by Cege Smith
Angeline searched the vast database of knowledge in her mind. Even turning over all of the legends and myths that she had fed on as a child, she couldn’t match that word with anything in her memory. But based on Connor’s face, becoming a wraith was definitely a bad thing. What had he done? What had she asked him to do?
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t drink any blood. You took mine. Why would that mean I would change into anything? What else did you do to me?”
“I did only as you asked,” Connor said slowly. “I did not feed you any of my blood so you are not turning into a vampire. But you know I’m right when I tell you that something is happening to you. I know that you can feel it.”
Angeline said nothing. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right. But she did feel different. The world around her seemed crisper and more real. Her senses were enhanced far beyond anything she knew possible. But what had her most frightened was that she could feel another presence in the space of her mind and it was laughing at her…and waiting. Waiting for Angeline to let her guard down.
“You planned this all along, didn’t you? You and your vampire Master!” She was starting to panic. She was on the verge of ascending the throne and claiming her birthright. Her father was dying. Her people needed her. And nowhere in that equation did becoming a…wraith, whatever that was, factor into it. Her perfectly planned life was shattering before her eyes.
“You need to stay calm. I did not plan this for you. I had a mission. I was to bring you to my Master. Nothing more, nothing less. He will be less than pleased as well,” Connor said.
“Your Master, your Master, your Master. I’ve heard enough about your Master! What about my king? What about my kingdom? I am the heir Princess and future Queen of Altera! You should be obeying MY commands, not some bastard vampire traitor who was banished to the edge of the abyss years ago!” Angeline lurched to her feet and snarled when Connor rose to help her.
She forced her feet to move toward the light. She needed fresh air. She needed to think. Connor’s presence was suffocating. She stepped out into the tiny sliver of light that peeked through the canopy of trees overhead. She felt cold even though she knew that she was sweating. It was like she was split in half, each side warring against each other.
She didn’t have to turn around to know that Connor had moved to just a few steps behind her. Even though he hadn’t made a sound she knew he was there because it felt like she had something inside her that was radiating out and picking up the moving objects around her. All she had to do was ping and if there was something there she got a message back.
She was testing the perimeters of this heightened sense when it picked something up; it was small and moving fast under the thick vegetation growing at her feet. Her mind shut down and she responded completely by instinct. She shifted to her left and then her hands went underneath a tangle of thick ivy. Seconds later the thing that she sensed was in her hands and she closed over it tightly.
She pulled it out. A small brown rabbit was struggling in her hands. She was just moving to twist its neck when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was the briefest touch, but it was enough to bring her back to her senses. Her fingers opened and the rabbit disappeared back into the underbrush.
Angeline’s breath was coming in short gaps. It was like another person had taken over. One that was much darker than Angeline and who had a thirst for the kill.
“What’s happening to me?” she cried out into the forest. It answered her with silence.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Connor felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest when he saw her stricken face. Although he knew what a terrible position he had put her in, he wouldn’t take it back. Life as a wraith had the possibility of being manageable. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was certainly better than the alternative. Her life from this point forward was going to be a constant battle between being a human and being a monster. But he felt certain that if anyone could bend the demon inside to her will, it was the woman standing before him. Properly trained, if there even was such a thing, she could return to her previous life and no one would be the wiser. But in order to do that, she needed to learn how to control it. She needed a teacher. And Connor could think of only one person that would be qualified for the task.
“I know you are upset. But I did obey your command, Princess. I know the importance of your life and what that means to Altera. I did what I did, despite what could happen, so that you would live,” he said carefully.
“You knew what would happen to me,” she spat. “You knew and you did it anyway.”
“This only happens in the event that you actually die. If I had been able to get the poison out before your body let go you would have been fine. But I was too late. At least alive you can still serve your people. Dead, your kingdom would have been thrown into chaos, and your father would have gone to his grave knowing that a once great and honorable bloodline had disappeared. That is not the way I would want to pass out of this world,” he said.
Angeline’s eyes shone with tears. “I can’t go back to my father like this. I don’t even know what this is. I have failed him.” She lowered her head and started to weep.
Connor wanted to reach out to comfort her, but he knew that underneath the sorrow burned a white molten core of anger and confusion and something far darker. Connor had only heard of a few wraiths being created in his days as a vampire, and both the wraith and its creator had met foul ends. There was a reason that the act of creating one was forbidden.
A wraith was the perfect hybrid between the living and the dead. It was like nature, or the abhorrence of nature, created a mold that took some of the best traits of both races and then turned it on its head. A wraith carried good and evil, strength and weakness, mercy and an appetite for vengeance. And they were wildly unpredictable.
“You haven’t failed anyone. I have failed you,” Connor said. “My stupidity put you in a position where you had to make an impossible choice with limited information. I owe you a debt, one that I intend to remedy.”
