Blood Of The Luna

Chapter 9

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Damian pushed the window open slowly, and he settled his gaze on me with his lips slightly parted. I could feel a strange heat coming from him, even though I was several feet away.

"Alyssa," he whispered, my name sounding so faint and foreign on his lips. He was so dazed and confused that I couldn't even believe it was really him for a very long time. He was wearing a tank-top, and his muscles rippled in the pale light as he watched me intently. He said nothing more, and he didn't do anything else as he continued to watch me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, my voice sounding faint. I was so flustered by his appearance that it was all I could manage. I moved towards the window, and Damian never took his eyes off me as I approached him. He took a step forward, and I felt a strange pull towards him, as if there was a strange voice which was calling to me from inside him.

"I came to see you," he said. "I wanted to see you."

I opened the window slowly, and he tilted his head now that there was no barrier between us. I could smell him, that intoxicating scent which drove me insane as I looked at him. It was an enticing scent, and all I wanted to do was drown in it completely. I wanted it all around me, and I wanted him all around me. My eyes were drawn to his lips, and how full and plump they looked. I was enchanted by him, and how effortlessly handsome he looked.

Remind me again why I was angry with him in the first place?

"You can't be here at this hour," I said. "My mom could come back at any moment. And if she sees you here, I will get in so much trouble."

"I came to apologise, Alyssa," he said, straining to get the words out. "I understand that my actions were reckless and insulting, and I wish to apologise to you. I want you to understand that I'm not usually like that. I would never do anything to make you feel unsafe around me."

Oh, right; that was why I was upset with him. Every ounce of affection which had suddenly bubbled to the surface immediately disappeared when I remembered his tight grip from earlier. When I looked at him, all I could see was the twisted look in his eyes. And that was not something I wanted to deal with right now.

"You should leave," I said.

"But I need to apologise to you," he argued, furrowing his brows confusedly.

"I think you have already apologised," I said, glancing over my shoulder as I heard footsteps from the hallway. "But you're going to have to do a lot more than that for me to forgive you for what you did."

"Like what?" he asked.

“Maybe you could stop attacking people like you own them,” I said. “Or maybe you could lose the ego. You’re not as amazing as you think you are.”

“I never said I was,” he argued.

“But you always act like it,” I said. “You walk around like you own every and everything, and you act like you don’t care how other people feel.”

A vein pulsed in his forehead, and I noticed him getting pissed off. I didn’t care however. I wanted him to know that I was mad at him. I wanted him to realise that his actions had consequences, and that he was hurting the people around him by being so reckless and nonchalant.

“Let me ask you this,” he said. “If you were in my shoes, what would you have done?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “I wouldn’t have done anything, because I would understand that there is nothing wrong with someone else touching you.”

He sighed, and to me it almost looked like he was stopping himself from saying something because he didn’t want to upset me.

“What can I do to make it up to you?” he asked.

"I don't know yet," I said, reaching for the window so I could slam it shut. Damian reached out to stop me, and when his hands touched mine, I felt a spark fly across my skin and crawl all over my body. The electricity was so powerful I nearly jumped back from it. I was sure he felt it to, because a dark look crossed his eyes at the intense contact.

"Here it is," mom's voice suddenly came from behind me, and I whirled around to find her carrying an old scroll and waving it over her head like she had found the map to the kingdom of Atlantis. She paused when she noticed that I was now standing by the window, and she narrowed her eyes as she looked at me suspiciously. I already knew that I was busted, and there was no way out of this. She would no doubt be furious that I had allowed Damian to come and see me at such a late hour. The i***t had once again landed me in trouble just when I didn't need that kind of s**t in my life.

I held my breath, and I bit my lip as I waited for her to start yelling. She would have already seen him, and now she would be furious with me. I was just waiting for the yelling to begin, but then she asked in a very calm but confused voice, "What are you doing standing over there? And shut that damn window. It is freezing outside."

I opened my eyes abruptly, and I whirled around to find that Damian was no longer standing there. He must have dashed away, and I was left looking on confusedly. To anyone else, it would have looked like I had merely opened the window and stood in front of it like a deranged person who didn’t understand how windows worked. I cursed him under my breath, and I grabbed the shutters and slammed them shut.

"Oh, it's nothing," I said quickly, trying to avoid the question I knew would be coming. "What is that you're holding?"

She must have known that there was something else to it, but she wasn't ready to speak about it. Obviously whatever she was holding was far more important than her trying to figure out what I did wrong. She waved away dismissively, then dropped the scroll on the table before beckoning for me to come closer.

"It's a family tree," she said. "Goes back to your great, great grandparents in the late 1800s. Your father has been keeping it this whole time, and I never bothered to look at it because I always felt like I was a stranger amongst them. But the name you just told me reminded me of something."

I came to stand beside her, and I was surprised to see the past generations of McCormacks staring back at me. All the names were written in pretty little brackets, with long chains linking each member to the other. At the very bottom was my name written in silver letters, and right above it was father and mother's names joined together by a single link. Separate from them was my uncle Jason, but he wasn't linked to anyone since he wasn't married yet. Above them was my grandfather René, and my grandmother Aileen.

"This is fascinating," I said, tracing every link with my finger. I was about to comment on how sparse the family members were, when I suddenly noticed a name which sent a chill down my spine. I stared at it in disbelief, not really understanding how it could be possible.

