Born of Oak and Silver (The Caradoc Chronicles) (19 page)

When neither of them answered,
I realized that they had most likely moved into what had once been Bram’s house. I again took off at a run, taking the well-worn path that led to Bram’s. I soon came upon the pond where Bram had taught me to fish, smiling again at the memory of the huge fish we had caught. The magic of the memory, despite the fact that Bram had cheated and used Druidry to be able to hook the beast, spurred me to move forward quicker. I chuckled at the recollection of it all as the pond disappeared behind me.

Finally
the large manor house came into sight. I ran a little faster and did not slow until I reached the house’s massive front door. I hardly ceased my momentum as my hand went to the door latch and made to open it. The door never budged, and I crashed into it. I was completely caught off guard by the impact, surprised that the grand return to home that I had been envisioning these long years did not go as planned.

“Hello?”
I called out as I knocked on the door.

No one answered, and so I did the same once again. I stepped back and looked
to the chimneys for any signs of smoke. There was none. Again, I stepped up to the door and gave it three solid thumps. “Hello? Maman, Papa, are you here? It’s Daine. I have come home!” I pressed my ear to the door, listening for anything to indicate that someone was in fact at home.

After waiting and listening intently for what I felt was long enough, I again stepped away from the door. My brow furrowed as I tried to figure out where my parents might be. I jogged quickly to the drawing
-room windows and peered in. They remained shuttered, and I could not see anything. I ran to the other windows, peering into the library, the office, and the dining room, finding that they all had their coverings still in place. I sprinted to the French doors at the back of the house and found that they too were locked.

I turned my back on Bram’s home, and invoking the wind
, I again ran back to my parents’ cottage. The hired coach had come and gone; the frost-covered ground was now marred by the horses’ footprints and the carriage’s wheels. Ayda stood beside the cottage’s front door. Her face was white despite the cold winter air, and her eyes scanned the property lines searching for something. Seeing me, she rushed forward, and I slowed to a brisk walking pace. Her hands went straight to my shoulders in an effort to stop me.

“
Daine, I . . . I . . .” She looked away from my eyes, her own betraying her fear as they welled with tears. “Just stay here, wait here for Grandad,” her lilting voice implored me.

I looked past her to the open door of my parents
’ stone cottage. A ball of bile hardened in my stomach as I looked down at Ayda’s face; she was worrying her bottom lip with her teeth as she stood firmly, doubting that she would be able to hold me where we stood if I chose to ignore her request.

The
fact that Bram was doing something inside my house that Ayda did not want me to see set off warning bells sounding in my head. I told her I was sorry as I brushed past her. I bounded up the stone steps and passed through the front door into a scene of complete destruction. The well-used dining table was smashed to pieces, the chairs totally unrecognizable. My mother’s cupboard, next to her stove, was demolished; her dishes, glasses, and cookware were broken and shattered on the floor. Mother’s drapes were shredded, the windows behind ruined.

The entire house was shrouded in shadow.

“Daine,” Bram called from my parents’ bedroom, his voice hoarse but still commanding, “do not enter any farther. Leave the house immediately, and wait for me outside with Ayda.”

Fear coursed through my body as my heart began to hammer in my chest more heavil
y than I had ever experienced before. I had to fight to swallow what felt like my very soul trying to escape from my body. I needed to know where my parents were. I needed to know it as badly as I needed air to breathe. Bram knew exactly where they were, and the feeling of terror bubbling through my veins promised that I would not like it when I did.

I stepped over and around th
e broken furniture; my feet, though I was trying to be careful, crunched pieces of my mother’s dishes underneath my feet. The cottage was small, and it was only a matter of a few steps before I rounded the stone mantle and was standing in the doorway of my parents’ bedroom.

At first glance, nothing seemed to be amiss. The room was completely untouched. The bed was still made, and
everything was in its place—a book that my father had been reading still rested on the foot of the bed where he’d last left it. My mother loved sunlight, and the drapes here were tied back from the windows to let in as much of winter’s warmth and light as possible. The only thing out of place was Bram. He stood at the foot of the bed, his face a mask as he considered the wall next to the door where I stood.

H
is eyes shot directly to me. “Stop!” His voice thundered and bounced off the plaster and stone walls. He attempted to compel me to listen and obey—no matter that my desires were counter to his words.

I closed my eyes, focused on my Druidic training and skill, and with concentration, unraveled the hold the words had
gained over my will. Bram’s compulsion had not worked, but the fact that he was attempting to use it to deter me—taking charge once again when for the past few months he had refused it—was a terrible prospect.

He marched towa
rd me furiously, and again used a booming voice as he charged me, “Damn you, you insanely stubborn boy! Depart immediately—there is nothing that you will want to encounter here!” His face was red with anger, and if possible, his beard seemed to bristle with his agitation.

I regar
ded him angrily. The waves of ire rolling off each of us collided explosively in the empty space that existed between us. These were my parents, and of no relation or concern to him. If I wanted to enter any room in their home it was no business of his. I looked down my nose at him, and for the first time in my life, I pushed past him and into the room. Two impossibly strong hands clamped painfully down on my shoulders and threw me physically through the air and across the dining room. I crashed into the stone and plaster wall opposite the entrance to my parents’ room. I fell to my knees, and from the floor looked up at Bram. My eyes glowed with hatred. He still barricaded the door; his eyes daring me to defy him again.

“Bram
!” I shouted at him. “Let me pass. This is of no concern to you, and I do not wish to harm you.” I raised myself from the floor, taking the time to dust the bits of plaster that had fallen on my clothes to the floor.

