Antique books lined three walls from floor to ceiling in the small room that Stefan had order them all to an hour before. A rectangular oak table dominated the centre of the room, its top ink-stained with ancient graffiti scored into it, suggesting that this was a former classroom rather than a meeting room.
“Have there been any fresh sightings at all?” demanded Stefan from his position at the head of the table.
“None, sire,” replied Alessandro, who had been summoned back to the castle from Florence. “There were several dead rats found in the stables yesterday suggesting that Anna had been there in the previous twelve hours.”
“Someone must have seen or sensed something!”
“Not necessarily,” pointed out Meryn calmly. “She’s clever. Very clever. Anna’s an expert at shapeshifting. Plus, she could be changing into any living creature within the castle walls.”
“So how do you propose we find her?” Stefan snapped. “I will not have my family threatened like this or my home infiltrated!”
An awkward silence filled the room. Eventually Alessandro spoke, “We know she is arrogant. We know she is cleaver too. We need to find her weakness. We need to use it to lure her out into the open.”
“How do we find out what her weakness is?” asked Michael, inwardly seeing the logic in the Italian vampire’s words.
“Her weakness is Luna,” stated Jem simply.
“I agree,” added Meryn before her son retracted his words. “I do sense that she wants to teach the child rather than harm her. She’s shown no malice there so far.”
“You are not using our daughter as bait!” raged Trine, her blue eyes blazing with fury.
“I agree,” stated Stefan. “It’s too great a risk. There must be some other way.”
“What about Beth?” suggested Trine.
“No!” shouted Jem and Michael in unison. The two vampires stared at each other for a moment. It was just long enough for Jem to recognise the look in the American vampire’s eyes. He was infatuated with Beth.
“We could be onto something,” began Meryn. “But we need to be extremely careful here. Beth isn’t strong. She’s barely begun to come to terms with what Anna’s done to her. There’s been no time to teach her anything about our ways. She can’t even hunt for herself. She would be totally defenceless and that’s a huge risk to take with my grand daughter’s life.”
“If we can guarantee Beth’s safety, how would this work?” commented Stefan. “How quickly could she be taught to protect herself?”
“Stefan,” snapped Meryn, “Teaching Beth will take time. Time we don’t have here.”
“Bubbles,” said Jem randomly.
All of them turned to stare at him.
“Explain,” ordered Meryn, not immediately grasping where her son was going with this train of thought.
“Beth hasn’t had time to learn anything about magic but Luna has,” continued Jem, scarcely believing he was about to voice is mad idea. “We use them both to lure her out. Luna has been learning to create bubbles. If we teach her to catch things that she wants or likes in the bubbles she makes then she could catch Anna for us. Well, catch her long enough for some of us to disable her with stronger magic.”
“We could throw a second impenetrable bubble around the first one,” said Meryn. “Jem, we could adapt the spell we used to contain her in her mausoleum.”
“That idea might just be crazy enough to work,” observed Michael. “I vote we give it a try.”
“No!” yelled Trine angrily. “You are not using my daughters in that way. It is far too dangerous.”
Hearing Trine refer to Beth as her daughter made Jem’s heart swell with pride.
“If we were all to work together nearby, we could step in at any moment to rescue our daughters,” Jem pointed out.
“Can Luna even create a bubble yet?”
“She can,” answered Meryn. “I vote we give this plan a try. It’s crazy enough to work. Anna won’t be expecting us to lure her in with play.”
“I agree,” said Alessandro, nodding his agreement for good measure.
“It’s so damn crazy it could work,” added Michael. “I vote we give it a try.”
“Same,” said Jem.
“It could have the element of surprise in its favour,” conceded Stefan reluctantly. “I vote that we try it but it needs to be strictly controlled. There needs to be some of you nearby to intervene.”
“I can disguise them,” assured Meryn, her mind already thinking ahead to the spells and ingredients that she would need.
“That’s decided then,” stated Stefan in a tone that left no room for debate. “When do we want to execute this plan?”
“How quickly can Luna learn to catch things in a bubble?” asked Michael. “It all hinges on that.”
“Give us three days,” replied Meryn, confident in her grand daughter’s ability to learn. “Stefan, can you create a play area in the kitchen courtyard? We need to set a scene that looks natural. Beth could innocently take Luna out to play for an hour or two. That way we don’t need to tell her and risk frightening her. The poor girl is terrified of Anna.”
“Leave that with me,” said Stefan.
Teaching Luna how to master the bubble spell proved easier than any of them could have dared to hope. Within an hour, she was sending bubbles soaring all around Meryn’s study then giggling when they burst. Using small sweets at first, Meryn then taught her how to trap something inside the bubble and then how to float the bubble to another person to catch. Gradually they increased the size of the object being placed inside until eventually on the morning of the third day, Luna succeeded in surrounding Jem with an iridescent bubble.
