by Dawn Gray
I didn't see Michael again for a long time. Life seemed to happen in between our meetings.
When I turned eighteen I started working, part time, in a store. That was where I met Jack Wolf. We started dating the January of the year I was to turn nineteen and then we moved in together the next spring. My feelings for Jack grew, taking on a life of their own, making Julian fade further away. Jack was there in form, he was human, mortal and the threat, if there had ever been one, of the vampire nations became just a dull dream of the past.
He loved me for who I was, a strange eccentric woman who believed in vampires and wrote adventures for others to enjoy. I found the normalcy in life, something I longed for, something I believe I needed and loved about Jack. Unfortunately, there was also the feeling of using him as a cover to forget a time in my life where nothing was normal. I wanted to go on with life, and Jack gave that to me, at least he did until life took a turn once more.
Lauren, an honest-to-a-fault red head stepped into my life, bringing back the strangeness of my past. She and I shared several common interests, one being vampires, so I let her read my stories and, gradually, I told her the story of Julian and the others. For the first time since that summer, someone believed me, and maybe it wasn’t such a farfetched story as my mind was lead to believe.
We were creating plots as we went on, bringing Julian, Michael, Quinn, and David into our lives by verbal stories that we created. I would tell Lauren that I had talked to Julian, who had a habit of just ‘popping in’ whenever he felt like it, and she would counter, with no thought to it, about her experience with him, or one of the others the day before that. This went on for a while before something quite interesting really did occur.
We walked through the local mall together, telling of our conversations with the four vampires that neither of us had really seen in each other’s presence, when it hit me. Like a ton of bricks falling from the ceiling, a wave of familiar thoughts and emotions wash over me. I stopped dead in my tracks, which made Lauren turn to look at me as I stared up through the three floors above me. From where we stood at the lower level, you could see all three.
There, from where I stood looking up, I made eye contact with a blond haired young man. He stared over the railing at me, with some kids at his side, a group of mortals that he was with. There was a look of absolute amazement on his face and the others seemed to be oblivious to the fact that he was paying no attention to them. He smiled, suddenly, as if a realization had just struck him, and then disappeared.
"Ashley, who are you looking at?" Lauren asked me.
"Michael," I smiled.
She looked up and smiled, believing that who we saw and when was for our own eyes. But she looked at me, again, and saw that I was now looking behind her. She turned, slowly and cautiously, to look at this blond young man, dressed in black from head to toe, who had just suddenly appeared. He smirked at me and then at Lauren.
"It’s okay, Michael. I'm old enough now that it doesn't matter if I remember or not. In fact, you are the only one who never faded."
"Are you sure? I wouldn't want you to get hurt." I nodded to him, and then he walked over, slowly, and hugged me tenderly. Slowly, he turned and looked at the red-haired girl that he had walked passed. "Good afternoon, Lauren."
"Michael." She smiled and said, knowing that this was indeed the real man. I laughed at the fact that she acted as if the two of them were old friends. "Nice of you to finally show yourself to both of us at the same time."
"Well, you know how things have been, I'm sure." He smiled, playing right along with the game. "You can't be too careful. You have to watch who you appear to these days."
Michael was with us for the rest of the day, catching us up on the events since we had last spoken. Our days together became frequent and when Jack wasn't home, which were most nights, Michael would come over and keep me company. He would tell me about Julian and the others and I would let out my frustrations on him about my day.
Lauren and I continued with the charade for several months, until it came to a head one day when I walked into work in a rather giddy mood. Lauren asked me what was wrong, and I told her something that I wouldn't have believed would have come out of my mouth. I told her that I had slept with Michael.
It wasn't true, at the time, just something that I had made up on the spot. She looked at me as if the ceiling had fallen on her head. I smiled at her and asked myself what I had just done. She was in shock the rest of the day and barely talked to me. After work, she asked about Jack and I told her that he didn't know. By the time I had gotten home, all I could do is think about how to tell Michael the stupid thing that I had done.
I was crying when Michael walked into my bedroom. He had a key and usually let himself in when he came over, which was mostly when Jack was at work. He sat in front of me and I looked up from the blanket I had curled up with.
"What is it?" He asked me. I shook my head.
"I've done something so stupid." He took my hand and held it.
"How bad could it be, Ash?"
"It could be really bad, depending on your point of view." He smiled.
"My point of view?" He asked me. "Tell me, what it is, Ash?"
"I lied to Lauren about you." He nodded and looked at me. "And, I lied about me. I told her something so stupid and I shouldn't have ever said a thing."
"Just spit it out, Ashley." He laughed at me.
"I told her that you and I had ..." I told him, and then stopped to try to find the right words.
"Had? Had what?" He questioned, with raised eyebrows.
"Sex, Michael! I told her that you and I had sex,” I blurted out. He sat back and looked at me, a confused look on his face. I then watched as a smile widened on his face.
"You told Lauren that we had sex?" He giggled at me.
"Yes, and I'm sorry if I made you mad," I pleaded with him to understand.
