A Trail of Echoes

  I stared out toward the ocean, past the boundary, until my eyes rested on the five gray hunter ships.

  Now that it was amply clear that Ben could not turn back into a human, we needed to satiate him. Even with River standing next to him, diffusing the smell of human blood, there was only so long he could starve himself of blood before even her scent would not be enough to stop him from going on a rampage.

  I shuddered, knowing my son’s tendencies so well. I had been like him, albeit not such an extreme case. Although I despised it, even I had been able to drink animal blood if I forced myself.

  As I continued to stare out at those gray ships, I knew that Sofia would not approve of what I was about to do. But right now, I couldn’t bring myself to care. I had to do what was best for our son.

  Besides, these hunters’ presence was still annoying the living daylights out of me. I might’ve promised not to unleash an all-out war on them, but there was at least something I could do to take out my frustration.

  But first, I needed to get help.

  * * *

  About ten minutes later, I found myself standing outside the mountain cabin of Shayla, a short witch with large eyes and a rounded face. She stood in her doorway, eyeing me curiously.

  “What brings King Derek to my cabin?” she asked.

  “I need help with something.” Normally, I would have asked Corrine or Ibrahim first, but they were too busy with other matters now. “Magic us both to the Port and I’ll explain,” I said, before she could ask further questions.

  She did as I requested, and as we stood at the end of the jetty, staring out toward the hunters’ ships, I explained my plan to her. She looked doubtful, but agreed to go along with it.

  After casting an invisibility spell over us, she transported us both outside of the boundary and made us hover above the water next to the ship that was furthest away from our island.

  I peered through the windows near the base of the vessel as she moved us from room to room. I was looking for a kitchen, or somewhere a fire could feasibly be started…

  I found what I was looking for as we reached the sixth window along. A kitchen area, filled with steel tables. One large gas hob was in the center of the room, atop which were four steaming pots. There was nobody inside.

  Shayla and I couldn’t make the mistake of going on board again, lest we trigger another alarm, but having the witch here with me meant that we could do a lot from outside.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Shayla whispered.

  “If you’re looking at the stove, then I think so,” I said.

  “Okay…” Shayla breathed.

  A moment later, Shayla had used her magic to cause the sound of an explosion. Then, manipulating the fire beneath one of the pots, she made it blaze and begin rising upward toward the ceiling. It spread rapidly throughout the room.

  The fire alarm went off.

  A few moments later, a man dressed in black came hurrying in with a fire extinguisher. As soon as he neared the flames, Shayla filled the room with a thick smog that would impair any surveillance cameras’ lenses.

  The rest of the task was fairly simple. Shayla silenced the hunter with a spell, and then vanished him out of the burning room, making him reappear outside beside us, invisible.

  She transported the three of us quickly to The Shade, and as we arrived back on the jetty, she removed the invisibility spell. I gripped the hunter by the neck and forced him to the ground.

  Although the conscience that Sofia had instilled in me was disapproving of what I was about to do, in that moment, it was the old Derek Novak that took over. The Derek Novak that was numb to loss of life. The Derek Novak that struck fear in every hunter’s heart.

  Chapter 31: Ben

  In between the pangs of unbearable hunger ripping at me, the revelation echoed in my mind over and over again:

  I can’t turn back into a human. I am stuck as a vampire.

  I grimaced at the bitter irony of it all. I’d wanted so badly for the cure to work so that I would stop craving humans. Now that I had taken the cure, I just found myself landed with ten times the desire to kill.

  I could hardly look at River. I didn’t want to see the disappointment in her face. We had both been hoping so hard that this would work, that I would no longer need to rely on smothering her twenty-four hours a day. I hated to chain her to me like this, and I hated to be a burden.

  Meeting her eyes was painful. I felt ashamed of what I was.

  Although she’d stood by me, she knew what happened when she left my side. She had witnessed me slay three innocent humans back in the Egyptian guesthouse. She knew that I would do the same again the moment I got the chance.

  A hushed silence filled the room after my father stepped out. I had no idea where he was going to get human blood from. I didn’t want to think about it. I just needed the blood. And I needed it now.

  Even River’s presence was beginning to lose its effect on my craving. Each moment that passed, the smell of humans on the island was stronger in my nostrils. More tantalizing. More delicious.

  When my father finally returned, he was accompanied by Xavier. My father held a steel bucket in one hand, containing blood that I could sense was warm even without touching it. I leapt from the bed and practically grabbed it from him. I drank directly from the bucket, hardly stopping to draw a breath as I swallowed gulp after gulp. I tried not to waste a drop, but I was shaking from thirst. Some ended up streaming down the sides of my mouth and onto my chest.

  It felt like I was pouring water over a fire. By the time I finished, I felt calmer.

  Sitting back on the bed, I looked over at Xavier. He gave me a weak smile, even as his eyes were filled with concern.

  I wished I could’ve seen my aunt too, but I was glad they hadn’t entered with her. She was a pregnant human. If I had done anything to harm her, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.

  The room fell silent again, all of us apparently lost for words. But all of us, I was sure, were wondering the same thing:

  Where do we go from here?

