Prophecy: Child of Light (6 page)

“I can’t go. I can’t leave my family.”

He knew that for a moment he’d convinced her. It gave him a sign that she was willing to be convinced, that she would go with him if he made her see that it was her only option. She wanted answers, and she knew that he could help her get them. If only he could make her see that she was no longer safe with her family.

“They are not your family, not anymore.”

He dodged the punch that she threw at him and then gave chase the instant he realised that she was running again. He was getting tired of this. The sun would be up soon and even if she agreed to go with him, they were going to be cutting it close to make it back to the warehouse before it broke the horizon.

He glanced up at the sky as he ran after her. It was clear with only a few patches of clouds, not enough to protect them from the harsh light of day when it came.

Bringing his eyes back down to earth, he realised that she was running faster this time, and that he was beginning to lose her. He couldn’t let her make it back to the mansion. He should have told her exactly what she was letting herself in for if she went back there but he had seen in her eyes that it would have been one push too many. Telling her that she no longer had a family had upset her enough. If he told her that she would die if she went back, that he was the one who would have to kill her, he couldn’t imagine how she’d take that. She’d certainly never be able to bring herself to trust him. He’d tell her when she was ready to hear it.

Turning down the street that led to her home, he redoubled his effort. She was mere feet away from him now. He could easily catch her before she made it to the gates.

He frowned when he sensed other vampires, strong vampires, and made a lunge for her. Dragging her into the bushes that lined the opposite side of the road to her mansion, he placed his hand over her mouth to silence her.

Prophecy thought about biting into his hand as it clamped down over her mouth. She dug her nails into it, trying to prise it off her, and wriggled to get free.

She stopped the instant she saw why he’d dragged her into the trees and undergrowth.

Arkalus.

And he wasn’t alone.

Her hands relinquished their grip on her captor’s arms and she watched the scene unfold in front of her.

Arkalus was with one of the other family, one of stature. Was this the lord of the vampire now holding her captive? He was strong, and old. She could sense the power in him when he turned to face her brother at the gates.

He signalled and several guards appeared and moved off to a distance as he waved a dismissive hand. Her eyes strayed to them. If they were the guardsmen of Aurorea, then she had been right about the vampire who was holding her. He wasn’t a guard. He was something above that position.

She returned her gaze to her brother and thought about that.

“Then it is settled.” Arkalus smiled broadly at the lord of Aurorea. “We shall join forces and hunt the abomination together.”

“For the safety of our kind.” The other vampire grinned back at her brother and firmly shook his hand.

“We thought we could contain her. Iona was a fool not to listen to me. She is not worthy of running this house.” Arkalus’ smile faded, leaving his expression cold.

Her stomach dropped. Abomination? Safety of our kind? Aurorea and Caelestis working together? She felt lost and struggled to comprehend what they were saying. Was she the abomination they were to hunt?

The vampire who was holding her had said that he had revealed her existence to his family, and her brother was saying that they had thought they could contain her.

What was happening?

She didn’t even notice the gates closing and the other family leaving. The vampire behind her let go of her and she slumped against a tree, staring at the dirt beneath her.

They were talking about her. Her own brother wanted to hunt her down and kill her. A vampire from the house of Aurorea wanted to protect her. Her head pounded as she tried to make sense of everything. Who was she? How was she a danger to their species? She was barely twenty, had never left her home before tonight.

They’d kept her hidden, just as the vampire had said. She’d broken the rules of her mother and gone out into the night, and this is what had happened.

If she went back, they were going to kill her.

She looked over at the mansion, letting her eyes take in the sight so she could always remember it and the sense of safety it had once given her, and then looked back at the man beside her.

“I’ll go with you, but I need to know some things first.”

He nodded. “I will answer all your questions as truthfully as I can but we must get to safety before the sun fully rises.”

Her eyes moved to the lightening sky. She hadn’t even realised that she was in danger. The whole night seemed like a confusing whirlwind of events that had spiralled beyond her control.

She felt lost and empty, unable to deal with the things that were happening. She didn’t want to know everything. She looked at the man again. He was watching her, his eyes intently locked on hers. She just wanted to know enough to make her feel it was all right to go with him.

She followed his lead in silence as he stood and began walking down through the trees to the path. Giving her home one last look, she started along the street, back to the warehouse.

The words of her Arkalus and the lord of Aurorea haunted her.

She was an abomination in the eyes of her kind.

She was a danger to them all.

She frowned.

Just what was she?

P
rophecy walked wearily into the building. She could feel the sun rising but she didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to clear her head, wanted the man she was with to make all the confusion and pain go away. She believed that he had some answers, at least enough to keep her walking the path she’d now chosen. Each step that brought her farther away from her family brought her more pain. She could never return home. Arkalus and the lord of Aurorea would kill her if she did. They would bring her to justice for a crime she didn’t know she’d committed. If they didn’t get her, she was sure that the Law Keepers would.

Her eyes moved to the man. He closed the door, shutting out the harmful rays of the sun, and then locked it.

He looked like a Law Keeper, or at least how she’d imagined they looked. They were the elite that all the guardsmen of the families aspired to be one day. She’d heard tales of them through the chronicles and through her maid, Serenity. They’d often passed sleepless days talking about the latest news within the seven pure bloodlines, and it often involved the Law Keepers. There were seven of them, one representative for each bloodline, and it was their duty to uphold the laws laid down by their ancestors. They were emotionless, unattached to their own families. Had he been destined to become one? He looked as though he had the skill and the standing within his family to achieve the honoured position once the current Law Keeper died. It didn’t happen often. Most of the Law Keepers were over three centuries old and had been in service for nearly one hundred years of that.

