But the rain continued to fall.
I grabbed the hem of my dress and ripped away a thin stretch of wet fabric. The strip of cloth dangled in my hand and I tied it around my wrist like a bracelet. Suleen’s blood was on my
skin, and even though it would dry, I would wear this fabric around my wrist until it broke apart. Until that happened, I would mourn Suleen and the life he had sacrificed.
‘Go forth’ I said the phrase, finally. ‘In darkness and in light.’
I pulled a small knife out of my dress pocket and walked to the end of the orchard row. I grabbed an apple out of the nearby basket and came back to where I had buried Suleen’s ashes.
The apple sat in my hand and lines of rain ran down its skin. I sliced it across its midsection to reveal a pentacle. The severed core and the seeds created a perfect five-pointed star, a symbol
of life, the symbol of the four elements – the Aeris. We stood together, that star and me, in the rain, above the ashes of my dead mentor.
Fire must have sent Suleen to me; it would be the only way he could time travel. I would leave her this symbol so she would know that I received her message. This pentacle faced towards the
heavens, where I hoped Suleen’s spirit would go – if there was such a place. He deserved silence, peace and a place without bloodlust.
I wiped the rain out of my eyes with the back of my hand, turned to the small mound of wet earth and shook my head.
It can’t be
, I thought again, but it was true. I knew
this
kind of violent death all too well.
Vampire Queen,
a voice in my mind whispered and I swore it sounded malicious, like a taunt. I am not a vampire. Not any more.
When I opened the door of the house Genevieve grasped both arms around me. ‘There you are!’ she cried. I drew her to me and relished the grip of her gentle fingers.
As I closed the door behind me, I threw one more glance at the orchard, at the burial spot – the apple was already gone.
Genevieve’s frame was curled into a ball beneath the blanket. All of it, every strand of the wool, was hers tonight. Instead of fighting me for a scrap of fabric, all
that poked out beneath the wool were two dirty bare feet. The medieval world did not allow the comfort of many bedrooms, at least not for my family, a farming family living on the orchard of a
monastery.
I kissed Genevieve’s head and she shuffled under the covers.
‘
Je t’aime
,’ I said in French, and turned to the door.
The apple was my beacon; Fire would come soon. She would arrive at sunrise just as Suleen had told me she would.
I tiptoed down the stairs and stopped at the little window that overlooked the orchard. I was not afraid to decipher this mystery. I had been the Vampire Queen, and with Suleen’s death,
whatever had happened, it was clearly now up to me to fix it.
My fingers ran against the cool windowsill and I stepped down on to the ground floor. I lingered at my father’s favourite chair and my sister’s riding stick. She loved to pretend to
ride a horse up and down the orchard rows, her curls bouncing and her laughter echoing through the many lanes. I closed my cloak even tighter to keep in the warmth and glanced back at the stairs. I
could go up and sleep, pretend this wasn’t happening. Just get up in the morning and go about my business. I shook my head because I would never do that. I couldn’t and
wouldn’t
leave Rhode, Tracy and the rest of my friends at Wickham Boarding School to torment. The house creaked in the silent summer morning. Soon the floorboards would squeak with
my father’s familiar footsteps.
The stone mantel of the fireplace was cold, the night’s fire long burnt out. My mother’s hearth smelled just like her – lavender and rosemary. I detached a sprig of the dried
purple flowers from a bushel hanging above the fireplace and placed it in my cloak pocket. I closed my eyes, inhaling my home: fresh air, wood and various herbs. Nowhere, in all of my many travels,
smelled as good as this special place.
‘I’ll come back,’ I whispered to the house. ‘I promise.’
I headed out the door and set off towards the edge of our property, towards the spot where once, so long ago, Rhode had made me a vampire. Far in the distance, at the horizon, the sunrise hit
the land.
I headed for the light.
My feet crushed the soft morning grass. The dew slicked the tree trunks and branches. I passed Suleen’s buried ashes and turned my face away from the place. He was never coming back.
I kept on, and when I turned the corner, there, at the end of the lane, stood Fire. She wore a cloak of red as vibrant as her hair. She held a hand out to me and I hurried forward. Once I
reached her, she gestured to the dirt lane that ran along one end of the orchard rows.
