AUTHOR'S POV
Alva uttered three words in a different language. At the end of her otherworldly command, the thin red line by the doorway lightened in color. She draw near Claudia, who have turned into a human after centuries of feeding on the vital essence of the living, as she grin ear to ear. "My.. my.. Not so tough now, aren't we?", Alva clicked her tongue.
Breathlessly, Claudia grunted as she feel the throbbing pulse on her neck. The sudden warmth on her cheeks and the blushing complexion all over her body were all new to her. Completely forgotten how it felt to be alive again. "Impo-ssible..", she stared at her coral palms, breathing heavily.
"Take our guest to her special room. Make sure she's treated very well", Alva ordered as a couple of Nagas, shapeshifters with a skin of a snake and slitted eyes, drag Claudia away. The original vampire fought with her once strong fists which have completely lost their immense power.
Diana watched how they drag Claudia out of the room. Taken away by force without any strength to retaliate against, Claudia glared at Diana simpering over her bite marks. "You'll be dead! I shall kill you!!".
Diana just met Claudia's gaze with fiery eyes, as she wince at the stinging puncture wounds she obtained. She then turned to Alva who was sighing in relief with eyes closed, ending with a devious smile. Feeling her chest about to explode out of too much anger, Diana's eyes swelled even more from getting appalled knowing that the mother she grew up with, non hesitantly put her life at risk to capture an original vampire, like throwing a lamb in a lion's den. That's when she knew, who she really is to Alva... No, to Tamara. "How could you..", Diana cried.
"Don't give me that look. You know I kept you alive better than anyone would ever have", it sounded more like a repayment for a debt of gratitude that Diana earned over the years.
Thus, its ambiguity silenced Diana. Despite it is not love, it not nothing either.
Their filial relationship receded like a candle in the wind. She whimpered on the floor while she control the bleeding on her neck. Keeping it together, she exhaled sharply and wiped away her tears.
Alva approached Diana, bent over and squeezed her chin with her slender fingers. "Listen up, Diana. I know how badly you want to end the curse for Scott. To make you feel better, I'll do you a favor since you've been a nice little girl to your mother.. I will gladly lift the curse on the Lockwoods. And for me to do that, you have to bring Scott to me.", Alva demanded,
"What makes you think that I'll bring Scott to you?", Diana gritted her teeth, eyes bored into Alva.
Alva laughed sarcastically. "You will. Either way, we all know I am the only one who can remove that curse. You want to break the curse? Bring Scott to me, or else, I'll be more than happy to sit at the front row and watch Scott ravage your entire body down to the very last drop of your blood..", Alva lifted her brows at Diana with a hardened face. She turned away, and suddenly, Alva looked up and sensed something that made her eyes twinkle in delight. "My.. My.. Speak of the devil", she whispered. Then, she looked at Diana and said, "Stay here and be a good girl". Alva hurriedly went up leaving Diana in the cold dark basement.
Standing in the middle of the room, Diana stared into nothing as she start to lose hope, reason and will to move forward. She suddenly felt broken, like a glass hammered into million pieces. Diana did had her doubts on Alva, but never as close to a situation like this - deadly and vile.
"They truly got no heart. That's for sure", a tiny voice of a man blurted out. Glowing in white light at the corner of the room, he stepped forward with his hands on his back. Closing in with his tender face glinting a certain kind of hope. "Let's go Diana, before she comes back", he deeply sighed as he held Diana's hand who's completely absorbed in her own lost thoughts.
Earlier, Back in the City
"What the hell are we doing here?", Scott seemed lost why Lucas had the idea of squeezing information from Kate, when she doesn't have any idea where Diana is. Arriving in the busy alley in a distant neighborhood, they stood before the obsidian wrought iron gate of a small apartment early in the morning.
"There should be something she missed.", Lucas rang the doorbell of Kate's apartment a few times. "What's taking her so long...", he muttered, ringing the doorbell several times more until a loud bang slammed, opening the deep blue front door.
"I heard you already...", Kate said, rolling her eyes, as she come out in her pink sweatshirt and pants. Half asleep, she dragged herself out and opened the gate.
"Good morning, beautiful", Lucas greeted with an arc on his lips. "There's still drool on your face", he teased.
"Ugh... Yea, yea.. Come on in", she didn't even looked at the two imposing figures coming in her home. "Shoes off", she demanded, as soon as they reached the main door.
