Series 1/Chapter 8: THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE
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| Morgan feels Caspian's hands around her throat |
The night sky over Savannah soon sparkled with what seemed to be a million stars. Every inch of the blackness was sprinkled with tiny little lights from worlds away. But the serene sky did not reflect the angst building up in the Craine family's luxurious townhouse where hours ago Caleb, the spell ridden son of Cressida and Caspian, attempted to break out of his sleep by connecting with his long-lost twin sister Caitlyn.
His powers were constantly getting stronger and stronger and now that Caitlyn was so close, he could sense her and deep in his unconscious mind he wanted to connect and join their powers together. But his mother thwarted his attempts just in time with an injection that kept him in his place.
A sleep like dream world that no one could touch except Cressida herself.
As the evening progressed, Cressida grew more and more concerned with just how much strength and resistance she saw Caleb showing just before she injected him into a deep sleep. She couldn't help bur fear that perhaps her spell was waring thin. That perhaps the powers of Caitlyn and Caspian all intertwining in the atmosphere and in the same area as Caleb could be strengthening him even more. She thought about what to do next just as Dr. Gabrielle Loures knocked on the front door for her evening check up.
Cressida, who was sitting at Caleb's bedside, became startled when she heard the knock on the front door of her three story townhouse. She knew Gabrielle was due at the house but with the situation with Caleb and also the raising of Ashe from his grave it had slipped her mind.
"What do I do?" Ashe asked stepping into the darkened doorway.
"It's Gabrielle." Cressida replied, exhaustion strewn across her perfect face. "She can't see you Ashe. She needs to never know what I did. We have to keep it a secret so I'm going to ask you to hide."
"I want to see her." Ashe replied, his eyes filling up with tears at the memory of the love he had for Gabrielle when he was alive. Really alive.
"We talked about this. It's not possible right now. If there were another way..." Cressida said as the knocking came again at the front door. "Please...come." She added taking Ashe by the hand and leading him into the study near the front of the house. She pulled a book from the shelf revealing a secret passage the allowed Ashe to travel through the house undetected. Unseen. Unknown.
Before he stepped inside the secret passage he looked back at Cressida with sadness on his face.
"She won't feel me?" He asked, hoping that perhaps Gabrielle's own magical powers would sense his presence in the home.
Cressida did not answer with anything verbal. She smirked at him knowing how much he adored Gabrielle but the walls of that house weren't just walls. They were of course walls held up by powers of Cressida Craine a powerful witch who made sure that whom ever hid inside them was safe, undetected and unseen.
"Go." She whispered as the false wall slowly closed Ashe inside.
Cressida quickly then rushed to the front door opening it to see the beautiful Gabrielle with a strange look on her face.
"What's going on?" She asked Cressida.
"What?" Cressida said stepping aside for Gabrielle to enter.
"What took so long? My key didn't work. I had to knock." She added.
"It's Caleb. I was in his room. Something happened and I had to secure the house incase John came." Cressida said, half lying.
"What's happened?" Gabrielle answered as she made a b-line to her patient Caleb's bedroom.
"I think he's sensing his powers grow. Caspian." Cressida replied not going any further.
"And Mae? Has she come? What does she say we do?" Gabrielle asked as she checked Caleb's vitals.
"She hasn't appeared to me in days." Cressida added hiding the fact Mae's spirt had encouraged her to bring Ashe back to life only a few days before in order for the un-dead ex-of Gabrielle to kill Caspian.
"Caleb seems ok. What happened?" The doctor and witch asked.
"He seemed to be convulsing. It was a sign, his eyes...he....Gab, I think he sensed Caitlyn. I think he's trying to break out of this." Cressida said, slumping down on a soft chair next to her son.
"Caitlyn." Gabrielle replied, remembering the young woman she met at the hospital who was Caleb's twin sister and also one of Caspian's precious coins.
"We're running out of time Cressida. I think it's time we take matters up a notch and nip-this in the bud. We have to destroy Caspian once and for all otherwise we'll never be rid of him. We can't keep Caitlyn out of Savannah. If she's gone, she'll come back. Something will always draw her back here honey. We have to do something now. As long as Caleb is under Caspian's control, his energy will eventually bring Caspian to us. We saw that witch at Mae's funeral. She knows we're here. She knows who we are. There is no time." Gabrielle said in a serious tone.
"I agree. I've taken measures already on Caspian. I have a plan." Cressida replied.
"Well, good, what is it?" the doctor asked.
"I can't tell you." Cressida replied to Gabrielle's surprise.
