'Come in! Don't stand idle by the door.'
The small figure before Alexis looked the same physically, but there was an essence around her seemed to give off a sense of something older. She pulsed with magic and understanding. As their gazes met, Alex felt bare, stripped and exposed. She shivered. The lady inclined her head and motioned at Adam who closed the door with a gentle push.
'I'm sorry, I'm not usual so forceful when I read someone but you have me intrigued, its not every day one runs into a concealer.'
Alex took a steadying breathe, 'But our meeting isn't an accident is it? You knew I would come.'
She smirked, 'I knew.'
Alex strolled around the office, she shoved the dagger into her back pocket and rubbed her wrist. The room was adequately decorated with items of Archaic and Gothic descent. In the corner a computer sat, so out of place it looked comical. With her back to the door and her front to her present company Alex spoke clearly.
'I find it ironic that in a cathedral is where I can feel a condensed presence of magic.'
The lady looked taken back. 'I hide my ability well.'
'The more you conceal, the more it calls to me.' Alex frowned at the truth in her words.
'You would name me then.' The lady's pitch rose, a question formed as a statement.
Alex observed for a moment, her posture, her face, her eyes. She was old. Someone of power that had long successfully been hidden. The itching feeling in her arms and feet begged for her to utter the words and let the burden of concealing her name be revealed. She closed her eyes and focused. The information maybe useful at a better moment.
'Not yet.' The answer was but a whisper.
At her answer, the temperature in the room became milder. 'I want this to be over, I want to return to some normality that was my life, but the prospect is...something slipping away from me.'
'Did Alistair Wentworth send you on this mission? This procurement of the black stone?' The lady asked, her voice gentle.
'Yes.'
'Was a choice freely made or was a bargain struck?'
Alexis smiled. 'A bargain was made, I cannot escape it. I can almost see the reasoning on your lips but unfortunately it was sealed with my blood.'
'Indeed.'
It was Adam that spoke then, his voice was a rumble against the stone walls.
'What difference does it make sealing with blood or your word?' Alex answered him, 'Giving my word and breaking it would be something only to affect me. When a bargain is sealed with blood it has to be honoured. I'm bound to Alistair to keep my promise of finding the stone. It can be dissolved by Alistair or by death.'
Adam seemed to contemplate this for a moment, he nodded once and turned back to the room's other occupant.
Alex cleared her throat 'I don't mean to be rude, well actually I do, What do you want?'
The lady laughed lightly, 'Miss Martinez, Alexis, It is within both our interests that Alistair Wentworth does not get his grubby hands on that stone.'
'So everyone seems inclined to tell me. Still vocalising the reasons of why he shouldn't seems to elude people.'
Alex looked to Adam, his face was blank betraying no sign of emotion or interest. How many years it must take to perfect a look. Alex recalled a memory sharply of playing poker with her brother and him reading her every emotion. She frowned. Paul. She missed him.
'Fine, truth between us then.' The lady motioned to a chair and took her own place behind the desk taking up the majority of the space in the room.
When both were seated, Adam moved to stand at the back of the lady's chair. They looked a formidable pair stood together.
'So what shall I call you?' Alexis asked plainly.
'For many years I have been Isabella.'
'Isabella.'
'The creature Alistair Wentworth had been searching for the stone for many years, we have kept track of his intentions intently.'
'What does he want with it?'
'In the beginning I thought his purpose was just greed, he has collected many things since his conversion to vampirism. I'm sure you have met his silent warrior and the changer.'
'The changer? You mean Diana?' Alexis leaned forward.
'Indeed, one who can change her face to an angel or a devil. Although, the latter is more closer to her true nature.'
'I read about the stone as a child, forged in the fires of hell and taken from its realm to this realm.'
'All of it is true. No doubt you have already read about the Mad Duke or lord, who had it in his possession?' Isabella stretched back into her chair. Alex nodded in response.
Isabella continued, 'He experimented with the stone constantly, crumbling, breaking it into pieces adding it to potions and concoctions. In the end his action drove him to madness, that much is true. What is also linked to his story is lycanthropy.'
