Defiance: The Hybrid's Tale
Chapter 5: Tangled Situations.

Nathan Underhill.

After stumbling into the kitchen, I rushed over to the table. The trek back to the house was arduous. Wolfsbane still clung to my blood, draining the last of my strength. The arrow wounds I had sealed with a ward were beginning to deteriorate. I grabbed onto the table to steady my balance. Pulling out one of the chairs, I fell into the chain with a hiss.

“Mom!” I cried out.

I had a hard time keeping my head from toppling over. What made it worse, the burn scar burned as if someone held a blowtorch to my skin. The three ribs I broke made it difficult to breathe as well.

“How did we get into this situation, Fenrus? Dad taught us better than that.” I stared at the picture of a handsome blond man with green eyes holding my mother and me in a tight hug. I miss you, dad.

“We all miss him...” Fenrus let out a mournful howl that made me tear up.

Just as I began to doze off, my mom walked into the kitchen with a bouquet of flowers she picked from the front garden. As soon as she saw me, she screamed and ran over to me.

“Nathan! What happened?” She pulled a chair up and dropped down beside me. She touched the wound on my left shoulder, making me flinch.

“Ow! That hurts.” I hissed.

“Tell me!”

“Hunters...” My lips began to numb.

My mom quickly grasped the situation and ran into the pantry. Seconds later, she emerged with a small bottle of red liquid and a first aid kit. She uncorked the bottle and lifted it to my lips. “Drink.”

I obeyed her command and gulped the nasty concoction, sputtering when the liquid burned the back of my throat and stomach. Immediately after, warmth spread over my entire body. I glanced down at the burn scar. The wound slowly faded away while my broken ribs crunched back in place, mending themselves. My regeneration had kicked in. Thank the Goddess for my mom’s magical potions. Fenrus chuckled at my comment. With renewed vigor, I tried to get up but my mom stopped me.

“Don’t move. We’re not done yet. The wounds on your leg and shoulder haven’t healed yet, it will take a day or two. So tell me what happened.” She took out a cotton pad and a bottle of saline solution.

I sighed, knowing that my mom would never allow me to leave my chair, so I explained what happened. After my tale, I couldn’t help but avoid her gaze. I was terrified that she’d hate me for killing those men.

“Nat?” She grabbed me by the chin and pulled my gaze at her. “What’s wrong?”

“I should never have killed them... I could have—”

“Don’t do that to yourself, do you hear me? You had no choice. They would have killed you without sweating it...”

“Just as I said,” Fenrus chimed in. “Great minds think alike.”

I huffed and replied, “Oh, shove off, will you? If your mind is so great, why do you keep chasing your tail?”

My mom’s voice interrupted Fenrus’ growl.

“...It’s a cruel world out there and sometimes you have to defend yourself no matter what. You didn’t kill them for the pleasure of it, but to defend yourself.”

“But—”

“No buts, Nathan. You don’t want to go down that road. What happened, has happened. There’s no turning back.”

I squirmed around in my seat as my mom dabbed my wounds with the cotton pad laced with saline. She then took out a roll of medical tape and gauze.

“What are we going to do, Mom?” It was highly likely that we would have to start packing up again. It was only a matter of time before the incident drew curious eyes towards us, especially when it hit me that I had forgotten my t-shirt at the crime scene.

How could I have been so careless?

“Everyone makes mistakes. We should just hope for the best.” Fenrus yawned loudly, causing me to follow suit.

“Well, first of all. You’re going to bed.” I groaned at my mom’s words but nodded quickly when she gave me a scathing look that shattered my defiance to pieces in a second. “Tomorrow, you’ll accompany me to meet with the local coven’s leader. I might be able to twist their robes into getting me an audience with the Alpha of the Raven Hills pack.”

“Why?”

My mom slowly lifted my injured leg onto her lap and began working on the wound. “I’ve tried to make an appointment through the official channels at the town hall but we’ll have to wait for over three months to see the pack leader.”

“Is he the pope or something? Can’t believe they’re insulting our intelligence by stringing us along like that.”

She snickered. “That’s the feeling I got. That’s why I need to see the Supreme of Shadowdale. It’s the only way.”

My voice of logic whispered a troubled fact about meeting up with the said coven. I had no idea where their loyalty lay. For all we knew, the coven would run right up to my grandfather’s ear and betray us. It has happened before, and we paid the price for it when my stepfather ended up dead.

“Is it a clever idea to involve the witches?” I said, flinching as my mom wrapped my injuries up in a bandage.

My mom finished wrapping up my injured leg and then said, “I’m not about to divulge all of our secrets, don’t worry. I’ll just cash in a favor for a service.”

I frowned as I lowered my injured leg onto the tiled floor. “What does Mom mean?”

“I’m a master Enchanter, remember? So I’ll offer my services. There’s always a need for a quality crafted artifact.” She moved over and tapped my necklace, smiling deviously.

It was common knowledge that one had to be very cautious when it came to magical artifacts. There were a lot of crappy ones out there that didn’t do as they advertised. My stepfather told me the story of a burglar who used magical artifacts to aid in his crimes. He spent a fortune on an amulet of intangibility to rob a jewelry store that very night. The burglar would have gotten away with the crime, but when he tried to walk through a solid concrete wall, the amulet seized up. When he poked his head through the wall, the intangibility failed and his neck got pulverized. When the shop owner discovered the burglar’s bloody corpse, his head was missing. The police found it on the other side of the wall.

