A Shade of Vampire 31: A Twist of Fates

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C
opyright
© 2016 by Bella Forrest

Cover design inspired by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations LLC

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

The “New Generation” Names List

Arwen
: (daughter of Corrine and Ibrahim - witch)
Benedict
: (son of Rose and Caleb - human)
Brock:
(son of Kiev and Mona – half warlock)
Grace:
(daughter of Ben and River – half fae and half human)
Hazel:
(daughter of Rose and Caleb – human)
Heath:
(son of Jeriad and Sylvia – half dragon and half human)
Ruby:
(daughter of Claudia and Yuri – human)
Victoria:
(daughter of Vivienne and Xavier – human)

Preface: Vivienne

I
t had been
a long time since I’d experienced a vision during the day. But now, as I sat alone in my kitchen, images flashed through my mind, even with my eyes open.

First, the vision of my daughter. Clothes torn, hair disheveled. Beneath a pristine blue sky she raced over an endless ocean, as though she wore the shoes of Hermes.

Second, her love, Bastien. His face concealed in shadow, he stood in a cave, at the border of a crater filled with boiling lava. Smoke billowed up, surrounding him as if in a caress, before he fell...
or had he leapt?

Third, my two brothers, Sofia, Ben, Rose and many other loved ones. I gazed down upon them with a bird's eye view as they traveled through a sprawling maze with no exit.

Then, finally, and most unexpectedly... Lawrence. He ran across a field of turquoise-colored grass, gripping the handles of several blanket-filled baskets in his hands.

I could only guess what any of this meant. But as my consciousness returned to the present, I was left with one contradicting, yet unshakable premonition:

The journey will be both hard and easy, winding and straight, impossible and possible…

Fates will collide
.

Prologue: Victoria

A
s I woke up
, the first thing I became aware of was the intense pain in my feet. It felt as though my soles had been punctured with nails. Or thorns. I groaned, my voice bringing me closer to consciousness.

I opened my eyes and as tears of sleep—or rather unconsciousness—cleared from my eyes, I was staring up at a dark canopy of leaves. A film of dew had settled over my face. Stretching out my hands, I felt dry leaves and twigs. I sat up. Why were my feet hurting so much? I gazed down at them… and felt like vomiting.

They were a mess of dried blood. Indeed, they were pierced with thorns and scratched up by twigs.

I clutched my throat. It was so terribly parched. I needed water. Badly.

But first I had to try to piece together where the heck I was.
What is this forest?
My first assumption was that I was in The Shade. Of course. My home.
Where else would I be?
But then my memory returned to me. I had left home to search for Bastien, with Mona and Brock—where were they now? Then, on arriving at The Woodlands, I had spotted Bastien on the shore with… Rona. He had run away from me. Confused, I’d managed to meet with his mother, Sendira Mortclaw. She told me that she might consider her son and I being together, but I needed to find Bastien first. Then had come the hours of searching for him in the ocean, but he had disappeared.

I gulped.

In my desperation, I’d drunk from the vial. The Mortclaw vial.

I glanced over my body again in a panic. And now what was I? What had happened? What had that elixir done to me? It had made me run with the speed of a wolf. Deep into the forest. So fast that I’d tripped and knocked myself out.

I reached behind my head, wincing as I felt a bump near the base of my skull. I may have suffered a concussion.
How long have I been lying here?

At least my body appeared to be as it was prior to ingesting the vial’s liquid. I appeared to be human still. I rolled over, my back creaking as I propped myself up on all fours. Then, slowly, I tried to rise to my feet, but I felt dizzy. I immediately fell to my knees again. I stood just long enough, however, to spy a small stream through the trees. I desperately needed water. Not just for my throat but for my wounds.

I crawled through the undergrowth, trying to avoid more sharp objects tearing at my skin, and arrived at the stream’s bank. I dipped my hands into the water and splashed my face. Then I began to drink. I swallowed the pure liquid until my stomach felt bloated and I could drink no more.
Now…
my feet.
My poor, poor feet. I glanced down at them nervously as I swung them over the edge of the bank and dipped them into the water. They stung like hell. But at least they were getting cleansed. I kept them in the water, letting the current wash them. Then I dared curl them up toward me and look at my soles. I almost wished that I hadn’t. They were practically in shreds.

I put them back in the water, panic rising in my throat.
Where are Mona and Brock? How far away did I even run from them?
Time and distance had lost all meaning as I had launched into that frenzy of running.

I’m in The Woodlands. Apparently deep within it. And my feet are beat up. I have no shoes. And I have no idea where the witches have gone. What am I supposed to do next?
I couldn’t walk at all.

In spite of my efforts to remain strong, tears of fear welled in my eyes.

I had really hoped that potion would help me find Bastien, but now I felt farther away from him than ever.

I had to at least be grateful that I was still alive. I had been extremely lucky to not have been eaten by a predator while I’d been lying unconscious.

Okay
, I told myself firmly.
Calm down. You need to calm down and think. Just think.

As I tried to still my mind, a brighter thought occurred to me. Maybe the potion
had
worked in some way. I had just assumed that I couldn’t sense Bastien’s location. But I hadn’t even tried. Maybe I would be able to. Maybe this wouldn’t have all been completely in vain.

Closing my eyes, I remembered the instructions Mona had given me regarding how to psychically sense the Mortclaws’ location. I pictured Bastien in my mind as vividly as I could. Every detail of his handsome face.