"Are you kidding? What do you mean? We're in this together, we're supposed to be a team Cressida. To help you I need to know everything." Gabrielle replied stunned at Cressida's secrecy.
"No, honey, we can't do this together anymore. This is my war. These are my children with Caspian and he wants me dead. Involving you is too dangerous. Look what he did to Mae. She'd dead. She's gone. I can't put you in that position. I have a plan that will not only destroy Caspian once and for all but also keep you safe for ever. You have to trust me." Cressida said reaching for Gabrielle's hand.
"I don't accept that Cressida. We're coven sisters. We've gone through things together for decades. Trials and escapes. So many things, what would Mae say if she knew you'd leave me out of a plan?" Gabrielle asked not knowing Mae came up with the plan in the first place.
"She would agree with me honey. You have enough on your plate. Think of what's happened in the last few weeks. Things have gotten more and more dangerous and that's because of me, but you, you're starting to find some sort of happiness and I won't get you in the middle of something that can take away from that. I just can't. Please. Just rust me." Cressida asked.
Gabrielle stayed quiet. She was happy. She hadn't been happy since she lost her love, Ashe. But in the years since his untimely death she did see some sort of light at the end of her long dark lonely tunnel, with Pascal. The new man in her life. A new man who himself had secrets tied to Caspian that no one knew.
But with all the terrible thoughts of what may happen to Cressida doing this on her own Gabrielle understood and nodded her head that she wouldn't ask any more questions. They were close sisters of the coven and of the powers that made them one time witches of Caspian's realm. They had indeed escaped many harrowing moments together and she did, in the end, trust Cressida's judgement.
Then---another knock on the door.
Gabrielle and Cressida looked at each other strangely.
"I'm not expecting anyone." Cressida said.
"You don't think its...." Gabrielle couldn't bring herself to say his evil name.
"It can't be." Cressida said, knowing exactly who Gabrielle was referring to.
They two witches grabbed hands and headed for the front door as the person there rang the door bell twice. Caleb, in his sleep, did not budge an eyelid. He slept soundly, a sign to the nervous witches that it could not be Caspian at the door ready to take back his son.
Step by step, in unison, prepared to fight whomever was at the door unexpectedly the two witches went. Their shoes clicked like horseshoes on the ancient cobble stone streets of Savannah on Cressida's lacquered hardwood floors.
Step by step. Nervously movements to the front door.
The door knocked again.
Then a door bell. Impatient was the caller.
Cressida, took a deep breath and grabbed the golden door knob to her beautiful townhouse, turned it and braced herself to see who was on the other side.
It was Khai. Mae's son. His face was stone-like and serious. He wanted answers. And he wanted them now.
She kept thinking, over and over again, of the boiling water, the water that she was touching and how she made it boil and the feeling of a powerful force rushing through her body.
"Hey where'd you go?" her boyfriend Nick asked, fresh out of the shower.
Caitlyn looked at him strangely as she put the room key down on the side table near the door. She knew she had been out for her jog longer than normal but it seemed that Nick had forgotten.
"I was out for my jog." she replied.
"But...we..." Nick said trying to figure out what had happed only a few hours before when he clearly remembered Caitlyn coming home and the two of them making love. He felt her body. He kissed her. He knew that the two of them were together but, now, something was off. Did he dream it? Did he fall asleep and dream of the two of them making love like they had never made love before.
"Nick, the water began to boil. Like really boil." She said.
"You never came back?" He asked again.
"Sit down." Nick said. She did and he turned to face her eye to eye. "You came back to the hotel Caitlyn, I mean at least I think you did. You came back, you came in and we....we had sex. I swear ...it felt so real. I could have sworn you came in and it was you. But...you said you didn't." Nick said.
"I'm not leaving. Not now, not ever. Not until I get answers. I need you. If you'd stay that would mean the world to me but I can't force you to. I can't force you to do something that you don't feel safe doing. But think about it before you pack tonight." Caitlyn said lifting herself up on her toes and kissing the man she loved on the lips, ceiling their love in with a kiss.
*****
Caspian Casador struggled to know what made him so interested in the young woman he watched at Forsyth Park. His fascination with her was so strong, that he followed her all the way into the Hotel St. Filipe where she and Nick Falconer were staying.
Caspian's whole body had humanized. He fit in perfectly with the rest of the guests busily rushing in and out of the hotel lobby. He saw everyone interacting: talking, laughing at the near by bar, eating at their tables, talking on their cell phones. It had been so many, so, so many years since he'd been living on the surface and lived like an actual human of skin and bone.
The energy in the hotel was powerful. It was like a raging electrical storm floating all around him. Everyone he gazed his eyes dark brown eyes on felt like a lightening rod shooting into his heart.
