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“Dawn?” Edmund’s voice brought me out of my slumber. I looked up at him with sadness. He was the only one who understood what was going on with me.
“Everything okay?” I asked, sitting up and realizing it was still night.
Edmund’s eyes glinted in the moonlight. It was quite entrancing.
“Yes, but I just got done talking with your friend. Is he on anything?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Adam? No, he’s just high on adrenaline,” I said softly.
“The boy is a talker, isn’t he?” He laughed and took a seat beside my bed. “How are you doing?”
“It seems like everything is about to collapse all around me. Wesley and Aaron are changing. Hell, even Adam is undergoing his own version of change.” I shook my head. “How am I supposed to do this?”
“You are the fire inside both Heaven and Hell. You are the first flame. You were bred for things like this. The only problem is, you didn’t have any backing like all those before you did. It was believed that if you didn’t know who or what you were, then you would never be identified.” Edmund started running his cool fingers through my hair. “Wesley? Is this the boy that you are trying to save?” he asked me.
“Yeah. He’s the one that this originally began for,” I confirmed. “You would think that it would be easy. Just dive in, snatch him, and bring him home. He even told me where he was.”
Edmund nodded. “You know, the best way to bring in an enemy is with bait. Mind games are easy to play if you have the power. I’m very good at them myself.” He smiled briefly. “What’s to say she isn’t playing on your emotional heartstrings to bring you in?”
“I knew that all those other times it was him though. I knew by the way he touched me, the way he smiled. It didn’t feel wrong,” I said, putting my face in my hands. “See what I’m saying?”
“You’ll get through this, Dawn. I have been on this earth for a very long time. I have met Wardens throughout the ages. I have seen raging battles over the destruction of the element shards. Nobody has actually achieved the elimination of an element. Let alone killing all four, which in turn would burn Heaven and Hell to the ground. That would pretty much make Earth a walking Purgatory.” He touched my face, his cold fingers sending a shiver down my spine. “You’ll do well, young one.” Our eyes locked and for a second, I believed him.
“You’re staying for the resurrection?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” His eyes shifted. “Please excuse me. I have yet to hunt, and it’s nearing dawn’s first light.” He laughed and pointed at the sky before getting up. In an instant, he was gone.
So, it was true about vampires… they could run at incredible speeds. I had never seen it till now, so it had all seemed like fairytale magic to me. I supposed there was a lot that I was going to have to get used to. If the allies were coming, I was going to meet creatures that most people thought were nothing more than bad dreams. Everything that goes bump in the night was real; it seemed, whether I wanted to believe it or not.
I sat there for a few more minutes, just thinking. I was alone again, just as I was before we moved to Midvale. I had Adam, of course… I had a feeling I was always going to have Adam. He was a mortal who had been allowed into the immortal world, full of fascination and wonder.
I lay back on the bed and put my hands behind my head. Tomorrow was the last day. In the morning I would work with Helen one last time on the ritual. At the first sign of twilight, we were going to the graveyard, where Krista was buried and bringing her back from the dead. It made me wonder how many other Wardens had had to do this. How many times had one been killed and consigned to Purgatory till another was born?
Somewhere around six, I closed my eyes, only to have them shoot open again at seven when the screaming began downstairs.
Chapter 28
The Grim
I had never run so fast in my life, not even when the demon beast was chasing after me a few weeks earlier. I hit the bottom floor without even taking the stairs.
That was new. I had never attempted to hurdle a banister before.
I came to a stop in the living room, where Helen lay motionless on the floor. My mother was standing in the opposite corner screaming, her eyes whited out and her hands on her ears. Whatever it was that was attacking us was assaulting the auditory receptors. I could hear nothing, however, as I grabbed my mother and pleaded with her to calm down. She merely pointed to the corner of the room, where a man in a black robe stood with his hands crossed over his chest. I couldn’t make out his face as it was covered by a hood. I could see how his appearance would cause alarm. The house had been heavily warded, to have a visitor as frightening as him could have been seen as a bad omen. Where my mother and Helen had found fear, I only found curiosity.
Hello, Dawn.
The voice in my head was strong and masculine. There were no other bodies present in the room. The only possible source was the man standing across the carpet from me.
“Hello?” I muttered as I began to press my fingers to my ears. I wasn’t sure if he had telepathically spoken to me, or if I had just missed the movement of his jaw.
My mother finally stopped screaming and fell in a heap on the floor.
I had no intention of scaring your
