"What are we waiting for?"
I get up from my seat at the dining table and flit off to my guest room to pack. That white wolf in the video was Bianca—I just know it—and she barely managed to fight off a whole horde of vampires. I look over my shoulder to see Rio following close behind, but not with the same sense of urgency that hastens my stride.
"She's in trouble, Rio," I repeat myself, "And we need to leave now."
I barge into the room and open the closets, not really knowing what I'm searching for since none of the clothes in here are mine. So, I look to the bedside table, grab my phone and stuff it in my pocket along with the phone charger for good measure. Rio stands near the door, typing something on his phone.
"Well?" I ask, my heart pounding out of my chest from the sudden surge of adrenaline at the news.
"Demi's working on tracking the IP address of the video," he says, his brows creased in concentration. "In the meantime, why don't we go see the mages?"
Rio and I walk up to a beautiful white villa with a red door. On the car ride over, he told me that the Lycans have a committee of three mages, who help them in areas where conjuring things beyond this world are concerned. I asked him if they were anything like the Fates from Greek mythology, but he laughed and said no, they are not that powerful as to guide people's destinies.
"But three is a powerful number, Astrid," he says, knocking on the door.
A man fitted with rings and a patterned crimson robe opens the door. His skin is ebony, while spots of white adorn his short afro hair.
"Welcome, Rio, Astrid," he greets with a little bob of his head then extends a hand inward. "Please, come in."
I was expecting the interior to look whimsical and magical with various herbs hanging around, strange artefacts and a bubbling cauldron, but, in fact, it looks like any old modern Greek house with bright furniture to match the bright exteriors.
"I suppose you're here about the vampire that my son has been complaining about in the family group chat," the ebony man says, closing the door.
"Yes, that would be one of the things," Rio answers. "Astrid, this is Souleymane Thebaud, Alex's father."
I shake the man's hand and notice the resemblance to the Beta, especially around the lower part of his face with his square chin and thick lips.
Souleymane leads us out of the living room entrance, through an open archway where two women are sitting around a rectangular dining table, drinking tea. One with fiery red hair and the other with sky blue.
"So, Alpha," speaks the red-headed woman with thin brows that arch up to give her a perpetual scornful expression. "Are you really sure about making a daylight ring? They can be quite dangerous in the wrong hands."
"Yes, I am sure," Rio replies confidently. "We are no longer in times of war and any vampire who chooses to go on a daylight rampage with the ring would be a fool and be met with a swift death."
She raises her brows in annoyance. "And you understand that the mere creation of such a ring will offset the balance of nature?"
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Helena," Souleymane tuts as he moves to sit at the head of the table. "We must trust our Alpha's decisions. He would not lead us astray, right Rio?"
Rio turns on his charm to smile at the witches and warlock, and for a moment, it reminds me of the time just a few days ago when that sort of look would have had my blood boiling. Helena's nostrils flare in displeasure. I guess, I'm not the only one who adversely reacts to that boyish grin.
"I would not do such a thing," Rio states. "Not all vampires are monsters, Helena."
"No, only the hundreds of covens we've had to clear out over the past decade. Only those." Her tone drips with disdain. "And they always end up rebuilding. Like cutting off a Hydra's head."
In Silver Bow, magic was like a flame, its moths being the supernatural folks. Nobody, after knowing that magic resists, can resist its awesome pull to nurture, create, fancy, and even destroy. So, I was always under the impression that witches and warlocks didn't care much about the disputes between Lycans and vampires. But then again, Rio did tell me that the destiny bond touches upon them as much as it does on humans. Maybe these witches have grown to dislike vampires after all their years of being mated to Lycans.
"We never faced attacks in Silver Bow." I don't know why I said that, but now that I have, all eyes are on me. "Alpha Greywood ran quite a tight ship, actually."
"How nice," Helena responds with a feigned smile. "How nice it must be to live in a continent surrounded by waters where only a quarter of the world's vampire population lives, with not just two but three wolf packs to police the bloodsuckers."
I look down and bite my lips, regretting my interjection. She doesn't have to go on for me to know that Midnight Shadow alone protects this side of the western hemisphere while Crimson Storm has its hands full up north in the biggest country in the world. Maybe I'm starting to understand why the Lycans seem so uptight to the rest of the Mighty Five packs.
"And these filthy undead are not going to let up any time soon," she continues. "Especially if they keep spilling over from the most populous human countries in the east. But that's tiger territory." She turns her nose up at this and pointedly glances at me.
"Astrid is as much a wolf as you are, Helena," Rio comes to my defence.
