The Vesper Creed

Chapter 19

Aizere's Point of View

The endless, twisting white corridor felt like a physical weight pressing against my chest. Every time I reached for a door handle, the numbers would melt and shift into those jagged, glowing symbols that felt like they were screaming in a language I couldn't understand.

The smell of damp earth and rotting leaves was so thick I could taste it, a constant reminder of the mountain and the death that followed me from it.

"It's not real, Aizere! Stop!" Ezrain's voice cut through the fog in my mind, sharp and cold as a blade.

He moved with a speed that blurred my vision, his hands catching my shoulders and spinning me around to face him. His silver eyes were intense, boring into mine with a focused power that forced the room to stop spinning. "Look at me. This isn't the hospital. This is a nightmare they've draped over your eyes. If you keep running, you're just feeding the illusion with your own terror."

"But I can see the blood on the walls! I can hear him calling for me!" I cried, my voice cracking as I struggled against his grip.

"That is exactly what they want," Niklaus said, stepping up behind me. His presence was like a wall of iron. "They are using the Anchor in your blood to build this maze. Close your eyes. Stop looking at the shadows and start looking at the truth. We are standing in a hallway of glass and steel, not a tomb."

I squeezed my eyes shut, digging my fingernails into my palms until I felt the sting of pain. I focused on the coldness of Ezrain's touch and the steady, rhythmic humming of the hospital's actual electrical system hidden beneath the magical static. I whispered to myself that the walls were straight, the floor was solid, and the air was clean. I imagined the dark veil over my sight tearing like old, burnt silk.

When I opened my eyes, the world snapped back into a brutal, sharp reality.

The shifting maze was gone. We were standing in a quiet, brightly lit corridor on the third floor of the West Wing. There were no hooded figures, no liquid floors—just the soft beep of heart monitors and the sterile scent of bleach. Directly in front of us was the heavy wooden door to Room 312.

We pushed inside, and my heart shattered.

My father was lying there, looking smaller than I had ever seen him. A thick white bandage was wrapped around his head, and his face was a mosaic of deep purple bruises and angry red cuts. He was hooked up to a web of tubes and wires, the rhythmic hiss-click of the ventilator the only thing filling the silence. The Sheriff of Caxwell, the man who had taught me how to ride a bike and how to be brave, looked like a broken doll.

"He's stable, but the internal damage is catastrophic," Victoria said. She moved to the side of the bed, her eyes scanning the monitors with a cold, professional gaze. She looked at me, her expression softening with a flicker of genuine pity. "Aizere, we cannot let him keep these memories. If he wakes up knowing that warlocks and monsters are real, he becomes a permanent target. Hades will use him as a pawn until there is nothing left of him."

"What do we have to do?" I whispered, reaching out to touch his hand. It was so cold.

"We heal his body, and then we rewrite his mind," Victoria explained, her voice dropping to a low, hypnotic tone. "We will make him believe you left for Georgia tonight to finish your studies. We will plant the memory of a tearful goodbye at the station. It is the only way he can live a long, quiet life while you are behind the walls of the Institution."

I looked at my dad, a sob catching in my throat. The thought of him forgetting I was even in this town, forgetting that I had come back to him, hurt more than any dark magic. But I knew the truth. As long as he remembered me, he was in danger. "Do it," I choked out. "Save him."

Victoria leaned over the bed. As my father's eyes fluttered open in a daze of pain and medication, she caught his gaze. Her eyes seemed to glow with a soft, pulsing light. Compulsion. Without vervain to protect him, his mind was a blank slate for her to write upon.

"Sleep," she whispered, her voice like velvet. "You remember the accident, a patch of black ice on a dark road. But you remember Aizere being safe. You remember hugging her goodbye before the crash. She is in Georgia now, studying for her future. You are proud of her. You are at peace."

My father's eyes glazed over, his pupils dilating as the new memories took root. A small, faint smile touched his lips, and his head rolled back onto the pillow as he fell into a deep, natural sleep.

Then, Ezrain stepped forward. Without a word, he drew a small silver dagger from his jacket and made a quick, clean slice across his palm. I watched, breathless, as he held his hand over my father's parted lips.

The dark, ancient blood of a vampire fell, drop by drop. It was the ultimate medicine. Almost instantly, I watched the deep bruises on my father's cheeks begin to fade. The monitors began to beep with a stronger, steadier rhythm. The broken bones beneath his skin knit themselves back together with sickeningly loud cracks, and the color returned to his pale face.

"It's done," Ezrain said, his own wound closing in a second. "He will wake up tomorrow morning a healthy man who thinks his daughter is hundreds of miles away."

I leaned down, pressing a final, lingering kiss to my father's forehead. The scent of his aftershave mixed with the hospital air, a memory I wanted to burn into my brain forever. "I love you, Dad," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"Aizere, we have to move," Niklaus urged, his hand on the door handle. "The Council's enforcers will be at the perimeter of the hospital any second. We are officially fugitives of the Institution."

I turned away from the bed, my heart feeling like it had been turned to stone. I followed the four pillars out of the room and back into the shadows of the night, leaving behind the only life I had ever known to become the weapon I was born to be.