“I’m happy.”
“How’re the visions?”
“They come and go.”
“You have a handle on them yet?”
I nodded. I didn’t tell him about the nose bleeds or coughing up blood whenever I get the flu.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing linked to the hunts anymore or finding your Alpha.”
His jaw dropped. “Are you telling me you have visions of the war?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, and I still see three different versions.”
“Visions of the fucking war.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“Why do you say it like it’s an abomination?”
“No.” He smiled. “The opposite. Not one she-wolf I’ve met sees the war, Ru?”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Heiko is going to love you.”
“I doubt that. I see the wolves lose time and time again. If they decide to fight, they can’t win.”
“Who is they?”
“I don’t know. The story of my life.”
We heard someone running toward the room, and Theo looked over his shoulder.
My eyes fell on Collin.
He froze in the doorway, his eyes locked on mine.
“I should leave you two alone.” Theo got up, kissed me on top of my head and walked past Collin.
“I thought you gave up hunting?”
I gave him a half shrug. “I don’t kill wolves anymore.”
“Vampires, Ru? Give me a fucking heart attack. What if one changed you?”
“Three years, Collin?”
He stepped closer. “I tried to find you. It wasn’t easy.”
“Yeah I know. My father was determined.”
I looked away as he came and sat on the bed.
“You’re still mad, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what I’m mad about. Your lying to me… or taking so fucking long to find me.” My voice broke and then my arms wrapped around his neck.
He buried his face in the nape of my neck, inhaling my scent and holding me tight. A warm glow of happiness spread through my body.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
I chuckled. “I told you before. I knew I’d never be happy without you. I’ve been miserable for over three years.”
“Sorry,” he said teasingly. “I was held up trying to find a little arrogant wolf hunter.” He winked at me.
“You’re a crappy tracker, mister.”
“I never said I was good. I have other qualities.”
I smiled.
“Which reminds me: you’ll be meeting the Alpha soon.”
“Oh, really? I’m honored.”
He chuckled.
I studied him. I’d missed his face. “How long did it take you to find him?”
“Your directions weren’t all that great, but thankfully Greg is a much better tracker than me.”
“You found Greg?”
“They found me.”
“I’m sorry about all that. I was confused.”
“It wasn’t like I made it easy.” He paused. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Can I kiss you? Please?”
I giggled. “You’re locked on me.” It was what the book called it.
“Don’t punish me. I spent a long time searching for you.”
I leaned closer to him and then our lips finally touched after three long years.
I couldn’t help thinking how screwed up my bloodline got.
Eva killed her grandmother because she became a wolf. Her descendants became wolves because of her bloodline.
Little Red Riding Hood would never be the same.
THE END
If you plan to continue with the Guardian of Monsters series by Kristin Ping,(who gave me permission to write Forbidden using her world), there’s an epilogue…but I suggest you stop here if you don’t like cliffhangers and don’t plan to continue.
Thanks for reading!
Immortal
By Kristin Ping
Natasha’s life begins the night she is turned. With the ability to channel fire, a gift that only belongs to the witches, she becomes a terror— not only to the packs, but all the supernatural breeds.
She’s known as Blaze. The deadliest vampire out there.
But Blaze has a secret. She didn’t want to become a vampire, she needed to become a vampire, and her reasoning is lost. It died the night her human life did. Her conscience activates when two varcolacs visit the covenant, looking for allies for the Great War.
What was it about the Varcolacs that made her grow a conscience? And will she be able to outrun it to keep the title of terror?
Natasha
2058 - Present
I shifted uselessly against my bonds and gasped as the metal dug into my skin. The chains and heavy locks that shackled my arms and legs to the stiff chair beneath me were made of UVS metal, among the strongest and deadliest metals to our kind. It weakened us so badly that we didn’t even have the strength of a mere human.
I winced at the pain throbbing in my neck. Werewolf bite.
It was a known fact that vampires did not live long, seven days at most, when bitten by a werewolf. Nobody here would suck out the venom, and no one was coming to my rescue.
Tonight’s events played through my mind in vivid detail.
Cass had let me go. After so many years, she finally let me go. But when I saw Vladimire and Francine, I knew it had all been a lie.
Alex and Leigh never stood a chance. Varcolacs were no match for werewolves. They weren’t as strong and their bodies couldn’t hold the Stra-vain—a concentrated dose of a rare plant that allowed werewolves to transform at will—in their system. Varcolacs had to wait for the full moon.
A few nights ago, when I was camping under the moonlight with Alex and Leigh, I’d thought I was the luckiest vampire in history. I had been given a second chance at life. An opportunity to make something good come from evil.
But that second night, when Alex smelled wolves on our tail, I knew it was just one of Cass’s cruel games.
She’d lied when she told me I could be with Alex, that she knew what it felt like to be in love with a Varcolac. She’d never intended to allow me to leave—not her precious Firebird, Natasha.
But never in a million years had I thought she would send my werewolf children to drag me back home.
What had she been thinking? That I wouldn’t kill them? Or harm them?
