Edward screamed in mourning disbelief. “No!” The sound startled Mike from his grieving, and he looked up at Edward. His eyes were still red and swollen. Tears streamed down his cheeks as Edward rushed toward where he sat beside the horse. “What happened?” Edward bellowed, with a mixture of grief and rage.
Mike looked up and saw the expression of pain on his face. “I ... I am truly sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” he said dejectedly.
For a moment Edward had completely forgotten about Mike. Now, he had Edward’s undivided attention. “You did this?” Edward yelled furiously. His eyes blazed at Mike as if his look could burn a hole right into Mike’s brain.
“I did,” Mike said remorsefully. “I didn’t mean to do it. I blanked out. A couple of minutes later I returned to my senses with the taste of blood in my mouth. I noticed the bite mark on the horse and realized that it had been me who put the mark there.”
Edward stalked angrily toward him. His rage was burning so hot right now that the only thing he could think about was wrapping his hands around Mike’s throat and strangling the life from his body.
Jack had never been one to figure things out quickly, but now he understood. The confusing aroma of death that he had tracked from the clearing was Mike’s scent. Apparently, the bats that had attacked Mike in the clearing had sucked the natural life from his body and infected him somehow. Jack had never in his life come across an individual like the one before him. If he was right, and it seemed very likely that he was, the bite of the bat had infected Mike—much like the wolf that had bitten Jack years earlier, with the disease of immortality. Meaning that he was now a vampire.
Katie stood back near the portal, close to where Amber was cowering. She couldn’t understand why Amber seemed so frightened. It wasn’t like anyone or anything was going to hurt her; she was already dead. Her attention turned back to the unfolding drama between Edward and … Mike? She had trouble believing her eyes. That couldn’t really be Mike. He was dead and buried back in the clearing. Wasn’t he? Other than how pale the man seemed to be, he sure looked like Mike.
Edward was a mere step or two from Mike, and as Katie looked on in horror, she saw that Edward’s hands were beginning to glow like the embers in a very hot fire. She could feel his deadly intent pulsing off of him in waves. “Edward, no!” Katie screamed at him in dismay.
He stopped for a moment and turned toward her. His once, almost hypnotic, gray eyes had turned black. They burned with an intense hatred that scared the hell out of Katie. She had never seen him this way and hoped that she never would again. “He killed my horse,” he growled in a voice that no longer sounded like his own. “He must pay for what he has done!”
“Just look at his eyes, Edward!” Katie pleaded, trying to reason with him. “You can see how sorry he is for what he’s done. He is mourning the loss of the horse just as much as you are.”
For just a moment, Katie saw a flicker of gray return to Edward's eyes. As he turned away from her and looked back at Mike, Katie hoped that she had gotten through to him. Mike partially got up from his sitting position and faced Edward, kneeling down before him with his head bowed. “I humbly implore you to find it within yourself to forgive me for what I have done,” Mike said meekly. “It was not my intent to hurt the horse, and I have no intention of hurting any of you either.”
Edward regarded the man kneeling before him. He continued to struggle with his emotions, feeling both contempt and fury. Mike’s apology sounded sincere enough, but could he trust him to not repeat his actions? He truly didn’t think so, but the question remained. Could he give Mike the benefit of the doubt? With these questions swirling around in his mind, Edward began to lose the harsh edge of his anger. The longer he continued to think about what to do with Mike, the more other thoughts began to creep into his head. Such as, would there be some benefit to having a vampire among them? Was it likely to tip the scales in favor of their group in a fight? Or would Mike be more of a hindrance?
Edward pondered the implications of keeping Mike in their group, carefully weighing the pros and cons in his head. Katie saw Edward’s posture begin to relax a little. Amber, Jack, and Katie all continued to watch with bated breath, waiting to see how the apparent stalemate would play out.
As she looked on, Katie began to get a chill. Gooseflesh rose all over her body. Instead of going away after a few moments, the chill persisted. When it hadn’t gone away after a couple of minutes had passed, she began to realize where the chill was coming from ... the folded piece of magic paper that was tucked inside her vest! Katie felt a combination of panic and exhilaration sweep over her. She hoped that the paper turning cold signified that Julie was trying to contact her again. She had become worried when their last communication had ended so abruptly, but since then, Katie had pretty much forgotten about the magic paper that she had tucked into her top.
Excitedly, she reached into her vest to grab the paper. Once it was out, she quickly unfolded the paper. It definitely looked like Julie was trying to communicate with her again, but this time it looked as if the situation had become more dire. Scrawled across the paper was: Please hurry, Katie! I think I was drugged and taken to Cemetery Hill.
“Oh my god!” Katie gasped. Edward turned toward the sound of her voice. When he did, he saw the look of shocked dismay on her face and noticed that she was holding a piece of paper in her hands. Temporarily forgetting all about the situation with Mike, Edward rushed over to where Katie stood.
“What is it?” he asked nervously. Katie turned the paper so that he could see what was written upon it. A look of concern spread quickly onto his face. “Have you tried to contact her since you received the message?”
