Chapter 28 - Rio

After Bianca's exit, Guru offers us to stay in the upper floors of his house that he hasn't had use for in years. He employs his son, Ganzorig's help to set up the room and get the heating going. I send Alex to help him along and to set our bags into our respective rooms. Valentina sits on the sofa Bianca left her in, once again contemplatively twisting the daylight ring on her finger.

Meanwhile, Astrid feigns a smile and small talk with Guru, though her eyes give her away. She asks the old man about the history of Sanctuary and the culture of the tigers, being as she was raised in wolf culture. The distraction seems to take her mind off of Bianca for a while.

"Are there other places like this?" Astrid asks.

"Not as far as I'm aware," the old man says. "Though small families, I'm sure, are dispersed across the continent. Did you say your mother is a tiger?"

"Yes, but her parents died when she was young," she answers sombrely. "So, all I really know is Silver Bow."

I soak this information in and ponder of my destined's struggles with identity, if any. Does she feel torn between her nature and the environment that nurtured her? From the little heated argument she had with the witch Helena, Astrid was quite defensive about her heritage, though there truly was nothing to be said about it, as she is thoroughly a part of the Mighty Five.

Speaking of which, Astrid brings up the little border issue that the witch posed to us that day.

"We do the best we can with what we have," Guru replies vaguely.

"Why don't the tigers unite?" she asks as Guru grimaces slightly. "You know, like the wolves."

"What do you think might happen when, say, a toddler goes through his or her first shift? Well, to us, tigers, this is normal, but to humans, this is a superstitious threat. Most prominent of all is the myth of the demon rakshasas. Many of us have grown up with the collective psyche that we are abnormal. It has taken us years and years to work through our inner prejudices to come to this point. And many more years would it take to finally unite."

"Much like the wolf's wild counterpart," he continues, "they have the pecking order to keep checks and balances. And much like our wild counterpart, we tend to stay together while the cubs grow up. After that, it's every man for himself. That's what we're trying to evolve away from. It gets harder when those outliers fall in love with humans until a mysterious tiger baby is born. Then what?"

Astrid nods solemnly at this and I wish there was more I could do to help.

"Maybe Rio and I can do something about it." She looks at me with a glimmer of hope in her warm eyes. "Our union could be the start of something great."

Our union.

I can't stop my face muscles from beaming at that. And I thank the Goddess up above for sending her to me, this ray of light who is destined to be my lover and my best companion for life. And as much as I cherished the time we spent in our small airplane cabin, I wished I could have shown her more just how much I appreciate her.

Ganzorig and Alex announce that the rooms are ready. Over the course of our conversation, Valentina seems to have dozed off on the sofa. Guru sighs at this and asks us to keep an eye on her during our stay as most of the tigers will not be happy to discover a vampire among them. Just to be safe, he orders his son to watch her and Alex is a little relieved that he now has a vampire-sitting partner.

"If you'll excuse me, I have to go see to Bianca's training." Guru announces. "It's all we can do to prepare at the moment. Perhaps you might join us, too, Astrid?"

"Of course," she nods.

Astrid looks at me expectantly, not for my permission or approval, but just to let me know that she'll be fine. Perhaps she wants to take out her anger on her friend in a healthy sparring session. I suppress a grin at the thought and take her warm hand to kiss it, sending her off with my blessing.

"In the meantime, I shall try to communicate with the Moon Goddess."

As Astrid and Guru leave and Ganzorig and Alex settle down around the fireplace, I make my way upstairs.

The cold, dry mountain air amplifies the dustiness of the room I enter that's been cleaned out for, I can tell, the first time in a long while. The floor is solid stone while the white-washed walls are well insulated and trap the warmth of the room well. A small draft wafts through the window and when I go to shut the door, it seals it immediately.

Where do I start?

I kneel by the side of the bed and rest my elbows on the mattress. I've seen this position in movies when little kids pray desperately to their God. But I'm not a kid, though I may be a little amped up to unlock this ability and finally know whether the black Alpha eye is for real.

