Fact and Hearsay- Time Frame: During the events of Rage of Vendetta (Occurring Parallel to Chapter 17)
Eric Stone muttered a curse under his breath.
The gunmen were closing in, and Ariel was taking bullets left and right like it was no big deal. The plan wasn't going to work anymore. He caught sight of Jesse's terrified expression, gesturing for him and Sasha to go while Ariel had the humans distracted.
Eric wasn't one to argue.
"Run!" he hissed, grabbing Sasha's wrist.
Sasha didn't resist, and taking advantage of the frenzy, the two of them fled. Zipping through dark roads and under street lights, it wasn't long before they realized there was no echo behind them.
Eric kept them running for a while longer, even though his lungs were close to giving out.
"Stop, stop, stop," Sasha finally panted as they approached a busy roundabout. "Let's call a cab."
Eric doubled over, resting his hands on his knees, heaving. Once he finally caught his breath, he glanced up and cast her a dubious glance. "Spend a few hours in a car with a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Maybe there's another option."
"We're waving down a cab, Eric," Sasha decided for them, taking his expression for defeat. "Unless you want to arrive at Central Park three days after the agreed time and have everyone take us for dead."
In no time, Sasha had stopped a cab, halting right next to them on the sidewalk like magic. It seemed too easy to Eric, but he shut up with one look from Sasha.
She tugged the door open and hurtled in.
Sighing, Eric followed.
"To New York City, please," Sasha told the driver. "Central Park."
They reeked of tourist.
The driver turned around. There was a tattoo winding around his upper arm and probably three days worth of stubble on his chin, but Eric thought he looked harmless otherwise.
"At this hour?" the driver questioned, raising a bushy eyebrow.
Sasha nodded. "Urgent business."
Out of the corner of his eye, Eric caught sight of a cockroach skittering along the floor of the car. He let Sasha deal with convincing the driver, and leaned down towards the cockroach without thinking about what a lunatic he looked like.
"How you doin'?" Eric said aloud, even though he could talk to animals in his head perfectly fine. It wasn't like Sasha or the driver could hear him while he was bent down close to where the engine was rumbling away.
"Food," the cockroach replied.
So it was one of those.
"How long have you been in this cab for?" Eric continued asking.
"Find food," it replied. "One night. No food."
"Has this driver done anything illegal?"
The cockroach scampered around a bit and did some circles before replying. "Nah. Not snack a lot."
Before Eric could reply to that, the cab began moving and Sasha jabbed an elbow into his ribs. That was all the warning he got before she was dragging his head onto the seat and leaning over it.
"Sasha, what the heck?" he hissed, barely able to get a few syllables out from the mass of red hair in his nose and flesh squashed against his cheek.
"The driver is already suspicious we're drug-addicted teenage runaways and suddenly your streaks just start glowing!"
"I was background-checking," he insisted. "We need to make sure it's safe."
"Background-checking doesn't create a purple-tinted hundred-watt glow," she whispered sharply.
Eric wrinkled his nose, still most trapped under Sasha's arms like a steel cage. For such a slender frame, she was strong.
"Okay, so I sort of got into a conversation," he said. "It's not like I can help it. Animal communication doesn't have a meter before the hair starts glowing."
Besides, his weaker bloodline meant his streaks usually only took on a tiny gleam, so it could easily be explained as glow-in-the-dark dye. It probably existed. Somewhere.
Sasha finally released him. Eric searched the area around his foot, seeing nothing.
"You've scared it off," he whined.
Sasha visibly chose to ignore that.
"He's not taking us to Central Park at this hour, apparently," she explained in a low voice. "Just a motel in the outskirts. But we'll live."
The cab ride was shorter than Eric had expected. Within half an hour, they pulled up outside a neon-lit sign and Sasha tumbled out in a hurry, leaving Eric to pay the fare.
"Where are we?" Eric huffed when he finally caught up to Sasha. They looked up at a dingy motel.
"Not sure," Sasha replied, "but it's definitely worse than the one in New Zealand."
"Oh, boy, it's been a while."
Eric whirred around, searching for the strident voice.
Sasha looked simultaneously amused and fed-up. "Why are you twitching?" she asked plainly.
"Something's talking to us," he replied. He finally caught sight of small, ashy-grey bird with black wings, perched on a far branch.
"Just let it be!" Sasha groaned, taking ahold of Eric's hand. She tugged at him and his unmoving feet. "Let's go!"
"The last time the red-haired girl was here, I was but a hatchling."
Eric froze in his steps. "Wait. What?" he blurted out.
"Eric, ignore the bird!" Sasha chided.
"No, hold on!" he insisted, moving toward it and dragging Sasha along. The bird was watching him curiously, hopping with slow movements. Eric could tell it was old, perhaps nearing the end of its lifespan.
"What did you say before?" he asked it. Their nearby darkness lit up with purple.
"I recognize her, oh yes, I do," it chirped. "We have very good memories, you know."
With a start, it came to Eric's mind what this bird was. Clark's nutcracker, a species that could recall every single hiding place of its food sources.
