Chapter 9
Mosier Home, Enfield, New York, Monday, January 14, 2013
Maerlin appeared out of thin air, materializing in the space outside the Mosiers’ home. She hoped Melinda and Brian wouldn’t hate her for what she’d done to Ash. Cloaked, Maerlin simply appeared to be a woman of ethereal beauty. In addition to the auras she recognized as her old friends, Maerlin could sense multiple Therians in and around the home.
Rather than going to the door and discovering how Melinda and Brian would react, she mused about the path that led her to this point. Examining her memories often helped Maerlin sort out her motivations and face the truth of a situation.
She had felt the final seal on Ash’s soul break a week ago. Maerlin had been investigating the activity around the Abyssal rift, revisiting her long-ago home at the bottom of the ocean for the first time in a very long time. After so long on this planet, Maerlin had become an expert at compartmentalizing and letting the memories she didn’t want to keep fade, but she struggled to let go of the horrors she’d seen during the fall of Atlantis.
Maerlin was content that the activity was strictly geological at this point and hadn’t affected the rift, but she knew what was coming. She could feel the potential growing on the other side of the rift. Maerlin’s memories of the lives she’d lived in the Abyss were splintered, but the feeling of an impending birth was ingrained into the fiber of her being. It called to her with the hope that after billions of years, she would no longer be alone. From experience, she knew nothing coming through the rift wanted a companion. The urge to conquer and consume was instinctual to Abyssians.
She had been reborn on Earth during the first collision. She’d spent a long time alone in this world, guarding the portal and waiting for life to evolve.
She’d stayed in Atlantis’s ruins long enough to ensure the rift was stable and place additional wards that would warn her of further magical activity there. It had taken all her willpower not to run to Ash when she’d felt the seal break, but her failure to check the rift could doom the entire world to a gruesome death.
She’d chosen to seek out Ash’s parents first. She didn’t know Ash, who was essentially her daughter, and she hoped her old friends could guide her about approaching her with the news. Revealing what she was never went well for Maerlin, and she expected their reactions to range from disbelief to fury or hatred, which would hurt.
Growing too close to humans in her current life was an obvious trap, but it was one Maerlin repeatedly fell into. The Mosiers had been kind and welcomed her into their lives with open arms when she’d met them. Brian and Melinda had been her family for a time, a refuge from the ravaging effects of a long life spent alone.
Maerlin possessed incomprehensible power and could conquer any foe, but her weakness was loneliness. Maerlin hadn’t birthed a child in millennia, but the decision to use her magic to spark life in Melinda’s womb had been inevitable.
It had been love at first sight. Maerlin had adored Ash from the moment she was born through her first two years of life. Sealing the toddler’s soul to bind her powers and walking away had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
Ash was special in a way none of her other children had been. She had birthed the others herself, and those children, the Titans, had risen to claim the Earth. Later, she had borne twelve children to a Mediterranean man, and they had become the legendary Olympian pantheon.
While all her children wielded phenomenal powers on a cosmic scale, they often lacked humanity. Ash had been born human, though the power within her had overflowed before she could walk. Maerlin hoped the extra layer of humanity and the delayed powers would help Ash retain the open, loving heart she was sure any child raised by her friends would have. The others had fallen prey to the hubris of limitless power, but Ash had the potential to be the best of them, the perfect combination of humanity and Maerlin’s Abyssal magic.
Maerlin sighed. The last seal breaking meant Ash had died and risen in her true form, which she couldn’t understand on her own. Something in her rebelled at leaving Ash to navigate that traumatic transformation alone. Squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath to steady herself, Maerlin walked up the sidewalk and knocked on the Mosiers’ door.
She heard footsteps approach, and one of the Therians opened the door. Maerlin dropped the magic that disguised her power, and Uuka, the panther Luca had left in charge of defending the Mosiers, stared at Maerlin in shock and dropped to his knees.
“Oh, please don’t do that. Get up,” Maerlin urged.
“Who’s at the door, Uuka?” Melinda asked, stepping around the corner. She stumbled a step when she saw her old friend, sending one of the family photos on the wall crashing to the entry steps. “Maerlin?” she whispered.
Rapid footsteps moved down the hall, and two more Therians ran into view, along with Brian, who skidded to a stop when he saw their guest. The color drained from his face, and both Mosiers looked like they’d seen a ghost. In a way, they had. They’d mourned at Maerlin’s funeral, visited her grave, and missed her for twenty years. Thanks to the Therians, they knew what she was and that she was still alive, but seeing her made it real.
Melinda recovered first and charged down the short stairway to throw her arms around Maerlin’s neck, sobbing with joy from seeing her again. Brian wasn’t far behind, and he wrapped his arms around them. When they stepped back, Maerlin wiped away Melinda’s tears, beyond relieved that they didn’t automatically hate her for disappearing.
