A Fork of Paths Read online

  “Paralyze him!” I hissed at the witch.

  She hit him with a curse, and… nothing happened. He continued to lurch toward the witch and me. My heart palpitating, I staggered back with Uma. A surge of horror rose within me. Oh God. Her magic doesn’t work on him!

  Then, without warning, his body froze up midair, and he collapsed on the sand.

  Recovering from the shock, I slowly approached and gazed down at him. His eyes were still open. He was still conscious, just devoid of motion. It seemed as though there had been a delay in the witch’s magic getting through to him for some reason. That was rather worrying, considering that we were relying on the witch’s magic for everything regarding these creatures, but I comforted myself that she had managed to get through to him in the end. It had only taken a few extra seconds.

  The witch’s expression was a mix of horror and childlike fascination as she bent over Braithe’s form and gazed down at him. After several moments of staring, she glanced up at me and nodded. “I don’t know what you want to do while I’m working—wait here or in the waiting room back in the castle—but I can’t yet give you an estimate of how long I’ll be… This is going to take some time.”

  Julie

  I ended up staying on the beach with Aisha. I would have preferred to wait in Uma’s entrance hall simply because it was closer to where she was taking Braithe, but Aisha wanted to remain here—and this time she insisted that I stay with her.

  Since the sun was on the verge of rising, I asked Uma to cast a spell of shade over me so that I wouldn’t get burned. She agreed and then vanished with the rigid Braithe.

  Aisha spun around and glared at me. “I hope you’re not trying anything behind my back with this witch.”

  I froze. Did she know? Had she eavesdropped on our conversation after all?

  If she had, then she already knew all about my plan, but if she hadn’t, I had everything to lose by coming out with the truth. It only made sense to keep lying. Besides, it wasn’t even a big lie. I did genuinely want to stamp out this infestation before it spread further… I just wanted to save my loved ones in the process. The only loved ones I had left in the world. Was that really such a crime? Wouldn’t Aisha or anyone with a beating heart do the same? I rationalized that even Benjamin would, if he were in my shoes.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my eyebrows knotting in a frown.

  “I mean that you’re a slimy little snake,” she replied, eyeing me as though I was a cockroach she wanted to squish.

  I scowled at her. I figured that acting offended was the best way to play my cards. “Well, I’m not trying anything other than what we discussed. You know that the supernatural realm has been my home for decades. Do you really think that I don’t care about what happens to it?”

  She smirked. “Is that even a question? You didn’t seem too concerned about the safety of the supernatural realm when you went and delivered Benjamin right to the Elders’ doorstep. Where was your solidarity then?”

  At this, I stalled. She had a point, of course. I knew what a risk I’d posed to not only the supernatural realm but also the human realm. But… I’d been numb to the consequences of my actions. Nobody else could understand why I’d done what I’d done because nobody else understood the kind of love I held for Hans. My actions had been mad. Selfish. Even downright evil. But the truth was, I would do it all over again if it gave me the chance to be reunited with the love of my life. When I was still a human, he’d become my only reason for living and even after nearly two decades of being apart—hell, even now, after he’d turned into a creature of nightmares—he still was.

  I cleared my throat and as I spoke, my voice was several tones deeper. “You’re right. That was a monstrous thing of me to do. I’m not even going to try to justify it.”

  “Then why did you do it?” the jinni snarled.

  I heaved a sigh. I couldn’t tell her about Hans, of course—I needed to keep him undiscovered for as long as I could. My mind worked furiously trying to come up with some kind of rational explanation.

  “I’ve been a victim of the Elders for almost as long as I can remember,” I said, adopting a pained expression. “My entire life was destroyed by them. They took my family from me, my husband, and even my young child. I’ve spent decades living in fear of them, waking up each day terrified about what they had in store for me next.” I paused to make a show of swallowing hard, as though just the memory of it was making me choke up. “Then one day, one of the Elders came to me with a proposition. None other than the feared Basilius himself. He told me that he had been privy to a prophecy by an oracle that indicated Benjamin Novak would be the one to help them recover after the war with the Hawks. He wanted my help in procuring Benjamin. He said that if I succeeded, once they came to power again, I would be treated with respect. I would be given power, and even freedom if I wished it. It was an offer that I just couldn’t refuse.”

  Aisha frowned. “But they lost control of you after the war with the Hawks. The Elders were no longer powerful enough to control any of their vessels. You were already a free woman. Why would this offer even interest you?”

  “That’s true,” I said, trying not to miss a beat. “But I was convinced that they would rise to power again, with my help or without, and then they would reclaim all their lost vessels. I believed I would be thrust back into the same miserable existence I’d endured for so long. So I… I decided to safeguard my future by offering to help them.”

  Aisha’s lips parted in a grimace. “You disgust me,” she murmured.

  You’re not exactly my favorite person either, I thought bitterly.

  I knew that I ought to avoid hot buttons with Aisha but, perhaps because of how smoothly my meeting with the witch had gone, and her quick agreement to help me, I was experiencing a surge of confidence. I dared lash back a little at the jinni, if only to soothe my ego.

  “And what of you? Weren’t you essentially holding Benjamin as a prisoner, a lifelong slave to The Oasis?”

