Unbound: The Call of Power

Chapter 12

“I am a half witch, half demon hybrid”.

That was what Ellie thought she had heard Maya say but she was sure she heard her wrong.

“What did you say?”

Maya felt regret slowly building up. Maybe she should not have said anything at all.

“I said I am half witch, half demon”.

Ellie was frozen in place. She knew her friend was special, but she was beginning to have an idea of just how special she was. A hybrid with both SuperNatural capabilities of the parents was nearly impossible. Most children of an inter – SN relationship only inherited one of their parents’ abilities and genetic makeup. If one parent was a witch and another parent was a werewolf, the child will be either a witch or a werewolf; never both. 

It was not impossible, but the chances of having a hybrid child was very low. Most hybrid children die in their infancy stages as their bodies are unable to deal with the combined pull of power from both sides.

Yet, the woman in front of her was a living, adult witch/demon hybrid. Ellie gasped. Demon! After the great mythical war, the portal that allowed travelling between the realms had been closed and sealed. Only a handful of demons who had fought on the side of the SNs had chosen to remain on the earthly plane and likewise, with the angels. That was why Nephilim1 and Cambion2 children were so rare compared to the other SNs.

The black markets were filled with criminals and smugglers who would do anything to get a drop of their blood to sell at a high price. Their blood and very existence, for some, meant the possibility of eternal life and they went to great lengths to hunt them down. None of it was ever proven to be real, but the demand was great; and the dangers, even greater.

“Ellie, you alright?” Maya was worried. There were various expressions on her face, and she was very worried that she might have broken her best friend.

“Let me lie down. I need to process this,” Ellie lay down and stared up at the ceiling. She knew Maya was worried about whether she could accept her for her parentage, but Ellie was more concerned about her safety. Years ago, there had been a faction of fanatics who had believed in experimenting with SNs to create a new breed of hybrids. They had been obsessed with obtaining a lost item which could potentially unleash the apocalypse. There were so many ways she could be hurt.

Maya looked down at her, at a loss. Ellie was giving off waves of emotions, and she did not know how she could help. Just then, she sensed company coming her way. She could not have been more thankful for them at that moment. She hurried over to her door and swung it open to Sam and Andrew’s surprised faces.

“Yeah I sensed you all! Come in”.

If either of them had any reaction to that statement, they concealed it well as they stepped into her apartment.

“How are you holding up?” Andrew turned to Maya; his eyes filled with concern. She felt her heart start to beat erratically faster and she mentally cursed herself. The two werewolves in the room would know, and true enough; Sam turned around to give her a knowing smile.

“I am better now, got the sleep I needed. How are you?” She hated that she sounded so awkward around him. A long time ago, it would have been impossible to shut her up when she was talking to him.

He smiled at her in response and she felt like her heart might just burst out of her chest. The way he looked at her made her feel like she was the only woman in the world. She felt like she was trapped in his gaze and she could not turn away.

How did I ever think he hated me? They stood there, staring at each other for a few seconds.

“What’s wrong with this one?”

At the sound of Sam’s voice, both Maya and Andrew whirled around like kids who got caught stealing cookies before shuffling over to where he was. He was pointing at Ellie, who was currently staring into the space in her befuddled state.

“Yeah, I think I broke her,” Maya confessed as she walked over to the sofa to sit down. The men followed suit. “We were talking and I kind of told her everything about the things that had happened so far, with me”.

“What exactly did you tell her?”

“For one, my hybrid mix”.

“Ohhhh!” Both the men nodded in understanding. That was often enough to generate a variety of reactions. Some people get awed, some get terrified for the demon half and some just stay away altogether. They had seen all that behaviour in the Matthews’ Pack. Sam recalled how the Alpha, Maya's father, had hired a witch to wipe the memories of all those he could not trust with his daughter's identity.

Next to Sam, Ellie shook her head and sat up so fast, she kicked him in his back. Sam yelped as she straightened up, his thoughts interrupted.

 “Wait! You BOTH know?” Ellie was incredulous. Sam, she could understand since he was part of Maya’s pack and grew up with her. But Andrew, even Andrew knew?

Andrew smiled at Ellie apologetically while Maya bit her lips, wondering how to explain it to her.

“Well, you know how these two crushed on each other when they were younger? Our dear Maya thought it would make her seem cool in the eyes of the cute boy she was sneaking out with, and divulged her secret to him,” Sam was never the one to let go of an opportunity to tease his friends and Maya had walked right into that one, unwittingly.

“Oh my god Sam!” Maya was mortified and she hurriedly rushed into the kitchen while Andrew broke out into a grin.

Ellie was stunned, before she burst out laughing; her fears momentarily forgotten.

“Of all the reasons to tell someone”.

Maya came back with two glasses of water for the men, “Ugh, I hate you guys”. Ellie and Sam were still laughing and she slowly smiled. At least she seemed to have stopped freaking out.

“Ellie, are you okay with the fact that I am half demon?”

She stopped laughing, “Why would I not be okay?”