There written in bold silver letters was Kendra's name. She was my great grandmother, and I felt a shockwave go through me as I stared at the name. How could this be possible? How could I have been seeing her all this time, when she had been an ancestor of mine? And she had looked exactly like me. Surely that meant something. I just hadn't figured it out yet.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" my mom asked, placing her hand gently on my shoulder. "You know, the belief that when one of us dies, instead of just falling into an empty and cold nothingness, our souls travel through space and time, and we are reborn onto the earth as new people with different lives and no recollection of the previous life we've lived."

It sounded like a load of bullshit to me. Of course I knew about reincarnation, but I just never believed it. How could it be possible for us to be reborn after we died? It just didn't make any sense. Death was a finality. There was nothing beyond it except emptiness. How could one's soul travel through the universe and find another body to inhabit? Was she trying to imply that I may be a reincarnate of my dead great grandmother?

What a load of rubbish!

"It's not possible," I said. "It just cannot be."

"I could be wrong," she admitted, "but think about it. How are you able to see visions of someone you've never met? And you said she looks like you, which will explain how that happened since you are her descendant. And if she lived over a hundred years ago, then it was probably during the first Cold War, when the vampires first attacked our kind."

Her words sent a jolt through me. It was as if someone had flicked on a switch in my head, and I was no longer standing in the middle of the kitchen. This time there wasn’t any powerful jerk, or any spinning sensation. This time, it was as if I simply blinked and opened my eyes on the battlefield once again.

Flashes of the scene at the forest suddenly came back to me, and I could see things more clearly now. Indeed, the battle below looked like it had merely been between wolves, but then there was something moving through the battlefield. Or rather, many things which were almost the same. They were dark blurs which were moving so fast that it was impossible to see what they truly were. There were hundreds of them, and whenever they moved, a wolf would fall and instantly be covered in blood.

And then I saw them, tall and dark figures which moved over the ground with blinding speed. Their claws were long and sharp, and their fangs glistened in the fading light. Everything about them was dark and evil, and I felt the fear cutting through me like a knife. Their movements were precise and calculated, and they seemed to know exactly where they were supposed to attack. The wolves stood no chance as they were cut off from any chance of escape while the vampires picked them off one by one.

There was nothing human about them. Their eyes were gaunt and lifeless, a reflection of the emptiness within their own hearts. They were creatures of the night, born and bred in the dark of the night. Their snarling was incessant, and they did not even pause for a second to catch their breath.

I was terrified, and I didn't know what to do or where I was supposed to turn. The smell of death hung thick in the air, and it was choking me. I wished I could run, but there was nowhere to go. And I could hear my mother's voice somewhere in the background, yelling at me with panic in her voice.

Vlad stood right in front of me, and he turned very slowly to look at me, his red eyes glowing in the semi-darkness of the forest. He was covered in blood, making him a very grotesque sight indeed. He had ripped off the cape from before, and now he stood over the battlefield with a satisfied look.

Fear gripped my entire being, and as I felt a jolt through my entire body, he smiled. A wicked laughter escaped his throat, and as he threw his head back in amusement, I noticed the fangs standing out as bright as daylight.

He was a vampire.

"I see you," he chuckled. "And I know why you're here."

His eyes were fixated on me as his laughter died down, but I knew that there was something evil brewing in his dark and twisted mind. The very sight of him spelt evil, and even I was terrified of him. He took a step towards me, slowly and with his head slightly tilted. I immediately fell back, terrified of what he could do to me. I didn't know if he could harm me yet, or even if any of this was real. But all I knew was that he wanted me dead; I could feel it coming from him like a foul sickness which was spreading into the very air around me. He was peering right into my soul, and I felt exposed and vulnerable in front of him.

"Oh, I wish I could touch you," he whispered. "There are so many million ways I could make you suffer. I would love to hear you scream, but now is not my time yet. Soon, in just a matter of time, you and I shall meet again. And when we do, there is going to be carnage."

He gestured towards the battlefield, with a grandeur which showed that he was immensely pleased with what he was watching.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked. “All this violence, all these lost souls that need someone to salvage them. I am their only hope, and I am their salvation as well as their destruction. All shall bend before my will, and I shall be the pillar that stands tall when the dust of humanity has settled and everyone’s soul has been reaped.”

He licked his fangs then, and as he took another step towards me, I turned around and bolted. But then I heard him chasing me, and in my panicked state, I screamed. The sound ripped from my throat and spread all over the battlefield, and that was when I noticed that the vampires had all stopped and were chasing after me as well.

My fear was growing too great now, and with Vlad's incessant snarling behind me, all I could concentrate on was how deadly his fangs were, and how dead I would be if he caught up to me.

"ALYSSA!"

The voice was like a fork of lightning shattering the battlefield in half. For a moment, I went deaf from the sound, and so also did everyone else. Even Vlad stopped chasing me, and when I glanced over my shoulder, he had come to an abrupt halt and was covering his ears painfully.

Heat flowed through my entire body, and it was like a powerful hand had wrapped around me and was pulling me up, carrying me away from the death and destruction below. My vision swam, and before I knew what was happening, Damian's eyes flooded my vision. I could feel his warmth around me, and he was whispering several words to me. I couldn't hear all of them, but when I blinked furiously, I finally realised that I was still in the kitchen. Mother was standing over me with tears in her eyes, while Damian was holding onto me like I meant the world to him.

"Relax," he said. "Everything is going to be fine."

I concentrated on his voice, but the last thing I remembered before the darkness took me was how handsome he looked.

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