by Lari, Simone
He was almost close enough to touch her when, from behind the girl, Vans and Christopher arrived at a run and overwhelmed him.
The three of them ended up on the ground.
The first to get to his feet was Christopher who jammed the broken katana into Banedoom’s back.
Vans tried to reload the revolver, but Banedoom grabbed Christopher and hurled him onto the hunter, then stood over them and began raining punches at them.
Nina saw Vans and Christopher on the ground; their blood was spread all over the floor.
That macabre vision reminded her of the terrible dream and the horrible words of the prophecy.
She immediately put her right hand on her forehead and the symbol transferred to the palm.
"I’m the one who is your rival!" she cried. "Destiny and the prophecies confirm it! Come here and fight me if you’re not afraid of me!"
Banedoom turned his attention to her once again.
Nina extended both hands toward him, and a beam of intense light sprang from the symbol as the other hand slowed his advance.
With a bruised face, Vans shakily tried to reload his weapon. His vision which was blurred with blood and his trembling hands prevented him.
"Nina!" he screamed, limping toward her.
A tear ran down the young witch’s face.
Banedoom had reached her. The vampire opened his hand wide, the claws grew longer. Deftly, he pushed four fingers into her abdomen and lifted her from the ground.
Nina was terrified; blood spurted from her throat, thrust out by a sudden cough, but now that she had the enemy in range, she could not give in. She put the hand with the symbol on the mask of bone and it immediately fell to pieces, revealing Banedoom’s astonished face.
Nina laid both hands on his face which began to sizzle and liquefy. In the grip of spontaneous combustion, his body disintegrated completely in a few instants, with no time to scream or curse.
The witch fell to the ground, devoid of strength.
Vans ran to her. He could hardly see her.
"Nina!"
"Va-Vans... The destiny, I did... I did not choose it. My life, for yours" she revealed in a whisper.
"No, no, fuck! Help us someone!" he yelled clasping her hand. "Absolon!" he cried out, but the spirit did not appear.
"Li-live for me too..." stammered Nina in pain, her voice increasingly faint.
"No, Nina!" shouted Angelique, arriving with Gabriel by her side.
"Help her!" Vans urged.
"I don’t know how to!" she replied in tears.
"There is a way, the same way that saved Jude" suggested Gabriel.
Vans stared, and then looked at Nina, dying, wishing with all his heart that it would not be the last time he saw her. Even if he might not see her again as a human being, knowing that she was on this earth would be sufficient.
Without any hesitation, he made a decision. He chose for her what he would never have chosen for himself.
"Christopher!" He turned around, but the vampire was still on the ground, unconscious.
"Stay strong, my love, I’ll be back quickly" he said to Nina, kissing her on the forehead. He entrusted her trembling hand to her friend so she could hold it tight it and comfort her in his absence.
He staggered to the vampire and took hold of him, dragging him to the girl. He shook him hard until he came to his senses.
The first thing Christopher saw when he opened his eyes was the crazed gaze of the hunter; and then he saw Nina’s body on the ground.
He pushed him away as Vans yelled: "You must bite her!"
Christopher looked at her. One solitary teardrop fell.
"It is too late" he stated grimly.
"What the fuck are you saying?" Vans hit him hard. "Damn you, isn’t it what you always wanted? Bite her! Transform her, take her with you and she will be yours, but do not let her die!"
"Vans, Nina... is dead" murmured Gabriel.
Clarissa and Agata arrived as an unnatural silence descended into the room. Vans saw them move their mouth in faces racked with pain, but heard nothing. He no longer understood a single thing of what was happening around him. He fainted thinking that this was just a terrible nightmare and that the first thing he would do when he awoke would be to kiss Nina.
Epilogue
The cemetery of Persepolis was crowded with people: family members grieving their lost relatives, witches and druids who had survived the terrible conflict consoling their kind.
The words of the priest gave Vans no comfort though; indeed, if it had not been for Gabriel’s presence, he would willingly have silenced that zealous minister of the cult with a good punch on the nose.
The hunter wondered how Clarissa could believe in the existence of a god, and how on earth Jared, in his last will and testament, had asked that his ashes be scattered in the ocean.
A strong smell of burning incense came from the chapel where, sheltered from the soft sunlight of that cloudy day, Christopher and Katrina assisted at the interment of Nina’s casket. In the burial recess beside it, her father’s coffin had already been placed in the ground.
They were not the only burials of that long day of sorrow and death, testament that the most important and decisive victories also have their huge cost in terms of lives and pain.
Sting and Jude were there, standing close side by side; Gabriel and Angelique were holding each other’s hand. Vans had only a dark urn with him containing his uncle’s ashes.
"Parents should not survive their children" Clarissa continued to repeat in tears. She sought Vans with her gaze, in need of comfort, but bowed his head and looked elsewhere. He immediately felt ashamed of that gesture, but he was aware that he would not have been able to bear any other pain in addition to his own. And it was up to Agata to console her daughter in that difficult moment as best she could.
George, in a dark suit which jarred with his young age and rosy cheeks, was holding his mother’s skirt. He did not know what had happened, all he knew was that from now on he no longer had a sister who scolded him for his pranks, and not even a father to console and protect him.
