Because he did.
seventeen
“Braden, have a seat.”
Nachari Silivasi had allowed the kid to sleep for the rest of the night, and then he had waited most of the day to approach him, while thinking things over. He had carried the envelope around, trying to divine more of its energy, trying to make sense of the cryptic words before finally speaking with Deanna about the precarious situation: If Braden had a friend, and the boys had a secret, as peculiar as that may be, Nachari did not want to disrespect his privacy or lord over his decisions. Beyond that, he knew that Braden’s parents were a sensitive subject—they just didn’t afford him the time or attention he deserved. They never had. And their curious absence in his life grew more and more glaring as each month passed. So if Nachari could’ve figured the whole thing out without showing Braden the letter, the envelope with his parents’ Hawaiian return-address on it, he would’ve.
But he couldn’t.
There was just something too troubling about the whole situation.
Something too amiss.
There was a distinct taint of darkness embedded in the ink, a contrary vibration in every loop of the pen, and even though it niggled at the wizard’s subconscious, for the life of him, Nachari could not identify the origins of the perversion. The energy was so peculiar, so eclectic; it held remnants of Italy, Romania, and Greece, yet there was also a modern North American feel to the missive. The contaminate was faintly familiar, almost like the tarnish of a Dark One, but the letter also held a trace of celestial…etiology?...like a stamp from the house of Jadon.
It truly made no sense.
And the actual invitation, the purpose of the letter? Well, it was odd at best, disturbingly intimate, almost prurient in motivation, for lack of a better word.
It just didn’t sit right.
None of it.
And why had this peculiar male, whoever he was, sent such an invitation to Braden?
Greetings, my auspicious friend,
I have discovered nine perfect stones down by the stream, near River Rock Road, and I believe I have fashioned five perfect citrines, three perfect rubies, and one flawless diamond ~ all for my newfound acquaintance. Alas, I am still biding my time—you will keep our secret, won’t you? Meet me by the river, Sunday night. Same place as before.
I am in great need of familiar company.
Grigori.
Now, as they sat in the elegant, sophisticated living room of the brownstone, Deanna on the soft leather sectional; Nachari to her right; and Braden across the room at a diagonal angle, sinking comfortably into a large upholstered armchair, Nachari held the card up in his hand. “First and foremost,” he began, “I want you to know that I had no intentions of violating your privacy by opening your mail. You know that I respect you, that Deanna and I both trust you, or we would not have bought you a car.”
“That’s right,” Deanna chimed in, “and Nachari would never open your mail…except…he truly felt like something was alarming this time, like there was something really strange, not right, going on.”
Nachari nodded. “The other night, while you were sleeping, I had a fairly disturbing dream, something that woke me from my sleep and caused me to shift into panther form, even before I awakened.”
Braden drew back in surprise before curiously leaning forward in his chair. “Okay,” he muttered cautiously, growing visibly impatient. “Nachari, what’s this about?”
Nachari handed him the envelope and waited while he read the card.
Braden shrugged and then he sighed, seeming much less perturbed. “Oh,” he said in a casual voice, “yeah, the dude’s kind of weird. My friend. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
Nachari cocked his eyebrows. “So you know this person, the male who sent this card?”
Braden pursed his lips together and nodded. “Oh yeah. I mean, kind of.”
Nachari exchanged a wary glance with Deanna. “And he’s obviously a vampire…from the house of Jadon…correct?”
Braden smiled sheepishly. “I’m not really supposed to say anything, but if it makes you feel any better, yeah. Yes. Definitely. Like I said, he’s just kind of odd.”
Nachari held his tongue. Yes, definitely odd, and just a little bit…evil. He considered his next words carefully. “Braden, where did you meet this vampire? Does he attend the Academy with you and your friends?”
“Oh no,” Braden said quickly, and then he just as promptly tried to set the wizard at ease. “Seriously, Nachari; I’m not supposed to tell. It’s a secret, and once everyone knows, it’ll be real cool. Promise. Trust me; the guy’s just really, really weird. Everything’s all right.”