But I can't let that rest. "Now what's your problem with tigers?" I ask, suppressing the glow that wants to emit from my eyes.
"You lot have all that natural power within you, but know nothing of working together," she remarks. "Your ancestors in Silver Bow scattered the moment the war was over, going back to live their solitary lives and have done so ever since."
"Helena," the younger woman with the bright blue hair interjects, her voice soft and almost inaudible compared to the older woman's. "You can't fault her alone."
"Ionna, nobody asked you," Helena retorts. "Besides, I am merely stating facts."
"Again, Astrid is as much..." Rio stops mid-sentence as I glower at him. He sighs, while Helena shrugs arrogantly.
"Anyway," Souleymane breaks the tension, glaring at his red-headed colleague. "Let us get back to the matter at hand. Ionna, let us begin."
Ionna, who seems a little shaken by our little conflict, takes a deep breath and utters something to herself. Possibly an affirmation. She raises her hands and begins to chant incantations. Slowly, the room grows darker and darker. I turn to look out a window and notice something like smoke glide over the panes until there is nothing but black.
"What's happening?" I whisper, but somehow the darkness seemed to have made my voice even louder than expected.
"In order to make this ring," Souleymane's voice startles me, "we must forge it in complete darkness with a searing light."
At this, two dots faintly glow where Souleymane is sitting. The light turns brighter until it is clear that the two dots are Souleymane's eyes. He, too, begins chanting but not in unison with Ionna, nor in chaotic timing. Their chants intertwine like an acapella ensemble, Ionna taking the soprano melody and Souleymane taking the baritone. A globe of light forms within Souleymane's palms, both cupped together, alighting the room and its five occupants. Ionna strengthens her incantations to wrap the darkness around the residual light until I see nothing but the spherical light. I instinctively reach my hand out to the side where I feel Rio. He wraps his fingers around mine and I feel his pulse quicken as much as mine.
A third voice joins the chorus, this one an alto that blends perfectly with the other two. I can't see what Helena is doing, but I can see the globe of light become smaller and smaller until a hollow appears at the centre. This continues for a while when I finally understand that the three of them are forming a ring from the pure light.
Then a fourth melody laces itself onto the mages' chants. This one faint, but familiar. I shake my head thinking it must be the three of their vocals resonating and echoing in my head, but something tells me it's as real and distinct as each one of them.
Eventually, the incantations slow down and quieten with Helena stopping first, then Souleymane, then Ionna. The fourth melody falls to quiet hum at the back of my head and stops too. And when the last word is uttered, the natural light from outside comes flooding back in.
I look over to Rio, who is looking down at our held hands. I gently pull mine away, not quite ready to show affection in public, and he purses his lips into a small smile. I may have kissed him back last night, but things are still very much complicated.
The witches and warlock look visibly exhausted as they all reach out for their tea to replenish themselves, Helena more so than the other two, with sweat gleaming off of her forehead for she appears to be the oldest. The ring is still a pure light and sits on Souleymane's open palm.
"Take this," he says, breathlessly, "and ask the vampiress to let fall a drop of her blood on its surface. That should neutralize it and hopefully ensure that only she may wear it."
"Thank you," Rio says as he grabs it with a handkerchief. "All of you."
"Of course, Rio," Souleymane nods into his cup of tea. "And please, Astrid, don't hesitate to give my boy a tight slap from me if he monkeys around you."
"Yes, sir," I answer.
Rio and I take our leave. Helena breathes deep into her cup with her eyes closed while Ionna waves goodbye.
"I hope you see now why it's hard to make something like the shifting suit you wore last night," Rio says as we enter his black jeep.
"Why don't the other witches and warlocks help them out?"
"There are only ever three mated mages in Mesaniskia at a time."
"Wow. I can't imagine how exhausted the three who made the barrier must have been."
"I heard that took a whole year to complete."
"The power of magic never ceases to amaze me," I chuckle. "In fact, I think I heard it back there."
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't hear the fourth voice? The fourth melody?"
"No, I didn't." Rio shrugs before I let my mind wander into the possibilities. "Perhaps you are just one of those magic sensitive people. Alex is one, but then again his dad is a warlock."
"Can Alex wield magic?" I ask.
"Not as far as I'm aware. He's a shoot first sort of guy."
"He's never tried?"
"Even if he could, I doubt he has the attention span to sustain any sort of magic."
Rio swerves the car into a small driveway at the end of which lies another black jeep. The cottage beside it is smaller than most houses here and has a red dome, however, the backyard is quite large with a pool, a fire pit, a jacuzzi, a motorboat on wheels and a shed in the far corner. I immediately know this to be Alex's residence.