  Aisha’s eyes flashed, and I knew already that I’d gone too far again in mentioning Benjamin’s name.

  “We were his guardians!” she hissed. “He was a part of our family, and we were to protect him with our very lives. Something that a selfish, deceitful coward like yourself would never do for anyone.” She paused, her eyes narrowing, before cutting me deeper. “I doubt you’d even do that for your own child if you had one.”

  Anger bubbled up within me, as well as righteous indignation. If only she knew the lengths that I was willing to go to for the man I loved. At the end of the day, the only difference between the jinni and me was that we loved different people. She and her family had apparently loved and accepted Benjamin as their own, and they were working to do everything they could to protect him, while I loved Hans and was doing the same for him. And I had experienced firsthand just how ruthless Aisha could be in that protection. Back when we had first met with Arron on that small island, if Benjamin hadn’t stopped her, she would’ve killed me right then and there to use my heart for him. Then, she hadn’t even known that I was working against Benjamin’s best interests. In her eyes at that time, I’d been innocent.

  Still, I held back on saying more. What use would bickering with this jinni do other than sink me deeper into the mud? I fell silent, pursing my lips and averting my attention to the ocean. I took in a deep breath and turned my thoughts to other things. Like how I was going to rid myself of the jinni after we had dealt with the ship of Bloodless. She’d made it clear that she was only keeping me alive because I was assisting her in this task. I was certain that she was going to try to murder me after that. I would have to beg the witch for protection—but I just hoped that the jinni’s magic would not overpower the witch’s. I was beginning to regret not adding a fourth request to my list for the witch doctor—to protect me from Aisha—but I was afraid to ask for too much at once.

  I would have to hope that her inbuilt dislike for jinn would make her side with me rather th
an Aisha. Although both were wielders of magic, they worked in different ways and had completely different methods of manipulating their power. But from what I understood, jinn usually had the upper hand over witches.

  Aisha wandered away from me, further up the shore, which I was glad about. That left me alone, with the box—still stained with the werewolf corpse’s grime. Being stuck on the beach at the jinni’s insistence and having nothing else to do, I decided to clean it. I dragged the box into the waves and submerged it, dipping down and using my hands as scourers to remove all the dirt. Despite the shadow the witch had cast over me, the sun was still bright in my eyes as it glistened off the surface of the waves. I had to squint to see what I was doing. Once the box was clean, I returned it to the beach and then waded back into the ocean to clean myself. I had rinsed myself off before but somehow, I still felt dirty.

  I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but the jinni and I stayed on separate parts of the beach, although I did notice her keeping an eye on me, shooting a glare over her shoulder every now and then.

  Never mind the Bloodless, I wish I knew how to murder jinn.

  From what I was able to pick up while traveling with them, it appeared that Aisha had a crush on Benjamin. I guessed that this was one of the reasons why she was so defensive of him. Maybe she’d even been in love with the vampire, despite him clearly not returning her advances in the slightest. He’d already told me that his heart was set on a girl back on his island. River, he’d said her name was.

  I sank down on the sand, stretching out my legs, allowing the waves to wash over my feet and ankles.

  I certainly couldn’t blame the jinni for crushing on Benjamin. Aside from his uncommon good looks, his strength of character and unwavering bravery could easily make a girl fall for him. I wondered whether, if my heart hadn’t already belonged to Hans, I might’ve fallen for him too.

  But I would never live in a world where that was the case, because Hans owned me. Now and forever.

  “Julie,” Uma called, startling me. I shot to my feet and whirled around to see that she had arrived on the sand just behind me. She had changed out of her nightclothes and was wearing a long brown dress. Wrapped around her was an apron which, to my discomfort, appeared to be stained with blood. Braithe might not have had blood of his own, but after the feasting on that small island, I was sure that he still must’ve had some of his victims’ blood left in his system. My pulse quickened as I feared she might’ve gone back on her word to do nothing to harm him.

  Apparently she noticed my unease. She said beneath her breath, “Don’t worry. He’s all right.”

  Her eyes shifted from me further along the beach. Following her gaze, I caught sight of Aisha moving toward us. She had spotted Uma already.

  “So what happened?” I asked anxiously.

  “I suggest you come with me to my treatment room. Your jinni friend can come, too.”

  “Not my friend,” I muttered.

  Aisha arrived next to us, for the first time laying eyes on Uma for more than a few seconds at a time.

  “Well?” she asked, eyeing the witch expectantly. “What did you discover?”

  This was also the first time that she had directly addressed the witch since arriving on the island. I guessed that she really was fed up with waiting and just wanted to get this task over with.

  Uma eyed her. “I suggest that you both come up to my castle. That’ll be a more suitable place to talk than down here.”

  I turned on Aisha and raised a brow. “I guess you’ll be waiting here again?”

  “No, I’ll come with you,” she huffed.

  “Okay,” I said, even as disappointment clawed at my chest. What I really wanted to know was whether the witch had managed to gain an idea of how to cure the Bloodless. But with Aisha present, we would only be able to discuss Uma’s findings on how to murder them. I would need to find another opportunity to ask her about the cure—perhaps, once we arrived at the ship, we would find a moment when Aisha was distracted.