“I’ve got some serious explaining to do,” she admitted sheepishly.
Melinda laughed, wiping away more tears. “You could say that. There are some pretty big holes in the story we know, and you may be the only one who can offer answers.”
“Please, come in. We’ve got some news you may want to hear as well,” Brian added.
Maerlin stepped in, picking up the broken picture frame and looking at the photo of Ash and Dani with wonder. She repaired the glass with a wave and ran her hand over the smiling blonde woman in the picture. “Is this her?”
Melinda led the group to the living room, and Maerlin carried the photo. “Yes, that’s Ash, with our adopted daughter Dani. They’re going to be so upset that they missed you.”
Maerlin sat on the sofa and looked at Brian and Melinda in turn. “You don’t hate me?”
Melinda laughed. “I’m a little pissed you faked your death, and it hurts that you didn’t trust us to accept you as you are, but no, we don’t hate you.”
Maerlin didn’t know what to say. “Don’t you understand what I did to your daughter?”
Brian shook his head, “Not really. I know you gave her the spark. We assumed that’s how we got pregnant. When Ash met Luca, we think that was the first crack in the spell you put on her.”
“Do you have any news about the girls?” Melinda asked hopefully. “We haven’t heard much from them since they left. Dani sent a text to say they had survived the battle and Ash killed Nadya.”
Maerlin’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know. It’s taken everything I had to resist watching her, and I bound myself to wait until the seal broke, or I would never have been able to stay away. Now I must approach Ash to help her work through the changes she’s facing, but I don’t know her or how she’d react.”
Melinda caught her husband’s eye, and he nodded in agreement with her silent question. “If you’re going to see Ash, we want to go with you. The Therian king extended us a permanent invitation to the palace, and I can guarantee they would welcome you like a visiting goddess. Seriously, you should hear how they talk about you.”
Maerlin smiled. “You know how legends are. I’m sure it’s a lot of ridiculous tall tales. How do you know the Therian king? I met his mother while she was pregnant with him. I hear he’s a rather special dragon.” She’d stayed away from Ash, but she had heard about the former king’s death.
It was Brian’s turn to look stunned. “You don’t know? The dragon king, Luca, took Ash as his mate before he ascended to the throne. It’s been a whole dramatic thing. They had to kill King Nikoli because he lost his mind and was slaughtering people right and left. It was pretty bad, but they made it through together. Ash had to become a vampire to save Luca and keep Nadya from turning him, which she accomplished. It’s been a whirlwind for a few months, but we’ve been preparing.”
“Yes, we have,” Melinda added. “We don’t want to live on the other side of the world from our girls. Nothing is holding us here. I think we can help Ash retain her humanity if the realities of being a vampire overwhelm her.”
Maerlin held up a hand to stop them. “First, I grievously underestimated the two of you. You seem to be taking all this in stride. Does nothing rattle you?”
Melinda and Brian shared an amused, loving look and another of their silent conversations and laughed.
“I don’t deny there was some initial shock, but we learned to roll with the punches and adapt to whatever life throws at us long ago. You might have bound Ash’s powers, but she was an amazing child, and no one could say she wasn’t a handful. Then, after everything with Dani’s mother and the murders, Luca saved Brian’s life and healed him from a stroke. Then we learned he was a dragon and vampires attacked Ash. Accepting the weird was a lot easier after that,” Melinda explained.
Emotions rose within Maerlin, and tears stung her eyes. They knew what she was, or the Therians’ idea of what she was, and they weren’t batting an eye.
“What’s wrong?” Brian asked, concerned.
Maerlin wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. You can’t imagine how incredibly lonely my life is. No one has accepted me as I am…well, never like this.”
Melinda closed the space between them and hugged her dear friend. “Oh, honey. Of course, we accept you. I can’t promise we would have reacted like this twenty years ago, but I’d like to think so. Maer, you have a place with us as long as we live. No one should be alone.”
Maerlin couldn’t stem the tears and gave a hiccupping laugh. “Don’t tempt me. I can make you immortal.”
Brian smiled. “Be careful what you offer. Cut Dani in for the deal, and I suspect you will have some takers. Ash said vampires live forever.”
“I have no problem taking you with me when I go find Ash, and we will talk seriously about immortality, but you do know she’s not a vampire, right?” Maerlin grinned.
Brian, Melinda, and the panther prowl stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean?” Uuka asked. “I saw her. She’s a vampire.”
Maerlin shook her head. “Only because she doesn’t know any better. Ash was born of my magic, which makes her one of my children, though she is also your daughter, born of your flesh and blood. I don’t know how to describe what I am. The closest I’ve come in human language is an alien goddess.
