Had she committed so great a sin that Raul had left her? Was that why the unfamiliar grief turned her heart to such a heavy stone? Around her, the faces slowly dissolved as the forms blurred even more, until they were only wailing shadows and the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach eased, even as her hunger grew beyond craving. She had a mate. She clung to that truth. Beautiful. Perfect. A man born to be her mate. Born for her. Olivera shuddered as voices in her head once again grew louder, drowning out the sounds of the jungle. Little flashes of pain grew behind her eyes, burning and burning until she felt her eyes boiling. Where was Raul then? Had he deserted her? The questions crowded in fast and loud, mixing with the voices until she wanted to hit her head against the nearest tree trunk. The inside of her brain seemed on fire, as did every organ in her body. Her heart nearly burst in her chest, and she sank down into the fertile soil where she had lain, trying to sort ou
Olivera pulled herself up to her full height, forced her body to stand straight when her gut clenched and knotted. Her body felt different, more leaden, clumsy even. As she shifted onto the balls of her feet, she felt the tremors start. "You chose your fate, dead one. I was merely the instrument of justice." She stated.The heads were thrown back on the long, thin stick necks, and howls rent the air. Above them, birds lifted from the canopy, taking flight at the horrible cacophony of shrieks rising in volume. The sound jarred her body, making her insides turn to gel. A trick, she was certain. She knew in her heart her life was over. There were too many to kill-but she would take as many with her as possible to rid the world of such dangerous and immoral creatures. The mage must have found a way to resurrect the dead. She whispered the information in her head, needing her mother to send a warning to the prince that armies of the dead would be once again rising against them."You a
The jungle erupted into an explosion of sound as the two cats came together. Birds screamed and took to the air, high in the canopy above. Monkeys shrieked warnings and threw twigs and leaves down on the two jaguars as they rolled in the vegetation. Boughs broke beneath the heavy bodies, scattering debris into a thick cloud around them.Olivera pushed past the red rage in the cat’s mind and tried to find the spirit of the animal as she kept its lethal fangs from sinking into her. Jaguars possessed extremely flexible spines that allowed them to turn and twist, move their legs in lateral sideswipes, even change direction in midair. And the ropes of muscles all over their bodies gave them tremendous strength. She took another vicious rake on her side as she tried to focus on calming the cat. She pushed harder, breaking through the wall of rage and found-man. This was no jaguar. This was one of the rare and solitary jaguar-men who still made their homes in the rain forest. Her and the
Olivera backed off, not wanting to rouse the ire of the cat any further. The animal was shaking, fur wet and dark as its sides heaved. The man was beginning to lose the battle for control of the beast. "You have been touched by the vampire," She said, her voice low and carrying the ring of truth. "I can try to aid you to rid yourself of the poisonous influence, but it will fight to keep ahold of you." And it would leave her vulnerable to attack, perhaps even from the jaguar. It was a risk, not even a good one, but Olivera felt compelled to help. The jaguar species, both man and beast, was losing the battle for existence just as her specie was. Tied to the jaguar now by blood, she could feel his alarm. He was no young man, cocky and full of bravado; he was old enough to know the danger of the vampire, and he had been questioning what was happening among his kind for some time. The cat crouched low and nodded the broad head, the gaze shifting from him to their surroundings, as mindfu
Olivera woke up with a sense of dread churning in the pit of her stomach. She had just had a horrible dream, and the memory of it lingered like a dark cloud over her mind. As she lay in bed, trying to shake off the remnants of the dream, Olivera felt a wave of panic wash over her. Her chest tightened, making it hard to breathe, and she struggled to control the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm her. The dream had been vivid and unsettling, filled with images that made no sense to her. She tried to piece together the fragments of the dream, to understand its meaning, but it felt like trying to grasp at smoke. Vampires and what-nots. What was all that? What was the dream trying to convey to her? Her emotions were in turmoil, like a storm raging inside her. Fear, confusion, and a sense of foreboding mingled together, creating a tangled web of emotions that she couldn't untangle. She still remembered the words that she had exchanged with the jaguar man, Mezon. For some reason,
At Olivera’s cry for help, Vee slithered out of the ring that has never left her hand to stand by the bed side. Olivera let out a breath of relief and sat up on the bed. She stood thereafter and began to pace from one end of her room to the other.Vee said nothing. He just watched her, waiting for her to speak. After a bout of silence, Olivera slumped pitifully on a chair nearest to her bed. “I’m sure you are aware of what has been happening. I’m sure that you are aware why I haven’t called for your aid.” Vee nodded, and sat on the next chair, his hands folded on his lap. This moment, his hair was curled up in a latest fashion. Olivera couldn’t help the smile that perused her lips. “You styled your hair. Looks good.” Vee chuckled with a shrug of his shoulders. “I have to look good for my mistress.” Olivera waved him off, not finding it the appropriate time to tease the being that sometimes made her forget that he wasn’t actually human. She had missed him these past weeks. “Raul
