A Shade of Vampire 31: A Twist of Fates (8 page)

My uncle was going to have to practice a bit of tolerance until we got out of here.

I switched my focus to the stairs. The main entrance to the house was still shut, of course, which meant we had to fly out of one of the windows which the harpies had so helpfully left open. I moved up the staircase, careful to fly as evenly as possible to avoid waking the infants in my arms.

Reaching the top, I heard the harpies’ voices to my left. They were in the room facing the front of the house. I took a right and flew through an open door into one of the back rooms, whose window was large and open.

We piled outside, into the harsh wind. After touching down, my mother and sister hurried forward to take a baby each from me; Kira took one of Kailyn’s cubs, while Jeramiah took the sleeping ogre from Lucas, leaving him with the awake, troublesome one.

Ibrahim and Corrine magicked themselves into the house and retrieved the rest of the babies quickly—the final two gray babies and the final cub—saving us passing the harpies again.

Each of us donated whatever spare clothes we had to wrap around the babies, even as everybody stared at the strange gray creatures.

“What are they?” several asked.

Of course, I could only respond with a shrug.

Even Ibrahim and Corrine couldn’t seem to offer any insight on the subject.

“Ugh, brat!” Lucas’ hiss came behind us.

We turned to see my uncle positively wrestling with the baby, whose interest had developed to Lucas’ ears. He had a fist closed around Lucas’ left one. My father, half laughing, took pity on his brother’s plight and pulled the baby away from Lucas.

But the ogre baby didn’t like that. He really didn’t like that.

He let out a guttural roar—quite shocking from something so small—which pierced the up-til-now quiet atmosphere.

Oops
.

Corrine and Ibrahim didn’t dally after that.

Shrieks erupted from the house and I just caught sight of the harpies soaring over the rooftop before the witches vanished us from the spot.

T
he witches transported
us to a familiar-looking shore. We had arrived on one of The Tavern’s beaches. The spike in temperature was abrupt, to say the least.

Every baby had woken up by now, four of them crying—the werewolves whimpered, the ogres roared, while the gray babies… all remained silent. And as their eyes blinked open, their appearance only became stranger to me. Their eyes were all the same—solid black dots in the center of their eyeballs. It was hard to even make out their pupils. Their eyelashes were thick and strangely long.

Everybody else was eyeing them with the same curiosity, but we had to push on.

“We need to take the orphans to The Shade,” I said, turning to the witches.

“I’ll take them back,” Corrine offered above the werewolves’ and ogres’ noise.

“I’ll help you,” my mother said. She fetched the cubs from Kailyn and Kira, while Corrine gathered the rest of the babies to her, levitating them with her magic. Then, after wishing us good luck, they vanished.

I drew in a breath, rubbing my hands together and reorganizing my mind. “Right. Now… we need to think about what’s next.”

“I think the next logical step is for us to return to the area we just left,” my father said. “Have a look around the neighboring islands. Maybe, just maybe, there’s somebody there who might have a clue about what happened to them.”

Since we all agreed, Ibrahim transported us back toward the cold island.

When we stopped whizzing through the air, Ibrahim had us all floating above an icy ocean. I gazed down. In the distance, I could make out the island we’d just fled—I even spied the three harpies flying in seething circles. Now they would have to start their unfortunate collection afresh. Somehow, I couldn’t feel too sorry for them.

Ibrahim extended the map Loira had given us and indicated the nearest island. In fact, we could actually see it in the distance from our current location. He transported us the rest of the way to the designated location, and we found ourselves soaring over another icy land mass. Only this appeared to be
completely
deserted. There wasn’t even a single scrap of civilization, unlike the harpies’ island. So we didn’t bother wasting time here. Ibrahim consulted the map again, and we moved on to the second nearest landmass.

Although it was no less frozen than the others, this one looked more promising. At least the landscape was more varied. There were forests and rolling hills, even a small range of mountains. All this indicated that there could very well be habitation here.

We descended and touched down on the highest mountain peak.