"If this doesn't scream 'scared of commitment'," I murmur.
Rio laughs. "At least he has plenty of space to renovate when he receives the Moon Goddess's blessing."
Rio opens the front door right up without knocking, which, I'm sure, is a habit developed between two best friends. The living room is not a mess, but the thin sheet of dust settled on every piece of furniture except for the beanbag and the gaming consoles on the coffee table, suggests a lazy bachelor lives in this place. The walls are decorated with movie posters and strips of LED lights.
"Alex?" Rio calls out.
"In here," a voice emanates from around the corner.
We follow it to a kitchen that smells of coffee and burnt toast. Alex is eating his breakfast by the counter. Rio and I greet him.
"If it isn't the happy couple," Alex grins with a mouthful of eggs and crunchy burnt toast.
"I trust Valentina wasn't too difficult last night?" Rio asks.
"She let her face do the talking as most people from her part of the world do. I would have gotten offended if she herself didn't stink so much like a dead body. It literally penetrated into my dreams. Astrid, can your tiger senses smell that?"
"Uh, not really," I reply. "To me, at least, vampires smell a little worse than bad breath. Nothing that perfume can't conceal."
Alex wretches as he places his burnt toast down. "See, I thought that a bit of burnt toast would cancel the stench, but it's not really helping. Actually, I did start to wonder how in the hell your friend could have ever bedded such a rotten, stinking—"
The door behind Rio and I, beside the pantry, swings open with a loud thud. Valentina appears in the dark hallway in black silk pyjamas with a sleeping mask raised above her eyes.
"Didn't anybody tell you it's rude to talk behind people's backs?" she asks with hands on her hips.
"Okay," Alex clears his throat. "You smell worse than a dead dog that's been forgotten and left out in a humid sunny room for two-and-a-half weeks."
Valentina huffs and turns her nose. "You are a very rude man. Besides, I only came up because of the Alpha and the tigress." Her expression softens when she looks at us. "Did you find Bianca?"
"Almost," Rio answers. "Hopefully, Bianca doesn't move too far from the IP address that Demi locates."
A new sense of urgency springs up in me.
"Give her the ring," I urge Rio.
"One daylight ring as requested," Rio unfurls the ring of light that's been laying in his handkerchief. Valentina gasps and instinctually flinches from it.
She eyes all of us with very concerned eyes and a trickle of fear at the light and I realize how vulnerable she must be feeling in an island full of people who would want to kill her on sight.
"It's okay," I tell her. "We just need a drop of your blood so that you can wear it."
Without hesitating, she brings a wrist up to her mouth and sharply winces. Blood falls freely from her wrists, dropping with pitter-patters onto the hardwood floor.
"You better be cleaning that, vampiress," Alex quips.
I take the handkerchief with the ring on it from Rio and try to carefully catch a drop of her falling blood, but it drizzles all over the clean white fabric. The liquid sears and sizzles against the glowing ring, which transforms before our eyes as the unnatural glow neutralizes and settles into a reddish gold with runes appearing on the inner rim. I present it to Valentina.
She takes it cautiously and wears it. For a moment, we all pause, expecting something extraordinary to happen. But it doesn't.
"Did it work?" she asks.
"Why don't you step out into the light and see?" I suggest.
Valentina nods and steps out, avoiding the spilled blood on the floor in front of her. At first, she reaches a hand out and instantly takes it back, expecting a smoky sizzle; at least, that's what I think happens. I've never witnessed a vampire death by sun. She widens her eyes and puts a bare foot out. Then the other. She gasps loudly as if she'd been holding her breath for a very, very long time.
"Mon dieu," she utters. "Je suis libre."
Valentina starts to giggle and cry almost hysterically. I can only imagine what she's going through, having lived in darkness for hundreds of years and finally being able to withstand the sun's deadly light. All because she fell in love with a wolf.
"Okay, okay." Alex gets up from his seat. "Calm down, Valentina. Remember, this isn't an excuse to hunt in the daylight."
"Oh, quel connard!" she curses and starts berating him in French.
"Excuse me, I fully understand every word you say," he retorts and also argues in French.
I merely take a step back and sigh. Rio looks at me like an exhausted parent, having dealt with these sorts of situations with Alex many times before. He clutches his jeans for his phone, which rings with a notification and looks at it very seriously.
"Everybody, shut up!" Rio yells, looks at me and nods. "We leave in 2 hours."