by Luke Metcalf
“What are we going to do?” Emily asked. “We have to get him and turn him back to normal. We have to save him. Before he was possessed by that demon stone he was such a good person, you have to believe me, Tom was so kind to me, Mitchell. We have to do something to help him.”
Now that it was only Mitchell, Sylvain and Emily’s sphere of protection holding millions of tons of water back, the combined force field was starting to collapse. Water began spraying down on them.
“We must go,” Mitchell commanded.
“Must get back to the surface or we will die!” agreed the imp.
It didn’t take long to make it back to the surface of the ocean. When they reached the shore, Mitchell set down the Well and turned to face Emily. “I have to take this to a safe place where no one will find it. In the coming nights I must study it and figure out how it works.”
“Mitchell, I… I have something incredibly important I need to tell you. Something I saw when I was in the Well.”
“It will have to wait.”
“At some point, maybe you can make some sense of whatever it is that just happened,” said Sylvain. “I must admit, I haven’t been this baffled since… well, since I became a vampire. However, I must depart immediately. I was at the most delightful masquerade party and actually right in the middle of some pressing business when I was… well… brought here.”
Mitchell squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “How can I repay you Sylvain?”
“You know there is no need.” He smiled. “I hope to see you again soon. I do throw marvelous parties and you are more than welcome to bring your lovely friend.” He winked at Emily and looked around. “Where exactly am I?”
“Portland, Maine,” Emily told him.
“Ah… interesting. I don’t suppose you can send me back to where I was?”
A look of worry crossed her face. “Oh, I didn’t even think of how you would get back – I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. I’m glad that I came.”
“I can help with that,” said Mitchell, pulling out his cell phone. He called his pilot and gave instructions for him to fly Sylvain to wherever he wanted to go. A few moments later Sylvain said his goodbyes, gave them a courtly bow and disappeared into the night.
“Teleport back to your home,” Mitchell said, turning to Emily.
“But Mitchell…”
“Please. Do as I say.”
With that Mitchell picked up the Well and ran off down the shore, heading east.
When Emily arrived home the fire trucks were still outside and Cady Sunner was nowhere to be seen. Emily’s phone buzzed. It was Detective Scannel.
“Detective Scannel, how are things?”
“We’ve arrested Cady Sunner.”
“Really?” Emily’s heart leaped with joy. She was hardly able to believe she had at last succeeded in bringing justice to her father’s killer.
“We’re bringing in a ballistics expert and are hoping to put him away for first-degree murder if the bullets used to kill your father match his gun.”
“Amazing!”
The firemen informed Emily that it was safe to go back into the house and although the fire had completely destroyed the guest bedroom, it hadn’t spread to her room except for some scorch marks around the hole in her wall. She thought about everything that had happened and worried about her mother. She had no idea what to do. There was water everywhere. She hung a rug over the hole and began cleaning up with the help of Mercurios. Hours later they were still working when she heard a gentle tapping on her window. Throwing the curtains back she opened it to allow Mitchell in.
“I’ve come to say goodbye.” He spoke the words quietly. “I will be using the Well to search for Marigold. I am sorry, Emily.”
Emily glanced at Mercurios. “Privacy please.”
Mercurios exited her bedroom. Emily smiled and came close to Mitchell, running her fingers over his chest and stomach, looking up into his eyes, enjoying the sensual feel of his powerful muscles.
“Mitchell, we swore that we would be together forever and for over four hundred years, through unthinkable suffering and hardship, you have remained true to that… true to me.”
“What?”
“All my life I’ve felt that there was a part of me that was missing. I felt it in my bones, in the pit of my stomach, I felt it from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, I felt it in the empty aching and longing in my chest, and now I know why.” Her eyes were shining, overflowing with love, desire and admiration. “Mitchell, I remember it all,” she whispered. “When we were in the Well, caught between two worlds, I was dying, disintegrating, and we merged into one, it all came back to me. I remember everything of my former life… and my death.” Her eyes grew distant and haunted. “After I died I was lost in that cold, terrible, lonely place! A separate dimension of… nothingness, like limbo or purgatory. It was so hard, searching, always searching, for you. I was terrified that I would exist there forever alone, never able to find you, that you were in Hell or in the Abyss, the realm of demons, and we would be separated forever, each in our lonely torment.” She stared into his eyes. “But then suddenly, ahead of me, a dimension door opened and a young demon emerged from the realm of demons. The dimension door closed behind it and the demon sped off through the darkness, not noticing me. I chased after it, desperately hoping I could find a way out of that terrible place. After some time, I could see a distant point of light ahead of us. The demon was headed straight for it.
“I was able to hear the demon’s thoughts. Two necromancers, a king and queen in a world called Magella, were conducting a magic ritual. They were summoning a demon into their unborn child before its own spirit could form. I realized that here was a way out of limbo or purgatory or whatever that awful place was.
“To be born into the world of the living again as an infant and live a whole new life from the beginning, possibly with no memory of anything else. The thought terrified me, but I would have done anything if there was even the remotest hope of finding you again!”