“So we should start a search, I guess,” Ibrahim muttered. “See if there’s anyone around…”

Even if we found creatures living here whom we could talk to, it really did seem unlikely that we would have luck questioning them about a group of children who might’ve passed this way over a decade ago… but we weren’t exactly overflowing with options at the moment. This was what we had to work with.

We decided that Lucas, Kailyn and I would fly overhead, while Ibrahim would remain on the ground with the others.

As we set off on our search, a thought hit me in a way that it hadn’t really before. Perhaps it had been seeing those babies. Holding them in my arms…

Soaring over the icy landscape, I realized I could be looking for my own stepson.

Grace often used to say she wanted a sibling… maybe she has one after all.

K
ailyn
, Lucas and I scoped out the mountains, while the rest began to roam the landscape. There were a number of caves in this range which might make for a suitable residence for some kind of supernatural.

But we failed to find anything in the caves other than a family of bear-like creatures with tusks, about twice the size of any earthly bear species I was aware of.

So the three of us left the mountains and caught up with the others, flying overhead as they swept along the ground.

“Any luck so far?” Ibrahim called up to me on noticing us.

“Nope,” I replied sourly.

We entered a stretch of thick forest, those running below becoming less visible to us.

Our basic problem was, we had no idea what to look for. If we had an idea of what kind of supernatural might live here, if any, it would be easier to pinpoint locations.

We surged forward in the snow blindly for the next hour, hoping to stumble upon someone or something. But again, we failed. We did come across some rather large caves which looked like they might have been recently inhabited. But perhaps that was simply by more bear things, or some other kind of animal.

We gathered together, preparing to leave and try our luck on the next island. But before Ibrahim could vanish us, we caught sight of something circling in the sky. Two
things
, actually. My first thought was that they were two of the harpies, searching for the lost orphans. But as I stalled Ibrahim from working his magic and soared up into the sky to get a closer look, I soon realized that these winged creatures were not harpies.

They were massive, for a start, and they had long sweeping tails with razor-sharp tips. Both of them shimmered in different shades of blue, one light and one dark. They were dragons. Ice dragons.

I remained transfixed, staring at them as they descended to the island. They touched down about a mile away, causing a mini-snowstorm to billow up all around them.

Then they moved toward the caves in the hills we had spotted.
Not inhabited by animals after all…

Lucas, Kailyn and Ibrahim had followed me into the sky by now and had seen exactly what I had just witnessed. We quickly returned to the ground and explained the situation to the others.

“Ice dragons, eh?” Rose muttered. “They must’ve left The Heartlands. Maybe they had a disagreement.”

“Let’s go and talk to them,” I said.

It was a little risky all of us going, seeing that we had no idea who these dragons were and what their temperament might be. But everybody was already moving in their direction, and we had Ibrahim to provide protection if they decided to unleash a deadly whirlwind of ice shards.

We caught them just before they set foot in their cave.

“Excuse me!” I called out, moving up ahead of everyone else.

They stopped in their tracks, narrow eyes bulging as they caught sight of us.

Then their demeanor turned defensive. They reeled on their hind legs, ears perked up, and it looked as though they were holding their breath, ready to release their ice at a second’s notice.

“We come in peace,” I said quickly, holding up my hands. “We would simply like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. It will take up only a few minutes of your time.”

The dragons—whose genders I was still unsure of—loosened a little, and exchanged glances.

“Who are you and what do you want to know from us?” the darker blue dragon boomed. I felt a cold wind blowing my direction—the beast’s breath touching me.

We approached within ten feet of the creatures and stopped.

“We are from The Shade,” I explained. “My name is Benjamin Novak. I’m here with friends and family. The first question I would like to ask of you is: how long have you been here on this island?”

Both of them shrugged. “We don’t keep track of time like that.” The second, lighter blue dragon spoke up.

I guessed the question was kind of arbitrary anyway, considering that dragon years were different from others.

“Okay,” I said, deciding to simply cut to the chase. “Quite some time ago, a group of five children might’ve passed this way. Peculiar children, with vampire bodies and Hawk wings. They escaped from your neighbors, the harpies. I would like to know if—”

“Hm,” the dark blue dragon rumbled, stalling my question. “Yes,” it said slowly, “I remember.”

