Attack on the Half Breeds
March 5, 2017-Shifter Realm, Second Dimension
March 5, 2017-Shifter Realm, Second Dimension
"I don't know how you do it. I really just can't get it."
Lilitu glances sideways at her younger sister, observing how she scratches behind her ears fiercely; she has to Transform soon. Although Lilitu never feels that urge since she has no Shape Shifter blood, she knows that Shape Shifters, especially younger ones, have a constant need to Shift into their True Form. She knows that Zaria is struggling to fight her urges, but she can tell that it’s becoming harder the longer it’s been since the last time she Shifted.
"Don't feel down about it, Zaria," she says kindly, wrapping her arm around her sister's shoulders. "Growing up, I didn’t really focus much on my Werewolf blood. I mainly focused on learning the art of Alchemy and how to use the various types of Glamour from mom, which is why opening portals came a little more naturally to me. You spent more time learning about your Shape Shifter heritage with dad. You'll figure out portals soon, I promise. If it makes you feel any better, I didn't learn until I was around your age either. Trust me, one day, it'll just click, and you'll get it."
"But I'm already going on 13, and you figured out how to open a portal as soon as you turned 12!" Zaria crosses her arms and looks up at Lilitu with wide eyes and her lower lip sticking out in a pout.
"That's true, but it's been two years, and I still can't go further than a few miles, 15 at most. Just watch, you're gonna be jumping continents soon." Despite Lilitu’s gentle words of encouragement, Zaria sighs in defeat, desperate to learn so that she can make her sister proud. Noticing the frustration on her sister's face, Lilitu takes her arm off of Zaria's shoulder and steps backwards. Zaria looks up in confusion, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. "How about we try this?"
Suddenly, Lilitu loosens her body and raises her arms, opening a shimmering portal in front of her sister that'll take them back to their house down the dirt road. "I know that you aren't really supposed to go through them until you learn, but how about we bend the rules just a little bit? Maybe if you feel what it's like to go through the portal, that special something will click for you, and you'll be opening the next one."
Zaria beams at her sister as Lilitu winks at her and holds out her hand. Zaria zealously grips it, and the sisters step through the portal, a moment of weightlessness consuming them as warmth surges under their skin before feeling the rush as their feet plant on the gravelly dirt in front of their house. Lilitu lands with her feet firm, no longer wobbling like she did the first time she went through a portal, but Zaria stumbles, and she would’ve fallen if Lilitu wasn’t still clutching her hand like a vise. However, she isn't deterred by her lack of grace; her smile broadens as she looks up at her fair-haired sister.
"Lilitu, I felt it," she whispers excitedly. "I don't know how to describe it, but I felt it. That was amazing! Can I try now?"
Lilitu is about to respond when all of a sudden, their mother, Parisa, erupts out of the house with her arm wrapped around their younger brother's shoulders, her face distressed. The sister's mirrored grins immediately transform into guilty grimaces, knowing that they're in trouble for disobeying the rules.
"There you two are!" Parisa sounds on the verge of tears. She momentarily releases their brother, Rapha, and rushes through their small yard to embrace her daughters in a bone-crunching hug that shouldn't be possible for someone as slight as their mother, especially since both girls are fairly muscular for their age after years of hard training with their father to tone their bodies. She releases them and grips their faces, tilting them to examine them for marks. "Thank the Watcher you girls are alright! Get in the bunker right now. I'll be right down."
Lilitu grips her mother's arms, trying to ground her while struggling to understand what her mother is talking about. "Mother, what's—"
Parisa shakes Lilitu off gently and nudges the girls towards the house, silencing her daughter's protests. "I'll explain soon. Just get underground, and take care of your brother and sister!"
Her blood chilling, Lilitu nods, assuming the role of authority her mother entrusted her with. She takes a deep breath, knowing she needs to remain calm. As she ushers her younger siblings inside, she glances back at her mother, watching her place enchantments and wards around the house to keep the Pure Bloods out. She knows that that will probably be enough, but the Pure Bloods are too powerful to let up your guard around, so the family retreats to the bunker as an extra precaution, especially since the bunker also has similar protective wards inside.
Forcing herself to look away from her mother, Lilitu takes Zaria's hand and wraps an arm around Rapha's shoulders, guiding her siblings to the last room in the back of their rustic house . She removes the old, golden key that she has on a matching chain around her neck and unlocks the door, revealing a dusty room with a single, gray chair that's seams are coming loose, and a thatch rug on the floor. She gently pushes Zaria and Rapha into the room before shoving the rug aside, lifting the loose floorboards that were hidden underneath to reveal a ladder that leads down into the bunker that their parents built in the event of an attack by the Pure Bloods.
Lilitu looks back and forth between her two younger siblings, desperately praying to the Watcher that the Pure Bloods won't harm them or that her mother’s instincts were wrong for once even though she knows they never are. "Get down there. I'll be right back." Zaria and Rapha nods, and Lilitu shifts anxiously from foot to foot while waiting until they're safely underground. She hastily replaces the floorboards and scurries across the hall to the room that she and Zaria share falling to her knees in front of the oak chest at the foot of her bed. She throws the lid open and digs through it, tossing clothes and Alchemy supplies aside until she finds the leather pouch buried at the bottom. She gingerly reaches inside and pulls out a bottle filled with a shimmering, silver liquid that looks like bottled moonlight. Lilitu holds the bottle tightly to her chest and rushes back out of the room, almost slamming into someone. She yelps, jumping away in panic and wondering if one of the Pure Bloods snuck in before her mother could finish setting her enchantments around the house. She hesitantly opens her eyes and nearly sags in relief to see her mother standing in front of her.
"Lilitu, what are you doing?" Parisa demands, her voice strained as she grips Lilitu's arm and pulls her into the bunker room. "You should be underground! Where are the others?" She locks the door, and the two begin prying the floorboards up again.
Lilitu holds up the flask for her mother to see. "Just in case," she whispers before sticking it in the waistband of her pants. "Don’t worry about the others; I made sure Rapha and Zaria were underground before I went for it. Where's father?"
