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“So, basically, they’re like real dogs?”

Vinique laughed. “Basically, but they can do vicious things if their Shadow Caster orders them.” She took out a couple of plates and handed them to me to set the table.

“But where do they come from?”

“We have shrines inside Oblivion. They’re like a Level Four Light Caster but dark. Her bloodline are the only ones that can wield them. Mine was wielded by a woman called Seamora. She didn’t like being a Shadow Caster and when she wielded Kiara for me, she put a lot of love into her. She also put a bit of mischief and too much energy, but overall it was the perfect recipe for a Shadow Hound.”

“Can Light Casters tame them?”

“If they can look beyond the darkness and evil emanating off them, I don’t see why not. But then again, the Light Casters have their own animals.”

“They do?”

“They are called Anitules. Their Casters are known as Tulas, a very old name for someone gifted to bond with Anitules. If I remember correctly, your father had an eagle called Lima, who would come to his rescue whenever things got out of hand.”

My eyebrows knitted as I thought about that.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Why wasn’t he there that night, when you needed him?”

“Because Lima would’ve killed me.”

“But he was just an eagle.”

She laughed. “Animals in Revera are not like the animals we have here, Chas. They are huge, so big that Casters can ride them. Lima was a giant eagle.”

“What?!”

“He showed me a picture of Lima once, he was a beautiful creature.”

“Did he die too?” I had to know.

She shrugged.

“So the Light Caster animals are just like the Shadow Caster animals.”

“You are one smart girl.”

“What can I say? I guess I get it from both my parents.”

Mom bumped me softly. “Eat your sandwich, smart mouth.”

We dug in and I had to say, it was the best sandwich I’d ever had. I enjoyed every single bit of it, up until Mom told me to finish my milk because we still had plenty of training to do.

Training carried on until late in the evening. Around nine o’clock, I watched Mom part with the last bit of my father’s sand. She stood outside the cabin with a blanket over her shoulder, just staring out into the woods.

It couldn’t be easy on her, knowing that she didn’t have anything that strong of Dad’s with her anymore. That thought and watching her just standing there brought tears to my eyes.

They would come, any day now. My mother had spoken so many times of this night. The night that could be our last. Still, it didn’t matter how many times she spoke about it, trying to get me strong for this evening, I wasn’t ready to part ways with her. There was still so much I needed to know, but she said I knew enough. I would learn the rest in Revera and the less I knew now, the better off I would be when they did come.

THE NEXT DAY I FOUND A PLATINUM BLONDE AT
the table, reading from a newspaper.

“The color suits you,” I smiled down at her and plunged myself onto the opposite chair.

She smiled. “They say a change is as good as a holiday. In my case it’s probably something like ‘time to find your old self again’.”

I laughed. My mom was a natural platinum blonde, Tim used to joke about that on numerous occasions, but she refused to go back her normal color. Now I knew why. She was unrecognizable as a red head.

For the next two days we talked about so many things. We actually spoke about boys and it was sad not knowing if my mother would ever get to be there when I was grown up and ready for them.

Still, the drilling about what I had do when the Pursuers came, got worse. It became an hourly thing. I could even say it in my sleep if I had to.

I woke up and stared at the morning sky filling the room. Every day now, I thanked God for another morning with my mother. They were getting short now. Breakfast was the best time of the day. Mom would talk to me about so many things, about how I’d changed her and the full life I’d given her. I knew she wasn’t ready to let me go either. She wanted so much more than just fifteen years, but the cards weren’t in our favor and the minutes were precious, we didn’t know how many more we would share together. I began to understand what she meant by a couple of hours spent with loved ones felt like nothing.

At ten, I would go about my wielding lesson. We didn’t do it outside anymore and did it inside the fighting room. She was right. The more I did it, the easier it got. It wasn’t as hard as the first time, I didn’t even have to imagine the Shadow Hound anymore.

When I opened my eyes, my dagger was lying in the heap of golden dust. I had three daggers now, all locked up inside the chest. They didn’t vanish like Leigh’s had in the dream which was another good sign. Strong blood flowed through my veins.

