Birth of Jaiden (29 page)

Danielle turned to Alex.
“Now do you understand why I told you she must grow up surrounded
by love?”

Astounded, Alex could not
speak. He could feel the anger of his vampire within begin to
flare.
Who
would create such an evil thing? Why would they make a way for the
demons to get out? Why?

Without a second thought,
he grabbed the book and threw it into the fireplace.

“
What are you doing?”
Danielle asked him. “It cannot be destroyed.”

Alex ignored her.
“Jeremiah, I want you to burn it.”

Jeremiah shook his head.
“It’s true, Alex, it can’t be destroyed.”

“
Burn it!” Alex screamed
at him.

Jeremiah went to the
fireplace and, with his eyes wide with concentration, he lifted his
shaky wrinkled hands. Each hand produced what looked like a string
of fire, then the two strings joined together to create a half
circle.

He turned his hands palm
out toward the fireplace and sent it straight at the book. Alex
watched in awe as the flames he threw actually bounced off of the
book and flew back at Jeremiah.

Anticipating this,
Jeremiah had formed a cup with both hands, held them out and let
the flames absorb back into his palms. “See, something or someone
has protected it.”

“
I don’t care!” Alex
stormed forward, grabbed the poker beside the fireplace and slammed
it into the book. Nothing happened; it only made him angrier and
each strike of the poker only made it worse.

He felt a hand on his
shoulder and whirled around to see Danielle beside him.

“
Alex, calm down,” she
whispered to him.

“
No. No! I will
not
calm down.” He
pushed her away, reared back and struck the book again. “There has
to be a way to get rid of this thing.”

“
Alex, stop it.” She moved
herself around till she stood in front of him. “Stop it,” she told
him calmly.

As angry as he was, he
would never hit Danielle. With raging frustration, he threw the
poker into the fireplace on top of the book.

Danielle wrapped her arms
around him. “All we can do is keep that book safe from others, find
Jaiden and Isabella, and kill Malcolm and Levine.”

He returned her embrace with
urgency.
Already,
he thought.
Already, they have been taken away
.

Alex released Danielle and
threw himself into a chair. While Danielle had been embracing him,
Chris had retrieved the book.

“
Well,” he said, “it looks
like we have some time before they actually need this.” Alex
watched Chris run his fingers over the hand print. “It looks like
she will be grown when her hand fits this.”

Victoria nodded. “Enough
time for them to teach her their evil ways if we don’t get her
back.”

“
What’s this?” Chris asked
as he looked intensely at the hand print.

Alex got up and went to
look at it too. He saw that Chris was examining a slot in the
center of the palm about an inch long and a quarter of an inch
wide.

Corrine shook her head.
“We are not really sure; the legend doesn’t say, but after many,
many years, we have come to the conclusion that you need to insert
something in there, as well as fitting the hands to actually
release the demons.”

Cautiously, Alex opened
the book. The pages were thick parchment, yellowed from age. The
first page was blank but as he flipped through the rest of the
pages, he discovered that each of them showed a picture of a demon,
a description, and their name at the top. And the worst part was
that the book had hundreds of pages.

Lord help us
, Alex thought.

“
What do you put in it?”
Chris asked.

“
That is another thing that we
aren’t sure of,” Corrine told him. “
That
is why it is still a puzzle. The only thing we
know for sure is that we cannot let Malcolm or Levine get their
hands on this book. Even more so, we can’t let them have Jaiden and
the book
together
.”

“
But, they would still
need whatever goes in this hole to complete it?” Alex
asked.

“
That’s what we think,”
Corrine replied.

“
How in the world would we
find that? We don’t even know what it is,” Chris asked
her.

Corrine grazed her eyes
over the entire group. “We think Malcolm has it.”

Just great
, Alex thought.

Damion slammed his fist
into the coffee table. “We need to move; we have to find them. We
have three people to save now.”

“
Damion, we don’t know
where they are,” Alex responded.

Deanna cleared her throat.
“Yes, we do.”

Alex had never seen so
many heads swivel at once. “What?”

“
I put a tracking spell on
Jaiden.”

Alex ran to her and,
without regard to her injuries, yanked her up and hugged her. “You
should have told us before.”

“
It wouldn’t have
mattered. We need to know where they’re located so they need the
time to get there.”

“
Deanna, you are the
best.” He let her go roughly. “How do we find her?”

“
I will need maps, one of
the world and one of the U.S. We will see if we need another one
after that.”

Alex glanced at Corrine as
she rushed off to get the maps.

When she returned with
them, Alex moved the book so that Deanna could use the coffee table
for a flat surface.

She unfolded the map of
the world and laid it out across the table. Then, she reached into
her pocket, fumbled around for a second and withdrew what looked
like a purple marble.

The entire council formed
a circle around Deanna so they could watch her perform her magic.
She set the marble in the center of the map and held it steady
until it stopped threatening to roll away.

When she let go, she said
softly, but firmly, “Find Jaiden.”

The marble started
rolling, at first hesitantly from side to side and then in a more
distinct direction toward the United States, and stopped in the
upper left hand corner of the nation.

“
Get me the other map,
please.”

Corrine gave her the other
map. Deanna removed the marble and then unfolded the new map while
Alex removed the world map.

