Like Father,Like Daughter - Hugs.And.Kisses (best novel books to read TXT) 📗

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"Which way did they go?" Aubrey questioned, huddling close to Lock. Without a tracker spell, the dungeons were just creepy. Shock blushed and looked over at Barrel as Lock grabbed Aubrey's hand and conjured up a tracker spell, smiling over at her. The younger boy was conveniently looking everywhere but the couple in front of him and Shock.

"Dnif em Jack." Lock muttered. The tracker set off, and the four followed.

"This seems to be becoming a habit." Shock muttered.

Lock looked over his shoulder. "What do you mean?"

"Us, having to track down Jack. Wasn't it normally the other way around?"

Barrel laughed. "You have a point there."

Aubrey tilted her head to the side, frowning. "Do you guys hear that?"

"Sounds like a fight." Lock muttered.

"You would know." Shock chuckled. Lock glared at her before braking sharply. "What?"

"The tracker spell's confused."

Aubrey's eyes widened. "He sent out a dummy!"

"A what?" Barrel questioned.

"A dummy." Shock repeated. "It's a duplicate of someone's magical signature, which is what the tracker spell searches for. Jack made one to throw us off."

"Why do you think we sent it after him and not Sally? She doesn't have a magical signature." Shock sighed and waved her hand over Lock's tracker. It stopped zipping between directions and held still.

"Well, at least we still have light." Aubrey said before grimaced slightly.

"What's wrong?" Lock asked.

Aubrey shook her head. "I'm still so tired… like I don't have any energy."

Shock frowned as well. "That shouldn't be happening."

"Lecture us later, oh-mighty-ones." Barrel said sarcastically. "Let's go; follow the sound of fist fighting!"

-Lock's POV-

It didn't take long for the four of us to find Jack on the first floor, and it didn't take long for all of us to get very confused. Jack was fighting what appeared to be Vanessa, only… way older. "What the…" I murmured. Aubrey's grip on my hand tightened as Jack's fist connected with Vanessa's face and there was a very audible 'crack'. Vanessa fell to the ground, clutching her nose and moaning.

"Dad!" Aubrey let go of my hand and ran over to Jack.

Jack looked surprised to see us. "Aubrey? I thought I told you to- oh, never mind." He sighed. He looked over at us. "Is everyone all right?"

"For the moment, Jacky." We all looked over to the throne room doors to see Raphael walk out.

"Aubrey." Jack nodded toward us. She ran back over to me, and I gripped her hand tightly.

Vanessa looked up through her fingers before scrambling over to her father. "I lost, daddy. I'm sorry!" She sobbed at his feet. Raphael pulled her up, shushing her calmly.

"Don't worry about it sweetheart. You've done everything I needed." He smiled at her and a sick squelching reached our ears.

"D-daddy…?" Vanessa gasped before cups of blood poured out of her mouth. She fell to the ground, motionless. Raphael's front was covered in blood, and in his hand he held a bloody sphere, randomly flecked with pieces of Vanessa's insides. I felt my stomach churn violently. That was disgusting enough, but to do it to your own daughter?

Raphael flicked bits of the gore off of the object in his hand. "Messy little business, isn't it Jack?" He questioned.

Jack gasped. "Raphael… please tell me that's not what I think it is!"

He grinned at Jack. "Oh, but it is, Jacky. The Skellington Key to the Living World!" He held it up triumphantly, leering over at Aubrey. "And now for the last piece."

Aubrey let out a cry of pain and fell to her knees. "No!" I yelled, charging at Raphael. His fist made a firm connection with my gut, and I doubled over. Pain laced through the side of my chest as he kicked me, sending me sliding halfway across the room.

"Aubrey!" Shock shrieked, and I managed to look over. Aubrey had fallen to the floor, and she wasn't moving. I ignored the pain in my side and my gut and scrambled over. Aubrey's eyes were dull and glassy, and there was a hole in the middle of her chest, where her heart should have been. Not a bloody hole, like what Vanessa was sporting, just… a hole.

The orb in Raphael's hand pulsed brightly, shining with a light that froze and burned at the same time. "It is complete!" He cackled.

Jack ran at him, fire consuming both arms up to his elbow. "Don't you dare!" But Raphael had already put his hand to his mouth, swallowing the key. Energy literally battered all of us, sending us shooting another few yards across the floor. When the light died down, I saw that everyone, including me, was chained against the wall.

Well, everyone except Aubrey and Vanessa.

"Raphael…" Jack growled from somewhere to my left. "You bastard!"

There was a smack, which I assumed meant Jack had just gotten hit. "Watch your language, Jack. I'm in charge now."

"You killed your own daughters!" Jack yelled.

"What is family in the quest for power?"

"Monster!" Shock yelled next to me.

Raphael walked over to her, and his hand closed around her windpipe. "What did you call me, child?" He hissed.

