Volume 1.29: Before The Dawn

Type: Series

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Rating: M

Characters:  Ava, Cadence, Luca
Word Count: 805

Glossary: 

Warning: coarse language

Somehow I know that we can't wake again from this dream

It's not real, but it's ours

Maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away

We'll be lost before the dawn

Before the Dawn-Evanescence

Cadence laughed, the sound echoed around the almost empty room, bouncing off the walls. She waited for the punch line, waited for Luca to tell her he was joking, or to at least confirm she'd heard him wrong.

But his denials never came; the deadpan look never left his eyes either.

"You're serious?" She shook her head, unable to wrap her head around his announcement.

"Warrick is alive and well. Maybe not so well, but he's hanging in there," Luca replied.

She didn't resist when he pulled her close to him and massaged her temples, slowly driving away the beginnings of a migraine.

"How? I don't understand? It's been twenty one years. He's human; he couldn't have survived for so long? Are you sure he's alive? How do you know this?" Her questions were rapid and unrelenting. Her mind was equally on overdrive, running at a million miles per hour.

"The cellar is equipped with basic amenities, but they aren't adequate for a human. Warrick would have died in a couple of weeks from hunger, so Julian turned him to prolong his life," Luca cleared up some of her confusion as he led her to the bed and sat her down, he could tell she was about to pass out from shock.

"So all this time, all these years he was alive. He was so close, and you never told me? Why? Why didn't you tell me?" Her confusion turned to anger very quickly.

Suddenly he was the enemy, the monster who'd knowingly kept her away from her father; he was just as bad as Sonja and her coven for keeping this major revelation from her.

Luca, having had plenty of years to prepare himself for this talk, remained calm and detached. He refused to be drawn into a screaming match with her, refused to raise his voice at her too even when it seemed like she was doing her damnedest to drive him over the edge with her irrational accusations.

"Come on, Cade, you know me better than that. I'm not the enemy; I'm on your team. Always. Don't ever forget that."   He lifted her chin and caressed her cheek with so much tenderness she almost forgot why she was angry with him.

"Until a few weeks ago we didn't think we could pull this off. I didn't want to raise your hopes only to break your heart.  I was also waiting for Sonja to come clean about Warrick. I didn't want you to hear it from me. It would have seemed like I was playing dirty, trying to paint a bad picture of your coven. But more importantly I wanted you to come to me on your own terms,” he explained.

Cadence couldn't find fault with his reasons, they were valid.  But she didn't agree with some of it.  Between him and Sonja, he'd seemed like the lesser of two evils, and that's what had made up her mind in the end. Not free will.

"I have to go," she abruptly got on her feet and left the room. She half expected him to stop her, and she was oddly relieved when he didn't.

Dusk was her favorite time of day.

She liked those quiet moments when the world seemed to slow down, getting ready to welcome the evening.

The colors, especially the sun setting on the horizon, looked prettier, the sounds were much gentler too.

But today, as she blindly made her way home, the beauty of the approaching night was lost to her. Her mind was spinning, there was so much to process, so much to think about. When she came to Luca's house she didn't expect to leave with so many new revelations.

She was so lost in thought she didn't notice Ava, with a crazy, almost enraged look in her eyes, sneak out of the thicket and follow her.

The sudden movement behind her alerted her she wasn’t alone. She turned around just in time to see the hunter reach behind her and pull out her handgun, the same one enchanted by Luann.

"Ava what are you doing?" She asked shrilly. She wanted to fight and defend herself somehow, but she couldn't move. She was suddenly paralyzed by fear, numbed by everything she'd just learned from Luca.

"You really should have listened and stayed away from the blood sucker," the hunter's face twisted into a sick smile as she raised the gun and aimed it straight at her.

“Put the gun down, Ava,” Cadence begged, all the while mentally willing herself to transform.

For Luca who was just seconds away from Cadence, the sound of a gun going off was deafening.

Disbelief, shock,  rage, played on his face when he finally reached the chaos.

With a loud, enraged howl he fell to the ground and wept for wounded cat before him...

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Note: for anyone confused about Cadence transforming: for the purpose of TF witches can take on their spectral form when the need arises. This was shown in Volume 1.9: Marked, where Rachel interacts with Rudi while he's in wolf form.