Her mother chokes back a small sob, obviously trying to remain strong for her children’s sake. "I wish I knew; he should be coming back from his hunt today, but I don't know for sure." Lilitu can hear the unshed tears of fear in her mother’s wavering voice making her throat tight. "Either way, we have to get underground." She gestures for Lilitu to jump down first, and she quickly follows, pulling the floorboards back into place before sitting on the ground with her children.
Zaria and Rapha, who had created a small flame in the palm of his hand to illuminate the small room, jump when Parisa and Lilitu enter, and the light extinguishes. Parisa snaps her fingers, and candelabras along the walls immediately spark, their flames flickering and casting shadows around the family. On the walls and ceiling are various protective symbols Parisa drew long before she and Arcadius adopted the children; they seem to have been drawn in blood. Next to the ladder is a bookshelf with a few blankets, some jars of food, and some alchemy supplies, but Parisa and Rapha are able to conjure almost anything the family could need.
Zaria immediately scoots closer to her sister, and Lilitu absentmindedly takes one of her sister’s hands to comfort her, the gesture instinctive. "Mother, what's going on? Please don't tell me the Pure Bloods are coming to raid our village again," Zaria whispers, her small body tensing. Parisa can see the memories of the last raid behind Zaria's dark eyes; she was only five, and a troop of Shape Shifters invaded their small village. A Striped Hyena, like Zaria, lunged at her, and Lilitu pulled her out of the way, shoving her toward the house and standing in the Hyena’s path, pulling out a silver knife and shoving it into the Shifter’s stomach when he lunged at them. She yanked it out and ran Zaria down to the bunker. That's when Zaria began to idolize Lilitu.
Parisa gazes fondly at her younger daughter, reaching out and tucking a lock of her light brown hair behind her ear before taking Zaria's free hand. Even though all of her children are adopted, Parisa loves them as if they really are hers and Arcadius's, and she knows that if anything ever happened to them, she would be losing a piece of herself. "I sensed a negative energy in the air, an unfamiliar charge. It didn't feel like the Pure Bloods were coming for us, but I've never been close enough to a Pure Sorcerer to tell what their energy is like when focused on destruction, so it could be them."
"But you're a Half Sorceress, mother," Rapha points out. "Wouldn't you be able to tell if one of them is coming?"
"You're also a Half Sorcerer. Try to reach out and see if you can sense them."
Rapha nods and closes his eyes, reaching out mentally to search for the negative energy to no avail. "I can't sense anything, mother. Could it have been the Half Fae in you that sensed them."
Parisa smiles slightly at her children's attempts to figure out what's coming for them despite the present danger. "I don't know. Girls, you're also Half Fae. Try to sense what's coming for us."
Lilitu can see through her mother’s calm façade; she can tell that her mother is trying to help the kids stay calm by turning it into a game or a lesson. For her siblings’ sakes she decides to play along and tilts her head up to the ceiling with her eyes closed, taking a deep breath and searching for any physical energy outside of the ones in the room. Zaria glances at her sister and mimics her straight-backed posture. Although she's unable to find anything solid, Lilitu's eyes shoot open and she stares at her mother. "I think I know what your talking about. It felt like something outside of this world, and whatever it is wasn't alone. It's cold…and dark, too. It's something evil, but I can't tell what exactly. It feels...angry. It’s so angry. Whatever it is is after blood, and it won’t stop until it gets it."
Parisa grimaces and nods. "It is. It's like nothing I've ever encountered, and I pray to the Watcher that our wards will keep us safe, and that He will watch over your father as well."
* * * * *
Arcadius whistles happily as he strolls out of the sparse, Australian forest, leisurely making his way home. He's excited to see his family again after three days away from home, but he admits to himself that he will miss the hunt until he goes out for another one in a couple of weeks with Lilitu for the full moon. The hunt always soothes him, sating two of his base needs: Transformation for the Shape Shifter half of him and the bloodlust that comes with his Vampire genes. He knows that Shape Shifters generally frown upon the act of meat-eating , but the Half Breeds do things differently from the Pure Bloods that shun them, and they couldn't care less about whether the Pure Bloods have an issue with them eating meat. It's just another check on their long list of reasons to hate the Half Breeds.
Zaria was beginning to get antsy when he was getting ready to leave, and he calculates how long it's been since her last Full Transformation—three weeks, too long for a kid. He grins, thinking that when he takes Lilitu out for the full moon, he might bring his younger two children out as well. His heart swells with pride at the idea of seeing his children work together for their prey, his son to sate his own need for blood and his younger daughter for her to knock out the scavenger instincts that come with being a Hyena.
He makes his way over the hill that leads straight to his village, his pace quickening at the closeness of his family; he can smell them—Zaria and Lilitu were recently outside. Arcadius practically jogs to the top of the hill…and he stops dead in his tracks.
His blood chills, as if to match the unusually frosty air that surrounds him as he takes in the sight before him. Black, shapeless blurs blot the normally blue sky. They launch at the houses at the foot of the hill, surrounding the ones that house Sorcerers and Fae who set up wards that protect against them like a writhing black sheet that just can’t penetrate the invisible barriers. Shrieks of terror pierce the air from the houses that the shapes are able to enter, and Arcadius is unsure whether he wants to know what exactly what havoc these black creatures are leaving in their wake. His mind temporarily blanks as he gazes at the trembling black cloud in the sky. All at once, his animal instincts scream at him to run, but he shakes his head violently, struggling to fight against his instincts for once. His brain slowly begins to function again, and images of his family tumble to the forefront. With them in mind, he propels himself towards the village, his instincts now telling him that protecting them is all that matters.
He Transforms into a grizzly bear and tears down the hill, bounding rapidly toward his house. He dodges the black shapes as he runs, knowing that nothing good can come of them, and his house at the back of the village finally comes into view. The first thing he notices is that it's one of the one of the few houses with shapes swarming around it but unable to pierce it, and relief trickles into his mind when he realizes that Parisa was able to keep her head and ward the house to keep herself and the kids safe. He quickens his pace as much as he can, and he's almost to his house when the wind is suddenly knocked out of him.
