Chapter 8

8

Anisa wakes suddenly as the bed is jostled, sitting up she sees her mother perched on the bed post in front of her
“Morning sunshine. How’d you sleep?”
She stretches softly “Could’ve been better… When’d you get here?”
“Just a moment ago,” Caroline holds up a key, smiling softly “Let myself in.”
Shan snores softly, tossing a little as the bed gets colder
Anisa lowers her voice so as not to wake him “Since you know the building so well, why don’t we go someplace else, so we don’t disturb snoring beauty over here?”
Caroline snorts softly, nodding she helps her daughter out of the bed and into a room down the hall from theirs “This was the room I stayed in the time I was here. We can talk now. How are you?”
“I’m… fine…” Anisa smiles softly, her eyes filled with a fake happiness “Everything is perfect.”
“Lair…” Shan appears at the door
Instinctively Caroline wraps her arms around Anisa, glaring at Shan “What did you do to my daughter???”
“Mom it’s not-” Caroline forces her to sit on the edge of a bed
“Hush darling, don’t talk.” Turning to Shan she continues “If you hurt her, or didn’t protect her the way you swore to, I’ll kill you. Now tell me what happened.”
“It was beyond my control at the time, it’s hard to defend her while I’m retrieving a blanket because she’s cold.” Shan stares back “And if you haven’t forgotten, you can’t kill me, you tried before.”
Anisa shakes her head softly and shoulders past them, going back to her own bed she grabs the notebook and pen that she slipped under the mattress and writes down her latest dream about Kail. She returns them to their hiding spot and buries her face into her pillow, crying. Caroline stands in the doorway, watching her “Shan… I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions and blamed you for her emotional state. It’s probably just the fact that she’s going to ‘pop’ soon.”
“I hope that’s all it is… She’s been dreaming about Kail…” Shan goes to the fridge and gets a cookie, rummaging for supplies as well
“Kail? We haven’t heard from him since he left the night we fabricated her death… the night I took back her crown… What’s she told you?”
“She dreamed he was at her aunt’s being tortured…”
“At Kate’s place? She’s never been to Kate’s… There’s no way she’d recognize it…”
“Well, that’s what she said… I think she keeps a journal of the dreams…”
“Why would she do that…? Unless…”
“Unless I believed them…” Anisa walks in, holding a red journal “Mom there was a picture… of Uncle Jack on the wall of the room that he’s in…”
“Should I leave you two be for a while?”
“No… Please stay…” Anisa walks up to him and wraps her arms around his waist “I need you… I feel like I’m going to explode any day now and I want you with me…”
Caroline picks up the journal that Anisa dropped on the ground and thumbs through it to the picture that Anisa described. The picture perfectly shows a woman, with the same birthmark as she on her lower back, sitting in the lap of a man who greatly resembles a younger Jack Saumers, Caroline’s brother-in-law.
“I’ll stay then.” He wraps his arms around her as well
“Who is she mom… I know you know… I see it in your eyes…”
Caroline smiles softly “You always did take after me… Your right… She’s your aunt Kate… And Kate did have Kail… He described this picture shortly after we got him back. You see he disappeared after I gave him your crown, and when he got back he was babbling about this picture…”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I think that Kate tried to use Kail to get information about Anisa.”
“Mom… Do you know what she wants?”
“No…Not yet…”
“Whatever it is, it isn’t good for us.”
“No its not…”
Anisa chews her fingernail softly “Mom…? Do you think she knows…? Well… Do you think she knows I’m pregnant?”
“I’m not sure darling… Why?”
“Well… What if that’s what she’s after…? Mom you took dad from her. Because she was intended for him her body was genetically altered so that she could only bear one child, and she was supposed to get pregnant on her wedding night and officially bring together the Vampyres and SkyKnights… But because dad fell in love with you, she didn’t get pregnant that night. Now she could be after a baby… My baby… She may feel entitled to Heather… Because you stole me, she wants to steal Heather…”
“It would explain her interest in Kail.”
“Yes… But why would she still be holding a grudge…? She sends you a cake every year… along with an apology card to me… But… If she wanted your child, why would she have tried to poison you every year for the last 198 years???”
“Maybe because she finally realized that the poison was never going to reach my lips? She heard I was pregnant and she decided that stealing your grandchild would be better revenge than killing your oldest daughter?”
“There may be more to it, you said Kail was loopy, right?”
Caroline nods “The only thing that he could tell us was a woman offered him tea and the exact details of the picture… And he said a bunch of random stuff in between; talked about pancakes, rainbows, random stuff. Why?”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s supposed to be with his parents… But we’ve not received confirmation… He sent his guards back before they reached the portal…”
“Great…”
“You don’t honestly think Kail would betray us like that do you? I mean after all he did go crazy when he discovered that Anisa was dead. A boy with that kind of devotion… he wouldn’t betray her…”
Anisa blinks a few times, trying to stay awake. Her mother’s words slur as she sinks to the ground
“Not good, I should have lowered the dose some.” Shan quickly catches Anisa
“Shan what did you give her?”