Nachari regarded the youngster politely, wanting to tread forward with respect. “Braden, the energy I picked up the other night was anything but cool. And the vibration coming off that envelope is anything but all right. Don’t you feel it, son?”
Braden sank back in his chair and turned the letter over in his hand, reading the script a second time.
“He used your parents’ return address—you don’t find that strange?” Nachari asked.
Braden dropped the letter in his lap, turned the envelope over, and stared at the return address. “Damn, that is kind of strange.” He sat forward in his chair. “But I’m telling you, the guy is just weird. He’s kind of like a foreigner.” He shrugged his shoulders, cocked his head to the side, and frowned. “I mean, yeah, the energy is kind of funky, but honestly? That’s his vibe, even in person. I dunno. I think maybe he was just trying to be secretive, like he just wants to keep his secret or something.”
“What secret?” Deanna asked pointedly.
Braden sighed in frustration, clearly conflicted about how much he should say. “Okay, so I’ll tell you this much: He is from the house of Jadon, but he hasn’t lived here in a really long time. And he came back to visit—that’s kind of how I ran into him, just by accident, down by River Rock Creek.” He set the envelope and letter aside on a nearby end table and folded his hands in his lap. “I was trying to make some gemstones from rocks, and he helped me out. Anyhow, he wants his visit to be a surprise, to let his family know he’s back in his own time, so he asked me to keep a secret. Like I said, weird, but probably harmless.”
Nachari cleared his throat. “Can you tell me what he looks like?”
Braden sighed. “I guess. I dunno: blond hair, slate-gray eyes, about six-foot-four.”
“So he’s not a Dark One?” Deanna cut in, making an absent reference to the vampire’s hair color.
Nachari cocked his eyebrows as if to say, Then what the hell?
He sat back on the sofa and mulled it over.
Something just wasn’t right.
So a son of Jadon came back to the vale after an extended absence, possibly a warrior from another generation, someone Nachari didn’t know; and the male wanted to surprise his family, but he ran into Braden first. And in the meantime, he just wanted another male’s company, to hang out with Braden by the creek.
While that was some truly strange shit, it wasn’t necessarily nefarious.
But the energy…and the dream…sneaking around Nachari’s mailbox?
There was something else going on.
And frankly, there was something Braden wasn’t telling them.
Nachari sat forward on the edge of the sofa, braced his elbows on his knees, and locked his gaze with the handsome young vampire’s, choosing to take another approach. “So, just to be clear: I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me, straight up, that you completely trusted this guy when you met him, that you completely trust him now, and you would feel perfectly comfortable going back to the river to meet with him again.” Before Braden could answer, Nachari added, “Oh, and you don’t find it the least bit odd that he stuffed this envelope in our mailbox in the middle of the night, instead of, say, texting you on your cell phone?”
Braden bit his bottom lip. “I never said all that,” he mumbled.
Nachari nodded. Th
ey were finally getting somewhere. “No, you didn’t. And you can’t.” He squared his shoulders to the boy and angled his jaw in a no-nonsense slant. “What aren’t you telling me, Braden?”
Braden chewed on his bottom lip as if he were trying to make a decision. “Well,” he finally murmured, “there were a couple things that struck me that night at the creek, some things that I questioned.”
“Wait.” Nachari held up his hand. “That night at the creek. You met with this vampire after dark?”
Braden nodded. “Well, yeah. I mean, I was there earlier, but he showed up just after sunset, I think.”
Nachari exchanged a telltale glance with Deanna before turning his attention back to Braden. “Go on,” he prodded.
Braden appeared a bit unsettled, but he quickly reverted to his previous train of thought. “Well, first, he did something I’ve never seen anyone do: He emerged out of nowhere, and I don’t mean like just materializing or transporting from one place to the next. He, like, came out of the mist…as if he was the mist.” Braden shook his head in frustration, clearly searching for a better way to convey his thoughts. “It’s hard to explain, but it was more like shape-shifting than traveling, something only a Master Wizard could do.” He regarded Nachari with a clear and healthy dose of respect. “The dude was like a ghost, and well, there is something else.”