"You recognize her?" Eric clarified with disbelief, pointing at Sasha.
Sasha blinked in surprise.
"Yep, yep, I do," it replied. "She looks exactly like her birth-giver. She, herself, was naught a bundle swathed in blankets."
Eric took a step back in shock.
"What's it saying?" Sasha pressed. She clutched Eric's shoulders and shook him slightly. "Eric!"
"Sash, I think this is the motel that Ariel told us about," Eric whispered in awe.
"The one Ariel told us about?" she repeated. "You mean the one Lilith showed her?"
Eric dropped his gaze to Sasha's wide eyes. They were pulling her face gaunt.
"Yes."
Sasha whirred on her heels, facing the bird. "What do you mean?" she shrieked. "How do you know me?"
Panicked, Eric made a grab for her arms before she could lash out at the bird. "Sasha, Sasha!" His arms tightened around her in a coiling hold, both to calm her down and to pin her flailing movements to her sides. "It can't understand you. Let me ask, okay?"
A brisk nod was all he got in response to that.
"What did you see?" Eric asked it, making sure to keep his tone calm. "Eighteen years ago, what happened here?"
"Oh, my, has it been that long?" it tweeted, hopping closer. "I remember another female human being dragged out of here, wrapped in supernatural technology. Not a single soul in this courtyard saw but I."
"What? What it's saying?" Sasha cut in.
"I think it's talking about an Invisi-let," Eric explained, thoughts stuttering. Eric had always hated those devices Dr. White invented with her abilities. "Apparently Bethany had one on when she was being hauled out of here."
Sasha's arms twitched. "What about my mom? Where did she go after that?"
Eric repeated the words to the bird, and it went silent for a few moments as it processed his words.
"She got into a car," it finally chirped.
"That's it?" Sasha said when Eric relayed its words. She sighed, and made a move to leave.
"Before that though, she disappeared for a good while. The receptionist had to hold the babe for a good hour until she emerged from her room again."
Eric furrowed his eyebrows. "She left Sasha with the receptionist right after her other daughter was kidnapped? Why would she do such a thing?"
The bird moved its wings in the movement of a shrug. "That's when I caught sight of her face. We don't forget easily. It was her, alright."
Eric left the bird then, jogging to catch up with Sasha. Her fists were tightly clenched. He could see the anxiety drawn in the creases by her eyes. Knowing where Sasha's mom had gone-taking Sasha with her-after Bethany was captured could mean finding the safe place she was currently staying at.
Assuming she was still alive, of course.
Of course she's still alive, Eric told himself. He couldn't believe he had just thought that.
"Did it say anything else?" Sasha asked, feigning flippancy.
"Just that you were left with the receptionist," he replied absently, deep in thought. "You wouldn't happen to know what room you guys stayed in, would you?"
Sasha shot him a side-eye. "Eric, I was a month old."
Eric frowned.
A bizarre idea was forming inside his head, brought on by the bird's strange words. What had Sasha's mother been doing in the gap between Bethany being taken, and leaving the hotel as fast as she could with Sasha?
They pushed open the door into the lobby, and approached the receptionist behind the desk.
Sasha opened her mouth to ask for a room, but Eric cut in to interrupt.
"Can we see the room allocation records from eighteen years ago?" he asked stoically, tensing his jaw and squinting slightly to appear fiercer. It was a technique he had learned from Jesse.
"Are you even eighteen yourself?" the grey-haired receptionist asked without even glancing up from her computer.
His technique obviously wasn't working.
Eric reached into his pocket and dumped half the cash Ariel had given them in front of the woman. The folded hundred dollar bills was more than enough to get her attention.
"Let me check the log books," she said simply, disappearing.
The moment her heels clacked out of hearing distance, Sasha whacked his arm.
"What are you doing?"
Eric stared her down. "Trust me."
"I do trust you!" she snapped. "My question was what are you doing?"
The woman returned with a yellowing, leather-bound journal before he could reply.
"We kept paper records in the 90s," she told them, dropping the book onto the counter. "Good luck."
And then she went right back to work.
Eric began to flip through the water-logged pages, squinting at the handwriting in each column.
"What are you even looking for?" Sasha exhaled in defeat, moving closer to help. He could feel her heat on his skin as she rested her face on his shoulder, and instead of warming him, goosebumps crept up his neck.
He focused his attention onto the words in front of him. "What month would it had been?" He flipped faster, having already found the correct year. "You were born on August the 14th. Maybe October?"
"Probably earlier," Sasha suggested.
Eric flipped back, going at a steady speed, when Sasha's hand shot out and stopped him.
Julia O'Conelle, Eric read. 5B
That was all the information he needed.
He slammed the book shut, and leaned over the desk. His heart was thudding into his throat. Eric was getting more worked up about this than Sasha was. "We need the key to room 5B."
The receptionist barely blinked as she reached under the desk and tossed him a small key, chained to a plastic square.
They were off immediately, out the lobby and searching for the correct door down the complexes. Sasha found it first, yelling out for Eric to hurry.
