Page 68 of Aleko
Pellos stopped in mid-bite on the pear. “Shit. Guess it’s a goodthing you got a healing spell then.”
“It wasn’t a healing spell,” said Alex. “It was a spell for turning a human into a wolf. I didn’t want to tell you until Killian came home, in case he couldn’t find it.”
Pellos blinked at them and then looked down at himself. They all watched as he tested his teeth with his tongue. “Huh. OK. That explains that. Um…” He looked at all of them. “What do I do now?”
“Eat,” said Alex, pushing the lamb closer.
“But,” said Pellos, taking another hunk of meat, “I don’t know… How do I do anything?”
“We’ll have to work on that later,” said Alex, taking a breath. The pack was home and he needed to start behaving like a damn alpha. He needed to make a plan. “First, I will head down to the beach and use the harbor bell to send a message to the Greens.”
“How?” demanded Killian. “I was going to go out in the boat.”
“So was I,” said Sebastian.
“And do what? Drive around in the dark looking for them?” asked Alex. “We’ll put the bell underwater and tap out a message in Morse code. Because Morse code is a useful skill that young people ought to know.” Pellos chuckled around his current bite. “Also, Howell used to be able to send messages to the selkies for miles with that method.”
Pellos put down the meat. “I am so sorry about Howell.”
Alex looked in confusion at Pellos.
“What Lia saw… I’m so sorry. He wanted you to come be with him. He said your pack was stodgy.”
“Theywerestodgy, but I was scared to leave them,” said Alex, feeling an unexpected wave of both relief and regret. It had been hard when Howell split from the pack. Alex had always wondered if things would have been different if he’d gone with his brother. “I don’t understand. What do you mean – what Lia saw?”
“She told me that some objects carry the imprints of the dead and that she could see them. She said it could be overwhelming, but I didn’t understand until I saw her do it. It was like she was living the memory. And then there was Brynn’s ghost. Lia said sometimes ghosts could talk to her, but I think whatever Lia was experiencing must have been more powerful she was used to. We could all talk to Brynn. Luca kept trying to shut Lia up. She saw everything. She saw Seth shoot Sofia. She felt it all. Seth tried to invert the warlock spell to channel all the power into himself. He said he was a descendant of whoever was in the jar.”
“That would be Adda,” said Hudson, coming into the kitchen. His shirt was half untucked and his hair was in complete disarray. Yazmin came in behind him, trying to tuck in her own shirt.
“That’s the guy that put Anuket in the coffin,” said Sebastian.
“Right!” exclaimed Yazmin.
“I’m so lost,” said Killian.
“So thousands of years ago, the first Shifters could change into whatever shape they wanted,” said Hudson. “But they couldn’t have children.”
“That part is unclear,” said Yazmin. “We don’t have any substantiation on the children.”
“It’s implied by the statements on the sarcophagus and the statue of Isis that you saw.”
“There are several potential interpretations,” argued Yazmin.
“Regardless,” said Alex, looking to forestall an academic argument. “What does this have to do with Adda and Anuket?”
“Adda wanted children,” said Hudson. “It’s implied that other Shifter’s like say… Anubis, donated some of their own magic to their children and thus limited their shifting abilities between a mere two forms. But Adda didn’t want to do that. So he stole some of Anuket’s life force and imprisoned her in the sarcophagus. From the spells you can see that the sarcophagusneeded to sit in its original location on top of a ley line to keep powering the spell. When the sarcophagus was moved, that’s when Anuket revived. Luca didn’t read Egyptian, so I doubt he realized that.”
“Hudson, are you trying to tell us that we really are the children of Anubis?” asked Killian.
“It’s possible,” said Yazmin. “But it’s also entirely possible that some of this is creation myth. What we do know, is that Adda stole some of Anuket’s magic and created a child with it. He subsequently died. His child mummified him and then in the 1500s Sir Barnabas, a Crusader knight from Germany found Adda’s tomb and raided it. His experiments used Adda’s remains from the canopic jars and formed the basis of warlock magic.”
“You’re shitting me,” said Sebastian.
“No,” said Yazmin. “And what we saw in Sir Barnabas’s tomb was that Adda’s remains are absolutely fatal to Shifters.”
Pellos was watching Yazmin and eating, but he leaned over to Sebastian. “So, they were in the Crusader knight’s tomb?”
“Yes and apparently, there was a mummy,” said Sebastian, “but not like our mummy. Their’s was black and goopy.”
