by Sophia Sharp
Laura’s head spun. Her body still didn’t want to respond, but she felt a cacophony of emotions overcome her. That one short explanation was enough to make her heart melt. But at the same time, she was furious with Logan for abandoning her. And forever grateful for coming back, for saving her. She was smitten with him again, and yet beyond angry for what he did. Her heart said one thing, and her mind, another.
Logan looked at her patiently. Laura felt the blood return slowly to her arm, then felt the tingles that accompanied it across her palm and fingers. And with as much force as she could muster, she swung her hand towards Logan, catching him across the cheek with a deafening full-handed slap.
His head jerked to the side. It stayed there for a moment, until he brought a hand up to his face. “Ow.” He worked his jaw slowly. Then he grinned at her. “I probably deserved that.”
Laura tried again, this time with her other hand, but he caught her arm. And smiled devilishly at her. “But not that one.”
He knelt down, and kissed her.
Laura’s heart stopped as his lips brushed against hers for the first time. They were soft and warm, tender and full of smoldering passion. Her breath caught as she kissed him back, using the strength in her arms to bring him closer, to press his body against hers. All thought evaporated and all hurt forgotten as she shared with him a moment of unbridled passion. A tingling feeling blossomed in the middle of her stomach, and slowly expanded until it encompassed her entire body. She shivered for more.
Slowly, he drew back, and looked deeply into her eyes. “I will never let you go.”
Epilogue
When Logan let her go, Laura fell back dreamily. She felt all warm inside, and for the moment, everything was righted. She closed her eyes happily as a tingle of shivers ran down her spine. When she opened them again, Logan was still right there, smiling down at her.
“I was so worried about you,” he said as he traced a thumb along her cheek. “I didn’t know where you were, or if you were safe, or if I would ever see you again.” The tone of his voice was genuine; his words were genuine. “You cannot imagine how much it pained me to leave you like that.”
“Then why did you?” Laura asked softly.
“I had to do it,” he told her. “It was the only way to keep you safe. I know you’re stubborn, sometimes – don’t frown at me, you know it too! – and if I had told you the truth, I feared you would want to come with me.”
“Of course I would have come with you,” she said.
He smiled at her again. “And that’s why it had to be the way it was.”
“And… Madison?”
“She does not hate you. She realized other Vassiz were close behind us the night we first met. That is why she acted towards you… the way she did.”
“To keep me away?”
“To alienate you from her, yes. And when she told me and Alexander what was going on that night, we all agreed that splitting was for the best. To keep you safe.”
“So that means,” Laura began somewhat hesitantly, “that there’s nothing… between you two?”
Logan smiled. “No,” he said. “It was all an act.” He chuckled lightly, and Laura sighed. She loved hearing him laugh, and missed it when he was gone. “To be honest, I thought my part in it had been so poorly done as to give it all away.”
“So that means that the fight I overheard? Between her and Alexander…?”
Logan shook his head. “Those two lovebirds have been at each other’s side for hundreds of years. Nothing could come between them anymore.” He pushed himself up, and offered Laura a hand. “Come. There are some that are eager to meet you.”
Laura took his hand, and looked around her for the first time. She was in a fairly spacious room, with no windows and only one grand door leading out. The floor that she had been lying on was hard marble, and a spectacular white. So were the walls. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said this was part of the same structure as that great corridor had been. “Who are they?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” Logan smiled. He slipped his hand around the small of her back and led her forward. Laura took her first step – and nearly fell. She hadn’t realized it before, but her legs felt weak, as if they hadn’t been used for a very long time. But, strangely, based on what she could remember of her condition after the fight with that… creature… she should have been teetering on the edge of death right now. Except that she wasn’t. Her body felt weak, yes, but nothing in particular stood out. There was no injury she felt.
“How long was I out?” she asked Logan.
“A few hours, at most.”
“What?” Surprise painted her tone. How could she have healed so quickly in only a few hours? She remembered hitting her head, and brought a hand up to where she thought she had made impact. To her surprise, there was nothing there. No scab, or gnash, or bump. But she distinctively remembered finding blood there, before. “How?”
“Those people that want to meet you?” he replied, a twinkle in his eye, “one of them was able to heal you after the battle.”
“Heal me?”
Logan smiled at her again. “You’ll see. Come.”
She put a hand around his back, and walked by him to the door. Twisting the handle, he pushed it open, and Laura gasped. They were looking right at the grand chamber where she had encountered that vile creature. The same shining pool spread across the floor, but its waters looked calmer, somehow. Slightly more relaxed. She looked up at the ceiling, and was relieved to find that the crystals there were blue. It meant this was the chamber on the first side of that curtain of black. Quickly, her eyes followed the hall down, to where she remembered flying through a tear in that terrible darkness. She saw that the black shadow was still there, but the gnash the creature had cut was gone, replaced by solid black. For some reason, seeing that was strangely reassuring to her.