Olivera told Vee about her dream absentmindedly, her thoughts were too filled with the knowledge that her wolf hated her. That for some reason, her wolf was different from the wolves of the others, the others that seemed in love with their human selves. Why was she always different? Olivera wondered. Why was her fate so cursed? What had she done to warrant the saucy attitude that her wolf had given her? Vee had tried to know what had happened, who had encroached her mind, but she had advertently switched the topic back to her terrifying dreams. She knew though that Vee wasn’t one to give up. He would come demanding an answer to his earlier question soon. Perhaps after the talk after the dream. “You said you had this dream before?” Vee was speaking now. He had taken a minute of silence after the narration to check his archives of knowledge and know the best response to give his mistress. “Yes, three times in the past two weeks.” A pause. “Then it is to be considered. Would you te
Olivera swallowed visibly. A vampire had been in her room. Sliver or not, it had been in her room. It had watched her sleep. Had the dream attracted it? Had the vampire somehow perceived that his plans were being revealed to a certain fellow, and had come to sniff the person out, to do away with the person before it gets exposed? Vee was right. She had to involve Raul and the others into this matter, seeing that it was way beyond her, and that the entire universe was involved too. Hearing the dread in Vee’s voice as he spoke, even though he tried to hide it, she could deduce that he was even scared of the vampires. She could deduct that the species were the most cunning of the supernatural species, and probably the most powerful. However, whilst speaking with Mezon in her dream, she remembered that she had talked about the plan to rule the world as if she had made the insane plan together with the vampires. She hadn’t told Vee about her involvement, not wanting to risk his suspic
When they clambered to the surface of the ground, away from the lab, the girls breathed in relief, freed from the nightmares they had been subjected to for years. It was then that Olivera took a blood bag from the polythene in her arms, feeling better in the night hair, and took a sip, wary of how the blood would taste. She had heard Jacob talking about the heady feeling, worse if it came from an ancient. But it still hadn’t prepared her for the kick of pleasure. She found herself moaning as she greedily drank the blood, until she drained the bag. When she was done, she looked at the others. They were staring at her with unexplainable emotions on their faces. At least it wasn’t disgust. Olivera thought with a shrug, before handing the bag over to Miriam. When her friend hesitated in collecting it, she piqued an eyebrow. “You want to do the dismantling of the structure, without alerting the soldiers?” Miriam huffed, and took the bag. As much as she had great magic, she didn’t want
The first thing Olivera saw when she stepped into the hole where the passageway stopped was the largeness of the space, which could contain more than five thousand people. Then she saw the tubes, the boiling liquids and the lab rats. A modern lab.‘Where are you?’ She asked the girl, needing to get out of here; it was making her nauseous. Ten more minutes here, and she might be vomiting all over the place. And there was the fact that she didn’t know when the soldiers would be waking up. ‘At the far end of the cave…’Olivera nodded as if the girl was speaking to her physically. And gesturing with her head, for Miriam to follow her, she sauntered toward the end of the hall, making sure not to look at the tubes housing different organs and parts of an organism. What the hell! She screamed mentally when she saw a full brain at a table which looked like a butchering table. “Oh, my god…what are they doing here?” She heard Miriam ask beside her and sighed. Whose brain was that? A human
Miriam’s heart pounded erratically as she followed Olivera, who seemed very confident on what she was doing, and on where she was going. Three times she thought of grabbing Olivera and walking away from the region, but she also knew it would have been a futile attempt. Her friend’s mind was already made up. She watched as the latter walked past the last barrack, and stopped by a pole, the only pole in the backyard. Behind it were the gates towering them. They have come to a dead end. “Olivera, there is nothing here? Are you sure this girl is real?” Olivera gave Miriam no answer, instead she concentrated on looking around her, waiting for the signal. When she got nothing, she traced the vibration residue, touching the girl’s mind. A jerk in her mind path told her that the girl was surprised she had breached her mind guards. But should she be surprised? Or was something else at play here? ‘Where next should I go?’ She continued, because she knew she was at the right place, that t
