What in heavens…
How? How could he have been here and left this message? Without even bothering to knock on my door and see me? Why would he do that?
I glanced left and right, half expecting to see him standing on our street. But it was empty. Leaping from the doorstep, I launched toward the town center and didn’t slow until I’d reached the main square. It was busy at this time of day; crowds of people milled about or sat by the fountains.
Clearing my throat, I bellowed, “Did any of you see the prince? Ben Novak?”
Silence descended on the square. It became so quiet one could have heard a penny drop. They all looked back at me blankly, confused.
“No,” some of them called back, while others merely shook their heads.
Then… how?
The thought that he might even still be here somewhere on the island was driving me crazy. I urgently needed to speak to Ben’s family. I’d been in such a hurry, I hadn’t even brought my shoes with me. But my mind was so preoccupied, I barely even felt the sharpness beneath my feet as I whizzed out of the Vale and into the woods with supernatural speed.
I arrived at the Residences and stopped outside Vivienne and Xavier’s penthouse, where Ben’s parents were supposed to be staying temporarily. I was about to rush into the elevator when another message caught my eye, this time etched into the damp soil. It was a similar note. Also signed by Ben. There were huge paw prints next to it.
What is going on?
It occurred to me that perhaps this was just some kind of prank. But I really couldn’t imagine who in The Shade would stage such a sick joke involving their prince.
Tearing my eyes away from the message, I hurried up to Vivienne’s penthouse. I knocked hard on the door. Nobody answered. When I peered through the windows, it was dark. It appeared that nobody was home. Breathing out in frustration, I returned to the forest ground. The next logical place to visit would be Rose and Caleb’s treehouse, which wasn’t far from here.
I glanced once more at the shaky note, then launched off in the opposite direction. As I ran, questions and doubts overwhelmed my brain. But then, as I’d almost reached Rose’s home, a moment of clarity came upon me.
Suddenly, I wondered why I hadn’t seen the connection before.
Hero… Ben?
Sofia
Ever since the beginning—when Rose and Ben had still been only five years old, and we had decided to leave California and move back to The Shade permanently—Derek had harbored a desire for me to turn him. The only reason I hadn’t at the time was because I had harbored a secret fantasy of my own; Derek turning me. But now, he was finally getting his wish.
The first part of the process was all right because, well, there wasn’t exactly any “turning” going on… but when it finally came time to sink my teeth into his bare neck, I felt like a nervous wreck. It was one of the hardest things that I’d ever had to do. This was the first time I had ever turned anyone.
I crouched over him, the tips of my fangs centimeters away from his warm flesh. Derek settled his broad hands firmly around the backs of my thighs, as if to reassure me. Ground me.
“You can do this,” he whispered, his steady blue eyes gazing up at me.
I nodded, even as I felt like backing out of the whole thing. I leaned closer and finally broke his skin. Derek’s warm blood filled my mouth, its taste tantalizing my senses. His hands remained anchoring me against him as I began to release my venom. Then his palms moved upward, settling around my hips. He pushed gently, indicating that I’d inserted enough poison already.
I drew my fangs out and then crawled off of him, giving him some space as the transformation kicked in. He started drifting in and out of awareness, and all I could do was watch as he began to shake and vomit blood. Even though I could fetch one of the witches to help if there were problems, it didn’t make watching my lover go through this agony any less torturous.
I appreciated him now more than ever for having volunteered to do the same thing for me. Turning itself was hell, but watching a loved one go through it… it was a different kind of punishment.
As the hours passed, I kept checking the clock. His turning was progressing at the usual pace, but it felt like forever. When he finally began to show signs of stabilizing, I couldn’t have felt more relieved.
I clutched his hand as his shaking subsided. “You’re doing great, baby,” I whispered to him, planting a kiss over his knuckles. His eyelids, which had been tightly shut the entire time, opened slowly. I reached out and stroked his forehead. “I think you’re done.”
He gazed at me, his blue eyes more brilliant than I had remembered them. His gaze sent chills down my spine, reminding me of the first time he had ever looked at me, all those years ago when he woke from his four-hundred-year sleep.
“How are you feeling?” I asked gently, my palm still against his forehead.
He clenched his jaw. “I’ve been better,” he rasped. His throat sounded horribly dry.
Crap. He needs blood!
I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought to remind him before we’d started. His request to turn had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and I had just agreed to it. Then he had started seducing me and one thing had rolled into another.
“Will you be okay waiting here while I go fetch some blood?” I asked. He seemed to be of sound mind and I didn’t sense that he would leave the lighthouse to go rampaging around the island murdering our humans… but, recalling my son with a painful stab in my chest, I knew one never could be quite sure with a Novak.
“No, it’s all right,” he murmured. He rolled to the edge of the bed and reached for his cloak that had been discarded on the floor. I frowned as he withdrew two sacks of blood from within the garment’s deep pockets. Well, someone came prepared…
He ripped the bags open with his fangs and downed them within two minutes. Then, grimacing, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned back against the headboard.
