" 10th Avenue?" I had just intended to ask but it ended up coming out as a scream, diverting everyone's attention from Billy to me. " Um........I mean, are you sure it's 10th Avenue?" I asked after I had gulped so hard that I could literally hear the saliva moving into my oesophagus and my larynx contracting. " Do you know of this 10th Avenue?" alpha Jace asked, staring at me right in the eye. " Not really, I just wanted to make sure that he knew what he was talking about. We wouldn't want to receive false information now, would we?" I tried to excuse myself before I unconsciously exposed Diego. " I am sure and I've been there myself", Billy firmly resolved. " We then just have to appoint some people to take care of it", Mrs Bram said, " people that we know are strong and clever enough to kill them without leaving behind a single trace". " Pakstin and Hans should be able to do a fine job", alpha Jace said, " they are our best fighters", no one argued about it with
Diego's POV After waiting till 5:00 AM and still no sight of Malia, I went back home. My father was on his laptop at the dining table when I walked in. " Good morning dad", I grumpily greeted. He just replied 'yeah' and still kept his eyes fixed on his laptop screen. I expected a query of where I had spent the night but it wasn't forthcoming. He probably thought I spent the night in a club or in a secluded place with a girl who I must've ended up fucking. I made to walk upstairs and had almost completed that mission before his large voice called me back. " Yes dad", I answered as I stood in front of him, after reluctantly descending the stairs I had already ascended. " Get yourself ready by 8:00 AM, we'll be going to the blood farm", he said, with his eyes still fixated on his laptop screen. " And why are you suddenly taking me to the blood farm?" " The Maester thought that it was about time you took up social and economic responsibilities that wi
Everywhere was white, white and skyblue. I was in the clouds, and my eyes wandered into the far distance of scattered ultraviolet rays as I turned around. The ground beneath me seemed to give way, and I descended with great speed onto the earth. I landed on top of a building and the impact broke the roof, making me fall into the building. I didn't feel any pain, not one single one at all, but still for some reason I grunted and got up. Looking around, I recognized the place, the painting of the last supper on the windows, the sculptures of the Christian Mary and Jesus, and the images of angels with their oversized wings at the door. I recognized it all, it was that church. I saw Malia at the sanctuary, standing behind the altar, and I happily ran to her. " Where have you been? I've been so worried", I said, bringing her into my embrace. She giggled and I released the embrace to look at her, only to find that she had the head of that little girl, she was still herself,
Patricia's eyes were wide open and Derek's were blinking, clearly curious as to know who Malia was. " Um....... it's nothing, it's just our pet cat, did you see the cat when you walked in?" I instantly felt apologetic towards Malia for referring to her as a cat. " Oh", Patricia heaved a sign of relief, " no, I didn't see any cat, but wait, you were never really the type to keep pets, are you?". " Well, I changed", I said, raising my eyebrows to affirm the claim. " Did we later attack the Northcave pack?" I asked. " No, we didn't, your dad who was supposed to send the missiles to lure them out is currently in a coma so we just couldn't attack", Patricia said and I could sense that she felt disappointed. Too bad for her, but I was kind of happy about it. " The Maester was really angry when he heard about the attack and if not for those stupid poisonous trees, he would have raided the pack ", Derek added, being the vampire he was meant to be - an eternal enemy to
Ariel's POV The potion wasn't working. I had done everything the book instructed, everything was in the right proportion - the chick's saliva, the bee excreta, the cat's teardrop - everything was right, but why was it not working? I wondered, pacing up and down in tension, time was running out. I sprinkled fire dust in the fireplace again and gently steered the batter in the large clay pot. I brought the stupidly large book again and read through it, and went on to mix everything again. The last ingredient - the chick's saliva - only remained a drop in my bottle, and was the last one I had. I tried to not freak out and placed my fate in the hands of divine providence: if it worked, fine, if it doesn't work, still fine by me. And with that I added it, and on a second thought, added more fire dust to the fireplace. The batter boiled as the fire enveloped the body of the clay pot, causing the green colored mixture to create hot bubbles as it erupted like small pa
With rage and fury, I opened the door, forming a lightning bolt with my fingers, with every intention to throw it at him. " Wait, Ariel, please just hear me out", he still said, trying to calm me down even though he knew that it wasn't working. " Why should I? You son of a bitch, tell me, why the hell should I listen to you?" raising my hand, about to throw the bolt at him. " Because I'm sorry, ok, I'm sorry for what I did to you", he said, but that wouldn't do. I expected him to do more, to kneel and plead more insistently. And I knew that he didn't just come to me to apologize after all these years, he wanted something more, and my hopes were high. " That is still not a good reason to listen to you", I said. " My mate might be in danger!" he shouted with his eyes closed, seeming to surrender to his fate of being electrocuted by me. For a moment, I was stunned, speechless as a matter of fact. I closed my palm, the lightning bolt disappeared, together with the urge
