Prophecy: Caelestis and Aurorea [A Vampires Realm Novel]

by F. E. Heaton

  He followed her out into the corridor and walked beside her, occasionally sneaking a glance in her direction.

  Something about Prophecy had always destroyed his ability to concentrate. From the moment he'd met her in the graveyard, he'd been unable to get her out of his thoughts. These past weeks she'd been constantly in them, always distracting him and making it impossible for him to resist her.

  It definitely hadn't just been the vision he'd received from her blood that had made him want to rescue her.

  It had also been the underlying attraction that had been gravitating between them since they'd laid eyes on each other. He knew that she had been the same. Her attraction to him had swayed her decision to go with him to England. They'd both denied it at first. In England, he'd hated her. In Paris, he'd denied his feelings. In Venice, he had realised hers. In St. Petersburg, he'd surrendered the fight.

  He loved her.

  And no matter what the laws said, there was nothing wrong with that.

  "I think we're here,” she said and he looked around them at the room.

  He hoped that she'd been concentrating while they were walking because he couldn't remember any of the journey. His attention had been completely arrested by her. He wondered if she ever had that problem. Did she ever find his presence distracting?

  He looked across at her to find her facing him. He wished he could see her eyes so he could know what feelings he was stirring in her. Her kiss had told him of her desire and it matched his own. He could think of much better things to be doing than sneaking around a museum finding a scroll. Maybe they should have put it off until tomorrow night so they could spend more time together. He felt as though he hadn't seen her in years and apart from last night, he'd barely spent any time truly alone with her.

  Prophecy watched Valentine walking along the rows of cabinets that lined the walls. She went in the other direction, searching for the scroll and hoping that she'd recognise it. Would it be in a case like the other half? She shook her head, telling herself not to look for such particulars. She just had to look at each manuscript she came across and see if she recognised it, regardless of the state it was in.

  There were various stone tablets in the first case she passed, and in the second were fragments of paper, all pinned next to each other to make up one document. It wasn't that. The fragmented manuscript was labelled as being Mesopotamian. She scanned the pieces of parchment in the next case and saw a few that were written in cuneiform but none that seemed familiar and none that were labelled like Hyperion had said.

  Looking across at Valentine, she saw that he was still walking along the row of cases, his attention wholly with them.

  She ran her eyes over the cases again, looking at each parchment in turn and each tag, and then moving on to the next case. She kept her ears pricked and her senses sharpened so much that she would be able to hear a pin drop thirty metres away.

  She turned the corner and started along the row of cases on that wall. When she found herself standing next to Valentine, she smiled at him.

  "Not this room,” she whispered and he led the way to the next.

  Her eyes ran over his back and down the length of his legs. She was glad that he seemed to have taken onboard what she'd said outside. The only way that Venturi would give up on annoying Valentine and winning her was if Valentine rose above it all. She realised that it was probably difficult for him to do so. She had wanted to fight Lucya when they'd met. She'd felt threatened for Valentine's affections and she knew he felt the same way about hers. Venturi was a threat in his eyes, just as Lucya had been in hers.

  And Elena before her.

  In fact, any girl that even so much as glanced in his direction.

  She broke away from him and started looking in the cases for the second half of the prophecy.

  Of course, next time they ran into a girl he used to know she was going to have to control her mouth or he'd be lecturing her about the fact that she'd complained about him being jealous.

  She went back a few steps when she felt as though she'd missed something and stared at the fragment of manuscript in front of her. It was about the same size as the half a scroll that they had, barely six inches across and a little more than that in length.

  Her eyes darted to the label. It was exactly as Hyperion had told her. Had he been here before? Why hadn't he reclaimed the prophecy? Maybe he'd felt it was safe here amongst the humans. Mathias had told her that they had been unsuccessful at translating it. Even if they did, each line was only half of the sentence and would make as much sense as each line of the first part they had.

  Which was no sense at all.

  "Valentine,” she whispered and waved him over to her.

  She pointed at the manuscript.

  He ran his fingers along the edges of the glass and she saw his brows knit. She wanted to see his eyes so she could know what he was thinking.

  "We might have to break this,” he said.

  Her brows rose. “Break it? You mean, hit it hard, smash it, the kind of thing that would make a lot of noise?"

  He nodded. “I like the sound of breaking glass."

  She grinned. “Me too."

  Standing back, she watched him draw his fist back and punch the sheet of glass that covered the front of the case. It smashed into fragments and the sound of it echoed around the room. She waited for the alarm to go off, but once all the glass had fallen nothing but the sound of her breathing greeted her. It was a silent alarm as Valentine had predicted. Any second now they were going to have up to a dozen guards to deal with.

  She frowned when Valentine shook his hand and she smelled blood in the air.

  When he turned around, she could see the dark liquid coating his gloves. She caught hold of his hand and concentrated, using her power to heal him so he would be able to fight without injuring himself even more. When his hand was healed, she pressed a kiss to it and grabbed the scroll. She quickly rolled it up and tucked it safely inside her shirt.

