Page 20 of Branches of the Willow (The Ancients #3)

19

In the Dark

F or the first time in my adult life, everything seemed to be falling into place. Ashley and Asi’s house had been built on pack lands, and ours was nearing completion. We were getting excited about moving to the pack and being closer when we were needed. I was excited, because it meant I would be closer to the women who knew what they were doing when it came to this child birthing stuff I was going to have to go through real soon.

“I can’t believe we’ve had such an uneventful six months.”

“Bite your tongue, woman.” Mikael scolded me.

“I know, I just woke up today feeling like we finally got that happily ever after. We’re close to having a baby.” Mikael stopped what he was doing and came over to put his hand on my protruding belly. Our daughter was kicking up a storm, and he always enjoyed feeling her attempts to show how strong she was.

“Who needs a boy with a girl that can kick like this?” Mikael joked. “What do you think? Maybe we should get her involved in human football?”

“That’s a man’s sport. Do you really want a line-backer for a daughter?”

Mikael rolled his eyes at me. “You are too American for your own good. I was talking about actual football, you know, soccer.”

“Oh, yeah, well that’s different.” I laughed. Truthfully, even if my daughter wanted to be a linebacker, I’d be there painting ugly black lines on her cheeks and yelling for her to take the stupid boys out. No matter what, I never wanted her to feel limited by anything in life.

“So, what’s on the agenda for the day?”

“We’re going to see the house today. My dad said the guys finished up with the painting last week, and everything else is done. That means, we should be able to move in soon.”

“Hmmm,” Mikael stood there looking at me for a moment. “I see it now.” He waved his hand around in front of my round belly then. “This has all been a ruse to get out of doing any actual moving. Your timing was impeccable, my sweet.” I laughed at his accusation.

“Yes, because it seems like such a trade-off. A few days of moving boxes and furniture, as opposed to a lifetime of worry. I must not be as smart as I think I am.”

“No doubt. You picked me, remember? I was definitely not the wisest choice of all the men out there.”

“You were the only choice.”

“Ah, good! You passed!” He nipped my nose.

“Oh, so you’re testing my loyalty now?”

“No, I know you’re absolutely loyal, but I sometimes have to trick you into saying how completely awesome I am. I mean, look at this package. It’s like you won the lottery, babe!” I threw a pillow at him, catching him in his stubbly face.

“My dad wanted to meet with us, so we better get going. It wasn’t just about the house.”

“I know.” Mikael told me as we walked down the stairs of our house. “Avery’s going to be there. He has some news to share with us too.”

“Do you think they found anything out about Mishka?”

“The harem girl that ran off?” Mikael asked.

“I don’t think she ran off. She seemed pretty content here.”

“We can ask your dad when we get there. Maybe someone’s heard something by now.”

“I don’t think they were too concerned about it. Especially since she’s not the only one. Apparently, others from that group have left the packs they were sent to as well. Do you think it was too much on them? Trying to adjust to pack life after being locked in a glorified dungeon must be hard.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it. We’ll probably find them all lounging about on some beach having cocktails together one day.”

I laughed at the ridiculous image Mikael conjured in my mind of the harem girls sipping Margaritas on the beach. I let my imagination run wild for the rest of the trip to the pack lands. When we got there, Mikael parked right outside my parent’s house instead of going to the house we had built here. When he saw my puzzled look, he smiled. “I didn’t want you to have to walk all the way back here. We can drive to the new house when we are done talking to your dad.”

“This is why I chose you as my mate. You think ahead!” I winked at him and got out of the car to head in my parent’s house.

Natalia was there with Evan when we walked in, and she appeared to be wiping tears away from her eyes. “What’s going on?” I asked.

My mom came over to me. She was already emanating waves of calm. “The boys were out on patrol, close to where our lands border those of the town, and they found something.”

“They found what?”

“Mishka, baby. They found her body early this morning.”

“I knew it didn’t feel right that she’d just leave. What happened to her?”

“I’m not sure. Your dad’s in the office with Avery now, discussing things. I think it’s probably best if you go ahead and join them.” My mother leaned in to give me a hug, and patted my belly too, before I waddled off toward my dad’s office. Mikael followed behind, closing the office door once we were both inside.

“Ah, Jess, look at you!” Avery beamed over at me as if he were my own dad. “It won’t be long now, hmmm?”

“No, not too much longer.” I touched my own belly then, it was a habit, I realized I picked up about the same time my daughter decided she was able to kick the hell out of my insides every chance she got. “Mom told me about Mishka. What happened to her?”