“Some of my blood.”
“Shan… How much did you give her…?”
“Enough to sate her at half power…”
“Shan… she’s never had that much blood at one time in all her life… I know it was stupid of me to try and protect her by cutting back her blood supply, but I thought… I thought that if she didn’t come into her powers she’d give up, she wouldn’t try… But from the looks of this journal she’s developing the ability of sight… When did the dreams start, and when did you first give her blood?”
“I first gave her blood yesterday.. And I’m not certain what time the dreams started.”
“Yesterday is too early… There’s at least seven dreams in here… Have you started training her yet…? “
“Of course.”
“How did she take to the training?”
“She did pretty well at the element training and control, that’s all we got to though.”
Caroline paces, tapping her finger on her lip “I just don’t get it… Only an extreme does of element or a high dose of blood could’ve kick-started her powers like this… And the only elements she’s been in contact with are yours and hers… and you said that she did pretty well… she had to have excelled for it to have been her element… Unless… your wedding day…”
“The explosion?”
“Yes… After that, at your wedding, when Cain and Able attacked, the temperature in the room went from being 80 something to being 20 something in a matter of seconds… There’s really only one element that can do that… and that’s water. That’s Anisa’s element isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’d bet money that’s around the time the dreams started…” Caroline opens the journal again “Which either means that Kail is being held by Kate or that these dreams have yet to come true…”
“Either way it isn’t good, tea and torture equals mind control.”
“I know what it means… it was a technique that my mother developed when she was younger… Rumor has it her father was a drunk, and so she developed this to get him to quit hitting her.”
“I’m pretty sure that my people didn’t own slaves, thankfully… Although I keep feeling this urge to let her mark me in some way as hers.”
“Do you think this feeling relates to something from your past…? I mean… Why would you feel that way….? What would possibly compel you to do something like that?”
“I’m not sure, it feels important, but anytime I try to grab the information it slips away…”
“Well I think we should go lay Anisa down. Then we’ll talk over lunch, alright?”
“Ok…” Shan picks her up and softly carries her to the bed
Caroline grabs two plates and slaps together two sandwiches, one with pickles and the other with bananas. She sets the sandwiches on the table and sits down in front of the banana sandwich and waits for Shan to return
“Back.” Shan walks in and takes one of the sandwiches
“How is she?”
“She’s sleeping. All in all she doesn’t seem to be any worse for wear…”
“Good… Shan… When you said ‘half power’, which power did you mean?”
“I meant my own power.”
Caroline pauses mid-bite and sets her sandwich back down on the plate “Your power? Are you crazy? You gave her half your power?”
“No, I am currently at half power, as such my blood’s flavor and strength has decreased as well.”
“Don’t worry me like that… Shan I need to ask you a very personal question, and be honest please.”
“Ok, go ahead.”
“How did you give Anisa your blood? Did she bite you or did she drink from a cut?”
“A cut, she was worried she’d go too far, why?”
“Because Vampyres can leave a marker in their lovers. A marker that prevents another vampyre from biting them, and if a vampyre is stupid enough to bite a marked person the vampyre will get sick and die. But drinking from a cut won’t have left the marker. If you’re still worried about having her leave a mark then that might be one way to do so.”
“My instincts seem to say that wouldn’t work… Remember, I’m a Dragon-bred, Dragon-bred’s mate for life, but unless some physical form of their love is made into both of them the mating can be called off, or disrupted.”
Caroline winks softly “Then bite her back.”
He chuckles “You know how much power is in my blood… You should be able to guess what would happen if I did.” He smiles softly at her, a small sadness in his eyes
“Then what do you propose, oh smart one?”
“I have to fight her, with Stealers, I can make two blank slate knives and start her training on that, but it might take too long…” He paces, nibbling at his sandwich
“Don’t initiate a fight with her… She’s already emotionally unstable as it is, something like that would cause her to think you don’t really love her, it’d send her into a spiraling depression. Why not weave magyk? Weave it into a bracelet shape and then use it, wrap it around your wrists, imbuing it into your skins”
“Could be undone, most Drakes have a single scar, the one from their lover, if I can somehow find a way to get her to leave a scar, then it should work…”
“Yeah… until she looks at the scar she left on your perfect body and starts to hate herself for hurting you… Shan you need to explain this to her, tell her that it’s a tradition of your peoples and that if done improperly she could lose you. Or just start talking about your wedding day and piss her off.”
He half frowns “I’m sorry things went wrong… Honestly we could have made it out of there without the fuss if Cain and Able hadn’t found out who I was…”
“Don’t blame her, she doesn’t fully understand who you are.