Indigo Vamporium (2 page)

I want to see the legendary keepers of our divinity with my own eyes, to know what it's like to look into the eyes of the lady of the sea.

Chapter 2

Seithe:

Back at home, escaping the human litter on the beach, I'm stuck in the master's study for another ear lashing.

When Venix drops his bomb, I can't restrain my outrage.

“How could he do this? Doesn't he understand that for once maybe his kids need him more than the humans do?!”

“Sit down,” he orders, in that commanding authoritarian tone.

I'm too tense to sit, I feel like punching something.

“Seithe,
sit down
.” This time when he says it my legs get weak and I have no option but to collapse onto the couch opposite him.

“I have a choice too! If I want to stand, I'll stand.” I hate it when he forces us into doing what he says.

“In some things you don't have a choice. Seithe, I'm tired of this cycle. Do you have any clue how tedious it is to be your eternal babysitter?”

Glaring at Venix, I can feel my eyes glowing and getting hot, “Then get lost. We didn't ask you to babysit us. We'll be fine until dad comes home.”

“He's not coming home.”

“What?! Why not?” I demand.

This is not happening.

Venix leans back in his chair and stares at me levelly.

I don't understand why these responsibilities always end up on my shoulders. I'm not the oldest brother, Darise is. Yet somehow it's always me expected to take care of everybody. To do the dirty work, to push back at the constricting boundaries choking the life out of us.

Tenting his fingers, he looks like he's just sucked aspirin – powdered. “You were given lethe. And we keep on giving it to you and your siblings because you grow up, you become too jaded, and you never manage to get a human to love you. We've done this dozens of times. You remember your mom as if she died yesterday. We modified that memory. Seithe, she died four hundred and twenty-three years ago. Your father left before then. He pops in now and again, but you don't need him here.”

“Liar!”
And I
do
need him here!

I'm so angry he'd do this. I'm tired of these mind games with my uncle.

Prowling out of my chair, I circle the table, the power rising in me to such a degree I'm illuminating the room, “Dad was here yesterday!”

“No, he wasn't. You went down to the beach to mourn the death of a woman who never learned to drive. She died because she was old, Seithe. No other reason. She was human, she couldn't live forever, and she didn't want to.”

“Why?” I fling my hands out in an arc of exasperation. “Why would we choose to become adolescents when we had complete autonomy as adults? Why on earth would we put ourselves through this angst, this loneliness, this intense isolation – if we had a choice?!”

“You didn't have a choice. Sometimes you have to start again with a new generation. In just three years you'll be a man with the looks and maturity of thirty. You don't have to endure this youthful state for long. Teenagers fall in love with their entire being. They give you it all, they feel it all because it's new, it's exhilarating, it's exciting. The first steps into the adult world are intense. It's brutal and it's complete. First love cannot be measured against any other. It's totally unique and it's a chance for you to finally find a woman who loves you more than her own life. You needed a new start, this is it.”

My anger is blasting white light off the mirror, filling the room with the brilliance of a neutron star. It alarms me.

“How do I control this? What happens if I'm with a human and this happens?” Slamming my fist down, snapping the table into two pieces along the grain, I yell out my frustration at him, “Why is this happening? Why are you doing this to me?”

And Ellindt, and Jo, and Darise...

Why us?

“You must develop self-control if you wish to manage the light flaring out of your eyes. As for 'why', that should be obvious to you. You have two choices in this life, reach your full potential as an angel, or find redemption. I'm not the one making this hard, your adherence to ignorance is what makes it hard.”

I'm not a kid. I don't feel like a child and I really hate it when I'm treated like one. He stands, producing a single feather out of thin air like an underpaid poor imitation of a magician.

He offers it to me. “Take it, Seithe. Remember who you are. Remember who you are meant to be. Remember your destiny.”

“Yeah right! And a stupid feather is going to make me do all that.”

Narrowing his eyelids, my uncle's irises finally flare with white lightning. “Seithe, you are not this stupid and you are not this immature. Take the feather. When you understand it, then come and fight with me. Until then, trust my wisdom.”