“She was brutalized. We’re not entirely sure what was done to her.” He hesitated a moment, but then decided not to hold back. “The poor girl was in pieces.” My father’s head hung low as he spoke. “We failed her,” he whispered at the end.

I moved to stand closer to my father and put my arm around him to give him a side hug, which was really the only way I could hug these days with my big belly in the way. “You did not fail her,” I whispered back to him and I put my power behind the words too because I needed him to believe them.

“It’s the same as the other girls we’ve found from my pack,” Avery told me, drawing my attention to him. He glanced between my dad and me and nodded his head briefly. It was good to know he approved of what I had just done. I had come to respect Avery Daniels a great deal. “Two of them, so far, have gone missing, and then a couple days to a week later we found them torn to pieces. Each one has been left closer to where the humans reside. It’s like someone is trying to taunt us, and have us found out, all at the same time.” Avery’s speech ended with him deep in thought.

“Okay, so who wants to tell the world about our kind?”

“Who doesn’t is probably the easier question to answer.” Avery explained. “Each non-human group has factions within it that think it’s time we stop allowing humans to live with the delusion that they are the best thing that ever happened to this planet. We could be dealing with any one of them. We have rogue wolves running around from where Freedman’s pack dismantled, and no one wanted to pick up the strays. There are the hunters in our midst, and the problems we are having with them. The dark ones and their insatiable need for blood could have made a vicious enough attack that it would tear the body apart in that manner.”

“Why would dark ones want to be out in the limelight though? They prefer to lurk in the shadows.” I joked. No one got it. You win some, you lose some. “So, you’re saying there’s a really long list.”

“Basically.”

“Fantastic.”

The door to the office opened and closed again. I didn’t see who came in, because my attention was still on my father and Avery. “We’re hoping that I will be able to help get to the bottom of things, or at least make the list of possible candidates shorter.” I turned to see Serena standing there, in all her magnificence. She smiled at me, and the gesture reached her glacial eyes. On anyone else, that color-or the leeching of color-would have seemed cold. Serena made them seem like pure magic though. “Hello, dear.” She called to me, and then she went to stand near Avery. “As requested, your guest is in the hall.” As requested? A million thoughts and questions flitted through my mind. Serena was standing so near to Avery that the fine hairs on each of their arms were touching. I cocked my head to the side and observed them as they stood there having an entire conversation with their eyes.

Tension hung tight in Avery’s shoulders before, and now it seemed to melt away. I gave Serena a quizzical look, and she simply smiled at me again. “Jessica, Mikael, you two should come over here for now.” We moved, without hesitation. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew I trusted Serena and Avery both with my life, so I obeyed, and Mikael followed suit. “Bring him in.” Avery bellowed.

In the next moment, the office door opened, Andy Wallace came through, tugging at the largest bicep I had ever seen in my life. I lived with inhumanly strong werewolves, so that was saying something. The man had to be about six and a half feet tall, if he was an inch, and his thighs rivaled his arms in ways I didn’t even want to think about. This man was a powerhouse. Behind him, keeping a hold on the other gigantic arm was none other than the smart-ass Nicholai. He winked at me when he saw me take note of him.

“Who the hell is that?” I asked.

“Who the hell are you?” The man asked back, piercing me with a set of wild, hazel eyes. His brown hair was cropped close to his skull, adding to the illusion that his eyes were larger and wilder than they probably would have appeared otherwise. His lips were set in a cruel sneer, until he glanced down from my face and took in my belly. Just like that, his features softened, and instead of being the raging prisoner that he so clearly seemed to be, he inclined his head toward me.

“What the hell?” I heard Mikael say beside me. He’d noticed the gesture too.

“This is Gabriel.” Avery spoke calmly. “We had to set quite the trap to snare him.” Avery glanced beside him at Serena.

“You may stop manhandling Gabriel now. He will be no trouble.” Serena stated simply, talking to Nicholai and Andy. Mikael took a step forward so that he was a solid barrier between me and the hulking giant of a man.

“I would never harm her,” Gabriel spoke softly, as if trying to seem smaller and less imposing with his voice.

“Someone needs to explain what’s going on here, right now!” Mikael managed through clenched teeth. He had gone into full protect mode.

Gabriel moved forward, and Mikael shadowed those movements, always at the ready, keeping me out of sight of the man. Then Gabriel simply took a seat in one of the free chairs and laced the fingers on his two hands together before sitting them in his lap. He looked up, directly at Mikael. “I will not harm your mate. On that, you have my word. She and her line are ever in my charge.”

