The castle was ancient, that much was obvious.

  But it wasn’t dark stone, or eerie paintings, or dreadful tapestry depicting death, or even the silver weapons that hung on the walls that made Wesley uneasy. It was the magick he could feel coursing through the place. Old and…foreign, it roved through the very bones of the place.

  Even the Morningstar Estate had not had such a thing.

  It was only easy for him to put it out of his mind because he was so distracted. Distracted by his new body. The bounce he felt in his step. The ease and…fluidity of his motions.

  It frightened him. The whole thing did. He just hoped the paralyzing fear did not strike him. Or that this transformation did not sicken him further. He could not afford it.

  Esther led them by candlelight through the corridors and up to the first floor. She’d kept him in the basement, it seemed. At least there had been a window, he mused.

  It took his eyes a long moment to adjust when they finally reached the room, its tall windows blinded him, and the smell of old, leather-bound books overwhelmed him. The rows and stacks of books. The wooden figurines of carved animals high on the shelves. He stumbled into a bookcase and Cece caught him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He is acclimating to his new senses,” Esther said, not an ounce of compassion in her tone. “He will be fine.”

  Cece’s hands did not move but held study on his chest and shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” I croaked out, trying to pull myself up.

  “Get him some water,” Cece said.

  He was surprised to find a cup pushed into my hands a second later, as if Esther had already thought of it.

  Though he wasn’t parched, he still drank and was able to find his feet after about a minute.

  “Now,” Esther said, as if nothing had happened. “This is the entirety of my father’s collection. What, exactly, are we looking for?”

  “We need to find a spell that will allow me to take magick from one thing to track it on another,” Wesley explained. He found a chair and fell into it. “It’ll have to be different from a traditional tracking spell. We’ll need a physical object that will guide us.”

  Cece moved around the room, looking at the books, drawing her finger along the spines. “Then I will carve runes into it so it takes us to a body, not an object.”

  “What if he is dead?” Esther asked.

  Wesley glanced at Cece, who’d paused at the question. “He likely is,” Wesley said.

  “Then we’ll have to wake him. Merlin isn’t some mortal being, he is of Avalon, trapped, so to speak, in our world. We’ll wake him.”

  Esther stared at him, crossing her arms over her black tunic. “You’re guessing.”

  “Of course, I’m bloody guessing,” he snapped. “We’re in uncharted waters here.”

  They fell into a lulled silence where the only sound was Cece flipping through pages. After about five minutes of thought, Wesley rose to find books too. Then eventually Esther did too. It became like a study hall, and he felt he was back at the Academy, pouring over books before exams.

  Ah, he mused. What a simpler time it had been.

  Minutes became hours and soon the sun was setting, and candles were lit around them. Wesley didn’t notice who lit them. He’d barely noticed anything other than the accounts he was ready. It was Old Magic, what these books spoke of. Some recounted the times before wands and spells even, when magic was purely a form of primal expression. When a scream could set fire to a tree, or a thorough bashing of fresh dough could bake it to bread in seconds.

  Wesley felt closer to that time of chaos and uncertainty now more than any other time in his life. It was violent, at the whims of the so-called Fates. His own body was not his anymore. First it had been the Nocturne’s, then tainted too by a Basilisk. Now, a werewolf. How much more could he take? His luck would run out at some point, if he didn’t consider it gone already.

  In the dark hours of the night, when Wesley’s eyes had glazed over and his body felt like a pile of wet rags, his mind brought him images of his mother’s death, and the crouching, rearing black figure that had been there too.

  It was like a waking nightmare, to relive it again and again. A masochist he wasn’t, but his curiosity and fury drove him to examine each part of it. He needed to know what this creature was. Why it had appeared in the study. What it had wanted.

  Dark spirits were nothing new. But this thing had been…different. Corporeal almost, as if dragged from a shadow and given a silky body.

  Had it been summoned? If so, by whom?

  “You need to sleep,” a voice said, snapping him back to reality.

  “I’m fine,” he growled.

  Cece looked over the edge of the tome she was reading to raise her eyebrows at him. “You have read a word in about an hour.”

  “I’m fine,” he said again.

  “Your body is changing,” she pushed. “It needs rest.”

  “When we’ve figured this out,” he said.