Nachari held his breath, not wanting to interrupt or to distract Braden before he could get it all out.
Braden sighed. “It was weird enough—he was weird enough—that I took a strand of his hair. You know, just to be sure. He shed it on a rock, and well, when I saw it, I just thought…maybe I should pick this up, hold onto it…just in case.” Nachari’s mouth quirked up in a smile, and Deanna let out an audible sigh of relief, even as Braden’s countenance brightened in response to the couple’s obvious approval. “I was gonna show it to you, Nachari, make sure everything was chill. Just didn’t get around to it yet.”
Deanna smiled, her bluish-gray eyes alighting with mirth. “Perhaps we could’ve started with that information, ya think?” She chuckled softly to lessen the reprimand.
Nachari took a deep, cleansing breath and nodded in agreement. “No time like the present,” he chimed in.
Braden rolled his eyes. “Sorry.” And then, without further prodding, he rose from his chair. “Ah’ight, I’ll be right back.”
Deanna and Nachari waited quietly, their collective anxiety rising with every moment Braden was gone. When, at last, the handsome youngster returned with a crinkled sheet of Saran Wrap in his hand, the plastic haphazardly encasing a single strand of hair, Nachari couldn’t help but shake his head. It was vintage Braden Bratianu: Uncanny wisdom and foresight all wrapped up in a silly, disheveled package—would the boy never change?
Braden placed the package on the Raleigh coffee table in front of Nachari and sat back down in the armchair, diagonal from the wizard. “So what do you think?”
Nachari leaned forward and immediately stiffened.
What. The. Hell?
He turned to his destiny and eyed the back of the sofa. “Deanna, go stand behind the couch.”
Deanna rose immediately and padded around the arm of the sofa toward the back of the room, taking a distant stance well beyond Nachari, the leather sectional, and the curious package he was about to analyze. She waited silently as the wizard removed the single strand of hair from the Saran Wrap, closed his eyes to quiet his thoughts, and began to gather energy from the elements around him.
Once he felt like an empty vessel, Nachari opened his eyes and began to envision a pure, untainted light before him, a stream that represented truth, clarity, and wisdom, and then he began to pour golden, focused energy into the pristine, untainted channel, wrapping a powerful intention around the strand of hair: Show me what lies beneath.
As the particles in the air, hovering above the specimen, began to coalesce around the sample, yielding to the wizard’s request, Nachari began to chant:
Gods of old, please grant me favor;
Lords of light, whose truth I savor;
Let me see beyond the veil ~ assist me in this task;
Make true the lie; make false deception ~ remove the clever mask.
He waved his hand over the hair and drew his fingers back, as if drawing the true essence out of the strand.
As all things come from deep within,
Our truest thoughts, our hidden sins,
So the shell may still reveal the soul beneath, asleep and still…
Awaken, now! Come forth! Divulge!
The origins the gods expose.
Show me your true skin.
Just like that, the single strand of hair began to curl inward, the root forming the shape of a flattened, conical head, the end becoming a long, coiled tail, until at last a venomous snake appeared.
Deanna gasped behind Nachari, even as Braden shot back in his chair and swiftly tucked his feet beneath him. But the Master Wizard—he smiled, exhaled, and laughed. “So, our vampire is a snake in the grass. He believes he can slither into the house of Jadon, unnoticed, until he is ready to strike. Braden, what was the male’s last name?”
Braden cleared his throat in an anxious scrape. “Um, Antonopoulos. Grigori Antonopoulos.”
Nachari nodded. “That isn’t his true name.” He extended his forearm in front of the snake, and the serpent immediately drew back and bit him. As the fangs sank deep, Deanna shrieked, and Nachari began to snarl. He traced the poison as it left the snake’s glands and began to counter it with his own vampiric venom, two forces, diametrically opposed, in a struggle for supremacy.
The wizard won with ease.