“Oh, I see.” I smiled.

“OK. Get into a shower and then head straight for your bed. I’ll be up in a minute. And remember to cast a water repellent spell on your bandages.”

“Right, Mom.”

***

Cassandra Pope.

Tormented cries echoed throughout the halls of the dungeons as I made my way to the end of a long hallway, dreading what I might replace behind the iron-wrought doors. I hated what this place had become. I grew up in the Blackwater coven. The magical community holds us in high esteem for our affinity for enchantments. Our magical artifacts were legendary and coveted by all the witches and warlocks all over the world. This made our coven very wealthy. But it seems that of late the grand status of our coven has gone to my father’s head.

He wasn’t always like this. He once cared for the coven and his family. However, after the revelation that his own daughter, my older sister, had polluted the family’s bloodline by giving birth to a hybrid, sent my father over the edge. He always bragged about how pure our bloodline was, but now he had become the laughing stock of those he considered his peers. Several covens in the magical community were known as purists. They believed that they were the one true race, elevated above the common rabble. They thought the werewolves and vampires were the scum of the earth, humans even less. I never shared my father’s beliefs. I would have raised my voice against my father, but I couldn’t jeopardize all that I had accomplished thus far.

For years, I had been feeding information about our father’s plans to my older sister. I was not about to let my crazy old man kill my nephew in his obsession of ′cutting out the rot that has spread into their family’. His words, to be exact. Instead of vilifying my nephew, he should have loved him even more. There weren’t any hybrids in the world to my knowledge and there never were until Nathan showed up. I made a promise to my sister that I’d do everything in my power to help them, but there was another reason as well.

I took in several deep breaths and struck a pose of indifference on my face as I wrapped my slender fingers around the handle of the door. I fought back a shiver as the cold steel bit into my hand. A soul-crushing scream grabbed me through the door, causing me to flinch. What have you become, father? But I already knew. He was a bloody monster who had ripped the coven apart. Most of the members had already fled and fled into hiding. Only those loyal to my father stayed behind. I was the only mouse left in a pit filled with venomous snakes. One wrong move on my part would cost me my life.

I slowly opened the door. My father stood in front of a huddled figure. Red glowing chains wrapped around the victim’s body, burning their skin as the chains dug deeper into them. The nauseating smell of burned hair and flesh hit my nostrils. It took all of my willpower not to gag, but I couldn’t show any signs of weakness in front of him. I made my way through the torture chamber. Weapons and torture devices took up every available space in the room.

I came to a halt next to my brother, Ethan. The weasel that crept around my father’s boot waiting for any form of praise my father would throw in his direction. He was the youngest of us three and the only one who took a dark turn and got lost in our old man’s madness. His brown eyes stared transfixed at the chained man with malicious delight. Ethan smelled and looked like a corpse. His skin was paler than the moon and his greasy, brown hair clung to the side of his gangly face.

“Good evening, daughter. It surprises me that you’d come here of all places.” My father’s gray eyes darted around my face, no doubt searching for any sign of discomfort. He enjoyed making me feel worthless in his presence. “Aren’t you supposed to be placating the Council? I’ve heard that they’ve been poking around of late.”

“I am father, but the Elder Council has expressed their suspicions that something’s amiss with our coven. All the defections of late have drawn their attention. There have also been rumors swirling around about our involvement with the destruction of the Highlands werewolf pack.”

My father’s demeanor changed on the spot. He closed the gap and wrapped his fingers around my neck, choking me. “I gave you simple instructions to keep the Council in the dark and now I replace out you can’t even do that for me. Why do I keep you around?” He threw me to the ground. “Stay!”

I froze, pushing my numbing pain in my back to the side. I didn’t dare move. I had to play along until I could play my hand. For now, I have to play the puppet. My brother chuckled as I lay on the ground, no doubt enjoying the show. My father walked over to one of the tables and grabbed a broadsword. Even though he was skinny, he wielded the sword in one hand without effort. He walked up to the chained figure.

“Do you know how I hate people who disappoint me?” he asked the man. I could have sworn my father flashed his eyes at me for a second.

“Please sir! Have mercy!” the tortured prisoner cried, wringing around the chains.

“Mercy?” My father cackled with utter delight. “I only show mercy to those who have the brains to redeem themselves, but you, you are an incompetent Shadowstalker who couldn’t even track down a filthy mutt and his whore of a mother!”

My father’s eyes glowed red for a second before the sword in his hand began to heat up, glowing with the ferocity of fire. In a swift and brutal instant, he swung the sword overhead and brought it down onto his victim. He sliced the man’s head off his body with a sizzle of flesh. The man’s head fell to the filthy floor, rolling inches away from his body before the dead Shadowstalker crumbled to the floor.

The horror of the man’s execution made me lose my breakfast. I puked all across the dungeon’s floor. I sputtered and coughed trying to get the taste of bile out of my mouth. My father handed the sword over to Ethan and walked, with a lordly gait, over to me.

“Come.” He stretched his hand out to me.

I hesitantly reached out. My father pulled me to my feet and retrieved a handkerchief from his overcoat’s pocket. “Here, wipe your mouth off.”

He turned around and strutted off. “Do well to remember, daughter, what will happen to you if you fail me again. Get the Council off our backs.” Before he reached the dungeon’s door, he turned to Ethan. “And you. Get me another Shadowstalker. One who’s better than the last idiot you chose.”

My father then stormed out of the chamber.