AN: There are a host of reasons why it has taken me so long to update and I can only apologise for keeping you all waiting for over a year, your patience is truly amazing and I am really grateful for it. I promise such a lengthy delay between chapters will not happen again, not if I can help it.
Though I will admit that I've been sitting on the first half of this chapter since early January when I was alerted to the fact the prequel to this story, 'Coming Home', had been copied in it's entirety and reposted on Wattpad without my knowledge or consent by someone claiming to have written it themselves, something that obviously irritated and shocked me to no end. This being the sequel to 'Coming Home', I'm sure you can all understand why I was hesitant at first to continue this story. Since then I've reported the so-called 'Author' who copied my story and had 'Coming Home' removed from their profile page. Anyway, this little blip isn't going to interfere with me finishing 'Heart Of The Huntress' any longer, and with that said my friends, please enjoy the latest update :)
Chapter Three.
Kolmården Forest, Sweden.
Fifteen hours ago.
Searching through the dead male's pockets, Bella Swan came across the last thing she'd expected to find. Dark mahogany brows furrowed into a puzzled frown as she pulled the scrap of paper free from the deceased Fae's tattered jeans and settled back into an easy crouch next to the body. The raw wind howled morosely in her ears, whipping the long thick fall of her dark hair around her strong shoulders as she studied the series of etchings scrawled across the page with tumultuous eyes, turned dark purple, the colour of bruised plums, with hunger and stress. The paper had been folded in half twice, precisely, so that the edges all met up evenly to form a perfect square.
Her eyes darkened tiredly as she slowly scanned the unfolded page. She took a deep breath, exhaling sharply. In the cold, crisp air, her breath emerged from her full lips in a thick wispy vapour. The paper was filled from corner to corner, in neat parallel rows spaced quarter of a centimetre apart, with text written in a foreign language. She closed her eyes, her long dark lashes creating shadows on her delicate cheekbones as her attention was seized abruptly by the agonising longing in her heart and the churning emptiness in the pit of her stomach. The diamond-hard tendons in her slender neck stood out starkly, straining against her pearl-white skin, as her pale mouth twisted into a pained grimace. She struggled to bite back the primal roar of yearning building up from the very core of her being, her teeth clenching so tightly a persistent tic formed in her porcelain cheeks, even so, a strangled noise erupted from her lips, like that of a wounded animal caught in a trap. Growling deep in her throat, she comforted herself with the fact she would flying home in two hours time, at midnight. She would have her beloved Rosalie back in her arms by 9am tomorrow at the latest and she would be reunited with Ashley and Lucas after they finished school for the day.
~Been Away From My Female And My Young Too Long. It Is Unnatural.~Instinct whispered defiantly in her ear.
She shook her head briskly, silently reminding herself that she had a job to do, and if a job was worth doing, it was worth doing well. Blinking open her heavy eyelids, she steeled herself, locking her emotions away, and focused on the foreign marks scrawled across the paper in her hand. She had a large knowledge base, having picked up fourteen different languages over the years including Latin, the mother tongue of her people, Old Norse and Ancient Greek along with some Egyptian and even a little Elvish. She absentmindedly admired the elegant handwriting as her eyes roamed intently across the unlined paper, running through every language she knew in turn as she tried to translate the text. With her preternaturally heightened eyesight, she deducted from the fine flowing lines, far smoother than anything a ball-point could produce, that they had been sketched with a fountain pen in deeply saturated black ink.
Long moments passed, finally, her upper lip curled into a resounding snarl, terrifying enough to frighten an Alpha Minotaur into submission. Unsure whether or not the markings made up some sort of encrypted message or if the note was written in a language unknown to her, Bella carefully folded the paper in half twice, the way it had been folded when she found it and slipped the square into the back pocket of her closely tailored black silk slacks with silver pinstripes. She would have to worry about that later, for now she was determined to be finished with her search.