I clamped my lips together tightly in determination, willing this to work, even as I squeezed out the built-up tears from my eyes.

And then I felt something—what I could only describe as a sudden tug of intuition. I wasn’t even sure which way was north and which was south. But I sensed that I needed to move forward, straight ahead of me, following a line perpendicular to the stream.

Was this what the intuition was supposed to feel like? Or was this some weird quirk of my imagination?

It had to be real.

Now… if only I could start moving in the right direction. My feet weren’t going to heal anytime soon and I didn’t know how long it would take me to find the witches.

Then another thought struck me. A thought that I hardly even dared to entertain.
If I can sense Bastien’s location, it means I have successfully developed one of the Mortclaws’ powers. What if I’ve developed other traits, too, even as a human?

There was only one way to find out.

My first instinct was to attempt that which I most desperately needed at this moment: flight.

Though I was hardly even sure how to attempt it. What was I supposed to do, just leap into the air and somehow float? What if it didn’t work? I would come crashing down, only to cause further torture to my feet.

But I had to try something. I couldn’t just sit here. I decided to move into the stream. The current wasn’t too strong, and it was shallow, so I didn’t have to worry about drowning. I couldn’t stand, but I could kneel. The surface of the stream reached the base of my chin as I dipped inside and moved toward the center.

Spreading out my arms to keep my balance, I could much more easily jump in water, even from my knees. Positioning my knees and shins against a smooth rock, I pushed myself upward, expecting to immediately fall back down.

To my amazement, I didn’t.

Indeed, I began to float. As though I weighed nothing. As though I was a fae.
A Mortclaw.

I lifted out of the water, and higher, higher toward the towering canopy of trees. I broke out above the leaves, emerging beneath a starry night sky.

The fact that it was night time freaked me out—it had still been sunny when I had entered the woods. But it wasn’t enough to dampen my relief. I found that I could control my movement with surprising ease. As I tried to see how fast I could go, I zoomed so far that I feared I would lose control and spiral to the ground.

It felt like I was dreaming and yet I had just woken up. This wasn’t a dream. This was real. As real as it got.
I can fly. I can fly!

After I got more used to the sensation, I was able to increase my speed with more control over my direction. Then I paused to think.

I had to go find Mona and Brock. I knew that they wouldn’t have returned to The Shade without finding me. They would still be here in The Woodlands, searching for me.

Although the tugging in my chest pulled me toward the coast in the distance, for now I had to ignore it. Until I found the witches.

* * *

I
zoomed
over the treetops for the next hour, even daring to call out Mona and Brock’s names as I built up confidence. Who cared if somebody heard me? I wasn’t defenseless now. I could fly. The thought made me wonder what other powers I might possess, and how I might unlock them. Did I have the ability to vanish completely? Did I have the ability to…. shoot lasers from my eyes? As terrifying as that sounded, I couldn’t deny how freaking cool that would be.

But for now, all I needed was flying and the ability to locate Bastien.

I found Mona and Brock hovering around a mountain range I didn’t recognize, maybe a hundred miles away from where I had woken up.

“Victoria!” Mona cried as she spotted me.

She and her son looked dumbstruck as they hurtled toward me. They looked to one another as if to verify that neither one of them was suffering from a hallucination.

“What the heck happened?” Mona panted.

I felt so guilty. I had just put the two of them through God knew how many hours of hell.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I took some more of the potion.”
In case you couldn’t guess.
“And look, I’ve… I’ve developed some of the Mortclaws’ powers. I can sense where Bastien is. I know which direction to head in.”

It was all too much for the witches to take in, especially Mona. For the next ten minutes I just kept repeating what had happened before it finally sank in for the two of them. Even then, they were still gaping at me in disbelief.

Then Mona remarked on the state of my feet. “Ugh!”

“I know. I left my shoes behind.”

Mona grabbed my hand and flew down with me to the nearest treetop. We sat on a branch, where she ordered me to lie back and extend my feet to her. I acquiesced.

She took both of my feet on her lap, where she began to work her healing magic.

After a few uncomfortable minutes, the pain subsided. I curled my soles toward me again. They were healed.

“Thank you so much!” I breathed.

Mona sighed. She rubbed her temples, still looking on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “And now what, Victoria?” she asked me, frowning deeply.

“Now…” I swallowed. “Now, the two of you should return to The Shade. It’s not right that I drag you around with me any longer.”

“What?” Mona exclaimed. “What are you going to do?”

I looked toward the glistening moonlit ocean in the distance, my consciousness settling on the tugging within my chest. Tugging that seemed to be right at my heart.

“I have to find Bastien.”

“Victoria, we can’t just—”

“Then wait here in The Woodlands if you must, though I would much prefer you return to The Shade.”

Mona looked like she was about to protest again, but I gripped her hands and squeezed them. “Please, Mona. Let me go.”

Although the two witches looked thoroughly uncomfortable, they backed down.

“All right,” Mona said after a pause. “We’ll wait for you by Blackhall Mountain, though. There’s no way we can just abandon you. I suppose I have to keep reminding myself that you’re an adult… and not just a lovesick teenager.” Her tone turned sarcastic.

“I’ll return as quickly as I possibly can,” I promised. I hugged her tightly, and then hugged Brock, before backing away on the branch. I turned my eyes toward the horizon, the wind blowing against my face, trailing my hair behind me.

Yes. This feels right. This finally feels right.

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