Welsh Road (The Depravity Chronicles) (27 page)

It didn’t take
long. Not long at all. But the screams were not exactly what Nina had expected.

1

“We’re not far
now,” Eleanor said as her and Isabelle walked on the shoulder of Welsh Road.

Isabelle
suddenly felt an intense surge of panic. “I think Jena is in trouble.”

“I felt it too,”
Eleanor said. And just like that, she vanished from sight.

“I hate it when
you do that,” Isabelle said to the empty space beside her. Alone and surrounded
by ominous sounds and the painful memories of those who died on this haunted
road, Isabelle began reflecting on the consequences of bad mothering. The
memory was so vivid it was like she was reliving it. Perhaps in some strange
cosmic way, she was.

Binding Jena’s
magic nearly ten years ago had set many things into motion, most of them
not
good. The worst of it happened exactly twenty-four hours after the deed was
done. Eleanor was still alive, though quite old. Together, her and Isabelle
performed the complicated midnight ritual to bind Jena’s ancestral heritage.
They did more than bind it, however. They expelled it, transferring her magic
to a talisman that Isabelle kept well hidden. Jena was seven at the time, so
Isabelle removed the memory of the ritual from her mind.

At first, Isabelle
believed that the task had been accomplished. It didn’t take long before both
her and Eleanor recognized that they were going to pay for what they had done.
And pay dearly. The day after Jena’s magic had been relocated, Eleanor randomly
showed up at their front door in her nightgown. It was 11:55pm.

“Grandmother, is
everything okay?” Isabelle asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes. “Do you know
what time it is?”

Eleanor said
nothing. She simply stared past Isabelle, seeming to focus on the staircase in
the foyer. Isabelle noticed that her grandmother’s eyes were slightly clouded
over by a thin, white haze. Just as Isabelle was about to speak again, Eleanor
abruptly raised her hands as if she were being held at gunpoint.

“They’re coming
for her,” Eleanor whispered.

“What?” Isabelle
asked, hoping she had somehow misunderstood her grandmother. “Coming for who?
Who’s coming?”

“It was a
mistake to bind her magic, Isabelle. A mistake.”

“Are you kidding
me? You were the one who insisted that it would protect her. I went along with
you, in spite of the fact that our foremothers advised against it.”

“A mistake,”
Eleanor said again.

Isabelle had to
bite her tongue so she didn’t lash out. Her grandmother had been the most
powerful witch in their long ancestral line and had taught Isabelle everything
she knew. Isabelle’s own mother had died in childbirth, and her father bailed
because he couldn’t handle the pressure of being a single father. So it had
been up to Eleanor to be the mother that Isabelle so desperately needed.

“A mistake,”
Eleanor repeated.

“Jesus Christ,
Grandmother. Are you a broken record?
What is going on?
”

“They are coming
for her,” Eleanor said, this time a little louder and more forcefully.

“Isabelle,
honey, who is it?” Frank asked as he walked toward his wife. As he descended
the stairs, he suddenly stopped mid-step. At the same time, the pendulum in the
grandfather clock beside Isabelle stopping swinging. Somehow Eleanor had frozen
Frank, the clocks, everything in the house. And although it didn’t seem
possible, Isabelle had a feeling that time itself had stopped.

“I am out of
time,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know how long it will be before I can visit with
you again, so listen closely to what I am about to tell you.”

“You’re talking
as though you’re about to die,” Isabelle said. “Please don’t leave me,
Grandmother. I still need you.”

“Jena will need
to be reconnected to the talisman as quickly as possible,” Eleanor said,
ignoring Isabelle’s pleads.

“Why?” Isabelle
demanded.

“She will be
coming for her.”

“
Who
will
be coming? When? Why?”

“It will be…”
but Eleanor didn’t finish her thought. Her blue eyes sparkled briefly before
returning to normal. She gasped, her eyes now darting back and forth, scanning
her surroundings.

“Grandmother?”
Isabelle said in a hushed tone.

“What in the
hell am I doing here?” Eleanor asked. She gave Isabelle an accusatory look.
“What did you do?”

“What do you
mean, ‘what did you do’?” Isabelle was exasperated. Eleanor was difficult
enough to deal with when she was normal, whatever that meant.

“If you wanted
to summon me, you could have just called. I have no idea how I got here.”

“What is the
last thing you remember?” Isabelle asked as she guided Eleanor into the house and
onto the couch.

“Going to bed,”
Eleanor said as she glanced at the clock. “And that was three hours ago!”

“You were
talking about unbinding Jena’s magic,” Isabelle reminded her.

“Good Lord, why
would I say that?”

Isabelle sighed
heavily. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking
you
.”

“That’s a bad
idea, Isabelle. That’s why we did what we did last night.”

“You said
someone was coming for her.”

“I did?” Eleanor
asked, pointing at herself. “Oh my goodness. This can’t be good.”

“Gee, ya think?”
Isabelle asked. “Try to remember, Grandmother. Did you have a vision? Your eyes
were cloudy and you were acting very strangely.”

“That is not how
my visions work. You know that.”

“I don’t know
much of anything at the moment, except that you said Jena was in danger and I needed
to return her magic. You also said you were out of time.”

At that moment,
Eleanor seemed to remember something. She nodded, was about to say something,
and then fell forward onto the floor.

“Grandmother!”
Isabelle shouted. The clock then chimed, the heat kicked on, and Frank appeared
under the archway separating the foyer from the formal living room.

“What the hell
is going on?” Frank asked, confused and a bit frightened. “One minute you were
at the door, the next you’re in the living room.”

“Call 911!” she
cried as she kneeled beside Eleanor. She searched for a pulse, first in her
neck and then her wrists. She couldn’t find any signs of life. Panicked,
Isabelle glanced toward Frank, who still hadn’t moved. “What are you waiting
for, Frank? Call for an ambulance!”