She laid out the new map
and repeated the procedure. That time, the marble rolled right up
into the corner of Idaho. “They’re here,” she whispered. “They have
been living right on top of you all this time.”

Corrine’s eyes were wide
and, for the first time since Alex had known her, he saw fear in
her eyes. “Did they know you were here?”

“
I don’t know.”

Deanna looked at her. “We
are going to need a map of Idaho.”

Corrine slowly left the
room and soon returned with yet another map. Again, they all
watched curiously as Deanna let the marble roll.

“
It’s a mountain.” She
pointed to where the marble had stopped, close to the border of
Canada.

She looked up at Damion.
“Stewart told us that it was caves. Could they be
inside
a mountain instead
of underground?”

“
If all this is right,
then, yeah,” he told her.

“
Damion, that hurts my
feelings. Just trust me; I know what I’m doing. My spells always
work.”

Alex watched him rub the
top of her head like a father would a child. “Let’s go get’em,
then.”

31

Levine sat in her throne
and filed her fingernails.

After having been in a
man’s body for so long, she felt like she needed to embrace her
femininity.

“
How could you
do
that?” Malcolm
screamed at her. “I sat here for days watching you in that chair
looking like you were dead, only every so often you had a
seizure
to let me know you
were still alive.”

He ran up to her throne and
pounded the arms of it with his fists. “
Listen to me
!”

Bored with the whole thing, she
looked up at him and threw her nail file in his face. “Shut up! I
did this for
you
.
I brought you
two
council members
and
the baby and all you can do is
yell
at me. Well, screw you,
then.”

“
Levine, I was beside myself. I
had no idea what was wrong with you, and then, you just show up
here, only not as
you
.
How am I supposed to act?”

“
Grateful!” she screamed
at him and stormed out of the throne room with her clicking heels
echoing in the dank caves.

Levine slowly navigated
the narrow passageways. She knew that Malcolm would get over his
anger soon but nevertheless she didn’t want to be around
him.

How could we not have known
that Corrine was right under our noses this whole
time
? she
thought as she followed the stairway down to where they kept
Stewart and Isabella.
We could have done away with her a long time
ago
.

“
Well, hello, my tasty
prisoners,” she called cheerfully as she entered the room. The
guards stepped back to let her get to where Isabella and Stewart
sat chained to the wall. She had bound their powers, of
course.

Isabella sat with her
knees pulled up close to her chest. She was still wearing her tee
shirt and socks which were thoroughly soaked with her own blood.
The cold stone floor combined with the horror of the trauma caused
her to shiver violently.

Levine kneeled down next to
her. “You’re
pathetic
.” She spat out. “How dare you try to take that child from
me. I should have killed you but I have a feeling we might need you
later on.”

Isabella sucked in a
muffled sob.

Levine reached out and ran
her index finger through the blood that covered Isabella’s arm.
“What’s the matter, sweetie? Are you scared?” she asked in a mock
baby voice. Then, she brought her finger to her lips to let
Isabella watch her lick the blood.

“
Stop it,” Stewart said in
a weak voice. “Leave her alone.”

Levine looked over at him. “I
will do anything I want to either of you because now
I
am your
God
.”

Stewart smiled at her. “You can
torture me, you can kill me, you can do whatever you want but you
will never be any kind of god to me. I will never,
ever
do anything you
want me to.”

She could not believe that
guy; after everything he had been through, he still had the gall to
be a cocky little bastard.

“
We may need
her
,” Levine tilted her head toward
Isabella, “but we certainly don’t need you anymore.”

The lack of blood and
exhaustion seemed to make him delirious because he laughed at her,
he actually laughed at her.

“
How dare you laugh at me. Stop
it!” She started to crawl toward him. Anger erupted inside her but
he kept laughing. “Shut up! Stop it,
now!”

Still on her hands and
knees, about a foot from him, she hissed loudly and opened her
mouth wide so that both Stewart and Isabella could see her fangs
grow right out of her teeth.

“
No, no, no, no, no,”
Isabella screamed so loud it echoed throughout the caves. “Stop,
Stewart, stop laughing!”

He managed to speak
between chuckles. “What’s the matter, Levine, you don’t want me to
be one of the cows for your farm?”

“
Stewart, don’t make it worse,”
Isabella begged. “
Please
stop.”

Levine raised her dress
and straddled Stewart’s lap with a leg on either side of him. While
he continued laughing, she slapped him hard with her diamond laden
right hand.

“
You are a fool,” she told
him.

His laughing tapered to a
stop and he looked into her eyes.

“
They
will
win,” he whispered to her.

She grabbed his hair in
her left hand and yanked, snapping his neck.

Isabella screamed long and
loud.

Levine ignored her and
brought her lips to the exposed side of Stewart’s neck. She
immediately pierced his skin with her razor sharp fangs and covered
the punctures with her entire mouth.

While she drank, she
moaned with ecstasy and moved her hips back and forth. The taste of
blood, the revitalization it gave her, the intimacy of the bite.
All of it was her love; it was her greatest pleasure.

Finally, after she had
gotten her fill, Levine reluctantly pulled away from Stewart’s dead
body. She touched her chin and discovered that she had gotten blood
on herself. With one hand, she removed a white cloth napkin from
the neckline of her dress and dabbed at the droplets of blood that
still lingered on her chin.