“I will not protect you
in this again, boy. It would do you well to remember that I have advised you twice to leave this house,” Bram warned me with an authoritative voice.

I breathed heavily, my chest markedly rising and fall
ing with every breath. “No,” I answered him growlingly.

At the sound of my back hitting the wall, Ayda had come to stand at the entry of the house.
“Daine, please, do as he says.” Her soft voice broke, filling the corners of the dark and destroyed room that was my parents’ home as well as my mind. I turned my head to once again look at Bram; despite standing like a sentry over the entrance to the room, his face too held the faintest hint of sadness showing through the cracks of the mask his face had become.

I shivered, feeling the
winter’s cold for the first time. The ashes from the uncleaned fireplace swirled as a breeze drifted into the room.

I knew that they were dead.

“I’m sorry.” I looked from Ayda to Bram. “This is something that neither of you can protect me from.” I moved forward, once again crossing over the broken furniture and to the doorway of my parents’ room. Bram stepped aside with a nod and I entered the room. I knew exactly where I needed to look, and turned my head to the left as I rounded the threshold. I gasped in disgust at what I found.

The reaction was instantaneous, and the tears and sorrow erupted from my broken spirit in choking sobs. I fell to my knees, my hands reaching for but not daring to touch the feet of my parents.

They had been hung on the wall. Their naked arms and legs were held fast by crude spikes of metal.

T
heir feet were streaked by the stain of blood that had coursed down their torn bodies before merging into a puddle on the wooden floor. Their bodies were naked, and utterly mutilated. Both had been eviscerated with surgical precision; their innards dangled freely from their open abdomens. Their eyes, noses, nipples, and finger- and toenails had all been removed. Large tracts of skin had been partially peeled away from their legs and left to hang over their knees and ankles. The same had been done to their faces.

My father’s genitals had been removed; my mother too, had been similarly mutilated.
Their teeth were gone; their mouths hung widely agape. Both of their throats had been slit, just below the jawline, and their tongues pulled through to hang in a final gruesome act. My father was completely unrecognizable, as was my mother, save only for her auburn hair, which had been left untouched.

I turned
and vomited on the floor.

I remained that way,
hunched over with tears clouding my eyes as I attempted to sob between my body’s attempts to disgorge itself. I was racked with pain, and could do nothing but become a slave to my body’s reaction at the revolting state my parents had been reduced to. When my stomach stopped spasming, I dragged myself toward my parents’ bed to lean my head against their quilts, which hung over its side. I completely succumbed to the interminable sorrow that I seemed unable to escape.

The l
ight began to grow dim. I sat, unable to think or move, smelling the faint scents of my mother’s soap and my father’s workshop that lingered in their bedding. Who knew how long they had been gone? Who ever had done this had sealed the house, which all but stopped the natural process of decay. All of this could have happened as early as yesterday, or it could have been as late as six months ago. I exhaled, and again inhaled the final scents, reminders, of my always loving parents.

The air in the room shifted slightly, and I felt two small and gentle hands wrap around my chest. Ayda’s body embraced me from behind as she crouched to rest her cheek against my own. “Daine,” she
whispered softly, “let us leave this place. Your parents’ remains may be here, but their spirits fly free elsewhere. Remember them for what they were, and allow them to rest from this world.”

I lifted my h
and to interlace with hers and nodded somberly. She was right—my parents were no longer here. Even though all that was left of them was this macabre shrine, I knew that whatever part of them still existed was not to be found here.

I accepted her help as I slowly began to stand. I had yet to spare a second
glance at my parents’ bodies, and I did not offer them one as I forsook their room and came into the smashed kitchen and dining room. I stopped by the front door as something caught my eye. I bent down and removed chunks of wood and glass, discovering my father’s rifle lying on the floor. It was not loaded.

I stood with the rifle
in my hand, scanning the room. Lodged deeply into the wood of the doorframe was a bloody bullet.
At least they’d tried to put up a fight
, I consoled myself. Ayda came to stand beside me. I propped the rifle against the wall, and allowed her to take me outside. My hand trailed over the bullet hole as I left.

I squinted in the sun after
spending countless hours within the tomb that had once been a home. When I could see properly, I noticed that Bram was just coming toward us from my father’s workshop. “Nothing inside of his shop has been disturbed. Robert’s tools still remain where he left them. Perhaps the two of you would do well to wait there while I conclude our business here?”

What he was offering was to conduct my parents’ funeral.

“No, Bram, gather whatever information you deem is necessary. After you have,
I
will light their funeral pyre. But leave them as they are. I do not want them removed from their present state in the house,” I informed him very soberly.

He
was surprised that I did not want to displace them from where they so cruelly hung. If I could not have what represented a semblance of what they once were, I did not want any kind of false reminder to exist after them. Even if those were their desecrated physical remains—my parents deserved more than that. I could honor them best by my remembering how they’d lived.

Bram left Ayda and
me alone as we made our way to the barn, entering what was left of the home that I had grown up in himself.

Stepping into my father’s workshop was like stepping into a place lost in time.
As always, large, beautiful pieces of finished furniture waited along the far wall for pickup while others in various states of completion sat in the work space. Tools still remained close to where they were most recently used, looking as though they’d just been set down and their handler would return at any moment to take them up again. It made what was left of my heart hurt.

“This is beautiful!” Ayda said, interrupting my heartbreak
as she ran her hand over the dark finish of an intricately carved wardrobe. “They’ve never made anything like this at home. Now I see why Da always likes to order his furniture from France. I wonder if we have any of your father’s work at home.”