Arcadius is knocked onto his side and looks up at the sky again as one of the black shapes surges out of his body, shooting back into the sky to join the others surrounding his house. His thoughts suddenly blur as rage surges to the forefront of his mind, and all he can think about is murder. He stands up, the desire and need to kill something flooding all of his senses as bloodlust sets his nerves alight.
Arcadius sees red as he turns back towards the door, sniffing the air and catching the scent of the family that moments ago was the only thing that mattered to him. Now, they matter for a different reason. Now, they will sate his bloodlust.
* * * * *
Parisa and the children sit in silence together, none of them knowing what to say to comfort each other. Zaria, who’s always been as close to her father as she is to her sister, is particularly distressed, and Lilitu holds her sister tightly, knowing that no words can relieve the tension. Lilitu's hyper-sensitive ears suddenly prick as she hears a bang upstairs. She glances at Zaria, knowing that their mother’s ears aren’t sensitive enough to pierce through their shelter. "Did you hear that?"
Zaria suddenly goes on high alert, and Rapha sniffs the air. "It's father!" He stumbles away from his mother and grips the ladder, prepared to scramble up to let his father in.
"Stay where you are," Parisa commands calmly. "Your father wouldn't want you to leave the bunker. He'll be down in a few moments." The children nod and settle back down by their mother, but they all buzz with overwhelming excitement and relief that their father is still alive and well.
Within moments, they hear him in the room above, but he didn't use his key—the children hear a crash as if he knocked the door off its hinges. Lilitu stands and backs away from the bunker entrance, pulling her sister along behind her. "Mother, Rapha, stand behind me."
Parisa gapes at her daughter. "Lilitu, I will not let you—" her mother protests.
"Stand behind me, mother. Something is wrong, and you have to keep them safe." Lilitu pulls her flask out of her waistband once her mother and siblings are against the wall behind her and chugs it in one sip, cringing at the unpleasant taste that almost feels like a blend of too much pepper sprinkled onto a sour apple and dipped in excessively sweet chocolate; it feels slimy as it coats her throat, making her shiver slightly, but this is the only way to trigger a Werewolf Transformation at any point in time other than during the full moon. She drops the flask as her neck rolls, and she crashes to the floor on all fours. Her nose elongates into a snout as thick, brown and gray fur begins sprouting up along her body. A long, low growl rumbles in her throat as a bushy, snow-tipped tail grows to compliment her furry white paws.
The family looks up as the floorboards to the bunker are ripped apart violently, revealing Arcadius's furry, brown face and angry eyes that focus on the most immediate threat: Lilitu. He dives down into the bunker, and Lilitu lowers her head defensively, half of her mind wondering why he's approaching her with his teeth bared. The other half is charting the best means of attacking him. Saliva drips from Arcadius's long, thick, sharp teeth, making him look rabid. Parisa pushes her younger children further behind her when she sees this until they’re pressed against the rough stone wall. Zaria Transforms, following her sister's example, but she remains shielded by her mother.
Lilitu pauses, her tail tight against her body. Adrenaline pumps through her as her mind races. This is her father, the father that raised her and loved her and always took care of her, but now he’s attacking her like she’s a stranger. She’s never seen him like this, even at his most furious, and she knows that after seeing the terror in his family’s faces, he would’ve already Shifted back to comfort them if he was really in control. She quickly glances at her mother and siblings, knowing that she has to attack her father, if only for their sakes.
A sense of serenity consumes Lilitu as she comes to terms with what she has to do, Arcadius stands on his hind feet, raising a massive paw as if intending to smack the smaller wolf. He's forced to hunch over in the small space, and Lilitu sees her chance. She launches herself at his exposed throat, almost being cradled by his extended arm. She claws at his snout and eyes as she latches onto his neck with her canines, forcing a roar of anger and pain to erupt from Arcadius as she struggles to remind herself that this isn’t her father and tries to let her animal instincts think for her instead. He shoves her off, but she refuses to be deterred. She jumps onto her hind legs and swipes her claws against his exposed stomach and scrambles back up his body, again sinking her teeth into his neck as if she's the Half Vampire instead of him.
Arcadius digs his giant, black claws through his daughter's fur, tearing them down her back. She rears her head back, howling in agony, and he throws her to the floor. She yelps as she lands on her bloody back, and Arcadius falls onto her before she can move away, pressing one paw down on her chest to constrict her breathing before using the other to dig his claws into her torso. Hot blood oozes onto her fur as he shoves her to the other side of the room. She whimpers but doesn’t move.
The fresh blood permeates the air, and Arcadius advances on Lilitu again, clearly attracted to it the scent. Rapha, seeing his father begin trudging intimidatingly towards his sister, ducks under his mother's arm and races to stand in front of his sister, baring his fangs and snarling. Zaria sprints towards her father as well and launches herself at his back, digging her claws into his spine and sinking her teeth into his neck like Lilitu did.
Arcadius stumbles away from Lilitu slightly, trying to swipe Zaria away. She pulls one of her paws away from his back and begins clawing at his head. Arcadius roars again, falling backward, and Zaria barely has time to jump away before he crashes onto his back. He quickly heals and rolls onto his paws again, searching for his younger daughter. Between the deranged look in his eyes, the thick blood dripping from his teeth, and the dark blood matting his fur, he looks like a monster, not like the father Zaria's always known, and she forces herself to keep attacking him to keep her family safe.
"Mother, do something!" Rapha shouts, staring desperately at his shell-shocked mother. "He's not our father anymore! I can't attack him alone. He's gonna hurt Zaria!"
Rapha's pleas jerk Parisa out of her frozen state, and she plots out how best to attack her husband. Taking a deep breath, she tilts her head back and stretches her arms out, slowly waving them forward to stretch out in front of her. She clenches her fists closed as tightly as her eyes. Her body begins to emit a pulsating, white glow, and she floats slightly, hovering on a pale gray cloud. Arcadius is distracted by the beautiful glow, temporarily falling onto all fours and forgetting about Zaria. She rolls off of him and backs away to stand with Rapha in front of Lilitu, the older girl groaning in pain from the deep, slowly-healing lacerations in her back and torn internal organs.