It was painful, in a way, but also exhilarating. He loved it. He hated it. He wanted to know more. More about the feeling alive again and also about the young woman he had become so obsessed with in such a quick moment in time.
As he slowly made his way up the large winding staircase to the second floor of the hotel in search of Caitlyn, Caspian felt another jolt of power. But this wasn't coming from the young woman Caitlyn that was in reality Caspian's own daughter. It was a dark energy. A dark force.
It was the powerful pull of Morgan Isles. The witch Caspian had sent to the surface months ago to find his son and bring him back. She, ever the manipulative and sneaky sorceress she was, had other plans and had failed him.
Caspian continued on his way yup to the mezzanine of the hotel where he saw 6 golden elevators, 3 on either side of him. All three opened to him, empty.
He chose the center elevator and the doors closed. The powerful energy spun all around him and as he looked down at the floor pad, the circle around the 4th floor turned red. Morgan's floor. The elevator took him to the floor and the energy flowing threw Caspian's body lead him to her room.
It was a door at the end of the hall.
He wasn't sure what he'd find once he opened it.
He turned the knob and entered the room that was large, full of luxurious furnishings and layers and layers of fancy sheer window coverings that blew up into the empty space of the room with a cool breeze flowing in from the cold Savannah night.
There, was Morgan, dressed in all an all white backless strappy gown exposing with her back turned to Caspian.
"You." He said to her, his voice gravely and cold.
"I know you're angry. You don't need to be. I've only done what you wanted me to." She said to him, her dark hair cascading down her bare back.
"I should have never trusted you. You were sent here to find my child, the Coin! The coin that would send us to another layer of power and of course you decided to do your own little hunting. I should kill you where you stand." Caspian replied.
"But I can offer you something more, something better then Cressida's child." Morgan said turning to face Caspian and showing him a shockingly plump pregnant belly.
She had successfully created new life with Nick Falconer, and the speed of a child of a witch growing in it's mother's womb was astounding. The child, only hours after being conceived, had already grown to what a normal baby would be at 4 months.
"What have you done?!" Caspian shouted.
"What we agreed on! This is what you wanted. This is what you deserve. Leave Cressida's child to her, take mine, this one is strong. I can feel it's own power growing inside of me, Caspian. You can have this baby and live out your prophecy the way you intended to all those years ago. Don't you see? Cressida had distorted Caleb. You cannot save him!" Morgan explained.
"You selfish witch. This is not how its supposed to be. You cannot make these choices without my knowing. You'll destroy us all! Don't you see, you've step into a plan, a prophecy that is beyond your control. You cannot do that. You cannot step in where a witch has no place." Caspian replied.
Morgan cuddled her growing belly. She squinted her eyes in disgust with him. He wanted nothing to do with the child she had successfully conceived and now was attempting to throw it all away. All her work. All that she had done, she had completed a task that she had believed was her destiny and now he was trying to deny her unlimited powers by denying the child she carried for him.
"You're disappointing." Morgan replied.
"Don't try me witch. Trust and believe that any second I choose I can destroy you and this child you carry in a second. In a flick of a finger. Reverse this spell. Reverse it and send the child back to where it belongs, to the unknown place." Caspian ordered.
"I won't! You can't make me do it either, Caspian. This is is my destiny and I demand you take this child in the place of Caleb, he will be your heir. Not that pathetic excuse for a child that lives with Cressida." She said.
"He is my true son, not ..."
"TRUE SON?" Morgan laughed. "He doesn't even know you exist you fool! Cressida had totally brainwashed him and put him under a spell where he sleeps. You don't think I haven't checked? It wasn't even important enough for me to kill him and I wanted to. I wanted to take his life and replace him with this baby growing in my body. But for what? YOU can choose to take the baby here and make him your heir and give me the powers I so deserve. You don't have to chose Caleb." Morgan added.
Caspian's anger began to boil over. He was furious with the witch who went rogue and who decided her own power play was more important than finding Caleb and bringing him back. He lunged at her. Pushing her all the way up against a wall. She struggled with him and gasped for air. He growled in her face as his eyes turned dark red and angrily waited for her to die.
But she was a powerful witch, more powerful than Caspian gave her credit for.
As he chocked her, she shapeshifted and took herself out of her own body, replicating another Morgan standing behind Caspian. The Morgan in his hand was like a snake skin, shed from her own body. Caspian's hands clasped around the empty shell that was Morgan, a blank thin layer of matter that once housed the witch and he threw it to the ground and turned to face the real Morgan who was behind him stroking her tummy.
