Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (37 page)

“That wasn’t exactly a
yes.”

“No,” Mr. Dayton
agreed, “it wasn’t.”

Ross sighed. “Liza, I’m
about to put my phone away, but not without you agreeing with me
that this is the best course.”

Liza nodded. “Aradia?
What about you, honey. I think your decision’s the only one any of
us should really want on this matter.”

She’d been afraid of
that. She knew the human world couldn’t handle a creature like
Dereck. Yet, if she threw him to the hidden world, anything could
happen. She hated her options.

“Dereck is hidden,” she
finally said. “He chose that life, and he chose to violate hidden
laws. He did violate hidden laws, right?”

Mr. Dayton
nodded.

“Alright, then. I say
hidden court.”

“I will request a
tribunal,” Mr. Dayton said.

“I’ll let Kaiser know
his dad’s killer is getting justice,” Aradia said. Her father
nodded. He was proud of her. Even now, she firmly and clearly
understood that Dereck deserved justice, not vengeance.

It was late by the time
they’d finished their preparations. Dereck was bound and sedated.
Mr. Dayton had a veritable pharmacy in his basement. The hidden
tribunal had been arranged, and as Aradia understood,
representatives from all the hidden races with substantial
populations in the area would be present for it.

“It will soon be dawn,”
Mr. Dayton declared. “I sense it’s approach, and while I need not
necessarily sleep the day, on this one I would prefer to do
so.”

Ross yawned. “Yeah, I
think we’re all on a vampire schedule.”

“Before you go, though,
there is one final matter I wish to discuss. Aradia, there is
something you must know regarding your lineage. Your
heritage.”

“Is being a witch of
the hidden race a bad thing?” Aradia asked.

“No,” said Mr. Dayton,
“quite the contrary, it is an amazing thing. The problem is,
Aradia, no one has seen a hidden witch in over three hundred years.
It is common knowledge, apparently false knowledge, that all the
witches were eliminated.”

“Eliminated?” Aradia
repeated. “What do you mean?”

“He means genocide,”
Ross said, recognizing a euphemism when he heard one.

“You know of the Salem
witch trials. The victims of the trials were human, every one. The
incident coincided, though, with a not-unrelated mass hysteria in
the hidden world. The other hidden races at the time believed that
the witches had betrayed us, and so they embarked upon the most
shameful crusade the hidden world has seen. They hunted down and
killed every last witch.”

“Every...” Aradia
started in disbelief.

“Or so they thought,”
Mr. Dayton concluded, looking directly at Aradia. All eyes in the
room, in fact, rested on Aradia.

She shook her head and
said, “No, surely not everyone. I mean, not everyone but me. They
couldn’t. The Nazis tried this in World War II and they
failed.”

“I mean no disrespect
to the human race,” Mr. Dayton said, nodding toward the humans in
the room, “but we of the hidden race, when we decide to do
something, we do it very efficiently.”

He emphasized the word
‘very’ in a deep tone to indicate to Aradia how serious he was.
Aradia did not want to believe it. Yet, Mr. Dayton wasn’t leaving
much room for ambiguity.

“But if what you say is
true,” Aradia sputtered, “then wouldn't that make me...”

“Yes, Aradia. Not only
are you a witch, but you are also the last of your kind. You,
Aradia, are the last witch.”

Chapter
Thirty

Aradia sat by herself
at a Starbucks, nursing her extra-whip gingerbread latte. Normally
she’d hang at the SilverMoon, but after the recent events, she
needed a little time to herself.

She was thus quite
disappointed when Tristan, of all people, slid into the chair
opposite her.

“Tristan,” she said, “I
don’t mean to be rude, but I really don’t want to deal with you
right now. Say whatever you have to say, and please go.”

“Okay,” he replied,
surprising her. “I just wanted to tell you that Dereck wasn’t the
lone wolf you and your little team make him out to be. At least,
not by choice.”

She raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean? How do you know that?”

“I did some digging,”
he replied. “He had a pack, once, a pretty good sized one. He even
had a wife. They were systematically wiped out, Aradia, one by one,
real genocide style. Dereck was the only survivor.”

“Oh, God. Who was
responsible?”

Tristan shook his head.
“That’s all I got. I do know he blamed vampires, though. I don’t
know if he was right to do so. This all happened a while back, and
you know our kind doesn’t exactly keep records of this sort of
thing. Apparently he was always kind of on the crazy side. Even in
the pack, he was something of a sociopath. I guess when they were
wiped out, it pushed him over the edge.”

“I guess that explains
some of his rage.”

Tristan
nodded.

“When did this
happen?”

“Over the course of
several weeks, a little over six months ago.”

“Tristan, why are you
telling me this?”

“Why are you so
suspicious of my motives?”

“You don’t do anything
for nothing. You don’t do anything good for nothing, at least. What
do you expect in return?”

“Nothing. Just take the
information as a gift. Maybe it can make up for some of the torture
through which I’ve put you and your friends.”

Aradia replied, “Gasp,
Tristan, was that an apology?”

“Not at all,” he said,
grabbing the back of his chair and rising. “Just a
gift.”

Aradia and Roy strode
through Salem Woods. Unlike the last few times she’d been there,
this time they stayed on a path and enjoyed the scenery.

“What was it like for
you?” Aradia asked regarding being called to speak before the
hidden tribunal.

“Weird,” Roy said.
“They didn’t tell me anything or let me stay after they were done
questioning me. There were four of them on the panel. They didn’t
introduce themselves, but I could tell they were a werewolf, a
vampire, a fae, and a shapeshifter.”

“Sense of smell?”
Aradia asked playfully.

“I’m telling you, it’s
really good,” he replied, smiling. “What about you?”

“Kind of just a normal
human sense of smell. Maybe even a little worse than average,
actually. I tend to go heavy on perfume.”

Roy burst out laughing.
“Yeah, I’d noticed on the perfume thing.”

She punched his arm
playfully. “Jerk.”

He smiled again, and
said, “You know what I meant, though. What about the
tribunal?”

“They told me a little
more than you, but not much. I guess they take the whole ‘hidden’
thing pretty seriously. They said that the decision was that Dereck
would be punished for his crimes, and that because his greatest
offense was against vampires, the vampire leader would have final
say on his fate. Some guy called the Sovereign.”

“Against
vampires
?” Roy
bellowed. “He killed two werewolves, nearly killed a third, and
assaulted a witch. How did they figure?”

“His goal was to frame
a vampire for an ‘unapproved race-based event,’” she quoted with
her fingers in the air. “Apparently they thought that was the worst
part of it all. Beyond that I don’t know.”

“Unbelievable,” Roy
muttered.

“Yeah,” Aradia said.
“You know, I still think Mr. Dayton was right. Human courts and
prisons just aren’t fit for a guy like Dereck. But a
fter
seeing them take him away for what was basically a secret tribunal,
then almost totally shutting me out… I don’t know. It kind of makes
me question whether I should put complete faith in any system of
justice.”

“You probably
shouldn’t,” Roy replied.

“I just hope Kaiser and
all the other relatives of the victims can find some
peace.”

“What’s happening with
Kaiser, anyway?” Roy asked.

“He’s heading back to
New York,” Aradia replied. “He’s moving back in with his mom.
Apparently she really regretted kicking him out. Has him all
enrolled in a nice private school and everything.”

“I guess there’s some
silver lining to all this,” Roy replied.

“Yeah,” Aradia agreed.
“Plus, we’re all friendly again, right? More silver
lining!”

“Nothing like combating
a sociopath maniac to bring people closer,” Roy joked.

“Not just us,” Aradia
replied. “I’ve seen how you and Dax have been interacting recently.
If I didn’t know better, I might even call you guys
friends.”

