Bitter Sweet (36 page)

Vanessa Stanton

Epilouge

              If you have ever had a dream in which you have died only to wake up gasping for breath and felt your heart pounding in your chest, you know partly how it feels to be vampire. My mind and heart raced the whole time as everything I had ever known broke down before me. At times, I was freezing with fear and at other times, I was burning with a passion to maintain my life. I could see all that was going on from outside of my body as well as in with sound alone.

              “Vanessa, are you with me?” asked Alik, snapping me out of my contemplation. I feared that could become a habit now that I was vampire.

              “I’m sorry, what?”

              “I asked ‘are you with me?’”

              “Yeah, sorry. I was lost in my own thoughts.”

              “Well, we are here. Are you ready?”

              Alik took my hand and led me out of the car into the night. On our left was Ceil, hidden in Alik’s shadow Luna, and to his  right was

June, all of us draped in deep black cloaks. We walked slowly through the streets. It was as if the people around couldn’t see us or didn’t want to see us. We came to a condemned church in a dark corner of Rome. We looked around and no one was anywhere near. We slipped through a side alley and up a set of backstairs to an upper door. We walked past a few old rooms that could have once been offices on to an upper balcony that looked down on the floor. The inside was lit by candlelight that shone around the room from hundreds of candles. Around forty vampire moved beneath them. As Alik shut the door, Ario stood up from his seat, where the altar would be, to address his guest.

              “Welcome, my children. It has been a year since we all were together like this and that time was marred with the attack from rebel vampire who wished to ruin the lives we have created for ourselves. In every life, there are bumps that you will come across and that was only the first our kind ran across in the previous year. It is my sad duty to tell you of the loss of our sister, Lilith, and our creator Aaliyah.” There was a murmur of talk at this and Ario went on. “Please, will you join me in a moment of silence in respect for this great loss?” Ario and Ayara bowed their heads and put their hands together as if they were praying and the rest followed suit.

              Through the beginning of Ario’s speech, I could hear Alik’s hand gripping the handle of his sword tightly and he steadied himself, trying to control his anger. I took his hand and he relaxed. When Ario raised his head, he froze as he caught sight of June in the back of the crowd before him.

              “What are you doing here?” he asked, and the vampire in the room looked back, not having

known she was there. All June did was smile back under her hood while Alik answered.

             
“She’s here to have a hand in your destruction, Ario,” Alik replied behind him, and Ario jerked around to stare into his face. Ayara made a twitch like she would attack when Ceil spoke.

              “I would worry about myself if I were you,” she suggested, standing at Ayara’s left.

              “You would kill your master, June?” asked Ayara, turning to look at June, but found her gone. She looked around; then the whistle of a sword through the air and the dripping of blood were heard.              “Lilith

was my only master, the day you allowed her to die you became nothing to me,” June said, her blade in Ayara’s chest.

              Ayara looked shocked for a moment and then jumped, the hole in her chest slowly healing while June’s sword continued to drip blood. When two vampire jumped from the crowd toward Alik, Luna intervened and they fell to the ground and never got up again. Ario looked over at Luna, and then his eyes widened.

              “Do you seriously think that you four can kill all of us in this room?” Ario asked.

              “No, of course not,” I said

              “We only wish to kill you two,” Alik added.

              “You will have to go through our children as well,” hissed Ayara.

              “You say that, but only two seemed to have responded so far,” Ceil stated.

              “They will not help you. Your children have no sense of loyalty to you. When my mother said my children, she spoke to June, Vanessa, and myself. The vampire were never supposed to run rampant across the world, but you two never understood that. You two created a race that only bowed to the most powerful and heeded to the strong. They will wait to see who is stronger before they make a decision,” said Alik.

              “You are good, Alik, but you are still a child compared to us. You will die here,” claimed Ayara.

              She moved to attack Alik, but never made it. Ceil blocked her path and June attacked again, this time she dodged June, only to meet Ceil’s attack. Ayara fell to her knees and Ceil’s blade was now dripping with blood. Ario tried to help her when Alik grabbed his arm and threw him to the ground, his foot in his chest and his arm facing the wrong direction.

              “What do you plan to do after you kill us? The covens will not follow you!” Ario spat.

             
“Have you not listened to anything I have said? They will follow the powerful.” Alik said.

              Ario twisted and Alik allowed him to get up. One of his arms was hanging with his bones broken, and then he attacked me. Alik stood by as he flew toward me; I watched his movements and they were easy to dodge. The ease at which I dodged him baffled Ario and his anger grew with the passing seconds. As he stepped into a punch with his remaining arm, I landed a kick underneath his attack and he flew through the air toward Alik and was impaled upon his sword. Ario looked down. He grabbed the blade with his hand when Alik pulled it out and Ario’s fingers fell to the ground. Ario fell to his knees and Alik walked around to look him in the face.

              “Now you die.”

              Alik flicked his wrist and a shadow passed through Ario’s body. His head rolled down the few steps leading to the altar and came to rest before the onlooking vampire. Ayara screamed and, in rage, flew at Alik, but Ceil was faster and she appeared before Alik. Ayara fell to the ground, coughing up blood, but she still tried to claw her way toward Alik. June walked around to stand in front of Ayara and looked down at her. The same shadow passed through Ayara’s body and she stopped moving. The onlooking vampire stared at the bodies of their leaders, broken and torn on the ground, and then up to Alik. There was a low growl coming from a few when Alik looked into the crowd and then it went silent.

              “You are all dismissed; I do not want to hear from you until I call on you. Is that understood?” Called out June taking her place as leader of the vampire.

              All the vampire in the room bowed and then the four of us were alone. June pulled out a cloth and cleaned the blood off of her sword and then she took out the same flashlight I saw her use over two years ago. As we got to the door of the church, she turned it on the bodies and they burst into flames. The carpets and altar ignited. The oldest vampire in the world were now dead. The world of the vampire had changed, and only time can tell if it was for the better, or for the worse.