Chapter 10 Abigail
Abigail hurried across the room and pulled an empty coat rack from a stack of equipment. She brought it near the slab and set it down, talking to Ethedra.
“I'll have to separate my essence and meet the vodvod Crew Arcoal without it.”
One of the pegs of the coatrack had a clip on it.
Abigail took her cask off her shoulders and carefully clipped it to the coat rack.
She touched the mouth of the cask, and it opened wide.
She was dimly aware that Ethedra was saying something, but her mind was on her very important task.
Nothing was more important than that things went perfectly with the vodvod.
She probed the belly of the fox and found it satisfactory, so she looked around for—
Ethedra sparkled mini fireworks around her, bright and loud, distracting Abigail from what she was doing. “What?” she snarled.
“This is your plan?” Ethedra said, arms out wide, then she put them on her hips. “Separate your animal essence before you go meet with the wolf? You’ll be so confused.”
“It’s the only way to keep him from knowing what I am.”
Ethedra crossed her arms and gave Abigail an incredulous look.
Abigail shook her head. She threw her hands in the air, shouting, “Just listen!” She hurried to a utility shelf, gathering an empty bowl and a pitcher of water, saying, “True, it will take all my memories since I reconnected, and that’s what I need you for.”
Abigail took the bowl and pitcher back to the slab, then went across the cavern to another shelf, periodically turning around to shout sentences at Ethedra.
“I’ll take my memories... I’ll form them into something the vodvod will accept, then separate my essence…
You’ll take it for safekeeping… I’ll implant the modified memory, then you’ll send me to my store. ”
Abigail gathered some salt in two large clay bowls, and some magical implements. She took it all back to the slab, thoughts of Paisley constant on her mind.
Ethedra looked down her nose at Abigail. “You’ll never pull it off.”
Abigail swung her way. “Do you have a better plan?”
Ethedra stayed silent.
“That’s what I thought! This’ll work—it has to.”
She turned back to the slab and arranged the equipment just the way she needed it, she couldn’t stop the words from falling from her lips. Words she’d never said to anyone before.
“I first separated my animal essence when I was… 20 or 21 years old and hiding from my father.” She spat out the word, hate, fear, and bitterness filling her as she tried not to remember the horror of serving the demon. “I don’t know the year exactly, 1720 maybe, or 1730.”
“Long time,” Ethedra said.
Abigail leaned against the slab, taking a few seconds to rest, wondering where to start. “What do you know about me?” she asked, not sure where the Augury ended and Ethedra began.
After a beat of silence, Ethedra said, “Your father is the Devil of your world and he pursues you and your family constantly, seeking servants and playthings. Your kind is shunned by the other shiften, the wolven especially, as they lie to themselves about your origin. You were stolen from your mother at four years old. Your father snatched you from under your mother’s nose, then slammed the mind-gate to the Pravus shut in her face.
He marked your chest and demanded your allegiance and obedience.
You ran from him again and again, he found you and brought you back, beating and subjecting you, until finally you escaped for good.
You’ve been hiding ever since, and now you have generations of progeny to hide as well.
You’re not immortal, but you seek to be as long as the Tether is not broken, because your spirit will go directly to the Pravus when you die. ”
“Shit,” Abigail whispered. “When you put it that way…” She turned to the slab, fingers weak, arms heavy.
She poured water into the bowls, then salt, then awkwardly mixed the water in each bowl with a metal rod, the weight of the years dropping in a little more every second.
She thought of Paisley and determination filled her.
She wasn’t dead yet. She slammed her hand to the slab, and a metal cup appeared with a finger of Everclear in it.
Abigail drank it in one swallow. “My mother…” she began, her fingers tightening on the rod. Her throat clenched and her lungs seized as painful memories tumbled through her mind and the liquor burned her tissues.
“Serenity Saint Clair,” Ethedra offered unhelpfully.
Abigail’s throat tightened in a vise grip.
She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. Her heart sped up, threatening to break her ribs.
Serenity Saint Clair. Abigail had loved her mother with all her heart.
After four years of a rough but loving life with her mother, the demon had stolen into their lives and pulled Abigail and Boe into the Pravus, where he’d terrorized them and brutalized them for years, before sending Boe to the Ula to plant foxen seed in human bellies, making more and more foxen.
Abigail had never understood why her mother hadn’t come for them. She’d expected to be rescued, even while laying in her own blood and fear, all the way up until she was a preteen, when she’d finally realized she had to rescue herself.
She bent over the slab, her hands to her throat, willing it to relax. Little by little, it did.