“Good thing you know
better,” Roy replied gruffly. Aradia just grinned.

“You know,” Roy said,
“since you bring up Dax…”

“Yes?” she
asked.

“If you did want to
date him… well, you could do worse.”

“Why, Roy!” she
exclaimed. “Did you just give me your blessing to date a
vampire?”

“I wouldn’t go that
far,” he replied. “And he still lied to you for a long time. I
can’t forgive that. But he showed his true colors in there with
Dereck.”

“So did you,” she said.
“Besides, unless Dereck decapitated him, he wasn’t really at much
risk.”

“Rai, Dereck is a
werewolf.”

She didn’t see what he
was getting at, so he continued. “The bite of a wolf form werewolf
is toxic to a vampire. It can really mess them up, even kill
them.”

“Oh my God,” she
said.

“And since he can
basically live forever, more or less… he risked a lot facing Dereck
like that. He earned some points in my book. I thought you should
know. That’s all I’m saying.”

She nodded. “Well I
really appreciate that, Roy. Now, about your love life! There is a
girl I sit next to in seventh period World Studies who I think
would be perfect for you.”

“Yeah? Who’s
that?”

“Lisa
Renier.”

He growled softly.
“Lisa Renier. You think she’s into me? I wouldn’t mind studying her
world.”

She punched him again.
“You dog!”

“It’s difficult,” Ross admitted to
Aradia over coffee. Well, he was drinking coffee. She was drinking
hot cocoa with extra marshmallows. “Pretending I don’t know what
happened to Dereck. The police are still looking for him. They’re
investing time and money in a search which I know will bear no
fruit.”

“I know,” Aradia replied. “The hiddens
at school got the memo, but the humans are still talk talk talking
about Dereck Caradoc, the Vampire Murderer, and when he’ll strike
again.”

“I was a little miffed the tribunal
didn’t even want to question me.”

Aradia smiled. “You didn’t miss
much.”

“This whole situation is like one of
those damned police dramas I hate,” Ross said. “The worst part is
not knowing how Dereck’s story ended.”

“Yeah. We don’t know much on his
punishment. But I do think I’ve mostly put the whole string of
events together leading up to it,” Aradia said.

“Oh?”

“Dereck became a lone wolf, but it
wasn’t always that way. He’d had a family, a pack, one which was
taken from him.”

“Taken from him?”

“Wiped out. He thought it was done by
vampires.”

“Ahhh,” Ross said.

“I think there’s more than that. You
showed me some files, and Kaiser showed me some ledgers. I don’t
think this was his plan from the start. The Vampire Murders, I
mean. I think originally he’d been trying to swindle Mr.
Stanley.”

“Invest to get a stake in the business,
watch it fail, sell the property.”

“Yeah. He never thought the business
could succeed. He was basically just buying out a big chunk of the
property at a discount price. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d
engaged in a sketchy financial investment.”

“That was more or less why the police
ruled him out as a suspect,” Ross said. “Because he had nothing to
gain by Stanley’s death. He actually lost a lot, monetarily.”

“I think his plan changed. I think even
when he had a family, he was still a sketchball and borderline
criminal. I think this was his way of financing his lifestyle.”

“The financial thing,” Ross replied, “it
just doesn’t sound very werewolfy.”

“Cash goes a long way, Dad. Werewolves
like nice things just as much as humans do. Money could get those
things for him and his family.”

“And help his pack avoid trouble with
authorities,” Ross added.

“Sure. But then his pack was murdered.
He didn’t need the money anymore.”

“You know, this is making sense,” Ross
replied. “One of our researchers issued me a report saying that the
business partner, Dereck, disappeared for a few weeks, just about
six months ago.”

“That’s right when it happened,” Aradia
replied.

“Then he came back…” Ross said, putting
the pieces together.

“He came back with a new plan,” Aradia
supplied. “One that had nothing to do with earning a living.”