Ellida (40 page)

“May I please have a glass of milk?” he asked
in his sweetest voice. “It helps me get to sleep.”

The nurse didn’t say anything, but soon came
back with milk. She put the cup on the bedpost and left the room
without uttering a word. Henry could hear the clicking of the
lock.

He unbuttoned his pajama top and took it off.
For a long moment he carefully studied the hospital mobile table
beside the bed, with all sorts of machines and monitors placed on
its top. He opened the drawer beneath and pulled out a handful of
metal discs hooked to the monitors with long wires. He placed them
on his chest the same way Nurse Leslie had done it before the
surgery so that Dr. Mohegan and Dr. Demmir could monitor his
heart.

Then he leaned on the pillow and reached for
the cup.

“I must not take too much,” he murmured, and
took a small sip of milk then another one.

Almost instantly his skin broke out in hives
and his heart rate skyrocketed. A sharp pain slashed across his
abdomen and his throat and lips swelled. A series of short,
laborious wheezes came out of his mouth.

“CODE BLUE—FLOOR FIVE—ROOM FIVE-OH-THREE…
CODE BLUE—FLOOR FIVE—ROOM FIVE-OH-THREE,” he heard the announcement
over the hospital loudspeaker system, and smiled weakly at the
instant sound of multiple steps running through the corridor toward
his room.

Dr. Falkenstein and Dr. Altman rushed in,
followed by several nurses. “He’s in anaphylactic shock! Somebody
gave him milk! Epinephrine, pediatric dosage, 0.01 mg per kilo,
he’s 21 kilograms! Quickly!” Dr. Falkenstein shouted the
orders.

Somebody pushed in another mobile table and
Dr. Falkenstein prepared the syringe. The moment a nurse lowered
his hand to place an oxygen mask over his face, Henry grabbed his
wrist.

“They took the Ellida!” he pushed out the
words through his swollen throat and tongue. “Call the Einhamir,
quickly!”

He felt a needle pinch on his thigh, and
heard the loud sound of a fire alarm, more steps running through
the hospital, telephones, cars, brakes, and voices yelling and
shouting…

“Mission accomplished,” he murmured as his
throat relaxed and air finally reached his lungs again.

IT WAS half past four and we’d been missing
for one hour.

The rear door of the ambulance opened. My
kidnappers were nowhere to be seen. Instead, several uniformed men
stood on each side of the door.

One of them stepped out. “Welcome to Copper
Ridge, Ellida,” he said, not bothering to introduce himself. “I’m
glad you’ve finally decided to accept our kind invitation.” He
turned around. “I don’t see the cavalry coming to the rescue!
Follow me.”

He looked at Ahmed. “You, take the boy to
headquarters and lock him up. Stupid humans, they always go
overboard,” he grumbled, irritated. “Why did they take the boy in
the first place?”

His hand reached for my elbow.

“You talk too much,” I snapped and jerked my
arm away. “And
do not
touch me. I can walk myself.”

Ahmed threw me a warning look, but to my
surprise, the man took a step back. “Move!” he barked, maintaining
a physical space between us. “And don’t get any ideas, Ellida, or
your mother is gone.” To illustrate his words, he moved his finger
across his throat.

I looked at him and took a deep breath,
memorizing his look and his scent so that I could find him
later.

We walked through the foggy, cold night
toward a big white castle that stood isolated on a flat-topped
mound. Despite the dire situation I was in, it was impossible not
to notice the beautiful stone structure, built as an early medieval
castle. It was encompassed with several layers of defensive walls,
and sported other middle-age castle features—a gatehouse, towers
with arrow slits, the keep, even a chapel—only on a smaller scale.
I remembered Jack and James mentioning Seth’s ‘Castle’, which was
built two decades ago, but I didn’t expect to find a replica of a
medieval structure. It was out of place and time and a testimony of
his mental state, yet strikingly beautiful nonetheless.

After a brisk walk through the gatehouse,
across the inner yard and through seemingly endless dimly lit
corridors and secret passages, we entered the keep, Seth’s
residence.

The guard pushed me inside and secured the
heavy wooden door from the outside.

I didn’t have time to assess the interior. My
immediate attention was drawn to a figure on the floor, curled into
a ball. She moaned and lifted her head.

