by Leena Maria
"Why don't you try to make her immortal yourself? My blood is in your veins now. It should transform her. So far we have only made our own human Hunters, but no human Hunter has tried to do this to another human. Try that. You remember how I did it?"
Ambrogio nodded.
"If my blood works, she will be immortal too."
And then Artemis sank back into the mists behind the physical world and disappeared from sight.
Ambrogio went back home. Selene came to meet him at the door.
"You never grow old, my love," she said, as if reading his thoughts.
"That is true, Selene. And now I am going to tell you why."
Now, at last, Ambrogio told her everything. Hades, hunting for the silver wings, the shadow, and how exactly Artemis had made him immortal.
"And I met her again just now. She said I could do the same to you."
Selene watched him. Her eyes were dimmed with age, and her hair had white streaks. To him she was still beautiful, but you could see her time would soon come.
She nodded.
"Very well. I have nothing to lose, I can feel sickness inside me, and I will be gone soon. You can try. But we need to do this somewhere where no one can see us."
They left at night, and Ambrogio carried Selene, wrapped in her blanket. He ran until it was certain no one saw them. He put her on her feet on the slope of a hill.
They stood there, in silence, for a long time. The moon rose over the horizon. Suddenly Ambrogio felt Selene's hand taking his. Skin touching skin. He felt a surge of passion in his mind and turned towards Selene. She had raised her face towards him, and this time he did not refuse. He bent and kissed her.
They kissed forever and her hands felt so good against his. He grabbed them tighter, and kissed her longer, more passionately. It was as if her skin made his blood sing. She let out small voices, he heard them, but he did not open his eyes.
Then, suddenly, something felt strange about the kiss. The tang of iron...
With a yell he opened his eyes and pushed Selene back.
It was too late. He had bitten her tongue, and tasted her blood. And now he could not stop himself anymore. The Hunter in him took over, pushing his mind aside. He yanked Selene to him, and bit her on the neck and the sweet, tasty blood filled him. It tasted so different from animal blood. Selene fought back at first, but then stopped.
He could not stop. The desire in him was irresistible, overwhelming. When it was over, he opened his eyes, and lowered Selene's limp body to the ground. Her eyes were still alive and they... smiled.
"I am in you now, forever in you," she whispered and died.
"No!" Ambrogio yelled, and bit her arm. He tore open his own vein, and poured his blood into her wound.
Too late. Her heart had stopped beating, and so his blood could not travel in her veins.
"No!" he screamed again.
There was nothing he could do. He sat there on the steep hill, next to his beloved and cried in the silver moonlight.
"I'm forever here, Ambrogio," he heard her whisper from inside him, "forever here with you."
He fell silent and listened. He felt a presence. When he concentrated on them, his mind opened, and he saw Selene's memories in his mind. Now he could see her childhood, her youth, how they met. And the endless love she had felt for him all these years.
Though her body lay on the ground, still and calm, her mind was coursing inside him, her blood united with his. She spoke to him in her blood... Tears fell from his eyes, when he listened to her emotions, her memories, and was wrapped in her love.
In awe he realized that now they were together at last, for all eternity.
And after a while the thought was born that he could try to create her physically again. All he needed was another woman. He would try to transform her into an immortal being. When he would give his own blood to her, Selene would be physically present in the transformed woman, because she was there in his blood.
Suddenly, there was hope. He rose, and quickly carried the body Selene had occupied down the hill. With his strong arms he dug a hole in the ground and buried her there, gathering stones over her so animals could not reach her.
And then he turned back towards Ephesus, with new vigor in his steps.
He would create Selene again.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
89. The Attack
"Quick!" Lilith grabbed grabbed a locket hanging from her neck and dragged the chain over her head. "Here is the Key! Take it and leave right away!"
"No, we can't. I can't!" I said. I felt panic rising in me and tried to muster all my strength.
"If the shadows have breached our defenses, this is the first thing they'll be looking for – after Dana. They are not having either one. Leave. NOW!"
We heard sounds of fighting from the hall.
"Quick, everyone! Grab each other!" Grandma took control.
My heart was beating like thunder in my ears when everyone grabbed me and Daniel. Elijah grabbed the notebooks.
"Go, go, GO!" Lilith yelled.
And so we faded into the mists of the buffer zone.
"We need the mirror!" Grandma said. "Quickly, it is in the equipment room!"
She had barely time to finish her sentence when we were already in the room. She opened the little casket holding the mirror and grabbed it – but not quickly enough. We were suddenly surrounded by a dozen shadows, all nightmarish figures from hell.
I grabbed Grandma and screamed when a shadow caught me by my hand. Grandma turned and hit the shadow at the neck – I saw a rosy colored flash, which then bounced across the room and behind the door. She had dropped the Key, but none of the shadows seemed to have noticed.
Daniel's wings roared into life. Elijah's did the same. Like lightning flashes their hands and wings fell inexorably onto the shadows. They cut right through them and their power made the whole house shake. The first wave of shadows fell and crumbled to nothing and it looked as if we were going to make it.