  Chapter 32: River

  I was still recovering from the shock of Ben’s failed turning. He and everyone else had seemed so confident that it would work, and after seeing the amount of immune blood, which was supposed to be the key to making the cure work, I’d also been certain that he would step out as a human.

  The plans we had made were crushed into dust. Now I didn’t even know if I dared to leave the island, leaving him stranded with his cravings. I supposed I could leave him my blood, but I had already seen that did not always work.

  I was sure we were all relieved when Ibrahim finally broke the silence.

  “Obviously we have a lot to reconsider… In the meantime, why don’t Corrine and I look at those tattoos you’ve got?”

  I rolled up my sleeve, baring my skin for Ibrahim to look at, while Corrine examined Ben’s arm.

  At first I’d been scared to see Corrine so close to Ben. I’d thought that he might crave her blood too, but even I could sense that their blood was different to a human’s. It was more bitter, and I could understand why it was not appealing to a vampire. At least not the way a human’s was.

  Now that we had been stumped in our plan, I was grateful for the change of subject before we returned to the inevitable. We needed something to break the tension.

  Ibrahim and Corrine looked at Ben’s and my brands. Their expressions were almost identical—deep-set frowns as they looked closely at the etchings. And then something flickered in the witch’s eyes all of a sudden. Alarm. She seemed to have realized something that even the warlock hadn’t yet.

  He eyed her, raising a brow. “What? What do you see?”

  She didn’t reply as she left Ben and moved toward me, reaching for my arm and staring at the tattoo. As she examined my brand, the same alarmed look was in her eyes.

  My breathing quickened as the blood drained from her face.

  “What???
? several of us asked at once.

  Corrine just bit her lip. And when she finally did raise her face to make eye contact, there was an unmistakable look of terror in her eyes.

  She uttered only two words:

  “Oh, dear.”

  Chapter 33: Ben

  The witch’s look of fright and her refusal to give us even the slightest of explanations was eating away at my nerves. No matter how much we all pressed her, she refused to give us an answer.

  “Not until I’m certain,” she said, her hands trembling slightly.

  “And when will you be certain?” I asked, no longer able to hide the frustration in my voice.

  She didn’t reply to my question as she walked toward the door. She just said, “Both of you stay in this room until I return.”

  She slammed the door shut, and we all stared at each other.

  As per Corrine’s order, we remained in that room for the rest of the day. When she still had not returned by the evening, even Ibrahim looked perplexed.

  “River and I should return to the submarine for the night,” I said. “I shouldn’t sleep on the island.”

  Ibrahim shook his head. Then he glanced at my parents, who were still waiting with us in the room. “Derek, Sofia, I suggest that you two return to your penthouse for the night. I will stay here with River and your son. Corrine told them to wait here, and they should obey her. Even I’m not sure what that woman is thinking, but I know Corrine. When she gets into a mood like this, she should be listened to.”

  Ibrahim shot me a look as I was about to object again to staying on the island. “I will sit in that chair by the door and make sure both of you remain here. So you need not fear going on a rampage in the middle of the night. I will put a curse on you if I have to, but you will be all right so long as I’m watching you.”

  “All night?” I asked.

  “All night,” Ibrahim replied.

  My parents bid us good night, albeit reluctantly, and left the room.

  Ibrahim dragged an armchair over to the door. Since this room was windowless, there was no way I could exit without him knowing. Although the bed I was lying on was narrow, I moved up until my back was against the wall, so River could lie sideways next to me. It still pained me just to look at her. Once she had positioned herself on the bed, she reached up to touch my face, brushing my cheek with her fingers.

  “We will figure something out, Ben,” she said, even as I could tell that she held little conviction in her words. “I know we will.”

  I couldn’t find it in myself to respond. I just nodded stiffly.

  She wrapped her arm around me, holding me firmly, and then rested her head against my chest. She closed her eyes. Judging by her breathing, it took a long time for her to fall asleep, but finally her grip around me loosened a little and she nodded off. I remained holding her as I stayed awake deep into the night.

  I had no chance in hell of sleeping. I just fixed my eyes on the clock in the corner of the room, watching the hours pass, my vision slightly unfocused as my mind was elsewhere, reliving the previous day’s events.

  I replayed every moment in that Pit back in my mind, every torturous moment, as if in doing so I might discover some detail that could tell me why I was trapped as this beast. As 2am struck, I sensed that even Ibrahim had fallen asleep.

  My mind drifted unwillingly toward all the humans who would be tucked up in their beds tonight in the Vale. How easy it would be to smash through their windows and drink to my heart’s content. I shook myself, forcing myself out of the ghastly fantasy.

  Almost the moment I did, noises of The Oasis surrounded me, occupying my hearing so fully I was aware of no other sound. It had been a while since those noises had been accompanied by that strange voice, but now that also echoed around my head again.

  The voice started softly, as it often did, then grew louder and louder, until it was hard to believe that the whole room was not ringing with the sound.

  “Come back, Benjamin Novak. We know who you are, and we know what you want.”