  The noise of heavy boots on the hard floor echoed down the corridors.

  She flexed her fingers and looked at Valentine. He was staring hard at the hallway they had come along, his eyes narrowed and his lips compressed. He was listening. Her brows knit and she cocked her head to one side, focusing on the sound of approaching guards. It was joined by a similar noise coming from the other corridor.

  "Four, maybe five,” she said to Valentine, sure that she had counted right.

  "Six,” he said. “One is almost in step with another."

  He smiled at her and the feeling of disappointment that had begun to grow inside her on hearing his words disappeared. She had almost been right. This was all new to her. She had so much to learn about hunting and tracking, but she had the advantage of a good teacher.

  "We go out the back.” He turned around and started walking towards the corridor opposite the one they had come out of.

  She withdrew the knife from her pocket as they walked. Flicking it open, she listened to the blade click into place and held it by her side. The footsteps were growing closer. She wondered why the guards didn't speak to each other. It wasn't as if they would break their cover. She could hear them coming a mile away on this floor.

  When they appeared in view, she wrapped the fingers of her left hand tightly around the knife handle and placed her thumb against the end of it, making sure that the sharp edge of the blade was pointing away from her. It would be quicker to kill them by slashing rather than stabbing.

  The guards reached Valentine first and she wondered how he was going to kill them without resorting using to his preternatural strength and doing what his hunting instincts were telling him to. Hers were begging her to kill and feed.

  Her eyes widened when he slammed the heel of his hand into the man's nose. The man dropped lifelessly to the floor and she looked at him, trying to see what Valentine had done. He'd smashed the bone of the man's nose up into his brain. She was still staring at him when someone approached her. Before t
hey had a chance to reach her, she had turned on the spot and brought the knife around with her. She slashed across the woman's throat and caught her before she could fall. Blood spilled from the wound while the woman's body jerked in her arms. Prophecy waited for the death throes to end and then lapped up the blood, drinking as much as possible before someone else attacked her.

  Dropping the body, she blocked the punch a short stocky man threw at her and hit him in the chest with the flat of her hand, forcing him to skid backwards along the floor. She ran at him and leapt at the last moment, bringing her foot down hard on his neck and listening to it snap. She landed heavily on the floor and rolled forwards to evade the baton another man tried to hit her with. She sprung to her feet right beside Valentine.

  He had killed three of them.

  She gasped when he brought his arm around behind her, sweeping her out of the way. He growled and she turned to see the man's baton still against his outstretched arm. When the man backed away, she leapt at him, her hand grabbing the collar of his uniform while she brought her feet up and pressed them into his chest. She slammed him into the floor, her feet pressing him hard into it and slashed across his throat before springing off him.

  When the only sound in the room was hers and Valentine's ragged breathing, she licked the blood off the knife and looked at him.

  He shook his arm with a frown and then rubbed at it.

  "Thanks,” she said, knowing that if he hadn't placed himself between her and the man, she would have received a nasty blow to the head.

  He gave her a slight smile and then held his hand out to her. “We should leave."

  She nodded and slipped her hand into his, intertwining their fingers. In the distance, she could hear more guards coming. Running down the corridor with him, she scanned each room they passed for a possible exit and kept a tight hold of his hand. She ground to a halt, forcing him to stop, when she saw a door at the end of a corridor.

  "This way,” she said.

  He tugged her arm and pointed to a sign above their heads. She frowned when she read it.

  Emergency exit.

  The little arrow beside it was pointing directly ahead.

  She really did have a lot to learn, but she'd come so far in such a short time and each new thing that Valentine showed her stayed with her. She smiled and ran beside him. She was sure that before long, she would rival Valentine's skill for this kind of thing, and for hunting and tracking. Years of experience had taught him the things she'd had to learn in only a handful of days.

  He turned down a side corridor and she glanced up to see another sign pointing in that direction. Was this the reason he'd chosen this direction to run in? She knew he didn't care about killing humans. He would happily kill all of the guards. Was he running because one of them had got close to hurting her?

  She looked up at his profile, taking in the expression of grim determination on his face. His lips were compressed and his brows were tight together. She was sure that behind his goggles, his eyes were dark and full of a desire to kill. She felt exactly the same. She wanted to kill the guards and take pleasure from their deaths, but deep inside she knew that there was a time for fighting and this wasn't it. They had retrieved what they had come here for. The more time they spent fighting, the more likely they were to get into trouble. The police would be coming by now and they wouldn't be able to fight them all without getting injured.

  He kicked the fire exit door open and she ran out into the courtyard with him.

  Placing her hand inside her shirt, she checked that the scroll was still there. She closed her fingers carefully around it, making sure that it didn't get damaged or fall out while she was running to the car. When they rounded the corner, Valentine waved a hand at Venturi who slipped into the car. The engine started and she let go of Valentine's hand as they closed in on the car. Tugging the door handle, she pulled it open and slipped into the back while Valentine ran around to the passenger side.

