"
She smirked and gestu
red at me. "Look at yourself."
I did. I was flat against the wall in mid-air. My mouth fell open. "Are you doing that?"
"You caught yourself. I bet you didn't dent the wall."
I let my body glide downwards. I asked as my feet touched the floor, "Was I supposed to?"
"Someone normal would've gone through three buildings. You barely touched the first wall. You're good, better than you think." Then she reared back to throw her power again. This time I saw it coming.