Chapter 18

Luc

The breath was knocked out of me when I saw who was by the door.

Next to me, Anna was breathing in short gasps as she recognised the people in front of her. It was strange; I knew exactly who I should be fearing, but I couldn't bring myself to tear my eyes away from the person stood just behind the man, almost hidden in the shadows. The person who I had last seen jumping to her death.

"Maddie?"

Her face did not show the slightest change; not even a flicker of recognition or a twitch at my almost desperate whisper. Her face was set in stone. My heart was breaking in my chest at the sight of the girl who had been as close as a sister to me not even flinching.

"Well, aren't you going to introduce us, Lucas?" He spoke in perfect English, with a barely noticeable accent. I finally turned to the one I should have been focussing on. He stood there, looking exactly as he had over a year ago when I saw him fall to his death.

"Anna," I turned to my Significant with a bitter smile. "May I introduce to you my grandfather. Grandpère, this is my Significant, Anna... although I think you already know that."

"A pleasure to meet you," he smiled at her, somehow sounding completely genuine, despite the fact that we were both covered in bruises and dirt and lying on a concrete floor where Anna and I had been imprisoned for the past few hours, maybe more. But his eyes remained dead and cold.

I automatically reached for Anna, to put her behind me, to hide her from grandpère, whilst struggling to sit up. I had to protect her; she was more important to me than anything and I was going to keep her away from that twisted man if it was the last thing I did.

How had he turned so evil? Had he always had the darkness in him, but just kept hidden, buried for all those years? Whether he had it in him before or not, grandmère's death was what brought it out or started it, what changed him...

It was the day of her funeral. I couldn't even bear to think of her name; in fact I tried not to think about her at all- it was just too painful. It made me want to cry, but I had already cried, lots, and I needed to stop now.

"Hurry up, Lucas, we need to go!" Maman called, knocking the door gently as she passed on her way downstairs.

"Coming," I called back, checking my black tie in the bathroom mirror and attempting to smooth the stray piece of hair that would never stay down.

"Grandpère?" I called softly, stopping outside the room and knocking gently on the door of the room opposite. The door opened and he walked out without a word, not even acknowledging me as he slowly made his way downstairs. I went to follow him, but my feet took me in the opposite direction, where grandpère had been; to her room.

I looked around in surprise. The room was completely bare; everything that had given it personality was gone. The polka dot curtains that had always brightened up the room were gone, leaving a bare window. The vase that always stood beside her bed, ready to receive the flowers which grandpère would give to her, every week without fail. The chequered bedspread she had made in needlework at school. She used to joke that she had to use it all the time since she spent so long making it- she said it had taken her five years to complete, but I always thought she was exaggerating.

Seeing this empty room now, it looked like grandpère wanted to forget her as soon as possible; but to me, that sounded as if he didn't care any more. I knew he did. Seeing his empty eyes outside her room, the way his face was an empty mask; I knew he was hurting.

Looking at his expressionless face, I remembered the months that followed. He had pretended he hadn't cared; that was his mask. And he had never taken it off, so the mask, instead of hiding him, became who he was; cold, hard and uncaring, whilst the monster inside had grown and rotted behind the veneer. He had become a monster, slowly but surely, and pulled everyone along with it. And now he was back.

Anna's fear washed into me, ripping me from the memories. She was scared, of course she was. So was I. I had been terrified of this man for years on end and only now did I realise that my fear was still here; it had never gone, not even when I had thought he was. Meeting his eyes, my childhood fear returned. Those terrible instincts, that mix of primal fear and self-preservation that causes even the strongest of us to be weak. And I wasn't strong in the first place. Grandpère stirred that fear in me, the cowardice that I so despised. The cowardice that led me to run away, to abandon my family, to abandon Maddie.

Maddie hadn't been weak, or cowardly. She had always been so fearless, so feisty, she would never have run away. I had to be like her; I had to take my courage in both hands. I took a deep breath.

"What do you want with us?" I spat, clenching my jaw so tightly that pain radiated around my skull.

"Want? What do I want?" Grandpère appeared almost... surprised? Not angry, as he would have been if I had spoken to him like that before I ran away. "I assumed you already found out."

What...? "What are you talking about?"

"The prophesy? Didn't you read it?" he asked. I could only stare at him. My eyes were aching to look at Maddie again, to see her alive and well. But I knew what I would see- the cold and uncaring face. And it would break my resolve. So I just stared down the man in front of me.