“Not yet. I wanted to show the message to you before I tried doing that,” Katie explained. She turned her attention away from Edward and began to concentrate on sending a message back to Julie. Are you okay? Please answer me if you can, Katie thought. She stared intently at the paper, hoping for a response. A couple of minutes went by. The message that she had shown to Edward was slowly beginning to fade and Katie was starting to lose faith. Did Julie receive her message? She said something about being drugged, so maybe she was no longer conscious. Katie frowned in frustration and began to fold the paper so she could tuck it back into her vest. Suddenly, before she completed the first fold, the paper began to grow cold once again. Katie quickly opened it back up so she could see it. The message looked broken and haphazard. Edward stood to the side and slightly behind Katie, and looked over her shoulder as he read the message.
Feel strange—Something— on my head—Draining—Others are here—Big room—Patrolling…
Katie desperately tried to make sense of what Julie was telling her. I don’t know what you are trying to tell me, Julie, she thought, concentrating as hard as she could. Once again, the minutes passed without the message changing. The letters were fading out again. The air was beginning to feel oppressively thick as they tensely waited for another message to appear. Several more minutes went by. The previous message was completely gone now. “Damn it!” Katie sulked, and with a tear forming in her eye she turned to Edward. “Could you make any sense of Julie’s last message?” she asked.
“No,” he answered forlornly. “The only thing I picked up from the message was a sense of urgency.”
“I got that, too,” Katie told him. “It feels like if we don’t find her soon, something very bad is going to happen to her. Worse than what she is dealing with right now.”
Overhearing the conversation between Edward and Katie, Mike spoke up in a hitching voice that was laced with sadness. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”
Katie and Edward turned toward the sound of his voice. They had forgotten all about Mike, but now he had their attention again. The look of grim determination returned to Edward’s face and his skin suddenly began to grow hot.
Katie noticed the heat emanating from him, as if his skin were an oven set to broil. She turned toward Edwar
d, cupped a hand over her mouth, and whispered something in his ear. He turned and regarded Katie briefly. Her words seemed to placate him for now, as she saw his eyes shifting to their normal coloring, and the heat rolling from his skin became less intense. Katie turned her attention back to the kneeling man, whose eyes were still brimming with tears. She felt sorry for him. He never asked for the events that led to what he had become, and Mike seemed to be trying very hard to hold onto what remained of his humanity. As Katie looked into his murky eyes, she could see that the words he had spoken were the truth. He really did want to help, but for whatever reason he didn’t think that he had anything to offer them in his current state. “Why do you feel that you can’t help us?” she asked.
Mike’s eyes flitted back and forth, nervously gathering the expressions on Edward and Katie’s faces for a few moments before answering. “I don’t want to risk hurting anyone,” Mike said as he lowered his head. “I don’t know if I can keep my urges under control.” Mike looked back up at her. A fresh trail of tears was blazing a path down his cheeks. He knew the look that Katie was giving him right now. It was a look that told him she was willing to take the risk. Before she could say anything to confirm his belief, he spoke up again. “And another thing,” he began. “Since you have been gone in the portal I have noticed that when the sun comes up I have issues. An irresistible urge comes over me to flee from the light. It overwhelms all thought, as if it were an instinctual thing for me to seek out darkness. Perhaps it’s fear that drives me away from the daylight. Whatever the case may be, I don’t think I can travel too far from this place, because when the sun comes up I wouldn’t have anywhere to hide.”
Katie considered his words carefully. There had to be a way that he could still travel with them. There just had to be! Her brow furrowed in concentration. If it weren’t for the intense look on her face, someone looking at her might have thought she was catatonic; she stood frozen in place, like a mannequin, and did not even blink.
Edward turned toward Katie to see her reaction to what Mike had said. Seeing the look of concentration on her face told him that she would not give up, not until she found a way for Mike to remain part of their group. Edward conceded to her will. No matter what he could say to counter anything she came up with, he would not be able to get Katie to change her mind. He would be fighting a losing battle if he tried. Giving in, instead of wasting time trying to persuade Katie to leave Mike behind, Edward turned his own thoughts inward. He searched his mind for ways that Mike could help. For several minutes he searched his memory for anything that could be deemed helpful. Edward was about to give up when a memory of his childhood suddenly sprang into focus in his head.
In this memory, his father had taken Edward on a trip into the wilderness outside of Elysia when Edward was in his early teens. His father had told him that he was taking him on the trip because Edward was too accustomed to life within the walls of the castle. “You need to learn how to do things for yourself, boy,” his father had told him sternly. “You will not always have servants to do everything for you. You must learn how to fend for yourself, as men do.” At first Edward did not understand how this trip was going to accomplish what his father had said, but as the days passed he began to see how different things were away from the castle.
His father had brought a bow with them to hunt for small game so they would have something to eat. During the weeklong excursion in the wilderness, his father taught him how to use the weapon. Still, sometimes Edward would cheat when his father wasn’t watching by using a spell he had read in one of his father’s books. He was far more accurate throwing a summoned bolt of ice from his hand than he was with the bow. His father either never noticed the deception, or he had just never confronted Edward about it.