“How are we getting past that?” Olivera asked Miriam as they came to stand before a huge gate that towered many feet over them. She could now see why Miriam had wanted the journey to be done in the privacy of the night. As much as she could see—as they had zapped to this point—this area wasn’t open to the city dwellers, only to the special few. She looked around her again. Barracks with soldiers sleeping within. None was even standing guard at the gates. She didn’t believe such a thing would exist at this time. City gates. Where did it lead? She piqued an eyebrow when Miriam smirked. What was the latter thinking? “As if you don’t already know…which other way, if not by mist…there is no way I am climbing that. I don’t think I am ready to fly with you above it…” Miriam spoke, covering the distance between them, and wrapping her arms around Olivera, her mouth fixed in a pout. Olivera shook her head, yet unable to stop the smile that cascaded her lips. It seemed that her friend was g
A knock woke Olivera up from her deep slumber. After bathing and eating off the snacks she had bought earlier in the day, from the shops in the new city, she had fallen like a log of wood to the bed, and hadn’t even stirred after that. Still groggy from the smooth sleep, she let her hand search for her phone which was the only thing that had gone to bed with her, should Miriam call for her. She peered at the screen. It was one in the morning. It was time then. She yawned like a hyena, causing Miriam to chuckle from behind the door. The chuckle dissipated the remaining fog fostering around her head. Taking a deep breath in, she stood up from the bed, flung a sheet around her naked body, and walked to the door. When she opened it, she saw that Miriam was alone, and carrying a tray of steaming food. “You are a lifesaver.” She muttered, opening the door wider for her friend to come in; the rumbling sounds that emitted from her stomach in agreement with her. Miriam chuckled again, an
“Where are we heading next?” Olivera asked Miriam immediately they stepped out of the borders of the town, into a city sprawling with people. After they had left the males who had tried to detain them because of her eating habits, they had walked to the largest building in the town, because if Clooney was a big name, it was probably because the man was rich. They hadn’t been right in their deduction, but they had at least gotten away from the unsettling males. Olivera had taken her friend behind the building, and had quickly switched to her mist form, turning Miriam into the same, and together they had zapped the remainder of the city without stopping, till they were out of it, till they were in a new one which looked more modernized than the previous. She looked at Miriam, who was staring at the city with artificial skylights, and wondered if her friend had ever been here before. “I never get over the culture shock, you know, seeing the drabness of the town we just left. The cont
What now? Olivera thought, looking at the six males that couldn’t be a year older than twenty five years old. What were they doing in front of her? “State your names, and what you are doing in this town…” The male, slightly in front of the others, spoke with a steel voice, causing Olivera and Miriam to exchange furtive glances. What was going on?There was a minute hesitation before Olivera spoke. “I am Darcy. My friend is Lilian. Who are you?” She patted herself mentally for names well cooked and delivered. Darcy and Lilian? How had she come up with those seemingly true names? She watched the male that had just spoken, looked to his comrades behind him, and judged that he was the leader of this small group. Were they the police? She looked at them again. They didn’t look like the police. Vigilantes? Maybe. But why were there vigilantes in the town? She kept a seal on her thoughts when the male returned her attention to her. “My name is Luke, and these are my associates. Our job is
“We will kill him right?” Miriam asked, as they stepped out of the camp, and turned around to look at it again, reliving what they had seen in there. “We need to. He is evil. Why will a sane man work with a vampire? Is he crazy?” Olivera just couldn’t understand the foolishness, no matter how much she tried. Why would one make a deal with an almost eternal wickedness? Had he no fear for his life, for his family? “I think he is crazy. Evil-y crazy. But that’s by the way. What are we going to do now?” Olivera looked around the camp, and spat in disgust. “We will burn it down. We will burn it until it’s nothing but dust. We will eradicate this curse from the face of the earth.” Miriam couldn’t agree less, but then she remembered that the ancients might have use for the materials in there. Olivera, having sensed the latter’s thoughts, shook her head. “They won’t be needing it. I’ve already transferred the necessary details to Raul, and Jacob. They can take it up from there. The mater
“Do you think anyone is in there?” Olivera asked Miriam, immediately she shifted to human self. Miriam looked at her clothed self and smiled. “Seems you have gotten the best hang of shifting, and still keeping your clothes on.” Olivera shrugged her shoulders. “There was no other choice. I can’t keep going up and down with my clothes in my hands or mouth. Since I’m part ancient, I have to improvise.” She took in a deep breath, inhaling the air tainted with magic and something else. “This place is tainted with magic. You smell it?” She shook off the imaginary dirt on her clothes, just in case, whilst waiting for Miriam’s reply. When she looked up, her friend was smiling. “What’s tickling your fancy? I don’t think my question has that much prowess…” Miriam cackled. “I never thought riding on a wolf would be so exhilarating. If I had known, I would have befriended a werewolf, and snagged rides every week at least. It’s quite freeing and therapeutic.” Olivera nodded. It was just as