by Cege Smith
“What happened?” Connor demanded as he took her hand and stared at it.
“It has been a long time since I’ve encountered one like her,” Caspian said warily. “I’d forgotten. I should have known though. If nothing else, this confirms her bloodline more than anything else could have.”
“What are you talking about?” Angeline said. She was tired of the vague references and cryptic meanderings of this tiny vampire. She just wanted to know what was going to happen to her and if she’d ever be able to go home.
“You’ve attracted the attention of the Amaron ghosts. And it is a stupid, stupid thing to try to communicate with them. The likes of you is a siren song they cannot ignore. And if you fall into their grasp, they will sap your energy and leave you a shrunken husk,” Caspian said.
“The Amaron ghosts?” Connor said with a note of wonder in his voice. “I’ve been through this forest thousands of times. I’ve never seen a ghost. That’s a myth.”
“You wouldn’t have interested them,” Caspian scoffed. “It’s the same reason that I am able to reside here. They have no use for our kind and their memories are long, which is why they avoid us. Once upon a time those souls were the only sustenance that vampires had to survive. They usually give our kind a wide berth, in the event someone remembers that long forgotten secret.”
“Then why are they here now?” Angeline said slowly. “That was what I saw when I…woke up, right? Those things in the trees are the Amaron spirits.”
Caspian nodded.
“You said that I attracted them. Why?”
“Our time is much shorter than I realized,” Caspian said. “Now that they have your scent, I’m not sure how much longer my boundary spell will keep them at bay. Tricky bastards, they’ll figure out a way around it with the right incentive. And now they have it.”
“Answer her question,” Connor said, grabbing Caspian’s arm as the older vampire started to turn away. “Why her?”
“Revenge of course,” Caspian said.
“Revenge for what?” Angeline asked. “I have done nothing to them.”
“You’re a Robart,” Caspian laughed. “And it was Alair Robart who put them here.”
Angeline felt like she had been hit in the stomach. “That isn’t true. It was the vampires. The vampires killed them, and then trapped them here.”
Caspian almost doubled over from laughing this time. “Oh, you humans are so blissfully ignorant of your own history. It is quite comical actually. You walk around thinking you are so superior to every other creature here, when in all actuality you are not so different.”
Angeline raised her chin. “Alair Robart was a hero. A legend. A wise man and a great king. He saved our people from the likes of you and yours.”
Caspian started to say something else when Connor cut him off. “This doesn’t seem like the time for a history lesson, Caspian. Is Angeline in danger here?”
Angeline wanted to know more about what Caspian thought he knew about her ancestor, but she grudgingly had to admit that Connor was right. They had to prioritize.
Caspian frowned. “For the time being. But they are multiplying out there at a much faster rate than I’ve ever seen. And now that they know she’s here, it’ll probably draw every single one of them to the clearing.” Caspian pointed in a wide arc around the clearing. “The boundary begins about ten feet inside the tree line. It was a rather rudimentary spell that I cast shortly after I took refuge here. Not that they had any interest in me, as I mentioned, but occasionally a guest would intrigue a few of them enough that they would try to come in for a closer look.”
“Why would they be interested in wraiths?” Connor asked.
Caspian scowled. “My work here is private. I won’t be divulging any details to the whelp of the one who hunts me in order to drag me back before the Master. I’m not going back there! He had his chance. Too bad for him that centuries later he decided that he wants what I have.”
Angeline wondered where the tirade had come from. She looked at Connor, who sighed and then shrugged.
“Let’s get on with it then, shall we?” Angeline said.
“Smartest thing you’ve said all night,” Caspian grumbled. “Connor. We are going to need to feed soon. While I’m working with the princess, why don’t you go find us something to eat?”
“What about the ghosts?” Angeline asked.
“They won’t hurt him,” Caspian said. “Vampires aren’t tasty to them at all. Go along, Connor, and be back before the sun rises. Even if you stay under the forest canopy, sometimes those tricksters do enjoy playing a game or two in the daylight, and I’d hate to see you get hurt.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Connor stood at the edge of the tree line, considering. He sent his mind out to see if there was any danger, or rather, any danger besides the multitude of spirits gathering out there in the darkness. He did not have the same confidence in his safety that Caspian seemed to have. He heard a low buzz out there, almost as if there were many people talking in low voices, but he couldn’t make anything out of the hum.
So he could hear them if there were a lot of them in one place. That was helpful to know, although he couldn’t see a way to leverage that piece of knowledge quite yet. But it wasn’t the spirits he was looking for; he was looking for any trace of Searon.
Although Connor was fairly certain that they had lost Searon in the fields before they even entered the Amaron forest, he couldn’t be sure. Searon was sneaky, and if he had sensed Connor out by the ravine, he would have taken steps to hide his mind from him. After sweeping the area several times, it didn’t appear that there was anything out there other than the spirits.