"I told you Caspian, this is my destiny. I can already feel myself getting stronger. You can't stop me." She said.
"I can and I will." Caspian said as he lifted his hand and sent a jolt of power into Morgan's belly.
She screamed with pain as the powerful light burned into her body. She tried to fight it off but Caspian too was a powerful demon, he was not to be played with.
"Stop...." she screamed. "I swear to you, if you kill me, just before I take my own last breath...." She continued as the power surged through her veins, "I will kill Caleb in the last moment of my own life."
"You're too late," Caspian said. "You're already dying."
Morgan fell to the ground, her body was turning grey, her heartrate was slowing and the power of Caspian was surging through her. When she lay there motionless he stopped. Walked over to her and looked at her limp body.
Then her eyes flicked open and she leaped into the air, high above Caspian hitting the hotel room ceiling. She laughed her witch's cackle that echoed in the air she was floating in. She had again taken control of the situation with the monster Caspian.
"You will never ever take me again Caspian. This child is going to be yours one way or another."
Morgan's words were seared into Caspian's brain and Morgan suddenly disappeared.
She was gone and in her vanishing she left Caspian in the hotel room alone with his thoughts. And for the first time in his whole existence he felt his own sense of fear. Morgan was a live-wire. Unpredictable. Out of control. And he needed to make sure his son Caleb was safe.
"Where are you...." Caspian said as walked himself to the hotel room balcony and wondered where Caleb and Cressida were.
He needed to find Caleb, his true son, before Morgan got to him and destroyed the plan, the plot, the prophecy in her own selfish wish to gain all powers.
Time was ticking like the clock on a bomb, and Morgan was the accelerator and trigger.
Back at Cressida's townhouse across town Khai stared down the two other witches in his mother's coven. He looked at them as aunts, women his mother had taken in years ago as surrogate daughters. She taught them all she knew, about life and the world around them--what he didn't know was that she taught them the art of the masquerade: to roam the world as powerful sorceress in the bodies and lives of mortal women.
Those secrets, the three witches kept under lock and key and away from Khai.
"Darling!!! Come in! Please come in!" Cressida said, releasing her hand from Gabrielle's an ushering in Mae's only child.
"When did you get to town?" Gabrielle asked, quickly lighting three small candles on the coffee table in front of them.
"Just the other day. John picked me up." Khai noted.
"You should have told us you were coming over, you must of been surprised to see us both answer the door together. Its a strange sight." Cressida said with a nervous giggle. "Caleb's had a hard night." She added.
"How is he?" Khai asked of his old friend, a boy he grew up with up until the age of 5 when Caleb suddenly went into his sleep like coma.
"Good days and bad. You know." Cressida replied.
"I guess you know why I'm here. I want to know everything, I need to know everything. How did it happen? How could my mother die just like that. She was the healthiest person I have ever known." Khai asked.
"Darling it's not clear to us either. We don't really know." Cressida answered.
"The medical examiner said that there may have been a heart issue. Something of that nature could have just happened even if she were otherwise healthy." Gabrielle chimed in with her medical talk.
"No, I don't believe that. I mean really? A heart-attack? You both know more than you're letting on. I've known you too long to just pretend that you both wouldn't have done your own digging when it came to my mother suddenly, and out of no where, die of a heart attack. So what did you find? Tell me!" Khai asked.
Cressida and Gabrielle looked at each other. He was as feisty as they remembered him. As a boy Khai never allowed anyone to take his toys and was always the one to confront the bullies in the school yard. He was a protector at heart. Strong willed and wild---a leader even though he was often all on his own as he was living in Tokyo all this time.
The secrets his mother and his surrogate aunts kept from him where in reality kept locked away for his own safety and security. He could never ever know that his mother, Cressida and Gabrielle were three escaped witches hiding from the demon king Caspian Casador. He could never know. Never.
It was a pact the women made years ago when the boys were young. And in the same vein, they could never tell them they suspected Caspian was the one who killed his mother--which was the truth.
"I know you're under a lot of stress, honey. It's a painful thing to lose someone like this, especially after all the years apart you and Mae had between you but the truth is he...." Cressida began before Khai interrupted.
"NO! I don't accept that. John and I both think that there's something else going on and that you're both hiding the truth." Khai said as he reached into the backpack he was carrying and pulled out his mother's spell book that he and John found and slammed it on the coffee table book. "What the hell is this?" He asked.
"Khai, where did you get that?" Cressida asked, her eyes widening with shock.
"Oh Khai." Gabrielle said.
"It was at my mother's house. Locked away. Hidden. What is it? Tell me what it is! TELL me what she was about?" Khai asked angrily.
