Inescapable (Eternelles: The Beginning, Book 1) (9 page)

Within twenty-four hours of a trauma, here was another curse she lived with presenting itself—a curse that didn’t bother her too often, but when it did, left her drained. Not as much as when she caught fire and needed sustenance to bring the life back, but her body gave in to a week-long lethargy unless her painting foiled the process. If she was able to channel the visions in her work…

Her work! The painting…

“Mom?” she murmured into Adri’s neck.

Adri was caressing her curls and massaging her scalp now. It felt so, so good.

“
Oui
,
mon coeur.
What is it?”

Hating to stop the tender ministrations, Sera lifted her head and turned it toward the easel. “Look,” she said meekly, too weak to raise a hand and point a finger at it.

Adri’s gaze followed hers and a gasp escaped her lips.

“
Dieu du ciel!
”

It was far different from anything she’d ever painted before. In fact, it seemed like an entirely different hand had created it.

Adri held her tighter as they stared, transfixed. A frisson of foreboding slid down her spine, like a half-dozen ice cubes dropped with haste inside her stretchy shirt. From the way her mother stiffened, she’d felt it, too.

Two figures waddled in a blood-red ocean that reached to waist level. In the distance, people fell from a precipice into the unknown and a fire tore through the land and the mirror surface of the water. A bloodied sword in the hands of one of the women separated the two females who advanced, center stage, their faces flat gold and waxy, as though in trance.

Tears of blood fell from both their eyes, but from their detached expressions, it was as though they weren’t realizing the desperation and destruction around them.

One had doll-blue irises, the other glowing crimson—shades that stood out from the rest.

But the most terrifying part for Sera and Adri alike lay in the likenesses, because both of those faces that looked back at them from the square of canvas were their own.

*

Adri dislodged the soft, curvy body from her arms and stood. She took one step toward the easel, then stopped.

“What in heaven’s name is this?”

“I...I don’t know.”

She whirled to face her daughter, who had a lot to explain. What was she doing painting such disturbing pictures and inserting their likeness in there? She’d gone ahead with the whole crazy hobby of painting when Sera took a course in
Venice and claimed art was what she wanted to do. She’d humored the girl—after all, being able to paint counted for some finishing accomplishment, especially given how Sera could not hold a note to save her life or hit a piano key without turning anyone around her suicidal.

But the girl did have outstanding talent for bringing a canvas to life. So she’d agreed to let Sera pursue pastoral landscapes and bucolic Impressionism that would literally look like rainbows of soft color. Later, she didn’t bat an eyelid when her daughter showed a growing interest in the evocative Surrealist style, back when the artistic movement was still in its infancy in popular culture.

Not this kind of sickening renditions of loss and chaos that would make Renaissance painters look like amateurs at portraying suffering. The heavy brushstrokes also gave the work a rough and unsophisticated appearance that betrayed nothing of Sera’s usual style.

Her jaw trembled when she opened her mouth. “How can you
not know
?”

Sera lowered her eyes. That was when the answer not spoken flitted into her mind.

Visions.

Adri braced her shoulders. “So now you have Second Sight?”

Her daughter didn’t look up, meaning she had something, or more, to hide.

Anger hissed and rolled in an ebbing tide inside her. Before she could realize what she was doing, she moved to Sera’s side and clasped the girl’s upper arm. Bringing her to her feet like a limp rag doll, she then tugged the body with the reluctant legs to the canvas and shoved her in front of it.

“I bet this isn’t the first time.”

Sera still refused to meet her gaze. She reached out and clasped the chin, forced the girl to turn and look up. In the tears that coursed down the alabaster cheeks, she found the confession.

How could she have done this? How could she have kept it all a secret? Didn’t Sera know what could be at stake here? The very nature of her arrival into this world made her vulnerable, then look what Harcourt had done to her. But Second Sight? Only a select few could boast that talent, something they kept hidden as revealing that could make them prime targets for those bent on power.

Like the Vampyre Federation, who’d licensed one of their overlords to attack Sera that very evening.

As the realization and the horror slashed through her, Adri gasped. How could she? Sera had put her life, and that of everyone around her, in danger by keeping her in the dark. Unbidden, her hand rose and slapped the tear-stained cheek.

