was livid. She was boiling on the inside. How dare Bree do this to Red, how dare she not only work magic on him, but interfere with his spirit, the very essence of who he was.
Night had fallen and the Grovestead had grown quiet despite the number of people staying there. It was almost as if everyone could sense the rolling rage that simmered inside her and had chosen to keep their distance. No dinner was being cooked, no music was being played and no sounds of laughter or bickering came from another room.
Or maybe it was just her, maybe her rage was causing her to block out everything except for the anger she was stoking inside, tending it like a campfire in winter, nursing it like a faithful mother with a sick child. Making sure it didn’t get worse than she could handle, but keeping it hot and ready and just under the surface.
“What are we going to do? We can’t keep him drugged forever,” Jessica sat at the kitchen table with Nate and Cord, Demon lurked in the corner as usual. Bree had been absent since her confrontation with Red.
Which was probably best for everyone. Sidney didn’t think she could stomach looking at the old woman knowing what she’d done to Red.
The thought of all the things Red had done since Bree had dug her claws into his spirit, starting the process of stripping away his humanity, made her want to simultaneously cringe away, pushing the thoughts from her mind, and rip out someone’s throat. And there were probably a lot of things she didn’t even know about. Things she didn’t want to know about. What is to stop you from doing the worst things in life if you have no emotion, no humanity to temper your baser urges? The random thoughts that people have every day, I could kill him, I should rip his head off, I hope he runs into traffic, become so much more than a passing random thought when you have no moral compass. And it infuriated Sidney to know that this had been done to Red, who even when surrounded by drugs and bikers and God only knew what else, had always just seemed so good. He always made the right choice, not just for himself, but for those around him. That is until Bree. So the longer the old lady kept her distance the better as far as Sidney was concerned.
“I don’t know what to do,” Sidney answered her sister, “I’ve tried everything I know how to do and it doesn’t seem to be doing anything.”
Sidney had tried over and over again to find the part of Red that wasn’t quite right, a discordant within his being, but she couldn’t. When she tried to really see him, the way that she could see everything else in nature, all the little particles that made up Red all seemed completely fine. There were no flickering lights, no dead pieces; everything inside of him seemed perfect and healthy.
But it wasn’t.
“What about you Demon,” Sidney asked, “You healed him before when I couldn’t.”
Demon shrugged, “I could probably heal his body, maybe even his mind if he had just gone crazy, but I wouldn’t even begin to know how to heal a spirit,” Demon said, looking out the window. He’d seemed pretty upset about what Bree had done as well. She knew that Red and Demon weren’t the best of friends, but they were still brothers and that had to count for something.
“Can’t you just try?” she said, hating the pleading that tinged her words. Demon just shook his head and continued to look out the window.
“The old ones are here,” Nate said, “and that’s pretty much all they do is healing, why not go ask them?”
He was right, she’d forgotten about the Old Ones. Actually, she hadn’t even known what kind of magic the Old Ones did, but even if they couldn’t heal Red, maybe they’d know something that could help.
One thing she did know, is that she couldn’t keep him asleep forever and the sooner she had an answer as to how they could help him the sooner she could stop worrying that he was going to wake up at any moment. She still remembered when she’d thought he was an overgrown wolf and how the tranks she’d given him that should have put a fully grown man in a coma for a few days had only made him take a bit of a nap. And the last thing she wanted to deal with was a conscious-less Red any more than she had to.
“It can’t hurt to ask,” she said, leaving the kitchen with everyone following. It only took a moment to find them, each in various states of snooze. Eyes closed, chins on chests or thrown back with no support, drool working its way out of the corners of mouths. They looked… uncomfortable. She would normally hate to wake a napping person, but these folks looked like they needed help.
She coughed a polite cough, hoping that that would do the trick, but nobody even batted an eyelash. She coughed again, a little bit louder. Still nothing.
Demon rolled his eyes, “Hey,” he practically yelled, “Wakey-wakey, eggs and bakey.”
Sidney hit him with the back of her hand, that wasn’t how you treated old people. And these were the oldest old people.
“What? Is it time for bed?” One of the men said, sliding upright in his chair as he woke up.
“Why are you all just standing around staring at us?” a woman complained groggily, “It’s rude. The youths these days have no sense of decorum.”
“It seems like nobody under 200 does,” said the other lady.