“Tell you what,” Mom said as she walked over to the chest. “Let’s try this with a bow.”

“Mom!”

“You’re ready, Chas. It’s not so hard.” Mom had an overexcited tone to her voice as she ran to her room where she kept Dad’s bow.

I giggled as I watched her exiting the door. She came back two minutes later with Dad’s bow wrapped in a blanket.

The minute she placed his bow without the arrows or string in my hand, I started to second guess myself. I’d only seen it once, from Leigh inside my Initiation dream. He was really good. But I know I wasn’t ready for this.

“You can do it, sweetheart. It just takes practice. Imagine yourself pulling back the string and imagine the arrow.”

“That’s a lot of imagining, mom.”

She chuckled as she stood right behind me and I pulled the imaginary string of the bow back. “Take a deep breath, visualize the arrow, feel the strong grip of the string. When you are sure you’ve got it, release.”

I closed my eyes and imagined what my arrow should look like. I put strain on my arm and pretend it was a string that couldn’t move back anymore. Then I imagined Leigh, the way he’d released his arrows and they magically appeared in thin air. Long, pointy, golden arrows. I let go and opened my eyes immediately.

No arrows.

“It’s okay. Try again.” My mother smiled and I raised the bow to my shoulder again.

After the umpteenth time, when my shoulders ached and I couldn’t pull back the imaginary string anymore, I lowered the bow.

“I can’t do this anymore, mom.”

“You have to try, Chas. I don’t know how much time I have left.”

“Mom, I don’t feel my sand. I think I used it’s quota for today.” I gave a small chuckle, but didn’t get the same response from mother. Mom just stared at me with huge round eyes. “Mom, It was a joke, unless—”

“It’s not that, Chas. They’re here.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY…NO!”

“When other Light Casters are near, Initiates, or Level One Casters feel a bit drained, which stops the sand from flowing naturally. We didn’t train enough today for you to feel so tired Chas.”

“Are they in the house?” I didn’t want it to be today. I still needed to know so much more.

“Close your eyes.”

“Mom, I’m not ready.”

“Neither am I.” She stroke my face gently. “But we have no choice. Now close your eyes and do what we practiced.”

“What if we just stay here?”

“They’ll find us, Chas and the plan will be ruined. I can’t go back to Oblivion and you won’t survive there either. Now do as you’re told.”

I closed my eyes and knew that Mom was going to scratch herself on her face to make it look natural. I took
the deepest breath I could master and screamed.

I opened my eyes as Mom put a thick rope around my wrists behind my back and a bandage over my mouth. I couldn’t help but give her a look of fear. What if I screwed up and give away the fact that she was my mom?

I watched her make the transformation, her eyes became dark, black and an ice cold finger traced down my spine, making my skin crawl. Millions if goosebumps rippled on my arms. She looked like pure evil and I closed my eyes, trying to remember her beautiful blue eyes. I knew they’d had to change to play her part. To make her role in this convincing and become the Shadow Caster she once was.

The door to the arena flew open, but it wasn’t an arena anymore. It was the inside of a huge closet.

“Found her!” A woman with a pale complex, wearing white clothes with a short haircut that fit with her outfit yelled.

She grabbed me around my arm and pulled me gently out of the closet. The bandage over my mouth disappeared instantly.

“Where is she?” A male asked. He was huge with raven black hair tied into a pony tale. He wore red and white leather paints and had a pair of sunglasses resting on his head. His jacket was pure white, just like the woman who’d ripped of the bandages covering my mouth.

When I didn’t answer, he switched over to Mandarin.

“English is fine,” I whispered.

“Your name?”

“Chastity Blake.”

“Where is the Shadow Caster?”

“The Shadow what?” I said, just like my mother had drilled into me. I know nothing. The man gave me a blank stare before he nodded once. A couple of other guys, one wearing a cowboy hat, and two dark men with long coats resembling Ponytail’s, which was called Tom, gear, started moving silently in the cabin. All of them had weapons in front of them. The cowboy was walking in front with a huge crossbow while the other two held guns.

