Ibrahim’s face was flushed with relief. “Meet our new residents of The Shade.”
Life always finds a way, indeed.
Lawrence
After finally getting through to Ben, I wiped the sweat from my brow and returned to my companions, crouching down beneath the bridge. They looked up at me expectantly as I approached. I nodded.
“Finally reached him,” I murmured.
Then all we could do was wait. It had been a long ride from the mountains, and as soon as we’d reached a town and felt we were a safe enough distance away to stop, we had to figure out how to get some money because the hunter’s phone battery had died by then. I’d ended up pretending to be a beggar. Borrowing one of the bird boys’ scruffy caps, I put it on me and slumped down on the floor outside a twenty-four-hour store. A couple dropped me a few dollars within ten minutes. We were in business.
We’d located a pay phone on a bridge-cum-highway. I had told Benjamin to look for us beneath the bridge because standing on a busy road was asking for trouble. The amount of time I had already been forced to spend up there when using the pay phone had been risky enough.
Ibrahim arrived swiftly, thank heavens. The bird boys eyed him curiously as Ibrahim landed. But far less curiously than Ibrahim eyed them. I frowned at Ibrahim, bewildered, as his jaw hit the floor.
“Oh, my God!” he cried, blinking as though he could hardly believe his eyes. “Y-You you found them! You found them!”
“Sorry?” I found whom exactly?
Ibrahim still looked so shocked, he could hardly string a sentence together.
Clutching my shoulder, he said, “Let’s just get you all back to The Shade!”
Ibrahim magicked to us straight to Meadow Hospital. We arrived in a vaguely familiar hallway. I was sure I had once wheeled down this hallway with Grace chasing after me, worrying that I would strain myself.
Grace.
“How is Grace?” I began to ask, but Ibrahim shook his head.
“You’ll see. Follow me.”
He stopped outside a door and knocked. It was Benjamin who opened it. He displayed exactly the same shock as Ibrahim, though a bit more audibly. His eyes transfixed on the bird boys.
“How? What?” he stammered before beckoning us all inside, even as he continued to stare at the boys.
Gasps swept around the room as we emerged, everybody shooting to their feet. I gazed around at the semi-familiar faces. I was unable to see the bed with everyone standing.
Everybody was so focused on the bird boys that they barely even noticed me back from the dead. Which suited me. I was dying to see Grace. But as I moved toward the bed, it was empty… and then, as the crowd shifted toward the entrance of the room to gather around the boys, my eyes fell on a sight that cut me to the core.
Grace thrashed against some kind of magic semi-transparent bars.
I stared at the creature in horror, for who else could this be but Grace?
She had transformed completely. She had become practically androgynous. Just like the other Bloodless. Her hair and nails were gone. Her beautiful turquoise eyes had turned a gleaming black. I had come too late.
I had failed her.
Even now, I still had not discovered the cure.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but she seemed to grow somewhat excited. She started thrashing harder. But that was probably just because of my blood, drawing so close to her.
I felt torn apart.
“Grace,” I breathed, having no idea if she could understand me in the slightest. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
I knelt on the floor near her, unable to concentrate on the conversation going on behind me. I sat there gazing at her for several minutes before Benjamin called me over.
“Hey, Lawrence. Come here.”
Tearing my eyes away from Grace, I crossed the room to her father.
I didn’t understand why his expression was so light when his daughter was writhing around as a monster in a cage.
“Do you have any idea who these young gentlemen are?” he said, positively beaming. “Who you have just brought to us?”
I glanced over the boys and shrugged. “Only what they’ve told me—which I suspect they’ve also just told you. Right? Specimens, bred in a lab.” Like, I suspect, many other creatures were by the IBSI.
Ben smiled.
“I think you’ve just saved my daughter.”
Lawrence
What? Saved Grace?
As Ben began to explain the significance of these five young men, I could hardly believe him. If what he was saying was true—that an extract from their blood was the missing fifth ingredient of the antidote—then fate had finally smiled upon me.
I was also shocked when Ben told me that Dr. Finnegan had been brought here. She was in some temporary accommodation, but one of the witches left immediately to fetch her.
“Lawrence!” she exclaimed on laying eyes on me. “You’re alive.”
“Yeah,” I replied grimly.
Everybody focused once more on the bird boys. They looked quite overwhelmed by everything. Obviously, they hadn’t had a clue of the significance of their bodies, or the role they had played in the IBSI’s history. In my mother’s history.
But they willingly agreed to give us a blood sample.
Corrine suggested that we all head to the “Sanctuary” to mix up the antidote. We already had the other four ingredients—Ben had kept the test tubes I’d given him back in the Chicago lab safe.
She transported the whole crowd to a large circular room surrounded by shelf upon shelf of potions. There were two large stoves and a long counter that circled the room, upon which lay drying cauldrons and other utensils. A dusty bookshelf towered near the door. A spell room, indeed. I could not remember ever stepping into a witch’s spell room before, though I was quickly distracted from the novelty as Dr. Finnegan and Corrine gathered round the counter.
