became one. Still, I ask you again. Why come back now?”
“Because both you and I are needed in this world.”
“What?”
She closed her eyes and began to explain. “This is more than a dream. This is me reaching out to you from my home in order to talk to you so you do not run away. That night, ten years ago, we were both meant to die. But something went wrong. We were meant to die together, in a car accident. What’s more, we were both meant to go to Heaven. We must work with what we have been given though. The mistake that happened to us can not truly be fixed. Not now. But for others, it can be. There is someone on this earth that is killing those who are meant to journey to the next life together. And they are both people who are pure of heart. Power comes from purity, Koios. You know that.”
“Who is it?” he asked her.
Anahita made to answer his question, opening her mouth and starting to say the name. A sudden movement from behind her made her stop though. “I can’t tell you here, Koios. There’s too many ways that it can be intercepted and The-One-Who-Takes can learn of it and prepare to destroy the one I was sent here to keep safe.”
Koios nodded. “So what do we do then?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” he told her without hesitation.
“Tonight. After you awake and make your hunt, meet me at the church.” She didn’t need to tell him what church she meant. He knew that she meant the one where he had almost killed her.
“Bridgett,” he began, stretching out a hand through the bars of the cage to where she was. She moved to touch his hand, but before their fingers could touch, the dream vanished.
He awoke, gasping for unneeded air in the black of his room.
V- Immortalis
Koios was the first awake. Unlike every other time that it happened though, he did not wait around for the others of Diu’s Court to wake and join him in the communal room. He was dressed in black and was out of the door into the twilight of the near set sun just as the others were beginning to stir.
His hunt was quick this time. In his rush to make it to the church, he did not think of his own limitations for once. He grabbed at the first person that he came across and drained them to near death. Blood still on his lips and too much spilt on the ground around him, his hunger was not yet sated. He left the alley quick enough to appear to be nothing more than a moving shadow to anyone watching and immediately tracked down another prey. He was letting his vampiric nature take control of his body for once and it was reveling in it.
After one more near death and one feeding that resulted in not only a large blood loss, but also a loss of life, Koios was on his way to the church. With power and energy in excess from all that he had done that night, he had no problem in quickly getting to it. His running was so quick that the landscape blurred even to his own enhanced eyesight. Any jumps that he made propelled him high into the air and across the little light that the moon gave off so that he was nothing more than a sudden silhouette against it. He was truly a stalker and a hunter in the night for once in his ten year tenure of being a vampire.
He reveled in the power.
When he reached the entrance to the church, he finally slowed to a walk. As he approached the steps that led inside, he found that he was unable to get any closer than just the doors. Even getting that close was something that was hard to do. Confused and knowing that he had gone inside just the night before, he pushed himself forward until he touched the doors in order to push them open. Then, like when Anahita had glowed, he was in sudden pain. It was as though he was looking back on the crosses that were inside the way he had the night before. Only a hundred times more painful.
He slowly backed away, hissing slightly as he bared his blood spattered teeth to it.
“Something wrong?” asked a voice from behind him.
He twirled around and found himself facing Anahita again. She wasn’t glowing and had no wings. She looked only a bit like Bridgett though, which made it slightly more bearable to be around her. Although he had been sure it was her in his dream last night, he wasn’t positive now that he was faced with the real thing. “Anahita,” he said curtly in way of greeting.
“Something wrong?”
“No. Everything’s fine,” came his quick reply.
“Then shall we go inside?” She walked to the doors of the church and pushed them over before going inside. Once across the threshold, she stopped and turned back to look at him. “You coming?”
“I…I can’t get inside.”
She nodded. “I see.” There was a pause and then, “How much blood did you take tonight?”
“No more than usual.”
“How much more than usual was spilt?”
Koios looked away from her and up to the stars. “Enough,” he replied after a moment. “I can’t get in because of that, can I? It’s because I let the demon in me take control.” Anahita nodded to him from her place inside the church. “So, now what?” he asked. “It’s not like I can walk inside and we can talk
there.”
“There is another place,” she said after a moment.
“Where?”
“Graveyard. About ten minutes walking at human speed away from here. Vampires of any court won’t go there after dark. After all, there’s no fresh blood there, is there?”
He looked at her. “I’ll meet you there.” Before she could truly reply, he was off and running in the direction that she had just motioned in. He reached it in about three minutes, spending a great deal of the energy that he had gained that night. Which was probably for the best, he determined, if he was going to spend the night talking to an angel. Considering what had happened at the church with his demon aspect at the front of his being, he wasn’t really sure he want to know what would happen if he spent any large amount of time with an angel while his demon was still in control.
Not knowing where they were going to meet once there, he paused just outside of the gates, searching for any sign of Anahita. He saw a brighter area towards the left and through some trees and moved towards it. Pushing through the branches, he saw Anahita sitting on a rock, waiting for him.
She was as bright as a full moon reflecting on freshly fallen snow and was full of grace even though she was just sitting. When he stepped into her circle of light, it dimmed a bit. Was it her own choice or was it from the darkness that he found himself consumed in? He wasn’t sure, nor was he sure if he really wanted to know.
“Do you remember your dream from last night?” she asked in way of greeting.
He moved to take a seat next to her on the rock. “Yes. And, before you ask, yes, I believe it truly happened as well. You are Bridgett. However, you are more Anahita now than the girl that I…that James loved.” He swallowed hard at his error. It had been years since he had even considered himself as James. Koios was who he was and who he was going to stay. He looked at her. “Who is it?” he asked, repeating the same question he had asked in the dream
“The-One-Who-Takes,” she replied with a small smile.
“The-One-Who-Takes?” An eyebrow was raised. “Does he have a name that is more name like and less
of a description?”
Anahita licked her lips nervously even as she smiled. “He does. But I’m not sure if I should tell you. You won’t like it.”
“Who is it?” he demanded to know through clenched teeth.
“Diu.”
There was complete silence in the graveyard. Only the sounds of the night could be heard. Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted and then swooped down to capture some poor unlucky mouse. The quiet wings
were deafening in comparison to the silence that was found in the clearing between the angel and the vampire.
“No. There’s no way it’s Diu,” Koios said forcefully.
“How can you be sure? He’s the one who has turned every single person who is in his Court. Young and old.
And every one of them has had something tragic happen to the other people they were with.” Anahita looked down at the grass below her feet before drawing in a quiet breath. “He was the one who killed me.”
“He could not have killed you!” he shouted at her. “He was with me the entire time after I was shot.” He leapt up from the rock and began pacing about. “He turned me and was with me until I found your broken body and the body of the thief. There was no way that he could have gotten away, killed you and then have returned to walk beside me and me not notice that he was gone.”
“I didn’t mean him directly,” she spat at him, standing as well. “Some of his Court actually killed me. But it was on his order. They killed the thief too.”
“Who cares about a damn beggar? He was going to go the hell anyway!”
“Are you so sure of that?” she asked. The sudden softness of her voice was such a contrast to Koios shouting that it made him stop cold in his walking. “He wasn’t trying to kill us. Just get money so that his children could eat that night.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he spat out at her. “It was his fault that it all happened anyways.” He walked to the edge of the clearing before