Connor was reluctant to leave the clearing, and not only because of his personal safety. He was afraid that if he left Caspian alone with Angeline for too long, Caspian would embark on another history lesson and that could have disastrous consequences. There were too many things that had been secret for too long, and although in another time or place, Connor would have welcomed the opportunity to finally set the history books set straight, today was not that day.
Angeline was in a delicate phase of her development, and he knew that if she discovered the truth about Alair Robart, she risked losing her grip on her dark side and then there was a chance that persona would take over forever. If the truth was too much to bear, she may even let go completely without a fight. Connor knew that he had no rights to her, but he couldn’t let her disappear from the face of existence either. What she brought to her people, her destiny, was too vital and too important to sacrifice.
He looked over his shoulder. Angeline was sitting on the ground by the fire with her eyes closed and Caspian was gesturing wildly. Connor had no idea what he was talking about, but for the moment things appeared to be focused on training and not on history.
He couldn’t delay any longer. He hoped that Caspian knew what he was talking about. He took a step into the woods. Immediately he felt the buzz hush and go silent. His next step faltered for just a moment. Then he steeled himself and pushed forward. Caspian said the spirits were gathering at the boundary wall, and Connor could see now markers of it that he had missed on the journey to the clearing. The trees along the boundary had trunks that were lighter and smaller than the rest and as he looked up, he could see that their leaves looked sickly. Nothing grew at the base of those trees, as if the ground itself was contaminated.
He couldn’t see anything. If he didn’t know better, he would have believed that he was completely alone. But there was something menacing in the air, and he felt his shoulder blades clench. As he approached the boundary, there was an unnatural chill in the air. He stopped just inches from the boundary and paused. They were there. They hated and feared the likes of him, but they were willing to be this close for a chance at Angeline.
Connor understood the desire for vengeance. He had wished countless times that Monroe be struck down dead for stealing his life away from him. But then that feeling was counteracted b
y the knowledge that what Monroe stole had really been a life that wasn’t even worth living. He had brought shame and misery to his family. He had been a penniless murderer. He had been nothing good in life, so why should his afterlife be so different?
“I wish you no harm,” he said out loud. “I am hunting living flesh today. If you give me no trouble, I will return the favor. If not, my friend Caspian shared a few secrets with me today. I have been feeling the slightest bit lethargic lately and could use a shot of energy. You understand what I’m saying, I’m sure.” Although he felt a bit silly addressing a thinly veiled threat to thin air, he felt it was necessary to ensuring that he was able to return without incident. He hadn’t cared for Caspian’s warning of “pranks.”
Then he strode through the boundary. He felt the pressure of what seemed like hundreds of cold touches shrink away the instant his flesh touched them. They were here, but they were afraid of him. Good. Then the pressure was gone and he sensed that he had reached the other side of the spirits’ perimeter. It was time to stop worrying about spirits that he could not control. It was time to hunt.
Caspian had been very clear on Angeline’s dietary needs before Connor left.
“Something big and preferably predatory. Bring it back alive,” the old vampire had whispered to him in his mind. It was the first time that Caspian had communicated with him like that, and Connor was chagrined that the other vampire was aware of his talent. Or that likely that meant that Caspian had been reading his mind all along and he had been completely unaware of it. Connor disliked losing his most valuable advantage.
He stalked into the night. Caspian had also suggested to head south, and eventually angle back toward the cliff wall, which apparently extended all the way to the westernmost tip of the Solera Valley. He knew what he was looking for: a mountain lion pack.
Connor wasn’t particularly hungry himself, but Caspian had also told him that as a newly born wraith, Angeline would be hard to keep up with, and anything that distracted her or jangled her nerves would mean that Caspian would tie her right back up to that tree. The more calm and soothed they could keep her, the less likely she’d inadvertently unleash the darkness hiding within her. They didn’t have a lot of time to get her ready at all.
It didn’t take long for Connor to find the cliff wall again. He stood still for a moment and cast his mind out. Further north he could just sense that low buzz again. So they had picked up where they left off once he left them. He couldn’t hear anything beyond that barrier, which worried him. He wasn’t so far that he shouldn’t be able to feel Angeline, but the spirits appeared to be blocking him. The sooner he got this errand over the better.
He looked in the other direction, further south. There. About a mile away, a small group of animals were hunting, just like him. He could feel the wild and simple emotional sensory desires of hunger guided the beasts. He admired their singular focus and wished not for the first time that his own life could be boiled down to such simple details. Hunt. Eat. Mate. Sleep. But a vampire’s life held intrigue that rivaled a human’s life, especially since they never slept.
Just as he was backtracking and getting ready to move, he brushed another mind. He recoiled immediately. There was someone else out there. Much more carefully, he sent a tiny tendril out to feel for that presence again. This time, he found nothing. Damn. Not only was someone else out there, it was someone who was aware enough that they closed their mind after sensing Connor. He considered going back to Caspian to let him know that someone was close by, but he knew that daylight was coming soon and if he didn’t bring something back from the hunt, he would be potentially delaying Angeline’s progress.
