Distract my hunger (18 page)

This group of vampires are called “The Council” since they began as a council to make the most important decisions for our kind. It was made of six members, all of which are Ancients, and probably the oldest alive. The idea was to have the council members in their positions until their death, but as the years went by, we discovered that pure ancients did not die so easily. That’s when the problems began.

The council members got power-thirsty and wanted more and more power. Instead of putting all their efforts to ensure the best for our kind, they only tried to ensure their positions . . . and increase their power. Other ancients became too dangerous, so they were slain under false pretences. And the prophecy was the perfect excuse to kill.

The birth of the vampire that would change all was something to be prevented at all costs they believed, for they knew that the change would come as a change of hearts.

Any child that was born of both ancient parents was meant to die, and just in case, they killed other ancients at random too.

That’s when things started to get complicated, because not many vampires where left alive to stand up to them. Our order, “The Order of the Black Iris” was born as a resistance to them. The first members were ancients that managed to escape and formed this underground order to save other vampires and someday bring down the council.

The Order has fought several wars, where nobody won and many of our mates died. We never managed to actually kill any council members, but their numbers are not the same as a few years ago.

The original council was made up of six members, all of which are said to be the most powerful Ancients (and oldest) of our kind. Now, they are only three, but the three most vicious ones are the ones that remain. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we are almost preparing an army to fight three vampires! They have supporters . . .

As I said before, Juniper decided to stand against them, and she did so with Duncan, another council member. Their treason to the other council members made it essential for them to escape and hide, for what they did was supreme treason.

For many reasons, what they did was almost a death-wish, yet I believe it was a combination of true love and pure rebellious spirit. I don’t know if they still live to be honest I have not seen them for almost eighteen years, but the fruits of their rebellion are right in front of me. They were your parents.” He said and folded his hands in front of him. He had dropped the bomb and was now waiting to see its effects.

I started hyperventilating. The woman who wrote the notebook was my mother! And my father was another ancient, and from “The Council” . . . that meant that the prophecy was even more precise. Some verses of the poem started dancing in my head; they became so present that I wouldn’t have been able to make them disappear even if I wanted to.

A
newborn
baby,
a
rising
sun.

From
noble
cradle
born

And
human
raised,

The Council was the vampire equivalent to more than just nobility, it was basically the equivalent to royalty, and my blood came from not one but two council members! I was also human raised for my parents had died in a car accident . . . or did they fake that to save me from the other council members? Could they still be alive?

I feet felt numb, just as if no blood was getting there. I had believed my whole life that I was human yet I was not. My parents were supposed to be dead . . . yet they might be alive and escaping vicious vampires or they could have encountered an even more terrible fate. It was all too much for me to take. I wanted to run away at first, and then a huge rage started building up inside me. It was bigger than the hunger and bigger than anything I’d ever felt. I wanted to take revenge on The Council.

“I’ll fight” I said, my voice sounded so determined I couldn’t recognize myself. It sounded older and stronger than I ever sounded. I felt a new kind of energy flowing in my veins, power pulsed through my limbs and somehow I knew something had changed inside me. I was not the same vampire girl I was in James’ house; I knew that if I tried to move something like the old man had done with the notebook I could do it. This new energy that flowed inside me made me different from what I was before. I had now completely awakened.

I could feel all their eyes on me. They could probably guess that something was happening but I’m quite sure that they never got the full picture.

“I will look for them.” I added, “And wherever they are, I will find them, or find out what happened to them.”

Nobody said a word. I guess it was just too much for them too, after all, they knew almost as much as I did before we came here. Also, another big question stood there unsaid like a huge pink elephant in the room. How much did Violet know beforehand?

Time was going by and nobody said a thing. We all simply continued sipping some more catnip tea to elude talking. The atmosphere was as tense as a piano-cord and nobody dared to crack the silence. I was deeply set in my own troubles when suddenly I realized that certain numbers did not add up.

If the original council members were six, and three of them were our enemies now . . . then there were three more members that did not favour them. Two of those were my parents who were missing, but who was the third one?

It was an interesting puzzle, some other strong vampire was against them and it would be most useful to know who he or she was.

I thought about that for some minutes until suddenly it all came clear. I looked at the old guy at the end of the table and just knew. He was one of them.

We looked at each other for some time, he held my gaze though nothing was said. He knew I had guessed his secret, yet he said nothing. Some things were best kept unsaid.

“What should be our next move?” Ginny suddenly asked in her almost Texan accent. She dared to break the silence, and we were all truly grateful for it.

“I know we might stay here and hide the girl forever, but I’m sure that there’s surely something else we ought to do, right?” She added, extending an almost irritating twang with the word “right”.

Our hosts exchanged glances for a while before giving any kind of answer. Then the rebellious ancient spoke for the first time since he had dropped the bomb about my origins.

