The Waking (The Upturned Hourglass), page 11
They needed to decide what they were going to do, and they needed to do it fast. Was Jack going to allow Isaac to kill this innocent girl, his own daughter? Jack had been prepared to help him transform her into a werewolf. He did not think himself prepared to commit an act of murder. Would he—could he—stop such an occurrence from happening—or, at least, try? What allegiance did he owe Isaac?
Full of misgivings, Jack cast a final glance into the little room where Valie was, for now, safe. Jack signaled for Shane and Noah to follow, and they departed in single file, melting silently into the fog and misty rain.
“What are we going to do, Jack?” Shane asked apprehensively, as they found a dry overhang nearby to shelter themselves.
“We can’t let Isaac kill the girl, correct?”
“Correct,” Noah and Shane said in unison.
“Then we get her away from him.”
Shane snorted. “How?”
“She knows what we are, now. We’ll have to tell her the whole story. We’ll just have to convince her.”
“We don’t have any proof,” Noah interjected.
Jack shot him a mischievous look. “Yet.”
LOYALTIES
Jack banged on the door of an old industrial type building over by the railroad tracks. The rusty, nondescript sign that was hung in the center of a deserted alleyway certainly didn’t attract many customers to Windemere and Borken—Antique Books and Miscellany, even in broad daylight. In fact, the sign was illegible and had been for fifty years—probably a good thing, since the interior of the shop held very few books and, although the miscellany was in abundance, it was hardly the type of junk the average bargain hunter would bargain for. But it didn’t really matter. The occasional visitor saw exactly what the two warlock shopkeepers—Windemere and Borken—wanted him to see.
The pack had been staying here for nearly five weeks. So far, there had been very little trouble between the werewolves and these old warlocks. Of course, there was always the potential for a . . . difference of opinion between different Occult kinds. But, the old wizards were of the generally accepting and accommodating sort—as long as payment was made. Still their natures were deep-rooted in the ancient ways—when Lycanthropes did not mix with the Fey or the people of the Craft such as themselves. Even at that, it should have been easy to strike a bargain with these two and be treated somewhat as guests but, instead, Isaac had played off of old fears and private debts to coerce them to house his pack indefinitely—so they were treated accordingly—except for Isaac, of course.
That should have been Jack’s first clue that something was off with Isaac. They weren’t even allowed to rent a hotel room. And they had been explicitly warned not to drop Isaac’s name in any of the local Occult haunts. “Too public,” he’d vaguely stated.
So here they were, stuck in the musty, airless upper rooms above the Occult shop—with hardly enough space for the two shriveled warlocks, much less six werewolves. Jack, Shane, and Noah weren’t particularly anxious to return tonight to this hideaway, but they needed to plan.
It was now past midnight and the fog swirled all around. Jack rapped louder. Finally, Windemere opened the shop door a crack and looked out at the three impatient werewolves in front of him.
“Coming in, are we?” he asked peevishly. “Here. Let me play the doorman for you.” He scowled as Jack, Shane, and Noah sauntered in casually. Securing the door behind them, the warlock muttered something in an ancient tongue and followed them up the creaky staircase. Jack wondered what the expletives meant, but he ignored them as usual.
The werewolves had to admit that the warlocks had created a beautiful living area—richly decorated with priceless treasures, eternities old. The furnishings were mostly Fey—with their distinctive tableaux carvings—indecipherable, of course, to the pack. The room fascinated Jack. From what he had gleaned from Isaac, Jack learned that much of the detailed carvings had to do with the Division and the worshipping of Earth’s First Light over the darkness of the Vampyre horde and their demonic influence. Jack had never had much of a mind for history, but upon transformation you are an Occult being with as much history to draw upon as human beings; ignorance could prove fatal. So he’d learned to pay attention as much as possible to the little things.
Shane’s querulous voice finally broke through his consciousness. “Why would we go to Seattle? Won’t the rest of our clan suspect something?” Shane demanded as she stomped up the stairs, last into the room.
