Chapter 30 – Clawdia
One moment I was looking into the familiar and warm eyes of my love and the next I found myself in the beautiful converted warehouse the witches were staying in. I gasped and hid behind a door as I touched myself and looked for the portal I came through, but found none.
How did I get here? How do I get out? But as I touched the door, my hand went through it. A vision. I was having a vision? But I’ve never had a vision in the middle of something. Does this mean it’s getting worse already? Has something happened to Nisha?
The vision felt different from the ones I’d seen before. They felt colder, less vivid and, from the look of the places, it was obvious that it was a historic vision. However, this looked exactly as I remembered it, just as bright and beautifully decorated with the tall windows and the colorful abstract art on the wall.
Is it the present or future?
A scream of rage echoed around the room, shaking the chandelier over the table. A man’s scream.
Swallowing nervously, I peeked around the door, and in the center of the room, Fafnir raged.
Fafnir punched the sofa, battering it until wood poked through the fabric and springs and filling poked through holes in the ruined seats. Spittle wobbled on his lip as he bared his teeth and panted with exertion. His eyes flashed wildly.
He was terrifying.
It was then I noticed the defected witches also in the room, lining the wall like soldiers that flinched as his gaze landed on them. One had a clear resemblance to Mary, so I assumed it was her sister, Alice, and she sobbed into her hands.
“Stop your incessant crying, woman,” He roared in her direction, his hands gripping the sofa as though he might launch himself over it and silence her himself. “It is not you who should be crying. It’s me. Years of work and centuries of planning are all ruined.” He screamed again.
Alice did her best to hold back her sobs as she said, “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just … Mary is dead. A hunter murdered her. We couldn’t even retrieve her body as we escaped.” She sobbed into her hands and the women on either side of her tried to muffle her sounds.
Fafnir straightened, and his eyes narrowed. “I wondered where she was. What makes you believe it was a hunter? Have you researched the cause?”
“What do you mean?” An older witch asked hesitantly.
“The hunters did not like you, but tolerated you for my sake. They wouldn’t murder in plain sight of their leaders. The escape of the witches and the presentation …” He ground his teeth, unable to continue talking about how terribly his presentation went. “I know there was interference from an eternal source.”
The defected witches exchanged glances. “How should we look for answers? We cannot-”
His anger boiled over and he shouted again, “You are witches and you know the ways of dark magic. I taught you everything I learned. I gave you the ability to do the most powerful spells, brew the most deadly potions, enchant objects, and yet you cannot use your minds to solve a problem so obvious. You look to me as your leader when I too am grieving a loss and I have no patience for you.”
The witches simultaneously bit their lips and clenched their hands together in the face of his fury, but one brave soul took a deep breath and, with a trembling voice, said, “Sir, there’s no spell to turn back time.”
“Turn back time?” He repeated incredulously, then he roarer, “turn back time? Are you so dim? Who said anything about turning back time?”
“What-what would you have us do then? We are at your service.”
“Must I do everything?” He rubbed his head and sighed. “Gather the candles, a knife, salt, and something of Mary’s, which she treasured.”
Within a few moments, they had finished racing around the rooms, moved the destroyed sofa back against the wall and created a salt pentagram on the ground. They sat around the outside, awaiting instructions from their master. He took the knife and sliced his hand, letting drops of blood fall into the center of the star as he mumbled something indecipherable.
He passed the knife to the witch on his right and they followed his lead, doing exactly as he did, and it continued until the knife returned to Fafnir. He laid it out in the middle of the circle and then placed a ring on top.
I recognized it. Winnie had given it to Mary for their anniversary. Just seeing it made me want to growl. How dare she treasure something from the woman she murdered?
But I couldn’t focus on it for too long because the ghost of Mary appeared, hovering over the star in the center of their circle like a translucent version of the last time I’d seen her. Even down to the leather boots.
She looked around, unsurprised and smug, as she smiled and said, “I’m glad to see I’m missed.”
“Of course you are,” Alice exclaimed, jumping from her seat as though to embrace her sister.
“Quiet,” Fafnir interrupted and pushed her back down. “We have little time. Tell me who killed you.”
“Clawdia,” Mary growled, and I shivered at the mention of my name. I knew she had already spoken of me to Fafnir but I don't want him knowing much more. I held my breath as they continued to talk.
“The familiar?” Alice gasped.
“She snuck into the compound to rescue her soul pair. They are the first of their kind, very powerful. I’m not sure what he controls but she retains her ability to shift from human to cat. She is the reincarnated soul of your ex wife.”
“My dead wife ruined my plans?” Fafnir asked in a calm voice which set my hair on ends.
She shrugged her ghostly shoulder. “It seems so.”
“And who is she working with?” He asked quickly. “I saw a male descendant with them in the warehouse. Is he the dragon?”
“Charlie. He was her neighbor.”
“Yes. Charlie. The red-haired witch told me so.” Fafnir nodded fervently as he paced.