“We could stay, that’s right . . . this is a safe-house. Still it is not the best option for us. We should start looking for them right away. That will give us the head start.” He said and finished his tea in a sole gulp. Now that things were said and clear, he seemed to be in a hurry to get to action.

“That’s all very good, but where should we start?” Jonathan said and looked at me as if I had all the answers now.

I was completely puzzled. I could not answer him, I had the impulse and would fight till the end, but I did not know where to begin.

As always Corbin was the one to give us a solution. He was our jester, but he was also an amazing puzzle solver. It was brilliant to have somebody like him on our side.

“Oh come on!” He exclaimed in his jesterly manner. He tried to sound bored as if the answer was completely obvious and we were missing something so evidently simple.

He looked at his nails trying to exaggerate his boredom and adding a very clear theatrical quality to his behaviour. He just loved being the centre of attention.

“
We
have our secret weapon, don’t we?” He said then as if it was completely obvious to us. Yet obviously we had absolutely no idea of what he was talking about.

“The Twins!” He added. He said it in an almost irritated tone as if it had been crystal clear from the beginning and somehow we were the ones that could not see it.

“You mean to try and get the twins to locate them or something like that?” Jonathan asked clearly amazed.

“Exactly! If we find a way to make them
feel
the three council members, they could probably pinpoint someplace to start.” Corbin exclaimed in a very bright voice.

What he said was right! The uncanny powers of the twins could surely give us a hint or two. Though we still had a problem with that, how on Earth could we make the twins feel a connection with three vampires they didn’t even know existed before now?

If we only had a photograph or some piece of clothing things would be different yet I doubted those vampires would leave things lying around.

“We can do it” The twins said in their eerie manner and stood up only to remain as still as statues.

They were completely sure they could do it, they had no doubt yet I still wondered how. I looked at Jonathan and we exchanged deeply puzzled looks, he was as clueless as I was.

Lucrecia, that had been really quiet all this time looked very thoughtful and did not give us any hint she knew how the twins would manage to do it. James and Ginny both stared at the twins; their stares had a mixture of love and complete admiration. They didn’t even seen to doubt they would do it or question how.

The old man stood up too almost right after the twins. He was much taller than what I’d expected. Even though he looked older than any other vampire I’d ever seen, he stood and moved like a warrior. He had an air of fearlessness and strength around him I had not noticed before.

He walked towards the twins almost in slow motion. We all looked, absorbed in his movements and wondering what was going to happen. We had no clue as to what he would do, though the twins seemed to be completely serene expecting something from him. What exactly they were expecting, was a big mystery.

He walked until he was right in front of them and then lifted his shirtsleeve to reveal the whole length of his scar. Then, very slowly he closed his eyes and traced the scar with his index finger.

The scar was longer than I’d imagined when I saw it the first time. It looked old yet very deep. It was very straight and went all the way up from his hand to well past his mid-arm.

“Liam gave me this scar” he said and handed his hand to the twins. “If they can sense our fight, they’ll get a small grasp of his essence, and finding him we can find the tree of them.”

The twins both moved their left hand towards his arm and stopped with their fingertips no more than two centimetres from his scar. They seemed to linger there, waiting for something for a few seconds and then very rapidly they simultaneously took hold of his arm. Their eyes rolled back instantly and their faces went completely blank. They were scanning the old guy’s past.

CHAPTER 14

A Doomed Quest

“H
e decided to leave, but Liam found him before he was gone. Things were not right with the council, something rotten was going on in there. He had to leave, he should have left when Juniper did so but did not have the courage.

Liam didn’t try to talk things over, he didn’t want him to stay, it was the perfect excuse to get rid of him. As soon as he tried to leave Liam withdrew his sword. He “wouldn’t live to abandon the council” he had said while he attacked him.

Luckily he had had a dagger with him that day and used it to stop Liam’s blows. Still the dagger was no match for the long-sword. He had to be too near to attack him since the long-sword had a better reach. After a long time, he grew tired and made a mistake. He left his guard down and Liam almost killed him. The only thing he managed to do was stop the blow with his bare arm. The pure copper blade cut through his tissue right to the bone and would have completely cut off his arm if he had not used it as an opportunity. He attacked Liam once again with his good arm and managed to cut his face.

The dagger opened a big gash in Liam’s right side of the face. It might have cut his eye too but he was not sure, there was too much blood.

Liam turned and fell; he turned and ran.” The twins recited after maintaining some contact with his arm. Then they let go and sat limply on their chairs once again.

It was as if they were there when he fought Liam, they spoke as if they had been passive spectators of it all. Now, they could feel Liam. If there was any way they could sense this Liam’s whereabouts they would surely do so now, still, it could take some time.

I figured they were trying to process the new info in their psychic minds and that was why they sat again. They made me think of a casino’s slot machines with all the drums rolling.