Seeing that Lilitu is no longer unprotected and that his father seems to have forgotten about her, Rapha scurries to stand behind his mother and mimics her pose. While he doesn't rise into the air, he begins to emit a similar glow, and he echoes her as she murmurs a Latin incantation. Rapha recognizes the spell from their studies—it’s one of the few that needs to be spoken aloud—and despite the dread filling his mind, he trusts his mother.
Zaria watches her mother and brother, Transforming into her Sorcerer body to use her hands to gently push her sister as far from the bright glow as possible. She isn't sure what to expect, but she knows that whatever it is will be powerful. She wraps herself around her unconscious sister, ignoring the thick blood matted into Lilitu’s fur as she closes her eyes against the blinding glow and too afraid to watch what might happen to her father.
Rapha and Parisa grow louder as the glow around them becomes even brighter. Wind begins whipping around them, and a forcefield forms in the small space, trapping Arcadius inside. He roars indignantly but is too confused to give into his bloodlust for the moment as he struggles to escape from the stormy air. Arcadius manages a small step forward, but another gust of wind whips past Parisa to join the mini tornado trapping the Bear. He beats angrily against his prison, but despite her tears of horror at what she's about to do to him, Parisa doesn't stop. The whirlwind lifts Arcadius slightly off the ground, and he begins thrashing even more desperately to free himself.
"Mother, it's time!" Rapha shouts over the screeching storm; Parisa nods and stops chanting.
"Go protect your sisters!" Parisa commands, keeping her eyes trained on her husband. As Rapha warily shifts around the windstorm to his sisters, Parisa tries to make herself forget about Arcadius in this state so that she can just remember him as the loving father and husband that she's always known him to be. "Whether you can understand me now or not, I love you," she sobs quietly, almost positive that her children can't hear her over the wind. She raises her voice again so that Rapha can hear her. "Are you ready, Rapha?"
"I'm ready!" Parisa sees him slowly approach Arcadius, closing the wind even tighter around him, and she does the same so that he's trapped in a field pressed tightly against his body. His thrashing becomes slightly less coordinated as his lungs are surged with the strong wind.
"Now, Rapha!" Parisa cries. The two suddenly reverse the process, the tornado unravelling and taking all of the oxygen inside of it out, including the air that Arcadius was breathing. He tries to roar again from the agony, but without any oxygen left in the whirlwind, the sound is hoarse and weak. He collapses to the floor, but he's still alive and struggling to rise up again.
Closing his eyes desperately, Rapha conjures a stake of wood and silver entwined together. It's through his father’s back and piercing his heart before Arcadius has the chance to even raise his stomach off of the ground, and when Rapha opens his eyes, his fist is still closed tightly over the stake's handle, pressing the wood and silver tighter together. He hears Zaria and Parisa crying, and he feels sick at what he's done. He stumbles away from his father as he begins dry heaving, and he conjures a bucket just in time to catch the vomit that suddenly surges out of his stomach.
When Rapha's retching is reduced to dry heaving, he looks up at his mother's tear-stained face, suddenly terrified. "Mother, please don't hate me," he whispers; his throat feels raw. "I didn't want to, mother. He was...he was gonna kill us all. Please, mother, don't—"
Parisa cuts him off, falling to her knees and wrapping him in a tight embrace. He closes his eyes as he feels her gently rub circles around his back. "He wasn't your father anymore. I could sense a...darkness inside of him. It's what made me pause. It was a concentrated form of whatever is outside right now. Whatever attacked him took away the love and purity of his soul; there was nothing we could have done. You did him a great justice by freeing him as bravely as you did." She kisses his forehead and holds him tightly.
Zaria, who had been watching silently while petting her sister's back, suddenly feels the fur begin to recede and quickly grabs a blanket from the corner of the bunker to cover Lilitu. "She's Transforming back," Zaria calls quietly once Lilitu is covered.
Within moments—although still much longer than normal due to her physical state—Lilitu is back in her Sorcerer body, surrounded strategically by her family so that she can't see Arcadius. "My head is killing me," she mutters as she struggles to open her eyes. She tries to lift her head, but gives up quickly when the room spins and her family members multiply. "Where's father? Did you guys manage to subdue him so that we can figure out what's wrong?" Everyone glances around, unsure how to answer her, but Lilitu suddenly notes the tears on everyone's faces, and her throat constricts. "I want to see him."
Parisa almost protests, but she thinks better of it, and moves aside to allow Lilitu to see her father. The stake is still lodged in his back, and blood—both his and the sisters’—covers his fur in patches. "There was no other choice," Parisa whispers, her voice catching. "His soul was black; he wasn't the man you knew anymore."
"I know he wasn't," Lilitu snaps before reminding herself to reign in her anger at the situation. She takes a deep breath to calm herself before continuing. "I could sense it. My father would never attack me the way he did. As far as I'm concerned, that was just a wild animal that got into the house. Nothing more, and nothing less."
Parisa nods understandingly and resolves not to discuss it any further. "We need to tell the Pure Bloods what happened here today."
"Why should we?" Zaria demands, a fiery glint in her eyes as her body tenses with fear and anger.
"The Pure Bloods hate Half Breeds," Rapha adds, crossing his arms in accordance with his sister.
"They may not like us, but whatever is outside right now, whatever took your father from you, is a threat. I can sense them, sense their anger. I don't know what they are, but will destroy everything in their path, and everyone needs to be prepared to protect themselves. Not just the Pure Blood parents who hate us, but the children like you—the innocents who never had a say in banishing us to this island. I can't bear the thought of another child going through what you three did today, having to be as brave as you all were. We have to tell the Pure Bloods. Whatever this is is bigger than an eternity-long blood feud."
The children all nod, and Lilitu manages to sit up, keeping the blanket wrapped tightly around her body. "What do you need us to do?"