A small Asian dude walked in and stayed closed to us.

“Do you know what you are?” The woman asked.

I shook my head.

Why hadn’t I sticked to my mother’s version,? She’d drilled it into my head over and over and asked
what
, the way I had that night when Leigh asked me the same question.

“Why was this woman after you?” The woman asked again.

Fear crawled into my gut and I couldn’t answer. Where was my mom? I remembered looking at her and when this woman opened the door, she was gone.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.” She gave me a soft smile.

“A couple of days ago, my hands were covered with sand…without me picking any up.” My tone was shaking, breaking up, and I sounded scared. It sounded like I didn’t make any sense. I looked at both of them, her and then the Asian dude as the woman exchanged a look with him.

The ponytail came back down the stairs and stopped in front of us. “What was the color of your sand?”

“What do you mean, what color? The color of sand. It was light brown.”

“Golden,” the woman asked again and I nodded. “She’s one of us, the Shadow Caster was trying to change her.”

“How do you know this woman?” Ponytail asked again.

“I don’t. She took me while I was on the street in Chicago. I woke up here.”

“Where is she now?”

A loud, breaking noise from upstairs made me scream.
Don’t do anything, you know nothing
, Mom’s voice yelled inside my head.

“Fox, get her out of here, now,” Ponytail yelled as one of the dark men came tumbling down the stairs and landed face down on the carpet. He didn’t get back up. The cowboy and the other guy was still upstairs. I had no choice but to follow the woman that looked like a white mouse.

“It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

At the door, I was pushed out of the way and I watched as one of the sofas crashed into the door inches from us.

“Stay here, don’t move.” The girl, who I assumed was called Fox and not rat said as she went after her team members.

I peeked around the corner and saw Mom’s black dust in the form of the whip, her favorite weapon. She was really good at fighting against all of them. Bodies wearing white flew a couple of paces away and then I heard that same buzzing sound that I had heard that day in the attic, and by the shouts and fists hammering the floor, I knew she had escaped the same way we’d came here. She was safe.

“She’s just gone,” the Asian man that crawled from under the table said, sounding a bit annoyed.

“You know who that was?” Ponytail asked.

“Vinicola? It can’t be,” Cowboy dude said with a bad Texan accent.
Vinicola, Vinique
.

“No, John. Vinicola disappeared a long time ago.”

“I remember. You don’t have to remind me of that night,” Cowboy said and then he looked back at me. “The question is, why’d she try to recruit this one?”

They all stared at me.

“Are we talking about
the
Vinicola?”

The woman slapped the Asian dude hard on his back. “Henry, there’s only one Shadow Caster who can handle a whip like that, and it’s Vinicola.”

The cowboy dude laughed.

“It’s not funny. Selene is not going to like this one bit. Knowing that the Shadow Caster who killed one of her best Light Casters is back…” Ponytail shut all of them up. “It’ll be on us, all of it.” I wanted to smile. My mother was famous and the Light Caster Ponytail was speaking of, could only be my father. By the look on these people’s faces, my mother wasn’t just famous, she was very dangerous too. Then Ponytail walked toward me with huge strides.

“Your sand?”

“Tom,” Fox said.

“Fox,” his head snapped back at hers. “Remember who’s in charge here. You had your chance.”

“I’m just saying, she’s been through enough.”

“Still we have to make sure that she wasn’t turned.” He stood right in front of me and started putting his fingers on my lips to look inside my mouth. I pulled away hard, pushing his hands away.

“Tom!”

“Your sand.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t in the right place to wield it now and Mom did warn me about what could happen if I wasn’t in the right place. “I don’t know how to make it come.”

“Your sand,” he said again.

The woman’s hand grabbed him gently by his arm. “She doesn’t know what she is yet. She can’t even wield her sand properly, just take her to Revera.”

“You know we can’t take her there if she’s a Shadow Caster.”

