Page 12

EIGHT

MARA

T he emergency council meeting convened at seven AM in the Mist & Mirth Inn's main parlor, the only building in town that was large enough to accommodate everyone while still being protected by the new ward that surrounded the Cooper family home.

Griff could feel the magical barrier humming just beyond the windows, a constant reminder of what he and Mara had created together and what they now had to defend.

Aerin sat at the head of the dining table, her research materials spread across every available surface like battle plans.

Dark circles under her eyes suggested she'd spent the entire night cross-referencing data from supernatural incidents across the continent, while Leo maintained his protective vigil near the entrance with the focused alertness of someone expecting an attack at any moment.

Lyra and Cade had arrived just after dawn, their founder's mark and alpha bond making them natural allies in whatever confrontation was approaching.

Nico occupied his usual position near the window, ancient texts balanced on his lap as he continued the genealogical research that had already revealed so many uncomfortable truths.

Tilly sat beside Mara on the inn's old-fashioned sofa, her stuffed wolf clutched in her arms and her eyes bright with supernatural awareness that made her seem decades older than her six years.

She'd insisted on attending the meeting despite Griff's protective instincts, and given her central role in recent events, no one had been able to argue with her logic.

"I've been analyzing the pattern of supernatural incidents across North America for the past eighteen months," Aerin began without preamble, her academic training allowing her to maintain professional focus despite the personal stakes.

She activated a tablet that projected a map of the continent onto the parlor wall, red dots marking locations where supernatural communities had suffered unexplained magical disasters. The pattern that emerged was both elegant and terrifying in its systematic precision.

"Each site that's been hit follows the same progression," Aerin continued.

"First, trusted community leaders begin making subtle changes to protective protocols, always justified by seemingly reasonable safety concerns.

Then individuals with founder bloodline connections start experiencing what appear to be natural magical surges or awakening abilities.

Finally, those same individuals either disappear entirely or suffer complete magical breakdown that leaves them in persistent vegetative states. "

"The consumption process," Leo said grimly. "What we saw with the shadow beings, but refined over decades of practice."

"Exactly. But here's what I couldn't understand until yesterday.

" Aerin highlighted several clusters of incidents on the map.

"The targeting isn't random. Every community that's been hit contains descendants of the original four founders of Mistwhisper Falls, and in every case, the entity responsible gained access through someone in a position of hereditary authority. "

Lyra leaned forward, her chaos magic crackling with agitation. "Someone like Ruth."

"Someone exactly like Ruth," Aerin confirmed. "But not just Ruth. I've identified similar patterns of manipulation in at least twelve other supernatural communities, all involving trusted elders whose families have held leadership positions for multiple generations."

Cade's wolf was close to the surface, his protective instincts responding to the threat assessment with barely controlled aggression.

"You're saying this thing has been infiltrating supernatural communities for decades, using the same strategy over and over again.

We suspected this but not this big. I never thought this have spread… literally everywhere."

"Not decades," Nico corrected quietly, looking up from a leather-bound journal that appeared to be written in multiple languages. "I've been tracing the genealogical records of the families involved, and the pattern goes back to the original founding of Mistwhisper Falls."

He opened the journal to reveal a family tree so complex it required three pages to contain all the interconnected relationships.

"The entity we're dealing with didn't just consume Mordaine Ashglen.

It studied her, learned from her, and then spent the next two hundred years systematically infiltrating every supernatural bloodline that posed a potential threat to its long-term goals. "

"What goals?" Mara asked.

"Complete integration into the physical realm," Aerin said, pulling up another set of data that made the magical readings from the past week look like minor fluctuations.

"Every person it's consumed, every fragment of consciousness it's absorbed, has been adding to a collective intelligence that's been learning how to exist independently of any single host body. "

Tilly suddenly spoke up from her position on the sofa, her young voice carrying the ancient wisdom that still made Griff's protective instincts flare. "She doesn't want to just wear people's faces anymore. She wants to make a face of her own, one that can never be taken away or destroyed."

"How do you know that, sweetheart?" Mara asked gently.

"Because I can feel her thinking about it," Tilly said matter-of-factly.

"She's been touching my dreams ever since the ward thing happened in the forest, trying to see inside my head.

But now that Daddy and Miss Mara made the sparkly barrier, she can't get all the way in. She's really mad about that."

The temperature in the parlor lowered as the implications of Tilly's words sank in. The entity hadn't just been observing them from a distance. It had been actively attempting to infiltrate the mind of a six-year-old child, probably for weeks or months.

"That settles it," Leo said, his voice had a dangerous edge that meant his lion was demanding action. "We evacuate the town. Get everyone to safety while we figure out how to deal with this thing without putting civilians in the line of fire."

"Evacuation won't work," Nico said, closing his journal with an expression of grim certainty.

"I've been researching what happened to the other communities that tried to flee when they realized they were being targeted.

The entity followed them. It doesn't just want the founder bloodlines, it needs them.

And it will hunt them across continents if necessary to complete whatever working it's been building toward for centuries. "

"Then we fight," Cade said simply. "We make our stand here, where we have home territory advantage and the support of an established supernatural community."

"Fight with what?" Griff asked, his bear prowling restlessly with the knowledge that his family was in danger from something he couldn't simply attack and defeat.

"We're talking about an entity that's been consuming powerful supernatural beings for centuries.

It has the accumulated knowledge and abilities of dozens of founder descendants, plus whatever powers it originally possessed. "

"We fight with what we've always fought with," Lyra said, her founder's mark glowing faintly as her magic responded to her emotional state. "Community. Connection. The bonds between people who choose to protect each other instead of just themselves."

Aerin was nodding, her academic mind clearly working through possibilities.

"The shadow beings were able to break free from its control when we offered them healing and connection instead of trying to banish or destroy them.

And our research into the betrayal sigil suggests that the original founders built safeguards into their magical legacy specifically to deal with this kind of corruption. "

"What kind of safeguards?" Mara asked.

"The kind that activate when descendants of all four founder bloodlines work together voluntarily," Nico said, opening another ancient text that blazed with its own inner light. "Not through coercion or manipulation, but through conscious choice and mutual trust."

Before anyone could respond to this revelation, the air in the parlor suddenly grew thick with magical pressure that made it difficult to breathe.

The protective ward around the house flickered like a candle in high wind, and through the windows, they could see shadows moving in the morning sunlight with purposeful intent.

"She's here," Tilly whispered, pressing closer to Mara and Griff. "The pretty lady is here, and she brought lots of friends."

The front door of the inn opened without anyone touching it, revealing a figure that made everyone in the room go still with recognition and horror.

It was Ruth Blackthorne, but not the corrupted version they'd encountered in the bookstore.

This was something wearing Ruth's face like an ill-fitting mask, her features constantly shifting between familiar and alien, her movements too fluid for human anatomy.

Behind her stood a small army of people who might have been the missing residents of a dozen supernatural communities. Men and women of various ages, all with expressions of blank contentment and eyes that held no trace of individual consciousness.

"Good morning, children," the entity said, and its voice was a harmony of dozens of different tones speaking in perfect unison. "I do hope you slept well. We have such an important day ahead of us."

"You're not Ruth," Leo said, his hand moving automatically toward his weapon despite knowing it would be useless.