Nightwish (An Echoes of Eternity Novel Book 1) (5 page)

Her uncertainty sent a chill through me. “You don’t believe them?”

“Not for a second.”

“It seems like you conducted your own investigation. What did you find out?”

“Daughter?” said Delphine to Alexis with a stern expression. “Come along now, child.”

I ignored my mother and looked after my niece.
But we just met
, I thought. Sound wave. Pluck!

My sister chuckled, spun around, and headed toward Delphine. Based on what little I knew about my sister, she treated me as an adversary, most likely because she hadn’t determined the firstborn female in our family’s line. Then again, when matters centered on our mutual affection for Celestina, she immediately set aside her personal feelings about me. Which reminded me: she seemed to know a great deal about me. The disadvantage was infuriating.

“Hey,” I shouted to her. When she turned around, I said, “Stay out of my head!” I wanted her to know that, even without any known powers, I wouldn’t back down from a confrontation.

She hit me with a devious stare. “Good luck with that.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“I suspect you have many questions,” Grams said, sighing with impatience.

She had never looked at me with such…repugnance. Yet, she appeared coherent: she showed no trace of panic. So where did her distaste spring from? I tried to overlook her current state, figuring that perhaps she had a very good reason for lying to me about my mother, sister, and niece, or paranormal creatures, or that I supposedly had supernatural abilities.

On second thought, she didn’t attempt to explain her motives for keeping the truth from me for over two decades. Anger burned through my chest, making it difficult to maintain my composure.

Grams cracked a smile at my frustration. “You appear quite frazzled, darling.”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘darling’?”

“Would you prefer that I substitute that term of affection for another?” she asked, circling me slowly.

The smile on Grams’s face, the way her creepy grin kicked up at my discomfort looked…threatening. A sliver of fear passed through me, clamping my gut tight, locking the feeling in place. It forced me to recognize that something was not right with Grams. That knowledge sent a distress signal through me.

“Is everything okay, Grams?”

“I am quite fine,” she said, stopping behind me.

Her breath tapped my right earlobe, and I hitched my shoulders at the slight transmission.

“You look nervous, darling. Shall I call upon a physician?”

I had asked Grams that same question out of concern, but her use of that phrase left behind a disturbing quality that made me tense my muscles, a reaction that, in the past, had always precipitated battle on the mat at martial arts competitions. To have that response toward Grams confused me.

But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Her Alzheimer’s left her oblivious one moment, clear-headed the next several times a day over the past few years. The last ten months, however, had seen an uptick in both the frequency and the length of each episode, so that she either sat silent with a frown, asked (or demanded) to speak to friends who had passed away years earlier, or talked about people or events that occurred up to seventy years in the past…as if they occurred the day before.

Although her deterioration sometimes pained me so deeply that I needed to leave her side to release my tears in private, I only now realized that caring for her had drained me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed if the illness hadn’t warped her mind. Still, I clung to her few lucid moments because Grams was the only person who had ever loved me. And I couldn’t deny that I was scared to face the future without her.

The person she’d become, however, tarnished her warmth. At this moment, I didn’t know how to handle someone who was unaware that her mind had gotten out of whack.

Grams clutched my shoulders and nestled closer to me, her nose dipping into my hair as she inhaled deeply through her nostrils. “Youth! So vibrant. So potent.” She exhaled and added in a gravelly voice, “Wasted on ignorance and immaturity.” She looked me up and down, a look of revulsion on her face. “Tell me, darling, have you rutted with a man?”

I swung around, incredulous. Cheeks blazing bright, I shook my head, unable to form a reply.

“Have you permitted him to
grind
into your core?” She narrowed her eyes, and hunched down a little, approaching me.

I stepped back. “What? Why are you talking like that?”

“Allowed him to pummel you with his rod of shame?” She quirked an eyebrow with curiosity and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply through her nose again. “Hmmm, yes, you have. I can sense it, almost smell it.” Her eyes snapped open. “But our princess has not granted another man such proximity again, has she? No, I think not.” She cackled with delight and turned her back on me.

