 InformationBY: Silverwind Fara - 0silverwindfara0 [at] gmail [dot] com LOOSELY BASED ON: "Genesis" (English translation of the Swedish story "Begynnelse", formerly known as "Skapelsen enligt Magra") - An alternative universe crossover fan(slash)-, songfiction between the movie "Blade 1", "the Bible" and "The book of Nod" by Silverwind Fara. (The songs were: "Psalm" by Nordman, "Forever yours" by Nightwish and "Remember when it rained" by Josh Groban) If you want you can read it here GENRE: Original story, Romance, Mystery, Gothic horror, Modern fantasy, Historical fiction, Boy-love. RATING: NC-17 / MA - Mature: This story and the art in it is SUITABLE FOR ADULT READERS. STATUS: Work in progress. WORD COUNT: 28 907, for now anyway. WARNINGS: The story itself is not that bad, really, but now and then it do contains, bad language, sex, violence, blood-play, character's death, hints of incest, hints of rape, hints of sex with a minor, cross-dressing and homosexual relationships (male/male) so I'm going to post a warning for all of this just so people won't feel tricked into reading something they don't want to. Also I use artistic licenses on religious facts like the Bible to make it fit into my story so it's probably pretty blasphemous. If this is not you cup of tea then leave now.  COPYRIGHT © / DISCLAIMER: The story, all characters (that don't belong to the Bible or the world of mythology), places etc. are copyrighted © by Silverwind Fara. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead and any likenesses to unoriginal characters are purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Also the illustrations on this page is made for the story and the story alone, do not steal, borrow, crop, manipulate, change, or otherwise use them in any way.BETAREAD BY: My lovely beta-readers and great friends Claudia and Noah (Daisy) who has worked with this story, through all its mutations, over and over again, rephrased my sentences, fixed my grammar- and spelling-errors, put punctuations in the right places, cheered me on when I struggled with pluperfect and helped me with facts about things that I need to know for my writing - like the education-system in England for example. I could never have done this without you and I am forever grateful. (Also a thank to Chuchacz who helped me with the latin words and phrases when I begun the story, even though I'm not sure that she would recognize it now since it changed quite a lot since then.) ILLUSTRATED BY: Astasia - astasia666 [at] gmail [dot] com. She is a great and talented artist who so far has done everything I asked of her without even rising an eyebrow at my complicated ideas and many, many characters. The illustration are: 1 = "Shadow Worlds and Chaos Lights", 2 = "Silverwind Fara", 3 = "The creation of the world", 4 = "Burn at the stake", 5 = "Friends", 6 = "Fluttering paper", 7 = "Agwe was the leader of the group", 8 = "Mirror, Mirror", 9 = "The creatures in the underworld", 10 = "Happy kissing", 11 = "My name is Eoli Anaya", 12 = "Are you lonely?", 13 = "A meeting in the middle of the day", 14 = "In the name of God", 15 = "Double daydreaming", 16 = "Epilepsy?", 17 = "I love you!", 18 = "He is a vampirehunter!", 19 = "Worried frown", 20 = "Their 'childhood' was over", 21 = "Holy vs Unholy", 22 = "I want to help you", 23 = "Fearless leader", 24 = "A wise girl", 25 = "A spoiled child", 26 = "Perfect". THANKS TO: Besides my betareaders, Chuchacz and Astasia I also like to thank my best friend Maria. My friend Linda. My cousin Lizzy. Malin and Nicklas, who were there when I wrote Genesis and inspired to its coming to be. And last but not least my husband and my kids. NOTE: If you like to read some of my first drafts, see story-related stuff like timelines and real-face-models or simply read my rantings about things. Check out my LiveJournal! I also have a write-a-little-every-day-advent-calender in December each year that will be posted on my LJ. LAST UPDATE: 19/04/10 - Shadow Worlds and Chaos Lights -I He remembered his coming to be, the first awakening. The big explosion that sent shockwaves through the antimatter that was the beforeworld, that made it change shape to burning suns and brilliant stars, created planets around the suns through fires, earthquakes and heavy layers of ice and formed moons to orbit the planets. The cosmos had been in labour, birthing one miraculous part of the universe after the other.The creature had been marvelled by it, not as much by the creation itself, even though it was nothing but amazing. No. What had astonished him the most had been the mere thought of the enormous power that had to be behind it. He had wanted that power for himself, the power to create and destroy anything he wanted by the slightest will of his mind. So big had his desire been that he had reached out with his whole being and tapped into cosmos itself as he grasped for the power of the Creator. And for a second, he had felt it. The power had been within his grasp. He had had it; he had been a God. And then...With no forewarning at all, suddenly a severe pain had shot through him, and he had been plunged into a deathlike unconsciousness. He didn't know how long he had remained in that state, but it had been the singing that had brought on his second awakening. Though song might have been the wrong word for it, for it had been more like a humming sound, wordless and monotone yet still alluring, like a seid or a magic rhyme. The creature had been helplessly drawn to it. At first the sound had seemed to be coming from everywhere at once; it had whispered with the wind in the soft grass and roared in the mighty trees; it had echoed from the high mountains and murmured in brooks and springs. He had heard it in the bird's singing, in the buzzing from bugs and insects and in the howling of the beasts. But after he had listened for a while, the countless voices had begun to melt together into one single voice. It had been the voice of a young boy, not even in his teens yet. The creature wasn't sure how it had happened, but from the first time he saw the human, who's name had been Trian Jun, or simply Jun as the boy's friends called him, a sort of bond had been created between them. Not that the boy ever noticed. In fact Jun had never known he had been there, and the creature had wanted it that way; he had been perfectly satisfied with simply watching, not wanting to interact with the pathetic humans. Were they really supposed to be the crown of creation? The creature found that quite laughable. And as time had gone by, Jun had grown older and more and more skilled in his magic. His chants had echoed over the hills where he had had his home; birds and beasts had listened to his song and followed his command. He could make grass grow and withered flowers come to life just by singing to them; at the sound of his voice, the water in the stream started to flow against its natural current and wind and stormy weather turned away when he called. By the time Jun was a fully grown man, he had even gained the power to control his fellow humans and could bend them according to his will, though that was a gift he seldom used. The creature had thought that that was ridiculous. With powers like that, Jun could easily have affected the minds of the people who surrounded him, as well as the leaders of the world, and made himself the chief over the village, and later, king or even emperor. But, no, the stupid brat had hardly used his power at all. He had been happy living his pointless peasant life in his dull little village, not taking any of the chances to gain power that was given him. The creature had been bored, really bored. On several occasions, he had tried to get away from the man, but as soon as he had gotten far enough to not be able to hear Jun's singing, an overwhelming fatigue had come over him, and he had almost fallen into unconsciousness again. So over and over again, he had been forced to return to the man's side and the never-ending boredom. And to make things even worse, Jun had married a plain-looking, simple-minded and absolutely non-magic girl called Rose, and she had given birth to two children, both of them as simple and plain as their mother. They lived their life together in a genuine happiness that the creature found almost disgusting. But then one day, something had happened that had changed life for all of them. Three strangers had come to the village claiming themselves to be men of God sent to spread the great gospel to the heathens that still worshipped pagan Gods. They had heard Jun sing, had seen what he could do with his voice. And chaos had erupted. The creature had watched, horrified. Of course he hadn't liked Jun and his pathetic little family, but that gave those men no right to act like this. Jun was... His! He saw how the men beat Jun unconscious in order to take him with them and how they had, as a final precaution, cut out Jun's tongue so that he couldn't use his spells, as they called it, against them when he woke up. He saw them scream orders to burn Jun's home to the ground and kill everyone that might be inside, and he saw Jun's younger brother take his sister-in-law and the two children and flee up into the mountains saving them from being found and killed too. The men had taken Jun to a big city far away from the village, locked him up in the dungeons and accused him of being a warlock and having command over demons. When Jun had continued to claim his innocence, they had stripped him naked, whipped him, burned him with glowing pins and used the most horrible torture mankind could come up with to make him confess his sins, and by that save his own soul.  And finally Jun gave in, broken by the physical and mental torture and exhausted by the cold and the lack of food and sleep; he admitted to have done everything they accused him of just to make them stop. And then the verdict had fallen; they had sentenced him to burn at the stake as heretic and a practiser of witchcraft.The creature shuddered. He remembered Jun's death. The man's green eyes had been filled with terror and pain, their colour almost golden as they'd reflected the destructive flames. He had seen the man's pale skin getting blistered and turning reddish black, his long brown hair catching fire and burning like a torch. The creature had been born that day, brought to life by the anguish and the suffering from Jun, the self-righteousness that'd oozed from the men of the church and the lewd gloating from the spectators as the accused faced his dreadful death; his body created from the blazing fire, the white ashes of man he had been bonded to and the black smoke that had been his first breath and Jun's last coughing one. He didn't remember much of his first time as a solid being. Blinded by the pain of his own birth and with the smell of burnt flesh in his nostrils, he had fled as far as he could, no longer hindered by the siren-voice. Jun would never enchant anyone with his singing again. A choked sound, far too close to a sob to be to his liking, escaped from between the creature's lips, and he forced himself to snap out of the memories. He refused to dwell in the past. Jun had been a human sacrifice, nothing more, just the first one in a row of sacrifices that had to be made to give the creature the power he had always longed for. Yes, the power of a god. That was all that mattered, all he needed to think about. It had already begun; the wheels were in motion. It had been surprisingly easy to find some mortals willing to do his work, stupid mortals, easy to sacrifice when he didn't need them any more. They had seen him as a helper, a saviour, an ally in need, so he had simply played along. Some words about the light's flawless victory over darkness, some quotes from the bible, a promise of powers they would gain if they just did a few things first, and they had been more or less ecstatic in their eagerness to serve him. And now they waited at his command, ready to start the ceremony as soon as everything was prepared. It wasn't long now; soon no one, no thing would be able to stop him. Soon! He closed his eyes. IIThe moonlight and the shadows gave a fairytale atmosphere to the otherwise ordinary objects in the apartment; it was reflected in the TV-screen as if it was a high-tech version of a forest pond from a storybook, swept over the tiny kitchen area and made the coffeemaker and the toaster on the counter shine as if they were of purest silver instead of plain stainless steel, continued past a couple of wall lamps and a small desk cluttered with student literature along with a laptop marked 'Property of St. Isolder's University' until it finally lingered on a black mini-stereo on the nightstand next to the bed. A young man was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book. A spring storm earlier that day had pulled down some of the electrical wires in the area and left the people that were living there without both electricity and hot water, so the man had equipped himself with a flashlight with which he illuminated the text on the pages as he read. The man's name was Heedan Ortus, a name his few but loyal friends used to say fit him because it was pronounced almost like the word 'Heathen'. His surname Ortus meant 'Daybreak' in Latin, and was a name Heedan found both corny and a little romantic in a gothic kind of way. That name was, by the way, one of the few things that connected him to a father he had never met, so Heedan had kept it as his own. As for the 'Heathen' part, it couldn't be denied that Heedan was more or less a heathen. Not that he was an atheist or that he didn't believe in anything, because he did, he just didn't believe in the God they talked about in church. The church was boring, the services were dull and one-sided, and the priest's monotone chanting about a God, who to Heedan didn't seem to care the least about the people that were living now, didn't interest him at all. He understood that the words from the priest's mouth and the rituals he performed in the service had some kind of meaning for the believers, but to Heedan they were just empty words; there was no life in them. No magic.  It was the occult that called out to him, astrology, tarot, crystals, other realms, the unexplainable. But most of all, he was fascinated by his childhood's fairytale characters, vampires and werewolves, fairies, trolls and goblins, ghosts, all those beings that lived in the nature beyond human knowledge and to some extent the angels and demons the priest spoke of in his sermons. And they weren't fairytale characters to him; they were real.At least they had been real when he was a child. As a child Heedan had been living with his mother, Ailene and his uncle, his mother's twin brother, Adrian, as the only child in a small and quiet suburb where the rest of the population were older men and women that wanted to spend their final years away from all the stress and noises in the big city. He had been a shy and silent child, who kept mostly to himself and even avoided to play with other children at the rare occasions when their neighbours had had their grandchildren or great-grandchildren visiting. His mother and uncle had been worried about him and the fact that he was always alone; they hadn't understood that he'd never really felt lonely. He had friends and a lot of them too, friends that played with him, cared for him and some that really scared him. He had seen trolls and goblins in tree stumps and stones; the trees had been demons that'd reached after him with their branches. He had seen satyrs and dryads dance in the moonlight, heard fairies sing him to sleep at night and seen angels play hide and seek in the clouds during thunderstorms. His mother's clean laundry on the drying rack had been ghosts captured by his mother's clothes-pegs and the darkness under his bed had been occupied by a whole bunch of zombies, werewolves and vampires. He had believed in all those things that grownups came up with to scare or amuse their children, like the Boogieman, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. But as the years went by, they all had disappeared one by one. It had begun when Santa Claus had disappeared one Christmas, or maybe not so much disappeared as transformed into Uncle Adrian with a fake white beard and big pillows stuffed under the red suit. The magic had disappeared around the jolly Christmas character and the rest of Heedan's friends had slowly but surely followed the same path. The trolls and goblins had turned to stones and tree stumps; the demons had become regular trees. He never saw the satyrs dance again or any angels that played in the clouds and could no longer hear the fairies singing. The ghosts had turned back to clothes and clean sheets that Heedan had had to help his mother hang when she had too much do to at work, and the only thing he could find under his bed were dust bunnies and occasionally a single sock that had lost its mate. And that made Heedan sad. Others might have laughed, embarrassed by the reminders of such silly childhood fantasies, but Heedan was different. They hadn't been fantasies to him. They had been real and he missed them as much as anyone would miss friends that they had to leave behind when moving to another town. And, when he thought about it, that was in fact exactly what had happened; he had grown older and moved further and further into adulthood. He had left his childhood's shadow creatures behind, lost the magic, lost his ability to see, and lost his friends. And he had spent the latest years of his life trying to find them again. The bookshelf in Heedan's apartment was a testament of how far he really had gone in his search for his lost friends. There were a great number of books about how to train the ability to see the invisible, how to speak with the dead, communicate with animals or foretell tomorrow's weather in the bottom of a tea cup. There were books about the dark arts, tarot reading, crystal healing and sexual magic, about white witch Sabbaths, parallel dimensions, UFOs and reincarnation. There were even books about how to grow and prepare different herbs, that would give strong hallucinations which would let the user come in contact with the other side, but to be frank, the closest to contact with anything the users got was the contact with the doctor that took care of them after they used the advice from the book. Almost every subject that was associated with the supernatural was represented in the bookshelf; no books were too insignificant or illogical. Heedan had bought them all with the single hope that they might hold the answer of how to find his friends again. However, so far they all had failed him and now they stood in the bookshelf collecting dust, like gravestones over his decreasing hope. In boxes at the bottom of the bookshelf lay different folders with papers, from the uncountable courses, séances and seminaries he'd been to, divided into two groups. The first one was for courses that had been so obviously fake that Heedan, right from the beginning, had noticed that it was just a way to rip people off, to get their money or those that had started out good but then turned out to be as false as the first one when the people that arranged it started to talk about book subscriptions at exorbitant prices or wanted him to join whatever cult they belonged to. He didn't even know himself why he kept those papers, but he guessed it was for the same reason he kept all the disappointing books; as a proof to himself that he had done everything in his power to find answers. The second group, however, contained papers from the courses that most likely had been for real; there had been no cult memberships or expensive subscriptions that would mark them as a fraud, and Heedan had seen it in the eyes of the other participants, as they had left high in spirit over what they just experienced, that there really had been something there. Heedan had been glad for their sakes, but he himself had gone home with an aching emptiness inside. Whatever it was the others had experienced, it hadn't been for him. Those nights he often cried himself to sleep, begging for his friends to answer him, to let him return to them so that he once again could feel whole. Still, he hadn't given up. He continued searching for his lost friends with a passion and an obsession worthy of a knight on a quest for the Holy Grail. He went to even more seminars, he read even more books, grasping at straws for anything that could help him fight the voice of reason that told him that maybe his friends from the past had been nothing more than fantasies created by a lonely child, and that it was time to accept that and grow up once and for all. Heedan knew he was isolating himself, and that he let this research of his take up way to much time in his life, but he wouldn't have it any other way. So what if his classmates and even some of the teachers thought that he was an oddball because he never socialised with people? Who cared what they thought? They weren't important. It was another thing when it came to his family, of course. Last Christmas, his uncle had talked to him, one of those talks with a capital T, where he urged more than suggested that Heedan should see a psychiatrist for a routine check-up, since they had had cases of schizophrenia in the family. His mother had been a little less dramatic and simply but not so discretely hinted that maybe a girlfriend would ease his loneliness and get the thought of his imaginary friends out of his head once and for all. But not even his family could make him change his mind. He knew he wasn't sick or insane and he definitely didn't need to "get laid," which was exactly what his mother meant, just in different words. He knew that his friends had been real and someday, somehow he would find them again. He had to find them. So that was the reason why he sat and read yet another book about the supernatural, hoping that this time he might find what he was looking for. 