Her sleek and alluring form still tucked into a crouch, Bella's bruised purple eyes trailed along the prone cadaver beside her. Briefly she wondered when the sight of dead bodies had stopped overwhelming her with waves of nausea. Expressionless, she examined the corpse with an intense hawk-gaze. The head was missing, leaving a clear puddle of dense ice-cold venom pooling around the severed bull neck and broad shoulders, running outwards along and across the narrow crevices between the wooden floorboards. Even so, the body, with a massive chest and muscular arms clad in a tight long-sleeved white T-shirt, was at least six and a half feet tall. In life, he had obviously been a powerful male.
Remaining hunkered down over the body, Bella draped her pale, graceful hands over her lean thighs. Tilting her head back on her shoulders, she surveyed the ruined structure rising up around her.
It had suffered a lot of damage, the simple rustic log cabin that the deceased had once called home. She expertly filed away the details as they came to her. The roof was gone, appearing as though it had been blasted away with severe force leaving behind splinters and wood shavings scattered across the floor. Through the gaping space in the roof, the luminous full moon beat down brilliant shafts of lunar light into the interior of the lodge, while also drenching the canvas of snow and barren trees outside in silvery light, and allowing the icy wind to pour into the heavily damaged building. There were no partitions in the cabin, no kitchenette or bathroom and no generator or wires to conduct electric, it was a single open room lacking every necessity a human would require. The dead male had built the cabin himself, that much was obvious to her, and he'd probably used the small nameless lake she had passed en route to the scene to bathe.
Bella's nostrils flared slightly as she curiously scented the bitter Wintry air. The body's natural odour of vibrant pine needles and ripe apples was muted but the putrid stench of death had yet to envelop the corpse. Two cylindrical, oak beams stood on opposite sides of the cabin, ceiling-supporters deeply split and cracked, as if an inexperienced lumberjack had been hacking away at them with an axe, never hitting the same spot twice. Inhaling slowly, she drew the cold air into her lungs, detecting the water and sensing the pressure starting to gather in the atmosphere. In Sweden's particularly chilly temperatures, the rainwater would freeze and fall to the earth as snow in the next two days or so. She could smell the musk of a pack of wolves in hot pursuit of a wily moose, and feel the subsonic vibrations of their paws and hooves crunching snow as they hit the ground, a dozen miles to the West but she didn't smell the torrid spice of any explosives, man or supernatural made, lingering in the interior of the cabin. So what had blasted the roof free from it's firm foundations?.
Freely flowing into the lodge, the pitilessly glacial wind washed over the contours of her agelessly beautiful face and teased the ends of her glossy mahogany hair as she slowly swivelled her head, analytically scanning the ruined structure with piercingly perceptive eyes. The door had been kicked clean off it's steel hinges with such strength that the solid oak had broken in two, both halves of the door lay flat and askew on the floor, never to touch again. Towering and enormous bookcases spanned all four of the cabin's walls, leaving only the violated entryway unobstructed, these too were cracked and scarred like the fragile ceiling-supports, looking as though they were about to crumble to dust at any moment under the weight of the battered hardback books, arranged by genre in alphabetical order, balancing precariously on their shelves. A translucent film of glittering white frost was just beginning to collect on the edges of the upper shelves but had yet to spread downward to the rest of the cabin. The decapitated male couldn't have been dead for more than a day.
Bella's facial muscles contorted sharply into a mask of empathy and regret as she returned her dark steely gaze to the body sprawled out beside her.
'There are so few of us left now.'
She pressed a clenched, white-knuckled fist to the flat, chiselled plain of her stomach, feeling a knot of sadness and frustration twist tightly in her gut as she began to comprehend how close she, and her companion, had come to finding her kindred Fae alive.
She choked off her sorrow as the freezing wind cried sombrely. She hadn't been able to save his life, but she was determined do right by him in death, such was her duty and desire. She refocused on her investigation.
Shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet, Bella leaned in closer to the corpse, maintaining her perfect crouching position as she reached out and took hold of the dead Fae's big right hand in both of her own. His unbending arm moved only with great difficulty. She knew from her Sire's teachings that deceased Fae enter into Rigor Mortis similarly to Humankind, but unlike a human whose body would eventually break down and putrefy until naught but bones remain, the body of a dead Fae will harden continuously until it is as rigid as stone. Only fire can destroy a Fae's body and put their Spirit to rest. She curiously raised his hand a little, closely inspecting the male's heavy limb. She wanted to know if he had gotten a piece of his murderer before the end, a stray lock of hair, a scrap of skin, something she could use to identify the killer by scent. She turned the dead male's palm over in her smaller, sleeker hands, noting the slightly waxy hue beginning to discolour his flesh.
Discovering nothing clutched in his right hand or wrapped around his thick fingers, she respectfully lay his palm over the middle of his muscular chest. Regally rising up out of her crouch, Bella stood and, silent as a wraith, carefully stepped around the body. Her supple leg muscles flexed smoothly beneath her tight, black Armani slacks, the thin silver pinstripes bisecting the length of her expensive silk pants gleamed faintly in the moonlight flooding the cabin, her black, long-sleeve Armani shirt with a high collar and plunging V-neck, that showed off hypnotic hints of her slender collarbones and enticing cleavage, hugged her upper body, proudly displaying her lean arms, her titanium-hard stomach and the soft, generous swells of her ample breasts, as she moved swiftly and purposefully like a prowling jungle cat. She squatted down on the other side of the male so she could get a look at his left hand.
Gripping the underside of his wide wrist in one hand, she turned his hand this way and that until her bruised purple eyes landed on a small image printed, in forest green ink, upon his flesh just below his bulging thumb knuckle. The sensitive skin at the nape of her neck prickled and stung, like a scorpion viscously stabbing it's poisonous tail into her neck. Leaping out from the shadows at the back of her mind a disquieting reminder ambushed her roughly, and she was forced to recall the complex 'tattoo' burned into her daughter's own left hand, the bold black lines and intricate swirls running vertically down from Ashley's slender thumb knuckle down to her firstborn's narrow wrist. Bella's willowy body coiled, taut and unyielding, as she considered the mate brand eternally marring her daughter's flesh, the only visible evidence of the connection between her innocent youngling to a genocidal sociopath. With a ferocious lion's growl rumbling deep in her chest, she ripped herself away from those thoughts before they could sweep her away from the present like the unstoppable current of a tsunami. She studied the small image, barely a centimetre in width and length, pressed into the dead male's hand. She could already smell the microscopic particles forming the bright green ink, the stamp was painted in, beginning to decompose and fade away. A temporary tattoo.
She allowed her mouth to curl into a grimly satisfied smile. She recognised the emblem, "Odin's Horn" Bella murmured, hardly more than a whisper, still her voice rang out like a crystal bell in the ruined cabin.
Her intense hawk-gaze trailed along the stylized symbol consisting of three interlocking drinking horns. As well as being able to speak and write Old Norse, she was also well versed in Nordic culture, both Human and Supernatural variations. Bella clasped the dead male's hands together atop his massive chest and remained crouching beside the body as all the related knowledge regarding the triple horned triskele flashed through her mind, like a computer processing code.
Odin's Horn was a symbol used in Old Nordic toasting rituals to represent the God-King's quest for the Odhroerir, a magical mead brewed from the blood of the God Kvasir, who was created from the combined saliva of all the other Gods in the entire Norse pantheon, something which granted him incredible power. Kvasir was murdered by dwarves who then took his blood and mixed it with honey to make the magical mead that Odin would come to covet. As History tells it, Odin used his magic to disguise himself as a farm hand, assuming the name Bolverk, he went to the dwarves seeking work in exchange for a drink of the Odhroerir. For three days Odin ploughed the dwarves' fields and for three days he was allowed to drink of themagical mead. The three horns used to form the triple horned triskele reflect the three draughts of the Odhroerir, and the length of the God-King's quest.
The emblem of Odin's Horn had several symbolic connotations for different peoples, but among many factions within the Supernatural Collective, Odin's Horn has become a sign of revelry.
Once again, Bella draped her hands over the hard muscles of her thighs. Her bruised purple eyes darkened until they were as black as scorched volcanic rock as a disbelieving frown contorted the attractive angles of her face.
