Chapter 80 Ch. 50
Ethan found himself standing within the walls of his father's archives for the hundredth time this week. He leaned against a shelf, sipping slowly on a glass of blood while feeling disgusted with the taste.
Since Zara, nothing ever appealed to him.
He dropped the glass on a nearby table and walked through the rows of scrolls and books, the scent of dust lingering sharply in the air, tingling his nose.
Every day since that day, he would come here, comb each scroll and book, from shelf to shelf, reading every intricate detail about his kind. He needed to know what this weird feeling in his chest was, why staying away from her blood was driving him mad, and why compulsion would not work on him.
He pulled out a new book, continuing from where he had stopped last.
A paper slid out, floating softly to the ground.
He made a move to squat—to pick it up, but just like almost every day since that day, he felt himself levitating. His shoes no longer touched the cold stone floor. He floated a hand's breadth in the air, and the edges of his coat brushed against the shelf behind him.
"Not again," he muttered, reaching for the shelf to pull himself down. His fingers caught the wood, but the pull did nothing to make him stop floating. He drifted higher until his shoulder hit a hanging lamp and set it swaying. Dust rained down in thin strands.
He pressed both palms flat against the shelf, pushing until his arms trembled, but still his body refused to sink. He drew a slow breath and held it, trying to will the floor closer. The movement eased, then stopped, and he lowered an inch at a time until his boots found the stone again.
His chest moved fast as he stood there, both hands gripping the shelf. He had not flown in centuries. No one in the clan had. That gift was lost long ago.
The thin paper he had dropped still lay on the floor, curled at the edges. He bent and picked it up, brushing away dust. It was not a loose note but a page torn from a book. The ink was faded and brown.
He turned it over. A half-written word was there, and he realized it was part of a title that marked the corner. He glanced at the shelf and found another book that sat there with a frayed spine and no title on the edge.
Ethan slid it free and set it on the table. The leather cover cracked under his touch. He opened it, the hinges creaking, and laid the torn page on its spot near the back. It fit the missing edge.
He traced the lines with one finger. The language was old but not lost to him. He read slowly, his eyes moving over the cramped hand. The book talked about the sky clans, the first to fly, the fall of their gifts when the bloodlines thinned. There were notes of rituals, old wars, and a single phrase repeated in darker ink: Blood catalyst.
Those were the hybrid creatures that had caused clans to lose power all in the name of bringing balance to the world. The vampire kind was far too powerful, so they needed to keep them in check by limiting their abilities.
But it had never been about limiting abilities.
It had always been because they wanted to take over. And then there was the war that wiped them out, fifteen hundred years ago.
He turned another page, and there was a paper there, not belonging to this book. His father's handwriting stared back at him, making him swallow hard.
It told of a young girl found years ago, a hybrid unlike any before. The first catalyst to be seen in years. He had captured her from The Veiled, but then she ran. When he found her again, it was on the subway, but she was pregnant.
His father's plan was to take her away. Keep her for himself. The other papers in the book showed an abduction plan, a plan to find out where she lived, and who the baby was for, but then she disappeared so suddenly, and he never knew whether the child survived or not.
He checked the date.
The papers were seventeen years old.
Ethan sat back, the wooden chair creaking under him. Seventeen years. Zara was seventeen.
He rubbed his forehead and looked again at the page. Could that woman be her mother? Could Zara be what the book called a catalyst? Was that why her blood tasted different? Was that why it healed him? Was that why he was suddenly finding new abilities?
The thought made his stomach tighten. If others learned what he now guessed, every old clan would come for her. His father was dangerous enough.
He closed the book but left the page marked. His hand hovered over the cover for a long moment before he pushed it aside and stood.
A faint sound came from the far end of the aisle. Ethan turned and saw a shadow between the tall shelves. His uncle stepped into the dim light, his coat brushing the dust from the books as he moved.
"Ethan," his uncle said. "I did not expect to find you here."
"Could say the same," Ethan said, sliding the chair back and resting his hand on the table. He hoped his uncle had not seen him floating earlier. "I didn't think you'd be back after what my father did."
His uncle ignored the statement and glanced at the book. "Research?"
"Something like that," Ethan said, keeping his voice even. He walked to the next shelf and ran his hand along the spines, pretending to read the faded titles. "You?"
"Curiosity," his uncle said, stepping closer. "Why are you researching?"
"Just felt like it."
"I'm here to research the only way to bring Ivanna back."