In the blink of an eye, Nachari’s forearm exploded with light, and a mystical flame shot into the mouth of the serpent, growing…glowing…heating until the serpent’s head began to blister. Then just like that, the abomination erupted into flames—sizzled, screeched, and hissed—and then melted into a pile of steaming ash.
Nachari sat back in his seat.
He checked his arm for signs of injury, puncture wounds, or blood. There weren’t any. He regarded his destiny with a comforting glance. “I am fine, my love,” he whispered, and then he turned his attention to Braden…
And froze.
The youngster looked almost feral, his high, angular cheekbones nearly calcified with anger. His usual burnt-sienna gaze was glowing stark red, and his fangs were cutting into his lower lip, even as his clearly defined biceps began to twitch.
“Braden?” Nachari asked, sounding as wary as he felt.
The youngster snarled, his top lip quivering with rage.
“Son, calm down.”
“No,” Braden hissed, sounding far more predatory than his limited experience occasioned. He leaned sideways in his chair, extended his legs until his feet were firmly planted on the floor, and rocked forward in his chair, glaring at the smoking pile of cinders. “Let me go back and meet the bastard, Nachari,” he snarled, his fangs extending even further.
Nachari held up both hands in a pacifying gesture. “We have much to consider, Braden. Why don’t we just—”
“Nah,” Braden interrupted, his chest muscles contracting. “There’s nothing we need to consider.” He shot a heated glare at Nachari and practically seethed with malice. “I’m as serious as a heart attack…unless…unless you think I’m a punk.”
Nachari jolted. “No one ever said or implied anything of the sort, Braden.”
Braden’s voice dropped to a haunting, lethal purr. “Why—the—hell does everyone think they can come after me? The Lycans, that night in the shed; Saber, when he was pretending to be Ramsey; and now, this jackass, who’s trying to infiltrate the house of Jadon.” He curled his hand into a fist. “Why does everyone think I’m such an easy target? Why does everyone think I can just be played…anytime…anywhere…by anyone? No more,” he bit out. “If the bastard wants to meet down by the creek and build some gemstones together, then I say bring it on. Let’s play. I don’t care i
f you, your brothers, and Napolean’s sentinels have to get my back; you have to let me meet him, Nachari.” He narrowed his eyes with purpose. “You have to. It’s a matter of pride.”
Nachari took a deep breath and settled into the silence, allowing the young vampire’s anger—and his heated words—to linger. He understood the child’s rage as well as his pain, and he knew that Braden believed he was up to the task. Nevertheless, Nachari was responsible for the boy’s safety, and if this deceptive vampire, this fake Grigori Antonopoulos, had half the power Nachari believed he had, then the child was no match for the imposter.
They needed to think it through.
They needed to consult with the sentinels and, possibly, Napolean, and they needed to devise a well-crafted, well-informed plan. “I’ll tell you what,” Nachari said evenly, “whatever we decide, you will be instrumental in the decision.”
“Not good enough,” Braden retorted in an icy tone.
Nachari nodded. He really did understand. “You know something, Braden?” The youngster looked away, but Nachari knew he was listening. “When I was trapped in hell, all those months in the abyss, I submitted to some pretty foul degradation. I let demons torture me; I submitted to my own humiliation; and I endured the unbearable, day after day, because I knew I had a plan. Because I wanted to win in the end.” His voice grew thick with intensity. “Sometimes, the end game is sweeter than swift revenge. Sometimes, we need to be smart, not just strong, and that isn’t a sign of weakness.” He pointed at the ashes on the table. “That very old vampire—I don’t know if he’s an Ancient or not, but he’s gotta be close—thought he could come out of the mist and toy with a teenager. He thought he could play you like a fiddle, but you? You were smart enough”—he tapped his temple in demonstration—“not to confront him, not to give him the third degree, but just to take a strand of his hair and give it to a Master Wizard.” He leaned forward, commanding Braden’s full attention with a paternal gaze. The moment their eyes locked, he continued, “And that means you have already outsmarted him. Now, we take it to the sentinels; we put our heads together; and we try to figure this vampire out. End game, Braden. It’s all about the end game.”