The fine, sensitive hairs on her arms and at the back of her neck tingled, alerting her to the fact she was no longer alone in the immediate vicinity. She lifted her head, steely eyes trained on the violated doorway, seeing the silhouettes of naked trees in the darkness outside, their branches, misshapen and twisted like grotesque limbs, were laden with snow. Upon entering the cabin, she had strategically placed herself so that she would be able to keep the entrances to the lodge within her line of sight at all times while conducting her examination of the scene. She tilted her head slightly to the side, remaining in a relaxed crouch, that would effortlessly shift into a defensive position with cat-like fluidity in half a nano-second if she came under threat. Composed and alert, she prepared for the return of her companion, and, though it was a highly unlikely event, the possible return of the male Fae's killer.
The icy wind surged into the cabin through the open roof and threshold, like a messenger carrying with it the scent of Freesia and Jasmine. She breathed the scent in deeply, immediately recognising to whom the smell belonged.
~Akasha.~ The voice of Instinct breathed.
A soft beckoning purr began to resonate outward from Bella's chest, an unspoken indication to her companion that she was aware of the other female's presence.
The combination of crushed Freesia and Jasmine was their familial marker, each member of their bloodline is perceived by the varying strengths of that same scent. Her Sire smelt more strongly of Freesia than she did of Jasmine. Footsteps sounded outside the lodge, so light and agile the moonlit snow beneath them went undisturbed. These were the measured footfalls of a natural predator deliberately announcing herself to her cub. Bella knew that if her Sire truly wished it, even as skilled as she was, she wouldn't have sensed Akasha's approach. The elder female had been trained to strictly marshal the slightest indicators of her movements, to pay close attention to wind-direction and changes, and with thousands of years of experience guiding her every action, Akasha was beyond the scope of detection for all races, excepting one. No one is safe from them.
A rich purr filtered in through the ruined doorway, answering and mingling with her own rumbling noises of greeting.
The pale moonlight, beaming down through the open roof, caught on Akasha's white-blonde hair, making the thick and silky waist-length cascade glimmer like freshly fallen snow as the Fallen Fae Queen stepped into the ruined cabin, gracefully carrying the carriage of authority.
Penetrating and intelligent eyes, that missed nothing, observed her from an ethereally beautiful face comprised of aristocratic angles and features that belied Akasha's age. As was often the way for the elders among the Collective, it was Akasha's eyes that identified her as an Ancient creature, weathered by hardships and horrors her Sire had spared her when her biological parents had handed her over to be raised by Humans, where she had been concealed from those who Hunted their race with unparalleled determination and unequalled proficiency. Akasha's eyes, ordinarily a glittering neon blue, another of their genetic markers, now stained black with a whirlwind of hunger, homesickness and grief, much like her own, spoke of the brutal blood-feud between their people, the Fae and the dreaded Sicarri.
Bella glanced over her shoulder to the far right corner of the cabin, "I seem to remember you going down there" She said quietly, gesturing with a wave of her hand toward to the small open trapdoor in the floor.
The trapdoor had formerly been covered by a large oaken desk. The desk was now pushed up against one of the bookcases lining the walls, out of the way. Sire and daughter had discovered the secret hatch while searching the desk earlier. Too subtle for human ears to catch, the floorboards had creaked when Bella had sat down in the basic wooden chair attending to the desk with the intention of rifling through the drawers, the sound's tell-tale pitch had indicated to a hollow chute beneath the oak flooring.
Akasha inclined her head, gliding across the lodge toward the out-of-place desk. The six foot tall female perched herself on the edge of the sanded-smooth table while Bella settled herself onto her haunches. The three twenty-four carat gold bangles encircling each of the blonde's elegant wrists chimed as the elder female crossed her slender yet muscular arms beneath her bountiful breasts.