“She’s only a child.” She grunted back at him. “I don’t care who’s in charge. This is still my team and I say we take her back to Revera.”

The two of them stared each other down.

“You heard Fox, Tom.” The cowboy said and touched my arm softly, guiding me toward the exit.

A grunt escaped Tom’s lips and he pushed past Cowboy and me to get out first.

Outside, two huge SUV’s were parked on the grass.
What was it with these people and SUV’s?

They looked similar to the SUV Beavis and Butthead had driven that day when they’d picked me up from school.

They were big and black with tinted windows. Inside was all black and leathery and I took a deep sniff as the scent of new car still lingered in the air.

Cowboy climbed in after me and Fox opened the opposite door. I knew I was going to be smashed in the middle like a piece of ham between two slices of buttered bread.

Tom slid in behind the steering wheel and the Asian dude called shotgun, while the other two guys took the first SUV.

Tom spoke in some code over his ear and mouth pieces that were still attached to him, and the only thing that I could make out was that the SUV in front of us was going another way, and of course over and out.

I caught Fox’s eye just as we drove off, and tge rat-like woman gave me a soft smile.

Cowboy, on the other side of me, slid his hat over his eyes so that just his nose and mouth stick out.

Something told me that this was going to be a long ride.

“So,” the Asian dude turned around his seat to look at me. “You talk the talk?”

I frowned and looked at Fox for some indication to what he was talking about.

“Mandarin,” she said.

“Oh, no.” I shook my head. “I don’t speak Mandarin, or Cantonese.”

Mr. Sandman, a very old song that used to be one of Mom’s favorites played over the radio. The Asian dude smiled at Tom as he turned it slightly louder. “I like this tune.”

Fox smiled and stared out the tinted window shaking her head softly while the Asian man kept singing softly along with the chorus.

I huffed as the words of the giddy song filled the car. The reality was so far from what the woman was singing about. Mr. Sandman was indeed a fairy tale version parents told their kids to help them have sweet dreams, but in reality, there was good vs. evil, both badass at fighting with weapons and sand that appeared from deep within when they needed it.

They were Casters, and that was something I didn’t know if I was cut out for or not.

THE RIDE TO WHAT TOM WAS REFERRING TO AS THE Passageway, was far from the cabin in Montana. It was hard for me not to cry. I didn’t know if my mother was safe or not and being stuck with people I didn’t know made the situation even worse.

I was scared and thought about the past couple of weeks. My life had turned from jealous girls and abs and asses to golden sand and wielding weapons.

The only one who spoke to me was the Asian guy. His name was Henry, and he was as geeky as they get. Still he didn’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese. He didn’t even have an accent. I didn’t ask him what his age was, as I silently wished for him to just shut the hell up.

I didn’t know what he was doing on this mission, he didn’t look like the fighting type. He’d been sitting in a corner, or underneath a table, way out of danger while the others were fighting against Mom.

The curves of my lips turned up slightly every five seconds or so as he kept speaking. Henry carried on babbling like a little schoolgirl until Tom literally growled at him. He turned around after rolling his eyes and everything became silent again.

The SUV turned into a very small town. It was dark but you could still see some light around the edges of the sky. It lit up the dark streets where most of the street lights were out. The only ones that worked were right in front of places that were still open.

I turned my head and looked past Fox. A port which still operated had about ten or twelve boats bobbing in the water and a lighthouse shone in the background. The wind blew against the car as they came to a halt at the stop sign.

I didn’t see a beach, just pebbles and rocks where the water crashed against land.

The SUV drove slowly down the street again, past a convenience store and a pharmacy. A hardware store and a small diner stood on the other side of the street.

Tom kept on driving the speed limit as I looked through tinted windows, this time, out of Cowboy’s window, as he was still sleeping. The soft snores that he let out told me that much.

By the second stop sign, Tom turned left and the road carried on for another couple of miles. When they finally came to a halt and Tom switched the engine off, I could see the outline of what looked like another lighthouse. This one was badly in need of some TLC.