Scott followed Lucas in, tossing his cigarette butt off the alley. He gave a quick glance at the narrow space of Kate's small neighborhood swarmed with constant activities of people walking by, cyclists passing, and hubs of daily local life. A whiff caught his attention, but it swiftly disappeared in the high community activity. Not considering it as a coincidental incidence, he kept wary.
Warm light spilled out first as Lucas enter Kate's apartment. Gentle, honeyed, settling over everything like a quiet blessing. Then, the smell of coffee brewing filled the air. Inside, the world shifted. In an awfully lively and hectic street, comes a home smelled of faintly flowers and vanilla, almost unnervingly soft.
"You said you found something?", Lucas asked, who grew comfortable at the pastel pinks drifting across the room in careful strokes catching light just right. The white furniture stood pristine, untouched, as if they never knew chaos. Cream gallery walls stretched in the curated perfection, layered with art. Every piece was carefully placed with intention. Every blanket folded just enough to look effortless. Every book stacked, like it belonged in a photograph rather than a life. Stylish. Personal. On a budget. "Nice home", he said, taking it all in - the textures, the softness, and the way the space seemed to hum with care. On the other hand, Scott lingered at the doorway for a while. He felt like the home is too small for what it was. It didn't felt like he deserved to enter a place as such. Then, he finally crossed the doorway. His matte leather boots pressed on the plush rug lightly, afraid to leave marks.
"I said, shoes off!", Kate blundered at Scott and Lucas who seemed like didn't hear her the first time. Grunting, she shook her head as the two still stood completely unfazed in her living area. Her home which was already spacious for her, suddenly looked too cramped with only these two grown men. "Not really found... But, it could be something", Kate then prepared three ceramic hand painted strawberry mugs, making coffee for her stubborn guests. "I usually spend my vacations with the Woodsworths. Taking pictures was my hobby.", she poured coffee in the mugs carefully out from her pink coffee maker. "There's this town that we went to a couple of times. We were too young to ask where it is, or... whatever. So I guess, maybe... just maybe. You'd recognize where it is from the pictures", she said, serving the coffee on the small natural colored dining table.
"It's better than nothing", Lucas uttered.
"Show us", Scott said, hoping that coming here was worth it.
"Upstairs", Kate looked up, crossing her arms. She led Scott and Lucas to the stairs up to her bedroom where there are more pastels, furs and personal decorative items. But this time, it felt... organic. Clothes with tags messily hung on the footboard of her unfixed bed. Random polaroid pictures sticking on the wall of a bookshelf desk. String lights hanging on the white curtained open window. A vanity laid with different beauty items in shambles. It was the only place in the house that looked honest, as it seemed. In the middle of all that, a scatter of photographs lay across the floor broke the careful symmetry of the apartment. Scott and Lucas furrowed their brows slightly at the pile of random old pictures, and few more photo albums on top of one another. "There's gotta be something here, you know", Kate said as she reach for the photos on the floor. She took all night to find and study all the pictures she took of her and Diana, and none really she truly recognize.
Scott and Lucas knelt on one knee along side Kate. At first, the pictures were just memories - sunlight, laughter and trees. Two girls growing up together from their teenage years until they became co-workers at the hospital. Too many occasions with just the two of them in every frame. Smiling in every single one. He took one photo of Diana, and instantly softened at the look of her younger self smiling along the beach. She looked carefree. Raw. And, happy.
"These", Kate said, as she pull up a couple of pictures. "We went there twice... and they never returned with me again.", she told them, as she drag one photo beside another... then another.
The two leaned in. Lucas squinted at how normal it seemed to him. A vacation home in the forest, and a much more expensive car during those years. They looked closely. Putting all the pictures together like jigsaw pieces. Until Scott spotted the other photos, noticing something familiar with it. The room narrowed in. Clearing as the sunlight cover the entire window. The clues then emerged. The old dead trees during the car trip. Idyllic wooden fences. Thatched pavilions homes with white washed walls.
Not only that, the same shadows standing behind Diana - watching.
A beat came in Scott's chest. The same figure came all the way to Diana's most recent pictures. It was unsettling, almost maddening. A sustained calm remained. As Scott flip one last photo of Diana and Kate smiling against a cotswold stone, his breath hitched. Something half hidden behind Diana. A wooden post carved with half of a word. -ACAC.
And that was enough.
Scott moved before anyone could figure out what was in the pictures. Without asking, Lucas knew that they have finally found a lead as he darted out of the bedroom, following Scott. Kate was unsure whether the pictures were helpful, but she felt the rush and started to worry. "Hey... I coming with you!", she said, jumping off the stairs trying to catch up on the two guys who have made all the way down the front door in just a few steps. Passing by the already cold coffee on the table.