“He speaks the truth,” Serena added. “I would not bring him anywhere near her otherwise.” She moved forward and put a hand on Mikael’s shoulders. “She is my blood, the last of my line.” Mikael glanced, out of the corner of his eye at Serena and then allowed himself to relax a fraction of an inch. He moved, slightly, giving enough space between where he stood and where Gabriel sat that I could see the man.

“I am an Elder Hunter. We, the elders, are the trainers of the new ranks when the old fall. We dispatched our people to the area almost a year ago, because of an influx of dark ones.”

“Wait. How did you know there was an influx of dark ones? We still have yet to see evidence of any.”

“You are not trained to look for the patterns, we are.” His gaze never left mine as he spoke, as if I was the only person in the room he needed to address. It was a bit unnerving. “There have been disappearances in surrounding human towns. The couple that turned back up as bodies, had the trademark signs of vampiric feedings. They had the right size fang marks or were simply torn to pieces in a frenzy feed. They were all exsanguinated, with no evidence of blood near the bodies. And there were other hallmarks. I can train your people to notice the signs, but the important thing to know is that the dark ones were called here by wolves.” He glanced between Serena and me. “We were unsure which clan brought them until we felt the presence of a witch, and her essence in this place and the other.” He nodded his head toward Avery with his last word.

“So, you knew it wasn’t my father’s pack or Avery’s pack because you sensed a witch?”

“Correct. We also sensed a witch near a third pack. We have reassessed how we do things since. That witch has been dispatched from this world.” He looked to Serena again.

“Sophia?” I asked.

“Yes. She knew where Malachi was, and apparently orchestrated everything that transpired. From what we gathered; my dear sister wanted to be worshipped for the goddess she thought she was. The only ones who would have done so, other than our protectors, would be the humans. Taking you, and the white wolf line, out of the equation was only part of her plan.” Serena sighed heavily.

“We came to dispatch the dark ones, but when we realized they were working with wolves, we sent our people in to start infiltrating the packs we had already cleared.”

“That’s why we kept finding interlopers on our lands.” Avery added.

“Indeed. Your two packs were near impossible to get imbedded with. The third, didn’t even realize they had a non-wolf living among them.” I thought about the Hunter we had taken to the Locks, and I felt sick. Had he just been doing his job? “You think of the one you locked away?” My head tipped up to look at Gabriel then and I nodded. “It was good that you did. He abandoned our brotherhood and was working with the dark ones and that pack. He was young, and easily swayed to the delusions of grandeur they fed him when they realized what he was. They had the self-professed King of the Werewolves on their side.” Gabriel looked pained. “He still should have known better.”

I turned toward Serena then, with a question that had been on my mind for a while. “The dark ones, Sophia only mentioned them briefly. Were they a creation of the witches too?” I needed that clarification, to make sure I’d remembered correctly.

A pained smile creased her flawless face. “In a manner of speaking.” She looked at me and took stock of those in the room. “Sophia was not my oldest sibling. Jonah was.” There were a few gasps around the room.

“The dark one who can walk in the light?” My father asked.

“The same.” Serena said. “Witches have a feminine magic of the Earth. We almost always have daughters. There are exceptions, as with everything. My brother was one of those exceptions. He was the only male born to my family line. When a male is born, they are endowed with what we think of as a tainted magic. They have their own type of powers, in some ways making them stronger than the females, but everything has a balance, and it was quickly realized that the males of our kind were creatures of darkness. While the females are creatures of light.”

“My mother had another sister once, Astrid. She wouldn’t hear of a mother turning her son away, and so she stepped in thinking that no soul could be bad from birth. She nurtured the boy, feeding him fresh animal blood, and on occasion, allowing him to feed from sick humans who would die anyway.”

“My mother was not thrilled with the way her sister took on her son and made him seem so normal when others berated her for the attempt. She thought to teach her sister a lesson and locked her in a witch trap with the boy. As he grew weaker and hungrier, it left only one food source for him. The stories say that my aunt offered him her blood willingly at first, but a witch’s blood is like a drug to the dark ones. It is full of the magic they are not able to access. If she had not been his kin, she would have survived, albeit in a weakened state for many years to come. Since they bore a blood link, eventually Jonah drained my aunt of her magic and her life.”

“Only a witch can kill another witch.” I mumbled, remembering my past conversation with Serena and Sophia.