Sera clasped a palm to her face, her big eyes wide with surprise and disbelief. Adri couldn’t believe what she’d done, either. Oh yes, she had swatted that behind more times than she could count when the girl was growing up, but she’d never hit her. Not out of any strong emotion, and Lord knew Sera had the power to bring up the biggest upheavals into her feelings.

Today, Sera had gone too far. She’d just proved Adri couldn’t trust her. How did anyone live with that kind of disturbing certitude?

“Why?” her daughter asked on a cracked whisper.

And she had the guts to ask that? Adri shook her head and pressed her closed fists against her hips. “Do I really need to spell it out?”

The chastising seemed to hit the young woman stronger than the slap. She flinched as shadows flitted through her eyes. “It’s because of the visions.”

She nodded. “Were you ever planning to tell me?”

Sera lowered her head and laid a supporting hand on the easel frame, as if too weak to stand on her own. Adri fought with herself to stand her ground and not rush to her aid.

“Or would I have discovered about them once I figured out why the vampyres attempted to kidnap you last night?”

The head with the flame-red hair shot up. “You think they know?”

“
Putain de merde, Séraphine!
Of course, they know. Why else would they come get you? No one in the world at large knows where Second Sight possessors thrive, and you know why?” She paused to glare at her wayward child.

Sera shuffled from one foot to the other, removing her hand from her source of support, and hugged herself, as if that would keep the reality at bay. “Because they’ve been shepherded away?”

As simple as that? No way. “Because we here at Fleur de Lys know who they are, and have taken every pain to protect them from prying sup megalomaniacs.”

She shook her head and turned to face a window. The sight of all that red on the canvas made her sick. They had more pressing matters to attend to now; the “vision” and whatever it conveyed would have to wait. Like the hundred other things happening right now and which no one understood, least of all, her. The not-knowing drove her crazy, put her on edge. An uneasy prickle had started to dance down her spine the minute she’d left the castle to come see Sera. Could that have been because her daughter was in the throes of a Sight occurrence back then?

The fight suddenly died out of her as she faced the mire they were getting sucked in. “You should’ve told me.”

Sera snapped from her subdued state and went into attack mode. “So now it’s all my fault, right? How like you to sling the blame onto everyone but yourself.”

Bon sang
, not another argument. She was tired of them. There were more important concerns vying for her attention right now. The first of them being to get Sera to safety.

She nodded at the door. “Back to the castle. Now.”

Sera crossed her arms again in front of her chest and lifted her chin. Color was returning to her face. “And if I refuse?”

Adri narrowed her gaze. She didn’t have the patience for that. “Then I’ll break your kneecaps myself and drag you back if I have to.”

Her daughter glared in mulish rebellion. She held the furious gaze. “Don’t push me, Sera. Not now. You know this place is not safe. Until we’ve worked in all the protection possible, you are not to set foot here again, you hear me?”

“Of course, it’s always
your
word and what
you
want. Can’t you think of others for a change?”

Sometimes, she wondered why she’d ever loved motherhood. Days like this were just not worth the pain.

“Like you’ve been thinking of only yourself so far?”

Blue-grey eyes flared with fire. “Fine,” Sera bit out.

The girl brushed past her and grabbed her coat on the way to the door. With her a few steps ahead, Adri stepped out of the cottage and closed the door on the image of that unsettling painting. Will trotted between them, soft whines coming from deep within his throat as he repeatedly bumped his nose against Sera’s thigh.

Will. She’d forgotten about him. Catching sight of Old Jim, the stooped, centuries-old fae who brought gardens to life like no magical creature ever could, she called out to him.

“Can you take the dog for a few days—”

“You’re even taking Will from me? How could you?”

“The familiars are acting up at the castle. He wouldn’t be safe there.”

“It’s all your fault,” Sera screamed as she threw herself onto the dog and buried her face in his neck.

Adri sighed. “Yes, it’s always my fault, isn’t it?” she said on a defeated whisper.

Sera murmured something in Will’s ear, then she stood and turned her back on them before stomping toward the castle. The dog whimpered, until Old Jim petted him on the head.

The craggy face turned to her with a gentle smile. “Don’t let her get to you. Children always act up.”

She gave him a weary smile. “Don’t I know that. Mark my words, she’s thinking of a way to make me pay as we speak.”

“She’s a good girl, at heart.”