"How was I?" He asked. This stunned me into silence.
"What?" I asked him, not sure if I had heard him right.
"Well, since I don't remember it," he said smiling at me. "I just want to know how I was, for future reference."
"You're not mad?" I asked him. He lay down on the bed and looked over at me, laughing.
"What I'm mad at is that I can't remember anything, but you told Lauren about it before you told me," he said smiling. That eased my nervousness, the fact that he laughed at me.
Later that night, as we sat on the couch watching a movie, he turned to look at me. "So?" He asked. I looked at him suddenly.
"So what?" I questioned.
"You never told me how I was."
"Oh, Michael," I said, crawling over to sat on his lap facing him. I took his face in my hands and kissed him on the nose. "You were the best I've ever had."
With that response, I climbed off and ran into the kitchen. The situation blew over and life returned to normal. Michael, though, went along with the tale I had told whenever he, Lauren and I were together. Lauren was still baffled by the two of us.
One day, after many months of being together, something that Jack and I had wanted very badly finally came about. On this night, Michael and I watched the news quietly. I couldn't tell him, couldn't find the words.
"Are you all right, Ash?" He asked me. I looked at him and smiled, then nodded. "What's on your mind?"
"Nothing."
"That's not true and you know it." He smiled at me.
"Okay, but you have to promise not to get mad," I replied to him. He smirked and gave me a look that told me everything. "I'm pregnant."
"What?" He said and sat forward, his smile faded, for a moment. He turned and looked at me then took my hand. "Are you going to tell Julian?"
"No, how could I?" I asked him. "What would I say? Jules, I love you but I'm pregnant with my husband's baby. I really don't think that would work."
"Can I tell him?" He questioned.
"Yes, if you want. If he asks, just tell him I couldn't bring myself to hurt him l
ike that," I replied. "I love Jack, I want to have this child, Mike."
"I know you do, Ash. It's nothing to be afraid of." He smiled at me. I nodded and sighed. That went better than I thought.
Michael was called away shortly after I gave him my good news, so again I was alone, without my vampires.
All my life I had premonitions, of my friends becoming pregnant, of what they might have, of little sorts of problems that people I knew might have, but when I was three months pregnant I had a dream of Julian. One that seemed to make all the sense in the world to me, about my past and of my future.
I was in a large civic center building, almost like the mall where you could see all floors from wherever you stood, but this place was full of people, all dressed in black, all vampires. I walked into this strange place and made my way through the spiraling crowd of people. I finally reached the bottom, and stepped out into the light, with a group of seven people behind me, people that I knew, that I trusted.
There in front of me, in the middle of the room, on a platform, was Julian, standing in all his glory, the suave prince that he was. He held out his hand for me and I took it. He pulled me out of the darkness and onto the platform beside him. He opened his arms for me, looked out into the crowd, and in a booming voice, he spoke to them. When he spoke, silence filled the room.
"Behold," he said with open arms, walking around me in a circle, facing the crowd. "For here amongst us this very day is our Queen. She has finally come back to us, to bring us together, to unite us all. She carries within her, a child, our prince, and this prince will be a great King. He will bring peace with us and with the mortals. We will all live as one."
He reached over and touched my stomach. I could feel the baby in me respond to his touch, as if they were linked. He looked up at me, Julian did, staring deep into my eyes and smiled at me.
"Michael told me," he said softly. I knew that it was just my subconscious telling me that this was right, but I couldn't help but reach out and embrace him. He felt real to me and, all the feelings of the last seven years, which I had held deep inside of me for him, raged to the surface. "You're very beautiful."
With those sweet words, I woke up and watched as a shadow moved toward the stairway. I stood up and walked out into the hallway, but the shadow had gone and the darkness remained.
Life had a strange way of bringing the impossible back into my reality. The rest of my pregnancy went by without incident and the baby, a boy, was born in the middle of August. Jack and I named him Jackson Daniel Wolf, and he had the most amazing blue eyes I had ever seen on a child so small. They were full of intelligence, as if he were aware of a world that existed outside the normal realm, and the prophetic dream haunted me once more.
When JD, as we called him, turned two months old, tragedy struck. The police came to my door, late one Sunday night. They told me that they had found Jack's car, not two miles from our home, faced in the direction of our house, but that Jack has vanished into thin air. There was blood in the car, on the dash and the passenger side seat, but neither matched my husband.
The search went on for two weeks, groups of men and women searched the woods and river that flowed through the city but his body was gone. There was no trace of him, no clue as to what might have happened, until they decided to check the car again. There they found a note, in between the seats.
The detective handed me the note, written in red ink. I unfolded it as my Mother took JD from my arms. It said, ‘We have him. He has come home to be with us. It is his own fault and he brought this on himself.’
It didn't make any sense to me, not anymore now than it did back then.
It never occurred to me just who he went with; why it was his own fault and just what kind of turn of events that this would create. I wasn’t prepared for what came next in life, on any angle. There were forces controlling my life that left me with a shaking feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.