‘I follow that path to Wickham?’ I asked. She nodded and led the way. We did not need pleasantries. We did not need to say our hellos. Fire’s cloak trailed over the ground as
she walked. It swayed back and forth and seemed to bleed its colour, transforming my path to a bright, tangerine light. The trees were covered in a blaze of yellows and red. Everything, even the
trunks and leaves, was saturated. As I walked, the colours mellowed into browns and the natural colours of the Earth. The orchard was behind me and ahead were tall sycamore trees.
A modern brick building with glass windows took shape on the horizon. A
familiar
brick building.
‘Keep going,’ Fire said.
The ground below me wasn’t soft and crunchy any more but hard and black. I kept following Fire as she floated ahead of me. I inhaled freshly cut grass and the unmistakable smell of
gasoline. I tripped over a root or something hard. My body lurched forward and I threw my hands out to break my fall. And I did fall, landing on to the campus of Wickham Boarding School.
Present day
I shook my wrists; they stung from the impact of hitting the ground. I was on all fours and dug my fingertips into the soil. I had landed just within the boundaries of the
Wickham woods. Ahead of me was campus, behind me Main Street.
Lovers Bay, Massachusetts was a town on Cape Cod. The salty smell of the ocean was a pungent odour compared to the earthy scents of home. The sounds of the campus echoed about me. Shrieks of
laughter mixed with the beeping of a utility vehicle somewhere nearby.
Utility vehicle. Something that didn’t exist in the fifteenth century.
Despite Suleen’s death and despite the hollowness in my gut, a smile tugged at the side of my mouth. I was really here, at Wickham – wasn’t I? A car roared past behind me and I
threw my hands over my ears. I pressed harder as a police car screamed by too. I jumped up, turning to the stone wall that encircled campus. My ears burned as the siren pulled away. The modern age
was relentlessly loud.
For the three years that I had been back home in the medieval world, the soundtrack of my life was the chanting of monks and whispers with my sister under the covers.
Her laughter.
I swallowed hard. This world seemed hollow and metallic. I would hear her laughter only in my memory, perhaps for the rest of my days.
I smoothed out my work dress just to do something with my hands, but found myself no longer in my medieval garb. I was wearing what I would have picked out for myself in the modern world: black
pants, T-shirt, combat boots.
The clothes of a soldier.
I lifted my wrist. The cloth blotted with Suleen’s blood remained fastened safely to me.
Fire hovered by my side.
‘We are invisible to those around us,’ she said, and handed me the sprig of lavender I had taken from my parents’ house; I took it without meeting her cranberry-coloured
eyes.
‘Well . . .’ I said after slipping it into my pocket. ‘Let’s get on with it.’ I crossed my arms over my chest and lifted my chin.
‘You have every right to be angry,’ she said.
‘Suleen is dead.’ I pointed to her when I said, ‘You punished Rhode and me. You said we couldn’t be together, so I went back, Fire. You said it would be safe for those I
left behind,’ I snapped.
She said nothing at first. Fine. Rhode and I wouldn’t be together. I would do what Suleen and Fire wanted of me and then try to get back to the medieval world. I was here again regardless
of what I had tried to do before.
‘Things are different than the Aeris expected,’ Fire said.
Dare I sense hesitation in her voice?
‘After what has transpired here in the modern world, you and Rhode are free to do what you choose,’ Fire said. ‘But it’s not simple. As you asked of me, the Aeris gave
him his life back; he does not carry the scars of his former vampire life. He has no memory of his past.’
‘He was nineteen when he was made a vampire. Won’t he look older to the students? I asked.
‘He will not age as a human until he turns nineteen. He has a whole host of memories from Lovers Bay,
human
memories.’
‘He needs to know what happened to Suleen, Fire. Give him back his memory.’
‘I can’t. What I have done with you and Rhode is—’ She stopped herself and her scarlet eyes locked on me with such intensity a flicker of fear rushed through me. I wanted
to take a step backwards, but fought the desire. ‘Don’t you see what we’ve done?’ she continued, ‘Justin poses an insurmountable problem.’