“But you seemed so, well, you know…” she gestured at the sofa.

 “I was taken in by the fact that you are a hybrid, more than anything else. It also explains why your parents had your powers bounded. If it comes to light the kind of hybrid you are, you could be in all kinds of danger,” Ellie expression sobered up once more, all traces of laughter gone. Maya understood what she was getting at. If anyone else knew about this, then it is possible the attacks the night before could be related to her. They were unsure, but it was still unsettling.

The men looked back and forth at the women. Their werewolf senses could pick up a certain degree of emotions from the women, and neither of it was pleasant. Sam caught Andrew’s eye from across the table.

“I think these two had some kind of bonding session,” he mind-linked him. "There's something they think, that they are not telling us". Andrew nodded in agreement.

“We will find out from them in a while,” he replied, still via mind – link. He had just found his Maya again, his first love. He was dumb founded when it turned out she was his mate as well. Everything he had done so far all these years, was driven by his ambition to be better for her. There was no way he was going to see her worry and not protect her from whatever it might be.

But first, he needed to deal with the security breach. It had been too close a call.

“We need to talk about last night,” Andrew spoke first. “We are still investigating, and we need to understand what you ladies saw or sensed when you entered the school compounds”.

Sam set out his phone recorder while Andrew pulled out some documents for filing the report. Maya and Ellie exchanged glances.

“We entered the school around 11:30 pm I think, from the front gate,” Maya started. “I wanted to take the route that led directly to the apartments from the outside, but Ellie suggested cutting through the school since it would be faster. We were walking past the library, when I realised that we could not hear any crickets. That’s when it struck us that something was wrong. The lack of insect sounds attributes to either a spell or the presence of vampires and Ellie could not detect any of our own staff or students’ presence”.

Andrew took down some notes on his reports. Maya focused on him, while trying to block out the thought that she had, indeed, killed someone last night. Sam turned to Ellie.

“Anything you can think of, Ellie?”

Ellie was troubled. “Truth is, I didn’t realise that something was wrong until Maya had pointed it out. My senses were completely cut off and I thought I had somehow not sensed it, or at least that’s what I believed at first.”

“It wasn’t?” Andrew leaned forward; his expression unreadable.

Ellie shook her head. “Last night, there was a spell that was cast around the school. It was designed to mute any Empath or Telepath’s power, long enough for the attacks to take place. I still could sense a little, but it wasn't enough for me to place the rogue vampires until it was too late,” she massaged her temple. She was reminded again of her helplessness at that moment.

Sam put his arm around her, “Hey, it’s okay. You didn’t know”.

“There’s something else,” Ellie glanced at Andrew. “Right before Maya passed out, the spell was lifted. I couldn’t sense much within the school compound, but there were two presence I picked out from the outside. I was only able to make out one of them, and I am pretty sure it was a vampire and a powerful one at that”.

Maya saw the look that passed between Sam and Andrew. Both men were deeply worried, and she wondered what was it that they knew.

“What’s going on?” Maya turned to Andrew. She needed to know what was happening, and if it was in anyway related to her. She could let anyone else get hurt because of her again.

“Rogue vampires are vampires that were formerly human and were turned. The turning process may take a few days, and it must be completed for the turned vampire to be completely normal. When the turning process is interrupted, that’s when you get the rogues. They are barely human but not fully vampires,” Andrew paused, flipping through his reports. “Last night, we killed seven rogues that entered the school compound”.

It slowly dawned on Maya where he was going with this. “You are saying that someone deliberately created these rogues and released them into the school?”

Sam reached out and paused his recorder. “Yes, and based on whatever Ellie has told us, it looks like we are dealing someone dangerous and strong”.

“But, why attack us, the school I mean?” Ellie was anxious. “What could they possibly want from these attacks? If you get bitten by a rogue, you either get poisoned and die or you become feral. I don’t get the point of the attack”.

“That’s what we are trying to figure out. In the meantime, I have increased the security at the school so there will always be my guards patrolling the compounds,” Andrew’s eyes grew dark. “The other schools around the continent were also attacked in a similar fashion over the past few months, with fatalities and missing valuable artifacts”.

“Hang on, the schools that were attacked; are they all schools that operate under The Order of Peace?” Ellie moved to find her phone and ran a search for the schools that were attacked.

“Yeah, every single school was operating under ToP,” Sam answered Ellie, who was furiously scrolling through her phone. “About 5 of the biggest schools have been hit so far”.

“And ours would be the sixth one?”

“Technically, we don’t know if the attacks are related yet but if they are, then yes; our school would be the sixth one”.

 “Someone fill me in. What are you all talking about?”

“Since the year started, schools that have been operating under The Order of Peace have been attacked. Only the biggest schools have been hit so far. We have around 8 big universities? Out of which, 5 have been attacked and robbed of important artifacts,” Andrew explained to Maya.

“What important artifacts?”

Sam shrugged. “We don’t know. That information was never released to us or to the press. It's being kept really quiet in the SN community. The only person who might know that is Dean Chinh”.