"Which is?" Ethan asked.
"Nothing important." His uncle's eyes moved to the table where the ancient book lay half-open. "Find anything useful?"
"Nothing worth a story," Ethan said, closing the gap between them with a slow step. He kept his shoulders loose, though his mind raced.
The moment his uncle turned, he reached for the torn page, folded it once, and slipped it into his coat pocket. The rest of the book he pushed back onto the shelf, careful to hide the gap where the page had been. His uncle turned to face him just then, assessing him slowly.
"What? Why are you staring?"
"Nothing," Dylan sighed. "You should go to bed."
Ethan nodded. "You took her from the morgue, right? To try and bring her back?"
"I have help from someone indebted to me," Dylan sighed. "Her eyes fluttered open, but that's that. If I don't find what I'm looking for..."
Ethan nodded, swallowing hard as he noticed his uncle's eyes were on his pocket. "I should get going, uncle."
"You should."
++++
Dylan found the loose page in Ethan's coat pocket before he let himself believe the thought.
He had wondered if Ethan cared about any of it. Why was he so interested in a Blood Catalyst? The boy was nothing like his father, so he knew for a fact that the last thing Ethan was interested in was getting powers or having a catalyst under his control. But he had been in the archives, reading, and he had taken something from a book.
So for only a few days, he shadowed Ethan's every movement from a distance, and it did not take him up to two days to know Ethan was following Zara. Yes, he was aware of the feelings Ethan had, but there seemed to be some other reason why Ethan was always with her, always looking over her shoulder.
And the worst part: the girl was clueless.
Maybe it was because Ethan knew his father would kill the girl.
By the third day, he had snuck again into Lorenzo's compound and seen Ethan in the yard under the full moon, trying to contain his levitation. Levitation was the first step to flying, and no one had done that in centuries past. Their powers were long gone... along with the catalyst.
But that sight was enough to give Dylan a flicker of hope. It had to be one of two things:
Ethan had somehow found a way to regain the abilities and was testing it out, or he had access to a Catalyst. Against his better judgment, he found himself in Ethan's room, checking his coat for what he took from the library archives. He smoothed the fabric and found the small seam where pages torn out of a book were kept. He had pulled it free and read the name at the top of the torn line.
He spent the next day in the library and matched the letters to names in the old books, flipping through journals that smelled old and safe and useful. He copied dates and names into a notebook, drawing lines between them until the dots connected. He read about blood catalysts until the term stopped sounding like a myth and began to feel like a fact. He read the account of a woman seventeen years ago who had carried a child and disappeared. Then, there was a scroll called "The Last Known Catalyst," the one who could awaken what was lost or end it then for good. He wrote the year in the margin.
His nephew knew. And somehow, his nephew had access to this Catalyst because how else could he be slowly awakening a power that was long lost?
His mind had flickered to Zara the moment that thought slipped into his mind, and soon, he found himself checking the texts on Ethan's phone next, though he felt guilty for doing it. He told himself the guilt did not matter when Ivanna's life was at stake.
And then he knew.
He connected pieces of a half-formed story through the texts he found.
She had been attacked, all too randomly, and Ethan had been there to protect her. Now he was around her in case it happened again. Or at least that was what Ethan had told her over text. But he knew Ethan was protecting her because he knew what she was.
He thought of the way Ethan had lifted from the ground. He had to have drunk from Zara's blood for that to happen, because Zara did not seem to know what she was, or the spells she could use to channel the powers that lay dormant in her.
Now, he sat at his kitchen table, hands shaking as he made a list and he crossed things off until the list read like a plan: find Zara, speak to her, offer payment if she would give a small sample of her blood, keep it safe, keep it secret. He looked at and marked the date of the regional preliminaries on his calendar. It was tomorrow.
He would go to the race, he would watch from the stands, he would wait, and then he would speak.
He knew he would have to speak to her quietly, to offer a reason she would accept, so he wrote the words he would say and then tore the paper to throw it away when it felt like rehearsing a theft. He told himself the money would be enough if she agreed, but he also knew the kind of men who would not offer money the gentle way he planned. He thought of them as a possibility he could not ignore, and his mouth tasted of iron again.
He had to tell Ethan he knew, but only after he got the blood.
So they would both devise a plan to keep her safe in case her secret got out.
But how would he start?
Hey Ethan, so I've been stalking you and I know your girl's secret?
Dylan sighed and hit his head on the table repeatedly.