Blood Hunter (The Grandor Descendant Series) (45 page)

“Did your parents not tell you anything of your destiny?” asked Chiara.

Ari closed her eyes, shaking her head as she said, “They were killed by the Ancients.”

“But how could the Ancients know that a Grandor line survived? Surely if they knew descendants lived on, they would have seen to its demise many decades ago,” said Chiara, her eyes wrinkled in confusion as she took a deep drag on her cigarette.

“I don’t know how they knew about me,” said Ari. “When I was a baby, Ragon rescued me and took me to an orphanage. It was only last year that the Ancients sent an assassin to finish me off.”

“Ragon?” asked Chiara.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Ari admitted.

“I see; such an odd union. But perhaps that was always meant to be; destiny has a funny way of playing out. Extinction is not something the universe considers lightly,” said Chiara.

A thousand questions rung through Ari’s head, and though she desperately wanted to know more, she knew there was no time to ask them now. They had already wasted enough precious time, time which they did not have. Ari needed to know about the blood hunter curse, she needed to know how to reverse it. She had to save Sandra!

“Now,” said Chiara, blowing out a large puff of smoke, “why is my granddaughter allowing the Grandor descendant to fall in love with a vampire and be ferried around by a wraith?”

Ari took a fast gulp of her tea, wincing slightly as the burning liquid coursed down her throat.

“Gran,” said Lea, her voice a few octaves higher than normal, “you can’t say stuff like that. And… and I almost got Ariana killed when I stuck my nose into her relationship with Ragon. I basically handed her over to the Ancients.”

Chiara, who had just taken another puff of her cigarette, coughed loudly.

“What?” she sputtered, clutching her chest dramatically, her eyes wide and bulging.

“It’s ok,” said Ari, rushing to Lea’s defence. “Lea thought that I was Ragon’s source; she was just trying to protect me.”

“Yea,” said Chris, clearly wanting to be involved in the conversation, “but it turns out that Ari doesn’t need protection, not from blood suckers anyway.”

“What do you mean?” asked Chiara.

“She killed the Triad,” Chris said hurriedly.

“How?” asked Chiara, leaning in towards Ari.

Ari glanced across at Lea, hoping to portray a sense of urgency. They didn’t have time to play nice with Chiara and chit chat; they needed the witch’s help to reverse the blood hunter curse.

“Gran we don’t have time to talk about that now,” said Lea, finally cottoning on, “we came here to find out about the blood hunter cu-”

“-Lea!” cried Chiara, cutting her granddaughter off mid-sentence, “You forget your place. This wraith may be half cast, he may even have a good soul, but it is our family’s responsibility to protect that which you seem so willing to destroy.”

“Chris already knows about the blood hunter curse,” Lea said, speaking very fast as she stared at her feet.   

“Excuse me? You have entrusted a necromancer with our sacred secrets?” said Chiara. “And how does your circle feel about you befriending wraiths? I seem to recall you telling me that the circle was investigating missing humans on campus; or do you no longer care about them?”

“It’s not like that,” said Lea, still looking at her feet. “I mean, we are still looking into the disappearances, but this is urgent. The blood hunter has already killed some of their line and now it seeks a vampire over a thousand years old. What was I supposed to do? Maybe the blood hunter is responsible for the humans vanishing? When Ari came to me and told me what had happened, I knew the curse would be the only chance of stopping it. So I told Ari. But we needed to get to you, and Chris was the only person who could do that; so I told him too. It’s not like I did it lightly; I put a binding spell on both of them before I told them.”

“And so you decided to betray your ancestors? You know that the Ancients have ways of containing threats such as blood hunters,” said Chiara. “You have been tricked into-”

“-the Ancients can’t contain this blood hunter,” Ari said hurriedly. “They sent a wraith to negotiate for my help to kill it; we didn’t have a choice.”

“Besides,” said Chris, seeing Chiara’s stricken face, “I hate wraiths and vampires; I’m not going to tell them anything about the curse. I just want to help kill the blood sucker.”

“Please,” Ari said. “We need your help… I need your help! I can’t control my powers. I could just as easily kill the people I love, and I can’t let that happen. The blood hunter has taken a friend of mine. He says that he will kill her. Our only chance of stopping this thing is to undo the curse.”

Chiara sighed and took a long sip of her tea.

“Only,” said Chiara, staring from Lea to Ari, “because you are the Grandor descendant, will I help you.”

“Thankyou,” said Ari.

“But you must promise me that if I tell you, you will seek out the truth about your destiny. It has been many thousands of years in the making. You should not take your responsibility lightly. Though only a very few number know of your power, there are many counting on you. You have the innocent to consider,” said Chiara. “Now, as for the blood hunter curse, many centuries ago, when the vampires begun to take over, witches feared that soon there would be no mortals left. So a Crown witch put a curse on all vampires, a curse that would ensure they would think twice before turning a mortal. The blood hunter curse enabled the formation of blood lines. It made it possible for vampires to trace back their own family line and if they killed their maker, or their makers maker and so on, then they would have access to their accumulated power.”

“We already know that gran,” said Lea. “How do we reverse the curse?”

“Upstairs in the chest by my bed,” said Chiara, pointing to a long flight of stairs, “is my book of white. It contains the details of the Blood hunter curse.”

“Thankyou gran,” said Lea, putting her half-finished cup of tea down and moving over to the stairs.