How many of her kind had they brought to justice in that time? Most sins received the same punishment.

Death.

It was what she would receive if they caught her, and she didn’t even know what she’d done wrong.

Her eyes strayed back to the man again.

She realised that he would receive it too. It was a sin to conspire against your bloodline and, by helping her, he was doing just that.

“You had some questions that you needed answering?” He picked something up off the table near the wall and flicked through them. They looked like little books. They seemed familiar.

She tried to remember what they were. They were something that she’d seen on the television many times. She frowned as she struggled to put her finger on it.

Passports.

England. He’d said they were going to England to see someone he knew.

“How do you intend to get us to this friend of yours?” she said.

He didn’t bother looking at her. He just threw the passport he’d been looking at over to her.

She caught it and flicked through the pages. In the back of it was a picture of a girl. Prophecy scanned over her details and then looked at the man.

“It doesn’t really look like me.”

He smiled that slight smile again. “It doesn’t need to. It’s all in how they perceive things. The closer it is to you, the easier their minds are to fool, but I am working on short notice. It was the best my associate could get.”

She’d never met anyone who had the ability to alter perception before. None of the vampires in her circle had that skill. He walked towards her and took the passport.

“What’s your name?” She didn’t hesitate in asking him. It was something she was going to need to know if they were going to be travelling together, and focusing on the small things was helping her avoid having to think about the bigger ones, like who she was and just how she was supposed to be destroying her kind.

He placed the passport down and glanced over his shoulder at her. He seemed to wobble in her vision and her head ached. She pressed her hand to it and leaned against the table behind her for support. She shrugged off the feeling as the after-effects of the drug he’d given her.

“Valentine,” he said.

She repeated it several times over in her head. It was a nice name. It sounded as proud and noble as he looked.

“I’m Prophecy,” she said.

He turned and gave her an amused look.

“And they expected to keep you hidden?” His lips curved into the faintest of smiles and then he went back to whatever it was he was doing.

When he turned around again, he was holding a bundle of clothes. He placed them down beside her and then distanced himself again. She picked them up. They were the clothes she’d been wearing when she’d first met him.

Taking the hint, she changed into them, noting that he somehow managed to avoid looking at her the whole time she was dressing. She was surprised that he wasn’t taking advantage of the situation and looking. All of the male vampires in her bloodline would have stared at her if she’d been changing in the same room as them. He was so different to them. How old was he? Whatever time he was born in, it had obviously been one where they’d had manners.

Hell, she would’ve looked at him if he’d been the one changing.

She smiled to herself while she finished putting on her boots.

Somehow, getting dressed made her feel the tiniest bit better.

She hopped up onto the table and sat on the edge with her hands pressed into the tabletop.

“Just why did I have to be hidden?” she said. He stopped packing things into a bag and his look turned pensive, but he didn’t speak. “What is it I’ve done?”

“It has nothing to do with what you have done, it is what you will do.”

She gave him a confused look. “What I’ll do?”

“The prophecy?” He frowned at her and she realised that he did know things that she didn’t.

“What?”

He inclined his head a fraction and his voice filled with disbelief. “You don’t know?”

She shook her head. Did she really want to know? Did she want to know the things she was supposedly going to do? Her brother and the lord of Aurorea had said they would hunt her down for the safety of their kind. Was she that much of a danger? Was she somehow going to be responsible for killing them all?

She waited in silence while he propped himself up against the table he’d been arranging things on and looked at her. She got the feeling that he was trying to figure out how to break things to her. Her stomach twisted and turned in a riot of nerves and apprehension. He was taking so long to tell her that it had to be bad. Was he trying to find a way to word it so it didn’t seem so terrible? She wished that he’d just tell her straight and tell her quickly.

“There is a prophecy. It foretells the end of our kind at the hands of one of our own. The child of the prophecy will come and on a dark day they will destroy all demons.”

His words lodged in her mind, the only sound in the ringing emptiness that had filled it on hearing them. She was going to destroy them all. Not just vampires, but all demons. What kind of terrible power did she have? She cast her eyes downwards and tried to make sense of it all. Her head swam again and she closed her eyes, trying to stop herself from feeling as though she was swaying rather than sitting still. Her hand moved to her stomach as it rumbled and ached.

Opening her eyes, she stared blankly at the dusty concrete floor.

She was going to be the end of all demons.

“If that’s true... you should have left me to die.” Her voice was a broken whisper as it all began to sink in, filling her with a sense of dread about what her future held. What reason could she have for doing something so terrible, so horrifying? There must have been millions of demons roaming the planet and she was going to kill them all.

She listened to him moving across the room and stared at his boots as they appeared in her view.

“I probably should have gone through with my duty and executed you,” he said and she tensed, her body going rigid with fear at those words. He was supposed to be her executioner? “But I could not sense anything bad about you, I did not see anything like that in your blood. I am uncertain as to how it happened or how it is possible for me to see what I have, but I did, and I could not ignore it.”

She slowly raised her head and met his eyes. They had a distant look in them, one that told her a lot about him. Deep inside there was a part of him that wished he had done his duty, but there had been another part of him that hadn’t been able to bring himself to go through with it. He seemed like the kind of man who valued his standing amongst his family, who awoke every night to fulfil his duty to his house to the best of his abilities. This kind of man would see honour in dying to protect something dear to him, and it was clear that his family and his position were very close to his heart.

So what could he have possibly seen to make him change his mind, to make him go against his orders and rescue her when he should have been killing her? She couldn’t imagine what it would take to turn someone like him against his own bloodline. She knew the laws, knew that he had broken at least one of them in helping her.