  “It is not sleep that clouds his mind,” came Esther’s voice from the corner of the room. She had tucked herself into a chair facing the window. “It is something else.”

  Wesley balked at her words. She saw more than he thought. Or perhaps cared to see more than he thought.

  Cece narrowed her eyes at him. “Is she right?”

  He nodded.

  “What is it? Tell us.”

  Reluctantly, and with great care, he recounted what he’d seen in the Nocturne’s mind. They listened without interruption and when he finished, neither spoke for a long moment.

  “So,” Cece began. “You’re wondering if it was real. And,” she said loudly, cutting his answer off, “if it was the Nocturne who summoned it, or your father?”

  Well, she had put it rather succinctly, hadn’t she. Wesley had not even wanted to think about the question.

  “If your father had done this, then he had a damn good reason,” Cece said.

  Wesley snorted. “Really? The Nocturne shows up to his house looking for the hilt and he just has this creature at his beckon call?”

  “Why don’t you just ask him when you see him. He’ll be straight with you,” she said.

  If he’s still alive, Wesley thought.

  “It could have been an old trap,” Esther offered. “Prepared by someone long before him. We have many here put in place by my grandfathers. The Nocturne could have sprung it.”

  Wesley considered the possibility but didn’t like it.

  “Or the Nocturne summoned it and cared little for the destruction it would cause. That is the most likely option. He was younger, then, not as powerful. It's likely he thought he’d need a distraction to get past your father.”

  Wesley grunted. That was the most likely, but it didn’t ease the sickening feeling he felt growing in his gut. There was something his father hadn’t told him. A piece of this vast, dark puzzle he didn’t have the information to fill in himself.

  He turned back to his book and conjured the focus to read again, his mind only barely eased.

  More hours came and went. His brooding returned with a vengeance and again his eyes blurred with doubt and worry. It rose in pitch, grinding his mind to pulp until something broke the deepening silence.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Sod it,” Cece said at three in the morning. “You’re going to have to just try it.”

  “Try…what?” he asked, rising from his stupor.

  “It.” She slammed the book she’d been reading shut and rose. “We don’t have time to read. Even the old tomes don’t reveal much. This power you have…its closest to that time. Something not to do with incantations or wands, but simply the magick in your bones and…body meridians.”

  “Meridians?” Esther asked.

  “The ley lines of the body. Where the magick travels,” she said as if the vampire was a simpleton.

  “But we still need an object to imbue,” Esther shot back.

  “I…” Wesley began. His mind had not forgotten about the task at hand completely, when he’d mused darkly on the dreamworld. He looked up to the wooden figurines he’d seen earlier. “I think I’ve got an idea. But I’m going to need one of those birds up there.”

  Both women looked at him quizzically. But it was Esther who rose and with the fluidness of a cat, she leapt to the edge of the highest bookcase and grabbed one of the wooden birds, then, pausing, grabbed two more. She fell to the ground with a flourish and set the figurines on the table.

  “Show off,” Cece murmured.

  Esther smirked and threw one to Wesley. “I will get the hilt.”

  He nodded his thanks. “I’ll imbue it, then Cece will do her runes, then we’ll enchant it to fly towards the magic it senses.”

  Esther walked out, and Cece looked at him. “You can do it, Wesley. Your father believed that you could. So do I.”

  The sincerity in her voice shocked him but he didn’t let it show. “Thank you.”

  He turned the little bird over in his hands, feeling the smooth edges, the sharpness of its beak. “What kind of bird do you think it is?”

  Cece bit the inside of her cheek and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Looks like a little Goldfinch to me.”

  Wesley had thought the same.

  When Esther returned, she set the hilt on the table in front of him, covered in a thin, black silk handkerchief. He could feel the pulsing power coming off it. Not just the imbued power of its nature, but the raw silver it had been wrought from. It tingled his new senses.

  It was strange, looking upon the little thing that had once been in him.

  “You shouldn’t have to touch it to absorb its magic,” Cece said.

  Tentatively, he reached for it. The first touch, even through the wrapping, jolted him. It was like a little shock from an electrical socket.

  It vibrated every bone in his body as he took it into his hand. And in his other, he took the bird.

  As if knowing his intention, his mind ran forth, possessed and fiercely wanting the power to take him forward. In his third-eye he saw a maze, outlined by furious, licking flames. He became a beast then, running through it, primal urges guiding him.