Then they began to seep through the walls as if the whole building had turned into mist with grasping hands and snarling jaws. Countless faces and bodies emerged from the shadowy mass. Time seemed to slow down and I found myself suddenly thinking that the nightmares of Hieronymus Bosch had come to life and this was the jaws of hell itself. Then a voice broke in on me, a voice that was filled with anguish and fury.
"Dana! Take the mirror! Go Go GO!" Daniel yelled, "NOW! GO!"
And I obeyed. My energies were so high that my wings opened on their own and filled the room. The shadows fell back from the energy wave. This would be our only chance. Grandma pushed the mirror into my hands and I concentrated... no, forced all my power into my hands.
Bright blue and silver threads shot out of them and the world began to disappear around us. The last vision I had of Daniel was when he was attacked by a mass of shadows that felled him to the floor, reaching for his throat. Elijah jumped on them like a wrathful god. Blue lightning flashes made the walls crumble around them.
Then the mists of time closed around us and we flew.
CHAPTER NINETY
90. Traitor
"Yes, my lady?" Ambrogio bent his head respectfully, but without obsequiousness.
Angel looked at her most trusted servant. He had been in her family since the times of ancient Greece. Her own grandmother had transformed him, and he was a legend among the Nephilim and vampires. The reason being that he was the original - the first one to create another human vampire. Before him the dark Nephilim had created immortals that survived by feeding on animals. They killed their prey by draining all the blood from it. Hunting their pray developed speed and skills, which were then put to good use when the Nephilim wanted someone, a human, to be killed. That killing had always been done in traditional ways, though, using weapons, or the sheer strength of the body.
But Ambrogio, for reasons no one knew, had turned to people as nourishment, instead of animals, and used the same method that Angel's grandmother had used to transform
him: he drank from a woman in Ephesus, not quite killing her. Whilst her heart was still beating, he had opened her wrist and poured his own blood into her veins, and made her drink his blood as well. And she turned into the creature that was later known as a vampire.
They had lived together, but somehow the new creature was not as strong as the vampires created by the Nephilim. In time she withered and became more fragile, withdrawing more and more into the shadows and she was eventually killed. But she had created her own kind before that happened. And they created their kind in turn, and a new species of creature was born.
These human vampires were long-lived, some very long indeed, but they could be killed. Ambrogio, however, had been in many life threatening situations, and always his body had managed to heal itself from the severest of wounds, just like the bodies of other Nephilim-made vampires. Nephilim-created vampires were the strongest of all, but the blood they transferred through others they infected was never quite as potent in the veins of their offspring. Also, the vampires that the Nephilim created did not need human blood to live, and could feed equally well on animals, but whatever offspring they produced had to drink human blood to thrive.
Angel felt nervous in the presence of the First Vampire. He never really revealed his innermost thoughts, and she did not dare to ask. Ambrogio had the eyes of the dark Nephilim – yellow, oily. His skin was an odd shade of pale gold, and his hair was shiny and black. He could walk in the sunlight and not suffer, but the strange color of his pale skin drew so much attention that he rarely did so.
"We know now Daniel's group has gone to ancient Egypt," Angel said, looking furious. "I want you to follow them. The shadows revealed to them that we know where their lair is. The fight with Daniel and Elijah was magnificent, but not successful because Dana escaped."
"How do I follow them, my lady?"
Ambrogio was standing in the room alone. His shadow was nowhere to be seen.
"You are to follow them discreetly, when they search for the Trail of Angels. They are vulnerable now that Daniel and Elijah are not with them. You will follow them and tell us when they find the Abode of the Watchers – or preferably, the last clue to its whereabouts. We would prefer to find the place before they do."
"How will I do that, my lady?" Ambrogio asked. "I am no Time Walker. Vampires cannot time walk."
"You will have all the help you need," Angel said and turned to look to her right. "Come, show yourself!"
The curtain leading to another room next to Angel's office moved. A hooded female figure stepped into the room.
"You are a Weaver," Ambrogio stated the fact. He could tell from the slightly smoky smell that emanated from all Weavers.
"I am," the woman said. "As it is, I do not have long before I have to return. They are never to know that I am gone - luckily the devastation of the Center is such that they will not miss me for a while. The important thing is that I know exactly where they went, and I can take you there."
She looked at Ambrogio from under her hood with open curiosity, and did not seem afraid. Only sad.
"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" Ambrogio demanded.
"Because I want immortality. Not only in the buffer zone, but in human world as well," she said.
"You do not know what you ask," Ambrogio said, and the tiredness in his voice made Angel quickly glance his way. "Immortality is perhaps not all you think it to be."
"Maybe. But my husband was attacked and has transformed into one of your kind. I want to spend my life with him, and not die before him. I want to be transformed into a vampire. This is why I helped the shadows in their attempt to seize Dana for you."
"Why do you not ask your husband to do the honours, then?" Ambrogio lifted his eyebrow.
"I know that to be truly immortal or to live a lot longer than the ordinary vampire, I need to be changed by a Nephilim. My husband was. And my Lady Angel here has promised to transform me as a reward for my help."
