Chapter Fifteen #2
“A…Adrias,” she whispered. Her childlike voice, suddenly a mature husky tone belonging to a woman.
Yet, it was still her as a little girl staring at her brother in awe.
I looked back at the house seeing a young man step out with a game controller in his hand, wanting to see what the commotion was about before another appeared from behind him.
Slowly, I walked towards the two siblings to interrupt.
“We need to come inside so we can explain the situation. It may also shed light on why you’re in this chosen body and how it happened.
” There was no question or suggestion, just facts.
Raven stared at her brother with a small smile as she gently touched his hair.
Adrias smiled but the two didn’t hug or even draw closer to one another, just simply took each other in with their eyes, and memories.
Raven suddenly turned to look at her daughters.
“Bree, put something on the stove, and go in there and clean up a bit so they can sit down.”
“Mama, who are these people? You never mentioned anything–––”
“Just do as I say now,” Raven cut in with a stern childlike tone.
Adrias slowly stood up, towering over Raven who looked up in awe as he turned to reach for my arm.
“Baby?” He said. His raspy deep voice, torn and broken from years of abuse was asking for our daughter.
“Home.” I told him, softening my own voice. One of the few words he would say. Raven looked at me before looking back at her brother. The quiet understanding of our relationship showed in her eyes when she simply nodded with her own smile.
“I’ll tell you right now… I don’t have the closest relationship with that man,” Raven let out as we began walking towards the house.
“I only spoke to my younger sister a handful of times. When I found out I had one, I reached out to her but she’s in Georgia, and my life is here.
I don’t get involved in that mess out there. ”
“Do you know about her daughter, Maggie Grey?”
“Who?” Raven asked as her pigtails swung around with her head turning to look back at me. “I don’t know nothing about her. Never heard the name. She never mentioned a daughter.”
“Your mother Poette Davis? Are you–––”
“I have no desire to speak to that woman. She chose to raise my sister, not my brother and I. Nothing else to say…”
“It’s a misunderstanding that goes deeper than you realize,” I said. She huffed with a dignified attitude before glaring at the brown cat.
“Go find me some work, Felix.” She let out.
Shooing away the brown feline that laid lifeless on the porch, he suddenly leapt up to take off down the front yard before disappearing completely into thin air.
The screen door was pushed open from the inside as we stepped in.
What should have been a small box of a living space suddenly stretch into a foyer with hardwood flooring.
A busy kitchen with full grown vampiric teenagers hovering around the stove trying to peek underneath the pots, and a few elders sitting in the living room that stretched all the way back.
Raven, no bigger than a 4th or 5th grader marched into the kitchen, shooing everyone away while she fixed herself something to drink.
She used a step ladder to reach the top counters as she reached for glasses and plates.
“You got my attention,” she said, examining a glass before setting it down on the counter. “Tell me something.”
The small white home that was tucked back from the main road was nothing as it seems. Raven Holmes was somewhat of a collector, common to women at her old age.
From trinkets to paintings propped against the walls, the long hallway that stretched from the living room towards the back, passed up different bedrooms and bathrooms. There was a room full of teenage boys fighting over the game as they congregated on the bunkbed to another room where it was girls on the phone with the music loud.
None of them showed any genetic markings that belonged to the First Family so I could only assume either she collected humans to turn, or they were abandoned, and she took them in.
Raven commanded the house like a tiny general, telling everyone to pick up this and move that until we reached the back door that led outside.
“You’re telling me we’re all at risk of being killed because of what we are.
” Raven went on as we stepped outside in the backyard.
She changed out of her house slippers and into thick rubber boots made for trudging through the mud and dirt.
I looked back to see Adrias standing in the hallway as two boys showed him how to work the game controller.
He didn’t look out of place as more teenagers surrounded him, feeling a sense of familiarity.
Out of respect for his sister, I doubt he would attack anyone in the home.
He probably felt the same urge to protect them until it came to protecting me.
Raven Holmes stepped past the clothesline that had white sheets hanging like drapes.
There was a goat tied up to a stake eating away at the grass and as she stepped closer to the white shed, I could smell the obvious.
She adjusted her small purse against her hip before using both hands to pull at the chipped wooden door of the shed.
“You ain’t fed in a while, have you?” She asked.
The scent of raw flesh began to drown my senses as she reached to pull the chain, struggling at the lightbulb to cut on.
Bits of broken sunlight broke through the shed when I saw the mangled white flesh hanging upside down over large buckets of blood gathering on the ground.
She had at least four bodies draining, creating a slow drip.
She moved around like they were her cows, checking their bodies and tapping their veins.
A single log of wood stretched from the ceiling that held their weight by a thick rope.
“May not be a pretty sight but it keeps them youngins off the streets and out of trouble,” she said.
“Aunt Alice and her sister Ana were my best friends when I first learned I knew how to turn humans.”
I stared at the hanging body of the Caucasian woman hanging upside, barely breathing as her lips turned a pale blue.
Her veins stretched and thickened by her legs and her dark brunette hair hung freely over the blue bucket of her own blood.
Raven stood on a ladder, something that seemed to be in every corner of her property specifically for her as she reached up to tighten the rope around another pair of pale ankles.
The body of a child in her little dress looked unassuming until you looked into her eyes, seeing a true predator within the pigtails and tiny hands.
“Those are their children as well…The ones in the house. We all take care and look out for one another. You’re telling me they’re in danger of being killed because of what they are…because of my niece and what she’s able to do? Is she really that powerful?”
“I’ve only heard stories of how great she is.
I have not personally met her,” I stated.
Pulling out my phone, I began to show her pictures of Maggie Grey in her school uniforms and at home with her mother.
Raven smiled affectionately as she gently grabbed the screen for a closer look.
Her eyes must be bad the way she picked her nose up with a lift of her head and pulled the screen back for a better look.
“She looks like me.” She noted. “She looks exactly like me…Same nose…hair…everything. She has my entire face as if I gave birth to her. She got a little boyfriend too I bet, if not already married.”
“A werewolf who will be named Alpha will claim her as his mate.”
Her brows shot up with interest. Scratching at her chin, she frowned at the idea like most did. It simply wasn’t natural that the two were together but that is what makes the Underground unique.
“She’s with a were? How did that happen?”
“Maggie is more human than most. She doesn’t feed or require feeding, even with fangs in her mouth, she has no desire for blood.
He wants her family to be there on her behalf since she herself will not be there.
She…represents the old tale of being the moon…
the reincarnation of the moon and he will claim her in front of everyone. ”
It was decided that no one outside of that house will speak on the truth.
We would continue on with the story of Maggie being Gaia the Moon Goddess for the sake of the Underground.
We would be the ones to spread her story of being the Moon Goddess as those before her have done in order to assert control in the Underground.
Just as before, it was a way to keep us safe by relying on fairytales and traditional folklore that became a religious belief for most.
Raven gave me the phone back, intrigued when the door suddenly opened again.
Adrias stepped into the shed with his eyes searching for me until they went to the hanging bodies.
Raven’s tough demeanor instantly softened at the sight of him.
A curious and quiet Adrias touched the bodies only to reach down to dip his hand in the blood.
Smiling, she watched him like a protective mother with her hand on her tiny hip, proud of what he’s become.