"Leave her alone!" Barrel ordered from my other side. Raphael looked over at him, then, after a moment, released Shock. She gasped for air, sucking it greedily into her lungs.

"Why, Raphael? Why kill Aubrey and Vanessa? Why give them the key if all you were going to do is take it back from them?" Jack yelled.

The bastard actually had the nerve to smile, like this was the question he'd been waiting Jack to ask. "Ah, simple, really. You see, Jacky, after I had the key in my possession, I knew that Cay and Jacob would have to be sacrificed in order for me to get away. So, I double-crossed them. It was one of my worse plans, true, because I neglected to realize that they would do the same to me by ratting me out to your mother."

Raphael turned away from us, clasping his hands behind his back. "I remember it so vividly; fleeing through the Hinterlands in terror, praying that I could get away, maybe get back to the Tree House and regroup."

"The Tree House?" Shock, Barrel, and I gasped.

He looked at us over his shoulder, grinning madly. "What, did you three think that you were the original pranksters of Halloween Town? No, no, no. Cay, Jacob, and I were the first Boogie's Boys, before old Oogie Boogie came into play. We worked for the first, the true Boogeyman."

"I always knew that he put you three up to it." Jack muttered.

Raphael laughed, like this was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Him? Oh Jack, Jack, Jack! Do your really think for one moment that that idiotic shadow could've dreamed up that plan? No, it was I who planned the entire thing." He smirked. "Your mommy always told you that she was the one who killed him, didn't she? Well, mommy dearest lied. I'd killed him weeks before, relaying fake messages and plots and schemes to Cay and Jacob. And the best part was that they actually believed me."

"But why, Raphael? Why do all of this?" Jack shouted.

"Why, Jack? For the absolute power, of course!" He laughed, throwing his head back. "I made a door in the Hinterlands and slipped through to the Living World. I had only planned on hiding out there until I could master the key's power and return to dethrone the Skellingtons and take over. But…" He trailed off.

My eyes fell on Aubrey and Vanessa. "Things didn't go as planned." I muttered, not really conscious of what I was saying.

Raphael's eyes closed. "No. My plan was proceeding perfectly, but then I met Rachel. I forgot everything that I'd planned, my schemes, my plots, everything. We started a family.

"That's when I realized it. If I still had the key at Halloween, the one night where the entire town was free to roam the Living World, I would be found, and quickly. I had to place it into a living vessel. One that would be able to mask the key's power. I chose my newborn son, Ryan. But it didn't take long for me to see that the sheer power of the key was killing him. He grew ill, and I took the key back.

"After a few years, I tried a different method, giving the key while the baby was still in the womb. Rachel's pregnancy had… complications, nearly killing her and the baby. Emily was born as though she was asleep. Her eyes were closed, and she wouldn't scream like most babies. I took the key back."

Raphael was silent for a moment. "It was then that I realized that the key was just too much for any one living person to handle. I needed more than one host. So, when Rachel found out she was having twins, I did the same as I had for Emily, only splitting the key into two separate pieces.

"It worked, but not as I expected." His gaze drifted over the two motionless bodies. "Vanessa was stillborn. Aubrey was born healthy, but she physically looked as if she had been long dead. I knew that Vanessa, as a mere infant spirit, would not survive long. I had to act, and quickly. I used the magic I had left to send her soul to Halloween Town, bypassing judgment. Then, I used a warping spell to make her body grow at two times the normal rate.

"I hoped that, somehow, Vanessa would learn to use the key's powers on her own, and manage to find us. But three years later, I realized how foolish this notion was. Oogie Boogie, who seemed to have somehow inherited the residual memories of his predecessor, took revenge on me. I had promised him a key, and he was going to hold me to it. That explosion would have only killed Aubrey, had I not forced her and Emily out of the car. Instead, it killed me.

"Or so everyone thought. I wasn't really dead, but the living body I had created to house my soul was. I returned to Halloween Town. Imagine my surprise when I found Vanessa waiting for me. She somehow recognized me as her father." He paused, his gaze boring holes into the wall beside us. "Her body is twenty-five years old, but her mind has not matured any farther than the age of twelve, thirteen at most. That is my fault, I suppose."

He actually sounded like he felt guilty for doing this to them, for a moment. "But after growing so rapidly, Vanessa's body was weak. She needed a new host. This is where Aubrey's friend, Sandy, came into play. After so much time with Aubrey, some of the key's power must have affected her. When she died, she was sent to my doorstep. Immediately, I began to try to use her for my experiments. I successfully transferred her soul into a blank homunculus with a spell on it to control her.

"But that's where everything went wrong. Sandy's body wouldn't take to Vanessa's soul, and it backfired, ravaging her real body. I had to improvise, quickly, or Vanessa, and her half of the key, would die. Of course, by now, I had remembered all of my old plans and dreams and had begun forming new ones, and Vanessa was a vital part of these plots. So, I transferred her soul into a mirror, and