The Vampire Legacy; The New Queen Rises (6 page)

4

I hope that no one reading this has ever
spent that much money on a hypnotist before, because they don't
work, or at least in my case anyway.

Shortly, after our move to Southfield,
Massachusetts my parents brought me to an older man, recommended by
the old lady that had visited our home. His name was Ludwig Van
Tassel, hypnotist extraordinaire, or so he claimed as he set forth
to wipe out any memory of Julian and the others.

For hours we sat there, debating if Julian
really existed and then I gave up. I agreed with them under the
impression that I was still under, that there never was a man named
Julian.

My mother seemed so relieved that I had
‘forgotten’ this whole thing and that I could get on with leading a
normal life. Therefore, I did. I went to school, I met new people
and I got a hobby, writing. My parents thought it was great that I
was so ‘into’ my new hobby, until they found out what my favorite
subject to write about was: vampires.

I had this ugly infatuation with killing off
family members in my stories that had my parents wanting me to see
a psychiatrist. I agreed, insisting that there was nothing wrong
with my writing and that no other subject has as much possibilities
as the subject of vampires and that's why I had chosen it. The
shrink agreed and told my parents that it was just a phase. The
shrink also said that I really held no ill feelings toward them and
that they should let me express things in writing, even if they
were a bit grotesques.

Every summer we took a family vacation down
to the beach house that we had lived in for that year. It was hard
to see the house, but after a few days that first summer, I had
learned that its owners abandoned it. It seemed very odd, for
Julian had told me that the land had been in his family for
generations. Underneath the excitement I felt of returning there
and the emptiness of the house, there seemed to be an odd feeling
of familiarity. As if the four boys were still there, but hiding.
We had also learned that the land was signed over to the state,
where it was turned into a national park.

Feeling that this place held no more meaning
for me and the threat of Julian was gone my parents didn't mind if
I went over and walked around the place. The building was opened
and the furniture was all there, all exactly as I remembered it. I
walked from room to room looking at all the old furniture, and then
I snuck up to the third floor. The door to Julian's bedroom had
been covered by wood to make it look like it was part of the wall.
I sighed and thought that maybe it had all been a dream. That I had
never really met him, but I knew that that wasn't possible either,
my heart wouldn't believe it.

As I walked through the halls, alone, I felt
a sudden presence following me close. When I turned around and
looked, I came face to face with a young man I knew quite well. It
was Michael, but I didn't want to let onto him that I remembered
him.

"Hello," I said and stared as if he were
familiar, but that I couldn't place him. "Do I know you?"

I watched his face drop, his eyes filled with
the knowledge that I had, indeed, forgotten him.

"Have we met somewhere before?" He started
backing away from me. I stepped forward. "Wait." He stopped and
looked up at me. I looked him straight in the eyes and called his
name.
Michael
.

He smiled at me and then stepped one step
closer. "I knew it."

No.
I told him
. Not out loud, with
your mind
.

Why?
His mental voice seemed quiet
next to his verbal one.

No one thinks I remember you, and for your
sake, I’d like to keep it that way.
He went to step closer and
I shook my head.
Listen to me, Michael; don’t tell Julian that I
remember. Tell him that you saw me, and that I’m all right, but
that I don’t remember.

I don’t get it, why all the secrecy?

"Hey, you kids!" A voice yelled to us.
Michael and I both looked at the man standing behind me. "What are
you doing in here?"

"I was looking around," I spoke up.

"Is this kid bothering you?"

"No, um, we just happened to be passing
ways." I replied to him. Michael nodded to us both and then
disappeared around the corner. I looked at the man and then left
the building.

The next event told me that the former
occupants of this place hadn't totally disappeared. The next night,
as I walked with Gina around the park I stopped and looked at the
stage that was down over a small hill. It was an open air theater,
lined with at least seven rows of benches on either side of a small
walkway. Down at the bottom, where the small platform rose to form
the stage, you could see the ocean from over the small wall that
separated the dunes from the rest of the yard. It was there that I
found Julian, or more to the point, watched him.

The wooden walkway that leads over the dunes,
to the ocean, was just in sight of where I stood. On the walkway
was a small platform, with seats, and that's where I spotted the
long, flowing head of black hair. He stood facing the west,
watching the sun setting, leaning against the railing on his lower
arms, his hands folded together. He looked peaceful, but I could
almost feel the hurt from where I stood.

I longed to hold him, to touch his face, but
I knew there was nothing that I could do that wouldn't put him in
terrible danger. I sighed, crossing my arms and looked up at him
again, whispering his name. In that instant, he turned and looked
toward me. I quickly ducked down, behind the wall and closed my
eyes.

That wasn't the last time that I saw Julian,
not that summer anyway. He stood in that same spot almost every
night, and every time I saw him, I wished to hold him. I know that
he saw me walking around the park, but he never approached me, only
stood and watched from a distance.

Gina asked, once, about the sudden distance
between Julian and me. Without giving away any unnecessary
information, I told Gina about the fact that my parents had moved
us away from here to keep Julian and me apart. To keep them from
pressing any charges, because of our age difference and the fact
that they thought he was taking advantage of me, we both decided to
pretend we didn't know each other. This upset her and she spent the
next hour letting me know what type of parents I had, even though,
I knew that they were just my guardians and that my real parents
were quite amazing people.

As the years passed, we visited the park less
and less. Even when we were there my sightings of Julian, or the
others, became less, to the point where Julian disappeared from my
sight for what I felt might be forever. He truly began to become
the hazy vision of something that resided only in my mind. It was
time to move on, time to admit that maybe my love for him wasn’t
real and that I had only imagined it.

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.