At Esther’s new residence:
As Freya and Lekan danced around each other, waiting for who would take the first step, Freya was analyzing her opponent. She still couldn’t understand his scent, she was just sure that it was unsettling, and that it repulsed her.
Freya also knew that she wouldn’t move, until Lekan made a move-until he shifted to whatever he was. Yes, she was sure that he was a good shifter, much better than he had relayed to his friends. Yet, to what? What does he shift into?
“Aren’t you going to make a move, mage? What’s stopping you? Shouldn’t you be chanting some gibberish to put me in some kind of cage or something? That would shorten this dance, wouldn’t it?” Lekan taunted, his words grating on the nerves of the watchers, yet Freya remained unruffled.
She didn’t win her fight against those three beasts by being easily ruffled. She stopped prancing though. She stood still, and folded her arms across her chest, causing Anthony to wonder what she was doing?
He would have asked to replace her, if he didn’t know that she was part ancient. Her confidence surely didn’t pop out of nowhere. He reasoned, remembering the fight with Casper that Aiden had recounted about Emma.
If Freya was anything like her sister, then this fight would be as good as over. With that knowledge, he took in a deep breath, and stilled his brotherly instinct. His cousin would be fine.
Lekan, seeing that Freya wasn’t dancing with him again, furrowed his eyebrows, and stopped moving. “Tired already?” He asked, gritting his teeth when Freya made no reply rather she whistled as if he hadn’t been speaking.
He hated that. He hated being looked down upon. He had tolerated the clique earlier because his parents had demanded it, yet at this moment, that he was free from that meaningless existence, he couldn’t take it anymore.
He would deal with her in a minute. He muttered, referring to Freya, deciding to shift directly to one of the beasts they had entrusted him with. This had almost killed his brothers-this entrustment, this ability to shift into impossible beasts.
When the masked man had tried to transfer it to them, he alone had survived the shift well, without any scratch, and so he wouldn’t allow himself to be trivialized by a girl. That settled, he inhaled deeply and with a snide smile on his lips, began his shift.
Freya watched then with furrowed eyes, when the change began to take place in Lekan’s body.
What in the world was this? She wondered, noting the sukenness that his eyes were absolving, and the stinky smell that was beginning to ooze out of him, the smell that informed her of what he was shifting to before he did. A vampire.
How was this possible?
She heard Melvina gasp, and not just her, but the others. She heard them question each other, what Lekan really was.
“A vampire.” She stated. “He is a vampire. He shifted to a vampire. I didn’t think that was possible. Melvina take a good look at him. That’s what a vampire looks like. You can see the difference between that and us. That’s why my uncle Kane had almost convulsed when your people had called him a vampire. They are the undead, the vilest thing ever to have walked the surface of the earth. I am just not sure how he had managed the shift, and how he is able to walk under the sun. I will have to transmit this information to the others after this fight. If this is the case, then we might have more trouble in our hands. Vampires that walk under the sunlight would be very dangerous.”
Freya struggled to contain her anxiety. These were the three beasts she had fought alone whilst she had been in the States, the anomaly that she had killed on three different occasions.
She could do this. She peptalked herself, taking in a deep breath, her mind ransacking the archives for the right magic words, and the right skills to utilize without killing herself, or him.
If Lekan was a true vampire, she would have fought him that way, fought to take his heart off his chest, and then call down fire to burn it off, but he wasn’t. He was a shifter, and she was confused-if the heart principle would work on him, if killing him would be worth it.
This would have been the best time to ask Aiden for help, but doing that would alarm him. She would need to face this by herself.
**
At Sheila’s residence:
Shane, Maya and Lucille watched with open mouths and shocked gazes as a being metamorphosed out of the thin air right in front of them a few minutes after Sheila’s words, as if it was tasting to see if Sheila really knew what she had been talking about, if she knew that it was actually there.
The trio already knew what they were looking at. A phantom. The phantom, they were sure, the one that had tried to kidnap Emma at one time.
“You must be the Azeera, Melvina told me of, that she had rescued when she was younger…” Sheila started, remembering the conversation that she had shared with Melvina after lunch, right before this journey, as if the latter had known that they would encounter this being.
Melvina hadn’t talked of the circumstances, but she had just dropped the info that she had saved the phantom, because of her father, and that was that. They would discuss that in detail of course, after all this. But for now, she had to get rid of this.
“What are you doing here? The truth would be much appreciated.”
The phantom smiled a ghostly smile, before taking a seat.
The trio were still standing, in shock. They didn’t understand how Sheila could be calm in the face of such terror; they could feel the aura all the way to their neck.
“I was sent here to capture Emma, but she had gone before I had arrived, or rather she had been in the protection of the ancients. I never knew they still existed, just like I never knew you still existed, red warrior.”