Akasha's lightly accented timbre was as rich and velvety as fresh honey as she relayed her findings, "As I expected, the hatch goes down into an escape tunnel. It runs East for several miles until it hits the coast. I found eight duffel bags on a table in a kind of, store room, I suppose you could call it, about halfway along the tunnel. The bags are each filled with a change of clothes and a quarter of a million in eight different currencies all sealed up in water-tight zip-locks. He'd obviously planned on swimming over to the Continent if they found him here"
With her back ram-rod straight, her head held high and a commanding aura swirling about her, the other female appeared every inch a Queen, even as Akasha's slender shoulders bunched and tensed visibly beneath her tight, sleeveless, turtle-neck. Black, just like the formfitting leather pants clinging to her long legs, the waistband rode low on her hips, Akasha's sleeveless turtle-neck made the paleness of her white-blonde, windswept hair, framing her angelic face and falling down over her shoulders to her waist, stand out all the more prominently. Bella felt her chest tighten as she watched the taller Fae's dark, ancient eyes inundate with grief as they fell upon the body of the dead Fae in the centre of the cabin. She knew Akasha felt the loss of each and every one of their people keenly, more so than anyone else.
"But they didn't find him. This isn't a Sicarri kill." Bella stated confidently.
Shifting nimbly until she was kneeling beside the headless cadaver on the floor, she rested her weight onto the backs of her ankles, laying her hands flat on her bent legs. It wasn't lost on her that she was in effect kneeling before the Head of her Royal House, her Queen, even though they had never stood on any ceremony.
Akasha cocked her head to the left, arching a brow, "No?. What makes you say so?"
Bella tilted her head to the right, mirroring her blonde-haired Sire, she was quick to note that the elder female wasn't challenging her opinion, the other Fae simply wanted to know how she had reached her conclusion.
"Sicarri play with their victims, especially Fae victims. They torture and mutilate and they take their time doing it. You and I both know this and we've seen the evidence they left behind." She swallowed hard as a barrage of gruesome tableaus invaded her mind's-eye, images of such sadistic savagery as to make The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 pale in comparison. Akasha's beautiful face contorted into a pained mask, her ancient oil-dark eyes glassy.
"This kill was quick and clean. And the murderer took his head as a trophy. A Sicarri doesn't take mementoes from corpses. The last two dead Fae we found...the things done to them were..." Bella's long slender fingers curled into tight fists. She sucked in a steadying breath as righteous rage began to burn in her heart. She forced herself to continue, biting out the words between gritted teeth, "...They were brutalised and butchered and then left for us to find like some macabre message from the killer. Their bodies might not have been intact but...the Sicarri who killed them didn't take anything with them"
Akasha stiffened, clenching her eyes shut as a sombre noise erupted from her pale pink mouth before she could catch it, "You mean to say that Alexia did not take anything with her after she slaughtered our brethren."
"Do not remind me that my young is mated to a monster, Akasha..." Bella growled, snappishly, pleadingly "...Not when I can't stop her from claiming Ashley. I don't want to think about it, I can't, not now" Not when the day of Reckoning is looming over her family like the glistening blade of a guillotine ready to put an end to everything they have built.
"Forgive me." Akasha whispered, distraught, her lightly accented voice sounding dull and far away. And she knew her Sire wasn't just asking forgiveness for mentioning thename of Evil incarnate, Akasha was asking forgiveness for so much more.
The tension in the cold air was palpable. From where she knelt on the ruined cabin's floor, Bella fixed her jet black eyes on her Sire, watching closely as the pale blonde-haired female wrapped her arms around herself.
Bella swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump constricting her throat as she began steering their conversation back on track and away from the disturbing subject of her daughter's unbreakable tether to the most prolific serial killer in existence, "Human murderers kill for sport and they take trophies from their victims to help them relive their crimes over and over again..." She had to clear her throat, twice, before she could continue, "...Supernatural Creatures aren't inclined to take trophies, as you well know, because we do not kill for the same reasons as humans. We adhere to our instincts. Primarily we'll only kill to defend and expand our territory, to feed ourselves, to claim a mate and to protect our family. The Sicarri are a race of rare anomalies, to find perverse pleasure in watching others suffer."
