Butterfly Night

**Grayson's POV**







The sun was peeking behind a sea of clouds and the windy air had a brittle bite to it. All of it served to make this cold Tuesday morning rather depressing. It was a perfect reflection of my mood. After my chat with Stravos, I went back home and tossed around on my bed until the sun came up. 

Seven hours of tossing and turning and I was back where I had started, no solution in sight. Vladimir and Josie were on a collision course and the result of it will mean the end for us all. But how was I to stop it without losing my reason for living? I slammed the door of my car and stomped up the curved driveway of the Braille Manor. This route was one I had taken a thousand times, but today, it felt like I was heading to the gallows.   

Today, I was going to seal my fate and let go of the one thing I held dear above all others, even my own life. 

Vladimir had invited Josie to his lair two days ago. In a few hours, Josie would go there to make a deal with him to secure her father’s release. Only one thing could stop that meeting from happening. I had to give her the one thing she had been asking for in all but words for the past decade. Me.

 Some days, just like this very moment, I regretted the choices that led me to this exact moment. In truth, the only choice I made was try to please my dad. 

The divorce had broken my dad, mostly because it hadn’t been his choice. His reason for living, even the mission he had dedicated his entire existence to had all gone down the drain when my mum had told him she was done. Dad was -is- a hunter and his mission had been to protect Josie Braille. In fact, it was the mission he failed to complete that was now my responsibility.  

The guild had always kept an eye on the Seven sisters even though they kept their distance. Waiting, watching and plotting against any eventualities, that was what the guild did. Three sisters’ positions were still vacant till date. In all honesty, the guild would breathe easier if those positions remained vacant. We didn’t want the witches in power any more than we wanted the vampires to be there. One of those vacant positions was more important than any other, even more important than the seven sisters  combined. The position of the Breaker.

The third, fourth and fifth positions were all currently  vacant, it’s previous occupants dead in very confusing circumstances. (That’s code for only the seven sisters know how they died and those witches went to the grave with their secrets). The Fourth sister was almost always the Breaker. 

The first female child of a sister born on the butterfly night is the Breaker. 

The Breaker was a witch without magic. She didn't wield magic, she broke it. Didn't matter how strong the magic or spell was, she simply had to step foot or hand in the spell and poof; it was gone. Fortunately -or unfortunately, depending on who you ask- the Breaker was born on a particular night -the butterfly night- that occured once every hundred years, and not only that, the conditions would have to be exact. The position of Fourth sister would have to be vacant and a descendant of one of the Seven sisters had to give birth on that exact night. Therefore, there hadn’t been a Breaker in over a millennium. In fact, her existence was thought to be nothing but wishful thinking on the parts of the Seven sisters at this point. It would have continued to be nothing but a wish for the sisters if the Fourth sister hadn’t died and twenty seven years ago, Inna Kivi hadn’t given birth to a baby girl on the butterfly night. 

For the first time since the war started, the guild knew something the witches didn’t. Thanks to the sisters’ brilliant plan to take to the winds, they lost contact and somewhere along the line, were unable to keep track of all their children. Black sheeps, wild oats sown and they had descendants they didn’t know of. But the guild, the ever present, ever silent referee, we kept track of everything. 

It also helped that not one but three of their descendants had given birth on that night. And Inna was the illegitimate child they never knew existed. I had no idea what had prompted Ave Puhvel to do what she did, perhaps she had been trying to save her grandchild from the clutches of the sisters and give her a normal life, but all she had succeeded in doing was setting her granddaughter in the path of my father and I and she had unwittingly fucked up our lives.

Mum and dad had been pretty happy before Ave Puhvel sent her nephew to America with her granddaughter. But when the guild became aware that one of the descendants -and possible Breaker- was coming to California, they had arranged their own security measure in the form of my father. It had been the obvious conclusion after Arthur was offered the position of CEO at grandmother’s construction company. At the time, grandmother was ill equipped to oversee the company her father had left her after his demise. So, she had turned to the son of one of the shareholders of her company -Arthur Braille. 

He and his wife were new to America at the time, having just run away from Arthur’s home country after his family had disowned him -that was the official story anyway- and were awfully close to penury. Kalev Braille had gifted his son Arthur his shares in three different companies and the American branch of the family business. Turns out the family business on this side of the continent was nothing but an old crumbling building and nothing more.  Not even a single staff was left and the local council had even given it a demolition notice so he had been hard pressed to say no to grandma's offer. 

Dad left his decent paying job as a bar manager and took a position at the construction company. My grandmother never liked my dad so she made sure he was only offered the position of a manual worker. Dad took it, he had to for the good of the guild.

The result had been more and more distance between him and mom who couldn’t understand why he would leave his job at an upscale bar that paid extremely well for a position in the family's company that only paid him a meagre amount. Then my grandparents fanned the fire by insinuating that father just wanted to please them so he could have access to the family fortune. They kept dropping little comments about how father wanted to swindle mum, that he was nothing but a gold digger after their wealth and those little seeds of doubt had grown into a forest that ultimately divided my parents.

By the time I was four, mum had had enough and told dad to hit the road. After the divorce, mum had requested that Dad never show up anywhere she was. His marriage was over and his mission forever incomplete. He had turned to the bottle.