Part 39 (2/2)

”But you c-can't be” said Thierry, looking at it The shadow advanced

Andre didn't care what the old legends said This thing was huge It was here now, before theet so out of hand

”We t-tried to s-save you,” he said, treht of the shadow

Suddenly the light shone

They were transfixed by the hunter's Mark

And then it spoke

”Store, a confusion of color and sound and The grapefruit-sized ventricle at its elbow released a surge of ulfed the night sky It seemed to envelop Thierry and Andre; before they knew it, fire, like burning coal, had invaded their bodies, rushi+ng to their very souls Halsey Rook bodies still with her, like shadows from a dream

For a moment that lasted an eternity, it felt like the , when a voice sounded: ”The war is starting Battle lines will be drawn She and the vaue Find the other one and kill him Do not let it survive”

”And theain, my old friend”

Chapter 1 Her 18th Birthday

I felt like I had run really far and stoppedure been and as I seeing hi evenbut even inTheir perceptions of hied, shi+fted, killed It had been really dark I wished I had seen him better But did I?

It was a second before I realized they were dead That I had seen it happen And that it was probably real Pere Lachaise was in Paris, France I had seen soreat distance away

I reached to turn on the light, but the lightbulb blew out This was soular basis, and I wondered why it hadn't happened before Probably because I needed to knoas possible before I could do ht

I didn't like to think that I was so much of a follow-the-leader that I had to wait for Lia to tellup microwaves and stuff before she realized it was the craft that was doing it The ic spark in her skin or whatever, her core self, that was saying, There's so into your Self

My Self was in her nightgown in her four-poster, shi+vering slightly, because the wind had knocked open the French doors, and when I looked he wasn't there Lennoxlove Lenoir, one of the vampires from France When Hunter, and what I had just seen in my visions, I realized he hadn't been one, either, a va for so That's all I knew I think instinctively I knew that Boxes of eave up and lit the Iron Roses, two entwined candle holders like roisin dubhs, black Irish roses, with links to northern Wicca

When I looked up LENNOXLOVE in a search engine, it gave me a place in Scotland Which eird Maybe that here Lennox was fro to think about What did I really know about hi, with long, dark hair that shot out dynaures, creeping into ht I was just a loner A stupid ragazza

I fetched fro the heavily-worn pages with ertips It had had a Mark The hunter had had a Mark That see which was important

But that wasn't possible, was it? He was a shi+fter I had seen hie into a wolfor a kind of wolf There hadn't been one in over a century A witch or wizard and a shi+fter A witch or wizard shi+fter So others had said I saw hi hed, letting ht; which had beco destroyed They were collecting like the bones of dead things in my trash can

I wrote out the last few lines inand closed the diary Dedication Erht a bit

Let's see

I hit upon a likely line and wrote the following: To my ae, I can only stress that the reh ive him his trespasses, even if he isn't in this voluht, before realizing the likelihood of any reader actually reading this far was beyond unbelievable But then all of this was Vampires and olves and me I was a Wiccan A Neophyte now, to be more precise There was also Adept, and then those ere Fledged; the great end-all be-all, Fledged; the steppingstones to ical apotheosis

As for why no one would read thiswell, that was one of the Lenoir's rules, wasn't it? To shut the hell up about the existence of vampires The other rule was don't make too many vampires Would I be held accountable if this account were to soh to know better But I had never been indoctrinated, in the Wiccan sense True, I had taken the Rede, a kind of Hippocratic oath, but I had never sworn allegiance, or, in fact, sided with one group over another, unless verbally Maria Lenoir knew, for instance, that my heart ith the olves and with her cousin, Lennoxlove Lenoir Almost like I was torn In truth, the predica, it felt like the right thing to do As if I was born to be split Like ic itself

Not one or the otherbut bothsi it, I toldaround with a pack of olves, and with the only vampire in Rome, would the Lenoir come for me?