"No, sweetheart", Lucas smirked, shaking his head.
"Deal with that", Scott left the house first, heading for their car parked a few blocks from the alley. They had no more intentions to keep Kate involved from there.
"If Diana's in danger, I should be there too!", Kate insisted, eyes pleading.
"If Diana's in danger, then you shouldn't", Lucas turned to Kate, and was distraught when she reached him for a kiss. Again with those supple lips that kept him awake for nights. His eyes were too open to see such beautiful mistake, that he held her shoulders pushing her away. "I'm not one you should get involved with".
"I'll stay out of your sight. Just bring her back. Safe.", Kate uttered, not batting an eye despite her cheeks have turned too rosy.
"Ye-yea", Lucas stuttered, clearing his throat. Her cute charm making him feel uneasy as he head out of her home.
Kate stood frozen at the doorway as Lucas leave. The echo of their departure rattled through her chest. "Be safe...", she whispered.
In hurried strides, Lucas found Scott standing by the car, lighting a cigarette in about a few blocks from Kate's apartment. Scott just ended a call alerting the pack, who were likely nearby the neighborhood already, to join them on a journey to find Diana. After a few puffs, Scott tossed the half burnt cigarette in a bin and went in the car. Behind the wheel, he made a sharp exhale with his eyes ahead. The same scent that he sensed earlier is still close. This time, it's not hiding itself. "They surely don't just give up", Lucas uttered, putting his sunglasses on.
Engines exploded into life. No more time should be wasted from now. The tires screeched against the pavement as he tore out of the neighborhood, speeding and climbing fast enough to blur the world into streaks of gray and green. Not later, another scarlet SUV trailed Scott. Cory, behind the wheel, rolled down his window and made a peace sign. Together in two vehicles, the Grayback wolf pack cut through the streets, with one mission.
At the stoplight going out of the city, from a single scent of a wolf that Scott senses, comes a few more. His jaw tightened when one of them stood out. Despite not seeing him, its strong presence was too familiar and hated to be left in unnoticed. Too unwanted. Like a second heartbeat on the road chasing the same prey. Scott's hands tightened around the wheel. Revving the car at the timer of the stoplight turns to zero. The real chase has begun.
As the road stretched ahead, his focus is somewhere else - fractured, divided. And restless. "Roman", he gritted. In his rear view mirror, motorcycles cut through the traffic with predatory precision. Sleek. Fast. Weaving between cars like they had nothing to loose and no intention of slowing down.
"Looks like we got a party", Lucas glances at the side mirror spotting the motorcycles closing in. "Shake them off, Scotty. What are you doing?", he quipped, stretching his legs.
"What do you think I'm doing?", Scott hissed changing gears on the stick shift. Roman stayed right behind him, no longer feeling like a chase... but a war. Scott drove a few swerves in some streets. Not letting the distance from the other predator close in.
"Let's go, Scott. You can do better that", Lucas provoked, watching Scott almost miss a turn. A few more shifts forced them to rush, then slow down a couple of times as if blending in with the about to be congested movement of cars. Stopped in a parking space for a bit to calm the streets, and went back to chaos in a busy street. Escaped the traffic lights just in time to loose them as they head on to the long winding highway. "Atta go!", Lucas felt proud, laying back with his arms over his head.
Racing against time and fate, Scott and his pack took the highway like a dart hitting the bullseye. Faster and speeding over the limits. Every second burned, and every mile felt like a gamble. They pushed harder until the city bled away behind them. The concrete road gave way to open roads. And the open roads gave way to narrowing paths. Closer and closer to the Diana.
Just when Scott thought they have loosened their unwanted pursuant, four motorcycles appeared roaring from a mile a way. The distance between them shrank like a tightening noose. "Why am I not surprised?", he whispered.
Wind tore at leather jackets as the rival pack surged forward, engines snarling like beasts barely held in shape. At the front, Roman leaned over his bike, eyes locked ahead. Not on the road, but on Scott. The one who found her first. His voice through mindtalk sliced through his pack's head like blade, sharp enough to make them wince - "Don't loose them again". Roman made days endless in search for Diana. He never faltered. He watched Scott's every move. From his pathetic efforts and desperate bid, Roman stayed close with Scott for he is the map to Diana.
