There were three realizations the Watts boys had to endure. First: Cyan was alone, scared, and possibly tortured. Second: Life wasn't a party. Third: Craziness ran deep in the Watts family.
Silken darkness fell upon the grim woods. The night froze through perturbation. Cicadas cried, and the winds purled through the leaves of oaks and cedar elms. It felt like the Watts backyard, but it wasn't. Everett once thought the Watts Mansion was a fortress of snobs who were too disdainful for the real world. In reality, the Watts Clan dug that big hole to bury their sins.
Without Bill Watts, privileges and powers alienated Prime Branch boys. Being homeless now, the brothers took shelter in the bilious forest they hated. There was no fresh sheet, no room service, and no comfort. Their current mansion was a cabin made of woods glued together, its size less than Everett's old bathroom's. The former residents had furnished the living space with garbage. Everett slapped his nose when the reek of old mattresses in one corner hit his face. Some notes and books spread on a table made of old crates. With a glance, Everett concluded that David had been self-efficiently living under Bill Watts's nose for a while.
In a kitchen—a congested corner stuffed with cereal boxes—David, Angelica, and John whispered. Everett couldn't make out their conversation, but David was stroking John's forehead.
Truthfully, David's transformation was impressive. The new outfit and the more acceptable hairdo turned David into a personality, but the remarkable thing was the way he talked and walked—and broke things. The lunatic even comforted another human being, although his approach was peculiarly intrusive. David patted John as if he was consoling a child while Angelica gave John something to drink. A moment later, John slid inside a small room, one of the two awful hollows in the cabin. Perhaps David's odd act of compassion was effective. Everett, however, felt sick to his stomach, for he couldn't offer John anything. The man trusted him, and he was supposed to take care of Cyan. Everett wished the Coopers left last night. If he weren't so selfish, they would have been safe and far away from this toxic land.
"I can't believe he froze every account!" Will threw a cell phone on the crate table.
"Bill Watts has been watching all of you." Angelica lifted the phone. "You need to get rid of this. And all the phones." She cast a glance at Simon, Everett, and Luke.
"It's begun." David strutted to the window where blackness was a pane. "You've been cut off."
"I can't sit here and do nothing." Simon jolted up from a wooden chair that nearly crumbled at his sudden movement. "What if those psychos cut her up as Hector did?"
"She heals," Angelica said and turned to David. "And hidden. They make sure of that. But the night of the ritual is when we'll know exactly where she and Hector will be."
"What do you want us to do, David?" asked Luke.
Currently, the crazy brother took control. The Watts boys needed him to lead. He was the oldest among them after all.
"I'll seal the whole place up." Angelica grabbed two empty jars from the kitchen counter. "You tell them about your precious great-grandparents, David."
***
In front of the cabin, the Watts boys gathered around a fire. David settled on a chair, staring at the flames. Several occasions, Everett wished David was sane, so he would know what it was like to have five brothers. The Watts boys had never imagined that they could share alcohol with Dark Prince. David never drank. At least, they thought he didn't.
"More than a hundred years ago," David said. "Colt and Rosalind built Dawn Cathedral." A sentence purled into the fire. The last time he spoke on the phone, a ten-minute pause swam between phrases. "I bet none of you know what it was for." He sneered.
In contrast to the Watts Clan history, as per David, Colt was a foundling brought up by the Foerstners, a wealthy family in an old town called Anchor Brook, an extraordinary isolation in the forest of Maine. He became a stable boy. Sadly, being free labor wasn't the most inferior status in this community, but being ordinary was. Colt was a human, but everyone else in town was magic. Women in Anchor Brook were huldrekes, the creatures with the power of longevity and enchantment, and their men were Rykers.
With a pair of eager eyes, Colt obsessed with Rosalind Foerstner. She was the only heiress of the household, and he was nothing. Although Rosalind was a proud noble, Colt's persistence won her heart.
David sighted Angelica, the charismatic redhead who was pouring some white liquid around the cabin.