Angeline looked up at him. Her violet eyes flashed. He could see the struggle there. “How?”
“There is a man that I have heard of, a man who supposedly can help those like you.”
“Can he cure me?” she asked. Her words were laced with hope.
“No.” Connor shook his head and watched her face fall. He took a small step closer. “But I have heard that he can teach you things to control those dark desires that I know you feel skimming your consciousness. He can help you be human again.”
“I’m no longer human,” Angeline said bitterly, testing the word while probably trying to superimpose it on the mental image she had of herself. “I am a…wraith.”
“You are becoming a wraith, yes,” Connor said. “The change is not complete yet. I think it best that we try to reach the man before that happens.” He was trying to hover without getting too close to her.
“You are afraid of me,” she said with wide eyes. It wasn’t a question.
“Princess, I want to help you,” he said. He knew that it didn’t escape her notice that he didn’t actually answer her question. He was scared of what was happening to her for many reasons, but it wasn’t the time or the place to discuss it. Plus he was certain that it would only make things worse.
“What about your Master?” Angeline asked. “I thought your mission was to take me to him.”
Connor was trying not to think about the Master. Or Monroe. Once it became known that Connor was missing and there was the possibility that Angeline was in his company, the Master would have no choice but to send the Chief Deputy after them, and Monroe was exceedingly good at his job. There wasn’t much time.
“I cannot take you to the Master right now. I think it’s better that we focus on you right now and helping you make it safely through this transition,” he said.
“This person you spoke of; he isn’t in the same place as the rest of your coven?”
He decided that on this topic, it was best to tell her the truth. She was in even more danger than she had been before with this turn of events. “No. We have a law about wraiths. Anyone who creates one is banished from the coven.”
“And the wraith?”
“Death.”
The word hung in the air between them.
Angeline felt her chest constrict and tried to rationalize how it was possible that her life had been turned inside out in a matter of two days. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had left the safe confines of the convent with Rhone. Now she stood here, in the haunted Amaron Forest, with the vampire who had kidnapped her and turned her into something that was inhuman. A wraith.
She felt dizzy and lightheaded. How could this all be real? She pushed past Connor and ducked her head to re-enter the small cave outcropping. She saw a flash on the ground and stooped to pick it up. It was the locket her father had given her for her thirteenth birthday. It had belonged to her mother. She never took it off. That life felt like it belonged to another person. She wanted to cry again. But she couldn’t do that. Crying wasn’t going to change what had happened to her. It wasn’t going to wipe away the last two days. Pouting was not the Robart way.
Again the internal sensor alerted her that Connor was moving. Even if she couldn’t see his shadow stretch out over her, she would have known that he was there. He wasn’t trying to pressure her, but she could feel the anxiousness from him. If what he had told her was true, then he had risked much to do what she had innocently asked him to do. There was no way to go back. She stared at the locket and thought about what her father would tell her to do.
“This man you mentioned. Do you really think that he can help me?” she asked without turning around.
“I do,” he replied.
“And once I meet with him? Learn what he has to tell me?”
“If he deems that you are safe to return home, I will take you there myself,” he said.
Now she did turn around. “What’s in this for you, Connor? Why do you want to help me now? You could just leave me here, return to your coven, and say that I had escaped.”
“If anyone of my kind found you and you told them how you became the way you are I would be banished. The only way that I can ensure my own safety and standing within the coven is to make you disappear. The Master will be angry that you slipped through his fingers, but I am used to being on his bad side.”
There was much more to that story, she could tell, but Angeline suddenly felt tired and like her skin was going to fly right off her body. It was as though there were millions of tiny bugs crawling just beneath the surface of her skin. She looked at her arm in alarm, expecting to see them wiggling there.
“What is it?” Connor asked.
That was when the pain struck like a lightning bolt, and Angeline could do nothing but scream.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When Angeline re-emerged out of her stupor, she could see that they had moved again. There were huge black holes in her memories from the last few hours. Every time she had become aware of the outside world again it felt like she was being pulled apart limb from limb. The pain had finally receded. As she lifted her head up slightly, she saw that she was lying next to a small stream that babbled along seemingly without a care in the world. She envied it.
A thick soft black fabric softened the hard ground beneath her. It was Connor’s cloak. The aroma of smoked meat filled the air and suddenly she was ravenous. She sat up, surprised how strong she felt in comparison to just a few hours ago when the pain bent her to its will. The forest was dark and she sensed that it was shortly after twilight. She had been delirious for the majority of the day, assuming it was still the same day.
She saw Connor watching her from across a small fire blazing in between them. He smiled wanly at her and she could see lines of worry etched around his eyes.
“I thought I had lost you there,” he said.