Mary continued, “There is a faei and daemon who visited him, but they’ve been spotted with another man, too. A vampire. But he isn’t an ordinary vampire. He portaled into the island with the witches against all the wards and Sigurd’s presence. He’s powerful. I don’t know what he is to the group, but it seems intimate. The titan stepped in front of a dart to prevent the vampire from being captured.”
“How do you know that?” Fafnir asked.
She listed on ghostly fingers. “I asked the guards, watched their body cam recordings and tortured witches to tell me more about the group. They weren’t very informative. It’s a shame Karin didn’t survive because she would have been helpful especially, since we gave her the books on dark magic. Apparently, she was quite close to the group and had Clawdia’s confidence.”
Fafnir paused for a moment before shaking his head slowly. “It’s such a shame you are dead. You had so much ambition and motivation to do as others did not. You were my best.”
He turned a cruel sneer toward the other defected witches. “And your family will need to pick up a great mantle in your steed.” It was the nicest thing I’d ever heard him say, and he ruined it with a wave of his hand as he said, “now off to the afterlife with you,” and abruptly cut off the spell and Mary’s image faded like dissipating smoke.
The defected witches gasped in horror and their hands stretched out to grasp onto the ghost, to say their final goodbyes, but it was too late, and she slipped through their fingers. Gone.
“My dragon will be returning momentarily, and we’ll find where they’ve been hiding.”
Who is the dragon, though? We thought it was one of the family, but he didn’t mention them by name. Instead, he called it ‘my dragon’.
Sniffling, the witches stood up and headed in different directions, clearly trying to deal with their grief in the most inoffensive way to their master and I watched, confused why I was still there when nothing was happening.
Fafnir picked his nails up and clenched his jaw occasionally, his mind ticking over as he sat comfortably in a chair. I pretended to box him from the doorway, throwing mock punches, but wasn’t brave enough to actually get closer to him.
I was getting bored with the vision when an older witch ran into the room. “He’s dead. They’ve killed him.”
“What?” Fafnir asked, but no one replied to him. “Who has been killed?”
“Your dragon, sir.” The witch whimpered, and she clenched her legs together, presumably to steady herself, but maybe she was about to wet herself from fear. I couldn’t judge her.
The roar he let out was inhuman and seemed to shake the foundations of the warehouse. Art fell from the walls. The chandelier chimed like a warning bell and something like pure power burst from him in a blast that pushed everyone off their feet. He panted.
“Please, sir.” A witch crawled toward him in the most pathetic supplication that I felt a little ill seeing it. “We only want to help you. We know your ex wife and her group caused Mary’s death, the presentation being ruined, and the death of your dragon. We can—”
She couldn’t finish her suggestion because he shouted, “What does it matter? My reputation is ruined. My plans of return to the hunters are foiled. The centuries I spent building up magic to split our souls and make him his own beast have been for nothing because he hasn’t survived a week without me. And now he’s dead. Dead.”
He picked up a vase from the side table and threw it against the wall, where it shattered. The witches covered their eyes and even I took an automatic step back.
But I was stuck on what he’d just said. What does that mean? The dragon was his dragon? His dragon that resided in his soul as Dralie did in Charlie’s? He forced him out of his body? With the magic he’d taken from others? How?
I recalled the faei in the vision, saying that he would use dark magic to get what he wanted. He wanted to be a hunter in all ways. So he cut the dragon out of him. It was its own beast. An abomination.
And I just killed it. I threw my hands up in celebration and did a little dance. I wanted to laugh in his face but didn’t have the courage for that, even if he couldn’t see me. Finally, we’d won something over Fafnir. His dragon was dead. He’d separated himself from the creature without us even realizing, but the result was the same. The dragon was dead and Fafnir could no longer fly.
“Yes, but you can get revenge.” The older witch said.
“Revenge?” He asked slowly, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
“We are on your side. We are here for you. We want to help you get revenge against those who ruined your plans.”
He sighed, looking completely defeated. “And then what?”
“And then you give us our dragons. We kill Sigurd and head to Drakor to hide.”
They don’t know Sigurd is dead yet, then.
‘Give us our dragons.’ It wasn’t the same as being asked to be turned into dragons. Interesting.
Fafnir laughed long and hard, and the witches exchanged nervous glances. “What’s funny, sir?”
“No. No. You’re right. Revenge sounds … perfect.”
Whatever childlike need for acceptance he’d clung to through his deaths and life until now had just died along with his dragon. All that was left was the need to get revenge.
He straightened and calmly walked to the mantlepiece where the enchanted blade lay. He stroked the blade before he gripped the handle and turned.
And he seemed to look directly into my eyes, sending shivers down my spine as he said, “She took her life in our past. But this time I will take from her the future she took from me. She will die by my hand. I’ll make her watch as I slaughter her bonds. I’ll cut her neck as I take what I couldn’t before and I’ll be the last thing she sees before she dies. This time she won’t escape.”
To be continued