Ghosts of the Past

The chill of the night air clung to Serena's skin like a heavy shroud, but it was the absence of sound that weighed down more than any wind. Serena stood in the courtyard, her breath coming sharp and ragged in the cold October air. Her heart raced — with anger, shock or pain? Maybe all three. Her mother, Isolde, and Mira disappeared like ghosts and faded into the night, but their presence still lingered, heavy in her mind. There presence  was suffocating, choking.

“Isolde is right about one thing,” Lucian growled, his voice low and stretched tight, low as evening low as night. Then there he was next to Serena, jaw set, brow to the sky as if waiting for something to come and peak and tear the dark in half.

“What’s that?” Serena said, her voice firm, but she could smell the implication in her mind like bad perfume.

“The blood of the Onyx wolf,” Lucian said, his gaze drifting away from her as though his eyes were deep with the mysteries of days long gone. “It’s a great deal more than we think it is. We already knew that though right? Even if we didn’t know exactly what it was.”

Serena nodded, but her mother’s words crept under her skin with a shiver — that the Onyx wolf was meant for her. She had felt its powerful currents running through her veins while fighting. She was beginning to feel untouchable — ferocious, invulnerable. But it tasted like ash in her mouth now.

“There’s stuff we need to do, and we need to be strong,” Elias said flatly, dissipating the tension rippling through the room. “But we’ve got to be careful, too. Now, Isolde is working with Mira. That is a dangerous combination.”

Serena turned to look at Elias. He was always more than the darkness behind his eyes, an occupied vessel holding something that walked beneath the borderline of a phobia, but Lucian he was always the who kept them concealed.

“I don’t care about what they do,” Serena said, crisp and unambiguous, yet could feel the tautness beading behind the seams of her words. “They cannot rob me of this.” They do not get the Onyx wolf. It’s mine.”

“And you’ll keep it,” Lucian said, stepping closer to her, his voice a near vow. “But we need to be ready. We need to know what they’re doing. And we need to move fast. The more time they get, the more powerful they’re going to be.”

 “We’ve got to be smarter than whatever they’re coming up with. We can’t afford to wait.” Elias said and Lucian agreed with a nod 

Serena’s eyes returned to the path beyond the courtyard, her head spinning as she attempted to process the implications of what they’d just uncovered. Mira and Isolde were deadly. But worse than that, they all gushed over him. And while each of her battles had only made her stronger, it was the way her mother spoke that sent her heart racing. Isolde had always been a wraith behind a veil, just out of reach. And there she was now, understood intentions.

She grasped the lapel of her cloak and vowed by blood. Neither by Isolde, nor by Mira, and certainly not by the darkness that tempted her. The Onyx had picked her, and she was ready to fight for it, for herself, for the people that she held dear.

“Come on,” Serena said, strengthening her voice, inspiring her mission. “We’re going to know where they’re hiding. We will see what they are doing.”

Lucian’s face softened, briefly, then nodded. “We’ll stick together. We’ll figure this out.”

The three trudged back through the still-musty hallways, loaded with the knowledge dredged up in the hours since nightfall, a black cloak of uncertainty that sat like a heavy weight on our shoulders. The silence now was deafening and each step forward, was laden-fuller, heavier.

They strode through the freezing, vacant corridors of the keep. The place seemed to have become colder, more barren now. The kindness Serena had once felt was weighed down by something far heavier. Instead, as she spoke, her head was filled with something other than love — something on fire

“I don’t have trust in them,” Elias said after a pause. “Not for a second.”

Serena was squinting at him, too, briefly closing her eyes. “Are you thinking they’ll be too delayed to move?”

“Definitely,” Elias replied. ‘We need to figure out where we hit where they are weak in their armor.’ There’s no fucking way they’re doing that lightly.” They’re up to something, something that could use a cloak of invisibility. But sooner or later, they’re going to screw the pooch.”

Lucian followed, taut, jaw clenched in purpose. “And when that happens, we will be ready.”

They walked side by side in silence down the cold stone corridor, the only sound their shuffling feet echoing off the stone walls. But just as they all walked toward the entrance to the main chamber, the loud noise stopped them dead in their tracks. It was a whisper, garbled, like one talking just out of earshot.

All her senses flaring, Serena’s hand brushed against her weapon. “Stay close,” she said, just above a whisper.

And so the boys moved in closer, tension thick in the air. Her heart racing in her chest, her body bracing and gliding into readiness for high alert for whatever they are about to encounter.

They turned a corner, and a torched cast the shadow of a figure into the dark. It was a face she knew, but Serena never expected to see it here.

“Mira,” she said, balefully, incredulously.

But Mira wasn’t alone. There was a man Serena didn’t know standing next to her in dark robes, dark set deep in his face glimmering in the low light.

“What are you doing here?” Serena replied, tightening her hand around the hilt of her weapon.

Mira smiled, but her smile was an empty one, a smile of no warmth. “The real question here, I think, is what are you doing here, Serena?”

It wasn’t awful enough, but then suddenly, with every strand of her body turned to the dude next to her, the stranger stepped a foot toward her and his eyes found Serena’s. He was a tall man, and he carried himself with authority. “Hard to describe what exactly it was,” Alice says, “but there was something ethereal feeling about him, like he didn’t have a right to be in this world at all.”

“I’m here to make sure the Onyx wolf bloodline continues” the figure spoke, a voice laced with honey and silk, the timbre almost melodic. “And you my dear are just what I need.”

“No” Serena breathed with her mouth agape, as though the air had been frozen in her throat. This was no ordinary threat. All was far darker than that — and this man, whoever he was, was at the heart of it.

“Who are you to think you can do such a thing.” Serena said, marching forward, her tone unyielding.

The stranger’s mouth turned slightly in his beard, but nothing smiled there.

“We’ll see,” he said, glancing at Mira. “It’s time.”

And with that the dark seemed to envelop then, footsteps trailing off into distance, and the whole wide world — all the choices Serena had been forced to make, every battle valiantly fought — had led to this moment.

Serena stood there confused at the words of the man. She was the last bloodline of the Onyx wolf.

" Don't listen to him" Lucian said with his hand on her shoulder. 

" I think he is right." She said starting at their retreating figure in the dark.