One thing that seemed to frustrate Edward’s father more than anything during their time in the wilderness was Edward’s complaining at nighttime. Each night, when they lay under the stars with their blankets wrapped around them, Edward would whine and complain that the moons were too bright for him to get to sleep. His father put up with the complaints for three nights before giving in. On the fourth night he cast a spell over the area where Edward lay bundled in his blanket. An opaque bubble had appeared above Edward, which blocked everything outside from view, including the light of the stars and moons. His father told him that he would only do this for him once per night to help him get to sleep. That if the absence of things around him was too much for him to handle, he only had to touch the bubble to make it disappear.
Feeling as if he were caught in a dream, Edward began to hear a raised voice. At first he couldn’t place where he knew the voice. It was familiar to him somehow, but was definitely not one that he was expecting to hear. It was a female voice that could have been his mother. He tried to reach out and break the bubble that his memory had him encased in, but the vision of his teenage self did not move. Suddenly, there were hands on his shoulders that were shaking him. Hands that weren’t visible to him in the memory world. As the voice continued to shout his name and the hands persisted their shaking, Edward began to realize that what he was seeing was only a memory. Someone outside of his dream world was calling out to him. Slowly he began to come up from the daydream. His vision began to clear. Before him stood Katie, with a concerned look on her face.
“Edward!” Katie shouted again, as she looked into the glazed eyes of her friend. He looked to be slowly coming around. “Are you okay? You have been standing there for several minutes with your mouth hanging open. It kind of reminded me of a zombie.”
“Sorry. I was trying to think of a way he could help and got caught up in a memory of my childhood,” Edward explained. “What exactly is a zombie?”
“A zombie is basically a corpse that has been animated and usually has a voracious appetite for flesh. Sorry. I should really quit confusing you with terminology from my world,” Katie said sheepishly. “Did your childhood memory help you think of a way that Mike could help?”
“Actually, it might have,” Edward replied with a grin.
Katie’s face lit up like a child in a candy store. “Well. Come on!” she said excitedly. “Spill it!”
“I remembered my father casting a spell when I was on an excursion in the wilderness with him,” Edward began. “The spell was supposed to keep the light from the moon and stars from getting to me so that I could sleep. I used to have trouble sleeping when I was younger if there was any kind of light around me.”
“Did the spell work?” Katie asked hopefully.
“Yes it did. The spell blocked out everything. I couldn’t see anything outside of the bubble.”
“Bubble?” Katie repeated curiously.
“Looking in my vision, that’s the way I remembered it. I don’t know if it actually looks that way though. I do remember my father telling me that if I touched it, that the bubble would disappear.
“So if you can do this spell, Mike can continue to travel with us?” Katie asked with mounting hope.
“If I can find the spell in my book we can try it before we leave the cave, to make sure it works. The only thing is, if Mike touched the bubble at the wrong time it would disappear and leave him vulnerable to whatever light happened to be around at the time,” Edward said.
Mike had been kneeling on the cave floor, listening to their conversation, and was feeling the first spark of hope. “I generally don’t move at all when I sleep,” he told them, “and I could always ask one of you if it was safe to touch the bubble.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Katie said with a big smile. She knew that Edward wasn’t thrilled about keeping Mike with them, but Katie was very happy. She noticed that for the first time since she had come back through the portal Mike’s tears had dried up.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Edward remarked. “I don’t even know if that particular spell is in my book. Even if it is, I have never cast it before. I’m not even sure if I can perform it with any sort of proficiency.”
&n
bsp; Katie walked over to where Mike knelt on the floor. She turned briefly toward Edward. “Then let’s stop talking about it and allow you some time to consult your book,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. Katie got down beside Mike and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. “Don’t worry. He will find it. I know he will,” she whispered in Mike’s ear, trying to keep his spirits up. He gave Katie a wan smile. Despite her best efforts, it still seemed Edward’s lack of conviction about his ability to locate the spell they needed was affecting Mike’s demeanor in a negative way. Katie turned to see what Edward was doing. While her back had been turned, Edward had gone across the cave to where Amber stood and sat down. Using the glow of her form for light, he rummaged through his bag and pulled out his spell book. He sat with a look of concentration on his face, idly flipping through the book in search of the proper spell. Katie silently prayed to any god that would listen that Edward would be successful in his search.
Chapter 22
George had been traveling for days on the shabby dirt road that started back in Haven and headed generally westward. He had awoken a few days ago in the abandoned home that he had found. His sleep had been troubled by what he thought were disturbing dreams; a normal person might have even considered them to be nightmares. In these dreams, the Black Knight, who admonished and berated him like an irate boss that was fed up with an insolent employee, confronted him. Being scolded in such a manner made George feel like he had when he’d been married a long time ago. His ex-wife had spoken to him this way before, making George feel like he couldn’t do anything right. During these times, George would often feel a mixture of depression and rage. Normally, rage was the emotion that ended up consuming him.
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