I clasp my hands together, close my eyes and concentrate.

I know nothing will happen for a while, that I might take me a whole hour of concentrating to hear or see anything. But after a few minutes, I hear something. A voice.

"Why are you doing this?" it asks.

I push further into the sound, when the darkness behind my eyes tints a shade lighter. Shapes start to form and a new feeling of constraint and suffocation overcomes me as my chest gets tighter. I feel afraid. But it is not my fear; it is someone else's.

I try to answer back, but a lump of silence builds in my throat.

A chill, but not the cold kind, runs down my neck, shaking my core to submit to the fear.

"Why are you doing this?" the voice repeats, this time in a feminine timbre.

"It was futile to think I could die," responds another voice. Or is it two voices?

And when the echoes ring, the memory of the dream on my last night at home strikes me down.

I try to move my head, but the stiffness at the nape of my neck disallows it. My hands want to move reflexively to feel it, but they, too, are stiff. And out of the periphery of my vision, I see constraints on either side of me: chains made of dark smoke clasped against starry white skin and delicate hands. I soon realize from the black wisps arising from my vision that my neck is also chained.

A tall figure enrobed in black smoke paces in front of me. He lowers his hood to reveal black, sleeked back hair and a sickly grey complexion. His face is handsome, but something cunning and sinister lies behind his black eyes.

Where am I?

I think to myself as a battle ensues over my body as I attempt to will itself to shake off of the chains. But I am not alone in here. I am not in control. As I look back at my dainty hands and the strand of midnight black hair that falls across my face, I am not in my own body.

Concentrate, the host wills me.

"I'm still here, aren't I?" The cloaked figure voice is unnaturally deep and ends in a lazy drawl, dispersing into echoes of a thousand voices.

"I saw you die with my own eyes." I utter uncontrollably.

My voice is not my own. It is light, feminine and carries an ethereal trill.

"No, dearest mother, I only became it and waited for this moment."

Mother?

The knowledge that I may or may not be hallucinating myself into the body of the Moon Goddess starts to trickle in.

"How?" she asks.

"There's a reason why firstborns hold greater importance over the rest of the brood. Though you failed to see this even as centuries passed after the death of my brothers, Fen and, especially, Luc, the Lycan." He contemplates on this name for a while, then scoffs, the smoke around his dark robes puffing up. "I don't even remember my own name."

"Son," she begins, "your name is—"

"Don't say it!" he hisses, exposing his yellowed fangs as saliva builds around the rim of his grey lips. "I am no longer the sad, pathetic boy you forgot about. Nor the naïve captain of the undead army I raised all by myself before Lucian's descendant ripped out my heart and pulled my body to shreds." He takes a breath to compose himself, then grins darkly. "I am the God of Death."

He walks over as the Moon Goddess only now begins to shake and fight against the chains. My head itches from a little sting as he plucks out a strand of long, curly, black hair that glistens indigo blue as he gathers it in the palm of his hand.

"With this strand, I tie the fate of the firstborn descendant of Fen."

He ties the strand into itself and snaps it in a flash of silver light.

The cloaked figure reaches out a grey hand once more. This time, I feel my body shake more intensely and more violently.

"Don't!" she pleads.

With another sharp prick, the strand is plucked and he gathers it in his palm yet again.

"With this strand, I tie the fate of the firstborn descendant of Luc."

The Goddess lets out a deafening cry as thunder sounds in the distance and flashes of light illuminate the shadowy figure better. Under the smoky robe, the faint outline of his body is decayed and decrepit. The texture on his sickly grey face is rough and grotesque. His fangs glisten as he gapes his mouth wide open in a sinister laugh that echoes through my mind.

An invisible force pushes me out of the Moon Goddess's body and mind as I stumble back and fall to the floor. I pant heavily as I try to regain my bearings and understand everything I'd just learned. I saw through the Moon Goddess's eyes as much as she probably sees through mine.

And she's in danger.