-Kaitlynn Rose
"I don't know how you do it. I really just can't get it."
Lilitu glances sideways at her younger sister, observing how she scratches behind her ears fiercely; she has to Transform soon. Although Lilitu never feels that urge since she has no Shape Shifter blood, she knows that Shape Shifters, especially younger ones, have a constant need to Shift into their True Form. She knows that Zaria is struggling to fight her urges, but she can tell that it’s becoming harder the longer it’s been since the last time she Shifted.
"Don't feel down about it, Zaria," she says kindly, wrapping her arm around her sister's shoulders. "Growing up, I didn’t really focus much on my Werewolf blood. I mainly focused on learning the art of Alchemy and how to use the various types of Glamour from mom, which is why opening portals came a little more naturally to me. You spent more time learning about your Shape Shifter heritage with dad. You'll figure out portals soon, I promise. If it makes you feel any better, I didn't learn until I was around your age either. Trust me, one day, it'll just click, and you'll get it."
"But I'm already going on 13, and you figured out how to open a portal as soon as you turned 12!" Zaria crosses her arms and looks up at Lilitu with wide eyes and her lower lip sticking out in a pout.
"That's true, but it's been two years, and I still can't go further than a few miles, 15 at most. Just watch, you're gonna be jumping continents soon." Despite Lilitu’s gentle words of encouragement, Zaria sighs in defeat, desperate to learn so that she can make her sister proud. Noticing the frustration on her sister's face, Lilitu takes her arm off of Zaria's shoulder and steps backwards. Zaria looks up in confusion, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. "How about we try this?"
Suddenly, Lilitu loosens her body and raises her arms, opening a shimmering portal in front of her sister that'll take them back to their house down the dirt road. "I know that you aren't really supposed to go through them until you learn, but how about we bend the rules just a little bit? Maybe if you feel what it's like to go through the portal, that special something will click for you, and you'll be opening the next one."
Zaria beams at her sister as Lilitu winks at her and holds out her hand. Zaria zealously grips it, and the sisters step through the portal, a moment of weightlessness consuming them as warmth surges under their skin before feeling the rush as their feet plant on the gravelly dirt in front of their house. Lilitu lands with her feet firm, no longer wobbling like she did the first time she went through a portal, but Zaria stumbles, and she would’ve fallen if Lilitu wasn’t still clutching her hand like a vise. However, she isn't deterred by her lack of grace; her smile broadens as she looks up at her fair-haired sister.
"Lilitu, I felt it," she whispers excitedly. "I don't know how to describe it, but I felt it. That was amazing! Can I try now?"
Lilitu is about to respond when all of a sudden, their mother, Parisa, erupts out of the house with her arm wrapped around their younger brother's shoulders, her face distressed. The sister's mirrored grins immediately transform into guilty grimaces, knowing that they're in trouble for disobeying the rules.
"There you two are!" Parisa sounds on the verge of tears. She momentarily releases their brother, Rapha, and rushes through their small yard to embrace her daughters in a bone-crunching hug that shouldn't be possible for someone as slight as their mother, especially since both girls are fairly muscular for their age after years of hard training with their father to tone their bodies. She releases them and grips their faces, tilting them to examine them for marks. "Thank the Watcher you girls are alright! Get in the bunker right now. I'll be right down."
Lilitu grips her mother's arms, trying to ground her while struggling to understand what her mother is talking about. "Mother, what's—"
Parisa shakes Lilitu off gently and nudges the girls towards the house, silencing her daughter's protests. "I'll explain soon. Just get underground, and take care of your brother and sister!"
Her blood chilling, Lilitu nods, assuming the role of authority her mother entrusted her with. She takes a deep breath, knowing she needs to remain calm. As she ushers her younger siblings inside, she glances back at her mother, watching her place enchantments and wards around the house to keep the Pure Bloods out. She knows that that will probably be enough, but the Pure Bloods are too powerful to let up your guard around, so the family retreats to the bunker as an extra precaution, especially since the bunker also has similar protective wards inside.
Forcing herself to look away from her mother, Lilitu takes Zaria's hand and wraps an arm around Rapha's shoulders, guiding her siblings to the last room in the back of their rustic house . She removes the old, golden key that she has on a matching chain around her neck and unlocks the door, revealing a dusty room with a single, gray chair that's seams are coming loose, and a thatch rug on the floor. She gently pushes Zaria and Rapha into the room before shoving the rug aside, lifting the loose floorboards that were hidden underneath to reveal a ladder that leads down into the bunker that their parents built in the event of an attack by the Pure Bloods.
Lilitu looks back and forth between her two younger siblings, desperately praying to the Watcher that the Pure Bloods won't harm them or that her mother’s instincts were wrong for once even though she knows they never are. "Get down there. I'll be right back." Zaria and Rapha nods, and Lilitu shifts anxiously from foot to foot while waiting until they're safely underground. She hastily replaces the floorboards and scurries across the hall to the room that she and Zaria share falling to her knees in front of the oak chest at the foot of her bed. She throws the lid open and digs through it, tossing clothes and Alchemy supplies aside until she finds the leather pouch buried at the bottom. She gingerly reaches inside and pulls out a bottle filled with a shimmering, silver liquid that looks like bottled moonlight. Lilitu holds the bottle tightly to her chest and rushes back out of the room, almost slamming into someone. She yelps, jumping away in panic and wondering if one of the Pure Bloods snuck in before her mother could finish setting her enchantments around the house. She hesitantly opens her eyes and nearly sags in relief to see her mother standing in front of her.
"Lilitu, what are you doing?" Parisa demands, her voice strained as she grips Lilitu's arm and pulls her into the bunker room. "You should be underground! Where are the others?" She locks the door, and the two begin prying the floorboards up again.
Lilitu holds up the flask for her mother to see. "Just in case," she whispers before sticking it in the waistband of her pants. "Don’t worry about the others; I made sure Rapha and Zaria were underground before I went for it. Where's father?"
