Chapter 4 Vaxan
~Vaxan~
“I won’t leave you.”
I ground my jaw as my words to Winter played on my mind.
More accurately—echoed hauntingly through my mind currently.
Acutely and rather painfully forcing their way to the surface, demanding to be heard.
They hadn’t been merely a statement. Nor even solely an offer of comfort and a constant that he’d desperately needed to soothe himself with how off-center he’d felt at the time.
They’d been so much more than that.
A confession.
An insistence.
An acknowledgement.
An oath.
And, as much as I’d detested Zayn’s initial entitlement toward Winter, before he’d learned the error of his ways, I suppose those words had also functioned as a claim of sorts upon Winter. Not exactly entitlement on my part, but a marking.
As Basilisk, I possessed territorial instincts borne from my primal nature, which I worked exceedingly hard to keep in check, to align with the modern world and to respect the agency of others.
Especially when it came to Winter with how he’d been treated, and how he was seen by many in the wider supernatural world—where his actual personality and way of being was often disregarded in lieu of their fear and misinformed judgments.
I wanted to respect that, for him to feel free, at least when he was with me, or within our foursome relationship.
But then he’d left.
He’d disappeared that night on Mordrek Mountains and it had taken hours for us to locate him. Many excruciating hours.
And it hadn’t been me who’d found him.
He’d demonstrated the unexpected ability to specifically block my animal senses from being able to track him. As if him masking his magical signature hadn’t already been bad enough.
Given the state he’d been in at the time, the depth of powerlessness I’d felt as a result had been intense, something I never wanted to feel again—that inability to aid those I cared for.
And, yes, there had been an element of possessiveness involved in that.
Especially when I’d tagged him with a vibrational tether.
It was my only way around him cutting off my ability to track him. And after that night, I’d vowed to myself that I wouldn’t allow it to happen again.
Now, however, with Winter missing yet again and seemingly not of his own volition from what I could gather, the timing was problematic. The optics weren’t exactly favorable—for me.
I’d displayed my distaste of him feeding on anyone outside our foursome—his activities at Polaris.
It wasn’t sexual for him. It never had been, according to him, Zayn, and even that revolting Carter.
It wasn’t for sustenance either, as Winter didn’t possess actual vampiric traits.
But for a supernatural creature like me, one with roots in primality, with an animalistic nature to my makeup, it was arguably worse than that.
He fed off these beings to feel alive. That was beyond animal, the need so very profound.
So, no, it hadn’t exactly sat well with me.
Now that had been dealt with because Zayn had offered himself willingly and rather enthusiastically. So Winter could have his need met without venturing outside our foursome anymore.
Yet, the fact remained that my stance there had revealed a territorial and possessive side to me—toward him, and, by extension, toward Evira and Zayn.
And now I’d had to admit I’d tagged Winter with a tether.
All too close to that, right on the heels of that revelation.
Once Winter learned of it, it could prove highly detrimental to what we’d built together.
I’d had little choice but to reveal it, because shortly after I’d managed to calm Zayn down when Winter had failed to respond to any of our outgoing communications, I’d told him I’d needed privacy to report in to my parents—my mandated monthly check-in.
When in truth, I’d been trying to pull on the tether, to locate Winter.
That had proven impossible from my dorm suite, meaning Winter had ventured further afield than Meforian Forest after all.
So, I’d headed outside. And shortly thereafter, Evira had flown in with Zayn, locating me on the outskirts of campus, where they’d found me failing at my attempt to track Winter through the tether.
I’d had to explain the entire thing and the fact that I’d felt a disruption that I couldn’t quite explain beyond the fact that something was actually wrong. Winter being incommunicado for two hours had been much more than him merely needing time to discuss complex magical matters with Ketheron.
And now, here we were.
Not actually in Meforian Forest at all, as I’d determined Winter had never actually touched down there.
He’d never made it.
Instead, we were on a dark sands beach that I knew functioned as an entrance to Ambrose Wisteryn’s magical plane—one of them.
Yet, there had been no sign of him.
No remnants of his magic either.
I was currently on my hands and knees, my palms flat to the ground as I pushed into the earth carefully with my vibrational hum. It was a special frequency latched onto Winter and following his trail through the tether’s transmitted movement.