At the end of the function, Sting and Jude joined Christopher and Katrina in the chapel where they would wait together until darkness fell and they could leave that sad place.
Agata took little George with her to take him home. At first, the child was reluctant to leave his mother, but was convinced to go with grandmother with the promise of a hot chocolate with biscuits.
Clarissa remained there, surrounded by the novices who kept her silent company, but that not could not even remotely fill the void she had in her soul with the loss of her daughter and her husband.
Ossian approached her to say some brief words of circumstance, after which he left her. He could understand her sorrow, given that he too had lost the closest thing to a son that he had in this life.
Vans gently laid a single red rose on the tomb of his beloved. He succumbed to his tears again, but did not care if he seemed vulnerable and distressed. They could all see that he was human and fragile.
Christopher, however, did not shed a single tear, but his heart was torn apart in the same way as the hunter’s. Unlike him though, he had already experienced something like this in his secular life and he had no intention of allowing destiny to see him weep again.
Absolon and Chandra looked on from the top of the hill.
"You have finally realized the importance of human life and the value of the species, I expect?" asked Absolon.
"I have understood how some of them are wonderfully selfless and unpredictable. Perhaps, after all, there are individuals who deserve to survive, but it is not so for everyone, as you well know" she retorted.
Absolon nodded sadly.
Once out of the cemetery, Vans headed alone toward his blue people mover.
Gabriel let go of Angelique’s hand and quickened his step as far as his injured leg allowed him.
"Hey! Where are you going?"
"I have to leav
e this place and I do not intend to return."
Gabriel sighed.
"There is nothing that binds me to this place any longer, other than terrible memories. What’s more, I have to fulfill the last wish of that hardheaded Jared." He looked at the urn with the one good eye he had left. "The sight of the sea though will make me happy too."
"I’m coming with you. Give me just a minute and woe to you if you leave!"
Gabriel went to Angelique on his crutches. Before he could say a word, she took hold of his head and kissed him with feeling.
"I..."
"I know you have to go with him. He has no-one left, and something inside him is dead, perhaps forever."
Gabriel hugged her tight.
"I’ll come back to you as soon as I’m feeling better."
Vans settled the urn in the rear seat, next to Kira’s carrier. The cat greeted the arrival of Jared’s ashes with a harrowing meow.
"I shall be waiting for you. In the meantime, I believe I’ll have plenty to do as the new Bearer" said Angelique.
She opened her right hand, revealing the symbol that Nina, on the point of death, had given her.
Gabriel kissed the palm and embraced her a last time, then went to the car.
The engine was already running.
"If you want to stay I understand" Vans insisted from the lowered window on the passenger side.
Gabriel got in quickly, closing the door with a bang. "Go. Don’t make me regret having chosen you."
"Look, nobody asked you to do it."
"You are like a brother to me, a gruff and crazy brother, but still a brother. So now let’s have a little music and press the accelerator."
Vans put on a pair of dark Ray-Ban, covering the black eye which was still closed, and gave him a shy smile.
"On our way to Miami Beach?"
"I rather thought the coasts of Maine for uncle’s ashes."
"So be it, Maine for uncle and Miami Beach for us." He put the car into gear and stepped on the gas with a mocking smile.
But that stereotyped attitude which he had seen him assume so many times did not fool Gabriel, and yet another tear falling from beneath his sunglasses confirmed it.
The blue people mover left a long trail in the gravel of the cemetery car park. Angelique watched it disappear on the horizon, with the notes of a sad rock song from the seventies becoming fainter and fainter until they disappeared completely.
Author’s Notes
A warm greeting to you as you finish reading the third and last chapter of my saga. I hope it has been to your liking, and that the action and unexpected twist and turns of the story have kept you good company. The writer is the first to be sad for the loss of some important characters, of whom he was very fond. He weeps for their fate, almost as if they were real friends, but things do not always go well for everyone. Nina’s sacrifice, like that of her father and many other men of valor, was not in vain, just as the sacrifice of a person who fights for love and for the good of their loved ones never is.
Thank you for reading my novel.
Simone Lari
If you want to contact me, my mail is:
[email protected]
I will be happy to answer you.
Note
[←1 ]
Sting refers to the seventh novel of the Harry Potter series in the moment in which Voldemort and his forces attack Hogwarts.
[←2 ]
Sting refers to the protagonist of the television series: "A Witch for Love", Jeannie.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - An Old Rival
Chapter 2 - The Vampire of Prophecy
Chapter 3 - The Enemy has Four Faces
Chapter 4 - The Meeting of an Unusual Group
Chapter 5 - At Jared’s Farmhouse
Chapter 6 - The Bait
Chapter 7 - Truth from the Past
Chapter 8 - Double Cross
Chapter 9 - A Contended Witch
Chapter 10 - Deception
Chapter 11 - I Am The Chosen One
Chapter 12 – I Am Still the Same
Chapter 13 – Unusual Parents
Chapter 14 - Demons Among Us
Chapter 15 - Sleepless Night
Chapter 16 - The Counterattack
Chapter 17 - Attack at the Chalet
Chapter 18 - Attack on the Manor House
Epilogue