Her mother chokes back a small sob, obviously trying to remain strong for her children’s sake. "I wish I knew; he should be coming back from his hunt today, but I don't know for sure." Lilitu can hear the unshed tears of fear in her mother’s wavering voice making her throat tight. "Either way, we have to get underground." She gestures for Lilitu to jump down first, and she quickly follows, pulling the floorboards back into place before sitting on the ground with her children.
Zaria and Rapha, who had created a small flame in the palm of his hand to illuminate the small room, jump when Parisa and Lilitu enter, and the light extinguishes. Parisa snaps her fingers, and candelabras along the walls immediately spark, their flames flickering and casting shadows around the family. On the walls and ceiling are various protective symbols Parisa drew long before she and Arcadius adopted the children; they seem to have been drawn in blood. Next to the ladder is a bookshelf with a few blankets, some jars of food, and some alchemy supplies, but Parisa and Rapha are able to conjure almost anything the family could need.
Zaria immediately scoots closer to her sister, and Lilitu absentmindedly takes one of her sister’s hands to comfort her, the gesture instinctive. "Mother, what's going on? Please don't tell me the Pure Bloods are coming to raid our village again," Zaria whispers, her small body tensing. Parisa can see the memories of the last raid behind Zaria's dark eyes; she was only five, and a troop of Shape Shifters invaded their small village. A Striped Hyena, like Zaria, lunged at her, and Lilitu pulled her out of the way, shoving her toward the house and standing in the Hyena’s path, pulling out a silver knife and shoving it into the Shifter’s stomach when he lunged at them. She yanked it out and ran Zaria down to the bunker. That's when Zaria began to idolize Lilitu.
Parisa gazes fondly at her younger daughter, reaching out and tucking a lock of her light brown hair behind her ear before taking Zaria's free hand. Even though all of her children are adopted, Parisa loves them as if they really are hers and Arcadius's, and she knows that if anything ever happened to them, she would be losing a piece of herself. "I sensed a negative energy in the air, an unfamiliar charge. It didn't feel like the Pure Bloods were coming for us, but I've never been close enough to a Pure Sorcerer to tell what their energy is like when focused on destruction, so it could be them."
"But you're a Half Sorceress, mother," Rapha points out. "Wouldn't you be able to tell if one of them is coming?"
"You're also a Half Sorcerer. Try to reach out and see if you can sense them."
Rapha nods and closes his eyes, reaching out mentally to search for the negative energy to no avail. "I can't sense anything, mother. Could it have been the Half Fae in you that sensed them."
Parisa smiles slightly at her children's attempts to figure out what's coming for them despite the present danger. "I don't know. Girls, you're also Half Fae. Try to sense what's coming for us."
Lilitu can see through her mother’s calm façade; she can tell that her mother is trying to help the kids stay calm by turning it into a game or a lesson. For her siblings’ sakes she decides to play along and tilts her head up to the ceiling with her eyes closed, taking a deep breath and searching for any physical energy outside of the ones in the room. Zaria glances at her sister and mimics her straight-backed posture. Although she's unable to find anything solid, Lilitu's eyes shoot open and she stares at her mother. "I think I know what your talking about. It felt like something outside of this world, and whatever it is wasn't alone. It's cold…and dark, too. It's something evil, but I can't tell what exactly. It feels...angry. It’s so angry. Whatever it is is after blood, and it won’t stop until it gets it."
Parisa grimaces and nods. "It is. It's like nothing I've ever encountered, and I pray to the Watcher that our wards will keep us safe, and that He will watch over your father as well."
* * * * *
Arcadius whistles happily as he strolls out of the sparse, Australian forest, leisurely making his way home. He's excited to see his family again after three days away from home, but he admits to himself that he will miss the hunt until he goes out for another one in a couple of weeks with Lilitu for the full moon. The hunt always soothes him, sating two of his base needs: Transformation for the Shape Shifter half of him and the bloodlust that comes with his Vampire genes. He knows that Shape Shifters generally frown upon the act of meat-eating , but the Half Breeds do things differently from the Pure Bloods that shun them, and they couldn't care less about whether the Pure Bloods have an issue with them eating meat. It's just another check on their long list of reasons to hate the Half Breeds.
Zaria was beginning to get antsy when he was getting ready to leave, and he calculates how long it's been since her last Full Transformation—three weeks, too long for a kid. He grins, thinking that when he takes Lilitu out for the full moon, he might bring his younger two children out as well. His heart swells with pride at the idea of seeing his children work together for their prey, his son to sate his own need for blood and his younger daughter for her to knock out the scavenger instincts that come with being a Hyena.
He makes his way over the hill that leads straight to his village, his pace quickening at the closeness of his family; he can smell them—Zaria and Lilitu were recently outside. Arcadius practically jogs to the top of the hill…and he stops dead in his tracks.
His blood chills, as if to match the unusually frosty air that surrounds him as he takes in the sight before him. Black, shapeless blurs blot the normally blue sky. They launch at the houses at the foot of the hill, surrounding the ones that house Sorcerers and Fae who set up wards that protect against them like a writhing black sheet that just can’t penetrate the invisible barriers. Shrieks of terror pierce the air from the houses that the shapes are able to enter, and Arcadius is unsure whether he wants to know what exactly what havoc these black creatures are leaving in their wake. His mind temporarily blanks as he gazes at the trembling black cloud in the sky. All at once, his animal instincts scream at him to run, but he shakes his head violently, struggling to fight against his instincts for once. His brain slowly begins to function again, and images of his family tumble to the forefront. With them in mind, he propels himself towards the village, his instincts now telling him that protecting them is all that matters.
He Transforms into a grizzly bear and tears down the hill, bounding rapidly toward his house. He dodges the black shapes as he runs, knowing that nothing good can come of them, and his house at the back of the village finally comes into view. The first thing he notices is that it's one of the one of the few houses with shapes swarming around it but unable to pierce it, and relief trickles into his mind when he realizes that Parisa was able to keep her head and ward the house to keep herself and the kids safe. He quickens his pace as much as he can, and he's almost to his house when the wind is suddenly knocked out of him.