As if in a trance, I walked to her and sank
to my knees.

“Mother?”

She parted her lips to say something, but the
words stayed trapped in her throat. A soft, painful groan came out
instead.

“Shhh, don’t talk,” I stuttered, choking over
my own words. I gently brushed the thick locks from her forehead.
Her face was a purplish-black mass of bruises and cuts. Some of
them still bled. “Did he do that to you?”

She nodded. “It looks far worse than it is,
don’t be alarmed,” my mother said and managed a tiny smile.
“Astrid,” she whispered in a shaky voice. “Astrid, my baby, let me
see you…” Her trembling hand stroked my cheeks. “You’re beautiful!
You look like your father, except his eyes were blue. Come closer.”
She pulled me toward her and said softly in my ear, “There’s a lot
that Seth still doesn’t know, not even about my role in this. He
hit me because I tried to stop him from bringing you here. He
doesn’t know about my powers.”

“Don’t talk, mother. I know what you mean.
Now lay still until I check you.”

She protested, “I’m fine. Let me touch
you.”

“Can you translocate?” I asked while my hands
examined her.

“I’m not leaving you, Astrid. Never
again.”

“Oh, Mom,” I cried out, sobbing heavily. “Oh,
Mom…”

She lifted her hand and brushed away my
tears, letting her own run down her cheeks.

“Mom, if you can, you must go and bring
help.” I tried one more time, although I wasn’t sure that in her
present shape my mother had enough energy for translocation.

She shook her head. “No, my love. This
building is under the heaviest protection against wizard magic.
Even if I could conjure enough power to translocate, that would
alert Seth before it is time. Trust me, Astrid, please. Darius will
be here soon and he’ll take us out. He knows the secret passages.”
She grabbed my hand, squeezing it. “Astrid, Heather’s here, do you
know?”

I nodded. “I suspect she has a role in this.
We kept an eye on her, but she tricked us all. I supposed she’s
regained some of her wizard abilities. Mom, about Seth’s vampire
hirelings, some of them are humans. Heather probably used her magic
to make them smell like vampires.”

“Oh God! We didn’t have a clue. He kept
bringing vampires and werewolves, but he knew he could never send
them to Red Cliffs. They would’ve been recognized immediately.”

“Humans were easily sneaked in. Nobody
noticed anything unusual because the town was full of humans
anyway. It’s ski-season.”

“We rarely saw them at all. They had their
rooms here, in this castle. How come we didn’t suspect
anything?”

“That was crucial to Seth’s success, so I’m
not surprised he took great effort to hide it. Don’t think about it
now.”

I finished the check-up and let out a
relieved sigh. The bruises looked horrible, but my mother wasn’t
seriously hurt. She was already healing. Her strong blood was
dealing with the injuries quickly and efficiently.

“Help me sit. I’m feeling better already. He
doesn’t do that often, and I know how to protect myself, don’t fret
about me.” She lifted her hand, but stopped in the middle of the
movement. “May I?”

I took her hand and guided it to the small,
round swell of my belly. “It’s a girl, Mom,” I stuttered before
words deserted me. I had so many questions, so much to say, but I
couldn’t utter a single word. My throat felt parched, and tears
were stinging my eyes.

I couldn’t move my gaze from my mother’s
battered, swollen face, beautiful in spite of the bruises.

I pressed my hand against hers, letting my
unborn daughter connect all three of us.

“Jack will be here soon,” I whispered after a
long, healing silence, interrupted only by our sobs. “I’m pretty
useless for fighting, being pregnant. There’ll be enough angry
werewolves, wizards and vampires to finish Seth once and for all.
Just don’t let anything happen to you. I need you, Mom. I have so
much to ask you.”

“You try to stay put. Don’t worry about me.
Don’t make Seth mad. Pretend to agree to whatever he says. He’s a
pathologically vain person, use it if—”

The door burst open and my archenemy walked
in. He slowly walked to us, as if savoring every moment of his
victory. Legs slightly apart, hands on his hips, he stopped in
front of us.

“Well, well, isn’t that a sight! I’ve been
waiting to see you for years. Welcome to your new home, Ellida
Astrid Vandermeer. Be a good girl and I might even keep your mother
alive. And that boy. You’re probably feeling terribly guilty
because he ended up here. The one that was in your office,
unfortunately, we had to eliminate. But you understand, in a time
of war, civil casualties are inevitable.”