The light from the flashlight moved over the pages, momentarily taking a detour to shed its light on the second hand curtain's pattern of light blue flowers as the hand that held the flashlight temporarily changed position when Heedan turned a page in the book, and then back to the pages again.The book he was reading was titled 'The Invisible;' it wasn't as bad as some of the other books he had read on the subject, but it wasn't actually good either. The story was told by a woman, Ruby Clark, who, several times in her childhood, had been abducted by something she had named, as the title said, The Invisible; supernatural beings like the ones Heedan had met himself when he was a child. Unfortunately for both Ruby and her readers, she only got to tell her story in the first 3 chapters, then the author of the book, apparently some journalist, had taken the rest of the book's 12 chapters for himself where he did his own interpretations and made long and pompous parallels to Black holes, Area 51 and the Bermuda triangle. The whole thing felt rather pointless. Heedan yawned and glanced at his wristwatch. The digital numbers that glowed softly in the darkness told him that it was almost three in the morning. He rose, and put the flashlight on the table, stretched and yawned again. He should have been in bed hours ago, and he knew for a fact that it would be hell to get up for school the following day, even if he did go to bed right now. He sighed and fought against the feeling of disappointment; another day had gone by and still he hadn't found anything. He was just about to close the book and silence the long-winded journalist in the middle of his parallels when suddenly a piece of paper fell out from pages of the book and whirled to the floor with a fluttering sound. Heedan picked it up and was just about to put it back in the book when the light-circle from the flashlight, which still lay on the table, fell upon the paper and allowed Heedan to read what was written on it. Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! There wasn't anything strange about the paper it was written on. Nor was it anything weird with the writing; the handwriting was neat and straight without any characteristic twists and turns and the two words were written in red ink, repeated over and over again, from the top of the paper to the bottom; "Help Us! Help Us! Help Us!" But still Heedan couldn't stop looking at it. He couldn't explain why a totally ordinary piece of paper had suddenly appeared to be the most remarkable thing he'd ever seen, or why he felt forced to repeat the words to himself over and over again; "Help Us! Help Us! Help Us!" A strange yet familiar feeling came over him. That feeling he used to get in his childhood when he could stare intently for several minutes on what everyone else said was only a stone and just know it was a troll. The feeling that this was something different; something that didn't belong to the grey reality. His pulse quickened; his legs turned to jelly; he heard the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears and the hand that held the paper trembled. "Yes!" his soul rejoiced; this was it; this was what he had been searching for for so long. But then suddenly, as unexpected as the feeling had come over him, it was gone. Heedan shook his head as if he had been in trance and a sob ripped itself from his throat, "No! Please don't leave me alone again." Still a little dizzy from the experience, he carefully put paper in the book and closed the book's covers around it and, as if that had been some kind of magic ritual, when that was done, the peculiar atmosphere had completely vanished. Had it really happened or had it just been his sleep-deprived body playing tricks on his yearning mind? He glanced at his watch again and couldn't stop a gasp from surprise. The glowing numbers on the watch showed 04.02. Heedan knit his brows; how long had he really stared at that paper? How could an hour go by in the blink of an eye? Could his friends really be behind this? For a couple of seconds he just stared at the watch, bewildered, but then a sad laugh escaped him. Of course it couldn't be his friends' work; there was even a perfectly logical explanation to the mystery. He probably hadn't looked good enough when he looked at the watch last time and simply believed that it was 02.57 rather than 03.57, a perfectly logical reason and an easy mistake to do. With a dejected sigh, Heedan changed into the washed-out t-shirt he used as pyjamas, got into bed and pulled the comforter around himself. He looked towards the table, where the book still lay with the paper hidden between its covers, one final time - "Help Us! Help Us! Help Us!" Help who? He didn't know - and turned off the flashlight. That night he dreamt about blood, not a few drops or a puddle, but whole oceans of blood that reached as far as he could see, and in the middle of this blood ocean was a pair of eyes looking at him, their gaze filled with a silent plea. He didn't remember the dream when he woke up. III
Agwe was the leader of the group and his whole appearance radiated a collected calm and such an authority that it was impossible to see him as anything else but a leader. He was a demonkin: half demon, half human. His skin was silver-pale like the moon, his white-less eyes sparkled like stars and his long hair was black as the midnight sky. From his shoulder blades grew two tiny, black wings, but they didn't seem strong enough to bear him if he actually tried to fly.Tana was sitting next to him. He could be described as nothing less than an angel with sparkling snow-white wings and long golden hair that fell down his back in perfectly shaped curls. Only his eyes betrayed that he had human blood in his veins, but those eyes did nothing to spoil his beauty. In fact, it was the eyes that were the most remarkable thing about him; they were all the colours of the rainbow, starting with cold violet around the pupils, going through the whole spectrum of colours and ending with flaming fiery red against the whites of his eyes. Next to him, leaning slightly against the angelspawn's shoulder, was Idin. Her ash-blond hair and the sickly paleness of her skin seemed to generate an eerie glow and her yellow, predatory eyes reflected the flames. The look in her eyes, however, was not the wild restlessness or the bloodthirsty madness that one could expect from a child of darkness; instead it was filled with an inner calm and a sort of warm satisfaction that one could only find within those who have accepted their destiny, no matter how hard it was. Ricven was sat next to Idin; he was a fairy with the mischievous features of a teenager and a wild, untamed mane of purple-coloured hair that fell down over his shoulders all the way to the floor. The look in his bright blue eyes, however, was not mischievous at all, but melancholy and kind of empty. His skin was pale with shades of violet around his eyes; on his cheekbones were two triangular markings from his pointed ears towards his nose and a pair of shimmering wings grew from his back. The fifth and the last of the creatures around the campfire was Mu'atsu, an androgynous male with blood red wings and hair and a pair of nightmarish eyes that were nothing more than dark pupils in pools of blood with no white visible at all. His skin was as pale as Idin's except for on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose where there was a faint blush that made him look innocent in spite of his blood-coloured eyes. They were an odd mix of creatures, but even though they were different, they had something in common; they all had been either cursed by the creator or cast out by their own. It was Agwe that had found the others. His father had been an angel, one of the followers of Lucifer, who was banished from heaven at the beginning of time, and his mother had been a human girl who had fallen for his father's mystic charm and good looks. Through his father's treachery, Agwe had been cursed even before he was born, not welcome in either heaven or hell because of his human heritage and considered a pariah among the humans because he wasn't fully one of them. Agwe had already at a very young age understood the whole meaning of being alone and an outsider so, as soon as he had been old enough to take care of himself, he had left his mother and father, making it his mission to travel the world looking for people that had been cursed and cast out, not wanting others to suffer the same fate as he had and to give them a home when everything else in the creation had turned against them. The first one had been Idin, the very first of the Black Lilies that Cain and his offspring had sewn amongst the humans. Once she had been a human girl, living a common life with a human's joys and sorrows but that had changed the night she had met Cain. He had ripped her throat open with his teeth, had drunk her life and her blood to still his own hunger. She had fought back for her life, kicking him, hitting him and a single drop of blood had fallen from the vampire's nose down onto his victim blending with hers. When the fighting stopped, Cain had left her drained body to die, not for a second considering the possibility that she would inherit the same curse as he. When Agwe had found her, she had been more of a wild beast than a human girl. Overwhelmed with her thirst for blood and driven to the verge of madness by powers she couldn't control, she had been roaming around the outskirts of her old home, mindlessly attacking people that got too close. Agwe had taken her to his home in the underworld and slowly but surely brought her back to sanity. He had told her about himself and his mission and asked her if she wanted to stay and join him in his search for others, and she had stayed with him. Ricven of the Fae had been rejected by his own kind because of his melancholy spirit and serious nature that had shone through everything he did even though he had tried to hide it behind an infectious laughter and promiscuous living. He had tried to blend in among the other fairies, tried to be carefree and joyful, laughed and danced and shared his body with everyone who wanted it. But he'd never felt content with his life; he'd never felt complete; something had been missing and it had filled him with an emptiness, a sadness and a desperation that'd ached inside of him, day and night. Soon, others had noticed it too, and then things had taken a real turn for the worst. Fairies were beings of love, joy and eroticism; there shouldn't be such a thing as a heartbroken fairy; it went against their nature and if one ever appeared, he or she would be considered an abnormality that had to be removed from the society. So the Fae's high council had simply told Ricven that he was no longer welcome among them before banishing him from the fairy realm. Ricven had wandered through the worlds alone and miserable, sinking deeper and deeper into depression and his longing for death, not caring about anything besides finding a way to end his suffering. It was in that state that the demonkin and his vampire companion had found him. Ricven had, for the first time in his life, found understanding for the feelings he had inside of him, and even though his new friends couldn't take away the feeling of emptiness, they had given him a sense of belonging and a purpose in life. The three of them had later found a winged, rainbow-eyed child alone and abandoned at the water's edge and understood that he must be an angelspawn, the result of one of the many relationships between the sons of heaven and the humans and that the child must have been the sole survivor of the great flood that probably killed his mortal mother and sent his father to the realm of the fallen. They had named the boy Tana and he had come to live with them accepting them as his new family. Shortly after that, they found a creature from before the beginning of time, Mu'atsu. The creature had been drowning in the darkness of his own soul and the pain from his broken heart, but Agwe had saved him from the brink of death and invited him into their little group. Eons had passed since then and time had welded the five beings together with bonds stronger than friendship or family ties, stronger than erotic attraction or the bond between spouses. They had been with each other for better and worse and still they all could agree that there were no other people they would like to spend eternity with. Whatever happened, they would always have each other. IVTruth be told, it became first ten, then fifteen, then twenty more minutes before Heedan finally woke, still dazed with sleep, and stumbled to the bathroom and into the shower. The electricity was still off so the water was ice-cold and when he came out of the shower five minutes later with a towel around his waist and another wrapped around his hair, he had goose-flesh all over his body and his lips were an unhealthy shade of blue. "T—there..." he mumbled, his teeth chattering. "I'm awake...I'm awake!" Maybe it was the power of suggestion or maybe it was his body's reaction to the cold, Heedan didn't care which; the important thing was that after the shower, he actually felt okay and ready to face a new day. He spent a few more minutes stretching his body and kneading the sleep from his muscles before shaving, thankful that he had used a regular razor instead of an electric one, which would have been useless without power, and putting on the school uniform of St. Isolder's University: a pair of well-creased grey pants, a white shirt and a black tie with the school's emblem, a pair of wings, on it. He gazed at his reflection in the mirror. His skin bore the weak signs of the spring's first tan and his long dark-brown hair fell freely around a well-shaped face with high cheekbones, soft, rosy lips and a pair of emerald-green eyes that seemed almost fluorescent, framed by long, dark eyelashes. He knew he looked quite good, though now his eyes were circled with the telltale marks of too little sleep that made him look hollow-eyed, and his lifestyle of always staying inside reading and eating junk food was starting to affect his body, that wasn't exactly top physique, nothing alarming yet but definitely not flattering. He looked a lot like his father, his mother had told him so, and since his mother was a short, curvy woman with curly, blond hair and blue eyes, Heedan had no other choice than to believe her on that. When Heedan had gotten old enough to realize that other children had 'daddies' as well as 'mommies' and asked his mother why his father wasn't with them Ailene had hugged him tightly and answered that "I know that your father would have stayed with us if he only could, but he had to leave us," and back then Heedan had been satisfied with that answer. Later, when Heedan was a teenager she had told him more. She'd met Heedan's father at a school dance when she was in secondary school. He had seemed so lost and lonely that she couldn't help herself. She had started to talk to him, and as the evening turned to night one thing had lead to another. Ailene had ended up pregnant after a single night of passion and against all reason, decided to keep the baby. She had never regretted becoming a mother at such a young age, but it hadn't been easy for her. Her pregnancy, of course, had become a huge scandal in her small hometown. The incident had made her lose most of her friends and had caused her to get into a huge fight with her parents over it, a fight that resulted in them refusing to talk to her until shortly after Heedan's first birthday, when they slowly but surely had realized that it wasn't that bad to be grandparents after all. Only Ailene's twin brother had stood by her the whole time, and he had continued to be there for them both throughout Heedan's life. And what about the boy that had been Heedan's father? Well, Ailene hadn't seen or heard from him since the night they had shared together; it was like he had vanished from the face of the earth, something that was really hard to do in such a small town. But Heedan's father had done it; and not only had he managed to vanish completely, but when his mother had started to ask people if they knew what had happened to the boy, she couldn't find a single person in the whole town that remembered him even being there at all. It was as if he wasn't really human. Still she hadn't uttered one harsh word about his father during Heedan's whole life. Like she had done when Heedan had been a child, she kept telling everyone that asked her that Heedan's father had had to leave them and that she never expected to see him again. 