After the little girl was asleep at night, Meryn worked with Jem, Trine, Michael, and Alessandro, teaching them how to work together swiftly to create an impenetrable bubble. Fundamentally, it was the same spell as she had cast with Jem to trap the dark angel in her woodland mausoleum, only this time the entire shield was woven about ground. It took teamwork and precision to create a secure enough bubble prison that they hoped and prayed would hold long enough for Alessandro to bind himself to ger again. Once he was bound to her, the plan was to return Anna to Level Zero beneath the castle.
Convincing Beth to take her little half-sister outside for an hour to play proved to be more challenging than Jem had anticipated. His older daughter was still nervous about being in the castle and looked close to tears when he first suggested the excursion. Despite still being uncomfortable with using her daughters as bait, it was Trine who succeeded in convincing Beth to help by looking after Luna for an hour.
“I’ll take you both downstairs,” Trine began. “Don’t want you getting lost in the castle.”
“Tas- Gwynn got me a surprise,” piped up Luna excitedly. “It’s an outside surprise.”
“Yes it is,” agreed Trine warmly. “Why don’t we take Beth with us to find out what it is?”
“Please, Beth! Please!” pleaded the little girl, grabbing her sister’s hands.
“Ok. I know when I’m beaten,” Beth sighed wearily. “I give in. Let’s go and see what your surprise is, Moonbeam.”
“We’ll all go,” suggested Jem, lifting Luns up into his arms.
“I’ll go and find Meryn. See if she wants to come too,” suggested Trine calmly.
As Jem had hoped, the kitchen courtyard was in the shade as the sun had begun to set for the day. In the centre stood an impressive wooden play set with a swing, a slide, and a climbing wall as well as a cubby for Luna to hide in. Thoughtfully Stefan had laid a rubber mat under it and set up a picnic bench beside it. A veritable feast was laid out on the table.
“WOW!” shrieked Luna when she saw it all. “For me?”
“All for you,” replied Jem lowering her to the ground. “Tas-Gwynn heard how hard you had worked on your bubbles. This is your reward for being a clever girl.”
“I love it!” declared his young daughter before running off towards her new play set.
Both Jem and Beth took a seat at the table and watched Luna easily climb the ladder to the top of the slide then squeal with delight as she slid down.
“Oh, to be that age again,” sighed Beth wistfully as she accepted a glass of lemonade from her father.
“Doesn’t seem that long since you were that age,” mused Jem remembering how Beth had looked at Luna’s age.
“A lifetime or two ago…”
They sat watching Luna play for a few minutes. Out of the corner of his eye, Jem saw shimmers of magic in the shadows as the others took up their positions around the courtyard. He couldn’t sense Anna nearby but he still felt confident that if he left his daughters alone for a few minutes that she would make an appearance. A large part of him, his paternal instinct, felt guilty for exposing Beth to this without her consent but he also knew that she would never have agreed to come outside if she had suspected that Anna would appear.
“Do you think Meryn could teach me some magic?” Beth asked, disturbing his daydream.
“For sure,” he replied. “I think she’s keen to train you to become a healer too.”
“I’d like that,” said Beth quietly. “Would that mean that I would need to stay here when you leave?”
“Most likely,” nodded Jem. “Would that be Ok with you? You don’t need to stay if you don’t want to.”
“I think I’d like to,” revealed Beth hesitantly. “There’ something about here… I don’t know what it is. Feels more natural to be here than at home.”
“Would it have something to do with a certain American?” quizzed Jem playfully.
Beth blushed and remained silent.
“He’ll be happy if you decide to stay,” laughed Jem getting to his feet. “Can you watch Luna for a few minutes? I want to go and see where Trine and my mother have got to. They should have been here by now.”
“Ok. Don’t be too long.”
“I won’t be.”
From his position in the shadows on the far side of the courtyard, Jem watched and waited in silence. Suddenly the whole scheme seemed insane. How could his young daughter capture Anna when all the adult vampires had failed on more than one occasion? He watched Beth get up from her seat to go and push her little sister on the swing. It warmed his heart to see his daughters getting to know one another. Knowing that his sons would never share in this world was a bittersweet thought.
Suddenly his sixth sense twitched. A large crow had flown down onto the edge of the picnic table. The air around the bird shimmered for a split second before he saw Anna sitting on the chair that Beth had vacated.
“Anna!” cried Luna excitedly. “You came back!”
Seeing the dark angel, Beth froze with fear.
The swing came to a stop. Luna jumped off and ran towards the dark angel.
“I missed you,” declared Luna as she flung herself into Anna’s lap.
“I’ve missed you too, moonbeam,” said Anna. “You’ve grown.”
“I learned new magic,” boasted Luna proudly. “Mamm-wynn showed me.”
Before Anna could react, the little girl had spun her bubble spell encasing her in a delicate sphere of magic. Without hesitation, the five vampires who were hidden around the courtyard added their impenetrable bubble spell to Luna’s, creating a second layer around the dark angel. Stepping out of the shadows, Alessandro cast a second spell that shrunk the entire sphere and bound it to him.
Inside the dark angel screamed but no one heard her through the thick layers of intricate magic.
Coral McCallum 