For a moment my heart froze.

“
Henry’s alive, Miss Spock. Stay
calm!”
I heard a familiar voice inside my head.

I was so shocked with my wolf’s sudden
reappearance that it took me a long moment to realize that my
mother’s gentle squeeze had sent me the same message: Seth was
bluffing. Henry was alive. How my mother and my wolf knew, I didn’t
know. They had their own ways.

I didn’t have time to dwell on the remarkable
come-back of my wolf and its possible implications. I was very,
very happy she was there. I instantly felt safer.

I concentrated on Seth, the very source of my
deepest fears, my nightmare, my sworn enemy.

He was dressed in accordance with his
surroundings. He wore a garment that resembled an early medieval
soldier: a short burgundy tunic with a gold lion emblem on it,
black pants and knee-high boots. A long sword in a sheath hung from
the left side of his belt, a Finnish
puukko
knife on the
right.

He used to be a handsome man; there was no
doubt about it. He was tall and powerfully built, strong and agile,
with brisk yet calculated movements. Broad face, firm chin and
strong nose, high cheeks, high forehead.

And mad eyes. A mere glance at his eyes
revealed his mental state. They either couldn’t keep their focus
longer than few short moments, or they would concentrate on
something that wasn’t there. They were feverish and alive at one
moment, clouded and dull the next. They were wide-open and round
when he talked to me, and two malicious, narrow slits when he
addressed my mother. Even their color shifted from bright blue to
stormy grey.

He turned to me, waving theatrically with his
arms. “And now, I would like you to meet my son. We have a wedding
to conduct so let’s not waste any more time.” He clasped his hands
and the door opened again. “Tell Darius to join us here,” he
ordered a guard, darting his gaze between my mother and me. “At
least your mother will be present at your wedding.”

Darius came in, followed by a man in a police
uniform. I glanced at him, hoping he was one of Darius’ allies, but
then my eyes stopped on a pair of familiar hands. Ahmed! Thank God
for his strange inability to change the appearance of his
hands!

“Astrid, meet your future husband,” Seth said
with a broad smile, openly satisfied with himself. “No reason to
complain, huh?”

I slowly moved my eyes over Darius, assessing
him. “Under different circumstances, perhaps I wouldn’t mind
getting to know your son better.” Repeating the words I’d once told
Darius in order to upset Jack, I nodded approvingly and smiled back
at Seth.

I didn’t know what kind of reaction he had
expected, but he looked taken aback by my unexpected statement.

He tilted his head, eyeing me suspiciously.
He didn’t like this unpredicted turn. And he clearly didn’t know
anything about me now. I was able to confuse him. He wanted me to
fight the very idea of getting married to Darius, not to consider
it, not even for a moment.

“What do you mean, ‘under different
circumstances’?” he said warily.

“
Be careful now, Miss Spock
,” I heard
my wolf’s voice once again.

“I thought you knew. The trip to Las Vegas?
We have a technical problem, Seth, I’m afraid. See, if I marry your
son, the marriage isn’t going to be valid. I’m already married. You
must know that.”

His mad eyes scanned over me, trying to
figure out what the hell I was talking about.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know,” I continued
with my charade. It sounded unconvincing, but I couldn’t think of
anything better. “I can’t believe your people didn’t inform you. I
was sure I spotted a few of them in front of the wedding chapel. I
assumed you’d know about my every move.”

“And I do. That’s why you’re here now.”

“That was clever. I’m impressed,” I said and
gave him a flattering smile. “Anyway, I got pregnant that weekend,
as you know,” I said, tapping the bump of my abdomen. “Jack
insisted we should elope. We couldn’t tell anyone. Uncle James
would have gone berserk; you know him. Why do you think your men
didn’t tell you about the wedding?”

It was an insanely risky gambit. Seth didn’t
know about our trip to Vegas so there couldn’t have been any of his
men there. But, in Seth’s delusional state of mind facts and
fiction were so thoroughly mixed that I hoped with all my heart he
wouldn’t notice my terrible bluffing.

I played on his madness and vanity. It was a
see-through and unconvincing maneuver, as illogical and irrational
as Seth himself, therefore, there was a chance of success.