  Usually the two lines were repeated one after the other, as if they were a verse. But this night, after the first echo, the voice began repeating only the last line, as if the first line had been forgotten.

  “We know who you are, and we know what you want…”

  Over and over again until I began to feel nauseous from the words.

  Just as I was about to groan in frustration, something else arrested me.

  While I was used to a wall of sounds closing down around me, I’d never had my vision hijacked.

  This night, I did.

  The room surrounding me disappeared and was replaced with a scene so strange, I wondered if I had indeed finally fallen asleep. But I didn’t feel like I was sleeping. No. Something, or someone, was imparting a vision…

  A cloaked figure stood in the center of a veranda surrounded by giant broad-leafed trees and sheltered by low-hanging branches. Her long curly hair and the way her body curved betrayed her to be a woman, though she was anything but human. A set of wings were folded beneath her cloak and as she turned her face to the side, she revealed a black beak with a razor-sharp edge where her nose and mouth should’ve been. And instead of feet, she possessed talons.

  She was a Hawk.

  She stood looking down upon a wooden cradle. After watching it for several moments, she stooped down and reached into the crib. When she straightened again, she was carrying a dark-haired infant, wrapped in a blanket and deep in slumber. Then she spread her mighty wings and launched into the sky.

  She rose higher and higher toward the canopy of leaves. Cradling the baby in her arms, she didn’t stop until she had pierced through the leafy roof and burst out into the open sky, where an orange sun had almost set on the horizon.

  Her wings beat heavily, speeding up as she soared over a jungle populated with gargantuan trees.

  Even still, the baby slept.

  Once the sun had bowed to the moon, the woman’s flight had taken her beyond the forested landscape, and she had reached an ocean. There seemed to be a time lapse as the view changed beneath her several times. Although she flew over mostly water, exotic islands, desert terrains and lush valleys also passed beneath her.

  Finally, she let up her speed when the clear sky gave way to thick clouds. She flew right through them, everything blurring as she navigated through the fog. Perhaps hours passed, it was hard to say for certain, but when the clouds got a little thinner and she lowered in altitude, the Hawk and the baby were flying over a landscape unlike any they had passed so far.

  They were looking down upon a vast range of black mountains that stretched out as far as they could see. There was not a hint of vegetation in sight, nor any other life for that matter, just miles upon miles of shades of black and grey. It appeared that they had left the sun behind, yet the sky, which was filled with dark clouds, had an eerie reddish tinge.

  A strong wind swelled up, forcing the woman to battle against it until she touched down on the peak of a mountain. Her talons gripped the rocks as her wings folded behind her back. Her long hair was a tangled mess as she adjusted the baby in her arms. Her eyes fell on a wide crater about ten feet away from where she stood. She moved toward it, and stopped at the very edge.

  Staring down into it, she let out a piercing shriek.

  Then she stepped back and fixed her eyes directly above the crater.

  “I have the child,” she said, her voice low. She remained staring into empty space.

  A breeze blew against her, catching the edge of the baby’s blanket and lifting it right off to unwrap the infant.

  The infant levitated from the arms of the woman and began to float in midair, toward the center of the crater.

  Its small fists clenched and eyes shut tight, still, the infant slept.

  A thin veil of reddish mist manifested, and began to swirl around and around the infant. As it gathered speed, it became denser and denser until the mist turned into thick smoke and envelop
ed the baby completely. The woman watched, her narrow eyes fixed unblinking on the scene unfolding before her.

  As the smoke billowed, gradually, it began to thin again… until there was nothing left but the light reddish mist that had first touched the infant.

  Leaving the center of the black crater, the baby floated back into the woman’s outstretched arms. She looked the child over, then wrapped him again in a blanket.

  “Is that all?” The woman spoke to some invisible force.

  The answer came as a bone-chilling hiss:

  “Take him back to Aviary… His time will come.”

  The vision disappeared as suddenly as it had shrouded me, and I sat bolt upright, almost sending River rolling off the narrow bed and falling to the floor. My chest heaved as I panted, trying to make sense of what I had just seen.

  “Ben?” River whispered, clutching my arm. “Are you okay?”

  I barely took in her words as my hearing was hijacked once again by the strange whispery voice for what would be the last time that night:

  “We know who you are, and we know what you want…”

  Chapter 34: Jeramiah

  Looking up and down the length of the dark island’s shoreline, The Shade was more spectacular than I could have imagined.

  While Amaya and I had been waiting outside the boundary for Benjamin and River’s arrival at The Shade, I had wondered something that I had wondered many times before. Did The Shade truly live up to its hype?

  Keeping the two of us invisible as we hovered over the waves, Amaya had landed us on the back of the submarine just as it entered The Shade’s border. When we arrived inside, any doubts were proven unjustified.

  Amaya transported us to the nearest beach, where I began my tour of the island. I didn’t want to miss any part of it, and so I took my time. My witch companion might have been annoyed at the speed we were traveling if we had been in any other place, but even she appeared enamored by The Shade. I didn’t hear a single complaint out of her, not that she had a right to grumble anyway—she owed me a favor.