Arcadius is knocked onto his side and looks up at the sky again as one of the black shapes surges out of his body, shooting back into the sky to join the others surrounding his house. His thoughts suddenly blur as rage surges to the forefront of his mind, and all he can think about is murder. He stands up, the desire and need to kill something flooding all of his senses as bloodlust sets his nerves alight.
Arcadius sees red as he turns back towards the door, sniffing the air and catching the scent of the family that moments ago was the only thing that mattered to him. Now, they matter for a different reason. Now, they will sate his bloodlust.
* * * * *
Parisa and the children sit in silence together, none of them knowing what to say to comfort each other. Zaria, who’s always been as close to her father as she is to her sister, is particularly distressed, and Lilitu holds her sister tightly, knowing that no words can relieve the tension. Lilitu's hyper-sensitive ears suddenly prick as she hears a bang upstairs. She glances at Zaria, knowing that their mother’s ears aren’t sensitive enough to pierce through their shelter. "Did you hear that?"
Zaria suddenly goes on high alert, and Rapha sniffs the air. "It's father!" He stumbles away from his mother and grips the ladder, prepared to scramble up to let his father in.
"Stay where you are," Parisa commands calmly. "Your father wouldn't want you to leave the bunker. He'll be down in a few moments." The children nod and settle back down by their mother, but they all buzz with overwhelming excitement and relief that their father is still alive and well.
Within moments, they hear him in the room above, but he didn't use his key—the children hear a crash as if he knocked the door off its hinges. Lilitu stands and backs away from the bunker entrance, pulling her sister along behind her. "Mother, Rapha, stand behind me."
Parisa gapes at her daughter. "Lilitu, I will not let you—" her mother protests.
"Stand behind me, mother. Something is wrong, and you have to keep them safe." Lilitu pulls her flask out of her waistband once her mother and siblings are against the wall behind her and chugs it in one sip, cringing at the unpleasant taste that almost feels like a blend of too much pepper sprinkled onto a sour apple and dipped in excessively sweet chocolate; it feels slimy as it coats her throat, making her shiver slightly, but this is the only way to trigger a Werewolf Transformation at any point in time other than during the full moon. She drops the flask as her neck rolls, and she crashes to the floor on all fours. Her nose elongates into a snout as thick, brown and gray fur begins sprouting up along her body. A long, low growl rumbles in her throat as a bushy, snow-tipped tail grows to compliment her furry white paws.
The family looks up as the floorboards to the bunker are ripped apart violently, revealing Arcadius's furry, brown face and angry eyes that focus on the most immediate threat: Lilitu. He dives down into the bunker, and Lilitu lowers her head defensively, half of her mind wondering why he's approaching her with his teeth bared. The other half is charting the best means of attacking him. Saliva drips from Arcadius's long, thick, sharp teeth, making him look rabid. Parisa pushes her younger children further behind her when she sees this until they’re pressed against the rough stone wall. Zaria Transforms, following her sister's example, but she remains shielded by her mother.
Lilitu pauses, her tail tight against her body. Adrenaline pumps through her as her mind races. This is her father, the father that raised her and loved her and always took care of her, but now he’s attacking her like she’s a stranger. She’s never seen him like this, even at his most furious, and she knows that after seeing the terror in his family’s faces, he would’ve already Shifted back to comfort them if he was really in control. She quickly glances at her mother and siblings, knowing that she has to attack her father, if only for their sakes.
A sense of serenity consumes Lilitu as she comes to terms with what she has to do, Arcadius stands on his hind feet, raising a massive paw as if intending to smack the smaller wolf. He's forced to hunch over in the small space, and Lilitu sees her chance. She launches herself at his exposed throat, almost being cradled by his extended arm. She claws at his snout and eyes as she latches onto his neck with her canines, forcing a roar of anger and pain to erupt from Arcadius as she struggles to remind herself that this isn’t her father and tries to let her animal instincts think for her instead. He shoves her off, but she refuses to be deterred. She jumps onto her hind legs and swipes her claws against his exposed stomach and scrambles back up his body, again sinking her teeth into his neck as if she's the Half Vampire instead of him.
Arcadius digs his giant, black claws through his daughter's fur, tearing them down her back. She rears her head back, howling in agony, and he throws her to the floor. She yelps as she lands on her bloody back, and Arcadius falls onto her before she can move away, pressing one paw down on her chest to constrict her breathing before using the other to dig his claws into her torso. Hot blood oozes onto her fur as he shoves her to the other side of the room. She whimpers but doesn’t move.
The fresh blood permeates the air, and Arcadius advances on Lilitu again, clearly attracted to it the scent. Rapha, seeing his father begin trudging intimidatingly towards his sister, ducks under his mother's arm and races to stand in front of his sister, baring his fangs and snarling. Zaria sprints towards her father as well and launches herself at his back, digging her claws into his spine and sinking her teeth into his neck like Lilitu did.
Arcadius stumbles away from Lilitu slightly, trying to swipe Zaria away. She pulls one of her paws away from his back and begins clawing at his head. Arcadius roars again, falling backward, and Zaria barely has time to jump away before he crashes onto his back. He quickly heals and rolls onto his paws again, searching for his younger daughter. Between the deranged look in his eyes, the thick blood dripping from his teeth, and the dark blood matting his fur, he looks like a monster, not like the father Zaria's always known, and she forces herself to keep attacking him to keep her family safe.
"Mother, do something!" Rapha shouts, staring desperately at his shell-shocked mother. "He's not our father anymore! I can't attack him alone. He's gonna hurt Zaria!"
Rapha's pleas jerk Parisa out of her frozen state, and she plots out how best to attack her husband. Taking a deep breath, she tilts her head back and stretches her arms out, slowly waving them forward to stretch out in front of her. She clenches her fists closed as tightly as her eyes. Her body begins to emit a pulsating, white glow, and she floats slightly, hovering on a pale gray cloud. Arcadius is distracted by the beautiful glow, temporarily falling onto all fours and forgetting about Zaria. She rolls off of him and backs away to stand with Rapha in front of Lilitu, the older girl groaning in pain from the deep, slowly-healing lacerations in her back and torn internal organs.