  Venturi barely gave her a chance to close the door before he was speeding away. She looked over the back seat when she heard distant sirens and breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't see any police cars after them.

  "Did you find the part of the manuscript?” Venturi said.

  She pulled it out of her shirt and unrolled it, placing it in her lap. She pushed her goggles up and leaned back into the seat.

  "We got it,” she said and ran her fingers over it. Her eyes moved to Valentine where he was sitting in the front of the car beside Venturi.

  He pushed his goggles up so they were across the top of his forehead and looked over his shoulder at her.

  "Are you all right?” He gave her a concerned look.

  "I'm fine. We should hurry though. It's not long until sun up."

  He nodded and she held onto the seat when Venturi finally put the car headlights on and put his foot down on the accelerator.

  Staring down at the scroll as the world flew by outside the window, she wished that she could understand what it was saying to her. Everything seemed to keep its secrets from her. She had a prophecy written about her that she couldn't even read, and a book that didn't want to be opened.

  She sighed and rolled the scroll back up, placing it into the small cardboard tube that they had brought with them.

  Looking out of the front of the car, she watched the buildings flying towards her and frowned.

  There was still so much they didn't know, but it felt as though time was running out.

  She didn't have a clue where the final fight was going to take place, or even who she was supposed to be fighting. Other than seeing a robed person in a jumbled vision with the battle at the Tenebrae's castle, she had nothing to go on.

  Who was that person?

  Where were they supposed to find them?

  Just what did her future hold for her? Was she really going to save the world like they were beginning to believe, or was she going to be the instrument of destruction like everyone else feared?

  One thing was certain; they couldn't remain in England. Wherever the final fight was going to happen, it wasn't here.

  Pulling her gloves off, she put her amulet back on and stared at it for a moment before wrapping her fingers around it. The fingers of her left hand idly played with the silver star around her neck and the feeling of the cool metal seemed to relax her.

  She ran her thumb over the marks on the back of it while her fingertips traced the delicate pattern on its surface.

  The mark on her chest pulsed gently, making her feel as though her heart was beating, and she pressed her amulet to it.

  She needed answers.

  She needed to sleep.

  Sleep would bring her them.

  Chapter 22

  Prophecy turned in her sleep and curled up against Valentine. She opened her eyes, looking at him, and then at the room. It was day. The light was streaming in through the open windows. She ran across the room to them, careful not to tread into the deadly rays, and went to draw the curtains. She stopped what she was doing when her hand was exposed to the sunlight and nothing happened. She looked at the warm, golden light playing on her hand and then across at Valentine.

  He was still sleeping, completely unaffected by the sunshine creeping towards the bed as the sun moved around.

  She was dreaming.

  A noise in the street below caught her attention and she realised that she wasn't in Mathias’ house. This was somewhere else, somewhere she didn't recognise now that she was looking around the room.

  The mark over her heart pulsed slowly, making her whole chest reverberate with it. She pressed her hand against it and looked down to see she was naked. Finding her clothes over the back of a chair, she slipped them on and looked at Valentine again.

  Something told her he had to come with her.

  She walked over to the bed and brushed the hair from his face. He smiled in his sleep. Bending over, she pressed a kiss to his lips and when she withdrew, he was looking at her, his green eyes full of
questions.

  "Come,” she said and held her hand out to him.

  He did as instructed and she went to the window while he got dressed.

  There was something very wrong about this. Something that she couldn't put her finger on.

  Turning to see Valentine ready, she walked across the dark wooden floor, passing the rich mahogany bed and the other items of antique furniture. She turned the ornate brass handle on the large door and pulled it open, revealing a well-kept hallway. Heading through the house, she noticed that it was all neat and tidy, everything polished until it reflected the sunlight that streamed in through every window. All of the curtains were open. She looked at the paintings that lined the hall as she walked past them, not stopping to question where she was going. Her feet seemed to know the way.

  Walking down the steps and out into the wide entrance hall, she looked around her. The splendour of the furniture matched that of the bedroom.

  Her eyes widened when she saw a series of paintings on the wall that felt familiar. She approached them, her eyes narrowing while she took in every detail. She felt as though she should know each person whose image they captured, but she just couldn't remember them.

  Stepping out into the sunshine, she frowned when she watched the cars passing them by and realised what was wrong.

  There was no sound.

  She looked around her, watching the trees blowing gently in the breeze but not hearing the swish of their leaves, and seeing the people who were passing her talking to each other but not hearing their words. Another car passed, making no sound as it drove down the hill.

  Why was the world silent?

  She looked down at her hand when her fingers itched and she saw that the magic was darker than ever before. The threads of purple were almost black and they twisted violently around each other. She remembered what Valentine had said.

  When she'd screamed, the whole world had gone silent.

  Had she done this?

  She turned to face him and he was no longer there. When she turned back to the road, the scene had changed. The sky was dark, more than she'd ever seen, and a strange halo glowed against the inky blackness.