‘
We?
What I’d really like is for someone to tell me what the hell has happened since I’ve been gone.’
Fire dropped her head. She was not human, but this was such a human admission of failure I couldn’t help but be taken aback. Fire could not meddle in the affairs of vampires. The Aeris
were only responsible for the four elements and keeping the balance of all living things. She would never be human no matter how she behaved.
‘If you do not kill Justin,’ she said quietly, ‘someone will take my place who does not care for you as I do. Someone who will reverse this decree and keep you and Rhode apart
again,’ she explained.
I drew a sharp breath at the frightening hierarchy of the universe. Fire was
in trouble
because what we had set out to do had failed.
‘You can be replaced?’ I asked quietly.
She did not answer but instead placed a warm, feather-light hand on my shoulder.
‘Wait. Wait,’ I said while working it out in my head. She had said someone would take her place who would keep Rhode and me
apart
. That would mean Rhode and I would have to
be together first.
‘Rhode and I . . . we don’t have to stay away from one another any more?!’
She nodded once.
I wanted to jump up and down. I wanted to run through campus at that very instant and find him immediately. I also wanted to hold on to the nearest tree because my breath was short. I exhaled
heavily to steady myself.
Fire hesitated before she spoke, and I caught a glimpse of pity in her eyes as she said the next words.
‘I would not be so excited. I do not think he will ever remember his past,’ Fire said. Her words were sobering.
Think like a soldier, Lenah.
I touched the bloody fabric on
my wrist.
‘Rhode’s going to need protection,’ I said. ‘From Justin.’
It sounded weird even saying it aloud.
‘What do we know?’ I added, getting to business.
‘Justin is the king of the vampire world. He has made an allegiance with the Hollow Ones.’
I straightened my back. If I felt tight and strong, I could understand this. I could work out a plan. I couldn’t imagine any scenario in which Justin was more powerful than Suleen. Or one
in which he was in cahoots with the Hollow Ones – vampires who had given up their ability to love in return for power and knowledge, becoming mutants of the supernatural world. Demons.
‘Why is he still a vampire? I know you can’t meddle in the affairs of vampires, Fire, but you promised me the world would change.’
‘Some circumstances are beyond even the Aeris’s control.’
Anger shot through me yet again.
‘You’re an all-powerful being. You can manipulate
time
.’ I stopped myself and shook my head. ‘Forget it. Forget it. Yelling about it won’t change anything.
Just tell me what I need to do.’
Fire reached up to her neck and removed a necklace. It was simple, a gold chain with a red teardrop-shaped pendant. It floated through the air towards me and dropped into my palm. I curled my
fingers around the smooth jewel. It had an unnatural heat as though a tiny fire burned within the gem.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘The only power I have left to give you: the power of flame. You may use this only once. Cast this necklace at your opponent and it will become a conflagration so monstrous that it will
tear down those who wish to harm you. It is fire. Nothing more, nothing less.’ She punctuated every word and warned, ‘Use it only when you need it most.’
The little orb glinted. It seemed to be echoing Fire’s declaration.
‘You’ll find your life at Wickham ready for you. To those here, you are a new student entering the school in your senior year.’
I closed my hand around the warm jewel.
‘What would have happened if I had refused this task?’
Fire paused and finally said, ‘I would fear for the natural order of the world.’
I shivered. Whatever had happened to leave Justin a vampire had unsettled the natural balance of the world. It must have been catastrophic indeed for Fire and Suleen to bring me back.
‘Tell me first,’ I said. ‘My friends – they won’t remember me?’
‘It won’t take them long this time. The soul can always recall who it has loved.’ Her light faded from bright red to orange.
The necklace in my palm swirled and sparked. I wanted to ask her why we had failed the first time, but all I could think to say was, ‘What if I need you?’
But Fire’s orange light had dimmed to yellow before I finished speaking and in a blink, she was gone.
I fastened the necklace, but when I reached up to make sure it lay correctly – the clasp had disappeared.
I turned around to face campus. Just a few steps and I would be on a Wickham pathway. I didn’t know what lay ahead, but I knew I had to leave these woods to begin this journey.