Adri nodded. Too bad her daughter couldn’t be a good girl on the surface, too. At least with her. Perhaps it was her fault for not treating her daughter more as the adult that she was. Was she too hard on Sera? She was, after all, a grown woman who’d been through Hell and back in her lifetime.

No.
After what had happened, and Sera failing to confide in her, she had no alternative. Her mother’s heart brooked no argument.

After rubbing Will’s head in goodbye, she trudged up the path toward the castle, Sera firmly in her sights. She had to make sure the girl was inside and in the lower level as soon as possible. After that, she had a lot of work to do to protect the latest secret about Séraphine Dionysios.

The air positively crackled with electricity the closer she got to the castle. Restless energy surged into her muscles, hurting like the trickling flow of lactic acid build-up in the body after a frenetic workout.

Anxiety materialized to wrap itself around her heart and squeeze. Something not right waited at the house. What could it be? There wasn’t a place on earth more protected than that residence.

Sera nipped into the interior from an opened French window. Adri sighed. Of course her daughter would go in from the north library and sitting rooms. The corner farthest from their living quarters, from where she could hope to dodge her mother’s vigilance by getting lost in the maze of corridors.

Not on my life, you don’t, you cunning rascal.
She forged into the north wing, passing from one room to the other in their Versailles-style enfilade structure. Catching sight of the bright red hair as Sera took a turn left, she accelerated her step, only to stop dead in her tracks at the sight that greeted her.

Energy bristled around her, the same electricity that had prickled her skin outside. No wonder, given who was here.

“Grandpa!” Sera squealed and jumped to wrap her arms around the neck of the tall, huge man who had stood to greet her. The girl nearly disappeared into his barrel-chest once inside his embrace.

As he released her, Sera turned for a fraction of a second to throw Adri a sly look. Oh yes, her daughter would make her pay. Starting with the over-enthusiastic welcome to the man she’d never wanted to see again.

Zeus. Mighty god of Olympus. The one who had thrown her out on her arse two thousand and eight hundred years earlier.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He had the gall to chuckle. “I should’ve expected that.”

Adri snorted. Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she cocked her right hip and narrowed her gaze onto him. “What are you doing here?”

He wrapped an arm around Sera’s shoulders and pulled her to him. The girl all but burrowed into his side.

“Can’t a man come see his family when he misses them?”

“You are not a man.”
And we stopped being family the day you repudiated me.

“Gosh, Mom. Do you have to be such a bitch?”

“Watch your tongue, young lady,” Zeus said softly.

The girl had the decency to look chastised. No wonder, given how she idolized the creature she considered her grandfather, and hero-worshipped her uncle. Bloody damn, she shouldn’t think of him. If he popped in here, they’d be in even more of an awkward relationship mess.

As if summoned by the devil himself, Ares materialized in the sitting room.

Adri closed her eyes.
Oh, great.
Just what she didn’t need. These two men couldn’t be in the same room without the Apocalypse breaking out.

She opened her eyes and turned toward her brother. “Now, what are
you
doing here?”

He shrugged. The massive shoulders rolled under the thin silk of his shirt that lay opened to the middle of his smooth, muscled torso.

Sera giggled as she released Zeus and went to embrace Ares. “Where are you coming from? The eighties?”

“
Ibiza.”

“Eighties in
Ibiza? Is that a new clubbing trend or something?”

He laughed. “I’ll take you next time.”

“Over my dead body!”

Zeus rolled his eyes. “Adrasteia, you have to let the girl live a little. If Ares says he’ll take her, he’ll be there to keep an eye on her.”

Something definitely had to be amiss, because Zeus recommending Ares for a task—any task—spelt “fishy.” And not at all something she had the strength or the patience to deal with right then. She couldn’t tell them the truth about Sera.

The whole lurid situation engulfed her and she stopped fighting the irritation. The anger and fear for her daughter’s safety got the better of her, and she crashed inside.

“Trust him to do his job?” she threw out. “Like he’s been doing these past few weeks? Seems to me I heard rumbles of the Hamas about to sign a peace treaty with the Israeli government, so much the god of war has been otherwise occupied lately.”

Ares narrowed his eyes and took a step forward. “Low blow, sis.”

“Deal with it.”

He engaged her in a battle of wills while they both stood there and glared at each other.

“Father, have you heard? Adri has fallen in love.” He paused. “With a mere, insignificant mortal.”