"What is it that you even think we'll find?" Sasha asked.
Eric grunted, unlocking the door with more effort than necessary. "I don't know. Call it a sixth sense that bird gave me."
Sasha flipped the light switch, and the small room lit up, two messily made beds to the right and a table to the left. There were doors that led to a bathroom and a toilet at the back.
Eric watched as she walked around, taking it all in. This was the site where her world was altered the second time without even knowing it.
"See anything that screams out at you?" he asked.
Sasha shook her head. "Nothing looks familiar."
They wandered around the room slowly. After two or three scans, Sasha gave up, collapsing on the bed. Eric kept going, until more than ten minutes later, something caught his eye.
"Hey, what is it?"
"A safe?" Sasha suggested, rolling off the bed and crawling towards it. She tried the unlocked handle, and pulled it open to reveal an empty space. "Nice try. It's empty."
Eric's eyes weren't on the empty contents. "No, behind it!" he exclaimed excitedly. He knelt down, and began to heave the safe out of the way.
"An electrical outlet?" Sasha questioned again.
Eric narrowed his eyes, running his finger along the edge of the outlet. "Why is an outlet being covered by a safe? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?"
"Eric," Sasha began, barely suppressing the sigh. "This room probably gets two occupants per year, it's really not that surprising the interior design is questionable."
Eric ignored her skepticism, and gave the cover a tug. To his surprise, it actually came off. "Someone pulled all the wires out and marred them. Look."
"Are you sure you didn't just do that by taking the cover off?" Sasha asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Sash," Eric insisted. He turned it over, where the assorted wires that had been attached to the cover were snapped and strangely blackened, then some almost fused together to create strange patterns.
Sasha laid eyes on it, and immediately went pale.
"Five to the left, three up," she whispered under her breath.
Eric had no idea what she was talking about. He stared at her, waiting.
Slow, Sasha pivoted on her heel, and counted her steps. Eric shuffled silently after her, taking into scrutiny ever slight shake her limbs made. He tried to peer at her face when she stopped, but Sasha dropped to her knees suddenly, peeling back the carpet at her feet with ease.
"How'd you know it was loose?"
She didn't answer his question, and was instead quietly muttering. "The game was just training so I'd recognize this."
Eric still wasn't sure what Sasha was talking about, and generally he could decipher her mumbling well.
The hard-backed carpet came off in a dusty square, revealing a hole in the floorboards, as if it had been chopped out in preparation and then left to sit, forgotten. It would have been impossible to spot if they hadn't know it was there.
In the hollow of the floor sat a piece of paper, folded three times over like a formal document.
Sasha made no move to reach for it, so Eric brought it out and unfolded it, careful not to disturb the gathered dust. He passed it to Sasha, but then thinking twice, stopped her.
"Are you sure?" he asked. "You don't have to, you know."
"If this is what I think it is," Sasha said, her hands shaking. "Then yes, I do have to."
"Whatever is in there, there's no going back," Eric whispered.
"I know."
Sasha smoothed out the crinkles, and as the dark script came to view, they began to read.
Anastasia,
I write this letter in hopes it'll reach you eighteen years in the future. It is all I can hope on, and you must simply believe me when I say I am wholly trusting the word of an Oracle that it is fate you will find this no matter where I place it.
I am unsure as to how much you will know when you come across this letter. I made a promise to your father that I would shelter you from this world, but if you have traveled this far already, I must assume something has happened. Tragedy has hit in present time. Time is running out for us, so I am afraid I cannot go into detail. You will not know Bethany nor Diana, and I'm sorry, my love, so sorry you did not have a chance to know them.
Diana is gone, Bethany has been taken, and I'm so, so afraid that you will follow down the same path in the future. They know of your existence. We have enemies on both sides, and it's only a matter of time as to which comes after us first. I can't guarantee our safety. In the future when this letter is unearthed, you will already know what has occurred, and if my fears were confirmed. I want to spare you from any grief, any suffering or misery, but it is in your blood. I can't do anything.
I wish it could be another way. But there isn't. Not until something changes.
Your father said the O'Conelle bloodline has always been entwined with Lilith's Champions throughout time. I've been told you will already know who they are, and who the current ones are, so I explain to you now that I've been told I must write this letter, or else far into the future, you will forever wonder in mystery. She will not tell me what my fate is, and why I must write to my teenaged daughter while in reality she is but a crying infant. I must assume the worst.
Anastasia, if you have not heard from me by now, I may be gone.
There is no easy way to say it. We will live-lived, I suppose to you-in constant danger. I promise you that while we can, I'll give us the best life possible. But this is outside my control. As much as I'd like to, it is likely there will come a day when I cannot protect you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Anastasia. All I can do, it would seem, is to say a goodbye in writing. I'm guessing we will not get another chance. I cannot tell you these words while I watch you grow, but know that day after day, I believe them as I raise you.
You were destined to walk a great path, whether as a triumphing force or as a crucial aid. I have no doubt you are doing all you can right now.
I'm sorry I can't be there with you.
I love you.