Then she noticed a bundle of shapes in a far corner. She saw Alexander and Madison, first, staring deeply into each other’s eyes, and behind them… a group of people she did not immediately recognize. They were tall and muscular – taller than anybody here by a head. Their bodies were lean, and perfectly proportioned. They were also completely unclothed.
A light seemed to radiate from the group, encircling all their bodies like a halo. Laura realized it was much the same as the light that graced this hall, the one that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
There were three men and three women in the group, and they were all facing away from her. But as the door Logan had pushed swung completely open, all six immediately turned to face her. And she gasped again. The people were the same ones she had seen in the pool earlier. And she had been right in her estimation of their beauty. When their faces were not twisted in pain, they simply had the most beautiful, most perfect proportions she could imagine.
Each of the six people looked slightly different, each in their own way, but each was still perfect, and more beautiful than the last. She remembered seeing Madison for the first time and being struck by her beauty; seeing these six, however, was like holding a glowing star to a flickering candle to compare which was brighter. Laura didn’t even want to think where she stood on that hierarchy.
One of the people – a man – stepped forward.
Laura Cubus.
She spun around. The voice had appeared in her head, but it wasn’t her own.
Do not be alarmed. The man from across the hall was looking straight at her, and smiled with easy eyes. This is the way in which we speak.
Laura looked to Logan, but he was completely unfazed. “Can you hear him?” she whispered in his ear. Logan shook his head. “If he is speaking to you, you will be the only one to know.”
Laura frowned. Hello? she said in her head. There was no reply.
“You need to speak out loud for them to hear you,” Logan told her, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Oh.” That was… a little discomforting. “Hello?” she said again, raisin
g her voice. Alexander and Madison looked up to her, and both of them smiled. Alexander’s arm – the one that had been burnt so badly – and his shoulder looked completely healed.
I am thankful you are feeling better. Were it not for you, we would not be here.
“Oh. Uh… thank you?” Then she remembered what Logan said. “Were you the ones who healed me?”
The man smiled at her. Yes.
“Thank you,” Laura said, and this time she meant it. “You know who I am – but I do not know you. I have seen your reflections in the pool. Was that… really you?”
We have been imprisoned there for thousands of years, held captive by the beast who tried to take your life.
Woah. Just who were these people? If they had the power to heal her… and the power to communicate like this… who knew what other gifts they shared? Who could possible imprison them?
But thanks to you, we are now free again. For that, we are forever in your service. As one, all six of the people dropped down to one knee and bowed their head. Each placed their left first firmly on the ground, and two fingers on their forehead. Laura was taken aback by the gesture.
“But I… I didn’t do anything,” she admitted, feeling flustered. “You can stand – you should not do that for me. I couldn’t possibly have… freed you. I wasn’t even the one who defeated the beast that held you captive! That was Logan, and Madison.” She heard Logan chuckle lightly under his breath. And the six did not move from their positions. They looked like glowing Greek statues, perfectly sculpted in every way in their stillness.
The prophecy said of your coming.
“Prophecy?” She remembered Alexander telling her something about one the night they first met. That there was a fleeting mention of some vague prophecy somewhere in the vampire creed. But she didn’t possibly believe it could be related to her. “What prophecy?”
‘When the darkness comes, and hope is lost, a shimmering star shall be revealed. And she will free the fallen ones, restoring order to the rule of man.’
Laura frowned. That sounded… prophetically epic. And… completely vague. “What does it mean?” she asked. “And how can it possibly have anything to do with me?”
There is more, of course. A tome dedicated entirely to the prophecy, writ long ago. What I quoted you is just a glimmer of the surface.
“So what does it say?” Laura asked.
It says many things, of course. Debate has raged through the eons about its true meaning. But some things are certain. It speaks of a new coming order, a realignment in the place of all. There is mention of a human child, taken in the dream, and ripped to reality. She is the shimmering star of hope. It is told that before her eighteenth namesday she will return to her world of birth, and with it she shall set the fallen free. The order of rule will be realigned in those who set the prisons, but she shall come both as one of them, yet set apart. It speaks of you, Laura.
“Wha…?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. You… are the fallen?”
Yes.
“The fallen what?” She asked the question, but in the back of her mind, a growing suspicious was telling her what they were going to say.
We are the fallen angels, both ancestors and descendants of the first life on earth.
Fallen angels? She may have been surprised by it, once, but not after everything she’d seen in the past few hours.
Our realm is that of the dream, and that is the world we are properly set to inhabit. It is where we stayed, before we found ourselves held captive.
“And who exactly imprisoned you?” Laura asked. Again, she had a feeling she knew the answer…
Our brothers, the Vassiz.
“Brothers?” That, Laura was not expecting. “What do you mean, brothers?”