"It was not always so. The Sicarri are a ruthless people, this is true. But remember that the Sicarri are the children of Artemis and as such, Hunting and killing are to them what Sunday Mass is to Catholics and Christians, their way of paying homage to their Goddess, their primary purpose. Each of their kills empowers their Mother, it is what She created them to do, and for that reason, remorse for their victims is a completely alien concept. One they will never grasp, it is not in their nature. But there was a time the Sicarri killed their prey in a quick and clean manner..." Akasha's gaze settled on the decapitated body beside Bella's kneeling form once again, her jaw clenching visibly.
"...Similar to that. They were honourable, in their own way. Even now, when they actively go out of their way to hurt their victims, they are still fulfilling their primary purpose."
"What are you getting at, Akasha?" She demanded.
"We, Supernatural creatures, don't kill purely for pleasure. It is always done with a rational purpose, at least in part. So I ask you, why did the murderer take his head with them when they left?. If not to relive the crime or to remember the pleasure of the kill, then why bother?." Akasha asked, genuinely perplexed.
Bella reached out and took hold of the dead male's left hand, tilting his heavy palm to display the bright green stamp printed beneath the wide thumb knuckle, "The ink is temporary, like the kind of temporary tattoo you might get upon admittance to a club, and the stamp itself shows Odin's Horn, the sign of Revelry. I know it sounds completely insane, he'd been running from the Sicarri since the time of The Great Purge and he didn't survive the better part of ten thousand years being reckless and risking a night out at a club where anyone might pick up on his scent as he travels back and forth-"
"But?" Akasha prompted.
Bella laid the dead male's palm over the back of his right hand in the centre of his massive chest, pressing her own hands to her toned thighs as she remained kneeling beside the corpse, "But we Fae aren't solitary animals by choice. We're supposed to live in nests, multiple family units thriving together. I've found no evidence to suggest anyone else has been inhabiting this cabin with him which means he spent several millennia utterly alone, without a mate and without a family, isolated from the rest of our kind. For Christ sake, he probably started talking to the walls and the animals out in the forest just to fill the silence. I know I don't just speak for myself when I say I would go insane if I had to survive like that. The loneliness probably ate away at him until he was driven to seek out companionship of some kind. And there are plenty of nightclubs exclusive to the Supernatural Collective in Stockholm to the North."
"No, Bella, what is insane is that he by some miracle managed to stay safe from the Sicarri, the Gods' favourite Creations, and from Alexia, a Huntress of such high calibre she is second only to the Goddess of the Hunt herself, for thousands of years only to be killed by something else" Akasha said, her lightly accented voice was unnaturally calm but the growl resounding in her chest was bestial.
Bella felt an answering growl built in the back of her own throat, she too, felt the instinctive need to get justice for the dead male, whatever it takes. Akasha pushed herself up from the out-of-place desk's edge, straightening up to her full six foot, the elder female tilted her head back and she stared up through the gaping hole in the ruined roof up at the blanket of twinkling stars stretching across the black night sky.
"After I ran the length of the underground escape tunnel, I returned above ground on the off chance I might pick up the killer's scent..." Bella had guessed as much when Akasha had walked in cabin's door, instead of climbing back up the hatch leading down to the tunnel. The Fallen Fae Queen began to pace back and forth, from wall to wall,
"...I found nothing out of the ordinary, and if I found nothing it means we are dealing with a highly organised and experienced predator..." She watched the elder female closely, waiting for the question she knew was coming, "...What do you think caused the damage to the roof?"
"At first, I thought, maybe he was attacked outside the cabin, that the killer had gotten hold of him and somehow ended up throwing him through the roof..." She swivelled her head, observing the small wood shavings and splinters littering the oak floor of the cabin, "...But there is hardly any debris inside, if he'd crashed in through the roof the whole ceiling would have collapsed in with him, instead it is just, gone. I considered explosives, but that is an even more unlikely scenario, the entire cabin and the body would have been utterly eviscerated, plus, the explosives would have left a lingering scent, there is nothing"
Akasha continued to pace, her shoulders bunching beneath the tight, expensive fabric of her sleeveless turtle neck as she grazed a slender fingertip along the edge of one of the bookshelves, "Over a hundred thousand years ago, when my Grandfather was King, our territory covered over ten per cent of the World, double that of the first Persian Empire..." Akasha seemingly pulled a hardback book from the shelf at random and flipped the cover open, she began flicking through the pages.