It was proving much more strenuous than I’d imagined, though.
Not just due to the fact that Zayn and Evira were pacing back and forth a few feet behind me as I worked, Zayn panicking and Evira working to soothe the volatility threatening to escalate to dangerous heights with him.
It was strenuous and so very far from being a straightforward track because Winter had been teleported several times over. Each time teleportation occurred, it broke the link in the vibrational chain, which I had to pick up anew and push through harder each time to lock onto again.
Eight instances that had occurred now. It was no coincidence.
Not with it happening that often in such a short span.
It very likely meant the culprit Winter was with had accounted for this ability of mine.
Also, given that knowledge and the timing, this was clearly the thing responsible for infecting Winter with that awful substance that had impacted his necromantic magic.
I grimaced as the conversation between Zayn and Evira reached me, the panic bleeding out threatening to impact me also.
“Why did Win even fucking end up here? He was headed to Ketheron, icicle.”
“I know.”
“This is Ambrose’s zone, but he was supposed to be off the grid somewhere, so why would Win even come here? Especially instead of going to Ketheron, which was where he said he’d be. He wouldn’t take off like this again. He promised us, right? He promised.”
“He did. He absolutely did.”
“It’s a kidnapping, then? Right? You no longer think I’m overreacting?”
“More time has gone by now and Winter still hasn’t checked in. He’s still unreachable. And here things have been wiped—scents, magic. Someone was covering their tracks. So, yeah, it points toward that.”
“To come at somebody with his powers, we’re talking… what… massive Celestial-level force? Maybe somebody—or a whole group of assholes—got the jump on him?”
“Either way, we’ll find him. We have the means through Vaxan’s ability, his tether on Winter. Between the three of us, there’s a fuck of a lot we can do. No matter who we’re up against.”
“You know, people think Win being unkillable makes him safe, but it doesn’t.
Largely because of how he is. So fucking gentle and peaceable.
It puts him in danger in these sorts of scenarios, which is why he’s been so intensely protected by his family.
He calls it overprotection and, yeah, I get it was suffocating, but this…
is this always gonna be the result without that? ”
“Zayn, we don’t yet know all—”
“I need to contact Sylas. Now. No more fucking waiting.”
I blew out a breath and pulled my hand from the sand.
I did so in my tense state a little too harshly and a blast of particles burst into the air from the disturbance my vibrational magic had briefly caused. I choked as I inhaled some of it, then I spun to Evira and Zayn.
I rubbed my crown, feeling its charge waning. I’d been out under direct sunlight for nearly an hour. Even fully charged, while I was pulling deeply on my power, it required more power to be drawn from it to shield me.
“I can’t.”
I hated the taste of the words on my tongue.
Hated the disappointment and despair that Zayn and Evira were currently too distressed to conceal even a little.
“Can’t?” Evira asked. “Your power is being drained too quickly due to the sun?”
“Not just that. Evasive maneuvers specifically against Basilisk vibrational tracking have been employed.”
Zayn stepped up to me as Evira tugged at her hair, trying to maintain emotional stability, trying to remain on task. House Vortimer had schooled her well where that was concerned. “You can draw power from Evira and me. Siphon us.”
Evira shook her head. “Then we’ll all be too weak to actually extract Winter when we manage to locate him.”
“Well, he needs more power. And protection from the sun.” He eyed me. “It is about the power, right? Or the tether isn’t strong enough? It broke? Something like that?”
“It’s the power,” I admitted. More words I most certainly didn’t like the taste of.
In fact, it turned my stomach.
Not enough power to help somebody I cared for so very deeply?
I couldn’t stand it.
I clenched my fists, then started pacing, knowing that exerting more energy when my crown was waning in Sunveil charge really wouldn’t help, but also needing to expel my frustration and upset in some manner. Curses!
I was losing my ability to think straight.
Movement across the beach startled the three of us, bringing me to a jolting stop.
Zayn spun around.
Evira called her glacial magic to both palms.
Violent wind whipped through the area, then tore around us, the sand shifting and spitting at us, before I caught sight of four figures.
Everything abruptly stilled as they came to a stop right before us.
Remnant. Ketheron. Ambrose Wisteryn. And Sylas Morgrave.