"You look so much like him, Heedan," Ailene had said one evening, shortly before Heedan had left for the university. "Especially your eyes..." she had sighed and added, still lost in memories of her one-time lover. "...He had such sad eyes...So guilty."Heedan smiled a little at the memory and met his own gaze in the mirror. It could have been a trick made by the light but for a flash of a second, he almost thought he saw another face looking back at him, a pale and skinny face with tear-filled eyes in the same colour as his own; the other's whole being a vision of sadness, guilt and broken hope. But before he could fully focus on the other face, the illusion was gone and he only saw himself again. "Hey! Wait!" Heedan exclaimed, giving the mirror an almost desperate look as if daring it to change again. When nothing more happened, he stuck his tongue out at his own reflection in a moment of pure childishness before straightening his tie and putting his hair into a tidy ponytail. By now, the sun had risen far enough that it shone straight into the apartment and robbed it of all the mystery the moonlight had given it earlier. It was, in fact, a really scruffy looking apartment even though Heedan had done his best to keep it clean and homely. The daylight revealed a collection of mismatching, second-hand furniture, all in different stages of wear and tear. The few walls that didn't have bookcases against them were more or less covered with posters and photographs in an attempt to hide the worn-out wallpaper that hadn't been in fashion for the last few decades, and colourful rag-rugs covered the linoleum that once had been green but now had faded to a dirt-gray colour. Sure, it wasn't fancy, but at least Heedan knew that he got what he paid for. This apartment didn't belong to campus but was let by a private landlord that specified in letting to students, retired and low-paid people who were interested in cheap apartments rather than well-situated ones or a nice view. This particular apartment complex, for example, lay on a shady backstreet, hidden between a pornographic store and the Salvation Army's shelter for the homeless, but it was closer to campus than a lot of other apartment complexes in town and was, indeed, really cheap, which left money over for Heedan to pay for more important things, like buying more books for his research and paying for courses and seminaries, so he was happy with it most of the time. Okay, so it was annoying when he didn't have electricity and hot water, but such things came with the cheap price and he could handle it. Heedan made a quick search through the clutter of books and papers on his desk, stuffed the ones he needed for school into his backpack of blue denim and dropped it on the floor by the kitchen table as he went to get the morning paper that lay neatly folded outside the door. On the way back, he passed the dead refrigerator and took out some breakfast; a lukewarm soda and left over pizza from the day before, and he put everything on the table. Not even bothering to sit down Heedan put a slice of pizza in his mouth and opened the newspaper, skimming through the news that reported the same misery as usual, mixed with ads about Slimfast diets and miracle work-out machines that promised you the body of an athlete with only five minutes training a day. He ignored the sports section, read his horoscope with an amused smile, because horoscopes in newspapers were at least something he didn't believe in, and flipped to the comics. And then he saw it, there in the middle of the open newspaper, just so that it covered today's comic strip of 'Hägar the Horrible' was a small piece of paper, not bigger than the palm of his hand, and on the paper some words written in red ink. The memories of what had happened during the night came rushing back at him and a cold shockwave spread through his body. Agwe Idin Ricven Tana Mu'atsu Heedan stared at the paper but he could no longer see the words. The world around him became blurry and made the red ink look like it was stains of blood instead of letters. The world spun around him, and he felt like he was going to faint. The sound of his cell-phone alarm brought him back to reality and he shook his head to get rid of the dizziness. It was the second alarm for the day. It had happened far too many times that Heedan had become immersed in a book or lost in a daydream during his breakfast and quite simply lost track of time, so therefore he had set his cell-phone-alarm not one, not two, but three times every morning; first when it was time to wake up, then when it was a suitable time to go and finally, the third time, when he had to go if he would make it in time for school at all. As Heedan bent slightly to pick up his backpack from the floor he happened to look down at the table and all colour disappeared from his face. The newspaper he had been reading lay folded at one side of the table and in front of him was instead a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a scrapbook he had bought earlier to collect newspaper articles about things he found interesting, but yet hadn't started with. The book lay open and upon the first page, the mysterious papers, both the one from the book and the one from the newspaper, had been pasted. Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Agwe Idin Ricven Tana Mu'atsu Heedan swallowed and shook his head again. His mouth became dry and he felt a couple of drops of cold-sweat run down his spine. "What's happening to me?" At the same moment he said those words, his cell-phone started to ring for the third time, Heedan jumped, and with a noise that sounded more or less like a whimper, he grabbed his backpack and rushed out of the apartment. V
As the other four rushed to his side he held up his arm for them all to see; his hand, all the way to the elbow, was covered with third degree burns and the skin on his upper arm was red and blistered; it was no question that it would have met the same fate as the rest of his arm if he hadn't pulled back in time.Tana gasped and a worried look marred his perfect features as he saw his friend's burnt skin. "That looks horrible! Does it hurt much, Ric?" He reached out and put a hand on Ricven's shoulder trying to send some of the healing energy he inherited from his father into him. The fae smiled a forced but kind smile. "Only when I move it; don't worry, angel. It will heal in time. Besides, it's a small price to pay if it means we have a chance to get out of here." The angel-spawn bit his lip, trying to think of a kind way to say what he wanted to say and then settled for the straight approach; "But you're not sure that he actually got it?" Ricven sighed. "No, I'm not, or how much of it that actually reached him. I guess if we want to be really sure, I can always do it again." "No!" As if those words had been her cue, Idin exploded: "I forbid you!" The vampire's eyes glowed dangerously, her anger getting fuel from her fear. "Look at your arm! You could have been crippled for life, or even have died, and for what? A plan we don't even know will work? You haven't even healed yet, and you're already suggesting you should do it again!" "I have to! You know I'm the only one that can reach through the..." Ricven started, but Idin interrupted him again. "No, Ric! We don't want to lose you, too..." she went silent, the word 'too' still hanging in the air. Ric caressed her cheek with his uninjured hand. "I know, I miss him also but isn't it partly for his sake we're doing this? Because he asked us?" Idin sighed but nodded, "For Andrin then." Andrin had been one of them, a member of their little family. He had been a human child with eyes that could see the shadow worlds, hidden from the mortals, and a bright and innocent soul that shone brighter than the sun, the moon and all the stars together. The whole thing with how Andrin had come to live with them was in fact a mystery in itself. None of them knew where the boy had come from, just that he had been there one day, standing at the opening of the cave they used as a home, a lonely boy, no more than two or three years old, hundreds of miles from the closest civilisation. Despite the fact that such a young child should have been terrified by being left alone and most likely would have cried for his parents, the boy hadn't been frightened at all instead he had beamed at the five beings, startling them because back then they had been certain that the boy couldn't see them at all, and had run towards them, arms wide open, giggling with joy as if they were old friends that hadn't seen each other in a long time. And on the boy's t-shirt, a note had been pinned. This is my son Andrin. For almost two years I have had visions of me leaving my son here in the mountains for someone to find him. That his destiny was separated from mine. I tried to fight against it but I know I have to do what the visions told me though it's not with an easy heart. His father wasn't human so know I can't keep him here with me in the human world. But still a mother can never easily give away her only son no matter how great the cause. So I beg you. Please, be you God or Goddess, take care of him! Blessed be Selene Ortus And so it had been. None of the five beings had ever claimed themselves to be gods or goddesses but they had taken him in, and it hadn't been long before he had become their little boy, their son, a light in their darkness. They had never found the boy's real mother, though they had looked for her everywhere, and when the boy asked about his parents, they simply told him that his mother was a powerful witch, and that she loved him very much. About his father they could only tell him what the letter had said, that he wasn't human. And the years had gone by. Their little boy grew up, passed through childhood, became a teenager and finally, a handsome young man, with emerald-green sparkling eyes, soft dark-brown hair and a warm gentle smile. Those had been happy years in the underworld, days filled with laughter and joy, and then one day, just before Andrin's nineteenth birthday, Skye had appeared. Skye had had the face of an angel, eyes like melted gold and his body had been tall and slender, almost with a feline grace. His skin, as well as his long, smooth hair, had been two-coloured and went from white on the right side of his body to black on his left side; the wings on his back mirrored the colours from the body and created an interesting contrast as the white wing almost glowed against the black skin and vice versa. They had suspected nothing. Skye had been polite and friendly; he had made them all feel good and made Andrin's eyes sparkle and his cheeks glow red from the very first time he saw him. Skye had lived with them for a while, and a steady friendship had grown between him and the rest of the group. He especially spent a lot time with Andrin, and soon it became clear to them that their boy and the golden-eyed creature were in love. They had start talking about leaving the caves and going to live in the Crystal Realm that was Skye's home, and even though it had been hard to let Andrin go, they had had nothing against it and wished them both the best of luck.  But then Skye showed them his true nature.The group still didn't understand how exactly it had happened, but they remembered every detail as if it happened yesterday. How Skye took Andrin's hand in his and twined their fingers together. How their hands had touched the wall around the opening to the cave, drawing symbols with their fingers on the cold stone. How the air suddenly seemed electric like just before a thunderstorm. Skye had kissed their boy, biting Andrin's lips, drawing blood. His eyes had been glowing in a poisonous yellow colour instead of the warm golden light they had grown used to, and Andrin had returned the kiss with love and passion. As their lips had met, the darkness had been pierced by a searing light, and there came sound as from millions of voices screaming in pain, and when the darkness had returned, both Skye and their boy had been gone. Everything had been silent, but over the cave opening was a shimmering force field, a barrier. They had been trapped inside the underworld, and to this day they still were. It would have been a lie to say that they didn't feel betrayed by their boy's actions, but still they couldn't blame him. Andrin had fallen in love; he had followed his heart, and how could they blame him for that? Mu'atsu himself had once followed his heart and fallen for a wraith of darkness, getting cursed in the process, and both Tana's and Agwe's mothers had fallen for sons of heaven and hell and paid for it with their lives. Yes, they knew about the power of love and what it does to people. So they forgave him for his actions and hoped that, even though he had betrayed them, he would find happiness with his beloved. Almost a year went by before they finally heard from their boy again. They received a letter written in Andrin's own blood and transported into their prison by dark magic. The letter was stained with tears. My friends (if I might call you that after all I've done), I don't ask for forgiveness because I know that there is no forgiveness for me. I wish I could say that I was misled or seduced but that would be a lie and you've taught me that I should always tell the truth, so the truth is what you get. Maybe I was misled or seduced in the beginning, but at the time, when I gave him my heart and chose to follow him, I knew exactly what I was doing and the consequences of my actions. And even though I regret the consequences, my heart keeps telling me that I'm doing the right thing. I feel so torn. I know that he is evil, never doubt that. I know what he is up to, his plans for humanity, and I know that he never will feel anything for me except maybe some kind of ownership. But I love him; I love him more than life itself, and I would do anything to be by his side because leaving it for even a second is worse than the most horrible torture you could think of. Yes, I would even die for him if that's what he wanted. I know it sounds pathetic, but please don't hate me, and even if you do, no one could hate me as much as I hate myself right now. The five of you were the best friends and the best family a lonely human child could have, so therefore I won't, I can't, leave you to your fate as prisoners in the underworld. Not when Skye is allowed to go free. I give you the only thing I have left to give, my own flesh and blood, my son. His mother is a kind woman; she will take care of him and see to it that he will be a fine young man one day, even though he has a bastard like me for a father. He will be strong enough to open the barrier and set you free. You must use him; you must stop Skye because I can't. I wish you all everything that is bright and good in the universe. If we ever meet again, it will be as enemies in a war about the fate of the world, and I honestly hope you'll win. Farewell, and thank you for everything. Andrin It was the last time they had heard from him, and now almost twenty years had passed. Agwe put another log on the fire and took care to make more noise than necessary, just to break the strained silence that had fallen since they all had gotten absorbed by memories of their lost son; then he spoke. "Don't worry Idin; he got it. But I think we scared the living daylights out of the poor boy in the process. His reaction to the messages was stronger than we expected. However, we know that the boy was a shadowseer as a child. If he got scared, it's probably just because he got surprised." Idin sighed. "I'm just worried. Will he understand our situation, and even more importantly, will he help us? Who knows? Maybe he'll think that we are monsters that deserve to be locked in for all eternity." "Idin! Don't say things like that!" Mu'atsu exclaimed. "He must help us; he's the world's only hope!" VI
St. Isolder's University was a huge castle-like building with stained-glass windows and doors big enough for a giant to walk through without risking hitting its head. The building itself was surrounded by a park area with fountains, Roman-inspired statues and fragrant flowers in all the colours of the rainbow.Heedan sank down on one of the wooden benches, put there so that the students could sit on them when they had lunch or classes outside so that they didn't ruin the groundskeeper's award-winning lawn. He was totally exhausted. His breath burned in his throat, his pulse was rapid and rushed and his face flushed from the unplanned exercise. His hair had gotten loose from his ponytail and fell freely around his face, and his sweat-soaked shirt stuck against his back. In an attempt to pull himself together and to slow his violently beating heart, he closed his eyes and hid his face in his hands, blocking out the surrounding world to focus on his breathing. It was stupid; what on Earth had made him run like that? The weird messages, the mood itself, or was it simply the sound of his cell-phone spooking him way out of proportion? He groaned in annoyance; the same phone he apparently left on his kitchen table as he ran from the apartment like a paranoid maniac. Had he even locked the door? He didn't remember. "Excuse me, but the class is about to start any minute," a soft and kind voice broke Heedan's trail of thoughts and he looked up at who had spoken. It was a young man, dressed in a school uniform of the same kind Heedan wore himself. The man's jacket was tied around his slim waist and from his left shoulder hung a small, red sports bag. His dark blond hair fell loose down his back and his brown eyes sparkled with humour and kindness. The young man looked vaguely familiar, but Heedan couldn't place where he had seen him before. "My name is Eoli Anaya," the man added as he saw Heedan's confused expression. "I was transferred here about a month ago; we have psychology together with Professor West, remember?" He smiled slightly, ready to apologise should he have mistaken Heedan for someone else. "You are Heedan, aren't you?" He held out his hand for Heedan to shake it. At first, Heedan could do nothing except stare rather stupidly at the man before him, but then he nodded. "Yes, I remember you; you moved here with your brother right? And yes, you're right; I'm Heedan, Heedan Ortus. Nice to meet you, Eoli!" Heedan took his hand and shook it. He knew that his own hand was still trembling slightly from the experience earlier, and that his palm was most certainly moist from sweat, but Eoli's handshake was strong and almost comforting. Eoli smiled. "Are you okay? You look a little pale. Have you seen a ghost or something?" His question was so earnest and straightforward that Heedan was struck by an impulse to tell him about everything that had happened to him during the past night and morning, but before he even had the time to open his mouth, the school bell started to ring, calling all the students to their classes. Eoli sighed and swept a stray lock of his hair from his face. "Come on, we should go! You know our dear professor; she has a nervous breakdown if the students are even a second late." A mischievous sparkle suddenly filled his eyes and he lowered his voice to a whisper: "Race you to class!" He turned around and started to run towards the classroom without even a care to check if Heedan had accepted