“Remember what, exactly?” I asked, anticipation rising in my chest.

“The five young ones. We caught them stealing our food. They came right near our cave and ravaged our lunch… We soon showed them some etiquette, and the risks of trespassing into a dragon’s territory…”

“What did you do?” I asked, my fists clenching.

“We blew them away,” the second dragon replied. “They went flying, somewhere south of here… though we cannot be sure.”

“Do you remember talking to them?” my father asked. “Did they say anything to you?”

“They spouted some excuses for why they were foraging—because they were hungry,” the dark blue dragon said.

“They also said that they had escaped the harpies and were looking for their real parents,” the other dragon added.

Looking for their real parents.
Well, at least they’d figured out that the harpies weren’t their real parents. Being trapped on an island their whole lives, since they were babies, I imagined they would have been brainwashed by the harpies to think that was exactly where they belonged. They had never known a world outside of it, after all.

But where would they have gone from here? Where would they have even started on their search? They were so young, after all. Would such young children have survived a journey across the supernatural realm, filled with predators? Since they had human blood in them they would be more appealing to more species.

“Thank you,” I said to the dragons. Although they were still eyeing us suspiciously, they seemed to have gotten over the doubt that we might start attacking them.

“So that is all you can tell us?” Ibrahim clarified.

“Hm,” the light blue muttered. “There is one more thing. Those birdwomen came searching for them some hours after the children came by. We have reason to hold a particular grudge against those harpies, so although they asked us if we had seen the children, we lied and said we hadn’t… before blowing them off our land, too.” The dragon’s face split in a cruel grin.

Good
. At least the kids wouldn’t have had those harpies on their trail.

As the dragons retreated into their cave, I turned to face the rest of my group.

“So we have only one additional piece of information,” my father said, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “They were looking for their real parents.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice trailing off as I slipped into thought. Now we had to try to put ourselves in the shoes of those kids, and figure out where their next destination might have possibly been.

I guessed their first logical step would be to find out exactly what they were. I doubted the harpies would have told them they were part human, part vampire, part Hawk.

But how would they find that out? By the sounds of it, the dragons hadn’t been exactly hospitable or open to questions when the children had come here searching for food. They would have moved on somewhere else… maybe found somebody else to consult?

It was hard to imagine five-year-olds undertaking such a task. All I could think was that these kids had to grow up fast while under the “care” of the harpies, and learned to work together to survive. It must’ve been a joint effort to escape the harpies in the first place—the children would have had to plan it carefully.

“Let’s consult the map again,” I said.

Ibrahim drew it out while the rest of us gathered around him.

The warlock sighed. He pointed to the next island in our vicinity, one that looked larger than this ice dragon residence.

“We could keep moving from island to island, I guess,” Ibrahim said. “Though something tells me, as they were part Hawk, their instinct would have driven them to warmer lands. After stealing food from the dragons, they would have had energy to attempt this.”

Ibrahim studied the map for several minutes, hmm-ing on occasion. Then his finger fell on a long landmass further south. God knew how many miles away it was.

“This here,” Ibrahim explained, “is probably the nearest major landmass that has a moderate climate. Since we have already started on this route of wild speculation, I would say that if there was any way they survived the flight across this icy ocean to warmer temperatures, this would be a land where they stopped for rest and likely to fill up on more food.”

“And what is that land, exactly?” my father asked.

“The Dewglades,” Ibrahim replied. “Land of the marsh dwellers.”

“Marsh dwellers,” several of us repeated together.

I had never come across marsh dwellers in the flesh, but we had all heard a thing or two about them over the years we had been operating the The Shadow League. They were an interesting bunch, to say the least.

My father couldn’t look more unenthusiastic if he tried.

“Marsh dwellers,” he repeated again. “Are we really prepared to marsh dwellers?”

Ibrahim shrugged. “Can one
ever
be prepared for marsh dwellers?”

My father and I locked eyes.

We had both already come to the same conclusion; now we were simply procrastinating. Prepared or not, we were going to The Dewglades.