The Vassiz are descendants of our kind. They are a hybrid, a mixture of human and angel flesh. The powers they hold come directly from our lineage. The story of their ancestry is not well known, but I will share it with you. It is a story of love, and sadness. The first came to be when one of our kind forsook everything given to us in the dream world to come into the world of humans. He spied a mortal woman, and fell strongly in love with her. He came to her dreams, spending time with her there, at first, but on waking she would not remember anything that happened while she slept. Every night, he would see her in the dream, and every night, she would meet him as if someone new. This lasted for many years, until the woman he loved became burdened with age and fragility. But he did not want to lose her to the embrace of death, and so – against all advice and rationality – he crossed the prohibited barrier from the dream world to the human world. He came into the human world in the flesh. It is there where he met his true love again, and she fell into his arms. They lived happily together, but time was still short. He did not want to lose her, and so, desperate to extend her life, granted her the gift of angelic blood. He did this by extracting his own blood and feeding it to her. He thought it would keep her alive and with him forever. But he was wrong. The transformation gripped her very soul, and she lost everything about her that made her human. She became little more than wild beast. And she thirsted for human blood. When he saw what he had created, it pained him greatly, and he took recluse from his love. He locked her away, barring her from him forever . But he could not predict was the spawn that would come forth from her. For the humans she bit before she was locked away transformed into others much like her. Their numbers grew quickly, but each successive transformation retained less and less angelic blood. The result of which, paradoxically, was that less and less of the beast instincts were activated in them. And so, over time, the creatures that had been let wild in the world of man began to conform to the rules of society. They began to retain more and more of their humanity, and soon – the Vassiz race was born.
“But… I don’t understand. How did you become captive? Are there more of you anywhere?”
We are the only ones left. A war broke out between our kind and our brothers. It threatened to shroud the entire world in darkness. It raged for many years, with many casualties one either side. Neither had an advantage, but we were slowly destroying both worlds we lived in – the dream world and the human world. In the end, to preserve life on this earth, the six of us you see before you today, three male and three female, were set to be imprisoned here, in exchange for an armistice. But we were betrayed. After we were placed here, the Vassiz leaders ordered all other angels to be killed. They were overtaken without warning, and had no chance. It was a genocide.
“The Vassiz did this?” Laura was shocked. “Who commanded it?”
They are known as the elders today. They rose to power following our imprisonment, and ruled over all other of their kind ever since. They are ruthless. They killed any others – members of their own race! – who held memories of our fight. The only Vassiz that were left were young, and newly converted. They did not know the secrets behind the elders’ rise to power, and could never suspect it.
Laura was amazed. It was the elders who commanded all the packs after her, and the elders who got their power by killing all those around them. No wonder they were the oldest vampires left. An anger at the cruelty of it all started to rise within her.
“What did you mean by what you said earlier? That ‘she shall come as one of them, yet set apart’?”
Your first feeding. You took vampire blood, did you not?
Laura felt a pang of guilt. “How did you know?” she asked softly.
I can feel your life essence. It is different from the other Vassiz.
Suddenly, Laura realized that everybody else was staring at her. Logan, at her side, was looking at her with wide eyes. So was Alexander, and Madison. They had both gotten up to stare right at her.
“What?” she asked, addressing the question to all of them at once.
“Your first feeding,” Logan began, “you took vampire blood?”
How did he know? Laura felt the eyes of everyone on her. All were expecting, and waiting. “Yes,
” she admitted.
“Who?” Madison asked in that chiming voice. Her tone was much kinder than Laura remembered from before.
“Korver’s wife,” Laura said slowly, staring past everyone to the far wall. “His pack attacked us. It is where Alexander took the arrow for me. She was trying to kill me, I’m sure, and her sons and husband went after Alexander. I got her down, and…” she gulped, “… and fed.”
She felt Logan squeeze her tighter. “Welcome to our race,” he said softly.
While all that was happening, the.. angels… had all risen again. And were all looking to her as if expecting a command.
“How did you know?” she asked Logan again.
He smiled, and nodded towards the front-most angel. The one who was speaking to Laura.
“You were talking… to all of us?” Laura asked, surprised. The man smiled at her.
Yes. You have us at your service, Laura. Only speak and we will do as you command.
“I have a question: what was that thing, that fought me and kept you here?”
It is a creature from nightmare, ripped straight out of the dream realm. Some would call it a daemon.
“But… how is that possible? How can something be ripped out of the dream realm?”
It can only happen here, in this place. This chamber is the one point on the entire earth that the dream world, and the human world… touch. There exists the slightest bit of overlap, and the result is that it becomes possible to go across worlds fully, in the flesh. The darkness you see to your side? It is the barrier between the two.
Suddenly everything started to make sense. Laura remembered being thrown across that barrier, remembered the feeling of losing herself all-too-clearly. So there was a reason why the sensation was the same as coming back to her body from entering the dream world. Or rather, not entering, but projecting yourself there.