Mitchell remained silent and frowning as Emily’s eyes clouded over again. “I attacked the demon, I went wild. I knew it was he or I, and that this was my only chance to escape that terrible place. You see I had started to think that it was possible your soul hadn’t been cast into Hell. That perhaps you were still fighting for your soul back in the realms of the living. I had to get back. I had to come to you. I was screaming, clawing, and rending his face like an animal. He burned me and stabbed me. But I finally seized my chance. I got past him and plunged into the light before the demon could enter, and I was reborn into the realms of the living in the child that would become Emily Bliss. But, just as I feared, in being reborn as an infant child, I completely forgot my former life, my former identity.
“It wasn’t the demon of Marigold that was trying to possess me.” Emily stopped and stared deep into Mitchell’s eyes. “Mitchell… it’s me, I AM Marigold Bonneville!”
“How dare you!” he snarled, incensed, eyes blazing as he reached for the hilt of his sword. “How DARE you mock me? How DARE you speak to ME in such a way!” Mitchell thundered with savage vehemence.
Emily went pale. “Mitchell, please listen to me. How else could I know these things? The pearl-and-ruby necklace, you gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday. How else could I know that?”
“When we were in the Well, maybe we went through some kind of mind meld and you saw all my memories. Or maybe you cast a spell on me that let you read my mind.”
“When vampires are cut and heal they don’t scar right?”
“So?”
“But any scars you had before you were turned into a vampire, you still have them right?”
“So what?”
She looked at the palm of her right hand and then held it up to show him. “Mitchell, I’ve had this scar along the lifeline of my right hand for as long as I can remember. I never knew where it came from… until today. You have one just like it on your left
hand. They are from the blood oath we swore on Halloween under the full moon in the year 1563. The oath we swore to bind our souls together for all eternity.”
Mitchell sucked in a breath and took a step back in shock, and then slowly raised his left hand and stared at the scar that ran down his lifeline. He looked up at Emily, utterly thunderstruck.
“My god, can it be?” he whispered.
“It’s just like you said to me so long ago: ‘You are my heart and my soul and my everything, in this world and in all worlds, forever, and time and death cannot touch that.’ Our blood oath came true, Mitchell. ‘I hereby join my spirit with yours forever. In this life and in all lives to come until the end of time.’ We will always find each other, Mitchell.”
“Beyond all hope,” he whispered, holding out his trembling hand, palm facing her. Emily could see the matching scar on the lifeline of his hand. Their palms came together and their fingers clasped just as they had all those many years ago.
“Marigold!” As though in a trance, Mitchell reached out and gently caressed her face with his free hand, then collapsed to his knees as he let out a cry of both anguish and joy and threw his arms around her waist. His shoulders heaved as he burst into an uncontrollable passion of tears. “Marigold! Oh, my Marigold!” he sobbed. “My love! My darling!”
Mitchell got to his feet, wiped the tears of blood from his eyes, took her face in his hands and showered her cheeks and lips and eyelids with kisses. After a short time he stopped and Emily opened her eyes. They stared deep into each other’s souls.
“But of course,” he whispered. “I felt it from the moment we met but I pushed it away because I wasn’t able to even conceive of the possibility. And your eyes, they are just like hers, the windows of the soul. So many nights over the years I prayed for this moment. I had to keep fighting and searching for you, and now here you are. Can this be true?”
Mitchell kissed her passionately. Emily felt four hundred years of hope, pain, love, passion and desire pour into her. Heavenly pleasure exploded deep inside her mind and body. His tongue filled her mouth and she eagerly responded. His powerful hands moved sensuously up her back to the nape of her neck. Her whole body burned for him. Joy and life beyond all description flooded Mitchell’s being, like a waterfall unleashed onto a parched desert. Through more than four centuries of suffering he had clung to the faintest hope that somehow, somewhere, he would be reunited with his love. Now that his most cherished dream had come true, he was overwhelmed.
As they kissed for what seemed like an eternity of bliss, they both knew that they would do anything to feel like this forever. They broke apart simultaneously to stare at each other, panting with hunger and love and indescribable elation, eyes wide in utter amazement that they were finally together again.
Emily’s face grew serious. “You need to turn me into a vampire, Mitchell, before anything else can happen that might separate us again, especially if we are going to hunt for Baelaar and stop the enslavement of humanity, and go to Magella to rescue Tom.”
“After I turn you, I insist that we marry immediately. We delayed last time and look what happened. I would suggest marrying in the chapel where I spent so many thousands of nights praying that I would find you, but since it has been somewhat destroyed by zombies we will have to find someplace nearby. I refuse to wait.”
“I love it! We will be married tomorrow!” Emily unbuttoned the top of her dress, displaying soft, pale flesh of her neck. “Take what’s yours, Mitchell.”
He stared at her, savoring her, adoring her, his eyes transforming into two bright stars, shining with profoundest love. He took off his shirt, casting it aside and Emily’s eyes hungrily drank in his perfectly chiseled body.
“Oh yes!” she murmured.
A primal lust burned in every cell of his being. For a moment Mitchell stared at the object of all of his love and desire and then in one ferocious movement he tore open her dress. Emily gasped as Mitchell licked his lips and smiled, his fangs flashing a brilliant white.
BOOK 2 of The Well of Many Worlds Series will be released
Halloween 2019.