When they attacked, I took on Vladimire first. Vladimire, who was like a son to me. I still remembered the day I went to pick him up, or really the day I stole him and his twin sister, Francine.
There in the woods, at first, I couldn’t find it in myself to kill him. I tried to scare him with my fire. That hadn’t made him back off, and he’d taunted me, telling me I didn’t have it in me to burn him alive. He was wrong.
Francine had attacked Leigh, and Alex had tried to help. His foot triggered a bear trap, but he still fought as hard as he could. Leigh and Alex tried their best to kill Francine.
I aimed my merciless fire at Vladimire, my Vladimire. Watching him die by my hands ripped my heart to shreds, but I knew it was either us or them.
When he was a charred corpse, I steeled myself to attack Francine next. Killing her should be easier than Vladimire—she was the more sadistic of the two.
But then a werewolf pack came out of nowhere.
Since the One was found and bitten, since the discovery that Stra-vain was the opposite of Wolfsbane, werewolves had become vampires’ worst nightmare again. They no longer needed the full moon to change and hunt us down. They could do it anytime they wanted.
Many covens had been destroyed that way.
As I turned my flame upon the newcomers, a she-wolf sprang forward and bit me. Poison flowed through my system and weakened me instantaneously; my fire, the flames I had trusted for such a long time, flickered and burned out. Hatred flickered in the eyes of the cre
atures who encircled me; the entire pack knew who and what I was—the thorn in their hides.
Alex and Leigh’s agonized screams filled the air, and I knew their screams would stay with me until the day I died. My heart shattered when I saw Leigh lying close to a tree, her eyes open and lifeless, a bloody chunk ripped from her neck. Alex was nowhere to be seen.
The werewolf pack had immediately recognized Alex and Leigh for what they were—Varcolacs. Werewolves saw Varcolacs as abominations, as somewhere in the past a werewolf and a vampire had found a way not just to make it work, but to truly love one another.
The pack’s Alpha arrived, and with a barked command, he ended the battle. He knew who I was and he had orders. I was another wolf’s to deal with. He and his pack were only there to bring me in alive. He shouldered his way through his pack and roughly threw me over his shoulder.
That was when I saw Alex.
The lower part of his body was detached from his torso. My heart clenched. I wanted to scream my pain into the night, wanted my flame to incinerate the whole pack of werewolves… but I was too weak from the bite. I couldn’t even lift my head.
And that was how I came to be here, tied to this chair, waiting for Salvator.
I sighed.
I’d never been this tired before. I’d never felt so… I blew out a gust of air. I couldn’t even put words to what I felt.
My dusty blonde hair covered my face and I tried to muster another gush of breath to blow the loose strands from my eyes.
I should hate the werewolves as much as they hated me. They attacked me when I was human and left me for dead. That was when Cassandra had found me and changed me out of the goodness of her heart. Or so the story went. I actually had no idea if that was the truth, because I had no memory of my life before becoming a vampire
Cassandra’s beautiful face appeared in my mind’s eye. Her face was borderline angelic. I was pretty certain she had some Hispanic heritage from the slant of her eyes, but with her skin as pale as it was, I couldn’t be sure. She had dark hair and crimson eyes—all vampires’ eyes changed. Some of us had bright crimson eyes. Others, like me, had translucently pale eyes—demon eyes, as some called them. But that transformation only happened if we stopped feeding off humans.
I loved Cassandra with all my heart. For a long time, she was all I wanted, and making her happy was my sole purpose. No matter how cruel or gory the task was, I always went through with it, because I never wanted to disappoint her.
The idea to build a werewolf army was something Cassandra and I had hatched. We’d stolen dozens of pups from the werewolf lairs, and all of them—except Bibi, Babilon, Vladimire, and Francine—had died. Now, Francine had returned to her own kind, gone feral, so to speak.
Did I love Cassandra now?
Honestly, I couldn’t say. I had no idea what to feel.
Alex hadn’t just changed how I felt about Cassandra. He’d become my everything. When they’d formed an alliance with our coven, I’d been at a breaking point. I had lost my will to live.
But there was just something about Alex and his sister, Leigh. They’d both intrigued Cassandra, too, probably because her first love had been a Varcolac.
The Varcolac she’d loved had been named Jericho. Whenever Cassandra thought I wasn’t near, she cried for him. But he’d almost destroyed her, almost killed her.
Why, I had no idea.
All I knew was that Cass used to be a witch. She used to have a coven filled with misfits. Vampires, shifters, djinns, Varcolacs. Somehow, she made it work. Whether she employed magic or connections or charisma or all of the above, I didn’t know; Cassandra rarely spoke about that part of her life.
But she’d made it possible for all of them to find a common ground. To exist in relative peace.
Then Jericho turned on her. Nobody talked about it, so I didn’t know how or why he’d almost killed her.
Steven had been the one to change her into a vampire.
After her change, the witches abandoned her, but she continued brewing potions—potions for the wolves so they didn’t become stark raving mad during the full moon and have to be locked up; potions that helped the wolves transform at will, like Stra-vain.
