Ally had just come into the lounge from the terrace when she heard Adele’s voice.
“Ally, darling…I was just coming to check on you.”
She smiled at her grandmother. “Thanks Gran. I just woke up and was on my way to find James.”
Adele looked at her with a gleam in her eye.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Ally said, as she turned a pale shade of red. “I had a dream that I wanted to discuss with him.”
Something in her grandmother shifted when Ally mentioned the dream. If she hadn’t been watching she would have missed it. Perhaps she was the one to consult not James. It also may not be of benefit to her to go running to him. She wanted to keep things simple for a while. It was all too much at the moment and whenever she found herself near him, she lost control of her thoughts and her body, traitorous thing that it was!
“What dreams?” Adele asked.
“It may be nothing, but I’m not sure,” she paused recollecting her thoughts before continuing. “Does James have a brother called Damian?”
Adele paled as her legs gave way, and she sunk into the overstuffed lounge behind her.
Ally flew beside her in a panic. “Gran, are you alright?”
Her eyes were wide with concern for her grandmother. That reaction certainly answered my question and created a whole lot more, Ally thought to herself.
Placing her hand over her grandmother’s, she lowered herself onto the couch beside her. “Gran…”
Adele’s big violet eyes filled with unshed tears, and she seemed to be lost in some moment or time from long ago.
The thunder roared all around them, and the cracking of lightning lit up the room and brought Adele back to reality. She looked at Ally as if looking into her very soul searching for answers to long forgotten questions. “What do you know of Damian?”
“Well not much at all. I didn’t even know if he was real.”
Adele turned and stared at her again. Ally had never seen such sadness and emptiness reflected back at her.
Is that what I looked like for all those years? She wondered. Her Gran had known sorrow before but there was obviously so much that Ally wasn’t aware of.
“He was real my sweetheart. Very real.” Adele let out a heartbroken sigh.
Ally watched her grandmother and gave her a moment before stating what she could see before her. Damian was obviously very precious to her Gran. What was he to you, Gran? Ally wondered.
“I know he was James’ older brother, but that sadness I see in your eyes makes me think he was something more to you.”
Adele let out a soft miserable laugh and rested her hands on her lap.
“Yes, he was.” She paused, remembering a time long ago. Then she snapped back to the present day and said, “Tell me about your dream.”
Ally told her everything she could remember.
Adele was lost in another world again while Ally recalled her dreams, almost as if her Gran was reliving them as she spoke. Her expression was mostly sad but there was joy in her eyes when Ally recalled the conversation he had with a female.
Ally let out a quiet gasp as she came to a startling realization. “You were the girl he was communicating with.”
Adele smiled. “Yes, that was me.”
“Were you his girlfriend? What happened?”
A dreamy expression clouded Adele’s face.
“He was my soul mate, Ally,” she said simply.
Ally’s jaw went slack with shock, and she took a moment before finding that she was staring open-mouthed at her Gran.
Adele couldn’t help but chuckle at her reaction. “Is it that shocking to discover I was young once too and had a soul mate like you do?”
“No, it’s not that,” she paused not wanting to say the wrong thing. “I guess I just assumed that you hadn’t found yours, or that grandpa was your soul mate.”
“Ally, I loved your grandpa very much. He was a wonderful man, husband and father. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to share my life with. But…he wasn’t Damian.”
“I suppose no-one could have been compared to that. If it’s anything like the pull I feel for James, and you weren’t fighting it. You embraced it.” Ally had a small understanding of how much pain it would have caused her Gran to lose her beloved soul mate, Damian. Her heart broke for her. “Oh, Gran, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s ok, darling. What’s done is done. But as you can see, the pain never left me.”
“When did this happen?” Ally asked.
“It was about fifty years ago,” she said waiting for Alessandra to do the math.
“But Mum was…” The truth hit her like a train. “Mum, she wasn’t…she was Damian’s daughter?”
Adele smiled softly to herself. “Yes, she was.”
“Did he know?” Ally asked still shocked from the revelation. It wasn’t just her beloved deceased mother who would have been affected by this, but her as well. Her grandfather wasn’t Jonathon. Damian was her Grandfather. That meant she was now destined to be with her late Grandfather’s brother. Her face twisted in horror.
Adele caught her granddaughter’s horrified look and giggled a little. Thinking that your Grandfathers brother was the love of your life, no matter what age he appeared to be, would have been quite a shock to the system for her. “It’s not as twisted as your mind is making it. James is not Damian’s brother by blood.”
“What? How?”
Adele began to relate the story from long ago. “When James was young, he was taken in by Damian’s parents, and they loved him as their own, so much so that they gave him their name. The Carlisle name is a strong ancient bloodline among the immortals. Everyone looked to them for guidance and direction. As a people, we have never had an official ruler among us. There hadn’t been a need for it but if there had been, the Carlisle’s would have ruled.”
Ally leaned closer. “What happened to his parents?”
Adele shrugged, “Nobody really knows. He was a baby when they found him, abandoned on their land with nothing but the blanket he was wrapped in, and the basket that carried him containing a prophecy.”
“What prophecy?”
Knowing that James had never known his parents made her think about her own parents. Even though she had been unfortunate enough to lose hers when she was young, Ally had at least been old enough to remember them and know without a doubt that they loved her. James didn’t even have that.
“Your prophecy, sweetie. There was a note written on the back of the parchment that James was destined to be the prophecy girl’s soul mate. That’s how we knew that you two were soul mates.”
Ally felt a cold shiver run through her body upon hearing that statement. There was so much that she didn’t know about James, and she was beginning to think that this was only the beginning. Something then occurred to her that she’d never thought to ask before. “How did you know I was the prophecy girl?”
“The eclipsed moon birthmark on your lower back and the circumstances under which you were born.”
Ally nodded, still running the thought over in her mind, while considering the information before her. It appeared that everyone was right. She really was the prophecy girl and James, it seemed, had known his destiny had been with her his whole life.
“Ally, stop analyzing. It is what it is,” Adele said, as she placed her hand lovingly on Ally’s. “You asked if Jonathon knew. He did know I was with child when I met him, and he loved Vivian as if she were his own. He loved you too, sweetheart.”
“Did Mum know?” Ally asked, suddenly concerned how her mum would have taken the news if she was still alive, or if she had already found out before she passed away.
“She worked it out as she got older, and she was told about the immortals. Vivian was a full immortal and knowing Jonathon wasn’t, she put it together.”
Ally was shocked. “Wow. She was ok with it all?”
“At first no, but she understood that Jonathon knew, and that he loved her regardle
ss of who her father was.”
Ally rested her head in her hands and absorbed the knowledge she had been given. Then the thought hit her. Why had she been given this information in dreams and who was the one sending it to her?
“You mentioned before I fell asleep, the land and the past immortals wanting to speak to me…well I did and this is what I get, a dream about the past battle,” she stopped to put it together. “So why this? How does this relate to me? James already knows about the vampires drinking immortal blood. He knows his brother was…well anyway you know all this so why send it to me?”
“The ancient immortals don’t do anything lightly. There is a reason for it, the reason might just remain elusive for a while. You don’t really get fast answers from them,” Adele laughed.
“Are these ancients still living?” Ally asked.
“No, they have all decided to move on to the next plane for one reason or another but their power lies in the earth still, and they are aware of what goes on here. They knew this day was coming so they have waited and watched for you, and now the messages begin.”
“Well not begin exactly,” Ally said shyly. She had never told anyone about her dreams before they hadn’t seemed important at the time, but maybe they were after all.
Chapter Fifteen
Immortal Prophecy Page 21