After much heartbreak and worry, I decided that I wanted to raise my son on my own. However, the fates weren’t through with dealing out life altering changes and tragedy struck again. An event that would direct the tides and bring back the past, making me realize there was never really any escape from what I was to become.
One dark night, when JD turned six months old, I woke to a sudden cry in the night. It had ripped me out of a deep sleep and I raced to Jack's room. The door wouldn't open. It was locked from the inside. I banged and yelled and pushed and pulled, but to no avail. While looking for an ax to break it in with I called the police who finally hacked through the door.
I screamed when I found out that Jack wasn't in his crib, that he had been taken out of a secured room, and I fainted when they found the note in his crib. It was just like his Father’s, written in the same red ink. It bluntly said, ‘We have taken him. He is where he belongs. With his own kind.’
Instantly I knew who ‘they’ were and there was only one thought running through my mind.
I had to get to Julian, no matter what.
5
The sun was just about to set to the west, over the ocean, when I arrived at the mansion still dressed in the shorts and T-shirt that I had woken up in that morning. I rushed out of the house soon after I had realized what my life really meant. I was the Queen of a race that I never really understood, and my son was the heir to the throne. What was worse, the prophecy made by Julian when I was three months pregnant, about Jack bringing peace to the land seemed truer than life now. Some wouldn't like that and if the prince wasn’t alive, it wouldn't come true.
I raced through the double front doors, which were amazingly unlocked, and stood in the middle of the parlor, just underneath the hanging chandeliers. I looked up to the second floor, then around to the empty rooms that surrounded me and I clenched my fists.
"JULIAN!” I yelled at the top of lungs, as I started to cry. "They took my baby, Julian." I hollered again, dropping to the floor. On my hands and knees I repeated my cry, in between the ragged breaths I was trying to catch. "They took my baby."
I ended up curled up on the floor, sobbing to myself, feeling as if my cries had gone unanswered. Until I realized, as the dark, blurred figure of a man stood over me and scooped me up into his arms, that I had indeed been heard, but wasn't quite sure by whom.
When I awoke, the sun was shining in through the light drapes that hung over the open window. I stared at the window for a while, before realizing that I was in the bedroom that I had spent the night in the last time I was here. With that realization came the feeling that I also wasn't alone. I turned over in the bed and looked at the man standing by the fireplace. He was tall and his dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and, at first, I mistook him for Julian, but then I realized how different he felt to me.
"Quinn?" I asked aloud and watched him turn to look at me. His eyes were full of sadness and he walked over to sit near me. "Where is everyone?"
"Gone, but they will be returning home now," he told me.
"Quinn, they took my son. The other vampires took my baby," I told him softly, as if he hadn't heard me when I screamed it the night before.
"I know Precious," he said and touched my cheek, giving me the same gentle sensation of calm that he had when Julian was gone all those summers ago. I could almost hear his quiet whispering in my mind. "I felt it the night he disappeared."
"Where's Julian?" I asked him. He shook his head.
"He hardly comes out anymore, never during the day, and barely at night. He knows you're near and he knows about your son being taken," he said softly, touching my forehead. "Your eyes are different from before."
"My eyes?" I asked him, and then I got up from the bed and walked over to the mirror. He was right, my eyes seemed to glow silver, but I shook my head as if it were nothing. "It must be the lighting."
"Michael and David should be back soon," Quinn said and got up suddenly. He walked to the door and barely looked at me when he opened it slowly. "I'll be downstairs. Dinner sho
uld be ready shortly."
As he left, thoughts ran through my mind. What had happened since I had last seen them? Quinn was quiet, not himself, and Julian not coming out in the day struck me as strange because he told me that he loved the sunlight.
I was sitting on the bed when I felt Michael enter the house, and then he was at my door. He stood in the doorway and we looked at each other. Slowly, I got up and walked over to him, he held out his arms and I hugged him tightly.
"He'll be home soon, Ash. He's on his way," Michael said softly. I shook my head. "He doesn't know you're here. We weren't sure you wanted him to know."
"Well, he'll find out when he gets here, won't he?" I laughed and looked up at him."I don't even know if he's still alive, Mike." My eyes started to water and I pushed away from him. "I can't feel my son, anymore. It's like he doesn't even exist."
"He's fine, Ash. You can't feel him because they don't want you too. They want you to think the worst." He sighed, then took my hand and held it. "Ask Quinn about the witch. Tell him that you need to see her. Tell him you need reassurance that little Jack is okay. He'll help you."
Later that night, I followed Quinn through the underground tunnels until he disappeared from me. I closed my eyes, standing in the darkness, and thought about how I was going to get back to the beginning, when I felt him close to me. I opened my eyes and looked into the bright red eyes of Julian's younger brother, who stood less than a foot away from me, staring me down, with a little annoyance in his eyes.
"You should know better than this, Wolf," he said to me in a low voice, using my married name. I stood up straight and faced him. "You could get hurt."
"You wouldn't dare," I told him and smiled. He smirked back at me and at my defiance.