Dr. Finnegan mixed up doses of the first four ingredients, and then Corrine, taking a syringe, withdrew a tiny amount of blood from Field, who’d been the first to volunteer. Dr. Finnegan said that even the drop that Corrine drew was too much; we could get by with a mere trace. But she doubted there would be any harm in adding the whole drop. We were all completely silent as we watched Dr. Finnegan add the blood and stir the antidote. Once she was satisfied, we returned to Grace’s hospital room.
As everyone gathered around her cage, Grace acted up again. Our blood was agitating her.
Corrine used her magic to stop Grace from moving so much and forced her to lie flat on the floor. Then she removed the magic cage.
Dr. Finnegan held out the tube of antidote directly above Grace’s face and to my surprise, Grace’s mouth opened.
Perhaps she sensed the blood.
Dr. Finnegan tipped the potion into Grace’s mouth. Grace swallowed, not wasting a drop.
Now was the moment of truth.
The tension in the room was tangible. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about where we would stand if this didn’t work.
Grace became still and quiet, but there was no noticeable change in her yet.
“There’s not really any set time for this antidote to work,” Dr. Finnegan said. “Especially since she’s half fae. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out… We just need to wait.”
And so we did.
One hour passed. Then two hours. Still there was no change. Grace lay there on the floor, calmly but still a Bloodless.
Then, after the third hour, something started to happen, causing everyone’s breath to hitch. Grace’s complexion warmed noticeably. The paleness faded, slowly but surely being replaced with a more natural skin tone.
The next noticeable change was her eyes. The blackness began to fade, her irises gradually returning closer and closer to their original turquoise color.
Then other parts of her face started changing. Her lips, which had been shrunken, began to smooth and gain volume. The oddest thing about her facial transformation was her
nose.
It started to jut out, until it attained the length of a normal nose. But it looked bruised. As if someone had punched her hard. Like the bone was broken.
But she was coming back.
She was coming back.
The atmosphere in the room grew more and more electric as the hours went by until finally… Grace was back.
Grace
My nose felt like it had been smashed by a baseball bat. Every part of me hurt. It felt like I had been put through a shredder. My limbs, still very thin, felt weak and hard to move. But at least I felt full control over them now.
I was back.
And, by some miracle, so was Lawrence.
I raised my head… and what a wonderful feeling that was. To finally have my body respond to me, rather than the terrifying virus that had overtaken me.
My mother broke out in tears, and so did my father. They were the first to smother me in hugs and kisses. They didn’t realize how fragile I still was and, both of them being supernaturals, I found their embrace rather overbearing. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I was too relieved to be holding them again.
After they let go of me, the rest of my family stooped down and had their turns. Also Orlando, who kissed me on the cheek.
And then, still standing and gazing over me, half overjoyed, half in disbelief, was Lawrence. Lawrence. Whatever had happened to him, he looked like he had been through the mill himself. His skin was uncharacteristically red, and when he moved his arms, I noticed nasty burns at the back of them.
I wasn’t able to hold my own weight yet. My mother and father helped me stand and sat me on the edge of the bed. Lawrence moved to me. He bent down to my level and, reaching a hand behind my neck, he pressed a tender kiss against my forehead, his breath constricted with emotion.
“You made it, Grace,” he said hoarsely.
I still wasn’t sure how I had made it. I had been losing my mind more and more as the hours passed as a Bloodless, and I hadn’t been able to pay much attention to the conversations that had been going on around me prior to being fed the antidote.
I still had a lot of recovery to make. I had no nails, for a start. And I was still bald. But hopefully those things would grow back with time.
As I gazed up at Lawrence, my eyes felt watery. “How did it happen? How are you alive?”
Lawrence’s eyes broadened. “How do you know I was supposed to be gone?”
I glanced around the room. From the look on everyone’s faces, they seemed to be wondering the same thing.
“I could understand things still,” I said. “I still had thoughts… though I’m not sure how long that would have lasted.” My eyes returned to Lawrence, not having the patience to go into details now about my trauma. “Tell me what happened!”
“It was all a hoax by my father,” he replied. “He was holding me captive and wanted to prevent anyone from The Shade from looking for me.”
There was so much I needed to be filled in on. So much had happened during my “time-out”.
“And h-how did you just cure me?” I looked to my mother and father with this question. “Why didn’t it work before?”
My mother, her eyes still swimming with tears, gestured to the door. Near it stood five young men… most peculiar young men. They looked like a cross between giant birds and vampires. She moved over to one of them and clutched his arm, leading him forward. I gazed up into his bluish-green-eyed face, framed by locks of deep brown hair.
“It’s all thanks to Lawrence finding this young man, Field,” my mother said, her voice choked up, “and Field kindly offering his blood. Field’s blood was the key to curing you.”
As my family and Lawrence explained that Lawrence had been given a faulty ingredient by his father—Bloodless venom, at that—and the journey behind their arrival at the real fifth ingredient, I could hardly believe it.
I wanted to ask more questions, but Corrine broke up the party by saying that I needed to rest. Although I wished we could have continued talking, she was right. I felt exhausted. Like I could sleep for four hundred years.
