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Chapter 189
The first thing Leesa did after Rave dropped her off at her dorm was head for the showers. She was anxious to see her friends, especially Cali, but that was going to have to wait for a bit. Getting cleaned up—and washing her hair, especially—was a bigger priority.
She had learned a lot about volkaanes staying with Rave for the past three days. One of the things she learned was that volkaanes didn’t bathe. They didn’t need to. Their inner fire kept germs and other bacteria at bay, and their heat dissolved things like mud and grease. If they got dirty with something more stubborn, they simply wet a cloth, warmed it with their inner heat, and wiped the spot clean. Their clothes seldom needed washing, either. She thought about Dominic, who owned only one set of clothes, but they were always fresh and clean. She wondered if that particular wizard’s trick was somewhere in her book of magic—while it wouldn’t be of much use for battling evil
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Leesa's Advent Chapter 190
Back up in her room, Leesa was both anxious to get started practicing her magic and nervous about how it would go, now that she was away from the magical energy in the volkaane settlement that had seemingly enhanced her abilities. She sat on her bed with Dominic’s book unopened on her lap, unable to decide whether to open the book and see what was next or to jump right into practicing something like the illumination spell. The pros and cons of trying the spell were the same thing—she would know immediately how much being back home was affecting her magic. She was afraid of the disappointment that might bring.Finally, she decided to just bite the bullet and try. Delaying wasn’t going to change anything, so she might as well get started. She pushed the book off her lap onto the bed and held her right hand out in front of her, palm up.“Illuminati verdus,” she said softly but forcefully.The familiar glowing sphere appeared immediatel
Leesa's Advent Chapter 191
It was nearly midnight when Leesa finally closed her magic book. She had read the section on dreams several times and discovered that the dream power was among the most complex and least understood of all waziri powers. Complete control over dreams was beyond even the most skillful of wizards—which she certainly was not.Still, she had shown ability in this area even before she realized she possessed magic, having had four dreams that seemed to have come at least partially true. Those visions had arisen on their own and had been completely beyond her control or understanding at the time, but they certainly demonstrated she possessed some power in the dream realm. Now if she could just learn to harness it a bit.There were lots of details in the book—more than she could possibly digest in just one evening of reading—but she thought she had gotten a good start on the basics.It seemed there were two basic parts to controlling dreams. The first wa
Leesa's Advent Chapter 192
She was standing in the sprawling parking lot of a large suburban mall. She didn’t recognize the place, but it was not unlike other malls she had visited. The sun hung high in a cloudless blue sky and the breeze blowing against her cheeks was cool, but not really cold. From the leafless trees in the distance, she knew it was winter. Glancing down at her arms, she saw she was wearing a dark red sweatshirt.The parking area was jammed with cars. A steady stream of shoppers snaked toward the mall’s entrance. Most wore winter coats—maybe it was colder out than she realized. Some of the men sported heavy, bright red Ohio State sweatshirts. She didn’t know why, but the sight of the sweatshirts gave her a feeling of satisfaction. She was unsure what day of the week it was, but from the number of cars and people, it had to be either a weekend or a holiday. For some reason she did
Leesa's Advent Chapter 193
Forty some miles to the south and east of where Leesa finally closed her book of magic, Kristi Brolen could not believe how different everything had suddenly become. Just a little while ago, she had been lying on her back, for who knows how long, unable to move anything more than her eyes and eyelids. All she could see were branches and the sky directly above her. The only thing she could remember hearing during all that time was the silver-haired woman’s voice. And her sense of smell had been even more useless.Now here she was, racing through the trees at impossible speeds with seemingly no effort at all. She ran half a step behind Marcio, with Dara and Genevieve following behind. Her senses, so limited for so long, had heightened to a degree that was unimaginable. She knew it was night—she had never seen so many stars in the sky—but she could see details that previously would have been invisible to her on even the brightest of days. Her hearing had also b
Leesa's Advent Chapter 194
“I have an idea,” he said at last. “You only have to feed on human blood but once. It must be soon, though. Do you think you could feed upon someone who wasn’t so nice?”Kristi thought for a moment. “You mean, like a gangbanger or something?”“Yes. Someone evil. Could you do it then?”Kristi nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I could do that.”Marcio smiled. “Then let’s go find one.” He glanced toward Dara and Genevieve. “Or a couple of them,” he added.The four vampires turned away from the park and headed south, where a soft yellow glow over the horizon told them they would find a town. Any place with more than a few hundred humans in it would certainly contain at least a couple of bad ones, of that they were certain.They didn’t even need to go all the way to town, however, stopping instead outside a rundown roadside bar. The gray brick
Leesa's Advent Chapter 195
The four vampires headed back toward their cavern. With several hours left before dawn, they were in no particular hurry, especially Kristi and Marcio, who trotted side by side. Dara and Genevieve were not in any rush to leave the cool, fresh open air either, so they did not begrudge the slow pace of their companions.Eventually, with less than an hour before the gray fingers of dawn began to paint the eastern horizon, they arrived near the entrance to their sanctuary. Marcio drew to a halt a few hundred feet from the opening, out of sight of anyone who might be watching from inside. The others stopped beside him.“We’re here,” he told Kristi. “The entrance to our cavern is just ahead.”“You live underground?” Kristi asked, surprised.Genevieve grinned. “Where did you think we lived, in some beautiful glass house in the middle of the woods? You’ve been watching too many movies.”“I, uh, hadn&r
Leesa's Advent Chapter 196
Sunday night, it was all over the news. Just as Leesa had foreseen in her dream, zombies had attacked people in a mall in Columbus. Fortunately, the police managed to destroy the creatures before they hurt too many people. At least one of the cops had known enough to shoot for the zombie’s heads, and the other cops had followed his example. At first, the officers had tried to stop the things by pulling them away, but after one policeman got his arm ripped open by a vicious bite, the police had turned to their weapons. The wounded officer was being held under close observation at a local hospital. The media had not been allowed to see him.Only one person had died—an Ohio State football player who had been at the front of the group of shoppers trying to hold the door closed against the zombies. The authorities were not calling them zombies—the official line was they were people who had been ravaged by some fast acting flesh-eating bacteria—but the most
Leesa's Advent Chapter 197
The next week passed fairly uneventfully, for which Leesa was profoundly grateful. She practiced her magic every evening, caught up on her schoolwork, and even managed to somehow score an A on a history test, despite the tumultuous weekend and missed class time of the previous week. Without Dominic to help her—and without the extra magic from underground in the volkaane settlement—her progress with her magic was slow. But at least it was steady.The zombie story in Ohio had died down, at least on the television news. It was still all over the internet, of course. The bodies had been spirited away to a hidden government research lab, but that didn’t stop the bloggers and conspiracy people from posting their opinions. The most popular explanation for the creatures seemed to be secret medical experiments gone awry. Other theories included a toxic waste spill, a terrorist attack, aliens from outer space, a plague of some kind, and even global warming, though Lee
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