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. For the next few minutes, I didn’t talk to him, giving him the space he needed to recover.
Then his eyelids lifted again. He glanced up at the clock in the corner of the room, and then, to my surprise, he pushed himself off the bed and stood up, his legs still shaky.
“I need to get dressed,” he murmured, snatching up the rest of his clothes and beginning to pull them on.
“Uh, honey, I really don’t think you should be standing up yet. You need to rest.”
“I need to get ready to leave.”
“What?” He’d said he wanted to leave soon after turning, but I’d never dreamed that it would be this soon. He’d only just completed his turning less than twenty minutes ago. Turning took a hell of a lot out of one’s body, and after the process, vampires were supposed to rest. Besides, he was still covered in blood—blood that had now transferred onto the clean clothes he was pulling on himself. “Derek, that’s insane.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, meeting my anxious gaze, even as he teetered slightly and was forced to hold onto the back of a chair for support. “I promise.”
Before I could say anything more, there was a knock at the door.
Derek finished doing up his pants zipper and allowed me time to pull on my own clothes before he opened the door. Ibrahim stood behind it. The warlock eyed Derek and then glanced at me with an almost apologetic look on his face.
Derek moved through the doorway, turning back to face me. “I’ll be back soon.”
My brows couldn’t raise any higher. “You’re aware that you look like a sweaty, blood-stained, crazy ax murderer.”
“All the better,” Derek replied, a dark twinkle in his eyes.
Jeramiah
Still stinging from the failure of the mission in The Shade, we ended up returning to The Oasis. On arrival, I was forced to turn my mind to other matters. Our coven filled us in on everything that happened there while we’d been gone: the raid by the Drizans along with the seizi
ng of the Nasiris, and even the visit of a group of vampires—headed by Derek and Sofia Novak.
After recent events, I deemed that it was no longer a safe place for our coven to be based. Although the Nasiris had left and the bonds they’d held with us were broken, it did not feel like a home anymore to any of us. Luckily for the vampires who’d been present, the Drizans only seemed to be interested in the Nasiris, but nobody wanted to live with the constant fear of those jinn returning. There was also the possibility that the Novaks could launch an attack on us in revenge for what I’d attempted to do, which was another reason why we shouldn’t remain here much longer.
Some of the vampires in our coven had scarpered already without waiting for my return. But most of them stayed behind out of loyalty to me. After all, they saw me as their leader. I was the one who had led them to this desert to begin with.
I mulled over our situation, wondering where we could go from here. We would take our half-bloods with us, but there was also the matter of the humans downstairs in the prison. We had toiled so hard to build up our human population. But if we were to leave, it would be completely impractical to bring them with us. So, after each of us had drunk as much blood as we could hold—as well as stored as much as we could pack—we let the rest of our prisoners free. It was a melancholy sight, watching them staggering into the desert. No doubt they would cross paths with the hunters stationed nearby, who would then return them to human civilization. All that work… for nothing.
Wherever we found our shelter next, we would have to start again from the beginning. But strangely, I was not as agitated by it as I’d expected to be. I’d been living down in that atrium for so long, chained by the bond of the Nasiris, it felt like it was time for a change of scenery.
A few hours before our planned departure, we made a visit down to the jinn’s atrium beneath us. It was like a ghost town. We filled up sacks of jewels and gold, intending to bring them with us. I wasn’t quite sure what use we would have for them during our travels, but they might be useful at some point in the future if we ever needed to barter with humans.
Now I found myself in my bedroom, glancing around at my belongings and deciding which items were really worth bringing with me. The reality was, I needed very little. Just a few sets of clothes, shoes, and toiletries which I stuffed into a backpack.
My eyes roamed the king-sized bed. Lucretia had been the last woman I’d shared it with. My supposed girlfriend. She had been among the vampires to escape after I left and ironically, my ex-girlfriend Marilyn had remained.
I moved into the living room to see if there was anything in here that I had forgotten about. I bent down to my bureau and began rummaging through the drawers. Then, to my surprise, the lights flickered out. The only light in the room now was a faint trickle through the door, emanating from an ornamental candle that I kept lit in the hallway.
Power cuts weren’t a common occurrence in The Oasis, not when we had witches here working their magic. Perhaps Amaya and our other witches had wound things up prematurely, although I had told them to wait for me before relinquishing their magic on this place. I could see through darkness as a vampire, but it irritated me that the witches had gone against my command. I stood up and headed for the door to find out what they were playing at, but as my eyes crossed the doorway, I stopped short. My heart skipped a beat.
Standing in the doorway was a looming figure, clad in a long, dark cloak. His face was concealed with an opera mask, and all I could see were his eyes. Blue eyes so vivid, they were almost luminous in the gloom.
What the…
I barely had time to wonder who the hell he was and what he was doing in The Oasis—heck, my apartment!—before he lurched toward me. I yelped in shock, but by the time I reacted, it was too late. He had reached me and grabbed hold of my neck. He slammed my back against the wall, pinning me there with alarming strength. The man’s eyes were closer to me now, and they bore into me with such intensity, it was as though they pierced my very soul. He let out a low, animalistic growl and the next thing I knew, he had withdrawn a syringe from his pocket and sunk it deep into my neck.