“How did you survive that cut?” Ginny said looking at the oldest vampire in complete awe. She had completely immersed herself in the story and seemed amazed to have him in front of her, and alive. “Copper kills our kind, especially with a cut so deep.” Her astonished voice was even whinier than her regular one.

“I had every intention in finding The Order of the Black Iris” he said, “way before that fight even. I thought they would have some information for me on certain matters, but I was wrong . . .” His eyes grew glassy with tears as soon as he said that and took a deep breath.

He seemed almost choked by his own words yet he tried to mask his feelings. He seemed to be loosing the fight to bury them deep inside him when he finally continued:

“I was hurt, and copper poisoned, I thought I wouldn’t make it. But I still tried. I had tried to contact The Order before, but they never answered, and that is what saved my life. I fled from the place and had nowhere to go. The stars were favourably aligned for me though. I was being followed.

The Order had decided to investigate me before they engaged in any kind of contact and they sent Terrance here” he said and pointed at the Asian guy “to follow me.”

Terrance suddenly looked very proud and nodded with a wide friendly smile on his face.

“He was following me and when at a point I passed out, he saved me.” A glance full of camaraderie was sent in Terrance’s direction making him even prouder.

Ok he answered part of the question, but not all of it. Terrance had saved him, which was pretty clear. They seemed to have formed a strong bond between them which was pretty obvious. But something was still unsaid: how did Terrance save him?

Did the huge guy have other special and hidden gifts? These people were all full of surprises . . .

“But how . . . ?” James started to say when Terrance interrupted him and spoke for the first time.

His voice was soft and almost honeyed. For some strange reason, it made me think of liquorice and cinnamon. He had a friendly voice, so much that at times it almost mismatched his menacing looks.

“Our order has a special recipe for cuts and deep wounds. It doesn’t always work, but when the wound inflicted with a copper weapon is deep enough it is the only hope. A strange flower that comes from Jordan is its main ingredient. It seems to counteract copper’s poisonous effects on vampires somehow. This special and unique flower names our order, for it’s thanks to it that we manage to survive. It is the source of our strength.” Terrance said and extracted a small glass vial with a foul looking paste in it from his pocket.

It looked as if something had rotten in there almost. A blackish uneven looking custard lay at the bottom with some tiny drops of a greenish liquid on top. I looked at it and could only be thankful that the cork was on and that he seemed to have absolutely no interest in removing it. I honestly hoped I would never have to have someone use it on me.

“So you call yourselves The Order of the Black Iris because of some plant?” Asked Ginny completely amazed.

“Yes.” The dark-haired woman snapped and continued, “It is the only way we survived so long against the council members. Most of us are not ancients, and though we train, we are not their perfect match if you know what I mean . . .”

It was the first time she spoke, and to be honest, I wasn’t very sure I wanted to hear her much more. Her voice was sour and bitter. She appeared to have a huge resentment inside her and it simply became way too evident every time she spoke. She seemed much nicer when she was quiet.

I imagined she was probably a victim of the Council’s ways somehow, and all that amassing of hatred made her so bitter. I remember wishing I never became like her and vowed to myself I would not let bad things corrode my soul. The truth is I had discovered there where too many things around me to push me to be like her, but I decided I would never allow it.

Jonathan suddenly smiled and squeezed my thigh. He had been listening to my thoughts all the time . . . I realized I still was unable to keep my mental mouth shut. I blushed all over, it was simply too embarrassing! Who knows who else heard what I’d been thinking . . . I was so ashamed . . .

He kept on looking at me and extended his mind to mine: “Don’t be, thinking like that is what makes you a true leader . . . and makes me love you more each day.”

My heart started beating faster in my chest as I locked my eyes with his. I wanted to kiss him so badly! I bent towards him, making the distance between our lips smaller each time . . . until we where no farther apart than a couple of minutes in a clock’s orb. He’d closed his eyes to kiss me, and as I started let my lids veil my eyes the twins startled me.

They started talking as suddenly as they had grown silent. They had found him.

“A castle, it’s ruined. Many humans walk about, they get there in a small cruise. In many small cruises . . .” They said taking turns with each word.

Their eyes were blank and looking at the girls I noticed they were still seated where they were before. They sat very straight and held hands. Energy moved from one to the other, it was not really visible yet it was almost palpable. Once again I looked at them and felt they were sharing one soul.

“Look around June. What do you see? Can you find any useful markings Summer?” Corbin said to them. He was trying to guide their vision, to find out more useful information.

The girls sighed at the mention of each of their names and rolled their eyes once again. The sight was quite disturbing . . . they looked as if they were on the verge of a convulsion.

“Water . . .” They said and tilted their heads from side to side. “There’s lot’s of water around the castle you can see from the house. The water is dark, almost black at times but when the sun touches it, it becomes nearly silver.”