“Mother Earth is one of my more accurate names. I was born here and was the first living creature on this planet, and I consider this place my home and under my protection. There’s a lot more to it, but Ash is unique. She is a true immortal with the seal broken, and her powers are limited only by her will and imagination.”
Brian sat back, the breath huffing out of his lungs. “Holy shit. We’re going to need drinks. Maerlin, keep talking.”
Uuka and his sister poured and passed out bourbon, and they all settled in to listen to Maerlin explain the curious situation in which they found themselves.
“There are other worlds,” Maerlin continued. “Other universes and other dimensions. My soul is from a universe called the Abyss, and a very long time ago, it collided with this universe, creating a rift between them below the ocean floor off the coast of Chile. What’s now Chile, anyway. The planet was different back then. In one of the last collisions of the Hadean Era, a rogue planet was drawn to the rift and smashed it open.”
They all stared at her in shock, but her words riveted them, so Maerlin kept talking. “Think of the Abyss as a shell containing a lightless ocean of incomprehensible size. Instead of water, the Abyss is full of… Translation fails me here, but think of it as amniotic fluid infused with magic. There is no death there. It is an endless cycle of rebirth as a soul lives one life after another. Conquest, conflict, and consumption on infinite repeat.
“I was in the waiting stage before my next life started when our universes collided. I was not a notably powerful being in the Abyss, but my magic works differently here. In my home, we never knew what we’d become from one life to the next. What we learned and the power we amassed influenced how we were reborn. Abyssian magic is based on potential. I don’t understand the difference in my power level, but I have not encountered many limits here.
“The exchange brought new material to the Abyss, and I can only guess what happened there. Here, the influx of Abyssal fluid sparked life. I was alone for so long, and I did everything in my power to protect the budding life on this planet.” She sighed wistfully. “I do miss the dinosaurs. There’s nothing like fighting a T-rex or running with the raptors. Still, there are things even I cannot change, and they had their time.”
Everyone watched her with awe, but Melinda’s laughter broke the silence. “The girls are going to love you. They want to study archaeology and explore the world’s history. Maerlin, you are the world’s history.”
Maerlin smiled happily. “Do you think so? I can’t wait to meet them.”
“We should save the rest for when we meet up with them,” Brian suggested. “That way, Maerlin won’t have to repeat herself.”
Melinda turned to Uuka and the other panthers. “Will you go with us?”
Uuka nodded. “The king left you both in our care, so we will go where you go.”
“Okay, then we need to find a flight with enough seats. I’ll start looking at the travel sites,” Melinda offered.
Maerlin grinned at them. They were adorable. “I can just open a portal. Instant travel, unmatched convenience, and it’s free.”
“You can? Of course, you can. Okay, let me call the girls and make sure they are prepared for guests. I don’t want to ambush them or intrude at an inopportune time.”
Ash didn’t answer her phone, but Dani did. She was thrilled that they were coming to visit, but Melinda didn’t tell her about Maerlin. “Ash should be back on Friday, so that would be the best time to come. She went on a vampire recruiting mission, going all Ben Franklin on their asses.”
“What does that even mean, Dani?”
“Current historical obsession. Ben Franklin was a badass, and he knew his way around a revolution. Anyway, Friday would be the best time to come. Eiko is with her, and they might be able to open a portal when they return.”
“That won’t be necessary, honey,” Melinda replied. “We can get there just fine. I’ll call you when we have more details. Otherwise, I will see you on Friday. Give Luca and the others our love.”
“Well, with that settled, how will we pass the time?” Maerlin asked.
Melinda laughed. “Are you kidding me? In addition to catching up on the past twenty years, I want to hear about your life. You must have been so lonely. I’m sure you’ll have to repeat some of it, but I’m not sorry since it will be just as fascinating the second time. I think we’ll find plenty to talk about.”
She sighed, still smiling. “I’ve missed you so much.”
The old friends stayed up talking late into the night, and the panthers listened in amazement. They watched Maerlin as if they couldn’t believe she was there. The power blazing within her was undeniable, and it had been difficult to move or breathe until she’d cloaked it again.
The panthers relaxed as the evening wore on. They all took turns telling stories, with Maerlin sharing the fall of Atlantis and Melinda explaining how they’d adopted Dani. They caught up on the major happenings of the past two decades while exploring Maerlin’s more impressive exploits.
Falling back into their old habits felt effortless, and a lost, lonely part of Maerlin retreated as she found a place to belong. Here, she was accepted and understood as the primordial force she was rather than the human woman she appeared to be. She didn’t mind waiting a few days to meet Ash when it felt so wonderful to be around old friends. These people felt like home.