Ariella's biggest desire in life has always been such a simple one. She wants to be 'normal.' Unfortunately, that one simple wish has never been within her grasp. Coming from a long line of witches is bad enough, but she's even more different than t...
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I wiped the tears from my face as I continued to read the journal Sara had given me. I couldn't help feeling horrified by what I was reading. I was smart enough to understand that vampires were dangerous, but this book was filled with detailed accounts of humans slaughtered by vampires and vampires slaughtered by Gorman witches.
However, some of the vampires in this book were killed mercilessly for no other reason than existing. I wasn't okay with all of the death that filled page after page. It was just too much death all around. Humans dying, vampires dying, witches dying. How did any of it make sense to any of these people?
One particularly hard entry to read was when Frances Gorman, the owner of the journal, wrote about two of her children being killed by vampires. From then on, it was filled with mindless hate-filled revenge against any vampire she could find.
Finally, after hours of reading, I dropped the journal on the floor between my legs and gripped my hair in tight fists, heartbroken by it all. Every time I read about yet another vampire being killed, I couldn't stop my mind from conjuring images of Everett, Lawrence, Cal, and tiny sweet little Annie.
Because I had no doubt, if Lawrence really was a vampire, the rest of them were too. I was filled with curiosity about how they became vampires, but it wasn't like I could just walk next door and ask them.
I felt like my heart was tearing in two. If the journal was believed, they were soulless, evil monsters, but I couldn't make that image mesh with the family I knew. I'd reached an almost mind-numbing level of confusion hours before. At that point, I just felt broken.
I'd been locked on my floor for over twenty-four hours, not moving, just reading. There had been a few knocks at my door, but I'd refused to open it for anyone so far. My phone had chimed so many times that I'd eventually turned it off.
My final breaking point had arrived when that first text came in from Gran, and that's why I refused to even look again. I turned my phone back on and stared at the screen, wanting to see that first text again. I couldn't squash the hope that it had somehow changed since I'd received it only twenty minutes after she had left my floor. Sitting on the floor of my living room, I just stared at the screen in devastation, once again.
"Don't forget to read the journal. And be careful. Your friend Lucien is a vampire as well."
That had been my breaking point, but it had also been the moment Gran's story had fallen apart. It no longer added up. If my mother had left the coven to hide us from vampires because we were being hunted, then why was my godfather one of the very same creatures we were supposedly running from? Why had my mother had him in our daily lives? I knew then that there was more to the story, but I had no doubt that the part about the coven was accurate.
Vampires and werewolves did exist, and the journal proved that hunting and killing the former was, in fact, my family's legacy.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured Lucien's chocolate brown eyes that had brought me so much comfort throughout my life. They were always filled with a warmth that you could bask in every time they looked your way. I didn't know what to think about any other vampires in the world, but that one... that one I could never see as a monster.