Grandpère sighed, sounding almost disappointed. "A human girl and a runaway willow will imprint. They and the one who weeps, along with her exception will rid the land of the evil that was cut back, but not destroyed, by the Visionary," he recited.

"But, how does that...?" Anna spoke up for the first time.

"My dear, I wasn't finished," Grandpère chided her in a chillingly soft voice. He was going to snap, I had seen it all too many times. I pulled her closer and gave her a warning look. She held me tighter, the fear evident in her eyes and her slight shaking.

"That was the first prophesy. But that wasn't my problem, it was theirs," he gestured to Marcus and his uncle, who were watching silently. "It was two others that interested me. The first was the one you were just looking at before you were brought here. If, before the rising of the new sun, the one who weeps makes her sacrifice, then the eclipse will never come to pass. The dusk has one last hope. The second was right underneath it, and it explains the first," he continued calmly. "When the new sun begins to rise, the ones who came before must use the willow and the human to stave off the dawn. It is the only way to stop her reaching her zenith. Fate rests on them. The day has come." He looked at us both. "Now do you see?"

No, I thought, but didn't say anything. Because anything could be all that was needed to tip grandpère over the edge. Because he was mad, I knew that now. The physical and emotional pain he had inflicted, his loss of all emotion except one; rage... they were all the symptoms of complete insanity.

"I can see you don't understand. I will explain," Grandpère continued, eerily calm. "You are the 'runaway willow'," he told me, "and you are the human," he inclined his head to Anna. "I still do not know who 'the one who weeps' is, but I believe that it has already come to pass, and the eclipse is the Watsons destroying the Jacobsons. I am one of the 'ones who came before'. The 'dawn' and 'sun' represents the changes that will happen under the new 'Visionary'. But everything is better how it was before. This Maggie is treating us like we are the same as the humans. But we are not; we are better than them all. So, we have to use you to stop the Visionary. Now do you see?"

I saw alright. He was trying to justify himself. No truly and completely evil person believes that they are evil; they believe that they are in the right and nothing will convince them otherwise. They may know they are doing wrong, but they will justify it with the 'greater good' argument; the ends justify the means. And if that means killing, murdering, destroying lives, ripping apart families, then that is the price to pay.

Grandpère believed that he had to control our family to keep them from becoming as bad as the humans that he believed were so beneath us. And when he couldn't control Maddie and I, he had to use other means to control us, justifying his violence at first with the alternative that was, to him, worse. But I think he had gone beyond that; he no longer believed the abuse he was inflicting on us was wrong. He had truly become a monster.

"I see," Anna whispered beside me, replying for me.

"Good." Grandpère gave Anna an empty smile which only had the opposite effect to a real smile. "Now, we wait," he said simply, and left, leaving Maddie by the doorway with Sikes and Marcus.

Wait for what? I desperately tried to find Anna's mind, but it was like there was a wall around my head, stopping my mind from reaching out. And I wasn't sure that her touch was working, nor mine.

"You may be here a long time; I suggest you get comfortable," Marcus sneered, standing up from the wall he had been leaning on to watch the show and leaving with Sikes and shutting the heavy metal door behind him. That left only Maddie and the person that had been lurking in the shadows behind her throughout the confrontation, who I thought I recognised and had a sneaking suspicion of who he was.

I waited a few seconds, to make sure the others were really gone, before cautiously studying Maddie. I felt Anna's hand slip into mine and give a small squeeze; it was amazing how she couldn't even read my mind, and yet she still knew that I needed her support. I gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand back, hoping she knew what I meant. She gave me a small nod and an encouraging look, and I turned back to my cousin.

"Maddie?"

It happened. Revision is rubbish and wasn't going well, so I decided to write this instead... sorry it's quite short but I think there was the best place to end, I just wanted a snapshot of Luc's feelings, since Anna can't get into his head. Also, I think since the majority of this book is in Anna's POV, the Luc chapters should be short as he's not the primary POV character; it's more of a snapshot.

Well done to those of you who guessed correctly, it was indeed grandpère (tbh, it was quite obvious), but were any of you surprised about Maddie being there too? Also, any theories on those pesky prophesies? What's gonna happen? And why can't he feel Anna? Exciting stuff...

I'm not planning on updating for about two weeks as I have exams next week and the week after, but I may get bored of revision again, so this isn't definite.

Until next time :)