“Was it bad?” she asked. She remembered the flashes of pain and screaming, but it was fading quickly from her mind, almost like the experience had happened to someone else.
“Far worse for you, I’m sure,” he said. She could see that her question had confused him.
“Where are we?” She decided it was best not to tell him that she had no memory of what had transpired. She wondered if that was normal. “How much longer until we reach the man you told me about?”
“Caspian,” Connor said. He slowly turned a spit over the fire, and Angeline saw a small pig there. Her mouth watered. She didn’t care if the meat was cooked or not. She had to hold herself back from snatching a piece of skin from its hide and shoving it into her mouth.
“What?” She was so focused on the pig that she missed what Connor said.
“Who is more appropriate,” Connor said. “The man’s name is Caspian. And we are still a day’s journey from where he was last sighted.”
“You mean you don’t actually know where he is?” Angeline was alarmed, but she wasn’t sure if it was coming from a growling that she heard in the back of her mind that wanted to consume the pig raw or the fact that Connor’s plan to help her seemed to have a fatal flaw.
“What Caspian does, or what he claims to be able to do, isn’t sanctioned by the Master.” Connor wasn’t meeting her eyes. “Monroe, my sire, said that he moves around a lot. He has to so that he won’t be found.”
“How are we supposed to find him then?” she demanded. She was angry that her fate was almost wholly in the hands of this vampire. Although he appeared noble and kind, this vampire had put her in this lose-lose situation to begin with.
“Monroe has hunted Caspian for years,” he said quietly. “And there is no way based on what he told me that Caspian won’t show himself if we are close and he senses that you are a wraith. Studying and working with wraiths are his life’s pursuit, or his afterlife, if you will.”
Angeline was working to process this information. She had not thought of Connor having a sire, but of course he would. Someone would have baptized him into this dark world of the vampire existence. She found herself wondering what Connor had been like when he had been human. She shook her head. Those kinds of thoughts were not going to get her home.
“So I’m supposed to put my destiny and that of the kingdom of Altera in the hands of an old, exiled vampire?” She couldn’t hide the sarcasm in her voice.
“Caspian spent years working on a project for the Master that would have changed the entire course of our history. But then he became…distracted…by his interest in wraiths.”
“What was this grandiose project?” Angeline said scornfully.
Connor did not reply. Instead he pointed to the spit. “I’m assuming you are hungry.”
It was the invitation the dark thing had been waiting for; it took over and Angeline fell onto the pig. She lost herself in the tangy taste of the slightly crisped flesh and the inner meaty parts that were barely less than raw. If she admitted it to herself, she went digging deep inside the body for those parts. They were still slightly bloody and she moaned in delight. Nothing she had tasted in her eighteen years even came close to comparing to what she was eating at that moment.
It seemed like just moments later she was licking the final juices off of the bone. Then she saw Connor’s worried face and she realized what she had done and how it must have looked to him. She felt sick.
She whirled around. “Don’t look at me!”
He was in front of her a moment later, and his hand grasped her under her chin and pulled her face up so that she was staring in his glittering eyes. “You have nothing to feel ashamed of, Princess. To feed is any organism’s natural instinct.”
“Not like that,” she spat as she shook his hands off. “Not like some common beast!” She stalked over to the water’s edge and started to rinse her hands and face. She felt sticky and dirty.
His laughter drew her up short.
“What is so funny?” she sniffed without looking at him.
She thought about it. Grudgingly, she realized that it had been awhile since she could remember eating anything of real substance. She had been so concerned about seeing the rise of the dark being inside of her that she had jumped to blaming that for her seemingly illogical behavior.
She wanted desperately to believe him, if nothing else to make her feel human again. “Do you really think that was it?” she asked as she returned to the fire.
“Do you feel satiated?” he asked.
Angeline considered the question. Her stomach felt bloated and distended, and she was still feeling a bit nauseous from eating so fast.
“Yes,” she replied wondering where his question was leading.
Connor nodded. “Then you have nothing to fear. If I was to eat what you did, first it would not satisfy me in the slightest, and secondly I would be the one about to retch and not you.”
“What satisfies you?” Angeline asked even though she assumed the answer. She just didn’t know if there was more that the legends never mentioned.
“I will be satisfied for the duration of our journey to find Caspian. You don’t need to worry about my appetite,” Connor said. “You may have an hour to rest, Princess, and then we must be on our way.” Then he took a small book out of his pocket and began to read. The conversation was over.
Angeline grew warm when she remembered that Connor had feasted on her blood; a lot of it. Of course he wouldn’t be hungry again for a while. She wrapped herself up in his cloak and then lay back down on the ground. She was asleep before any further memories had time to surface.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The hour passed entirely too quickly. It seemed like she had just closed her eyes when she heard the whisper in her ear, “It’s time to go.”