“We are terribly sorry for disturbing you at such a late hour,” Sidney said, trying her best to sound apologetic and squelch of the immediate flare of rebellion being talked down to always seemed to evoke, “but we have a problem and we thought y’all could help.”
“Could we not help at a more decent hour?” the last gentleman said, finally opening his eyes and acknowledging he was no longer asleep or alone.
“Yes,” the rounder of the two ladies agreed, “We do so need our rest, given our age and the task at hand. We don’t need to be bothered with every stubbed toe or sliced finger, you are a witch, deal with it.”
Sidney wanted to tell this pompous group exactly where to go and how to get there but she needed their help.
“Ma’am, please…” she began before being cut off by Demon.
“Now Miss Shonda, we are so sorry to bother you but it seems we have a problem a tad more complicated than the witches here can solve,” he said in his most gracious tone, a smile that could blind pilots and make the most notable nun weak kneed shining from his face as he spoke.
Of course he already knew the Old Ones, Sidney groaned mentally. Of course he did, she bet Demon had already buttered up to everyone here.
Shonda smiled back at him, obviously taken in by his smile, “Well then son, why haven’t you fixed their problem if they can’t.” She turned to one of the men, “Haven’t I always said that it’s handy to have an ang-,”
“But Miss Shonda, it’s not something I can fix, being a mere shifter witch hybrid,” he emphasized the last three words and Shonda squinted her eyes at him.
“But I thought he -,” one of the old men began.
“Shush Baylon, let’s see what problem is so important that they had to bother us so late.”
“I agree,” the other woman said, “because the sooner we can sort this out the sooner I can get into bed. I have a terrible crick in my neck.”
Shonda’s eyes had not left Demon, nor had they unsquinted. There was something Sidney wasn’t catching in the undercurrent of the room, but she didn’t have time to ponder it.
Sidney gave them a basic outline of what happened, only telling them the most salient points and answering questions as they were asked. She also gathered their names as they talked, the two men were Baylon and Ronald and the women were Shonda and Hestria. All of them were grumpy and still half asleep.
“Why in the world would Bree do such a thing?” Hestria asked, seeming shocked.
“Prejudice, plain and simple is an evil as old as time,” Ronald said, “Believe me, I know!”
“It is,” agreed Shonda, “But I don’t think we can help. If he’d cut his arm we could heal the wound, but if he’d cut off his arm, we couldn’t regrow it for him. We can’t heal something that isn’t there nor can we grow him a consciousness from scratch, that’s just not how we work.”
The other Old Folks nodded their heads in agreement.
Hestria sighed and said, “I hate not to try something though, can you bring him in and let us see if there is anything we can do?”
Demon and Nate left to pick Red up out of Sidney’s bed where he had been dumped, unconscious, and returned moments later dumping him on the floor with the same care and tenderness they had deposited him in the bed with.
Baylon stood up and rolled Red flat onto his back and positioned his arms at his sides, and the Old Ones gathered around him, kneeling two on either side. A sort of humming sound came from them that seemed to fill the room with a thrumming vibration.
Sidney closed her eyes and opened them again and willed herself to see what was really happening. The room was filled with green tendrils all snaking from the old ones. She could see the vibrant greens of the healing vines, sometimes tending towards yellow, others seeming to be bluer, as they twined their way around, and through, Red.
Sidney wasn’t sure what they were doing, but she could sense the goodness of it. These tendrils that were coming from them were nothing but goodness intensified. Like if a child could take all of the love they had for their mother and turn it into one thing it would only be a percentage of the purity of one of the Old Ones vines.
She hoped that whatever they were doing worked. Something so good, so pure had to do something, right? She blinked and let her vision go back to normal and the vines disappeared, leaving the old people just kneeling over him. Someone without her ability to see things would probably have guessed that they were praying. Which, couldn’t hurt anything, so she silently sent her prayers up while the Old Ones worked, letting her plea to heaven give voice to words she hadn’t been able to speak. To thoughts she’d forced herself not to think.
Please let this work, please let Red come back to me, I’ve missed him so much. I need him. A sob almost escaped her at the last thought, but she reigned herself back in with a deep breath. She looked around to see if anyone noticed, and the only person looking was Jessica who gave her a small smile Sidney took as commiseration. Sidney tried to smile back but wasn’t sure if she managed that or a grimace.