Alex frowned, 'In some of the notes and texts stored in the Magicians vaults it states as much, some sightings of him as well. How much is true is well...questionable.'
Isabella stared down and clasped her hands, 'Not really questionable.'
'Pardon me?'
'The Duke was my father.'
* 'I shouldn't have let her go in there alone' Jensen paced the church, he was anxious, tense.
'She'll be fine Lewis' Claude was observing his surroundings intently.
'You don't know that!' Jensen fumed, his pace increased as he palmed a dagger.
'Well actually I do' Claude answered with a chuckle.
Jensen spun on him, 'Did you see her face?'
Claude stepped forward towards him and gripped his shoulder. Jensen could feel a well of emotions spinning around inside him. His powers felt fresh and raw, more alert than they had ever been. He viewed the door Alexis had exited through and itched to follow.
'You love her?' Claude asked quietly, aware of the observers surrounding them .
'Yes. She is....' Jensen threw back his head and drew in a breathe, he shouted to the ceiling with his frustration and oppression. The nights he had spent in that basement plotting and planning, deducing his actions of when he would be finally free and now, the angel who had saved him, he'd let walk away. Not before he'd hurt her. Maybe he was more like his brother than he thought.
That thought, brought forward memories of his past. He'd never been close to his brother. Born a few years after his brother, Jensen could never quite bridge the gap in age or indifference between them. He was too young or too boring or just too different.
It had been the rumours at school that had first alerted Jensen to his family secrets. The students, the wizards and teachers all had their own theories and didn't mind making comments, whether Jensen was in the room or not.
On completing his fifth year of magical training, of the seven required to be declared a qualified wizard, he had spoken to his father of his confusion. Of the seeming inability for him and Alistair to have a normal brother to brother relationship. The type of relationship he had watched his brother share with George Martinez.
His father Henry had been a stern man, honesty but stern. He had encouraged Jensen, and the one thing they had bonded over had been hand to hand combat, the ability to use weapons and learn defensive skills. His father had told him once 'Some of our kind us magic for everything, they become complacent, idle and forget that learning defensive skills could added to their own ability. You need strength of body and strength of mind will follow.'
When Jensen had been competing in dirty, dingy, flea bitten holes and worn out gyms, surrounded by demons, angels and his own kind, that lesson had helped him well. He knew that his brother resented him, he thought fighting had aided Alistair in some way and would help overcome that resentment. The real lesson had been learnt harshly much later. When Taran had burnt him, stretched him, blasted him with fire, magic and everything else he could muster and his brother had watched, he finally knew.
Alistair hated him because they didn't share the same father.
Jensen's seemingly endless days spent in that dark hole of a basement had cleared his mind, and the childish notion of ever having a relationship with his brother. Alistair had taken Alex because she was a link to George. A link that had been severed of his own doing, many years before.
When he had rebelled, all those years previous and tried to overthrow the elders, Alistair had become crazed with power, with the need for it. Jensen had been disbelieving when Marianne and George had tried to explain the need for him to be stopped. The final act before his disappearance, when he had arranged attacks of magical families from the north, had opened Jensen's eyes and he stepped away from his brother and in doing so was branded a traitor. Alistair had proceeded to drug him and drain some of his power by taking blood. When Jensen awoke, the brand of his brother's followers was tattooed on his wrist. Alistair had left a note with three words. 'So you remember.'
When his brother had finally reached out to him years later, pleading to know him. Jensen had been overcome by the naivety of the need for family and his brother after his parents' death. He had soon met Claudia and then within a year he was tied to his brother, lost his wife and he himself was...lost.
Lost until a few days ago, when a beautiful young woman had literally fallen into his lap and given him back his sanity and his freedom at a cost to herself. That was something that was in the forefront of his mind at this moment as he and Alex were separated. The fear of it surprised him the most, that was the strangest of feelings.
His abilities as a Mage had grown over the years, he'd excelled from the rank of wizard to Mage in a few short years. Along the way he had experimented and learned many things.
Would Alex turn away from him if she the extent of his tampering into the dark arts? Was it a risk he was willing to take?