She gasped. “How dare you—”

“Is that true?” Zeus asked.

“No, it’s—”

“His name is Des.”

Adri drew to full height and stared her brother down. How dare he let her secret out like that? And she wasn’t in love with Des!

“
Fae skata kai psofa rae malaka
,” she threw out.
Eat shit and die, you wanker.
Not poetic or grown up at all, but when riled up, especially by Ares, she reverted to the lowest of the low from her Greek upbringing.

“
Ante gamisou
,” he said on a snort.

Go fuck yourself
? He couldn’t do better?
Up yours
, she wanted to sling back, but settled for
go to hell
. “
Ai sto diaolo
.”

“Enough!”

The loud bellow made the crystal chandeliers rattle. Rebuked, both Adri and Ares lowered their gazes. Sera concealed her laughter behind a snort.

“We have more critical matters to attend to,” Zeus stated. “Ares informed me of what happened to you two. Are you okay?”

She whipped her head up to glower at her brother. How dare he bring
him
in this?

A muscle ticked in his cheek, and he inclined his head softly. “Something bigger than all of us is at play here, Adri. We need all the help we can get.”

Yes, but not
his
. How to say that without sounding like a petulant child? “Fine,” she bit out.

“How are you two doing?” Zeus asked.

She shrugged. “Good. We’ve managed for one hundred and twenty-four years, you know?”

She couldn’t resist throwing the barb. Where had he been all her life, when she had needed him the most? And since she’d had Sera, other than brief visits to see her over the years, enough to convince the impressionable girl the sun shone out of his arse, he’d been totally missing in their existence.

And today he wanted to act all concerned and like he cared?

“Adri,” Ares said on a sigh.

True, though—she had to think of her daughter here. So she took a deep breath. “We might as well all sit down. Shall I ring for tea?”

Zeus laughed as he folded his hulking body into a Louis XV sofa. “If your cook has any of those lemon scones in your kitchen, I wouldn’t say no.”

She rang for tea. In strained silence—at least what felt like strained silence to her, as Sera babbled a thousand words a minute—they took their tea and settled back into their seats.

“So Ares told you?” she asked.

The big man nodded. “Vampyres were involved?”

“And soul stealers.”

“Any idea why they came after her?”

She swallowed. “No.”

“I’ll look into it. Hecate might know something.”

“That egocentric bitch? She wouldn’t know her arse from her backside!”

Sera giggled. “Sheesh, Mom. You on a roll or what today?”

Adri jumped to her feet. She’d had enough of the chiding and the tension and the implications that she didn’t know squat of what she was doing. Yes, she had no clue, but she didn’t need to have that thrown into her face at every turn.

“I expect you’ll be staying?” she asked Zeus.

“If you’ve got a little space for me.”

Sera plopped herself into his lap and hugged his neck. “Of course we’ll always have a little space for you.”

Adri snorted. The whole chummy affection made her sick. The god was the biggest traitor to have ever walked this earth; why couldn’t anyone recognize that?

“You’ll never fit into a ‘little space’,” she said on a sigh as she made inverted commas with her hands around the words. He had to be at least seven feet tall and weigh more than four hundred pounds of solid muscle, despite his age and white hair and beard. “I’ll have them ready a room for you.”

She’d started toward the door when he called her.

“What?” She whirled and stared at him.

“There’s another reason why I came today.”

She crossed her arms. “Other than to make my life hell?”

“Come on, Adrasteia.”

She sighed, and released her arms. “Fine. What is it?”

“Your father is coming here soon.”

At that revelation, she threw her hands up. Just what she needed. Vampyres, Hecate, and now Dionysos. No wonder the third component of that unholy trinity would make his appearance in the picture.

“Perfect,” she bit out. “One more complication I don’t need.”

On that, she turned and exited the room. Let Sera do what she pleased. As long as she was on castle grounds, in Shadow Bridge—temporarily excluding her cottage—and with Zeus, she’d be safe.

On her part, Adri still had a cottage to spell-cast, runes to place, and sigils to draw to ensure her daughter would finally—if ever—be safe.

*****

The quiet in the garden soothed her. Rain pelted the windows and glass panes of the roof in a soothing lullaby that called to her blood.