“Yes, my dear. Blood kin dark ones are the only exception, and one that I don’t think Sophia believed. She believed my mother eventually went back and ended Astrid’s life out of pity.” Serena shook her head. “That wasn’t the case. When a dark one drains a witch dry, killing her, and taking all her magical essence, he becomes Fiul Sange, a blood son, a dark one who can walk in the day.”

Looking around the room, I realized, I was not the only person hearing this history for the first time. Never, in a million years, would I have imagined that the dark ones, vampires, were actually the discarded offspring of witches. My mind was racing in a million different directions at once. “Why Avery’s lands?”

I glanced up to see Gabriel smile at my question. “You are a wise one, child. That is the question of the hour.”

“So, it’s no coincidence that they’re here in this area?” Mikael offered.

“Not at all. They were called here.” Gabriel stated, and then began to elaborate. “Looking around your little pack lands, both those of the Daniels Clan and the St. Marks Pack have small human towns on their outskirts, but no major development. This doesn’t seem like the most fruitful place to stage a coming out party for the supernatural beings of the world. There must be something else drawing them here. At first, we thought it was you.” Gabriel’s multi-toned eyes landed on me. “Then we realized they were holding their concentrated efforts closer to the Daniels Clan lands. Now, we just need to figure out what the hell that means.”

“It also means we will have to work together to figure it out,” Serena suggested. “I will be going back to stay with the Daniels Clan for the time being, as will Gabriel.” Gabriel nodded his head in agreement. “I have also called one of my sisters to meet with us. We all have different gifts, hers may be useful, as she can commune with the dead.”

“Do you think the white wolves would have knowledge of what’s happening?”

Serena smiled at me. “They may. I’m not sure they’ll share with us though. My dears are fond of their riddles and letting you figure them out.”

I rolled my eyes. That was the truth.

Serena, Gabriel, and Avery stood to leave. “We’ll keep each other abreast of what’s happening.” Avery said as he clasped my father’s hand in his.

“Be sure to keep your females close at hand. I’m not certain why, maybe because they are weaker by nature, but they seem to be a target for the dark ones.” Gabriel added before leaving the room with Andy and Nicholai.

Avery came to stand in front of me next, “Jessica, it was good to see you again.” He placed his hand on my belly and received a kick from my daughter in response. Avery looked over my shoulder at Mikael, “Enjoy every minute of her while she’s little once she gets here. When they grow up, you start aging, my man!” Avery blew out a sigh as he watched Andy, Nicholai, and Gabriel leave the room. “Quickly, it happens far too quickly,” he grumbled. I smirked, knowing what Avery was insinuating. The poor man had two very gorgeous daughters, both of mating age.

My parents saw the others out, and Mikael wrapped his arms around me, kissed my neck, and then moved until he was standing in front of me. He dropped to his knees and held my belly. “You’re not going to give daddy a hard time, are you?”

I laughed at him. “Maybe you should ask my dad how he felt when we showered at his house that time!”

“Bite your tongue, woman!” Mikael managed through a laugh. “My daughter would never…” His voice trailed off and he looked back up at me with a wink. “I bet your dad still wants to string me up for that. Hell, I’m angry at myself on his behalf now!”

“It’s all about perspective.” I laughed.

“I suppose it is. I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything though.” He stood back up, hands on my large belly, and leaned in to kiss me. “Besides, it’s pretty obvious what we’ve been up to when no one’s looking anyway.” He winked at me again and took my hand to walk me out of the office. Ashley and Asi were waiting on my parent’s porch. I’m not sure why they weren’t in the meeting, other than the fact that my dad needed a much bigger office.

“Where were you guys?” I asked.

“Ash wasn’t feeling well. We stayed out here for the fresh air, and figured you’d come fill us in later.” My best friend was starting into her second month of pregnancy. We joked that if she had a boy, our children were already destined to be mates, even if Willow was going to be older by a few months.

We filled Ashley and Asi in on what was happening with the dark ones, Gabriel, and the witches. “It’s going to start getting crowded around here again, real fast.”

“What do you mean?”

“Witches, an elder Hunter, the White Wolf,” he nodded to Mikael then, “the King.” That’s a lot of power in one little area. It’s going to bring everyone to our doorsteps. Friends and enemies alike.” Asriel was right, of course. It was something we probably should have addressed in the meeting, and one of the reasons it was clear he didn’t need to miss any more of them. He saw the worry lines starting to crease my face and patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jess. We’ll work through it.”

I knew that, but it was the growing pains we would all suffer as we worked through it, that had me wondering what was next.