"The huldreke glamor attracts wealth and power," David said.
Angelica drifted from the dark and reposed on a log next to the fire. Everett peeped at her youthful face in the flames of her hair. Cyan bore no resemblance to her supposed grandmother. He wondered if it was all an elaborate scam. The redhead got to David somehow, brainwashed him, gave him a new personality, infiltrated Bill Watts's guard, and orchestrated all the tricks to con them—Everett wished everything was a lie.
"You will learn about the huldreke world when you make it out of Colt," Angelica said. "But understand one thing: huldrekes and humans didn't have a wonderful history. There was a big war before this one, driving male huldrekes into extinction. Our blood is impure. Women with huldreke blood are huldrekes, but men aren't anymore. They're Rykers."
Angelica explained that the Foerstners and their loyal followers strictly kept their true identities hidden. But while Anchor Brook was shy about its powers, Rosalind wanted no limits. She envisioned the world without fear, the realm where huldrekes were liberated. With Colt's encouragement, she lavished the powers beyond her father's laws. As Colt's influence on Rosalind worried the community, Rykers were planning to execute him. But to prove her loyalty to Colt, Rosalind killed everyone in cold blood and set out to ravage the world with her poisonous lover by her side.
In the library, Everett used to find comfort in the virtuous portrait of his great-grandparents. They weren't angels but demons like the progeny they created.
"Rosalind's power gave Colt everything," David said, the bonfire glow twinkling in his eyes. "But it was never enough."
Colt craved the huldreke power so severely, helplessly envying Rosalind, who was forever young and powerful. And for what she thought was love, she satisfied his needs blindly. A huldreke, however, couldn't will its power to outsiders. Most importantly, huldreke power is only useful for women. Men of the huldreke bloodline—Rykers—are stunning and live long, but their other supernatural powers are dormant. Colt was neither. He was human, and that was his curse.
Colt needed the magic, the only thing in the world he couldn't have. The money, kingdom, and superiority were nothing compared to the huldreke power in his wife's veins. Rosalind's steel devotion to Colt eventually found a way to bypass the unyielding supernatural law. Colt, at last, could feel the great caliber in his bones, although the gift came with a price. For an insatiable man, such power was worth more than life.
Angelica inserted a spine-chilling chronicle where Rosalind hunted down a huldreke for Colt's first shadowing ritual. The couple killed their firstborn, so he could absorb the power. The magic was addictive. Hunger progressively grew whenever he consumed the power. Rosalind sacrificed huldrekes, her kind, one by one, death after death. With every huldreke Colt killed, the couple lost one of their own. The powers, fortunes, and everything the Watts Clan owned came from blood. Without the killings, the Watts Clan would be ordinary.
"Rosalind taught Colt to hunt." David sipped some beer and winced. "You boys have seen the journal." He glanced at Luke and Everett, his prying eyes as efficient as Bill Watts's.
"Those numbers revealed the identities of the huldrekes they wanted for the sacrifices." David planted the bottle on the ground and wiped his mouth with his collar.
"You're crazy," Everett whimpered, the letters and the symbols in the journal pricking his head.
Eleanor Valentine Scott. Mary Alexia Andover.
Nikolai Welshman (Nikolai Cooper). Cyan Adrian Cooper. Angelica Mars Swiss.
David smirked. "Colt was greedy and jealous of his own wife." He scoffed, fainter than how the other Watts boys did. "So one day, he killed her too." He pursed his lips. "But Colt's hunger was unfulfilled. He never stopped fertilizing this great family tree." A long breath escaped David while his warm glance marked Will, Simon, Everett, and Luke. "What Rosalind did for Colt had passed down to the next generations, letting us access huldreke power, unlike other Rykers who can't. The Grave Shadow is the way of the Watts Clan; this is how we operate."
"David," said Will. "You can't expect us to believe every single word you've just said. It's..."
"Crazy." Angelica snorted.