Snatching it from him, I look at the thick spine and wide plume. It looks like the feather you see in an indian headdress.

This is stupid. He's making fun of me and thinks I'll fall for it.

In one fluid movement he has me by the shirt, brandishing me up in the air like a petulant toddler, his fist so tight I'm choking, “I am your elder until you become my equal. Pay me respect. If I give you a feather and tell you it's a message, believe me!”

Loosening his grip he drops me from his 6' 9 height, and before I can regain my balance he's vanished from the spacious study.

Nothing makes sense anymore. I know mom died last week, I can feel it. I have a hole in my soul wider than the galactic center. It hurts. I can't stop thinking about her. I miss
her
.

“It's the love you miss. Not mom,” says Darise, finally stepping out from behind the door.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“For ages,” he shrugs, giving me a guilty smile. Stooping, he picks up the feather, twirling it around in his fingers. “So... what do you think he meant by this?”

Snatching it out of his hand, I glower, “He gave it to me. Get your own damn messages and clues.”

Reappearing in my bedroom, I throw myself onto the bed to stare at the drab gloom. They gave us lethe, the potion of forgetfulness. I don't know whether to be grateful or angry.

I have a soul deep feeling my redemption is here, somewhere at the tip of Africa where lost secrets lie waiting for discovery in Davy Jones locker on the ocean floor.

It makes sense to hide it where diving is impossible and predators are numerous. But there's more here, I can feel it pulsing through me like a physical heartbeat reaching me from a siamese twin. There's also a great darkness shifting between the realms here. It keeps me on edge, paranoid, and hyper aware.

Ellindt comes into my room, filling it instantly with her perfume. It was made uniquely for our womenfolk by a sage we've forgotten... thanks to the lethe probably. It infiltrates male cerebellum, locking it intuitively inside the thick fatty tissue encasing the left and right hemispheres of the brain, sinking tentacles of ownership right into the subconscious.

“What do you want?” I grumble, refusing to move.

“Is it true? Darise said we were given the potion of forgetfulness and made teenagers again. Why?”

The ache in her tone drastically twists my heart, and I sit up, looking into her tearful eyes.

Swallowing the thick lump now in mine at the sight of my twin in distress, I lift my arm. She slides immediately into the invitation, hiding her head and leaving her tears to trace a hot trail on my shoulder while I hug her to me.

“I don't know why. He said it was so we could find love, to find a human young enough to offer us redemption.”

How many times have they done this to us? And more importantly, why? If it takes me a decade I'll get to the bottom of this. I refuse to ever let us be their victims again. He did it to have power over us, I'm sure of it.

“Are we so hateful and cold that they need to strip us of our memories?” she murmurs miserably.

“No, we're not.” I shake my head, kissing her forehead, “Venix sucks. I need to find a way to get rid of him as our warden. He's callous and cruel.”

“Shhh!” urges Jowendrhan as he slinks into my bedroom, scooting like SWAT tracking a terrorist. “He'll hear you.”

“I don't give a damn if he hears me,” I say loudly.

Darise lurches in the doorway, folding his arms and looking arrogantly at me. “That's why he's hardest on you. It pays to kiss ass.”

Impaling him with my glare, I scowl, indicating he shut up for Ellindt's sake.

He points an accusing finger at me, “It's your attitude. You refuse to conform, and you're stronger than all of us put together.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I challenge, and Ellie sits up, wiping her vulnerable blue eyes.

Gushy and subdued, she whispers to him, “Your pride will see you fall. One day you will serve us, and you'll wonder why. I can tell you why, when we needed you, you abandoned us. Instead of protecting us you side with the one who picks our hearts open with a savage's hunger. Darise mark my words, one day you will regret this.”

Ellindt just cursed our oldest brother.

Heck, this isn't good. She has no clue she's more powerful than any male, what she says comes to pass.

Half angel, a powerful vampress, when she curses you it's written in the book of spiritual transgressions, it's cast in stone as surely as it's scarred into the akashic records.