the challenge. For a couple of seconds, Heedan just stood there looking at the young man speeding away from him, but then reality returned to him. "Hey wait!" he took a deep breath and hurried to catch up with Eoli. VIITables were placed in a horseshoe shape around the room and at them sat the members of the group that called themselves 'The Recruiters'; some of them were talking softly to each other and others were idly looking in the pamphlets that'd been laid out in front of them or yawning slightly, which was more of a reflex than a necessity since none of them actually needed to breathe. A young man with messy hair in an indescribable colour between blond and brown, and eyes grey as the sky on a rainy day, was busy doodling on his pamphlet while he waited for the meeting to start. Ornaments of flowers and stars were spread around the letters as his mind went further and further into his memories. His name was Sebastian Cooper, and it had been almost a year since he had had his first contact with the Recruiters. Back then, his life had been a total mess. He had been more or less a street kid, skipping school, hanging around with the wrong crowd, and getting in constant trouble with the law. He had lost track of how many times the police had picked him up and driven him home to his parents. Not that his dear mom and dad actually cared; no, Sebastian knew better than to think that. Of course, they seemed very grateful to have their troublemaking son safely home again, and they would smile sadly as they did make a half-hearted promise to punish him for his disobedience and look after him better in the future, but as soon as the police had left, they simply told him to go to his room and went back to their usual habits, getting as drunk and as high as they possibly could. Nothing ever changed. His parents never understood that he got himself into all that trouble to get a reaction from them. It wasn't hard to guess how his life would have turned out if he hadn't seen that ad in the newspaper. He could still remember every single word. Are you lonely? Feeling unwanted? Do you need someone to talk to? Come to our meeting! Get to know new, interesting people! Take part in exciting activities! There hadn't been any closer description of what the whole thing was about or even something about who had arranged it; there was just a logo of one of those French lilies and under that, it listed the place, which was a local café, and the time and date for the so-called meeting. To this day, he still didn't know why exactly he had gone to the so-called meeting; he was really not a social person, and going to a gathering like that wasn't his style at all. Maybe it had been the proverbial fate, maybe it had been a mere coincidence, or maybe, and most likely, it had been his last hope before the final rash act of taking his own life, but no matter the reason, Sebastian could say, without a doubt, that he'd never regretted going there. It had, in fact, been a very pleasant experience. Approximately fifty people had come to the café that evening after seeing the ads in the paper or one of the advertising posters the arrangers, whoever they were, had put up all over town. And all of those alone and unwanted people had been sitting around the café's cosy, round tables eating cake and talking to each other while a house band was playing softly in the background.  And then he had met her - Nadine. She had been the prettiest girl Sebastian had ever seen. That night, she had been wearing a blue baby-doll dress that matched the colour of her eyes, and her golden hair had been floating like a halo around her head. He had wondered why on earth she had been at a meeting for those who felt alone and unwanted; As far as he was concerned, such a pretty girl shouldn't have had trouble finding a whole bunch of friends that wanted nothing else in the world rather than to be by her side. He had fallen in love with her before he even knew her name, and had spent at least an hour just watching her before he finally gathered the courage to start a conversation.And it had turned out a lot better than he'd expected. Nadine had been great to talk to; she had had a good sense of humour, similar interests as Sebastian and, as Sebastian later found out, she wasn't a she at all, but a male in his early twenties that was called Nathanael when he wasn't dressed as a woman. During that first evening, they had become really good friends, and they had continued to go to the follow-up meetings together. Sebastian had never told Nadine that he had fallen in love with her before he discovered she was male, or how much those feelings actually confused him since he never thought that he was anything else but straight, but somehow he had a feeling he didn't have to. It was as if the pretty cross-dresser could see straight into his heart. And the weeks had passed by; Sebastian was ashamed to admit it, but the truth was that neither he nor Nadine had ever suspected that it was something else behind the friendly meetings besides getting lonely people in their little town to get less lonely. He had seen it as a way to get away from all the troubles at home and to meet up with new friends and most of all, to see Nadine. After a while, he even stopped questioning why there never were any signs of the arrangers at the meetings. Of course, now he knew that they had been there the whole time, watching the attendants from the shadows, but back then Sebastian had just thought that maybe there was no organisation in the meetings at all; maybe it was some kind of open house or youth recreation centre financed by the church or the police or maybe a private beneficiary, to keep troublemaking youths like himself out of the streets. God knows that the community needed a place like that. At the same time, things had happened in his home. Some neighbour had called the cops when his parents had been a little bit too loud in their drunkenness, and a social-worker had been informed about the 17-year-old boy that lived there. It had started a whole circus of bureaucracy, and finally it was decided that Sebastian would be sent to a Juvenile Home in another town to give him some change of scenery. But Sebastian didn't want change of scenery; for the first time in his life he had actually been happy where he was. But of course, no one listened to him. And then the day had come, the day for the last meeting, and Sebastian had been heartbroken over the fact that it had to end. It would have been the end of the only joy and the only stability he had had in his life, and even though Nadine had held him closely and promised him that she would keep in contact even after the meetings had stopped, even if he had to move to another town, Sebastian had been crying from despair because he had known that she would never be able to keep that promise. His story could in fact have ended right there; there was no doubt that he would have ended his own life, probably that very same night, if it hadn't been for the almost unbelievable things that had happened on that last meeting. While Sebastian had been crying silently against his friend's shoulder, the doors had opened, and a whole new bunch of people had entered the café. Of course this wasn't something new; every week new people had come to the meetings, but this time it was something different; there had been something in their eyes that didn't exactly matched the look of the 'real' outcasts on the meetings, something serious, something calculating, like soldiers focused on a mission. And one of them had come straight up to him. Through the blurriness of his tears, she had looked like an elf from one of Tolkien's books; her hair had been long and silver-grey like an old woman's yet her slender body and beautiful face and brown eyes so bright that they looked almost yellow, hadn't looked a day older than twenty-five. Her voice had been warm and welcoming. "Sebastian Cooper?" she had asked in such way that, even until this day, he still suspected that it hadn't been a question at all. "My name is Dwendelyn Blakeney, and I want to talk to you..." Somehow, Sebastian hadn't been the least surprised over the fact that the woman, Dwendelyn, or simply Dwen, as he had been asked to call her, had known his name; it had felt like she was an old friend that had known him for a long time, and that he'd just forgotten all about her until that evening. The thought that she may be some kind of social worker, there to pick him up and take him away to the new place, entered his mind, but then he noticed that others were being approached in the same way, and his feelings had turned from dread to curiosity in a matter of seconds. They had sat down at a small table, and Sebastian had seen how Nadine had left with an old man that had to have been one of Dwen's companions. He had assumed that the man had wanted to talk with her about the same thing that the woman had wanted to talk about with him. Dwen had smiled a nervous smile. "Sebastian, I won't blame you if you don't believe a word that I tell you right now, but I must ask you to let me finish before you judge what I have to say..." and then she had started to tell him her story. She had told him about 'Lilii Negri,' the Black Lilies, which was the vampire society she was a part of, though they almost never called themselves vampires. It was a word the mortals used, and misused, as a term for almost anything that drank blood, sucked life-force or acted as a parasite in any way, until the lilies couldn't identify themselves with it anymore. She told him about Cain, who had been the firstborn son of Adam and Eve and who had received the dark gift, or maybe it was more like a curse, from the succubus queen Lilith at the beginning of time. She told him about the two major clans: 'Lilii Nocis,' the Night Lilies, who lived like families in the cities, trying to blend in as much as they could, creating secret alliances with chosen mortals to secure their surviving and to keep them safe from people who wanted to harm them, and 'Lilii Mortis,' the Death Lilies, who lived individually away from the society and made no attempt to hide what they were from the few mortals around them, instead keeping them in line by giving gentleness and prosperity to those loyal to them, and torture and death to the ones that betrayed them. She told him about the two kings, one for each clan, Varnakan and Siramis, who ruled the clans with an iron fist, and about the special group of 'Lilii Nocis' called 'The Recruiters' that once a year held some kind of happening for the mortals, a happening that actually was nothing else but a cover for the Recruiters' one and only purpose: to find people that were suitable to become lilies. If the mortal agreed, then members of the Recruiters would become blood-fathers and blood-mothers to them, rebirth them and take care of them in their new life as creatures of the night. And if they didn't agree, there were ways to simply erase the mortal's memory of the whole thing and let him or her go back to their old life with no recollection of the offer they had rejected. And then finally, Dwen had gotten to the reason why she was there. She had asked him if he wanted to join them, to become a member of her undead family. And Sebastian had said yes. He had died in her arms that night and had awoken reborn, a lily of the clan 'Lilii Nocis.' Dwen had showed him the world of the lilies and had introduced him to her companions from the meeting; almost all of them had had newly reborn lilies at their side. And the thing that had made Sebastian even happier and had made him start to cry again, but this time tears of joy, was that Nadine had been one of them. He had hugged his friend tightly, and they had promised each other that they would meet again soon. Then Nadine had left with Jeffrey, her blood-father, and Sebastian and Dwen had continued to explore his new existence together. Sebastian liked the title 'Blood-mother' because that was exactly what Dwen felt like to him, especially the mother-part; she had filled a void inside of him and had become the mother he wished his biological mother had been. As for his real parents, Sebastian didn't think that they actually missed him. He had kept an eye on them for several weeks after his rebirth, just to see how they would react when he disappeared, and the reaction had been absolutely nothing; no worried phone calls to acquaintances or hospitals to try to find him, no putting up missing-persons posters in the neighbourhood and no reporting him missing to the police. In fact, they probably didn't even notice he was gone. A loud yawn from a man with raven-black hair and purple eyes woke Sebastian from his stroll down memory lane. "I'm sorry," the man said apologetically and turned to Dwen, who was sitting on a chair in front of all the others, going trough her notes a final time. "But I think I speak for all of us, Dwendelyn, when I ask why in Cain's name are we having a meeting in the middle of the day?"  Dwen smiled sadly. "That's a good question, Shaun, and the answer is not a very pleasant one. It isn't safe for us anymore to have our meetings during the night; those cursed hunters..." she swallowed the rest of the sentence in an angry mutter and looked down on her notes to collect herself again. "We will talk more about that later; now it's about time to start the meeting, don't you think?" She offered the man she'd called Shaun a small smile and rose from her seat. "I know we all are very tired, so let's try to make this as brief as we can.""My friends, a year has passed since our last campaign. As you might remember, last year our main focus was with the outcasts and people that felt lost and lonely in general, and, if I may say it myself, it was a great success. Last year's campaign resulted in nothing less than 24 new lilies." Those last words made the assembled lilies burst into spontaneous applause, and Sebastian felt himself blush as some of the older lilies gave him and the other last-year's-campaign-newcomers a warm look. "This year..." Dwen continued, after the applause had died down. "...The council has decided to do a campaign based on the increasing interest for the paranormal and the supernatural. According to our researchers, such subjects are really popular right now, both in literature and in the media, and we have seen a rising number of movies and TV shows that deal with the supernatural, both fiction about witches and vampires as well as documentaries about haunted houses and communications with the other side, so we're going to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak." She took a sip from a bottle filled with blood and continued. "Most of you know how we work already, but I'll say it one more time for the newcomers. A campaign usually starts with the advertisement; that means putting ads in different newspapers and putting up posters at schools, clubs, malls and other public notice boards. We will do that for about two weeks, and then we come to the big event." "As you can see in your pamphlets, the council has invited several talented lecturers to come and hold seminars on different subjects concerning the supernatural, and, once again, as usual, we Recruiters will be there undercover to keep an eye out for candidates." "Jeffery," she nodded to the older man who was Nadine's blood-father, and he smiled back at her. "And I will be in charge of the name-list this year, so if you see someone that you think is suitable to become one of us, give their name to us, and then when the campaign is over, we will assign names from the list to those of you that have a licence and follow standard procedure for the rebirth." She smiled warmly, but then the smile died on her lips. "I know I said the same thing last year, but things have changed, so it's really important that you remember this; you must never, ever, ever even hint to the mortals about what we are, no matter how suitable or interested they seem to be. As I said in the beginning of the meeting, there are hunters out there, hunters that have no other wish in the world than to watch us being staked or burned in the sun." "I know we don't live in the Middle Ages anymore, but the Inquisition has had and still has active groups all over the world, and we have all the reason to believe that one of those groups is here in this very town right now. During the last months, seven of us have been found dead and one is still missing, so I want all of you to be very careful out there, both during the campaign and in general. Promise me that!" Dwen looked very serious for a moment, but then her smile returned and she shook her head. "However, hunters or not, we do have a campaign to think about, so I guess that's it for today; you can pick up posters on the way out, and I'll let you know about the time and place for our next meeting." As the lilies started to move towards the door, picking up the posters they were assigned to put up, Sebastian folded the now illustrated pamphlet into a small square and put it in his pocket before he went to talk to Nadine. His friend wasn't dressed like a girl, for once. Instead, he was wearing a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a Spider-Man t-shirt, but he was still cute; too cute to be a guy, Sebastian thought with a lovelorn sigh. VIII"James..." Diana Blackwell, hunter of the second degree in the Order that called themselves 'Bellatores Luminis,' 'Warriors of Light,' looked at her victim with the same kind of look one gives a disgusting bug one's about to crush under one's feet, her voice filled with a supercilious contempt as she said his name. Her uniform, white leather pants with a matching suit blouse and an armband with the order's emblem, two crossed swords and a golden sun against a blood-red background, wrapped around her right upper arm, made James think of the Nazi Germans from when he had fought in the war. Diana's blond hair hung loose around her face, and her ice-blue eyes gleamed in the cold light from the fluorescent lamps in the ceiling. Her brother, Phoebus, also a second-degree hunter, had removed his uniform shirt and jacket and had taken a seat on the floor behind James, holding him closely. Occasionally, he stroked over the other's naked chest with tender erotic movements, as if they were two lovers rather than enemies in a cross-examination. His gaze, however, never left his sister for a second as he watched her every move with an incestuous look in his eyes. "James, James, James..." Diana said, her voice almost purring as she took off her blouse to avoid it getting stained. "...You know it's useless to fight back; your kin think you're already dead, but I will be merciful enough to let you choose whether you want me to end your existence quickly and relatively painlessly, or if you want me to give you a slow and painful death." She made a sound that James guessed was a giggle. "Tell me where your headquarters are and maybe, just maybe, I'll stake you right now instead of..." she didn't finish the sentence, but the eerie smile that touched her lips told James exactly what she wanted to do with him.  "Maybe our prisoner needs some more encouragement..." she raised a saw-toothed dagger, the edge of which was coloured by layer upon layer of dried blood; James knew that some of it was his own, and he shivered. "...Or, what do you say, brother dearest?""She is right, you know?" Phoebus laughed, a laugh tainted by repressed madness, and let his tongue lick one of James' pointed ears and his cheekbone before he went downwards and nibbled at his throat. His kisses were cool and inviting, filled with a false hunger, and James couldn't stop a moan from escaping. He felt Phoebus' lips smirk against his skin at the reaction. "You like this, don't you? Did the one who made you hold you like this? Did he kiss you, caress you, and nibble your throat like this, making you moan from pleasure, and then when the moment was right...?" Phoebus bit into James' throat and started to laugh again. His teeth hadn't been sharp enough to pierce the skin, but the humiliation in the way Phoebus heckled him with what James' blood-father had done out of love hurt more than any torture the sadistic siblings could come up with. James bit the inside of his cheek hard and felt the thick wetness of his own blood fill his mouth. He didn't know what was worse, the sister's painful torture performed with psychopathic callousness, or the brother's perverted touches whose purpose was to create anguish and shame rather than pleasure. How much longer could he stand existing like this? James wasn't sure. With every session with the siblings, his resistance had grown weaker and weaker, and his abusers knew it. But he had also noticed how his warders' patience had grown thinner and thinner. The examinations got shorter and shorter, the questions fewer and fewer, until it seemed like they only asked things in order to get a reason to torture him even more. The question was who would break first; him or them. He looked up into Diana's eyes. The psychotic callousness was gone, and had been replaced with the expression of a sexual predator, and somehow he suddenly knew that this was the end. He cleared his throat and fought to keep his voice as steady as possible when he spoke. "I...Won't...Say...Anything...I'd rather die a thousand painful deaths than betray my own kind to the likes of you, you perverted, monstrous witch!" Diana gasped, but it wasn't out of surprise over his defiant words; instead her eyes sparkled with orgasmic pleasure and her body trembled. She raised the dagger and with a moan, she drove it into James' chest. The knife burst the flesh, grazed the bones of his ribs and sank through his heart. Something hot and salty rose in his throat and ran from the corners of his mouth, splashing on his chest where the blade had entered. Blood-tears fell from his eyes as the world around him disappeared. It didn't hurt at all; it felt like falling asleep; it was over. "Too bad..." Phoebus smiled and rose from the floor where he had been sitting. It was a pity; he'd wanted to torture him further with his advances. "...I wanted to play with him more." "When will you learn not to mix business with pleasure, brother dearest?" Diana replied, despite the obvious hypocrisy of her words. Her hand twisted the dagger inside James' chest, causing thick globs of blood to pour from the ragged wound, her bottom eyelids tense with what looked like excitement. For a moment, she just stared at the thick streams of red that were beginning to pool in his lap, and then her eyes lost their glaze. She ripped the dagger out, half-heartedly wiping it on the now dead man's pants. She went out into the hallway and called, with the same casual tone as a store manager when he tells the clerk to swab the floor. "We need a cleaner to Cell 114! Just dump him somewhere where he can be found, we need to set an example to show his kind what we will do to them" "You know," Phoebus said, as the siblings left the cleaner to do his job, "...He never actually told us anything about the hiding place, did he?" "That doesn't matter," Diana replied. "Soon, everything will be ready, and then there won't be anyplace in the whole world where those monsters can hide from the wrath of God." IX "...Therefore it's important to study the problem from different perspectives..." the professor's voice penetrated his thoughts, and Heedan guiltily looked down at his notes; at the top of the paper he had written the word 'Psychology' with fluent handwriting, but the rest of the paper, where he was supposed to have taken notes about the subject the professor was talking about, was empty. In fact, he had been too deep into his own ruminations to even know what the subject of today was, much less why it was important to study it from different perspectives. Heedan sighed and let his eyes sweep over the classroom. All of his fellow students either had their eyes on Professor West as she was drawing a complicated mind-map on the whiteboard, or they were bent over their own notes, scribbling eagerly.His gaze fell on the young man he had talked to earlier that morning, Eoli. He was also taking notes, worrying his pen between his lips during the pauses between sentences. The sun was shining through the window and made the man's hair look like it had strands of gold woven into it, soft golden strands. Blushing, Heedan quickly pulled himself from his train of thoughts. Why on earth was he thinking about how the sun made Eoli's hair glow like gold? And why on earth was he blushing? He sighed again and tried to focus on what Professor West was saying. As soon as the bell rang, Heedan rose from the chair and left the classroom. He had had enough; he would solve this mystery once and for all, coincidence or not; then he might be able to focus on school again. Without any hesitation, he went to the computer room, dropped his backpack on the floor, sat down at the computer and turned it on. It took forever for the system to boot, and Heedan suddenly was filled with an unexplainable nervousness, bordering on panic. He shook his head to get rid of the feeling. He was here to do research, nothing illegal, so there was no reason whatsoever that he would need to feel this kind of unease. Finally, Windows' steel-grey login box appeared against the background's green meadow and blue sky, and Heedan let out a sigh from relief, and then realised that he had been holding his breath. "You're so stupid," he scolded himself, logging into his user account and accessing the internet. The rainbow-coloured letters of the Google-logo shone against him from the screen as he tried to remember what the paper had said except a lot of "Help us! Help us! Help us!", he knew there was no reason to search for that. Ag-something, Id-something Idun? maybe, Something, Tana, Mu'atsu; at least he thought it was with an apostrophe. Was it latin? The more he thought about it, the more sure he became that it was more like names than latin words. He typed 'Mu'atsu' in the search field and pressed enter. The results came up, but Heedan soon realised that none of it was relevant to what he wanted to know. Most of the pages were in a language he did not understand, and even if it said 'mu atsu' several times in the text, the lack of apostrophe between words and the fact that it was written in lower case told him that it did not have anything to do with the name 'Mu'atsu' even if he did not understand a word of the rest of the text. Maybe he missspelled it, he tried some other spellings and searched on the other names, but always with the same result, or lack thereof. With a sigh of equal parts disappointment and irritation, he logged out and turned off the computer. Of course he hadn't really expected to find anything, but the whole situation made him frustrated, and he felt tears start to rise in his eyes. Why were they toying with him like this; why didn't they simply show themselves to him like they had when he was younger? Didn't they understand how much he wanted them, how much he needed them, or was it all like a sick joke to them? A sick joke? That thought made Heedan think about something else. What if it indeed was a joke and nothing more? "William!" Heedan mumbled to himself. "Of course, why didn't I think if that?" William Noel was Heedan's closest neighbour, and even though they weren't exactly friends, they shared the fascination for the paranormal and had had some really interesting discussions on the subject. However, Heedan also knew that William had a sick sense of humour and loved playing practical jokes on people. When the electricity had failed, William had come over with some candles and matches for him, and the book Heedan had been reading had been on the table the whole time. Slipping a note into it wouldn't take but a second. The same with the newspaper; William worked as a janitor at the city hospital and often left for work before Heedan was even awake. The newspaper had been lying outside his door, probably for hours, before he had gone to get it. So it would have been easy as pie for William to continue his practical joke by putting another note in that on his way to work. To make Heedan think that there was something supernatural about the messages when it probably wasn't at all. "Ha-ha!" Heedan laughed a joyless laugh. "Very funny, Will!" "But what about the blackouts?" said a small voice of reason, or more like the voice of insanity, inside his head. "The hour that disappeared yesterday? The scrapbook you made in some kind of trance? You can't blame that on William can you? How do you explain those?" "I don't know," Heedan replied to the voice. "Stress maybe?" "In that case," the voice continued, "Will couldn't have known that you would react in that way to some pieces of paper, so what was the practical joke about?" "Great! I'm arguing with myself," Heedan mumbled and picked up the backpack from the floor. He was just about to leave, when something under the desk caught his attention. It was a piece of white paper, and on it he could see something written with red ink. All the blood in his body rushed to his stomach in a hot, aching lump that left the rest of his body as cold as ice. "Try to blame this on Will!" the voice in his head said smugly as Heedan crawled under the desk and reached for the paper. The handwriting was the same as on the earlier one, and even if the words were new, they were very familiar. 
Heedan, we need you!The world needs you! We can't stop him! He is too strong Please! Help us! Help us! Help us! Heedan almost didn't have time to finish reading those words before black spots started to dance in front of his eyes. They grew in number until it covered his field of vision and his ears were buzzing from the sound of his rapidly beating heart. Somewhere, inside his head, or outside, he wasn't sure, he thought he could hear voices, but they were weak and distorted, almost like when one can hear a radio show through the static noise on a nearby frequency. Heedan felt with his whole being that the voices were important, that they wanted to tell him something, but the more he strained to hear what they were saying, the farther away the voices seemed to be. "No!" he wanted to yell. "Don't disappear; don't leave me!" but he couldn't make a sound. "Heedan? Are you okay? What happened?" The soft tone of a voice and the steady touch of a hand on his shoulder called Heedan back to consciousness, and he gazed into the worried eyes of Eoli Anaya. "How are you? You're not epileptic or something, are you? Do you want me to get the nurse?" the questions came faster than Heedan could reply, so he simply raised his hand. "I...I'm fine...I just..." he croaked, shocked because his voice sounded sore and hoarse as if he had been screaming out loud, which was weird because he had indeed tried to scream, but then he hadn't been able to make a sound, or had he? He knew about people talking and even shouting in their sleep, but he hadn't been sleeping; this wasn't a dream, at least not a normal one; he knew that now. He looked at the other man again and realized that Eoli still was waiting for an answer. "I'm fine," he began again then went silent; what was he supposed to say, that he had just had a blackout, and apparently had lost consciousness from the text on a paper he had found on the floor? That this paper was connected to mysterious messengers in his apartment; that he was scared because Will really was innocent this time? "You wanted this," the little voice in his head mocked. "You wanted it - you begged for it to start again, for them to come back, and now when you finally got what you thought you wanted, you whine like a child because it scares you." "Heedan?" Eoli said softly, sounding even more worried now. "I'm fine," Heedan began for the third time. "Really...I am...I think...Maybe...I just want to go home..." "Do you want me to call someone?" Eoli smiled kindly. Heedan shook his head. "There is no one to call. My mom and uncle live in another town; no need to upset them." Eoli nodded. "I see." He picked up a fancy-looking cell-phone and dialled a number. After a short explanation about a friend that wasn't feeling well, he hung up and put the phone back into his pocket. "There... I explained everything, so they're coming to get you." "Who?" Heedan asked, half-joking and half-worrying. "The men in white coats?" He wouldn't have been the least surprised if that had turned out to be the answer, but Eoli just laughed softly and shook his head. "No, my family. I sent after someone to give you a lift home," he glanced at his wristwatch. "The car will be here anytime soon." Car, Heedan realized, as he more or less dragged himself out of school with Eoli's arm around his waist for support, was an understatement; it wasn't at all the kind simple passenger car he had expected, but a full scale limousine with shaded windows, an exclusive interior and personal chauffeur in the driver's seat. "Heedan, we need you!" Heedan shook his head. "Excuse me, what did you say?" Eoli smiled, but he couldn't keep a worried frown from passing over his features. "I said, call if you need me." He gave Heedan a business card and opened the door to the limousine. "I'll tell the professor you weren't feeling well, so don't worry about that." He helped Heedan get in, and then leaned over him, for a second or two almost looking like he was going to give Heedan a hug, before he simply told the address to the chauffeur, who then nodded. "Take care!" Eoli said with a final smile and closed the door. As the limousine started to drive the familiar way home, Heedan was suddenly filled with an eerie feeling. Something wasn't right here, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was; something was wrong with this whole situation. Eoli had been nothing but sweet and kind towards him during the whole day but still, Heedan couldn't shake the feeling that, well, he didn't even know what feeling it was that he couldn't shake. He must have been even more exhausted than he had first thought. He wasn't sure how he had gotten out of the limousine, up all those stairs and into his apartment, but as he collapsed on the bed, just before sleep claimed him, Heedan realised what had been wrong. "How did he know where I live?" X Still, he wasn't fully content. Something had happened, something that should have been impossible. Those blasted creatures, His prisoners. He had heard them calling, heard them begging for His boy to hear them, to save them from their fate. He had laughed at them, knowing that it was pointless to even try; even if they managed to get a word or two through the barrier, Andrin would never betray him.But then he had felt it, a wrenching pain in the deepest parts of his soul. Pain when the boy, no, not His boy, another one, had responded to their calls, called back to them, and His barrier had fallen, only for a few seconds, but that had been enough. For a single dreadful moment, the pathway between the worlds had been completely open, but then thankfully the connection had been broken. He figured that the boy had been called back to his own world by an outsider or maybe just lost concentration. Or maybe, and he smiled evilly at this, just maybe the darkness of the underworld had invaded his soul, poisoned him, filled him, killed him from the inside leaving his body brain-dead. The creature didn't really care which; it was just a boy after all, a pathetic mortal, not at all like His boy. But the whole thing had scared him even though he didn't want to admit it, not even to himself. "Andrin!" "Yes?" A young man appeared at the opening between two crystal blocks. His dark brown hair was jagged and uneven. One of his emerald green eyes was beaten and swollen shut, and the look in the other eye was filled with a myriad of conflicting emotions; fear, love, hope, loathing, longing, hate, admiration and more, all of them directed towards his master. The man's skin was discoloured from layers upon layers of cuts and bruises in different states of healing. He was pale and a sickly type of skinny; from the look of it, one could easily believe that he was a homeless person that hadn't had food or a warm bed for a very long time. However, the loincloth that hid his private parts was made of finest silk and was sparklingly white as the snow on a cold winter's day, and his nipples were pierced with the most exclusive diamonds. The creature let his gaze sweep over His boy's body, and a lewd smile grew on his lips. "We need to strengthen the barrier!" he gave Andrin a look that made His boy shiver with a mix of anticipation and disgust, and then he kissed him; a hard possessive kiss, making one of the healing cuts on His boy's lips split open, letting Skye savour the sweet metallic taste of blood in the kiss. He forced Andrin to kneel and pressed His boy's bloody lips to his aching cock. "Come on boy...Show me how much you love me!" At first, there was a look of hesitant fear on Andrin's face, but then he obeyed, leaning forward and accepting the cock into his mouth. His bruised eyes were squeezed shut, and he wore a pained expression, but his actions were tinged with obvious adoration. Skye looked down upon him smugly with half-closed eyes, watching His boy go to work. It amused and excited him to see such loyalty and obedience. After some time, Skye twitched. He filled His boy's mouth with his burning seed and let out a breathless but entertained murmur that might have been a laugh as the boy almost choked as the semen caught in the back of his throat. Without a word, he gestured for Andrin to stand. He grabbed the boy's loincloth, using it to wipe himself and then throwing it back in its place with a glare of disgust before turning away, leaving Andrin. He didn't see the boy's tears that mixed with the white droplets of semen, saliva and blood running down his chin or how the boy's lips formed the words "I love you." Meanwhile, in the underworld, the force-field of the barrier started to glow with an intense pulsating light. XI