“My mother…” she repeated. She stood and turned to face Ethedra. “I’m going to tell you a story… and then you’ll understand…”
The words tumbled out of her. “My mother, Serenity, was a wolven Citlali, born with a star renqua, and the ability to talk to Rhen. Three hundred years ago, this area…” She stumbled on her words, then righted herself.
“… this area was called Blue Ford. Countless groups of people moved through, but core encampments of shiften stayed, kept in Blue Ford by Rhen’s body, which was protected underground.
Plus, Khain was here. This is where the action was.
The shiften, or rather the wolven, bearen, and felen, were clear as to their purpose in Blue Ford, which was to protect humans from Khain, and also to guard Rhen’s body.
My mother was a clan leader until the day that Khain came to the Ula, found Serenity in the woods by herself, overpowered her, and… ”
Abigail’s voice faltered. Ethedra looked down at her, hands folded, nodding at her, lending her silent strength. Abigail held onto the altar, willing herself to go on.
“Boe and I were the result. We were Primary Foxen, bound by the Tether, which Khain created centuries ago, the first time he violated a wolven Citlali and the first twin Primary Foxen were born, fated to serve the demon for 150 years each.”
Abigail took a moment to breathe and unscramble her thoughts.
“Your mother knew what you would be,” Ethedra said, when the silence had echoed through the cavern for too long.
“She did, and she was required by wolven law to abort us. Instead, she took to the bluff, running in wolf form, crying out to Rhen, demanding to know why it had happened, and how she was supposed to kill her babies. She heard nothing from Rhen, and she ran all day long for so many months it was too late for her to abort us by any means known at the time. She birthed us on the bluff, a wolf giving birth to two fox pups, alone. We lived in the forest for four years, all throughout the woods and caves of Serenity. The foxen and the wild wolves respected my mother, and we always had shelter with them.”
“The night we were born, my mother had a dream that she met with Rhen in the Meadow. They walked and talked, two females strolling in a beautiful place like they were friends and life had been good to them. Rhen told my mother that although she had endured violation and hardship and long suffering, nothing was wasted. Her young, Boe and I, were special, and we signaled a new age of prosperity and equality for fox...”
Abigail’s voice gave out, and she coughed several times, her body threatening to break down on her. She rested, her head on the slab for a moment, then continued talking.
“Rhen told my mother that we were to be protected, and if the wolven embraced us, Khain’s power over foxen would end.
My mother had no one to tell, knowing that if the male Citlali saw us, they would kill us on sight.
We lived at the top of the bluffs, where the wolven rarely went.
Once we were two years old, Serenity left us with the foxen and stealthily visited the other female Citlali, sharing Rhen’s message.
She shared her message secretly for years.
Once she had several Citlali, all females, on her side she went to the Council of wolven and demanded protection for us.
The males chased her out of town, and that night, Khain came while we were sleeping and took us.
We woke up in the Pravus with the monster.
We were only four years old, tiny and weak, and unable to fight him in any way.
He sliced off our renquas with his dirty claws, then he marked our bare chests.
We cried and screamed and suffered, and he smiled like it was fine music we were making. ”
Abigail could not go on. Instead, she skipped over her entire childhood in the Pravus in her mind. If she could chop the memories out of her brain with a hatchet, she would.
“My name was Adil at that time,” she said quietly. Ethedra said nothing, only nodded and listened.
“I escaped the Pravus loads of times as a teenager,” Abigail said, her brain boiling.
“And I could hide from Khain as long as I was awake, but as soon as I fell asleep…” Abigail trailed off, remembering waking up in the disgusting Pravus, with the horrible demon, being completely helpless to guard herself against him, his every act intended to torment her.
She’d descended into madness constantly, playing mind games to distract herself, but always when she came around, she was still entrapped in the living hell.
She shook her head, then banged the heel of her hand against her forehead multiple times, making her neck hurt. She stopped and dropped her hands on the altar.
“I finally escaped for good,” she bit out, her eyes closed.
“I’d woken in the middle of the night with a dream clear in my mind—a dream of my fox and I playing together as two separate beings.
I recognized the meaning of the dream—my foxen half and my human half should separate, and then the demon would not recognize me.
I didn’t know how to do it, but I’d learned to work with the demon’s power, and I could form magic of all kinds easily using vvyst. I was confident I would figure it out, and so I set to planning. ”
Abigail mixed the salt with the water mindlessly as she spoke. “When the day finally came, I stole power from the demon while he slept—all I could absorb and carry—then escaped through a portal to the Ula.”
Abigail stopped stirring and her hand drooped. She stared into the cavern, her gaze falling on nothing, her head moving around on her neck like a marionette. Her right hand lifted and hovered in the air. She fell into the memory like a portal through time.