Jack held up a hand to silence her. He didn’t need unwanted ears listening in, picking up too much information.
“Where’s Borken?” Jack asked the old warlock.
“Out. We’re allowed to do that, you know. Go out.”
Jack ignored the man’s attitude and watched him shuffle out of the room. Then he returned to Shane’s question, but spoke in a quieted tone. “We’ll go home and pretend Isaac sent us back. We can go to the Council ourselves! Out Isaac for what he is! But in any case, we can’t stay here.”
Noah had been quiet for most of the evening—keeping his own counsel and letting Shane and Jack battle it out—but he finally broke his silence. “Jack, don’t you think Isaac would have covered his tracks better than this?” Noah asked. “Do you really think he’ll let us get that far?”
“He won’t. Especially with what little information you three are working off of.” Windemere spoke unexpectedly from the far corner of the room in his tired, wheezing voice. He sat in an old armchair about as decrepit as its occupant.
“And why do you say that? You don’t even know what we’re talking about,” Jack replied, though his conviction was waning. The hostility Jack had witnessed these last few weeks that existed quite obviously between Windemere and Isaac had seemed too familiar, as if the two had known each other for a much longer time. Perhaps Windemere knew more than Jack believed.
When the warlock merely smiled in reply, Jack walked over to the armchair and faced him.
“What do you know?” he demanded.
“A lot more than you cubs think. I’ve been here a long time.” He motioned around the dimly lit room. With a gleam in his eye, he added, “I was here eighteen years ago, when Isaac first came around—with his hollow aspirations.” He spat out the last word.
“Wait. You knew Isaac personally back then?”
“Yes, boy. I knew him personally. He stayed in my humble abode as a friend—this was before Borken and I became acquainted… Ah, but that is an interesting story . . . .”
Jack, fearing the old man’s mind was wandering, interrupted, “How did he meet the woman?”
“Who? Oh, Elizabeth. I also knew Elizabeth. Isaac introduced us.” Windemere paused, and then added, almost to himself, “He was always so sure of himself.
“They came here for a short time. She was a beautiful little thing—though she refused to believe it herself.” And suddenly he was back in those days, remembering, remembering a woman that—judging by his expression—he was fond of. “She was entranced with the Occult—genuinely delighted with this new world opened up to her. She had the most nurturing disposition. Imagine caring for an old wizard!”
Windemere’s demeanor changed abruptly. He became dour and petulant. “He should have protected her. She had no idea what she was doing. What could I do? She was a fool, and Isaac, an egotist. What could I do? Of course, the relationship was impossible. I knew Isaac was not right for her, even if he were human. He was too selfish; she, too giving. When he revealed the secrets of his existence to her—and even the existence of others—she welcomed the knowledge as an opportunity to get closer to him, believing that he was offering some secret part of himself to her. Fools! It is an inviolable law. She found that out. In truth, Isaac was using her as he does everyone. It is his nature; it is inescapable.”
“And the child? What about Valentine?”
Jack was somewhat taken aback at the range of emotions which passed fleetingly across the old wizard’s face. It was obvious that the mention of Valie caused him pain. Once more, he seemed to be speaking as if no one else were in the room. “Ah, Isaac! Did he love her? Perhaps, at first. Yes, I do believe he loved her, in his own way. It’s true that he made her happy for the brief time they were together. . . until the child was conceived.”
Jack thought that he was going to have to prompt the old man again. But, suddenly, the warlock jumped nimbly to his feet and began pacing frantically around the room. The three werewolves looked at each other, but remained silent, allowing him to work out his agitation. Finally, Windemere seemed to come to a decision. He stopped and looked around at the three, raising his hands as if in surrender. “He broke all the rules; then abandoned her and their unborn child. What could I do? I hated it all, and I told him so. But it was Elizabeth’s fate, was it not? And the child’s fate? Valentine McRae. Valentine Quinn. Of course, the child should never have been born, but such is life—a series of mistakes.” Then he looked directly at Jack, “Or is she fated, also? Did she ever have a chance?”