  I looked back down in the box. This wasn’t a private island. Although it belonged to the witch sisters, Uma had many visitors—a myriad of supernaturals who wanted treatments of various illnesses.

  “If Aisha is coming with us this time,” I said, “I don’t want to leave this box alone here on the beach. It’s a… special type of box and it has a lot of value to me.”

  “Not a problem,” the witch replied. With a click of her fingers, the box vanished. “I transported it up to the castle, behind the desk in the waiting room. It will be safe there. Nobody will touch it.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I approached Uma and reached out to touch her so that she could vanish me up to the castle. Seconds before she vanished us, Aisha whizzed toward me and grabbed hold of my other arm. We disappeared, the jinni allowing the witch’s magic to flow through her and transport her with us. This took me by surprise. A jinni willingly submitting to the magic of a witch? I didn’t know an awful lot about the jinn, but I was certain that this was unheard of. Was she really too lazy to travel on her own strength? It made me recall how reluctant she had been to offer me any help with the box, and back on the ship when she had used me as a guinea pig to attack the Bloodless. The most strenuous thing she had done to help me then had been to lift me away from danger. Had making me face the danger while she watched really all only been about exacting revenge on me?

  These behaviors combined made me wonder whether this jinni really was as strong as she made herself out to be. She had recently spent a lot of time within Benjamin fighting off the Elder. I wondered whether that was having an impact on her strength.

  But again, I didn’t have much time to ponder this as we arrived in the witch’s treatment room, which looked very much like the potion room I’d met her in earlier to talk. This one also had countless bottles of ingredients lining shelf upon shelf against the wall, each one labeled neatly and clearly—most of whose names I couldn’t even pronounce. But in the center of this room was a long, metal examination table, upon which lay Braithe. His wrists and ankles had been strapped to steel posts at each corner of the table, and he was lying there, stretched out and unmoving. His eyes were closed. Again, a horrible doubt filled my mind that the witch could have deceived me. I moved closer to examine him. Yes, he was breathing. He was alive—or as alive as he could be in his present state. He just appeared to be in a deep slumber, perhaps also still in the state of paralysis the witch had put him under earlier with her magic.

  The witch cleared her throat. “So,” she began, folding one arm over the other as she stood at the foot of the treatment table. Her eyes roamed the length of Braithe’s naked, emaciated form. “I have completed a preliminary examination. It has by no means given me conclusive answers, but I’m in a position to be able to make some educated guesses.”

  “Please,” I said, “just tell us everything that’s going through your mind—even if you’re not sure it’s true.”

  “I’m sure that these creatures can be killed, just like regular vampires such as yourself can,” the witch said to me. “They possess, after all, physical bodies.” She reached for a container on the counter that was filled with sharp knives—presumably for dicing up ingredients—and picked one up. Hovering the knife over Braithe’s right hand, she slid the edge of the blade against the tip of his forefinger, creating a small slit in his skin no larger than a paper cut.

  Braithe remained just as unconscious, and not even the smallest tinge of blood emerged from the cut. The wound remained dry, almost brittle.

  Uma replaced the knife on the counter before continuing, “The body of a human-turned-vampire such as yourself, if left without blood for too long, can start to morph and mutate into something different. Quite different.”

  “But not all of those creatures on the ship were starved of blood,” Aisha said, frowning. “I saw with my own eyes how perfectly normal vampires were turned by the Bloodless into one of them in a matter of hours.”

>   “Correct,” Uma said. “Originally, there was a vampire, possibly even more than one, who got deprived of blood for too long. In the process of their bodies adapting to survive without blood, they still retained the vampiric ability to turn… except now, their victims take the form of their new evolved bodies.”

  There was a span of silence as Aisha and I waited with bated breath for the witch to continue.

  “Regarding the ‘original’ Bloodless, so to speak,” Uma said, “I imagine that during the earlier days of blood deprivation—the first few months perhaps, maybe even up to a year, depending on how recently they’d last fed—their bodies consumed their own blood for preservation… In time, when no new blood was consumed, the body had to start finding another way to survive. What you see here”—she eyed the length of Braithe—“is nature’s answer. A body that craves blood more than anything else… but that no longer requires it to function.”

  My mouth hung open as I gazed at her, enraptured, scared to miss even a single word.

  “What about Derek Novak?” Aisha asked the witch. “You must know of the legendary ruler of The Shade. He survived four hundred years without blood, and he didn’t turn into one of these things.”

  “I am aware of that vampire’s case,” the witch replied. “But he had the assistance of a witch at the time— a witch who cast a sleeping spell upon him, that would have also served to preserve his body.”

  “Hm,” Aisha murmured.

  “I haven’t examined this one internally yet,” Uma went on, eyeing Braithe again, “so I can’t go into precise details regarding how his body is able to function exactly, but I think I’ve gleaned enough to help wipe out the ship…” Uma’s eyes fell on me. I guessed that she would need to cut Braithe open at some point, especially if she was ever going to find a cure. I hoped that she wouldn’t make a mistake in the procedure and end his life accidentally.