“Were we robbed last night?”

Both Andrew and Sam shook their heads in unison.

“Because we responded to the attacks that fast, nothing went missing”.

“Okay, but Ellie; what has got you so stressed?”

Ellie was staring at her phone screen incredulously.

“Guys, you know that every single attack of the 5 schools was done with rogue vampires?”

“Yeah, that's why we are trying to confirm if it's the same perpetrators for our case,” Sam was not sure where Ellie was going with this.

“Don't you guys think it's weird that all the schools that were hit were rumoured to contain a piece of the lost map”.

Maya was not sure what the lost map was, but it was enough to trigger a sharp intake of breath from Sam. She caught the look that passed between Sam and Andrew, before Andrew stood up and walked over to Ellie. “That’s impossible. The lost map is a myth, and you know that. Those are just rumours, right?”. He looked at Sam for his take on this.

“For all we know; that map might not exist at all. But what if whoever did this believes that the map exists, and therefore the map pieces exist? They could be attacking all the schools and robbing them because they could be looking for this ‘map’,” Ellie put air quotes as she said map.

Sam considered what Ellie was saying. While he knew it is impossible for something like that exist, there were plenty of people out there who believed in the great war and the map. “I think it’s a good angle to investigate and find out what fanatic groups might exist out there that believe in the concept of the map. If not for anything else, it might at least give us a lead”.

“If that is the case, these guys could simply be using the rogues as a distraction used to create chaos while the real thieves swoop in and steal the items undetected. There’s an alarming number of them who believe the apocalypse should be triggered so that the world can be cleansed of humans,” Andrew nodded curtly before walking away to mind-link his Beta to follow up on this angle of investigation with the police and his security team. 

If this was the work of fanatics, then he was going to have to be prepared for more attacks. A failed attack will only aggravate them more. But one question kept bothering him as he reached out to his Beta. Why attack so late at night, when everyone was already asleep or out for the night?

“I hate to keep sounding like the noob, but what map are you guys talking about?” Maya was intrigued. All three of them seemed to know about it, enough to have a reaction.

“You were definitely sleeping during SuperNatural lessons, weren’t you?” Sam shook his head at her.

Ellie walked over to her and sat down. “Once the great war had ended, the Portal was locked with a sword and given to our ancestors to be protected. Years passed, and the story goes that no one knows where the portal or the Key was located anymore. A few hundred years ago, a wizard supposedly managed to create a map that was able to correctly show the locations of where the Portal and the Key were located”.

“That means there are two maps, one for the Portal and one for the Key?” Maya was confused.

“No, it was just one. He created the map such that it could be read on both sides. One side for the Portal and the other for Key,” Sam chimed in.

Andrew walked back to join them. “Once it came out that such a map existed, everyone coveted it. To prevent it falling into the wrong hands, the wizard cast a spell on it so that only a certain kind of person could read the map. Then he tore into 6 pieces and gave it to The Order of Peace for protection”.

“What happened to the Wizard then?”

Ellie leaned forward, “They say he burnt all of his other drafts, his journals and any other documents before killing himself so that no one could replicate his work or his spell”.

Maya was horrified. “That is awful. Why would he do that?”

“I guess he really didn’t want said map to fall into the wrong hands, and because he cast a powerful spell on the map which can only be undone by him. If he was no longer alive, the spell can never be done. The spell conditions can only be fulfilled,” Ellie reasoned.

"What about his descendants? They could break the spell, right?"

Ellie shook her head. "He never married, and he had no other family to be speak of".

“So, what were the conditions of the spell?”

 “Well, the spell condition was that only a certain type of person could read the map. Us, as witches and werewolves,” Ellie gestured to herself and the men, “would only be able to read on side of the map which is the location for the Key. Supposedly, we will not be able to read the back of the map for the Portal”.

“Why not?”

“The Portal side of the map can only be read by a demon”, Ellie paused. 

"In that case, the map can be read by two different people anyway right? One SN, and demon?" She turned to Sam and Andrew. Maya didn't see how that was a problem.

"That's the thing. Apparently the spell is so powerful, if the reader does not fulfill the spell conditions; the spell will activate and erase their memory. So even as they read the map, they will never remember anything."

Ellie continued. “Which means, in order to be able to read both sides of the map, the reader has to be SuperNatural and a Demon; meaning a…”

“Meaning a hybrid,” Maya finished the sentence. That explained all their reactions when Ellie brought up the map, and why she was freaking out.

“Well, that’s the story anyway. No one knows if it’s real for sure,” Sam attempted to reassure her.

The sinking feeling intensified as Maya stared at all of them. Instinctively, she knew the three of them would do anything and everything to protect her. No one except those in her apartment knew who she was, so the chances of the attacks being related to her was very low. However, if this map turned out to be real and if it came to light that she might be able to read it, then Maya didn’t even dare to think of the events that might transpire.

“For all our sake; let’s hope something like that does not exist”.

1 Nephilim: Half Angel, Half Human

2 Cambion: Half Demon, Half Human