It wasn’t just Cassandra’s potions that were potent; she was. That was the thing I loved about her. She was invincible—just the right match for a vampire with the fire. Neither of us was a simpering damsel in distress. Two vampire women united by sheer power and passionate love for one another. I’d thought we’d last forever.
But she had built impenetrable walls inside herself the day Jericho almost destroyed her. On the days she was cold and distant to me, it felt like he had destroyed her, but I hadn’t known her before my change, so this was only a guess.
I sighed, pushing her to the back of my mind.
Dizziness made my eyes swim as I looked at the UVS locks on my ankles and wrists. There was no way I would get out of this one. I knew they would kill me because of who I was… and send my remains back to Cassandra in a box.
Logically, I should have been quaking with fear, but a part of me was glad my life was finally over.
Alex was supposed to be my new beginning. I was going to live with him and his pack. They were technically waiting for us right now, to migrate for the next seventy years somewhere in Eastern Europe.
And now, he was gone. Leigh was gone. No new beginning waited for me. Monsters didn’t get second chances, and I was one of the worst.
Perhaps it wasn’t so bad that I was finally going to die. Until I’d met Alex, I’d wanted to die for such a long time, so in a way, I was already dead.
If I died, the world would be rid of one terror, and as a bonus, it would spite Cassandra.
Her plan to drag me back had backfired.
I wish I could see the look on her face when she discovered I had perished in the process, that her werewolf twins had betrayed her, and that Francine had defected.
Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face. The consequences were severe. I was going to pay with my life. Again, I shifted in my shackles, looking around the rundown shed where I was being held prisoner. Where I awaited my imminent death.
I had celebrated my twenty-second birthday almost fifty times. Most humans would wonder why I was complaining, because the whole being-young-forever thing seems so appealing, but if they knew my entire story, they’d realize why I despised this life I’d chosen to live. A life that, according to Steven, I had wanted desperately. Had begged for as I lay dying.
No one knew why I had so desperately wanted to become a vampire. Apparently, my former self was extremely secretive and never revealed the reasoning behind the insatiable desire for this path. Everyone said the same thing: that I just insisted that becoming a vampire was the only way. The question was… the only way for what?
Maybe if I recapped everything in my head, I could make sense of how I got here. Best to start from the beginning, the day I woke up and nothing mattered to me, nothing but Cassandra. The day Natasha became Blaze.
* * *
2016
* * *
Pain. The first thing I felt was pain, searing me from the inside out. My skin felt as if it had been set on fire, and the stench of charred flesh filled my nostrils. Something was mauling me on the inside, tearing at my organs. I knew I was dying, but death never came and the pain carried on and on. Pure torture.
Suddenly it all disappeared. Everything inside me died. My love, my soul, my conscience—even my memories, even the secrets—all of it. Everything in my mind got wiped clean. I was no longer me. Just black and dark.
Then came the thirst. An unbearable, excruciating craving. I didn’t know what was happening, but I didn’t like the scorching dryness of my throat. It was enough to make me lose my mind.
I jumped up from the bed and rammed into something solid. I scurried up the wall until my head bumped against the ceiling, wanting to get away from whatever I had rammed into.
I waited to hear the pound
ing of my racing heart in my chest, waited to feel the thrumming of my pulse against my skin, but none of that came. Strangely, I was calm. I was supposed to be dead, but there I was, doing something quite impossible. Clinging to a wall. Defying gravity.
I looked down from my position in the corner of the room.
Four pale figures with dark blood-red eyes stared up at me. Light flickered, burning my eyes, but I kept staring. My breath came out in fast rasps, when abruptly I realized I didn’t need to breathe. My heart wasn’t beating, so why was I breathing?
One of the figures, a woman with a pale, oval face, gazed straight into my eyes. Her hair was black and shiny, and her eyes were wide as if in surprise. A sense of peace and belonging overpowered me, but then my internal senses heightened and my skin crawled. I can’t trust it, not one bit. I tried to remember who she was, but I couldn’t. All I knew was that I shouldn’t trust them.
The man next to her lay a warning hand on her shoulder as if to halt her, though she hadn’t yet moved. He also had crimson eyes and he was tall and lean with golden-blond hair.
An older man stood in the corner. He seemed upset; the hard lines forming on his face made me question everything about this room. A tall figure stood on my left. I quickly moved toward him until his pale skin was inches from my face. His cologne smelled sickeningly sweet, like candy.
I retreated back to my corner, but after a few seconds, I realized I hadn’t moved at all. I was still perched motionlessly in the corner of the ceiling. It was my eyesight. My vision was perfectly clear and could focus sharply on tiny things impossibly far away. My sense of smell was keen, too keen really; I wrinkled my nose at the realization that I could smell everything in the room if I focused on it.
And only now did I realize something that would have made my heart hammer in my chest if I’d still had a pulse: I was pinned against the wall. I couldn’t move. My hands and feet were stuck like glue against the surface.
“Natasha,” the woman said.
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