“Grams,” I said, at a loss for words. “What’s wrong? Why are you acting like this?”

She pivoted back to me, her odd expression fixed. “Whatever do you suggest?” she asked with an inquisitive expression. “I am in fine spirits.” A malevolent smile flashed. “Rather, it is
you
I worry about.” A moment later, however, the severity of her appearance disappeared, and she now looked pleasant, albeit tuckered out.

Terrified by her swift transformation, I swallowed and tried to grasp the situation. “You weren’t yourself a moment ago…and now you are!”

She stiffened and had a faraway gaze. “Perhaps.”

Realizing that her eccentric behavior remained, I said, “Tell me about it.”

“There isn’t time.” Her expression fell. “You graduated and you’re twenty-one.” Her face brightened. “Congratulations!” She held out her arms and folded me into her embrace. “And Happy Birthday!” Tears slipped from her eyes. “There’s so much you don’t know, and now I don’t have enough time to explain everything.”

Hugging Grams always left me feeling invulnerable as though her body was a shield that negative outside forces couldn’t penetrate. It felt that way now. Then her last statement echoed in my mind. “Not enough time?” I pulled away from her. “Why? Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

That admission meant she’d be leaving this world, not simply going on a trip. My eyes misted with tears, and I found it hard to speak.

Grams’s eyes turned glassy as well. She placed her hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to tell you something that you’ll find difficult to believe, but just know that I wasn’t forthright because I wanted to protect you.”

“You mean that demons exist? And the same goes for vampires, werewolves, and ghosts? Or that I’m a witch?”

Her mouth fell open. “How did you know that?”

“Did you plan on telling me that I have a mother? Or an identical twin sister? And a niece?”

She placed a trembling hand to her right temple, and kneaded it as though trying to relieve a migraine. “How did you find out? What happened?”

“A demon attacked me, but someone intervened and snapped its neck.”

Grams scanned me for injuries.

“I’m fine.”

“Who…” she stammered, finding it difficult to speak. “Who saved you?”

“Sharp fangs? No sense of humor? Acts like a stuffy university professor? Any of this sound familiar?”

“Darius saved you?” Grams asked, distrustful.

“Then he crushed my cell phone in his hand.” I sighed with annoyance. “A true gentleman.”

Grams put a hand to her chest as though she had trouble breathing.

“You should have told me.” I couldn’t keep the hurt and disappointment from entering my voice.

Giant pools of moisture now beaded in Grams’s eyes. “I’m so sorry.” She had difficulty swallowing. Her guilty expression clarified that she understood how her ancestral secrets had almost gotten me killed.

“So Darius introduced me to a family I never knew I had, and Alexis told me that I have powers I didn’t even know about.”

“You don’t know because they became available to you today. Only I know the truth: your mother delivered Alexis first. I wasn’t in the delivery room, but I didn’t need to be. I felt Alexis’s power the moment I saw her. But I didn’t tell your mother and sister the truth because I never trusted them. I never told you about them for the same reason: I didn’t want them to distort your good nature.”

“Why don’t you trust them?”

“My daughter was always drawn to the darker side of magic. With her ability to commune with the dead, she spent years trying to reincarnate the dead. She never achieved that goal, thank the Lord, but her granddaughter has that gift.”

“Celestina can revive the dead?”

“Your niece is the most powerful witch I’ve ever encountered.”

That reminded me of Darius’s remark about having known Grams since the Depression. “How old are you, Grams?”

“Far over one-hundred.” She gave that some thought. “Why? How old do I look?”

“Eighty-four.”

“Hot damn!” Seeing that I planned to ask how she’d managed to shed at least twenty-five years from her life, Grams said, “One of my three abilities is to slow the aging process.”

“Wow! But why do you think you’ll be…leaving soon?”

“Because Celestina has foreseen it.”

“But that’s only a possibility, isn’t it? That doesn’t mean you have to…move on.”