Darise stands straight, his black eyes growing so dark they look infinite, “We'll see about that.”

Abandoning us when he vanishes, I look at my sister and younger brother, giving Ellie another big hug, “Ignore him, he's an ass.”

“The world has enough asses and not enough angels. He should choose to be an angel, a liberating light, but instead he scorns his own family of light,” she says.

“So darkness awaits,” I nod, understanding her logic as if it's my own. We're twins right down to the bone.

“When he has what he loves more than himself, he'll lose it.” She gives me a determined nod, clutching my hand tightly in her own.

She's so dainty and perfect, I don't understand why she hasn't found love yet.

Jo flops onto the end of my bed, jostling us, “Ellie, be nice.”

She looks at him, squeezing my hand tighter with inner turmoil, “I don't make the rules Jowendrhan, I just see what you guys are too blind to see. The ether vibrates with every action, and he has a shadow following him because he's so selfish. One day that shadow will swallow him, blind him to himself, and make him live eternity in regret.”

I think back to Venix. I'm tall for my age, already 6' 2. The seven inches he has on me burns my hide. One day I'll be as big as he is, and when that day comes I'm going to hand his ass to him on a shattered platter.

Chapter 3

Tasmin:

After trotting down the short road to the beach, I navigate the uneven gap onto the wide stretch of sand.

I know this time I'm too early for any of them. I won't get caught out twice. The sky is barely tingeing coral with the new dawn and the wind coasting off the ocean is so chilling it scalds my lungs. Without a doubt, I'm too early for surfers or varsity guys.

Inhaling deeply, freedom and excitement ignite in my chest. Touching my toes in a long stretch, I then do a few leg lunges and side twists to limber up.

Ready, I pick my way carefully over the soft sand to get to where the water has hardened the ocean grains with high tide.

Shells catch my eye as I walk watching my feet. Ripples stay in the sand from a previous tide and it looks like Neptune was doodling it with a quill while we slept.

Smiling at the thought, I stare out at the ocean, listening to the early morning bird chatter from the shrub lining the boundary of the beach. I'm just about to start running when I spy a loner a good distance up the strand. It's male, dressed in dark clothing.

This is not good. He could be a hungover drunk, or a vagrant who sleeps on the beach. Either way no one is here, and me running right across his path now seems foolish and dangerous. I'm alone. I didn't even bring my phone. A deserted beach is the perfect place to commit a crime.

Narrowing my gaze, I study him. Sneaking back up the incline so I am behind him and won't catch his eye if he glances this way, I struggle over the mounds of soft sand. It's laborious walking up here because my feet sink into drifts with every step.

He's riveted to the mesmerizing motion of waves rushing up the gentle incline, frothing and foaming, fizzing when they recede again. The effervescence leaves behind the clutter of conical shells with snails still wriggling within.

Sometimes I sit down there just to watch how they pucker to my skin when I pick them up and prod the slimy gray insides with a finger. At least, I did, until I found out a lot of them can be deadly.

It's fresh and crisp this morning, the saline scent sharp with every inhalation. Getting stealthily closer, I'm still trying to gauge if this dude is a threat or not.

I do not need this. I got up at sparrow fart to run down here and typically someone has to ruin it for me.

He moves, and I freeze.

Standing, brushing the sand off his jeans, he strolls right down to the waves while glaring moodily out to sea. Shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets, he hunches his shoulders to stare at his shoes for a long while. He's tall. If he was a threat I probably couldn't out-muscle or outrun him. When he lifts his head I get a clear view of his face.

It's that guy from yesterday!

His mouth is twisted in grief, his eyes screwed up and his chin flexing like he's chewing his cheek or something. Dropping to his haunches he picks up a shell, twirling it around in his fingers while balancing in a crouch. Lost in faraway thought, I can tell he's not even looking at the shell.

He looks so miserable and sad.

Slumping back into a sitting position he wipes at his eyes, kneading the heels of his hands into them, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning his head into his palms as if in complete despair.