Adri pressed her forehead against a closed window and shut her eyes. She could hear his call, the compulsion woven into the water, drawing her in. The string music of 800BC pealed in her head, growing stronger the more rain skittered down the glass in sheets.

How she hated this need to give in to the call of water, to draw her power from it. As much as she loathed her capacity to pull sustenance from a crowd, she hated the other side of her even more. Water lay everywhere; there was no hiding from it. And with Dionysos around, the enticement of the seductive energy thrummed even stronger.

What was he doing around here? Shadow Bridge couldn’t be closed to anyone, otherwise she would’ve blocked him from entering the town. Like she’d stopped him from touching her life. Not that he’d cared about her. She huffed. He’d been ready to accept her in sacrifice to his magnificence, the improbable child a human maenad had borne him. She’d barely been minutes old when Zeus had saved her from that sacrificial altar.

Zeus. Between her breasts, the long, smooth water stone pendant hummed with energy. She clasped the unique jewel in her hand, her mind automatically returning to the moment when she had received that gift.

In a sun-drenched garden, she’d been a little girl barely two feet tall. Everything had towered over her—the Greek columns, the looming marble pots and ceramic vases. Even the flowers had been bigger than her head, brighter than anything she had ever seen. Soft, diffuse light radiated from everything, something she would learn was a feature of Olympus. She remembered hearing heavy footsteps, and turning to see a big, oh so big, man with tanned skin and long white hair approaching her. He had smiled, and opened his arms while he went down on his knees. She had run into that embrace, giggles pouring out of her mouth like the gurgles of the small waterfall next to them.

A part of her had known she owed her life to him, because he had saved her. Brought her here into this paradise and given her a chance to exist. She’d snuggled into his embrace at realizing this, conveying her gratitude with a hug because she didn’t even know how to speak properly yet. Smells of sunshine and pure air had filled her nose, along with that faint, unique scent that clung to him, that she’d later learn was ozone and sulphur from his lightning bolts.

When he’d released her, he’d sat her on his knee. From his pocket, he’d pulled a long, delicate chain with a smooth, crystal-clear pendant in the form of a teardrop dangling from it. He’d dipped the jewel into the water, and its color turned to deep blue. Then he’d placed the chain around her neck, telling her she could always count on that stone to protect her, as long as it remained blue.

Adri tightened her hold on the pendant, then let it drop as if singed. She hadn’t known who he was back then. Simply her savior, the man she started to see as her father, who brought her up. Years later, she would learn he was Zeus, mighty and supreme ruler of
Olympus.

And not at all her father.

The tang of ozone burst through her nostrils at the same time she heard the zing of a bolt of lightning.

His presence filled the room, reducing the airy conservatory to the size of a sardine tin.

She tucked the pendant under her blouse. He shouldn’t see her wearing it. He shouldn’t even know she still held on to that gift as if her life depended on it. Why hadn’t she thrown it away, she’d always wondered in so many years? A part of her had held on to her very first memory, and she’d never had the heart to obliterate that part of their relationship from her memory. No one knew that, though. She’d stowed the chain into a spell-cast corner of her refuge in the castle’s gardens when it wasn’t on her. Throughout her life, the water stone had never been far from her.

“Beautiful place you have here,” he said.

The structure was a replica of Marie Antoinette’s
Petit Palais
at Versailles. She’d loved that lavish edifice, having always been on the guest list of the queen’s private parties held there. She’d told herself she would get such a place, too, one day, and the opportunity arose when she returned to Shadow Bridge post one of her jaunts to Europe. After putting the horrors of the French Revolution behind her, her
petit palais
became her sanctuary, decorated inside like the apartments and boudoirs she had occupied throughout the ages. Since she’d moved here permanently with Sera following the tragedy with William, she’d made it a point to enjoy this space as often as possible.

Now even her safe haven had been breached, with him here. Too bad no sigil existed to keep Olympian gods at bay.

“You wouldn’t know, would you, having never visited and all that in the past century,” she threw out.

He sighed. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you, daughter?”

“I’m not your daughter. I think you claimed that loud and clear that day, am I right?”

Another reason why she hated meeting with him—he always brought the topic back to that fateful episode, the one thing she wanted to forget above anything else.

He closed the distance between them and placed a hand on her cheek. She flinched from his touch.

“How much longer will you make me grovel? I said countless times I was sorry.”