Page 15

15

Evan

I tossed and turned most of the night. Whereas the night before, the fluffy mattress and over-the-top pink faux feather comforter were endearing and kitschy, tonight, they just felt like a burden. Just something else causing me problems.

I finally got up around five in the morning and decided to go for a run down by the beach. It was still so freaking cold, and from my research, that wouldn’t change much with the Pacific cooling the breezes that came off it.

Thankfully, Cary had dropped off my luggage late yesterday, and the front desk had called, telling me it was there. So, I had my clothes to bundle up in.

It was still dark out as I jogged toward the beach, although the first indications of light were peeking over the horizon. Birds were beginning their morning pursuit of food. The tide was still out, which meant I could run close to the water without getting wet, but far enough away not to get struck by a sneaker wave. I’d read about those, too, and didn’t fancy a roll in the surf this early in the morning.

I jogged until I came to an outcropping that, during high tide, would’ve been submerged. It was quiet, the waves lapping against the monolith rock behind the one I sat on. The wind was blocked by the massive structure, so even though it was far from warm, it wasn’t biting cold either.

I closed my eyes and let the sea fill my senses. The Pacific smelled different from the Atlantic. I knew that sounded ridiculous, but it was true. The Pacific smelled… wilder.

I knew I wasn’t dreaming, not this time, but in my mind’s eye, I could see as well as I had in the dreams, two young men playing in the surf.

The wave rolled up, catching both men in its spray, causing them to laugh wildly as they rushed toward the shore. A woman, the one I now knew was my great-grandmother, Inez, laughed as the two ran toward her.

“Look at you both. You’re going to catch your death of cold,” Inez said, but there wasn’t any heat in her comment. There was a baby stroller next to her, and I could see a little one wrapped tightly in white swaddling clothes.

“Grandma,” I whispered, and I had to fight the tears that threatened to fall.

Inez looked straight at me, and for the first time since I began having these dreams, or visions, whatever they were, she made eye contact.

The young men and the baby that was my grandma disappeared. “You can’t let them cast him away. You have to fight him, bind him if he won’t leave. He’s done so much to hurt our family.” She looked to her right, and the stroller was there again, and the baby lay in it. “You can overcome this. You can make it right. Don’t let the witch man and his coven stop what has to happen. What you’ve got to make happen.” She picked the baby up and held her, then looked up at me. “Go back to the manor. I’m there, and so is your great-uncle. We can help protect you, but you must be the one to end all of this. Only you can do so.”

A wave hit the monolith, spraying me and making me jump off the rock I’d been sitting on.

I’d been there with her, my great-grandmother, Inez. My great-uncle had to be Andre. She was saying he and my grandma were half-siblings. Something I’d already figured out from last night’s dream.

Something else came out of all this. She loved him. Andre, the boy she’d been charged with caring for and who she helped raise into a young man. In every dream and vision, she’d been there for him. She looked at him the same way she looked at my grandmother, her daughter. With motherly love and affection.

She wanted me to return to the manor? To face… him? “Damn,” I said out loud. I couldn’t even imagine it.

“We’re there. We will help protect you.”

Were they really there? I hadn’t felt them, not like I had Leon Cordelia. Only then did it dawn on me that the old son of a bitch was my ancestor too. If my previous dream was any indication, he’d sexually assaulted Inez, and my grandma was the result. I sighed heavily. The evil bastard deserved a one-way ticket to hell and had no right to haunt anything. Not after what I’d seen of how he’d inflicted pain and torment on everyone during his entire miserable life, and continued doing so in the afterlife.

I didn’t have a clue how I was going to keep myself safe or how I was supposed to defeat him, but damn, I owed it to my grandmother, the sweet baby Inez had held, to make things right.

I jogged back up the beach to the hotel. Luckily, the owners were up when I got back and had made fresh coffee. I poured myself a cup, thanked them profusely for being so efficient, and dashed to my room.

If I was going to face that son of a bitch again, I needed to know everything I could about him. I opened my laptop, connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, and typed Leon Cordelia into my search engine. He might be coming for me because I was his descendant, but I had an advantage he didn’t have. I had the internet and his entire recorded history at my fingertips.