He retreated to his armchair—this emotional scene taking its toll. “Isaac fled from this place, never to be seen in the region until now. And why now, cubs? Why has he returned and imposed part of his clan on me? Yes, he has to keep a low profile. Of course, he keeps me close—because I know, you see. Only I know everything. And you wonder why my house is charmed!”
Windemere finished with a wry smile, tapping his temple with his forefinger. “You’re smart, boy, smart to have figured him out so quickly. May I ask what tipped you off to her existence?”
Nodding his head slowly as he now sat on the floor, Jack shrugged nonchalantly—like it was no big deal. He still didn’t know if he could trust Windemere. “Mostly from what the girl knew herself—and then there are the eyes—her eyes are that same unusual amber as Isaac’s are.”
Windemere nodded affirmatively and added, “There are other similarities in her personality—the stern set of her mouth, her defensiveness and stubborn temper. Too much like Isaac, probably. But she has her mother in her, too—spirit, determination, and . . . the capacity to love. Quite an interesting little half-blood. And she’s probably inherited some Lycan characteristics, but nothing of much consequence as of yet.”
Jack was listening to Windemere prattle on about Valie, as if he had intimate knowledge of her—firsthand knowledge for 18 years. Jack felt numb. First, he just couldn’t seem to get over the fact that he’d been correct—that Isaac—their creator, their father, essentially—was, at best, a deadbeat dad and, at worst, a would-be murderer with Valie, Isaac’s own daughter, as his unwitting prey. Second, he couldn’t figure what was in Isaac’s mind. He thought he understood Isaac, but, obviously, he was wrong. Windemere was right. There was nothing simple about any of this.
A plan? What plan?
Seeming to sense where Jack’s thoughts had led him, the warlock asked with an impish eye, “What are you going to do about it?”
Jack took a deep breath. He looked toward Shane, her eyes watery; and then toward Noah, stoic and composed. Without so much as a blink, he knew what was in their minds. He had needed a plan and now that his suspicions were confirmed, he had one.
“We’re going to protect her.”
“How?” Shane hissed across the room. Jack turned to find the blonde on the other side of the room, sitting in an old wooden chair next to a small side-table with a dimly lit lamp. The lamp was casting its white light on her face, shadowing the other side. The effect made her look even more drawn than she did already; the brightness of her eyes, the goldenness of her hair, the vivacious look she had learned to maintain—it was all dulled by the light of that lamp and the thoughts raging around in the she-wolf’s mind.
One glance at the girl told Jack that Shane was having serious doubts, dangerous doubts, doubts he couldn’t afford for Noah to contagiously catch.
“Noah,” Jack said in a low tone as he rose from the floor. “I hate to do this, but I need you to catch up with Terrence and Eliza for the night. We need to keep our own watch of Valie.”
“Alright, but what do I tell them when I get there?”
“Make something up. Say you need the practice. Or, better yet, say Shane and I were arguing. You needed something better to do than watch us go at it.”
Noah glanced between Shane and Jack as the two gazed at each other from either side of the room. Their looks were calm enough and the boy paused, confused.
“Are you fighting?” he queried.
Jack broke his eye contact with Shane to turn and smile at the boy. “Not yet. Don’t worry about it. Just take care, okay?”
Noah nodded and, with a final glance at his two companions and the warlock in the corner, took off silently down the stairs.
“Windemere, would you give us the room?”
The old man harrumphed as he rose form his chair. “I suppose. Looks like a storms coming.”
Jack didn’t grace that with a reply. He just waited until the warlock’s footsteps could be heard on the stairs before turning to his pack-mate and asked, “Now, what’s on your mind, Shane?”
The she-wolf looked down at her hands. “Your plan…it involves leaving Isaac doesn’t it? And soon?”
“Yes. It’s the only way. We need to get Valie as far away as possible and, if Isaac and the others are really leaving for a couple of days like Terrence said, then it’s the ideal window of opportunity to sneak away.”