Malia's POV I woke up groggy and disoriented, my surroundings bathed in a harsh sterile light. I adjusted my eyes to accommodate the light before scanning around. The room was stark and clinical, with white walls and metallic surfaces. I could feel my pale skin getting cold on the metal table I laid on, stark naked, restrained by straps that bounded my arms and legs. I tried to break free, but the straps were just too strong and for a moment I thought I felt weak. I decided to shapeshift, in the hopes that my gigantic wolf would break me off the straps, but I just couldn't shapeshift, it was as if every inch of my bone was broken into pieces even though I felt no pain. Medical instruments and monitors surrounded me, their beeps and whirs punctuating the oppressive silence. The air was heavy with antiseptic, the usual one that always smelled at our pack's clinic, and it was indeed clear to me that I was in some medical facility. I tried to recall how I ended u
I held my breath and the two with the scalpel got to cut me up. They sliced my flesh, cutting through layers of skin in a rectangular pattern at the upper side of my abdomen, revealing my rib cage. I screamed like I had never screamed before. The pain was unbearable and I felt it with each slice of muscle and flesh. Mr Grey eyes pinned me down from the shoulders, allowing the butchers to do their work perfectly. They cut out my skin and placed it in a plastic box and then brought a surgery saw. I couldn't see what they were doing, but the second they started cutting the bones of my rib cage, I forgot where I was. The pain was too much, and out of this world, and I collapsed. I opened my eyes to find myself in a church, and strangely, I vaguely remembered the interior, the large crucifix, the altar, the floor tiles, I remembered it, it was where my mother was killed. I turned around to the noise at the door and I saw my mom running into the church, holding little me i
I must've had an ear problem. Yeah, that must have been the case. Or rather he didn't literally mean what he was saying, like he was using an idiom. That must be it. Those damn idiomatic expressions can be as misleading as hell, imagine someone walking up to you and telling you that they saw a white elephant, only for you to later figure out that there wasn't an actual white elephant, just that the person had witnessed something unimaginable. Yeah, it was always unnerving, just like when you find out for the first time that Santa Claus doesn't actually exist, it's just mom that has been placing those gifts under the tree all those years. I even knew a girl that cried for several days when she found out that the tooth fairy doesn't really exist, the poor fellow would've probably been a grandmother by then, or would have even met her demise. " Excuse me sir, you mean that she had a vampire turn you into one, right?" I asked, just to be clear. " No. She turned me into one by hers
" What? You do what?" I asked him, my eyes widened in surprise. " I said I know who you are. Now come on in or if what you want to say is very brief, you can say it here right now", he said, keeping me on my toes with his husky voice. " Okay", I said. He proceeded to go into the house while I followed after him. His footsteps were tired, as if he was finding it hard to carry his own weight. He led me into the sitting room; a fairly spacious one with cloth covered sofas, all giving off the aura of a warm home. " Have a sit", he said, pointing at the sofa right opposite the television. The sofas were four in total; a three in one, a two in one, and two singles, all set to fill up the space allocated to the sitting room. He sat on the one next to the television, with a sofa dividing us both, giving a considerable amount of distance. " So, what do I owe this August visit?" he asked, relaxing carefully on the sofa, preparing himself to listen to any rubbish that I had to spill
Ariel's POV I immediately got zapped up into the familiar tunnel unconsciously, but instead of traveling down the tunnel, I started swirling around like that was inside a tornado. Drops of water appeared out of thin air, forming little screens that were showing different things, but all were of Calipsu, as if I was watching short videos of her with different screens, all passing by and rummaging with the storm inside the tunnel, giving little time for me to make out sense of what any of them were showing. The wind was picking up, blowing my hair into my face and my clothes almost away from my body. I tried to focus on the screens, but they were too much for me to focus on anyone. One screen was depicting Calipsu at another date with Diego's father, another was the familiar picnic scene, another was of both of them in bed, making love, another showed where she was casting a spell on a sleeping Diego's father, lying in the center of a witch's circle, but the one that grabbed my