  The power of the Hilt was primordial in nature, coming from the land of Avalon. Untouched by order like that of his world, it both welcomed and shunned any direction he wished to give it. He fought with it, wrestling it into submission, though it would escape him at the last moment, when he’d thought he had it.

  Pain was a backdrop to the chase, the hunt. It was as though his spirit had become one with his new nature, that of the wolf, which had been thrust upon him.

  The chase stretched, and the battle raged across lands he neither recognized nor remembered as soon as he’d left them.

  “Enough,” he cried at last, his voice a thunderous echo, shaking the very dawn of the world. “I bid you rise and answer my call.”

  It was then he did fight a rising being of pure light.

  Wesley’s eyes snapped open, and he was surprised to find himself in the study, a blanket covering him. The cool hilt of Excalibur in one hand and the blistering hot figurine in the other. He dropped it and it bounced away.

  “What's wrong?” came a sleepy voice from the couch near the wall.

  “I’ve done it,” he said, knowing his battles in the seat of his mind had gone his way, even if they were but mere fleeting feelings to him now.

  Cece flung off the blanket she’d been using and said, “About damn time.”

  Wesley blinked. “How long has it been?”

  “About a day and a half.”

  Wesley rose, his body stiff with inaction. “It felt like minutes to me.”

  She walked over to the figurine and plucked it off the ground. Wesley almost warned her but the heat didn’t seem to bother her.

  “My turn,” she said, walking over to a desk. She pulled a small carving knife from her pocket and got to work.

  “How long will this take?” Esther asked, appearing in the doorway like some ghost.

  A wave of flowery scent hit Wesley, and he realized he’d not smelled the vampire before. He was surprised to find it so…alluring.

  He noticed her watching him, quizzically. “Well?”

  “Ten minutes,” Cece said.

  “Then we should prepare,” Esther said, turning, but she paused, staring at him. “Is there a problem?”

  Wesley shook his head, he’d been staring at her. Not meaning to of course, but her scent had intrigued him so.

  “Come,” she told him. “We will need tools.”

  Once again, she led him into the labyrinth of the castle. This time back down into the bowels of it.

  “It will become more…uncomfortable for you down here,” she told him, one hand holding a candelabra and the other tracing the old stone with her fingers.

  They descended a spiral staircase.

  Pressure grew against Wesley’s temple, but it wasn’t pain, per se, more a kind of large shackle. Trying to keep him still, controlled. Lulling him.

  “You’ve seen more of this castle than anyone outside of the family in the last two hundred years,” she said.

  It eventually opened into a long hallway with a thick, metal door at the end. In the center of it was a thick wooden carving of a mountain-scape. He’d seen it sprinkled across other places in the castle too.

  “The mountains where my family are from in Transylvania,” she said, pulling the door open.

  The room beyond was dark and ominous. As light spread into it, he saw gleaming weapons, armor, gold and silver trinkets and many other treasures. It was very similar to the one his father had at his estate.

  “Loot,” Wesley said.

  Esther glared at him. “Armory.”

  He grunted. “What do we need?”

  “Well, your armor has been fixed,” she said, nodding across the room to a mannequin wearing his grandfather’s armor. “Only the straps were broken so my people could do it. Your sword was lost, so you will need to pick a new one.” She plucked a thin, leather sheath from a nearby table and handed it to him. “Your wand.”

  He was a little shocked, thinking he’d lost it altogether. “Thank you.”

  “Get dressed,” she said, turning to collect several things herself.

  Wesley strode over to his armor, inspecting it for…well, booby traps of a sort. When he found none, he pulled off the shirt Esther had provided for him and pulled on his old clothing, which was piled neatly near the mannequin.

  A sudden instinct told him to turn, and he did. Esther was standing a mere meter from him, her dark eyes hungry as they drank him in.

  He refused to flinch, only to bring his arms around, in case she attacked him. Instead, he smelled something else among her scent, pheromones. And they smelled good to him. Too good. He needed to be careful now.

  Instincts like that of an animal were berating him.

  “Yes?” he asked, quietly.

  “I’m…” she began, blinking slowly. “Apologies…”

  She was fighting something inside herself and losing…

  “I just…” she started again.