“Well…I don’t…I don’t know if I’m willing to do that….”
It took almost a minute for that sentence to fully register with Jack. “Weren’t you the one who told me that you couldn’t be an accomplice to murder?”
“I know! But we have killed for Isaac before….”
“Vampyres, Shane! The already-dead! And any other Occult deaths we’ve had a hand in—warlocks, witches, Fey-born—were all casualties of kill-or-be-killed situations.”
“Well isn’t this a ‘kill-or-be-killed’ situation? If the Mark—“
“Valie,” Jack growled through gritted teeth. He knew Shane’s reluctant words were spoken out of fear, but if Shane thought that she could now convince him to participate in Valie’s murder or just abandon the girl to her fate, she was gravely mistaken.
“My point is if she isn’t killed, then we will be! No matter what we say, the Interlunar Council will lump us with Isaac. We’ll be nearly as criminal as he is! Who knows what they’ll do to us!”
Jack met the agitated she-wolf’s ice blue eyes with a stern gaze. “I would rather be accused of betraying my leader for the right reasons than sticking around for the wrong ones.”
Shane leaned away from him and slumped down in her chair, her eyes staring dismally at the space in front of her. Her entire body exuded the obvious misery she felt—her usually exuberant face was drawn, her hair tied messily near the crown of her head, her nails looked like they had been bitten until they bled, though it was hard to tell considering her hands were shaking uncontrollably. It was a disturbing image that Jack would not soon forget.
“Why her?” Shane murmured. She did not look up. “Why her?”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked gently, taking a seat in a similar chair nearby.
“Why are you willing to abandon our life, our family for her? But you were never willing to just stay for….”
It was then that it all became clear; this argument wasn’t just about the risks involved in aiding Valie in her escape; it was about old wounds being reopened, wounds Jack had inflicted.
Almost one year after Shane was turned Jack had left the pack to serve the Lycanthrope army known as the Guard, effectively abandoning Shane to the mercies of their pack for almost two years. Shane had never got on well with most of the pack members, because of the circumstances in which she’d been changed. The decision to leave her was a decision Jack had made in youth, but that did not relieve the regret he still felt over his actions.
“For you. But I was never willing to stay for you,” Jack finished sadly. He let the words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “Shane, why do you think I came back after two years of being away? At that council meeting, when I saw you and Noah, who had been turned only a week or so before, who hadn’t even undergone his first Change yet….I knew I couldn’t let the clan, let Isaac, burden you two with the same beliefs and responsibilities that I was loaded with. I could already see it happening to you, Shane! You would do anything Isaac told you to without question and you had only been with the pack for a couple of years! And the way everyone looked at Noah with such…distaste, like he was nothing but a nuisance….” Jack took a deep breathe to steady himself as he remembered. “I don’t know exactly why I came back, but I think, deep down, I just knew it was right for me to be here. Not for Isaac, but for Noah. For you. And now for Valie, who deserves a chance to live.”
Shane’s head snapped up, her eyes alight with a sudden anger Jack hadn’t expected. He leaned away in his seat, but didn’t otherwise flinch from her gaze. “Is that what you think you’re giving her? A chance to live? As what, Jack? She will never be accepted in our world! She will always be a half-blood, an outcast, a mistake. Believe me, I know.” Shane jumped up from her chair and, with arms crossed, began to pace the room like a caged lioness. Jack, otherwise unmoving, patiently followed her agitated movements with his eyes.
“Is that what this is about?” he asked quietly. “Shane…just because Erica was the Mark and not you….”
“Shut up!” she screamed. Shane picked up an old lamp that was sitting in the corner and, with an angry cry, threw it against the wall, shattering it loudly into pieces. “Stop talking like you know me! You don’t know anything! You left! When I needed you, you left!”
Jack was on his feet now, holding his hands out as if to help the girl fuming in front of him. She looked like any minute she would either kill him or burst into tears. The she-wolf was right, he had not been a brother—or even a friend—to her in her time of need, but there had been so much more at stake.