Ambrogio looked at the dark-haired woman. He felt pity for her – she did not know the depths of despair a Nephilim-created vampire could fall into, watching everyone near them die except the Nephilim, who cared little about the lives of humans or the vampires. They were simply the ones who were doomed to do the dirty work of the dark ones, intented to watch their children die – both biological and created ones.
For a while Ambrogio let the memories of Selene fill his mind, and his eternal search for the perfect woman who would bring her back to life again. There were a few fleeting days of her presence in the new female body, and then it faded away. He listened to her presence in his own blood, and felt it become quieter until it was only an occasional whisper.
It was as though his vampire blood was tainted by time and age, and Selene's presence was no longer pure. All the human blood he had taken through the centuries had tainted hers, and she was now hidden behind the cursed whispers of those Ambrogio had killed after her - all competing for his attention.
Finally he understood that he had to stop killing people for food and go back to feeding from animal blood. Animals' consciousnesses left their bodies so easily, and left only a fleeting residue of their minds behind, soon gone. But he occasionally killed women still, especially those who reminded him of Selene, in the vanishing hope of bringing her back through his own blood in the veins of the newly created vampire.
He had often wondered, what would have happened if the last call for the silver winged one had been successful. He knew one had got away, when he shot that last arrow. If he had answered that call in Ephesus, could he have taken that Nephilim blood? Or would he have healed his Selene voluntarily? Or maybe Ambrogio's own blood so that Selene would have been present, and conscious inside him forever...
With time rage had risen inside Ambrogio. The silver winged ones were supposed to help, when they heard the call of the device. The last one should have returned, he often raged to himself. Still, he knew, that if that one silver winged Nephilim still existed, he would remember Ambrogio, and would never help voluntarily. But he could fight the creature, and take its blood, and drink it and pour it into his own wounds, so Selene could come back into his mind, if not into any female body.
Ambrogio felt the weight of the little leather pouch hanging from his neck. The odd device used to lure the silver Nephilim to him was still there. Useless, but a symbol of his transformation. He had not been able to throw it away.
Because of his own lost love Ambrogio understood this Weaver. The hope of being eternally with the one you loved... yes, he did understand.
Angel waited for her Hunter to think through whatever it was that occupied him. She knew better than to hurry his decision. He was much older than she was, and wiser.
"Very well," Ambrogio finally said. "Who are the travellers? Tell me their names."
She did.
"The Nephilim girl is an oddity, though," the Weaver said at the end.
"Oddity, how?" Angel asked.
"She got her wings too early for one... and she is a mighty healer. And a Weaver the like of which we have never seen before."
Angel stood like a statue.
"A healer?" she asked.
"She healed Elijah after he had been infected by one of your kind. And then she healed a Nephilim who had already been your kind for months. She gives them some kind of blood transfusion, I've been told. She purifies their blood with her wings."
Ambrogio's eyes turned pitch black from emotion. Angel was too occupied with her own surprise to notice how he clutched the leather pouch that was always hanging from his neck.
"What colour are her wings?" Angel asked.
"The most amazing colour... pure white – with silver veins. She is a Silver Nephilim. We thought her kind were dead long ago - gone in ancient times."
Ambrogio's face revealed nothing.
"Very well," he said in a rasping voice, "you will take me to them in ancient Egypt. How do we keep in contact?"
"I will attach one of my strings to you. I can con
nect to you through it, and hear you calling me," the Weaver said.
"Ambrogio," Angel said.
"Yes, my lady?"
"Bring her alive to me. She belongs to me. Promise me this."
Ambrogio turned and the Weaver took his hand, flinching at first at the touch of his cold skin through her gloves. Then she determinedly took his hand tightly into hers. She held an object and cut an opening into the air. Ambrogio's keen eyes recognized the rosy transparent colour of the tip she was holding and he remembered how he had fallen on top of Artemis's weapon. How had this ended up in the hands of the Weaver?
The Weaver held some other object as well in her hand, too small for Ambrogio to see. Her hands became blurry and several coloured strings wove from her palms and into the opening. Ambrogio followed her, and she turned and closed the opening behind them.
Only then Angel realized that Ambrogio had never answered her.
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
91. Floating
"Do you ever miss them?"
We sat by the underground lake, Seth and I.
I drew a line in the water with my finger and watched how the little shiny silver particles followed my finger. If I let them touch my skin, they tickled it slightly. It was a gentle, bubbly feeling.
"Who?" I asked, even though I knew full well whom he meant.
The roof of the cave was quite high where we were sitting, but the glow of the water lit it nevertheless. The waters created beautiful shimmering reflections on the rock. Further upstream, a small crack in the rock let a little daylight seep in to light the water. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Because of the light you could see to the bottom of the lake - the silver dust covered everything there, and shone light upwards, revealing even the smallest detail.
"Your mother and sister," Seth patiently said.
He was never impatient towards me, only friendly. He was older than me, but had become my friend from the moment we descended to the underground caves and the Silver Waters.