"...As you know, we Fae are a subspecies of the Sicarri. It requires many generations, many matings, but if you mix enough human blood with Sicarri venom, that coupling will eventually produce a Fae. We remained unaware of our heritage for countless centuries, as did the Sicarri, I do not know the exact details but about sixty thousand years ago during my Sire's, your Grandsire's, reign as Queen, she was approached by the Sicarri Prima at the time. Alexis, Alexia's Mother and her namesake, had somehow discovered the connection between our two peoples. It would be fifty thousand years before I was born and first met the Prima, but I remember thinking once that Alexis always looked at us the way a human looks at their pet cat when the animal does something the human thinks is amusing or peculiar" Akasha snapped the book closed in her hands and reverently replaced on it's designated spot on the shelf.
"Prima Alexis invited our kind to rejoin the Sicarri. We were wary at first, after all they were unknown to us, but we soon began to find our mates among the Sicarri's ranks and so more and more of us accepted Alexis' gracious invitation. By the time I met Alexia and her Mother, most Fae had already left the human Realm behind and relocated to Theïkós, the Sicarri's homeland, sculpted for them by the Greek Gods themselves. The Sicarri-Fae Alliance was greater than any Empire humanity has ever seen, greater even than the Atlantean Imperium is today"
"You've told me this before" Bella said with calm curiosity, wondering why her Sire was reiterating her History lessons.
"Mmhm..." Akasha nodded her head, pulling out another book from a different shelf, "...What I have not told you, is that after we fled Theïkós in the wake of The Great Purge, we returned to the human Realm to find that our territory had been divided among other factions of the Supernatural Collective. I led my small nest to the Carpathian Mountains, not knowing that the Valkyrie Sisterhood had claimed the territory as their own. We fought. And while I was protecting my nest, a Valkyrie engaged me in combat. A Valkyrie's shriek is so piercing it can shatter glass with ease, reaching a frequency a million times higher than any human opera singer could hope to reach. They always let loose a war cry when entering battle. Not only did the Valkyrie's scream have my ears bleeding venom, it incapacitated me, knocked me unconscious for the first time in my life. When I came to, I was face-to-face with the Valkyrie Queen, she still reigns over the Sisterhood today. Explanations were given. She finally agreed that we never actually relinquished our territory so we had every right to live in the mountains if we so chose. I knew the Sicarri were hunting us so I assured her we wouldn't be staying long, and that while we were in the mountains we would abide by her laws. We may not have verbally relinquished our claim on the Carpathians but we did abandon our territory to live amongst the Sicarri. As far as I was, and still am, concerned the Mountains belonged to the Valkyrie, and we were just passing through. These days, Queen Nymeria rules over most of central Europe, including Sweden."
"If a Valkyrie's war cry is so powerful, and she tilted her head back and projected her voice upwards...It could really rip the roof free and send the debris flying so far out into the forest we missed it?" Bella asked, eyebrows raised.
"Imbued with rage or sorrow, a Valkyrie's shriek would be louder and more powerful than a sonic boom. Our kind might be physically superior, but allow a Valkyrie to get her hands on a blade or bow and there is a fifty-fifty chance she'll take your head off, no question about it. They are peerless warriors, respected by all the Collective. They are not to be taken lightly or trifled with in any way, shape or form."
Bella rose to her feet, spreading her arms in a quizzical motion, "Why would a Valkyrie kill one of us and take the head with her?, especially if we've always had such a cordial relationship with them."
"I don't know for certain, but I will find out, one way or another." Akasha swore, her light accent thickening with her conviction.
"You're staying here then?. Elena will be distressed to hear it."