Ari was just about to follow her, when Chiara reached out a hand and grabbed her by the arm.

“Lea and Chris, why don’t you go get the books? I must talk with Ari a while; I can see that time is against you,” she said, indicating for Ari to sit back down, which she did reluctantly.

“I heard what you said,” Ari said, when it was just her and Chiara left in the living room. “But I don’t know if I am the person you’re looking for. I mean, I’m so screwed up. Wouldn’t it just be better to wait for the next Grandor Descendant? They would have to be less messed up than me.”

“There are very few who still believe in the Grandor descendant. Do you know why that is?”

Ari shook her head.

“More than a thousand years ago, when the Ancients realised the threat of the Grandor descendants, they made it their goal to destroy them. Every man, woman or child, who was believed to be a progeny of Grandor, was slaughtered. A powerful witch knew that she needed to protect them; she took the few that remained and made sure that they would not be harmed. She performed a spell, one that concentrated the powers down the line but did not allow them to be expressed. The spell meant that only once would a child be born with all the power of the Grandor line that came before them. This hid the Grandor descendant’s from the vampires, for without their powers, they were not discernable from mortals. Ariana, you are that child; we have been waiting a very long time for you. It is your destiny to kill the vampires which threaten the innocent.” 

Ari’s eyes had grown wide, and it was only when a lonely tear fell from them, did she realise that the whole time Chiara had spoken she had not moved a muscle, not to blink or breathe. Now she took in a deep breath, feeling her lungs compress the air with difficulty, as if her airways were tightening.

“But, but how am I supposed to do that?” asked Ari. “I… I love Ragon.”

“You cannot have both. You can’t be saviour and killer; it doesn’t work that way. You are the Grandor Descendant. I know the burden of such power is great. You have so much contained within you and yet there is so much more to come,” said Chiara, and for the first time she smiled at Ari, and reached a wrinkled hand to touch her face. “You have been through much already, but I am afraid it is only the beginning. Both your parents were stolen from you and nothing but darkness would bring them back. But you must not give into the darkness; you must fight against the shadows.”

At these words Ari thought of Cambridge and Larissa. She knew the darkness that Chiara spoke of; the darkness of the wraith’s magic, the darkness of evil. The Ancients had tried to tempt her with that darkness, had offered her life in order to be part of it. But it was only because of Ragon that she had refused them. Chiara didn’t understand that it was Ragon’s love that had allowed her to fight them off.

“You don’t understand. It was only because of Ragon that I am even still alive. He’s the one who has made me into a good person, not my powers and not this destiny. I know that everyone thinks vampires are evil, because they drink blood, but they aren’t all like that. I have seen more evil in humans than I have in Ragon and his friends. I won’t kill him, just because of a destiny I have inherited!” said Ari, feeling the weight of her responsibility crashing down on her. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You must do what you believe is right; that is your gift and curse,” said Chiara, placing her finished cigarette into an ashtray on the table.

Ari was just about to ask what the right thing to do was, when a sudden look of horror swept over Chiara’s face.

“Chiara?” asked Ari.

Chiara did not respond at first. Her eyes flickered manically; when finally she opened them, they were ghostly white. Ari was just about to call for help when Chiara spoke. Her voice was hoarse like sandpaper, and again Ari felt the crackle of electricity all around her.

“I see a blood bond; close but far away… kin but not friend,” said Chiara.

As soon as Chiara spoke, the back of Ari’s hand burnt and she held it up to examine it. Inscribed across her palm was a strange black symbol, Ari had never seen before. It looked like the illustration of a gothic sun, with black curls coming from a central circle; inside the black circle was four stars and something else… an intricate twist of white lines that spurred from the centre and intertwined to form a never ending loop.  

“My hand…” she mumbled, but Chiara didn’t seem to hear her.    

“You will know them soon,” Chiara added, dragging Ari’s attention back to her and the whites of her eyes.

Ari screwed up her face in confusion; what did that mean? There was something familiar about the empty white eyes that stared back at her, and she raked her brains trying desperately to remember what it was. Then a vision she’d had months ago came to her. It wasn’t a vision exactly, more like a dream she had forgotten. She remembered standing in a room with three vampires, while an elderly lady with the same white eyes as Chiara, was questioned. Now as she recalled the dream, she knew exactly who the vampires had been- the Ancients. In the vision the elderly lady had warned Ari to run and hide.

Reaching for Chiara’s hand and pulling her from her trance, Ari said, “I’ve seen someone else do that before.”

Chiara looked up suddenly and said, “What do you mean? What happened?”

“You just went into a sort of trance. You told me that I would know someone soon that was kin but not friend, and I have seen someone else do that before. It was months ago; when I was back in Australia. I saw the Ancients, at least I think it was the Ancients… they were torturing an old woman. In the dream her eyes went white, just like yours did then, and then she warned me to run.”

“She communicated with you during a vision?” asked Chiara, her face losing what little colour it had left, so that it almost perfectly matched her long white hair.

“Yes.”

“It is a powerful seer who can do such a thing. At any time prophecy may grip a witch, to warn of things to come, but I know of only one with ability to be able to communicate with a future self,” she said, standing suddenly and moving over to an old stained dresser and retrieving a small photograph.

Chiara handed the photo to Ari. It was black and white, and clearly from many, many years ago. There were seven girls in the image, all wearing long, high necked dresses, and each smiling merrily back at the photographer.