As the Vampire Realm prepares for battle against a mysterious enemy, the city's captiol is thrown into mayhem once the lost Princess returns to reclaim her throne. There's just one small problem, the Princess is human.
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My fingers move over the words of my book, the familiar pages bring me back to the days on the island. I can almost smell the the air of the water and feel the sun on my neck.
My fingers trace the dark fibres of the feather tucked away in the back of the book. I'm reminded of the church and my heart pangs with a hurt I cannot address. I turn to the very last page. I've read it many many times, but I read it over again.
When I first got this book I turned to the very last, because I needed to know how it would end. What would the last sentence, would it be a happy one. Somehow I thought the ending of this book would correlate with my own ending, my own life. And somehow I guess it did.
My fingers trace the letters as I read once more.
You have seen nothing and yet, you have lived it all. You have become nothing and you have had it all. You were birthed with nothing and you shall rot with all.
The beast has found your place of hiding, it seeks you out. The beast lives in your heart and will smell you out. It will come for you and own you all.
A beacon of light that is the beasts undoing, it fears the light because it cannot hide in it. The beast can only be brought down by the Inferno it seeks to run from, the same Inferno it escaped from. The beacon will come and undo it all, like thread that unravels it will reverse it all. And life will return.
Inferno ascended into the world of the living to claim the corpse it had been promised. In it's hunt for yet another captive, the blazing flames consumed everything and left nothing. The touch of the fire was akin to the torturous kisses of Hell. To interfere with such a perilous hazard would be nothing short of seducing Death.
The page abruptly ends, and I see that this is supposedly the last page. But my fingers trace over the rips in the binding, someone stole a page took it out, kept the ending for themselves.
"It must have been really good if they didn't want to part from it." I say, my palm goes to the leather binding and rests on the cool exterior of it. As I'm thinking about the lost page I notice a crease in the leather. The end of the leather cover of the book is as it always was, but I notice the rise in the hard back over. It's barely there.
I tear the leather open with my nail, and watch as the old material breaks open. To my surprise a black and white photograph falls out of the opening. It's face down but I see the writing in pen on the white background.
Mother's Day 1997 Claudette & Mira
With shaking hands I turn the photo over and gorge on its every last detail.
There's a tall woman smiling in the photo. She's wearing an expensive belted coat with black beret, her hands are wrapped around the arms of a little girl. She's beautiful I think as I focus on her details, she has long silver hair and light eyes, her lips painted dark.
I have no doubt in my mind that the little girl is me, she has dark hair, and the same brown eyes that I see when I look in the mirror. More over the little girl has her hands raised up to the sky and I can see the scars on her wrists, the scars on my wrists.
Me and my mother, we smile and I feel time stop.
There's a knock at my door, and I don't turn to look at whose come. But suddenly the photo is snatched from my hands and I look up to see its Amelie, she looks at the photo with an open mouth before she shouts something at me. Something I can't hear and then she's running out of my room with the photo in her hand, and I'm chasing after her, the book falls to the floor.
I don't hear anything as I follow after her, down the steps and into the living room where the others are.
Amelie takes the photo straight to Kieran and Josie and points at me. Comrade's not here, he never came home last night. And Vye's still out for groceries, she's been gone a while she should be back soon.
They all turn to look at me, as Kieran's voice breaks through my eternal quiet.
"The Empress," he spits out with so much hate, "she's your mother."
Not a moment too soon the door opens and Comrades breathless as he shouts.
"The Undead Army, they took Veena, they're planning a Blood Moon."