Death. It has always been a mystery, a journey whose end no one knows. No one has ever trailed down that road and returned, and so there was no answer to any questions one might have regarding the phenomenon. But one thing was certain; that everyone, every living creature must die. For humans, their time was shorter. They mostly died at seventy, eighty, ninety, hundred, or sometimes a hundred and a few more years, but it never exceeded a hundred and fifty. For werewolves it was a bit longer - three hundred, three hundred and fifty, four hundred, and so on, but they normally did not exceed five hundred. Witches normally exceed five hundred, even reaching up to seven hundred if they do take proper care of themselves, while vampires were topping the list, being able to live for a thousand years, but normally not exceeding a thousand and two hundred. It was also believed that one goes on to another part of the world after death. The Abrahamic religions - the Christians, Muslims, and
Patricia's POV I drove off immediately as soon as we locked up Diego in the room. I couldn't tell why dad would choose to have him locked up in that house, of all the places that he could possibly be locked up in. The house held memories that I wasn't so fond of, memories that I had buried deep inside me, sent straight to the back of my mind, and seeing the house again almost got me overwhelmed with the emotions that I had tried so hard to bury over all these years. But yet again that was predictable of my father. It was literally in his nature to torture me, to bruise me, both physically and mentally, all for the goal of making me stronger and wiser, and it was working. The fact that I walked into that house and came out without having cried myself to stupor was evidence of my father's toughening syndrome being active in me. I drove off immediately before the wall I had put up would crash to pieces, dropping the two guards at the Maester's quarters and leaving immediately t
" No, please, stop", Diego said, likely talking to himself as he struggled to let go of my neck. Trembling, he got his hands off, tears running down his cheeks as he tried to control himself. His head moved with the intention of burying his teeth into my neck, but instead he bit into his arm, shouting in-between as he kept biting his arm. I was too astounded to even move and I just laid there, watching him try to tame the monster in him. " Tie me up now!" he said as he continued biting, somewhat making it hard to discern what he was saying but thankfully, I was quick-witted and realized what his grumbling meant. I pushed him off my body, slamming him into the wall as the urge in him tried to have him attack me, but instead he bit deeper into his arm as the dripping blood increased. I quickly got the bed sheet and immediately tackled him to the floor, tying the sheet behind his back and letting him gawk for some time. I got off him and moved to the other side of the room, trying
Malia's POV I kept worrying. About Diego, about Hansel, about alpha Jace. These three men whose lives have become much harder just because of me, and I couldn't help crying myself to sleep sometimes. I felt that Hansel was getting better, even though I wasn't pretty sure if he had woken up, but alpha Jace was definitely getting worse. Hans' constant visit to the dungeon and his beatings and threats confirmed all that; he was dying. The physicians at the clinic couldn't figure out what was happening to him and couldn't find a remedy, something to treat him with. I wondered what could have gone wrong with me. He wasn't supposed to suffer from my bite, certainly not, not even when the bite was deep enough let alone when the bite wasn't so deep. There had to be an answer somewhere, a solution, an explanation as to why that was happening. The door slammed open and one of the guards walked in, with another following right behind him. Without saying a word, they both held me, ty
Was it Diego? Hell no, it was his father, but he damn looked exactly like his son. If Diego had been the one staring at him, it would feel like looking at a mirror; just that the mirror would have a moustache and curly hair that was even better than his bland face and plain boy haircut. It absolutely felt like deja Vu. " Um, yeah, yeah, I'm faaaaaaaine", she was about to let go of hid grip, forgetting that her legs were still stunted and her back was still angled perpendicularly. Yeah, I was inside her, muted, shut out, somewhere inside, but still very much able to know what was going on even though I had no control whatsoever of her actions or whatever was going on - just like old times, back at the picnic memory. She was about to fall even harder as she threw her handbag upwards in a reflex action, her right leg moving up to form an angle of 95% while her left one stayed put to the ground, and for whatever reason it may be, her mouth was terribly wide open. He surg
Ariel's POV Calipsu. She was a legend in the witches' world. The most powerful of all witches, the most skilled and advanced in tropical magic and spells, that was who she was. All the witches revered her, afraid to incur her wrath upon them; that was just how strong she was. She was the leader of the witches' council before Madison, and during her time as my mother usually told me, witches were feared as demigods. She was the thirteenth member of the witches' council, and their sovereign power and glory was sometimes attributed to the number 13; a number that cleans and purifies. The number 13 brings the test, the suffering and the death. It symbolizes death to the matter or to oneself and the birth to the spirit: the passage on a higher level of existence. For the superstitious, especially with Christian folks, this number brings the bad luck or the misfortune. But for the cabalist, the number 13 is the meaning of the Snake, the dragon, Satan and the murderer. But it is a