As she waited
for help to arrive, she had Frank administer CPR while Isabelle attempted to
connect to any lingering energy Eleanor might still have.

Nothing.

“Son of a
bitch,” Isabelle grunted. “I’ll take over here. You need to go check on Jena.”

“She’s fine,”
Frank said. “I checked on my way down here.”

“Then check
again,” Isabelle hissed. “It’s not a request.”

“Fine,” Frank
said flatly. Frank is what Eleanor had always called a
Loud Broadcaster
.
Translated, it means that Frank
thinks
loudly, making it easier for
people like Eleanor and Isabelle to hear his thoughts. Isabelle made a point of
trying not to invade her husband’s privacy. This time, however, the situation
seemed to call for it.

I hate this
witch shit
,
Frank was thinking.
If something happens to Jena because of their weird
religion, I’m outta here. And I am taking my daughter with me.

But now was not
the time to confront Frank about his reservations. She needed to connect with
Eleanor, but wasn’t sure how she could do it. Eleanor was 100 years old, and
even though she wasn’t frail, Isabelle figured that the best course of action
was to try to connect to whatever vision she had received about Jena. So she
stopped administering CPR and tried desperately to reconstruct what had happened
in the last several minutes when Eleanor had tried to relay the message.

As the ambulance
pulled into the driveway, Isabelle lost any hope that she would be able to connect
to Eleanor. Out of nowhere, images flooded Isabelle’s mind. But they were cloudy
and confusing, as if she were looking at blurred photos. Some were too dark to
discern what she was seeing, while others were incoherent and didn’t make
sense. A few were violent images of people who had been burned at the stake.
Isabelle couldn’t be sure, but she thought the charred bodies were her
ancestors. Then came the worst of all. A beautiful teenage girl, lying on the
porch of a farmhouse in a pool of blood. Isabelle knew instinctively that the
body was her daughter, more than ten years into the future.

“I can’t do this
without you!” Isabelle cried out. “Where are you? Come to me!”

EMTs burst
through the front door with gusto and a gurney. Eleanor had been right. She was
out of time. If that hadn’t been bad enough, Jena might be in mortal danger.
But how, when, and why? Isabelle had no idea. The anticipation and frustration
grew at an exponential ate. Any answers that existed were just carried to the
grave by her grandmother.

You would think
that since Isabelle and the women in her family had the gift of sight, that
some small sliver of information would be revealed. But alas, that is not the
way it works.

As the days,
weeks, months, and years progressed, Isabelle tried in vain to reconnect Jena
to her magical birthright. Isabelle left no stone unturned, no lead unfollowed,
no spell unspoken. And now…a decade later…

Nothing.

It wasn’t until
just last year that Isabelle was at last reunited with her grandmother. Eleanor
appeared at random now, but upon her first return, she was unable to provide
Isabelle with any answers.

Isabelle was
wrenched back into the present, on the shoulder of Welsh Road, by the sound of
a car horn. During her trip down memory lane, she had managed to end up in the
middle of the road. When she scurried back to the side of the road, she was
greeted by Eleanor.

“Is she okay?”
Isabelle asked.

“Define
okay
,”
Eleanor responded. That didn’t exactly lift Isabelle’s spirit. Her grandmother
picked up on the vibe and apologized.

“It’s fine,”
Isabelle said. “I’m a little on edge here. I was thinking about the night you
died.”

Eleanor focused
her energy on physical contact, briefly caressing Isabelle’s face.

“Save your
energy,” Isabelle said with a smile. “While I appreciate your love – always
have – we’re going to need your considerable fire power for our enemy.”

“Enem
ies
,”
Eleanor corrected. “There are several piles of black ash near the farmhouse.”

“So our vampire
friend wasn’t the only bloodsucker in the area.”

“No, quite the
contrary,” Eleanor explained. “It seems there is, perhaps
was
, an entire
coven, clearly under the control of Nina.”

“Did you find
out who or what Nina is?” Isabelle asked, hoping to find at least one concrete
fact amidst a sea of presumptions.

“Unfortunately,
no,” Eleanor said. “But, there is some good news. It seems Anish is not the
only person who has your daughter’s back. There is a sheriff, a priest, a
former FBI agent, and two teenagers.”

“How do you know
all this?”

“I read their
thoughts…and then some,” Eleanor added when Isabelle shot her a look that said
Don’t
you dare lie to me.

“But will that
be enough? Or will we get our asses handed to us?”

Eleanor shook
her head. “Such language, Isabelle.”

Both women
shrugged as they left the roadside and began making their way through the woods
toward what would certainly become Ground Zero.

“There’s
something that’s been bothering me ever since we figured out that Jena has
received some of her powers back,” Isabelle said.

“Her powers
back?” Eleanor repeated, chuckling. “This isn’t a Marvel comic book, my
darling. What’s bothering you?”

“So you agree?”
Isabelle asked. “Jena has reconnected with our magic?”

“So it would
seem,” Eleanor said. “Before you tell me what’s bothering you, let me ask you
something. How did you finally pull it off? You’ve been trying for years to
transfer the energy from the talisman back to Jena.”

“That’s the
thing,” Isabelle said. “I didn’t do it.”

“What do you
mean you didn’t do it? Are you telling me that Jena has done all of this
without the talisman?”

“That’s exactly
what I’m telling you.”

“How
extraordinary,” Eleanor said, clapping her hands together, though making no
sound. “I miss being able to make noise.”

Isabelle laughed.
“I’m sure you do.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the talisman,
which was attached to a necklace. Isabelle rolled it between her fingers. “It
still has tremendous power.”

Eleanor waved
her hand over the talisman, and then abruptly pulled back in shock. “There’s more
than just Jena’s magic in there.”