"Yes," Tana replied. "He must have gotten the gift back faster than we thought. Good thing that other boy was there to pull him back; who knows what might have had happened otherwise, we could have lost him.""He is nice, the other boy I mean," Ricven said, wincing from pain as Tana poured cold water over his burned arm and carefully started to clean the wounds. "Really friendly and helpful. Besides, I think Heedan likes him." "Nice!" Idin exclaimed, her eyes glowing dangerously. "He is a vampirehunter! Do you know what people like him do to my kind?" "Mother, please!" Tana said, giving his stepmother a pleading look. "He really isn't that bad; I can see it in him. It seems like he really cares, and he did help Heedan today; hunter or not, we can't overlook that." Idin sighed. "Fine, but why should we trust him? What if he wasn't helping him at all? What if he brought him back to reality, not because he cared, but to stop him from getting closer to us? Maybe he works for Skye; you know what the rumours say, that he uses hunters to carry out his plans? Hunters like that Eoli." She almost spat the boy's name. Then she forced herself to calm down and raised her hands in a classic pose of someone who gives up on an argument. "You say he isn't that bad, and I know you're often right so I will trust you on this, but Skye is clever; he's a master of deceit. What if he manipulates the boy to work for him? It wouldn't be the first time." Tana opened his mouth to reply but Mu'atsu raised a hand in a gesture to silence them. "Enough with the 'ifs' and the 'maybes'; no matter what side the hunter is on, Heedan still is the important thing here. We have to come up with a way to contact him without hurting him or making him lose consciousness. Otherwise, we might as well give up right now." Agwe nodded in agreement. "You're right, Mu'atsu, and one other thing we have to think about is how we affect his daily life. If he starts to act too peculiarly, there is a chance that the others, or even Heedan himself, will start to question his sanity. He already thinks he's losing it, so we better watch out." "Good point," Tana said, a worried look spreading over his face. "He won't be of much help if they decide that he is mentally ill and start to give him medications against hallucinations and delusions." "Don't forget the apparent Messiah-complex," Ricven added with a smile. "I mean, the fact that he will believe that the faith of the whole universe and the realms of heaven and hell are upon his shoulders, and all that. You don't get much worse than that you know." Tana hid a giggle behind one of his hands. "Yeah! Forget about medication; bring out the straightjackets and the cells with padded walls." Agwe scowled and opened his mouth to tell them that it really wasn't something to joke about, but as the good mood spread through their group, his scowl turned into a smile, and soon their laughter echoed against the walls of their prison. It was a good laugh; liberating. XIII know it's about time; I've been keeping an eye out since the first time I saw him. Back then, I thought that he had to be one of them; there was no other explanation. He was too beautiful to be mortal, at least I thought so, and he had had what seemed like a corona around him that didn't look mortal at all. However, I've realized my mistake; he has shown none of the weaknesses that they have, and the more I observed him, the more human he seemed to be. So, I decided to do the final test; confront him and get the up-close-and-personal observation done. I spoke with him, just before the class began this morning; I was armed of course with a stake and the ceremonial dagger, just in case he somehow had faked everything to fool me into believing he was safe. I found him sitting on a bench looking tired and confused, maybe even a little scared. He wasn't faking it, I'm sure, so I asked him about what was going on. Kind of silly I know, but I thought maybe he wasn't one of them himself, but simply connected to them in some way, I have heard of their so-called servants and that sometimes they get to drink their undead master's blood as a sign of gratification. Perhaps that's was why he looked so nonhuman to me, or maybe one of them had hurt him and that was why he looked so scared.  I never thought he would actually answer me. They keep their secrets buried deep, but he opened his mouth (did I by the way say that he has gorgeous lips. I better leave that out of my final report) and he began to speak, and then... The school bell started to ring, and we had to leave for class. How frustrating!During the entire class time this morning, I couldn't pay attention at all. I was far too busy watching him, thinking about him, daydreaming about talking to him some more and finding out what he's hiding. I had to fake taking notes as soon as he even glanced in my direction just so he wouldn't catch me looking at him. I better start paying attention, or I'll get bad grades; that would make my brother upset, but I tell you, it's not easy to be both a hunter and a top student. Better leave this part out of the report, too. Then at lunch something happened. He disappeared so quickly after class ended that I lost track of him. I know, never lose track of the suspect, but I couldn't exactly run after him either; that would have been even more suspicious. Anyway, I was wandering around in the school searching for him, trying to look like I wasn't searching for anything at all. And then I heard screams from the computer room. I recognized his voice. "Don't disappear, don't leave me." Those were his exact words. I ran there, and I found him on the floor screaming. I managed to wake him from his hysteric state. It was like he had had a seizure or a fit of some kind because he was very confused and sad and very tired. Maybe that's it; maybe it isn't something magical or vampyric about him; maybe he is just very sick, a brain-tumour maybe. It makes me all cold inside thinking about him being sick; he can't be. I know it's wrong for me to feel this way. Never get personally involved with the one you're watching; that's what the code says, right? But I am worried. Anyway, I called my personal-- "Mr. Anaya!" The professor's voice cut through Eoli's written rantings like the proverbial hot knife through butter, and he jumped guiltily before looking around, prepared to see his classmates' glee as he got told off by the teacher, but the classroom was empty. "The class is over," the professor said; her lips held an amused smile as she spoke. "Or do you like my class that much?" "Sorry!" Eoli mumbled, embarrassed, and stuffed all his books and loose papers into his sports bag, before quickly leaving the classroom. He totally missed that on the floor under his desk lay a single paper that had fallen out of his bag as he ran, and that Professor West picked up the paper, glanced at it and her amused smile turned into a frown of worry. XIIISebastian read the headline on the cover of the evening paper his blood-mother was reading and bit his lip. "So it is that bad, huh?" Dwen looked up from behind the paper. "It's even worse than that, Sebastian; the press doesn't know all the details. He was murdered, yes, but that's not all; one of our contacts inside the police force informed us that he wasn't only murdered. He had been tortured, probably for several weeks, before they finally killed him." Her voice shook, and she was on the verge of tears from grief and rage. "Those monsters! How could they?" she made a sound that was something between a feral snarl and a sob. "Poor James!" Sebastian swallowed; he suddenly remembered a couple of years ago, when he had read Bram Stoker's 'Dracula.' Hadn't he, caught up in the plot as he had been, cheered Van Helsing and the rest of the slayers on as they went to vanquish the evil monster? He looked up into the blood-tear-rimmed eyes of his blood-mother; had the Dracula in the book ever felt like this? Cried over a lost comrade, felt unfairly treated because they hadn't done anything to deserve the hunters' hatred and bloodlust? Did he also just want to live and love in peace? Well, Sebastian really didn't think so, at least not of the infamous impaler, who had been more into terror and bloodshed than into love and peace, but still, the thought got to him. How many other vampire stories had he read, each of which having its own version of a merciless hunter killing vampires left and right and apparently enjoying it? But Dwen and the others weren't like the vampires from books and horror movies. They were the kindest and sweetest people he knew, and to be frank, they were more human than some of the real humans he had known - his own parents included. It made him angry. What gave the hunters the right to slaughter them as if they were a disease that needed to be controlled and prevented at all costs? At that moment, Nadine entered the room, helping her blood-father Jeffrey to carry an armful of papers about the campaign, and all thoughts about death and torture were erased from Sebastian's mind and replaced with the warm, almost aching feeling he always got when he was near the beautiful transvestite. "Are you ready to begin, dear?" Jeffrey said, giving Dwen a smile as he put the stack of papers on the table. "How can I be?" Dwen retorted for the moment, not caring the least that she was lashing out at a completely innocent person. "How can we even think about rebirthing new young ones into this world when it's not even safe for older lilies like James or any of the others that have turned up dead?" she held up the newspaper so Jeffrey could see the headline. "He was tortured and murdered, Jeff!" "So they found him?" Jeffrey took the newspaper from Dwen and quickly read the article, then he sighed. "How horrible! Poor James; he was such a good man." Dwen nodded and they sat in silence for a while in grief over their dead friend. Then Jeffery spoke again. "But Dwen, even if it is horrible and unfair, we have to go on with the campaign. To quit now would be to let them win, to admit that they are stronger than us. We just have to be even more careful, tighten the security around the meetings, avoid being alone, keeping an even closer eye on the young ones." He took Dwendelyn's hands in his and squeezed them. "Dearest friend, we can't let the hunters win!" 
Dwen sighed. "You're right. The show must go on." As a sign of acceptance, Dwen leaned over the papers Jeffrey had brought and started reading.Sebastian watched in silence. A new campaign, new young ones; he knew what that meant. They were going to be replaced. That was how things worked with the lilies. There was a recruiting campaign during the spring, followed by the rebirth of the chosen ones in the early summer, and then began a year of training where the young ones learned to control their new powers, read about their history, the society and their laws, and were trained in practical things like how to avoid hunters, find food, blend in amongst the mortals and other necessary things. And then, just in time for the start of the new campaign, they were considered fully-trained lilies and, like a last year's calf, they had to step aside and let their blood-fathers and blood-mothers take care of a whole new generation of newly reborn ones. This cycle had been repeated over and over again during the last three hundred and eighty two years, and now it was time for the three-hundred-eighty-third campaign. Their 'childhood' was over and Sebastian didn't like it one bit, and he wasn't alone. He had talked to Nadine and some of the other ones that had been reborn at the same time, and all of them felt the same. During the year that had passed, the elder lilies had been the biggest part of their lives. They had been their mothers and fathers, their teachers and their best friends. They had been there with love and support, admonished them when they had made mistakes, cheered them on, rejoiced with them when it had gone well and comforted when things hadn't. But most of all, they had been a safe haven where the young ones could escape when all the sensations of their new lives had become too much for them. The thought that that safe haven in a couple of weeks would be occupied by someone else was not something he wanted to think about, but that was the way things were. Sebastian could still remember the jealous and dejected looks he and the others had gotten from the year-old lilies when they had been the new ones about a year ago. He hadn't understood why until now. Sebastian looked up at Nadine; she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, listlessly going through the pages of a magazine, and if Sebastian knew his friend as well as he thought he did, Nadine's thoughts had been travelling along the same path as his. Jeffrey had also noticed the mood in the young ones and came over to sit beside them. "Nadine? Are you afraid of the hunters?" he put a hand on Nadine's shoulder. "Don't worry; we will keep you safe." "It's not that...I think..." Nadine replied, confirming Sebastian's earlier thoughts. "That both Sebastian and I are sad because our training will soon be over, and you will have others to take care of. And we are worried that you will forget about us." "Darling, you should know that's not true," Jeffrey said, giving Nadine a hug. "You will always be my blood-child and have a special place in my heart, no matter how many others I take care of. Just because I get a new young one doesn't mean that I forget the ones I had before." "He's right," Dwen smiled. "And it's the same for all of us. Sebastian, you are my blood-child and nothing will ever change that. You can always come to me when you need me." Sebastian fought back the tears of relief that threatened to break forward at his blood-mother's words and mumbled: "You must think that both of us are childishly selfish." "Not at all," Dwen assured. "It's only natural; almost everyone reacts that way. Jeffery did too, you know, at the end of his first year." The youngsters watched Jeffery with surprise, and the older man laughed, somewhat embarrassed. "You didn't know that Dwen was my blood-mother?" "What do you say we go and see a movie together? The campaign can wait," Dwen said, giving Jeffrey a warm hug. "Isn't that right, Jeffrey? Our young ones need us for a little while longer." "Indeed!" Jeffrey agreed, smiling "So what do you want to see?" Dwen had opened the newspaper again, this time looking at the movie ads. "How about that new Dracula movie?" she said, after a while. "It got really good reviews," she smiled, an impish look spreading over her face. "Besides, the guy that plays Van Helsing is a real hottie." XIVOwain Anaya, hunter of the first degree and the commander of the Liberty Creek Filial of Bellatores Luminis sat behind his great mahogany desk and went through some reports. His hair, that had the deep colour of golden chestnut, was pulled back into a ponytail to keep it from falling down into his face as he was reading, and his brown eyes were partially hidden behind a pair of reading glasses that made him look much older than his 24 years, the youngest commander ever in the history of Bellatores Luminis. Owain wasn't vain, and he didn't care if the glasses made him look old or not, as long as they did their job. Well, to be frank, he really wasn't sure they did anything at all, but at least they didn't make things worse. The glasses weren't even his idea to begin with, but something the doctor had suggested he should try when Owain, during his yearly check-up at the hospital, had mentioned his constant migraine attacks. TThe doctor had asked about his job and his lifestyle, and since Owain couldn't tell the truth, which was that he spent his days doing research and hunting and killing vampires together with some friends, he had instead settled for a half-truth and said that he had a really stressful desk job. This had led the good doctor to the conclusion that since there had been nothing physically wrong with young Mr. Anaya, on the contrary he was in excellent shape, the migraines probably were caused by him straining his eyes too much during work and therefore, using reading glasses combined with healthy 15-minute-breaks once in a while might be a good thing for him. So Owain had thought that it was worth a try and wore them like a good patient, following the doctor's orders even though he was quite sure that it was the nature of his work and not the way he was working that caused the migraines. He sighed and let his gaze sweep over the enormous office. Once this house had been a regular apartment building with four flats on every floor, but the Bellatores Luminis had bought the whole house and transformed it into their headquarters. The whole top floor had been turned into one big office, and on the floors below were living quarters for the hunters and their staff of servants, several gym and training areas, a weapon storage room and the basement, which once had been used as a storeroom, was now transformed into cells. Owain really didn't like it; in fact, it made him feel agoraphobic. It made him feel as if he were a king in front of a court, and it only served as a constant reminder that he was more important than he actually wanted to be - a fearless leader for a group of hunters.  