They looked exhausted. Tiny drops of sweat started appearing at their temples. Their breathing had grown heavy, and for the first time I wondered if it wouldn’t be dangerous for their health.

“A sign. Yes, there is a sign near the castle. It says . . . Urquart, yes! It says—Urquart Castle-. Liam is in a house, it is blue, and from it you can see water and Urquart Castle’s ruins.” This time when they ceased speaking I knew they would utter no more words for a long time.

The twins had suddenly relaxed and gone limp on their chairs. Their faces didn’t look strained anymore and their breathing was even and relaxed. They had fallen into deep sleep.

“Hmm . . .” The old guy murmured almost under his breath, “They were describing the surroundings of Loch Ness if we’re not mistaken. There’s a very old castle that’s now an important tourist attraction with the name they mentioned. So they must be living in a house on the same lake.”

He was crossing his arms over his chest and looked very thoughtful. We all looked at him and said nothing. Our next step would be his call.

After a few unending seconds he finally made up his mind.

“It’s time for a road-trip fellows!” he said and motioned for the door. “Hurry and get your things!”

In less than half an hour later we were on the blue SUV once again. I still had no idea of the driver’s face or sex, yet I was by then completely resigned with things being somewhat unknown and unexpected.

Our party had slightly increased in number, and I was sure that each of our new helpers would be most useful.

Before we had started our journey in search of the council members the old guy had made a few phone calls. I eavesdropped somewhat and overheard that he was telling others where we headed and why. He was preparing a complex ambush. The war had truly started.

The trip there was tense. We all kept completely quiet and just checked and rechecked our weapons. I still had my scimitar, and each and every one of us was ready to fight. We knew we might not make it alive after the fight, and that maybe some of our friends would not tell the tale. Anxiety and fear kept a tight hold of us, yet we knew that this ambush was our only shot.

Terrance made sure before we left that he had many of the sickly-looking vials and hid them safely inside his combat clothes. He looked deadly with his combat boots and brown cargo pants. A simple khaki shirt covered his chest and hid a couple of weapons that where secured tightly under it. He seemed to feel no cold, and
that
seems completely impossible in January in Scotland.

We got to Loch Ness just after twilight. The sun had dropped and the night gave us a soft invisibility cloak. Vampire powers are at its fullest during night time. It was a fact that soothed me almost as much as it troubled me. We would be at our fullest, but
they
would be with their heightened senses too.

My vampire eyes where very quick to spot the blue cottage by the Loch, yet I said nothing. I was sure that they all had seen it too. It was the only blue house near the Loch.

We parked a long way away from there, yet we were at certain walking distance. If we managed to surprise them we would have a clear advantage. After we parked we started walking between the snowy trees. We managed to be uncannily silent like ghosts. Not even the snow beneath our feet seemed to take notice of us.

We moved fast, too fast for a human but not to our full speed. Adrenalin and instinct guided our senses and The Hunger waited silently for the fight. My hands felt cold even though I could feel heavy drops of sweat running down my back. This was it. It was my chance to get nearer to my parents’ mystery and live up to the prophecy. It was time to fulfil my destiny.

No other vampires could be spotted in the tracks. I wondered if any would actually join us, or if they would leave us to our fate. I decided it was best to wait for some before we attacked once we got nearer. It would increase our odds.

Was I supposed to be leading them in this battle? I had no clue, and I didn’t know if I would be able to do it. I didn’t even know if I would manage to make my mind stay quiet enough to continue unnoticed. I was trying my best to stop myself from recklessly broadcasting my thoughts and getting us all killed.

We moved on for about fifteen minutes, until finally we where almost there and decreased our speed. I looked around and saw Corbin doing the same, we where searching for others . . . but nobody seemed to have come. I could hear no sounds and realized that Corbin couldn’t catch any vampire or human sounds either. We where the only ones there . . .

Lucrecia looked ravishing and as dangerous as ever. She was ready and stood to the old guy’s left. Those two would surely be essential for our survival, without them on our side we would never stand a chance against three of the oldest Ancients and who knows how many more vampires. I swallowed hard and tried not to think about our odds; they were not promising.

We finally stopped at a safe distance from the blue cottage. Snow-covered bushes hid ourselves from the house and made it the perfect spot. Nobody spoke but I knew we would act in unison. A special force seemed to bond us together, it was the desire to change things, to make things right. It was the only real chance anybody had ever had against The Council, and though it hung by a thread we knew it was time to start believing in prophecies.

My breath came hard out of my lungs. The air was freezing yet my hands felt hot with blood and my heart pumped fast. I looked for Jonathan until I found his gaze, he was beside me. Our eyes met and I felt butterflies dancing in my stomach. This was it. Whatever happened, this was the moment that would change our lives forever. If we lived, I was not really sure what my part was supposed to be in all this, and if we didn’t this was the beginning of the end.