Seeing that Lilitu is no longer unprotected and that his father seems to have forgotten about her, Rapha scurries to stand behind his mother and mimics her pose. While he doesn't rise into the air, he begins to emit a similar glow, and he echoes her as she murmurs a Latin incantation. Rapha recognizes the spell from their studies—it’s one of the few that needs to be spoken aloud—and despite the dread filling his mind, he trusts his mother.
Zaria watches her mother and brother, Transforming into her Sorcerer body to use her hands to gently push her sister as far from the bright glow as possible. She isn't sure what to expect, but she knows that whatever it is will be powerful. She wraps herself around her unconscious sister, ignoring the thick blood matted into Lilitu’s fur as she closes her eyes against the blinding glow and too afraid to watch what might happen to her father.
Rapha and Parisa grow louder as the glow around them becomes even brighter. Wind begins whipping around them, and a forcefield forms in the small space, trapping Arcadius inside. He roars indignantly but is too confused to give into his bloodlust for the moment as he struggles to escape from the stormy air. Arcadius manages a small step forward, but another gust of wind whips past Parisa to join the mini tornado trapping the Bear. He beats angrily against his prison, but despite her tears of horror at what she's about to do to him, Parisa doesn't stop. The whirlwind lifts Arcadius slightly off the ground, and he begins thrashing even more desperately to free himself.
"Mother, it's time!" Rapha shouts over the screeching storm; Parisa nods and stops chanting.
"Go protect your sisters!" Parisa commands, keeping her eyes trained on her husband. As Rapha warily shifts around the windstorm to his sisters, Parisa tries to make herself forget about Arcadius in this state so that she can just remember him as the loving father and husband that she's always known him to be. "Whether you can understand me now or not, I love you," she sobs quietly, almost positive that her children can't hear her over the wind. She raises her voice again so that Rapha can hear her. "Are you ready, Rapha?"
"I'm ready!" Parisa sees him slowly approach Arcadius, closing the wind even tighter around him, and she does the same so that he's trapped in a field pressed tightly against his body. His thrashing becomes slightly less coordinated as his lungs are surged with the strong wind.
"Now, Rapha!" Parisa cries. The two suddenly reverse the process, the tornado unravelling and taking all of the oxygen inside of it out, including the air that Arcadius was breathing. He tries to roar again from the agony, but without any oxygen left in the whirlwind, the sound is hoarse and weak. He collapses to the floor, but he's still alive and struggling to rise up again.
Closing his eyes desperately, Rapha conjures a stake of wood and silver entwined together. It's through his father’s back and piercing his heart before Arcadius has the chance to even raise his stomach off of the ground, and when Rapha opens his eyes, his fist is still closed tightly over the stake's handle, pressing the wood and silver tighter together. He hears Zaria and Parisa crying, and he feels sick at what he's done. He stumbles away from his father as he begins dry heaving, and he conjures a bucket just in time to catch the vomit that suddenly surges out of his stomach.
When Rapha's retching is reduced to dry heaving, he looks up at his mother's tear-stained face, suddenly terrified. "Mother, please don't hate me," he whispers; his throat feels raw. "I didn't want to, mother. He was...he was gonna kill us all. Please, mother, don't—"
Parisa cuts him off, falling to her knees and wrapping him in a tight embrace. He closes his eyes as he feels her gently rub circles around his back. "He wasn't your father anymore. I could sense a...darkness inside of him. It's what made me pause. It was a concentrated form of whatever is outside right now. Whatever attacked him took away the love and purity of his soul; there was nothing we could have done. You did him a great justice by freeing him as bravely as you did." She kisses his forehead and holds him tightly.
Zaria, who had been watching silently while petting her sister's back, suddenly feels the fur begin to recede and quickly grabs a blanket from the corner of the bunker to cover Lilitu. "She's Transforming back," Zaria calls quietly once Lilitu is covered.
Within moments—although still much longer than normal due to her physical state—Lilitu is back in her Sorcerer body, surrounded strategically by her family so that she can't see Arcadius. "My head is killing me," she mutters as she struggles to open her eyes. She tries to lift her head, but gives up quickly when the room spins and her family members multiply. "Where's father? Did you guys manage to subdue him so that we can figure out what's wrong?" Everyone glances around, unsure how to answer her, but Lilitu suddenly notes the tears on everyone's faces, and her throat constricts. "I want to see him."
Parisa almost protests, but she thinks better of it, and moves aside to allow Lilitu to see her father. The stake is still lodged in his back, and blood—both his and the sisters’—covers his fur in patches. "There was no other choice," Parisa whispers, her voice catching. "His soul was black; he wasn't the man you knew anymore."
"I know he wasn't," Lilitu snaps before reminding herself to reign in her anger at the situation. She takes a deep breath to calm herself before continuing. "I could sense it. My father would never attack me the way he did. As far as I'm concerned, that was just a wild animal that got into the house. Nothing more, and nothing less."
Parisa nods understandingly and resolves not to discuss it any further. "We need to tell the Pure Bloods what happened here today."
"Why should we?" Zaria demands, a fiery glint in her eyes as her body tenses with fear and anger.
"The Pure Bloods hate Half Breeds," Rapha adds, crossing his arms in accordance with his sister.
"They may not like us, but whatever is outside right now, whatever took your father from you, is a threat. I can sense them, sense their anger. I don't know what they are, but will destroy everything in their path, and everyone needs to be prepared to protect themselves. Not just the Pure Blood parents who hate us, but the children like you—the innocents who never had a say in banishing us to this island. I can't bear the thought of another child going through what you three did today, having to be as brave as you all were. We have to tell the Pure Bloods. Whatever this is is bigger than an eternity-long blood feud."
The children all nod, and Lilitu manages to sit up, keeping the blanket wrapped tightly around her body. "What do you need us to do?"
-Kaitlynn Rose