Cressida stood up and Gabrielle came to her side. They stared down at the book and knew that this was not what Mae would have wanted. She would not want her son to know the truth in this manner. The two women grabbed hands and squeezed. Then they looked at each other and telepathically signaled what they had to do next.
Khia had to forget.
Suddenly, the air in the room dropped 30 degrees. Ice began to form in the corners of the large living room. Khai started to see his breath float out of his mouth in puffs of white smoke.
"What's happening?" He said slowly, his words melting the edges of his freezing lips.
As the room continued to get colder and colder, Cressida and Gabrielle closed their eyes and a white light began to imamate from their bodies. It became so bright that it began to blind Khai's vision.
"What are you doing!?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" Khai screamed as he turned away from the powerful illumination the witches were expressing.
Then, Khai felt warm again. It was as if the sun had come out and warmed his face from the cold winter day. He opened his eyes and there standing in front of him with Cressida and Gabrielle right behind her was his mother Mae.
"You need to listen to them." Mae said, her face and body seeming to glow bright like the day.
"Mom? WHAT'S HAPPENING!? Why are you here?" He screamed.
Cressida and Gabrielle, still holding hands had only stared at him with sad eyes knowing what was coming next.
"What's happening?" He asked again.
"You need to listen to them and move on, do you understand? Let this go!" Mae said,. her voice echoing in his mind.
"No, I need to know the truth!" Khai told his mother's ghost.
"The truth will kill you, they're trying to save you!" Mae replied.
"You're hiding it from me too. This book. This is a spell book! I can tell! I CAN TELL! What are you? What were you! WHAT IS HAPPENING!!" Khai screamed as he jumped up from the Cressida's sofa slowly going into a metal break.
"I am going to tell you one more time Khai, please. Let it all go. Listen to them and let it go." Mae replied again.
Khai looked at his mother, her eyes though faint and distant were still the warm beautiful brown caring eyes his mother always had. She had this glowing halo all around her, it was a strange sight but she was his mother, he could tell this was his mother. But he was unrelenting.
"NO! Not until I know the truth." Khai shot back.
Mae closed her eyes in despair and turned back to Gabrielle and Cressida and nodded her heard.
"Do it." Mae said sadly.
The two witches closed their eyes again and began to chant in Latin:
"OBLIVISCI OBLIVISCI - SEMPER OBLIVISCI. IN PRATERITUM. ET NUNC. PROXIMUS"
Over and over the two living witches chanted their spell. The cold air returned and froze the room again. Ice formed all over the place freezing the entire room. And still they chanted. Together, holding hands they started to walk towards Khai, chanting their spell in the blistering ice cold room.
He began to scream in fear but only the steam of his breath came out.
Closer and closer they go to him, cornering him in the room. Mae slowly dissolved in the distance allowing her two daughter witches to take over.
Soon, they got only an inch from his body and Khai passed out in the freezing cold room. When he was for sure unconicious, Cressida snapped her fingers and her beautofil living room in her beautiful townhouse return to normal.
Gabrielle grabbed the Mae's book and took it away hiding it safe in a closet.
Ashe, Gabrielle's back-to-life-lover peeked through a small opening of a door way at his Gabrielle as she hid the book.
Back in the living room Gabrielle saw that Khai's unconscious body was gone.
"Where..." Gabrielle began just before Cressida interrupted.
"He's fine. He's where he needs to be.
****
John walked in from the kitchen to the living room at Mae's house with a beer in his hand and jumped out of his skin when he saw Khai there on the sofa too waiting for him.
"Jesus kid!!! Why didn't you tell me you were back from Cressida's. How'd it go?"
"What?" Khia asked.
"Cressida's. You went over there to talk to her. What did she say about your mom and the woman at the funeral and that book you found." John asked.
"John what are you talking about? What book? I didn't go to Cressida's." Khai replied confusing John.
"The book! We found this crazy book in the safe and you.....Khai what do you mean you didn't go to Cressida's you told me you were going! Are you ok?" John asked, as nothing to him was making sense.
"I think you're stressed out, J. Why don't we both just get some rest. I'm feeling.....I think im exhausted." Khia said, keeping John in a whirl wind of confusion.
Khai got up from the sofa of his mother's house and patted John on the shoulder as he made his way to the room he'd be staying in leaving John alone with his thoughts.
It was clear now....Cressida and even Gabrielle were hiding something. Something dark and evil, so evil that they had even gotten to Khai somehow.
John took a sip of his beer and decided that he would not push Khia to tell him anything else. He would do it. He would get to the bottom of this secret
One way.
Or.
Another.