If only he was able to mentally connect with the old vampire, but the spirits were in the way. But Caspian had lived in these woods for years without discovery, and Connor assumed he had some other tricks up his sleeve to discourage unwanted visitors. His work would have depended on it, and he had managed to avoid Monroe’s detection for years. So Connor made his decision and quickly scaled the wall to the top. He closed his mind to avoid further detection and started down the wall in the direction of the animals. If he hurried, he could be back in camp within the hour.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Caspian wanted Angeline to focus on her second sight, and decided that was the first thing that they should work on.
“There are three things that you always have to remember as a wraith: control your mind, temper your emotions, and use ruthless logic leveraging all the gifts at your disposal. If you can do these three things, then no one other than a vampire will ever know that you are anything but human,” Caspian said.
“You make it sound so easy,” Angeline grumbled, remembering the way that the other thing inside her effortlessly took over when presented with something that it wanted: food. It had desired raw, bloody food.
“It will be once you assert your dominance as the host. You will take the best parts of your dark parasite and the rest you will lock up and throw away the key,” Caspian said.
“So you have helped other people? Other people like me?” Angeline felt like it was an impossible dream that she would be able to return home.
“In one fashion or another,” Caspian said, his tone ominous.
“What does that mean?” Angeline said.
“I told you that I cannot allow a wraith to leave until I am confident he or she is safe to return to their world. Wraiths are very uncommon and very unpredictable. Sometimes by the time that I found them, they had become much too attached to their parasite, and they had already relinquished too much of their host control to it. So they were never able to recover.”
“What happened to them?” Angeline was horrified. She had felt how strong the pull of the thing was inside her, but she had never considered that it could take control and she’d be the one locked inside.
“You are going to be queen someday, and I know Eric Robart would not have raised a stupid child. What do you think happened to them?” Caspian said with a note of disdain.
Angeline knew the answer but she still wanted Caspian to confirm it. “You killed them, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did,” Caspian said matter-of-factly. “Consider yourself lucky that Monroe’s whelp thought to bring you here as soon as it happened.”
“His name is Connor,” Angeline said. The old vampire was getting on her nerves. He didn’t seem to care about anything other than being obnoxious and acidic.
Caspian shrugged, “He’ll be gone again before I could even find a reason to care to call him by his name.”
Angeline felt a chill in her stomach. Connor wouldn’t leave without her. Unless…unless she was dead because Caspian killed her. Would Connor try to save her? “How many have you trained successfully?”
Caspian winced. “Like I said, you are lucky you are here now, before you had a chance to embrace that thing inside of you.”
“How many?” she demanded.
“I haven’t successfully transitioned one yet,” he finally said. “But as I mentioned earlier, each case is unique and there has to be a very strong desire to want to control what’s inside.”Angeline felt like the world was crashing down around her. “Not even one,” she said numbly. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
For the first time, Caspian looked pained. “I thought you understood that the odds of gaining the control required to return to your old life were small. But you are in the best possible place to do that. No one knows more about wraiths than I do.” He patted her arm, but it didn’t make Angeline feel any better.
“Now first things first though. You have a second sight talent. Let’s close your eyes and then I want you to tell me what you see,” Caspian said.
Angeline felt shell-shocked, but she needed to be the exception and not the rule when it came to Caspian’s training. Her kingdom depended on it. She closed her eyes obediently. If there was one thing she was really good at, it was learning new things.
She was just going to say tha
t she didn’t see anything—her eyes were closed!—but then she saw a burst of light and then another one. She could see brilliant color enclosed in each of the bursts, but they were gone before she could see what they were.
“I see, light,” she said.
“Mmm,” Caspian said. “What’s in the light?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They are gone so quickly.”
“Try,” Caspian suggested. “Use your mind to grab them before they disappear.”
Angeline furrowed her brow. Grab them? How? But she wasn’t going to ask any more questions. Caspian seemed to look unfavorably on too many questions.
She saw another burst shoot up from the corner of her eye and she reached her mind out toward it. Then it was gone. Another burst out from the top of her left eye. Again she reached but missed it. She hissed in frustration.
“Remember the second rule, Princess. You must keep your emotions in check,” Caspian said patiently.
She took a deep breath and stamped down the feeling of frustration that had bubbled up in her throat. Then she quieted her mind and tried again. Almost immediately the bursts lit up her eyelids again. Instead of trying to grab at each one, she watched them for a few minutes. It reminded her of the fireworks that were displayed at her father’s annual fall tournament. She had loved watching the jousting as a child, but really it was the fireworks that she looked forward to and the way they lit up the night sky. She could have watched them for hours.
The fireworks behind her eyelids grew even more spectacular, and as she relaxed it seemed like the bursts came with more frequency, as if they were trying to get her attention. They seemed to dance closer to her, and finally one seemed to be right in front of her. It was what she had been waiting for. Her mind’s eye snatched it and held it.