THE MAN NAMED AXEL KNOX

A GHOST IN THE FLESH

Mariette Windsor moved like the forest itself was helping her. She held Axel's hand and pulled him through the dark trees, stepping over roots and fallen branches without breaking stride. Axel's legs burned. His lungs ached. But he kept up.

“Where are we going?” he asked between breaths.

“Somewhere safe,” she said. “For now.”

They ran for twenty more minutes. The cabin's fire light slowly fading away behind them as they both ran. Eventually, they reached a small clearing with an old stone well at the center. Mariette stopped, knelt down, and pressed her palm against a moss-covered rock. The rock glowed blue for a moment, then the ground beneath the well shifted. A hidden door opened.

“Down,” she said.

Axel hesitated. “Into a well?”

“It's not a well. It's an entrance.” She climbed down first, disappearing into the dark. Axel hesitated and then followed behind him.

Inside was a small underground room, it wasn't ot a cave…. It was a real room, with wooden walls, a cot, a table, and lanterns that lit themselves when Mariette snapped her fingers. The air was dry and warm.

“This was one of the Windsor safe houses,” she said, sitting on the cot. Her shoulders sagged. The glow in her eyes faded. “My great-grandfather built it when the other families first started making threats.”

Axel stood in the middle of the room, staring at her. The woman who claimed to be his mother. The woman who had vanished when he was three.

“Start talking,” he demanded, his voice authoritative. “From the beginning.”

“I think you should catch your breath first before we delve into that, don't you think?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You don't get to tell me what to do!”

“Fair enough,” Mariette said bluntly.

“I'm listening!”

Mariette nodded slowly. “I am Mariette Windsor, the last true heir of a dead house or well I was, you're the new heir. The Windsor family was in a crisis, by the time I was twenty, our family had nothing left except our name and the other families wanted the Windsor name gone completely.”

“So you went to Harrison,” Axel said. The name tasted bitter in his mouth.

“I went to him for help and he pretended to care. He was charming, handsome, and he knew everything about our family's magic. The blue fire. The elixir. The power that runs through Windsor blood.” She closed her eyes. “I was young and desperate, I trusted him and he used me to destroy everything and everyone I ever loved.”

“What is this fire? This blue fire? Are we the only family that has such powers? What's wrong with me?”

Mariette stood up from the cot, holding both his shoulders, looking into his eyes. “Nothing is wrong with you, don't you ever think that!” Her voice slightly breaking.

Axel walked away from her, leaning on the wall. “I see that you have the same blue stuff that I have, what is it? I feel it every time burning through me.”

She sat back down on the cot. “This is Aevum.” Channeling blue flame to her hand only. “Long ago Aevum chose five bloodlines to be the VIGIL, protectors of the realm.”

Axel scoffed at her words. “Vigil? Protectors of the realm? Protection from what?”

“From the Evil One Axe.” She replied with a stern gaze.

“So were you so busy saving the world that you didn't come back for me?” Axel's voice cracked. “I was three years old and you fucking left me with a stranger.”

Mariette opened her eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I did come back. When I left Harrison's house that night, I went straight to get you. But you were gone, I looked for you but you were nowhere to be found. The neighbor said a woman had taken you, a woman who looked like me. I searched for months. Years! I never stopped.”

“Then where have you been?”

“I've been hiding and watching too. Harrison put a price on my head, if the other families had seen me they would kill me on sight. I had to stay in the shadows. But I never stopped looking for you, Axel. Never.”

Axel wanted to be angry, he wanted to scream. But looking at her at the exhaustion in her face, the truth in her eyes something inside him just instantly softened.

“The blue flame, Aevum,” he said quietly. “It’s overwhelming, I can't control it. It comes and goes.”

“That's because it's new to you. The elixir Harrison injected you with didn't give you power. It unlocked what was already there. Windsor magic runs in your blood. You were born with it. Harrison just woke it up.”

Axel looked at his hands. “He called me his son.”

“He is your father, yes, but only in blood. He doesn't love you, he only loves what you can become.” Mariette stood up and walked to him. She placed her hands on his shoulders. “But I can teach you and I can show you how to control the fire, how to make it obey you and together, me and you we can make them all pay for what they did to you, to me, to us and to our family.”

Axel felt the humming in his chest again, it was much stronger this time. The blue glow began to seep through his skin.

“Teach me,” he said.

Mariette smiled. It was the first real smile he had ever seen from her. “Close your eyes, I want you to feel the magic pulsating within you, don't fight it. Let it flow through you like water.”

Axel closed his eyes. The hum of Aevum grew louder. The glow spread down his arms. He could feel it, the surge of power, the fire, the storm, all of it waiting and burning within him just for him to command and let it all out.

And then, from above ground, he heard howling. Not wolves. Men.

Mariette's face went pale. “They found us already.”

She grabbed Axel's wrist. “We have to move. Now.”

But before they could reach the hidden exit, the ceiling cracked. Dust and stone rained down.

A hand reached through the hole……glowing blue. Harrison's voice echoed down. “Did you really think a rock could hide you, Mariette?”