"I will call her tonight and explain what we have learned here, Elena will understand. I can survive away from my mate longer than you can, Bella, but that isn't the only reason you need to go home to Rosalie and the Twins..." Akasha swallowed hard, her black eyes shinning brightly in the darkness of the cabin, the elder female seemed to have difficulty finding her voice, "...Ashley and Lucas come of age in a few days. Alexia will come for Ashley, as we have always known she would, and your mate and your younglings will need you more than ever when she does."
'An inevitability Rosalie and I have planned for the best we could.'
"You should start your search by looking into the club he visited. I'll get in touch with Rose before I board my flight home, ask her to access the Collective's database and track down which club the stamp on his hand belongs to. I'll text you the address and who owns it. Before you fly back to Alaska, I'd like you to make sure the money you found in the storeroom makes its way to the local orphanages and homeless shelters. Something good should come of this tragedy."
"I will." Akasha vowed.
Bella plunged her hand into the tight front pocket of her silk Armani slacks, pulling out her I-Phone, she checked the time, 23:42pm, "The jet leaves at midnight. Storm demons are sticklers for punctuality and our pilot is particularly anal about time-keeping even with the bundle I'm paying him, thankfully I've got more than enough time to make it to the airstrip."
Bella stared at her phone's wallpaper for a moment, at the picture of Ashley and Lucas cuddled up with Rosalie on one of the plush leather couches furnishing the lounge in Denali Mansion, the angelic trio smiling contentedly and laughing together, she could vividly recall the sounds of them purring lovingly as she took the photo, a couple of months ago, before being drawn into their embrace. At last, she somehow managed to find the strength required to rip her dark eyes away from the visage of all three pieces of her heart imprinted on her phone's screen, and cast her attention down at the headless body laying at her feet. She pushed her phone back into her pocket.
"I'll stay while you give him his last rites. Though he is a stranger to me, I feel like I owe him this. He is Fae. One of us. One of mine."
A bitter-sweet smile of maternal pride sluggishly tugged the corners of Akasha's mouth upwards, "Come, we'll need to tear up some trees to make his funeral pyre" Akasha started for the violated doorway, the gold bangles encircling her wrists chimed softly. Bella firmly caught her Sire's arm as the Fallen Fae Queen started to glide passed her. Gripping the taller female's lean arm at the elbow, she forced her Sire to turn back around and face her. Akasha cocked her white-blonde head in an unspoken question.
"One last thing..." She released her hold on her Sire to root around in her back pocket for the folded square of paper, "...Any idea what language this is written in?" She asked, unfolding the page and relinquishing it to Akasha.
The other Fae took the page from her and studied the text intently. Bella crossed her arms over the ample swells of her breasts as she watched Akasha's eyes trace the lines of writing, the blonde's lips pursed. Seconds crept into minutes, "Not the one..." Akasha admitted bluntly, folding the paper back into a square and extending it toward her, "...But that does not mean it is not encrypted, and you only encrypt information you deem so important you do not want just anyone reading it. You will have to ask Rosalie to take a look at the message when you return home. You mate's affinity for such things is truly remarkable, and somewhat terrifying."
In spite of herself, Bella laughed melodiously as she took the paper back from her Sire and tucked it away in her back pocket again, her chest swelling with pride at the reminder of Rosalie's considerable and widely respected talents, "Only if you have something to hide, Akasha..." It flashed over Akasha's ethereally beautiful face so quickly that Bella thought she might have imagined it, a haunted expression that manifested and vanished faster than the blink of an eye. She filed this troubled look away in the recesses of her mind for later consideration.
"...Only if you have something to hide."
TBC. . .
AN: Now you all know I have work obligations and various other unavoidable demands on my time, so I am not about to promise a speedy chapter four because I'll end up breaking that promise, but I do promise I will not abandon this story for any reason, unless of course I fall off the face of the planet ;DI'll update as soon as I possibly can, bearing in mind I have two other stories to update beforehand, in the meantime I hope you can continue to be as amazingly patient as you have been, and who knows in Chapter Four we may see Ashley and Alexia together.