“What happened?” Alicia asked, her voice just as cold and lifeless.
“She… she tried to attempt conversion,” Avice explained. He did not have the energy to fight anyone anymore. The purpose of his life was gone, held in his arms. “She’s dead.”
Alicia neither laughed nor relished in the fact that Yarra had died.
“Idiot girl,” she said, looking at the slight slice on Yarra’s thumb. “She thought that we would accept her if she became a vampire.”
None of them made a move for a while, merely looking at Avice cradling the body of the dead woman. “We still have to kill him for his betrayal to the clan!” Someone shouted to a fragmented chorus of assent. Alicia silenced them all with a cold, withering look.
“My son has killed Yarra Davis,” she gestured to Avice and the dead girl. “Though the circumstances are different to what I had designed, he has done what I set him out to do.”
There were murmurs all around Avice, but he did not care anymore. He held on to Yarra’s lifeless body, feeling the clammy skin. The softness of her flesh began to freeze.
This was not supposed to happen. They loved each other. Wasn’t that enough for him to be able to convert her? Why did it fail?
Alicia Selleck stepped in the shack then, looked at the body of Yarra.
“Though Avice had first betrayed us, he has killed the girl. Still, his earlier actions warrant consequences.”
The other vampires stood around her with bated breath, waiting for her to deliver her judgment.
“Excommunication from the clan,” she said out aloud.
Some of the vampires were disappointed by Alicia’s decision, and it showed in their expressions and body language. But, they respected their leader. Slowly but surely, they exited the shack and vanished away into the night, leaving Alicia with her son and the now dead Yarra.
She stared at her son, the one who had been destined to take over the clan, to replace her as its leader. He now knelt in front of her, ashamed, destroyed and damaged beyond repair, holding on to the woman that he had loved.
“Just kill me,” Avice cried quietly. Life did not matter to him anymore.
“No, Avice,” Alicia said, as she stepped out of the shack. “You will live with this punishment, knowing that you had killed her because your love was not enough. You will live with the knowledge that you can’t return to the Keepers of the Blades. Knowing that you will be grieving for the rest of your life, is punishment enough.”
With that, Alicia stepped into the night and was never heard of again.
The front door of the shack remained open, causing a cold gust of wind to come in. Avice cradled Yarra’s body and rested his head on her still chest.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he stammered. The tears continued to fall from his eyes.
“You’re ugly when you cry,” she replied.
Out of shock, Avice let go of her body, causing her to fall onto his lap. She squealed in pain and rubbed the back of her head where it thudded against the floor. But she had a wide smile on her face. Avice looked at her in disbelief as she sat up.
Her skin was now as pale as his. Her earlier hazel eyes were now red, and when her smile widened, he was ecstatic, relieved to see fangs there were shorter, blunter canines were supposed to be.
“You…, you didn’t die?” Avice asked, astonished.
“I did, at least for a while,” Yarra said. “But I think the conversion is successful.”
She got up and appreciated her now metamorphosed body. For the most part, she still felt the same, but something was different. Her senses were sharper, and she had lost the will for biological necessities. She did not need to breathe as much, and the earlier pangs of hunger had now completely vanished.
“I don’t understand,” Avice said. “A successful conversion happens immediately. You should not have died first.”
Yarra knew the answer. She had seen what would happen. The Oracle, Matthew Finley had shown her the possible outcomes, and she chose the one that she wanted the most. She chose from her heart.
“Your bite transformed our little baby first. That was why it took some time before it converted me.”
It was too much for Avice to take in all at once. First, they had escaped being killed by his mother and her clan members. Second, his girlfriend was now a vampire. And third, a baby?
“You will have to explain it to me, one by one!” he laughed and cried at the same time. They hugged in the quietness of the shack and kissed, a vampire warrior reunited with his now-vampire oracle girlfriend.
Conclusion
It was a small patch of land away from everyone and everything. Their closest neighbor was an elderly couple living three miles away.
The small cabin was nestled in the valley surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Three brooks broke from the furthest peak, running down to form the river which ran silently outside their home. Yarra felt at peace.
The sounds of a baby’s laughter came from the living room. Putting some sugar into two cups of tea, she carried it out of the kitchen and into the living room where Avice was playing with Jessie, their daughter. At three months old, her regenerative powers were in full swing, and she looked more like a four year old. According to Avice, she would be all grown up by the time she was three.
Such was the growth curve of a vampire; a steep incline followed by a plateau until death.
“Tea?” She offered a cup to Avice.
He smiled graciously and took the green ceramic mug from her. Life in the valley was quiet. Since the Keepers of the Blades had assumed that Yarra was dead, they had decided to banish him from the clan. They had not bothered him since, with Alicia under the assumption that Avice was living a miserable life, wallowing in grief.
Far from it. Avice was leading the perfect life away from his former clan members. With a wife and child, he was the happiest man on earth.
“It is supposed to rain heavily tonight,” Yarra reminded him. Setting her cup to the small coffee table, she picked Jessie up with a slight grunt. Little Jessie squirmed gleefully, eager to play with her mother. “You might want to chop some wood for the fire tonight.”
He peered outside. “It doesn’t look like it will rain tonight though. The sky looks clear, and it isn’t the slightest bit windy, baby.”
She smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Do you doubt my words now?”
He sipped his tea and then laughed heartily. Sometimes, he forgot that his wife was indeed an Oracle. Following her metamorphosis into a vampire, her abilities had become increasingly pronounced. The visions came to her with perfect clarity.
“Okay, okay, you are the clairvoyant one here!” He threw his hands up in mock defeat. “I will do as you say.”
After a large sip of his tea, he proceeded out of their home, heading to the back where large piles of wood were waiting to be chopped. The rustic life suited them, for now. When they become bored of it, they would change to somewhere that would suit little Jessie better. So far, they had been throwing ideas around about living on a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific, or even in a large city in East Asia. For now, the small, secluded village in the Himalayas was their home.
The family was impervious to the extreme cold of the mountain. Being what they were, they were unaffected by the sudden plummeting of the temperature during the nights. But Yarra sometimes reverted to her human form, a state of physical being that she missed.
She had not told Avice about her meeting with the Oracle. It would be the one secret that she would keep until the end of time. Kissing Jessie on the cheeks, they laughed together, looking at Avice chopping wood out the window with the crudest axe in his hands. He did a little dance for their entertainment, before proceeding to cleanly cut the wood with his bare hands.
Yarra wondered if there will be another Oracle born into the family. The Oracle’s words were still fresh in her mind. When she foresaw the birth of a new Oracle into the world, he would come, to bring her into the Tome of Sight. Until then, Yarra was fre
e to live the rest of her life on Earth.
She did not need her visions to tell her now, that she had achieved her happy ending. With Jessie and Avice in her life, she was content.
*****
THE END
Love Beyond the wall (A Rizer Pack Shifter Series Book 1) Page 52