Sofia
After Derek vanished with Ibrahim, I blew out a sigh and shook my head. I loved Derek more than I could express, but he was just such a weirdo sometimes.
Whatever he was planning to do with Jeramiah, I couldn’t help but pity the lad. I had been expecting Derek to drink more blood before setting off; he hadn’t ingested nearly enough to satisfy his body. And because of that, he would likely manifest more aggression than he should, but I suspected that this too had been a part of Derek’s plan.
At least he was with Ibrahim. If there was anybody I trusted to take care of my husband, it was that warlock.
I left the lighthouse, intending to head back to Vivienne’s penthouse where I would have a long shower.
But I didn’t make it as far as Vivienne’s home. As I made my way along the main path through the forest toward the Residences, I stopped in my tracks as River and Rose came hurtling toward me from the opposite direction.
“Mom!” Rose yelled.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, staring at the two girls as they approached me.
“You’ve got to see this.”
“See what?”
“By Vivienne’s tree,” River panted. “Just come.”
I was heading there anyway, but now I sped there with urgency alongside River and Rose.
As we arrived, the two girls pointed to the ground. My breath hitched as I stared down at a message scrawled in the soil.
“Ben?” I breathed. My eyes shot to Rose and River for an explanation. “What is this?”
“I found a message similar to this outside my own front door,” River said. “I-I think I have some idea how they got here. As crazy as it sounds… I think that the griffin who saved me from the hunters and brought me back here was your son.”
There were so many things about that statement that blew my mind, I didn’t even know where to start my questioning. But I didn’t even get a chance to as Rose said, “We need to talk to Corrine, and then River suggests that we visit the oracle.”
Ben
The journey was long and arduous. Perhaps it was just because my mind was unfocused, my soul still crying for the island I was flying away from, but the journey across the Pacific Ocean seemed to take twice as long as it ever had before. I lost count of the hours, but eventually, I spied land. Moving ashore, I was relieved to discover that I had, by some miracle, reached Canada. I found my way to the nearest town and gathered my bearings in a tourist center, which had a detailed map pinned against the wall. By the next morning, I had located the foothills of Mount Logan. From here, with much more zigging and zagging, I was able to find the route I’d taken with the ogres and make my way back to the gate dug into a snowy mountain plateau.
I moved to the edge and gazed down into the starry portal, its swirling, smoke-like walls almost beckoning to me. I prepared myself to dive through when a voice spoke behind me. A voice with a French accent.
“Are you here for the full moon?”
I thought at first that there must have been some hikers camping up here that I hadn’t noticed. I whirled around and found myself face to face with the ghost of a man, staring directly at me. Hovering over the snow only a few feet away, he was of average height and meager build, with a sharp nose and bony cheeks. He had lanky, shoulder-length hair and a goatee. His appearance was youthful—I guessed that he could not have been much more than thirty years old when he died, and, bizarrely, he wore shorts and a tropical, pineapple-patterned shirt. Evidently, his death had not occurred on this cliff—or anywhere nearby. He looked like he had just stepped off a Hawaiian beach.
His clothing only made his sudden appearance all the more confusing. What was this person doing haunting this icy landscape if he’d died thousands of miles away?
“Who are you?” I asked, staring.
“My name is Nolan,” he replied. “And this is my
wife, Chantel…” I followed his gaze as he looked over his shoulder. The ethereal outline of a small, slight woman with a blonde bob drifted toward us across the snow. Like the man, she appeared young, and also like the man, she wore what appeared to be beach clothes: a strapless, light cotton dress that fell just above her knees. Now I also realized that both of their feet were bare. I scanned their bodies, looking for marks or clues as to how they had died, but found none. I wondered if they might have drowned in the ocean.
“Joseph,” I replied instinctively, even as I mocked myself. It didn’t matter if the whole world knew my name now. It wasn’t like there was anything worse that could happen to me.
“So you’re not waiting?” Nolan asked, raising a straggly eyebrow.
I narrowed my eyes on him in confusion. “Waiting for what?”
He paused, flicking his tongue across his lower lip, before exchanging a furtive glance with his wife. He cleared his throat, his tone subdued as he spoke again: “Never mind then. If you don’t already know… I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
He had piqued my interest far too much for me to allow him to brush me off now.
I remained rooted to my spot, even as his hand passed over his wife’s back and the two of them began turning away from me.
“Wait,” I called. “You must tell me what you meant.”
The couple paused, the man twisting slowly to face me again. There was a span of silence as he considered my request. He glanced again at his wife. She spoke to him in French—a language I had not learned. He nodded slowly before addressing me. “First, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”
“I was about to jump through the portal and travel to the supernatural realm before you spoke to me,” I replied truthfully.
“What would you do there?” Chantel addressed me for the first time. Her accent was richer than her husband’s.