But before they left the room, I pulled Lawrence down to my level and held him tight, burying my face in his neck and kissing it.
Then I gazed up at the young man who was responsible for saving me. I reached for his arm and pulled him down to my level too, giving him a warm hug. Apparently he and his four companions were planning to reside with us in The Shade now.
After I had rested, along with getting some proper time alone with Lawrence, I wanted to get to know this mysterious boy Field better. I was sure that there would be plenty of time for that too.
Bastien
After Victoria wisely suggested that we head back to the ship, I thought that we were going to be forced to return to land and travel by foot. That I would have to somehow run while carrying her, even with the pain every part of my skin was tingling with.
When she tightened her arms around me, I yelped in shock as the two of us lifted into the air.
Holding her tighter against me, I gasped, “Wh-What is this? Did a witch cast a spell on you?”
“Kind of…”
As she began to explain to me her journey since I had last seen her, I could hardly believe it. First of all, the existence of the vial came as a shock to me. But then her drinking from it? When it could’ve killed her? She had made herself part-Mortclaw— part monster— for me. She was crazy.
An insane woman.
As she flew with me over the shore and we searched the waters for my ship, it took a while for her revelations to sink in. Then she insisted that I explain to her my own journey.
I was profoundly relieved to finally tell her why I had run away from her back in The Woodlands. That I couldn’t be seen with her.
In fact, even now, I couldn’t be seen with her.
“Do you have any idea what that jinni was trying to do to me?” I asked her.
“Yes, I do have an idea,” Victoria said darkly. “I’m almost certain that they were trying to transform you into a half-scorpion.”
My mind returned to the pictures on the wall of that cave the jinni had led me to. I shuddered. Though I doubted I would’ve survived the full transformation, anyway. I had been minutes from death in that burning pool. Victoria was certainly convinced that I would’ve died before ever succeeding.
“What did you say to the jinni to make them do that to you?” she asked. “And why were you in The Dunes in the first place?”
Due to the same craziness that drove you to drink from that vial.
“Victoria, as I told you, if my mother ever finds out that I’ve seen you, you are in danger from my entire family. No matter what she might’ve said to you in the meeting you had with her, and what you have become, I still fear that she would reject you.” I sighed deeply. “I wanted to solve our problem for good, by making myself into something they themselves would want nothing to do with. Something that would bring shame and embarrassment to their entire lineage. If they disconnected from me, they would have no reason to keep tabs on you or hold grudges. But now that my plan has gone all wrong, you are still in danger.”
Her arms closed more tightly around me. She gazed into my eyes, fearful. But not the fear she should have held. “You can’t leave me again,” she said. “Don’t even think about it.”
The ship came into view beneath us. As Victoria descended with me, it was clear that we still had a lot to discuss. But my body was still shaking from the relief of finding her again. Now that we were returning to solid ground, I needed us to pause this discussion.
Landing on the deck, I took Victoria to the control cabin, where Cecil was asleep, head leaned against the log wall. I hated to wake him but I had no choice.
“Cecil,” I said quietly, shaking him.
His head lifted, his eyelids fluttering open. His eyes widened and he looked quite stunned to see the two of us standing side by side.
“B-Bastien?”
“I found Victoria!
We can leave this land now.” And go where, I still wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter for the moment. We just needed to put distance between ourselves and The Dunes.
All I could think about was being alone with Victoria. Somewhere safe where I could hold her and kiss her properly without the distraction of the waves and the wind. Just a few minutes was all I asked for…
“How has Yuraya been?” I asked.
“Fine,” Cecil replied. “I’ve been sure to check on her every hour.”
“Wait here,” I told Victoria, before dashing down the stairs to where I had left Yuraya. Indeed, she was still unconscious, lying next to the heap of potent weeds I had collected from The Woodlands.
I returned upstairs to Victoria and Cecil. Interrupting the conversation that had started between the two, I took Victoria’s arm.
“Cecil, would you mind taking charge and navigating us away? I need some… time with Victoria.”
Cecil obliged. As he began to make the preparations to sail away, I led Victoria to the opposite end of the boat. About three quarters of the way along the deck there was a lower platform—a balcony. Its lower position created a kind of shield from the upper deck, allowing a sense of privacy.
I picked Victoria up and carried her down to the balcony. Setting her on her feet, I leaned her back against a pole. Her arms draped over my shoulders. I buried my head against her neck, breathing her in deeply. It felt like an age since I had last held her. It felt like, before my brain could move on to other matters, I needed to reconnect with her first. Body and mind. For me, as a werewolf, everything started with scent.
She moaned softly as I ran my lips down the arch of her neck, across her shoulders. Even as this hybrid being who was still a complete mystery to me, she still smelled like my girl. The same Victoria I’d first laid eyes on while trapped in that cage back on Earth. The same Victoria I had traveled for days through The Woodlands with. The same Victoria who had shared my bed. She was my Victoria, and now, as I caught her lower lip between my lips, I felt the desperate need to finally make her mine. Fully mine.