Not too long, they all found the dirt road lined with dead oak trees. The shapes of the trees gave it away. Its blackened bones and their branches twisted into shapes that no longer belong to nature, but to memory. Lucas flickered and glanced at Scott, realizing the Alpha indeed knew where to go just by looking at the pictures. Love isn't blind, he thought. It opens your eyes to a broader perspective that makes you either completely loose your mind or makes you sharper than ever.
The air is drier as they close in. Then it turned humidly warm, as trees on either side rose. Thick and watchful, swallowing the light whole. The fast pace of the cars utterly slowed down, as their wheels get downed by coarse rocky gravel. Now the maze starts as Scott trusts his instincts based on the pictures. Sooner, they entered the town. If that's how to call it. He started recognizing the thatched roofs and white washed walls, despite now broken with quiet windows. He slowed, not out of caution but out of recognition. "We're close", he said. And behind them that's closer were the motorcycles roaring in the same dead silence. Neither acknowledged the other. Not yet.
At the end of the town, Scott found a narrow road almost vanishing under an overgrown layer of grass. As if it was left that way to be overlooked. Beyond the road was cotswold stonewall with a wooden pillar carved with a writing. "Huāxyacac. ", Lucas read out loud. Then, just on its far side over the trees... was an uncanny mansion. "Scott, you brilliant piece of sh--", he ribbed the Alpha as the engines die at the switch of the key.
Silence crashed down. Even the nature doesn't speak on its own. Just the sun burning trying to leak through the thick awning of the trees. Roman took off his helmet, shaking his auburn hair, parking his motorbike on the side. "Devlin", Roman grumbled, hanging his helmet on the right side handle bar off his bike. Heat steam off of him, as he slip out of his jacket, leaving it on the bike's leather seat.
Scott slammed the car door into a close, meeting Roman in the eyes. "Brooke", the distaste was too bitter in his mouth seeing his pack.
The air between the two Alpha shifted. Not quite hostile, not restrained. They closed the distance in measured steps, stopping just short of striking range. Their packs stood on each sides. Waiting. Watching. Like threads to be pulled when triggered. "I'll take her out", Scott said, certain and low. "Upfront", a reckless and dangerous choice. But for all they knew, it was needed.
Roman's eyes flickered, and smirked along with that fanged teeth of his as he look over the mansion. "Then, she goes with me", he said. "We'll take all sides". It was a quiet understanding that neither of them wanted. One thing only matters in this mission. Find Diana and get her away from the Nagual.
And then, they started moving.
The mansion took them all out of their breaths. Its uncanny resemblance to the Woodsworth Mansion in the city took them by surprise. It wasn't similar. Not even inspired. It was the same exact home. Every window. Every curve. All the same. "That nagual is way out of her mind", Cory snorted.
There were two paths. Scott and his pack taking the front door. And, Roman with his pack surrounded the mansion like a closing trap.
The front door suddenly opened without even being touched. Welcoming the Grayback wolf pack as if they were expected to come. Inside, the scent of incense burning greeted them. Overwhelmingly strong, burying the rotting scent just out of sight. The pack entered in silence, instincts sharpened to a razor's edge. No footsteps echoed the way it should, as they go forth the warm home. "Clear this floor", Scott ordered quietly.
Scott and Lucas went up, Allen and Cory went down the hall, its rooms, and then to the patio. David and Austin took the corridors to the dining area, kitchen, and other common rooms. Their footsteps were lighter. Not wanting to draw attention despite the house seemed empty. Lucas headed his way on the other side of the hallway, while Scott went straight to Diana's room as how he could remember.
When he entered Diana's bedroom, her scent quickly surfaced in the air. Roman was already there... standing by the bed with her soiled clothes in his hands. "She's here", Roman confirmed, hugging her clothes close to him.
Clenching his fist, Scott left without a word. In his thoughts, that will be the closest Roman would ever be to Diana. As he meet Lucas down the hall, a mindtalk message from Cory made them rush down the basement. Making it at the doorway of the underground room, the cold winds from below sent a spine-chilling message. "Something's different", Lucas swore, eyes down on the dark hole of the stairwell down.
"An original", Scott seethed, sensing the deadly ambiance.
"The Luna!", Cory was about to go in when a faded red line on the doorway made him hesitate.
"Come down...", they heard a voice of a woman coming from the dark. "Scott Lockwood", a face emerged from the darkness, with a glimmer in her eyes. "Come with me if you want to see Diana", Alva disappeared in the dark again, reeling Scott towards the basement.