After a few more moments the old ones sat back on their heels, their eyes meeting over the prone body between them.
“So, how did it go?” Jessica asked, Sidney had been waiting, scared to ask for fear of the answer.
They all shook their heads but it was Hestria who spoke, “We’re very sorry, but it’s like Shonda said, we can only heal, not create something that isn’t there.”
“And it’s clear this boy has been tampered with. I’ve never seen such a stunted spirit, even in the smallest of creatures. It’s amazing that he managed to care enough about himself to remain alive. If something isn’t done soon I won’t be surprised if he dies of apathetic starvation.” Baylon added, the others nodding with him.
Sidney felt the rage building in her again. How could Bree have done this to someone? It wasn’t even that it was Red, which tore at her heart, but the ability to just coldly butcher someone’s spirit, someone’s will to live was something Sidney couldn’t wrap her mind around. But to do it to Red, who was full of fire, full of life and will and fight, was that much more of an atrocity.
Bree had killed him. No she hadn’t shot him with a gun but she had killed him just as surely, she had killed all the things that had made him who he was. The man who had claimed her to protect her when he barely even knew her. The man who had fought tooth and nail to save his daughter. The man who she loved more than anything.
The rage gave way to grief and the sob couldn’t be contained this time so she just let it go. She let herself bend double, let the tears stream down her face, she just let it all go. It was too much, she felt broken.
Jessica came and put her arms around her, “Come on, let’s go to our room. The guys can put Red on a couch while we figure out what we’re going to do.” Jessica’s voice was gentle, and Sidney nodded and walked where she was led, not seeing anything but the tears that blurred her vision. She wasn’t sure there was anything else to do, if the oldest living magical creatures on Earth couldn’t fix Red, who could? It was hopeless, she was going to lose him, and not just to someone else or to him changing his mind because he found out she was a witch, she was going to lose him forever. The thought tore through her, causing another round of sobs to break free.
Jessica paused in the hallway to let her compose herself. She felt her sister stiffen and stop, she looked up to see Bree standing at the end of the hall in front of the stairs, a look of disapproval on her drawn little face.
A cry, primal and raw, tore from Sidney as she pulled from her sister. Without thinking her hand came up and she tightened the air around Bree, picking her up. “HOW COULD YOU?!” she screamed, shaking the old woman in midair. “HOW COULD YOU?” she asked again, flinging the old woman up the stairs as she followed.
“Sidney!” she heard her sister cry, but she paid it no attention.
“You brought me here and told me this was my family,that you were my family now, and yet you kill the man I love more than anything else in this world? Why?!”
Bree was pressed firmly against the large window at the second story landing, held completely still by Sidney’s magical grip. She didn’t answer, she just looked at Sidney, something between fear and awe in her eyes.
“ANSWER ME!” Sidney screamed.
“I told you why Sidney, you hold so much promise, so much power. How could you waste that mating with a … shifter?” Sidney saw her self-correct to leave out any derogatory terms.
“Trash you mean, you didn’t want me to be with trash,” Sidney spat.
“That’s right, Sidney,” Bree paused, “ I didn’t want you to be with trash. And look at him. Even if he wasn’t a shifter, look at what he is, what he does. A biker, involved in all kinds of dirty things. And then look at you! So much potential ahead of you. Sidney I was hoping that one day you’d be the leader of the Grove, but how could you if you were attached to… him?”
“Who I am with or not with is my choice, mine, not yours or anyone else’s,” Sidney said, her rage beginning to cool as the spoke, she started to feel embarrassed by her physical outburst and she lowered Bree to the ground.
“You don’t have all the information I do, you were making the wrong choice. Don’t you see, I was trying to do what was best for you.”
“Then you should have given me all the information you could and let me make my own decisions, that’s what someone who loved me, someone who wanted to be my family, would have done.”
Bree was nodding her head and Sidney thought they were making some headway, but then she began to speak, “I can see I made a mistake, but it wasn’t in not telling you everything. I should have just killed him. That would have been kinder, to him and to you. I had hoped that letting you see his true nature would have been easier, that you would have made the right choice then. And you did, but it was not worth all this. I should have just killed him. I see that now and I hope you’ll forgive me for my error after I’ve fixed it.”
The rage came back, filling her body and blinding her with its inky blackness, and without even a second thought Sidney pushed Bree’s frail little body through the window and into the night air.