His eyes fell on the painting of the four founders of the Bellatores Luminis that hung on the wall closest to him. The artist had painted the four standing on a green hill, completely illuminated by heavenly rays; the hunters had golden coronas around their heads to emphasize their holiness, and all of them were ready to fight. The two knights, Marcus and Edon, were dressed in shiny armour with swords drawn, the young Henry, still only a squire, armed with sharp pointed stakes, and Maria, Marcus' sister, a nun, was shooting arrows soaked in holy water from a crossbow.A dark valley was painted below them, and the area was crowded with all sorts of beings that symbolised the evil the hunters were up against. There were tiny imps with razor-sharp claws and trolls as big as buildings, vampires with fangs dripping with blood and witches having orgies with horned demons. Hordes of succubi and incubi, seductive and breathtakingly beautiful reached for the hunters to lure them into temptation; there were animals with human heads, humans with animal heads, fallen angels with wings as black as the midnight sky, and all kinds of devious minions. Still not a trace of fear could be seen on the four's faces as they fought the forces of the devil, only determination and joy of doing God's will. It looked so easy, but Owain knew it wasn't. The artist had gotten it all wrong. It wasn't a joyful job; it was messy and gory and horrible, not at all a flawless victory against evil, like something taken from a movie, where the hero always wins. No, in real life good people got injured or even killed. Owain's own parents had, as the official report had stated, died in the line of duty five years ago, leaving Owain to take care of his then-14-year-old brother, not an easy task to do when he hardly had been a grown up himself, but he had done it. It was only after he got older that he first learned the whole truth about his parent's death; that they had been captured and turned into vampires and then sent back to the headquarters as mindless, bloodsucking monsters that killed everything in their way. Their squad-leader had had to give the hardest order of all; to execute their own friends to save themselves, and Owain was terrified that he one day would have to face the same situation. And about a year ago, he had lost one of his own hunters in an ambush. It had been a simple, routine mission that turned into a bloodbath in a couple of seconds. The vampires had been everywhere, at least a hundred of them, and Morgan, who had been their scout and gone in first, had more or less been ripped to pieces before Owain even got a chance to yell, "It's a trap! Pull back!" The hunters had fled for their lives, none of them escaping without injuries, and had had to call for backup from several of their affiliates just to bring Morgan's mutilated remains back for burial. Something had broken inside him back then. As their leader, Owain had felt responsible for what had happened to Morgan and for the injuries all the others had sustained. He had lost his appetite, and his mood had darkened. His sleep had become plagued by nightmares, and during the day, he had started to suffer from tension-type headaches, that as time went by, evolved into full-grown migraine attacks. And as if the threat from outside was not enough, there was another thing. To be a hunter, a warrior of light, a tool of God or whatever term you wanted to use, was to face evil every day. Not only the evil they were out to vanquish, but the evil inside one's own heart and soul. There was a fine line between merciful saviour and cold-blooded killer, and that line was too easy to cross. He knew that it had been crossed countless times before, even by his own hunters, and that there were hunters that enjoyed the killing so much that they turned fanatic, letting their lust for blood rule instead of their sense of justice. He guessed that some of that bloodlust, and the insanity that came with it, could be caused by cases of inbreeding. The Bellatores Luminis were quite a small group of people. They lived together, worked together and hardly met any others, so it wasn't that strange that they also loved and married among their companions. And the constant intimacy didn't make Owain's job any easier. Almost all the members in his group were related by blood or marriage, so it wasn't just anonymous soldiers he sent into danger and death; they were his family, and he cared deeply for all of them. With another sigh, Owain pressed the palms of his hands against his face as if trying to physically smooth out the wrinkles of worry that had appeared there. He knew that if the commander seemed to hesitate, it affected the morale of the whole group. He needed to be strong, calm and fearless; he needed to look as if he was sure of himself and believed in their mission. To sum it up, he needed to be everything he wasn't. He took some deep breaths, pressed the button on his intercom and called for his hunters, smiling in a way he hoped was confidence-inspiring and encouraging as they appeared one by one. There was his younger brother Eoli, looking at him with his eyes filled with trust and even some admiration. In Eoli's heart and mind, there was no doubt that his older brother was always right and that he always knew what to do. This made Owain feel even worse about the whole situation. He wasn't worthy of such trust. There was his closest friend Abraham, walking in with his long, russet hair dancing around his face and his green kind eyes sparkling with warmth. His face was, as usual, one big, always-happy, always-positive, sunshine-smile that not even the most desperate times or difficult situations could erase. He was the perfect contrast to Owain's nowadays, more or less constantly, gloomy mood, and Owain sometimes wondered if Abe wouldn't be a better leader than he was himself. Next were the three Blackwell Siblings, Diana with her psychopathic, cold eyes, Phoebus with his lewd smile and the youngest brother Gabriel, who was considered only a trainee with his 16 years of age. Of all the members he had to deal with, these were the worst. Diana was constantly questioning his leadership, claiming that she had more right to the position than he had, and was disobeying his orders, with Phoebus following her every wink and command like a loyal dog. As for young Gabriel, he was considered oversexed and a masochist and was usually wearing as little clothes as he could possibly bear without being indecent, as if the very feeling of fabric against his skin was tormenting him. The end result was that he looked like a male prostitute, except that the revealed skin bore signs of corporal mortification. Payment for sins he had committed, or at least thought he had. Owain had done what he could to stop the self-punishing acts, but to no avail. The boy kept torturing himself. At least he wasn't torturing others. It was a small comfort but, looking at Gabriel's older siblings, Owain was grateful that it wasn't worse than it was. After them came Cross. He was a half-Japanese, half-American hunter that had been transferred from one of their affiliates last year to help out after Morgan's gruesome death, and for that Owain was thankful. He really needed all the help he could get, and Cross had turned out to be not only a skilled fighter but also a loyal friend. He was quite short and somewhat slender; a trait from his Japanese heritage, but it wasn't wise to let his size fool you. His floor-length black hair was braided into tiny braids, each one with a small blade at the end, making his hair a deadly multi-weapon that he could combine with his martial arts skills; a weapon he, at the moment, was twisting around one of his fingers. And last, there was Noah, the group's top tracker and weapons expert. He was an albino with white shoulder-length hair, and who had on a pair of sunglasses that covered his sensitive, red eyes. Noah wasn't raised as a hunter, as the other ones were, but as a victim saved from the clutches of an especially nasty vampire by the hunter squad Owain's parents had belonged to. Among the eight of them, Noah was probably the one that hated vampires the most, and he had the most valid reason for it- personal revenge. Of course, all of them wanted some kind of revenge. They had all lost a friend or a family member during the battle against the forces of darkness, but that was just the point; it had been in battle, like soldiers fighting a war. The hunters had fought a war against the vampires. As a soldier, you knew that there was a chance that you wouldn't live to fight another day, and they had all chosen to be a part of it. Noah was different; he had been innocent, just a kid, a civilian wounded in the war between good and evil. When young Noah had recovered from his nearly fatal injuries, he had told them that he was an orphan and had no other place to go than back to the streets that had almost claimed his life. He had begged Abraham's mother, Rachel, who was the squad-leader of the hunter team that had saved him, to let him stay and learn the ways of the hunter, a chance to get revenge and to prevent others from facing death the same way he had. And out of the goodness of her heart, Rachel had let him stay, adopted him as her own child and trained him side by side with her son and the other young students. Owain smiled towards his friends, but it was a joyless smile, and gave them a sign to sit down. "My friends, I thank you for coming so quickly. We have work to do." He opened a folder that lay on the desk, and gave each member a couple of photos. The first picture was of a young woman, dressed in the uniform of a local fast-food restaurant, smiling happily towards the camera. The second one was a crime scene photo of the same woman's bloodless corpse. "Caroline "Carrie" Simmons," Owain said. "Age 21, last seen alive Wednesday night having dinner with friends at the restaurant 'Flavour Heaven'. Her boss reported her missing on Friday when she failed to show up for work for the second day in a row. Her body was found in a dumpster behind a hardware store called 'The Toolbox' early Sunday morning." "According to the coroner, she probably had been dead for several days, but it was hard to determine the exact time of death since her body had been totally drained of blood. The blood loss is considered to be the cause of death, and she had, and I quote: 'Several bite marks from some kind of animal on her neck and throat.'" He paused. "Of course, we know better than to blame it on an animal. There is at least one dangerous vampire haunting this town, and it's our job to find out who it is and to take care of him or her before it's too late, and we get another victim on our hands." "No problem!" Noah said, a grim smile spreading over his face. "That sucker will soon be wiped from the face of the earth." The others wholeheartedly agreed, and Abe smiled warmly. "Don't worry Owain. We'll get the job done." Owain nodded, but no matter what they said, he was going to worry; he was going to be afraid and upset and wonder if he ever would see anyone of them again until they all were safely home. "Alright, you know what to do then. I want all of you back here tomorrow with reports. Be safe my friends, and may God give you strength. Dismissed!" As the hunters started to leave the room, Owain spoke again. "Diana, Phoebus, you stay here." XV
He was in his own bed and the power was back on.The light came from the lamp in the ceiling and the song, which now had been replaced with some overenthusiastic guy yelling to the listeners to call to the show to win fabulous prices, came from his mini-stereo. Heedan rose from the bed, stretched his body that ached from lying in an awkward position, and realised that he was still wearing both his school-uniform and his shoes. He turned off the stereo, undressed and went to the bathroom. With the electricity back on, the apartment once again had hot water, and Heedan spent at least 15 minutes standing under the hot spray of the shower letting it soothe his muscles and clear his mind. He needed to think. When it came down to it, the message and the blackout at school left him with two options. Either there was something supernatural about the whole thing, or he was simply losing his mind. The mere thought of the last option made him scared. What if he indeed was losing his mind? What if none of the things had actually happened? What if his mind had snapped totally and he had imagined the whole thing with the messages? He fought back the panic. No, things couldn't be that bad! He had never doubted his senses when it came to his supernatural friends before, so why should he start now? His sixth sense told him that it had been happening and he shouldn't question it. With an almost triumphant smile on his lips, Heedan went through the day's events in his head while he towelled his hair. He was now convinced that the messages he had received during the night and this morning really had been real; the book where he had pasted the messages should be lying on the kitchen table where he left it. He put on a bathrobe and went to the kitchen area to check. Yes, there was the book and the messages he received in the book and in the newspaper. They were real! Unless, of course, he was dreaming the whole thing. He quickly pinched himself to be sure and winced at the pain. Ouch! No dream! With the last of his doubt out of the way, he read the messages again, "Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us!" And so on, and on the second, the words that he decided were names " Agwe Idin Ricven Tana Mu'atsu," not much information there. But the paper he had found in school had had more to say, hadn't it? What had happened to that last paper anyway? He remembered holding it in his hand when he lost consciousness, but then what? He remembered the feeling he had during his unconsciousness, then Eoli had showed up and awoken him somehow and helped him to get home. Had he had the paper with him then? Somehow his memory was all blurry, but then again he must have been really exhausted falling asleep like that, clothes and all. He picked up his pants from where he had left them and stuck a hand into the pocket, felt around a little and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Yes, there it was, "Heedan, we need you! The world needs you! We can't stop him! He is too strong. Please! Help us! Help us! Help us!" Well it was no question of who was the receiver of the message anymore, was it? The whole thing was turning out to be quite a mystery. Someone needed to be stopped, but whom? And why by him? With a thoughtful frown, he pasted the new message under the two from before. "I want to help you," he said to the pages, as if he could reach his mysterious pen-pals through them. "Just tell me more." Heedan closed the book and sighed. His gaze fell onto something white that had fallen out of his pocket as he'd taken the note, and he reached for it. It was Eoli's business-card. On the rectangular, expensive-looking piece of paper, Eoli's name and telephone-number were printed in gold. "Probably real gold too," Heedan thought, and remembered the limousine that had taken him home. At the bottom of the card Eoli had written a short note. His handwriting was as steady as his handshake had been and had a charming tilt to it. "Heedan, call me if you want to talk!" On pure impulse, Heedan picked up his cellphone, dialled the number and waited. "Hi, this is Eoli!" Eoli's recorded voice said cheerfully as the answering-machine picked up, "I can't talk at the moment, but leave a message and I'll call you back." Heedan had no idea what to say; he wouldn't have known what to say if Eoli had answered in person either; he wasn't even sure why he had called in the first place. "Ehh, hi, Eoli. This is Heedan from today.. I ehh .. just wanted to say thanks for the help and such and ehh I guess I'll see you tomorrow. So ehh bye for now!" He hung up and smiled. *** The creatures in the underworld smiled at each other. "He wants to help us. He wants to know more," Agwe said, his voice not hiding his relief. "Then we tell him more," Mu'atsu replied. "From the beginning, let's tell him about whom we are and how we ended up here and then maybe..." "...Maybe he will find a way to get us out of here..." Idin continued. "...and stop Skye." Tana finished. Ricven laughed. "You sound like identical triplets finishing each other's sentences like that". The others glared at him, but none of them really took offence at his words. XVI "Dr. James Westlake," he said, and gave his subordinate hunters a weary but stern look as he held up the newspaper in front of them with the pages spread open.On the page to the left was a picture of a man in his 40's, dressed in white doctor's scrubs and with a stethoscope around his neck. He had short brown hair and warm sympathetic eyes. Under the picture was a short article about the apparent murder of a beloved doctor. The right page was covered with letters from people who apparently had known James. His colleagues at the hospital where he had had the night shift, relatives of people he had been there for during the last days of their lives and old patients who remembered him long after they had become well and had been sent home. All of the letters talked about the same things, James' kind and friendly behaviour, his understanding nature and commitment to his work, his calm and professional deeds as a physician, but also his humanity, his infectious laughter and his ability to get each patient to feel extra special. And everyone expressed the same uncomprehending grief and confusion. Who could have done this to James and why? Diana shrugged and gave the newspaper an indifferent glance, thereby confirming what Owain already knew. Diana Blackwelll couldn't care less about the man she tortured, killed and dumped just hours before. Other hunters would perhaps have felt a sense of triumph or pride when they were reminded of a job well done in the service of God, or suffer from a guilty conscience when they realized the grief and pain they created by taking the life of someone, even if that someone had been a vampire. But for Diana, James meant nothing at all. He was not worth feeling triumph over and even less remorse. Owain pointed to the picture in the newspaper in order to underline what he was about to say. He wanted to yell at them, scold them, beg them to use their common sense, appeal to their emotions, try to make them understand how what they had done had been wrong in so many ways. But the word that came out of his mouth was a simple "Why?" "It's a vampire," Diana replied, as if that explained everything, and maybe it should have. He knew it had once, before he had started to lose faith in himself and in what they were doing, but this was just wrong, clearly wrong. However, because he couldn't show his doubt, not in front of the Blackwell siblings, Owain said the first thing that came to mind, trying to make it sound like he was worried about their reputation and nothing else. "You had to take someone who was respected among the mortals and then just dump his body in clear sight, even though I clearly gave you orders to try to keep as low a profile as possible and not attract unwanted attention." "Vampires are vampires," Diana replied coldly. "They are monsters whether they try to blend in among the humans or not. Those who try to blend in are actually worse. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, a danger to the public, and it is our duty to ..." "I gave you an order!" Owain interrupted. "I am your superior, Diana, and when I give you orders, you obey them. If I tell you to keep a low profile, you will keep a low profile, otherwise I swear that the Grand Master will hear about this. I'm pretty sure he does not appreciate either your choice of victims or your so-called interrogation techniques." "We were just doing our job," Phoebus said and casually leaned against the wall, an eerie smile touching his lips. Owain suspected that at this very moment he was fantasizing about their interrogation techniques and what he would do to the next victim they got their hands on. "We asked him questions; it's not our fault that he rather had died than tell us were we could find the rest of his kind." Owain shuddered from unease. "Do you think I don't know how you ask questions, torture and rape, and then more torture until you get tired and want a new toy? If it were up to me, I would ..." He felt a sudden nausea and a feeling of pressure behind his eyes that told him that a migraine attack was coming." Leave! Both of you! I can't deal with you right now ..." As soon as the siblings had left and closed the door behind them, Owain took up the newspaper again. He saw no monster, no beast, no cold-blooded killer who had to be slain at all costs. Instead, he saw a loved one and missed person, a good doctor, a good friend and a wonderful human being. A doctor who would never again say a few words of comfort to a grieving family member or rejoice that a patient had recovered and had to go home. A person who never again would joke and laugh with his colleagues in the coffee room or sit and talk with friends over a glass of wine. Tears filled Owain's eyes, but he could not stop them; it was all so terribly pointless. All this violence and killing. Sure there were vampires, horrible ones, like the vampire that had killed the woman, Carrie, for example. Owain had met many of them himself, so yes, there were evil monsters among the vampires, but were they really, truly evil, all of them? According to this article they were not. There were good and bad vampires as well as there were good and bad humans. As he looked at the picture of James again, he at least knew one thing, that really evil murderous beasts existed, but they were not vampires, and although Owain was the youngest person who'd ever been given the rank of hunter of the first degree, at that moment he felt terribly old. XVII She fingered nervously on the cord while she waited for someone to pick up.For 15 years she had been a human contact for the Lilies, a job that mostly meant helping them arrange their recruiting campaigns and fixing practical stuff in the mortal world, but also to keep an eye out for trouble, like hunters or the threat from other Lilies. Not that there were that many. Liberty Creek was a small and quiet little town. Sure it had its university, but not that many students actually went there, and those who did most often just moved to the town to study, stayed a few years and then moved on; no one really stayed there for long. This was something that actually had worked as an advantage for the Lilies and they and the humans had coexisted in blissful ignorance for the humans, until now. Hunters had moved here and they were apparently looking for their prey. That made her worried; many of the Lilies in the town were her friends and she was concerned for their sake, but to be frank, Patricia found it hard to believe that kind, scatter-minded Eoli was a fierce hunter, even though she had proof of it in her own hand. And now she had to call the vampireking himself to warn him of the danger. She had been given a special emergency number to call if she ever encountered such a threat, but this was the first time she had had to use it and she wasn't really sure what to expect. "Yes?" a deep male voice answered from the other end of the line. "How may I help you?" Patricia swallowed and tried to make her voice as steady and businesslike as possible. "Yes, I need to talk to your king! It's urgent." "Wait here.." the male replied and hung up. And she waited. The silence from the other side of the line almost had an ominous feeling to it and Patricia found herself wishing for some ambient music that usually played in the background when she waited on the phone. "This is Siramis speaking." She jumped; she hadn't heard him picking up the phone on the other side and the sound of his voice startled her. And not only that, it was something with his voice that made her shiver, her heart beat a little faster and her cheeks turn red as if she were a teenage girl and not a woman in her late 40s. "You're highness.." she began, ashamed of how her voice quivered. "My name is Patricia West. I'm calling from Liberty Creek. I need to warn you. I'm a college professor and I'm quite sure that I have a hunter in one of my classes." She read the note Eoli had dropped out loud and heard the vampire making a noise that sounded like a mix between a deep sigh and a growl. "I thank you for your warning, Miss Patricia West," the king said after she had finished reading. "I will warn my people about this Mr. Eoli Anaya. Do you know who the other boy is that the note speaks of?" Patricia sighed. "Yes, I think so; his name is Heedan Ortus; he is quite and oddball if you ask me." She suddenly had a bad feeling and, afraid that she'd insulted the king, quickly added, "Is he one of yours? In that case I apologise for calling him odd." The king laughed, it wasn't a kind laugh, but it wasn't a cruel one as would be expected of a vampireking either; it sounded false, like it was only a sound with no feeling behind it. A shadow of a laugh. "Are you afraid of me, Miss West?" "Of course I am, your highness," she replied truthfully. "Only a fool wouldn't feel fear when faced with a being like you, and royalty to top that." Siramis laughed again and she shivered. "You are a wise girl, but no, he is not one of ours. However, I will ask my people to take a look at them both. Thank you again for telling me. You will be rewarded." He hung up without another word and Patricia sighed with relief. XVIIIDwendelyn confirmed his worst fears. There was indeed at least one hunter loose among their kind, 8 Lilies tortured and murdered, fear and panic growing among the people in her group. And then she told him something even worse. "Hunters aren't the only thing out there, my lord. A bloodless corpse has been found, totally drained of every last drop. The police are suspecting a wild animal of some kind but, if she is only the first of many, it will not take long before the humans start to become suspicious. But that's not all, my lord," She swallowed. "The scent of the attacker on the corpse, it smelled like you." "What?!" Siramis felt as if someone had emptied a bucket of ice-cold water over his head and he felt suddenly ill. "That is indeed bad news, Dwendelyn. I'll look into it at once." He hung up and hid his face in his hands. His scent? Bloodscent was almost like DNA, every Lily had their own unique scent, but one could also find the trademarks from the scent of their blood-father or blood-mother. This served to create a feeling of belonging for both the young ones and the older Lilies, and also a way for others of their kind to see, or to be more exact smell, who was connected to whom. For his scent to end up on a victim's body, the perpetrator must be either Siramis himself or one of his own blood, to be precise one of his own blood-children. He knew all too well which one it had to be. Damon! It all had begun several hundred years ago. His Royal Highness Siramis Ramona of Eufemia had been on a two-week long diplomatic mission to a foreign country and on the way home, when they passed through a big forest, decided that he needed a late supper. It had been a bright summer night and the moon had barely risen as he'd stepped out of his expensive carriage and removed his shirt and his boots, letting the more primitive instincts of his nature take over for a while.  He had been following the trace of a deer when he had heard the noise of someone coming running through the undergrowth of the woods, a boy's voice muttering words of how unfair things were and the ruffling of expensive fabrics like silk and velvet. Siramis had guessed, from the sound of it, that it was a spoiled child most likely of noble birth, running away from home for some minor injustice hardly worth mentioning. And he had been right, of course; his senses were exceptional so he was seldom wrong in his guesses. But, oh, the boy had been perfect, more than perfect; porcelain skin on a soft body, a little chubby like a cherub, hair soft as silk falling in tangled curls around a cute, sullen face with big, blue eyes and pouty lips. Siramis had wanted him. He had wanted him badly, and he had taken him, buried his hard cock in the boy's body, and slaked his lust deep inside him. When it all was over Siramis had looked at the boy on the ground, ready to let him satisfy another of his needs, his hunger for blood. But then something weird had happened, until this day he really couldn't explain it, but the more the vampire looked at the sobbing boy on the ground, the more right it felt and a strange tenderness had overcome him. He had knelt beside the boy caressing his tear-streaked face tenderly. "Don't be afraid!" Siramis had said, even though he had known that it was a little too late for that. "I won't kill you; in fact I think I might keep you. What is your name?" "Joshua," the boy had replied in a sobbing voice. "Joshua," Siramis had echoed, his voice soft and caressing. "My Joshua." He had wrapped the boy in his cloak and taken him back to his carriage where he had removed all the traces of their intercourse and given him a glass of strong wine, spiked with a couple of drops of Siramis' own blood to help heal any internal discomfort caused by the rape and also to calm the boy's nerves. Somehow the king and his victim had come to an understanding. Their second time together had been better, more gentle, and their third time even more so. And years went by. Their first temporary acquaintance and occasional one night stands turned, when Joshua grew old enough and inherited the title of baron after his parents death and could rule his home as he wanted, into a steady erotic relationship, to a strong friendship and a deep love that never seemed to weaken, even though Joshua grew older, his hair and beard turning grey and his blue eyes a bit misty with age. The old man and his never-aging lover had often talked about the death they both knew would come. Siramis had on several occasions begged Joshua to let him make him one of his kind but the human had refused, claiming that that life wasn't for him, and the vampire had accepted it even though it was with a heavy heart. "What will happen then?" Siramis had asked one day when he had come to visit his friend and lover. "On the day you leave me?" "You will find another one, beautiful," Joshua had replied with sad smile. "One who will welcome your gift with open arms; one you can share eternity with." Siramis had sighed. "You make it sounds so easy." Joshua had taken his hand and kissed it. "I'll help you look, Sira. You will find someone perfect." The vampire's eyes had filled up with tears and he had pulled his love close and kissed him. "You are perfect, Josh my love. No one will ever take your place." "I don't mind sharing you," the old baron had replied with a grin, kissing away his love's tears and Siramis hadn't been able to stop himself from grinning back. And Joshua had kept his word; throughout the years, every time Siramis could take the time off from ruling his kingdom and come and visit his lover, Joshua kept hinting about young ladies and gentlemen he knew of that might have been the perfect one for his Sira, but no one had struck his fancy, and so it went on until the year of Joshua's 74th birthday. It had been quite a normal evening for them. They had been sitting in Joshua's library, enjoying a glass of wine served by a timid servant girl. The baron had caressed the girl's hair and she had flinched and blushed. This was not something new. As their master, it was Joshua's privilege to take any of his servants to bed if he wanted to, so it wouldn't be long before this one ended up in his bed too. Siramis hadn't taken offence by this. His and Joshua's love for each other was deep and devoted but it had never been monogamous and the girl was indeed very cute with her rosy skin, raven locks and hazel eyes. Sure she probably was a bit young considering Joshua's old age but on the other hand Joshua had been only 14 when Siramis, already then several centuries older, had made him his lover, so he couldn't actually blame him there either. Later that evening Siramis had seen the servant girl again. She had been talking to a boy some years older than she was, probably her brother or at least a close relative since he had the same dark hair and rosy complexion as she had. The look on the boy's face had been one of anger and disgust but Siramis hadn't cared. He had been perfect. The boy hadn't left his thoughts for the rest of the night, and by sunset the next day, the vampire's interest had grown into an obsession and he had wanted to know more about the mysterious boy. "You know that servant-girl that served us wine today?" the vampire asked his lover, a small smile playing on his lips. Joshua had nodded. "You mean Charisma? Yes, she is quite a beauty, isn't she? Do you fancy her?" Siramis had shaken his head. "No, you can have her, my love; it's not her I'm interested in.. I just wondered if she had a brother. I saw her talking to someone that looked a lot like her.." The old man's face had split into an excited grin. "Ahh, that would be Damon! He is one of my stable-boys, very good at what he is doing. Do you want him, my dear?" Siramis had let the tip of his tongue moisten his lips. "I think, my love, that he might be a perfect one." And so it had started. With a smile on his face, Joshua had introduced Siramis to the stable-boy, Damon, and had given Sira a kiss on his cheek for good luck before leaving them alone so his love could court his chosen one. It hadn't been an easy task. The boy had been hostile and suspicious, not wanting anything to do with the vampire at first, but then slowly but surely, he had warmed up to Siramis' company. He had started to ask questions about the king's life, his celestial appearance and about his weird habits - like the fact that he was never seen before sunset or never ate anything. And Siramis had replied with as much information as he could without giving away the whole truth. As time went by, Siramis' love for the boy had grown more and more and soon he had worked up the courage to tell the boy about what he really was, hoping that he wouldn't scare him away. He told Damon about his life before he became a vampire, his kind and beautiful wife and their little son, both of whom were taken by death far too early, and about his blood-mother that had saved his life and given him a reason to live again by making him a black lily. To his great joy, Damon hadn't been scared; he had been intrigued and wanted to know more. What did it feel like to be a vampire? What could and couldn't they do? And how did one become one? And Siramis, amused by the boy's interest, had answered all the questions he had, telling the boy about his superhuman strength, the illusions he could create, his speed and how easy it was to find food among animals even if human blood still had the best taste. Damon had listened, nodding once in a while to show that he understood everything Siramis told him, something that had made the vampire very happy. If he were such an attentive student already, he would have no problems with him if he was to make him his blood-child one day. "I see that you and Damon are getting along well," Joshua had said as they met up one evening for some cuddling.  Siramis had nodded, "We do. Joshua, do you mind if I take him as my lover? If he wants to I mean. I won't rape him." Truth be told, half a century ago Siramis wouldn't have been thinking twice before having sex with Damon whether the boy wanted it or not, but Joshua had changed him to the better and he didn't want to take him against his will."Not at all," Joshua had replied with a grin. "It was my idea after all, besides I fancy a certain young maid, so go ahead get your boy into bed; I'm sure he wants to, how could he not want you, and I will do the same with his sister." Siramis had smiled. "And if I want to take it further, my love? You know I would never do anything to hurt you." Joshua had kissed him. "Then do so. I can see that you love him and I don't want you to be alone; I will not live forever, you know. You have my blessing!" Later that evening Siramis and Damon had had a long talk and it had in fact been Damon that brought up the subject. "I love you," he had said and then continued, "and I want to become what you are; I want to be with you forever. Please, Siramis. I love you so much." "You're still young, just a boy," Siramis had replied, but it wasn't much of a protest. "Wouldn't it be better if we waited until you're a bit older?" "I'm almost 20; I'm a man, not a boy," Damon urged. "I don't want to wait. Please, if you do love me, make me what you are - do it now. I want to be with you. Or do you not want me?" Of course he wanted him and Siramis did love him. How could he deny him what he wanted? That night they had made love for the first time, and in the afterglow of their union, Siramis had made Damon one of his kind, held him as he died in his arms and helped him through the rebirth. The next few days had been pure bliss; he and Damon had been together day and night, finding pleasure in each other's bodies and hunting together among the wild-life in the forest that surrounded Joshua's home. Siramis had taught his blood-child the basics of what he needed to know as a black lily, but they mostly had taken it easy and enjoyed each other's company; there had been no rush; they would have years together for Damon to learn everything he needed. On the fifth day since Damon's rebirth, Siramis had needed to meet up with a courier, who brought news from his kingdom, and reluctantly he had left his blood-child at home. Even if it was only for a few hours, the life of a young one was always dangerous, but Damon had only smiled at his worries. "Go! I'll manage for a couple of hours. I promise I'll stay inside and hide until you're back if that makes you happy!" They had shared a kiss and Siramis had left to meet the courier. Afterwards he would like to claim that he had known something was wrong, but that would have been a lie. When he kissed Damon goodbye that day, he had had no idea what was about to happen. The meeting had went well; his kingdom was doing fine without him for another couple of weeks or so and Siramis had been enjoying the thoughts of spending them with the two men he loved, both his old lover and his new one. When he had come home, he immediately had gone to find Damon and tell him the great news, but he hadn't been able to find him anywhere. Siramis had panicked. Where was his blood-child? There had been no trace of him, and when Siramis looked a little further, he'd found no trace of Damon's sister either. And then he had smelled it, the smell of blood, Joshua's blood. He had rushed to his love's room and found Joshua dead, his body beaten almost beyond recognition, some blood stained the sheets, that was the origin of the smell, but most of the blood was missing, drained from his body. There had been only one explanation but Siramis hadn't wanted to believe it. That someone he had loved and trusted, someone that just days before had said that he wanted them to be together forever, had not only betrayed him and used him to become stronger but had murdered the man Siramis loved. Murdered his Joshua! He had known that he should have run after Damon, hunted him down, and ended his existence there and then, but he hadn't been able to do anything besides sit there with Joshua's body in his arms, sobbing and screaming out his grief. His heart had shattered into a million pieces that day. Damon's betrayal and the death of Joshua had been too much for him to bear and he had returned to his kingdom promising himself to never let anyone get close to him again. He had never seen Damon since that time, not that he hadn't had a chance to on several occasions. He had felt the presence of his blood-child and simply turned the other way and left, not wanting to see Damon, the pain in his heart and the hurt from the betrayal still being too fresh. And now Damon had appeared again, in Liberty Creek, right under the noses of the hunters. Siramis almost felt like cheering the hunters on, wanting them to catch Damon and let him have exactly what he deserved, but another part of his shattered heart still loved the treacherous murderer his blood-child had turned out to be and hoped that he was safe. And of course there was the other problem, that the hunters didn't see the difference between renegade vampires who killed people left and right and the ones that only wanted to live in peace, and Siramis couldn't let innocent people suffer just because he was too heartbroken to face his blood-child. Something had to be done. He turned to his bodyguard and right hand man, a huge man with a wild mane of red hair and burning yellow-shimmering eyes. "Isaac! We need to send our special team to Liberty Creek; they have problems with hunters," he smiled a sad smile, "and my child, Damon, is there." Isaac put a hand on Siramis' shoulder and squeezed it gently in a way that hid stronger feelings than just the comfort and encouragement he wanted to give his king. "I'll see to it at once, my lord!" To Be Continued |