Grams elicited a gentle smile. “It’s well past my time. I’ve only made it this long because I refused to leave this plane before I told you the truth about your heritage.” She started down the sidewalk. “I couldn’t even do that. How ironic.”

I fell in step beside her. “Celestina is a special girl. I feel that she doesn’t want to follow the path Alexis and my mother have laid out for her.”

“If you feel that way, you’re probably right. Never ignore your intuition. Many humans believe intuition springs from evolution. That may be correct to a certain degree. But that insight is even stronger within our line, since we have paranormal abilities that force us to listen to sensations that humans often ignore because they don’t believe in the supernatural. Even some who aren’t witches have paranormal insight. Psychics, for instance, have a penchant for identifying that which is hidden from normal human senses. They are born with a sixth sense. They’re attuned to magic, and for that reason, they can perform spells. Those who aren’t deeply in touch with each of the five senses cannot do enchantments.” She shook her head. “Humans can read any given spell but they have no ties to the supernatural, so they are not empowered; their words fall on deaf ears. But I suspect you wish to speak about your niece.”

“Yes. It was immediate and a little overwhelming.”

“That’s because, as witches, we are attracted like magnets to others with paranormal abilities. Unfortunately, Alexis refuses to let me near Celestina. I suspect it’s because Delphine told her I have malicious intent. Your sister admires your mother so much that she is blind to the influence she exerts over her. That doesn’t mean, however, that she likes her.”

I stored that away to consider at a later date.

“But I imagine the way you feel about Celestina is similar to how I feel about you. When your mother wanted to rid her hands of you, I gladly took you in because I felt an immediate connection between us. I also wanted to make amends for failing to guide Delphine along a righteous path. I always felt betrayed that she found more in common with Zephora, the first witch in our line, than me.”

Seeing my confusion, Grams said, “Zephora lived during the Salem Witch Trials. She created the magical rules we live by: the number of abilities we have, the strength of those gifts, the age females receive their powers. She created ghouls, shapeshifters, and almost every other paranormal creature, so she could rule every entity on Earth. She had every paranormal gift you can imagine and almost unlimited power. But in the end, she was limited to human form.”

“What about demons? I saw one leave a human body.”

“Demons are under Lucifer’s purview, but Zephora surely was able to swap bodies with other humans.”

“Is she still alive?”

“No, thank goodness. But every mother in our line has used her exploits as a cautionary tale for our daughters not to abuse their abilities.” She slowed her pace. “I followed that example, but Delphine was intrigued by Zephora, not afraid of her. I’m certain she has tried to commune with her. Whether or not she has succeeded, I cannot say.”

The story made goosebumps form on my skin. “How did Zephora die?”

“She was burned at the stake. Other than Delphine, no woman in our line wanted to think about Zephora for fear that we might allow her to cross back into our dimension. But I suspect I’ll learn more about her when I visit the other side.”

“Is that possible? Could she really find her way back to our plane?”

“Every person on Earth is composed of energy. When we die, our energy doesn’t always leave with us. From what I’ve learned of our line, when we cross over, we retain at least two-thirds of our power. The other one-third of our powers
may
remain behind, which allows some of us, depending upon our abilities, to communicate with those in this dimension. Every witch has been told, whether true or not, that Zephora has never given up hope to one day reclaim human form and attempt to rule humanity.”

“You said Alexis came first,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to our family.

“It’s the reason I wanted you to learn martial arts…to develop strength of mind, body, and spirit. You also needed it for structure, discipline, and confidence because when it comes to your sister, you will need it. She has a
deep
dislike for you, but I’ve not known her well enough to figure out why. Since you received your powers today, you’ll need to harness what you’ve learned in martial arts to control and maximize the abilities you’ve been granted.”

“So when I woke up this morning, I got three paranormal powers?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t remove the huge smile on my face. “That is
so
cool!”

Grams exhaled, annoyed by my lack of focus. “But your sister is more powerful than you because—”