Chapter 57

Lucian

It was a dangerous game I was playing. I had no idea what would happen to Trinity while she was pregnant. However, I couldn’t help but be a bit excited. My wife and I… never got the chance to have children. We hadn’t been married long enough to try for children when she’d been murdered.

I left the hospital, hovering above it and waiting. Soon, the cars headed out, carrying Trinity away from the building. I followed, unsurprised that they were going to Mark’s house. I waited to see where they would take her soon. I made sure to push the need for Trinity to keep the child through our bond. Soon, I saw them moving through the rooms of the house and preparing to leave. Mark’s car pulled out of the driveway and headed down the street. Soon after, the other two hunters went to the car down the street and followed. They drove out of the city and into the woods to a small wooden cabin that couldn’t have been built by the church.

Other than the silver each of them carried, there wasn’t a single piece of it in the area, and it was too near a crack between our world for the church to know of this place and not use the crack to get information about the status of the vampire world. I watched the hunters start to set up their pitiful traps and stand watch.

Then, something drifted to me through the crack between our worlds. It wasn’t quite an ominous feeling, but it was an odd feeling, like a warning from the castle or a beacon in the night. I headed toward the nearest crack between our worlds. It was time I headed home. The group of vampires hadn’t been under the command of the royal family, I was certain of that, yet they had been there for Trinity.

Trinity and our child wouldn’t be safe until I got her back to the castle, but there was something strange going on.

As soon as I stepped onto my land, the sense of something being wrong grew even stronger. The red sunlight that filled the sky was dimmer, like an eclipse. I narrowed my eyes and headed toward the front gates of my castle. There was no one to greet me. It was eerily silent, and the castle was oddly subdued. I could feel other presences in the castle. I headed towards the throne room and opened it to see every one of my servants kneeling. Members of the royal family were there, trembling in terror, and sitting on my throne was a man I had only ever heard of in our history books with the youngest princess in his lap. Her eyes were vacant as he continued to drink from her.

He pulled back with a sigh as she vanished into fluttering blue light. Then, I saw his face. He looked at me, his glowing blue eyes like the sun that had long since vanished from our world looked at me. He smiled as I lowered my head.

“Blood Ancestor,” I said stiffly.

“Are you the one called Lucianus?”

“I am, Blood Ancestor. I am honored you know me.”

“They’ve been quite forthcoming about you. Them and those criminals that roamed the forest… A good snack, as well as the food you’ve kept in your cellar. I have been waiting for you to arrive. I did not realize you would be such a poor host.”

“My apologies,” I said. “How can I make amends?”

“I am sure we’ll get to that,” he walked away from me. Turning his back to me as if I was inconsequential. I tried not to bristle as he walked back to my throne.

“Long ago, before the war with humans, there was a woman,” he began. “A lover of mine who bore me a child. She was human.”

I went stiff. Something told me I knew where he was going to go with this.

“She was the only one to have the honor to grant me a child. She did not turn from the pregnancy, and due to that, she died long before our child had much time to do more than walk. That child was taken into the human world and lost by her family. While I slaughtered them, it would not bring my child back to me….” He leaned forward, meeting my gaze. “I committed myself to sleep, thinking perhaps that I would find as close to death as I could. For a time, I was happy with just my memories for company….”

He narrowed his eyes. “However, recently, I felt my blood here in our world again, and since then, I have felt it growing stronger… Even now, I feel it growing stronger.”

“That is wonderful news,” I said. “It is a great thing to have you rule us again.”

At the least, I knew under our Blood Ancestor that the war with humanity would not end the way it had before. Perhaps the paths between our worlds would be open again. Our child would be able to travel freely between the two worlds.

Though, I worried for the child. Trinity would die if she was not turned from the pregnancy. Our child would grow into adulthood without her.

“Tell me, Lucianus, what happened during the last war with the humans?”

“They betrayed our covenant,” I said, closing my eyes and dredging up old memories. The more I talked, the more I thought of my wife. The clearer I could see her in my mind’s eye, the more I could feel the rage that had consumed me since her death.

When I was done, our Blood Ancestor looked at me without an expression.

“And you’ve since been stealing humans across the divide, keeping them… and this enterprise that I have heard of? Where is this… Stella I’ve been told about? Your sister-in-law? Your wife?”

“Both my wife and her sister are dead.”

There was a soft gasp.

“My wife was murdered during the last days of the war,” I said. “And Stella, I murdered several days ago.”

He laughed, loud and nearly heartless. “How amusing! And for what offense?”

“Betrayal,” I said evenly.

He chuckled. “And what have you to say about the royal’s claim that you are the reason the war against the church was lost all those years ago.”

I scoffed. “I would say, at the time, I was not the warden of the forest. I was general, a soldier, so from whom did I take orders?”

He chuckled again. “Well, said… You will be imprisoned for three hundred years for the murder of one of our own.”

My eyes widened as he smiled. “The royals, for their cowardice, have already been doomed to die. The rest of you will go and find my descendant by any means necessary.”

“It is very hard to go between our world and the human world,” someone said. “Between the small cracks and the church’s hunters lurking about.”

He laughed again and rose from the throne. “Take him to the dungeons.”

I tried not to fight as I watched him ascend. There would be time to get out. There would be time to get out and get to Trinity. I would not spend three hundred years in darkness. The guards who escorted me down to the dungeons were not familiar. The castle quaked though it seemed to be anticipating something.

When they locked the shackles around my wrists and closed the door, he appeared, picking at his nails idly.

“The human woman you have become so fond of….” He began. “I will have her brought here to be cared for.”

My eyes widened. He smiled coldly. “I am not a stranger to what it means to love a human. Three hundred years will pass in the blink of an eye if you sleep.”

“I would rather not.”

He smiled. “You are exactly as I expected you to be.”

He vanished then, and I looked out the small window as the eclipse seemed to end, and the red of the sun began to change to a deep, haunting blue. I could barely breathe in awe as I saw a great shadow rising in the sky. I felt the air start to change. Winds blew hard through the bars of my cell, stirring up every bit of dust over the desert.

The Forest quaked and cried. I could hear it growling and moving, shaking as it started to grow into the desert, and in the distance, I could see a bright light starting to carve its way through the sky.

“Impossible…” I whispered, watching with bated breath as the gate between our world and the human world appeared and started to open like a giant glowing mouth.

On the wind, I could smell the human world full of exhaust and blood. I could hear cries of shock and panic. Then, the air shook with thunder and darkness.

The war had begun again.