  Her pale skin was glowing.

  Wesley felt his own body responding, tingling and growing hotter.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice throaty.

  “Something about you,” she finally said, looking into his eyes. “I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to you.”

  He let out a breath. Wesley had been sure the vampire lady had hated him. She always looked at him with such disdain.

  “Esther…” he began. “What is this? We are opposites…why do we feel this?”

  She took a step forward, looking somehow further into his eyes. “We are both reduced to our base senses. It is our nature. Your nature, now,” she breathed, her eyes flicking over his face. From his eyes to his lips. “My heart beats but once every month,” she confessed. “And yours, well, thousands of times a day. It is…intriguing.”

  Her breath was like a drum in his ear. Her lips an illusion, twisting his mind around itself. Those eyes…they were anchors dragging him further in…

  Esther reached out a finger and dragged it down his chest. It felt like it was opening him up, both distantly painful and wonderfully cool.

  “We can’t,” she said, her finger stuck on his chest, as if glued there.

  He realized then how much he and the vampire girl had in common. Both children of powerful fathers. Both heirs to something. Both, now, wondering if they were no longer heirs, but…the owners.

  Wesley paused in his thinking. She probably had brothers, which he hadn’t even thought about. But at this moment, none of that mattered.

  He reached out, his newly powerful hand grasping Her’s, and he pulled her in. Their bodies pressed into each other’s, almost violent in their need of intimacy. Though they both longed for it to go on to something else. For their animal nature to take over, neither of them let it.

  For a moment, her mouth rested on his neck and her soft lips opened, then closed.

  When they broke away, the spell broke, and she moved away to the far side of the room.

  Wesley stood, watching her, his neck burning where her lips had touched it.

  He dressed in silence, pulling the armor over his white button down. He looked around and plucked a long, black coat off a nearby rack. It fit him perfectly. Then he strapped a blade he’d found on the wall onto his hip.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, pointing to the sleeve of the jacket.

  Esther turned, and her eyes went wide as she looked at it. Something passed in her eyes and she nodded slowly.

  “We’ll need transportation. Do you have any brooms?” he asked.

  She flicked a nod to a closet door. He grabbed three Ashwood broomsticks from it.

  “Only two,” Esther said casually, not looking at him.

  “There are three of us.”

  “I don’t fly,” she told him.

  He frowned. “You do today.”

  Her smile did not touch her eyes. “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Because I don’t like to.”

  Wesley tossed one back into the closet and closed the door. “You can fly with me, then.”

  She considered the option. “Yes, that will work. But if you drop me, I will rip out your heart.”

  He smiled. “That would only be reasonable.”

  ***

  They found Cece sitting near a window in the study, smoking her pipe.

  The little bird figurine lay on the table, the runes glowing dimly.

  “That was much longer than ten minutes,” Cece said, eyeing them. “Did you get lost?”

  Neither Wesley nor Esther responded, and they avoided each other’s gazes.

  “Is it done?” Esther asked.

  “Obviously,” Cece said, putting out her pipe. “Just waiting for this one to do his thing. Again,” she said, nodding to Wesley. “I’ll take my guns, now.”

  Esther walked over and dropped a dark leather bag at her feet.

  “Thank you very much,” Cece said, bringing her hands together in a mocking gesture before opening the bag and checking her equipment. “Someone touched them.”

  “Yes,” Esther said, “they were cleaned.”

  “Nobody cleans my gear but me.”

  “And me, it seems,” Esther said, smiling far too sweetly.

  Cece opened her mouth, then closed it, surprised.

  “Well,” Wesley began, drawing his wand out and pointing it at the bird figurine. “Why don’t we get this party started.”

  “Wait–” Cece began, but it was too late.

  “Expergiscimini,” Wesley said, a bolt of silver color bursting from his wand's tip and striking the bird.

  At once it flapped its wooden wings, chirped twice and flew at one of the windows, shattering it, sending glass all over the room.

  They all stood there in stunned silence for a moment.

  “You fool,” Cece cried, rising. “We must go.”

  “Come,” Esther said, “moving towards the door. We may still catch it.”

  But Wesley knew they wouldn’t lose it. They couldn’t. It was attached to him in a way he couldn’t explain.

  Still, they hurried through the castle, to its lawns, and off to find Merlin.