"The shadowing of the graves," David said as he eyed Angelica reluctantly, "was our great-grandmother's doctrine." His face went blank. "Every full moon, at least two people die—someone's most beloved son and a huldreke."
"It's impossible. You can't kill someone you love." Everett buried his face in the gloom of his palms. No, they won't hurt Hector. They can't kill Cyan. His stomach gasped.
"That's not all." David leaned forward, and the brothers inched closer to the fire. "First, you need to understand one thing." He lifted his chin. "The condition you must always remember." He sighed into the flames. "Only women can pass down huldreke genes." He plucked the bottle from the dirt and pointed it at Angelica, and she grinned to agree. He hurled the bottle across the golden ambiance into the dark, the beer which he barely drank spurting over the fire. Some sparks streaked through the air at twenty feet away like an electrical glitch. "Great job!" David winked, and Angelica scoffed like the Watts boys. "Even if a man has huldreke blood, he can't pass down these gifts to his offspring. Your mother has to be a huldreke, and only then you can inherit the power."
"You're trying to say that our mothers were huldrekes." Will furrowed his brows. "What are you getting at?"
"Yes, they were." David nodded slowly. "But they didn't know, just like the girl doesn't know, because they were meant to be on the chopping block."
"You're out of your mind." Simon's lips were red between his teeth. "He wouldn't..."
"The Watts women." David's jaw tightened, his hands trembling. "All of them were and are huldrekes. That's why you have the powers in you. That's why I can do this." He opened his palm, and a yellow orb throbbed in his paw.
"No..." Simon slapped his own mouth.
"Hunters track huldrekes, lure them, marry them, have children with them, and kill them when the time comes," Angelica concluded.
"That couldn't be real." Luke hunched his shoulders and tightened his fists.
"The women in the Watts Clan are like crops to be harvested whenever the men crave the magic." David snatched another bottle of beer and stared at it.
"He killed her." Everett's voice shivered. He looked at Luke, Will was already a wreck, and Simon was on the verge of breaking down in some foreign language.
David huffed and put the bottle beside his feet. He didn't seem to have the appetite for alcohol like the other Watts boys.
No matter how hard Everett tried, he couldn't remember that night when Mary called him and Luke to meet her in Midland. Luke couldn't, too, although he had the best brain. Both of them were drunk, and they blamed themselves for their mother's death as much as everyone else did them. Even if Bill Watts killed her, it didn't mean that they were innocent.
"I'm going to make him pay," Luke cried out and shot from the chair.
Bill Watts killed his wives. If it were true, not only the Watts Clan were a tribe of murderers, but they had been killing their flesh and loved ones for years. Hector, the vulnerable prince, was in danger now. Everett wouldn't let anything happen to his beloved brother. Could Bill Watts kill his son? A chill crawled down Everett's spine as his subconscious had already known the answer. David's power and Angelica's magic supported the horrific tales. Angelica wasn't a con, but Bill Watts was a liar. The agenda finally became clear, but in the back of Everett's mind, he wanted it to be a nightmare, a big misunderstanding, or perhaps his madness.
After the fire died, the Watts boys withered in the harsh reality, their tears dripping to brace them. David and Angelica shepherded Bill Watts's wasted brats to their deserving smelly mattresses. Tears flooded into the night after the truths fell upon them. The Watts boys were spawns of evils, the blood of murderers, the parts of their mothers' deaths.
"Sleep, Wolf," David whispered. He combed Everett's hair back with his fingers as Mary used to do. Other than his mother, only Hector called Everett Wolf. Now David did, too, with the touch that soothed him—or it might be the beer. The truth wrecked Everett beyond repair, but he hoped Cyan could heal him. She might be able to mend the broken reality. The black wolf drifted into serenity, his mother's lullaby crooning in his ears.
Mighty Black Wolf dances on the grass blades
Wonder where his beloved master be
Mighty Black Wolf kisses the darkness
Her true love fades, and he weeps
Mighty Black Wolf floats on the grass blades
Dripping in red and his soul free