It was a chance I would have to take I would be willing to take Writing was like therapy, to me I felt better when I did it It helped s Plus, if I wanted to attain the highest Wiccan standard (and I did), I would have to keep the diary Fledged wasn't so I could do in a controlled environment I had thrown my future away, after all Wiccans wrote Kept Books of Shadows

Briefly other Wiccan InitiatesShaharizan and so forth; Ge to established Wiccan Households, such as Harcort, or the Covens There was also the House of Peril and so them Ravenseal It was said Ravenseal was the best Then why didn't I want to join it? What was it about the easy opportunities and likelihood of running into 'the best people', at Ravenseal, that botheredwith the ene Which was kind of a recruit) NoI was in this by myself

It inter finally, fully and completely For the past six months, since I had been on the h the oddly-shaped boot which forrown used to what I referred to as the Mediterranean lifestyle, easygoing and rich in sensory stimulation, funded of course by my vast financial resources I was independently wealthybut you could've fooled me For the first seventeen years of irls' school, the kind most parents would be horrified to send their children to St Martley's Academy for the Gifted was a school for freaks I didn't knohy, but I would probably always think of St Martley's that way As a place I had escaped fro free Rome was as inhospitable as it had ever beenat least climactically; on a personal level, it was icy, windy and chill-inducing That's really where our story starts, on ether lonesome for an entirely different reason Oh, I had friends, all right In fact, two of thethe inevitable Her heart's joy was found in Gaven The King of all erewolves

My heart was lost

I got up from my bed, because I alrote supine It helped the blood flow, you know?

The lavender hangings around my four-poster remindedLennox, he had shut me out completely Why had I fallen for him so hard, when it didn't even make sense? Lennox was of immortal make and I-I was not How could I ask him to love e or some other mishap? And then, if I did die (if? I askedout the kind of happiness we ether, in someone else? The ansas most definitely not I didn't care if that made ht about it: ofleft behind In particular, I liked the grief and devastation, with regards to other peoplea wallbut then Liesel, this really hot older olf harief Lennox, in the dream-revery, didn't show any e I intuited tolies squirht a candletwo candlesthe Iron Roseskeeping an eternal vigil over me, or at least on my birthdays, as years became centuries and wethat is to say, he and I, or the memory of ether

It changed suddenly, and my eyes were like his, or like his fa stor tempests: the eyes of the la else,orchids

Could two people walk through a world eternal and unchanged together and forever to talk about, or would it all seeet this down in ot it, but my diary was already full

Two of them were I put the now-finished second volu, on my small wooden bookshelf, I had purchased from an antiques shop down in Via dei Condotti, on the strada where I lived, with, of course, erator, and now I had ainto the last twenty-four hours with increased lethargy, the naured that fit me to a T, or an H, as the case may have been) True to her word,uring out what I already knew: that there were sos

I didn't say good things Just things And soht le all the way down to ed to try not to look at it, every possible second, but had failed miserably in my self-imposed abstinence It was an itch too easy to scratch It was so unlike me to have this physical proof, this everyday, full-time reminder of what I had the potential to becos I felt that potential like a solid mass in the pit of o it had been raging unchecked inside ofup my arm Orchis halsey or whatever

It had been so bad I had felt like there was another part of me I didn't entirely understand yet that sometimes had control over inside ed part of my identity, like a stalk, almost, which puts out leaves, and then one day, bam, there's a flower there My Wiccan flower

My orchid

I looked up what it enus and so forthbut whereas Vittoria, as htshade, I had no real clue what my orchid was I just knew that it was a flower-Mark and therefore that my virtue was either Grace or Goodwill and that it looked badass; and as I didn't want others to knohat it looked like, I showed no one But my landlady wasn't any ordinary person In fact, she was extraordinary She could tell there was so different about me the first time I returned and she threatened h!” And then looked down her long, pointed nose, atyou,” she said to me

She jabbed at her oo eyes with her index and ers Instinctively I looked for her Wiccan Mark, but there was none

I couldn't hts, but I nodded ”May I go to e