“Arletta. I’m a wreck, too. But getting fried in the ocean won’t do your brothers any favors.”
Mention of her brothers seemed to get through to her. At least she followed me as I continued swimming with all the speed my limbs could muster.
As we swam, the ghastly forms of Hans and Braithe—the same forms that I was now certain Frederick and Colin would soon develop—plagued my mind. My head reeled. What had happened? What has my Hans become? It was like the starvation had caused Hans and his fellow vampires to somehow evolve… into a different species altogether. How is it that Braithe didn’t die when the pole struck his heart? No vampire should have survived that. And whatever his condition is, it’s contagious?
It was as though they were no longer even vampires… Or at least, not the vampires we knew.
Chapter 1: Ben
As I finished downing the blue elixir, a fire blazed in my stomach. I dropped the glass bottle. The burning sensation spread from my stomach to my chest, then along my limbs to the tips of my toes and fingers. The Elder’s shrieking faded into the background. I closed my eyes tight, locking my jaw as the agony consumed me.
And then, just as I felt that I could take it no longer, it stopped.
A lightness filled me. I felt myself floating upward. I opened my eyes. The sky above me, previously streaked with red, now looked washed out, its vibrant color faded. I twisted, rolling over weightlessly in what felt like midair, to face downward.
Beneath me was… me. My body. Curled up in a fetal position, face and fists clenched up in pain. Perfectly still, surrounded by the shards of the shattered glass vial.
The black mist of the Elder reached my body. He billowed around it, engulfing it completely, even as he continued to screech.
I stared down at my hands. They were a pearly, translucent white, as were my feet… and the rest of my form. I could almost see the dark ground below through my limbs.
When I’d realized my only path lay in taking the potion, I hadn’t been completely certain that it would work. That the liquid would really do what Arron had told me it would—detach me from my body and turn me into… a ghost. Although I had prayed that it would, I hadn’t been in the slightest bit prepared for it.
I no longer had a body. I was a ghost. A subtle being, trapped in the so-called “in-between” that Arron had described. This was the only place that I could be. I couldn’t remain in my body without putting into jeopardy not just the human realm, but countless others. And at the same time, I wasn’t ready to meet with death…
Staring down at my body curled up on the ground shook me to the core.
I am down there… and yet I am not.
Then what am I?
Throughout my existence, since the day I was born, I’d identified myself with that body, the body I now saw lying on the ground, a corpse. Although the Hawk had told me that I had an existence separate from it, being told such a thing and actually experiencing it were two different matters entirely. Arron was right. Although devoid of my physical wrapping, I still possess thoughts. Mind. Consciousness. There is more to each of us than flesh and bone.
The Elder, still swirling around my body, was apparently trying to enter it. But he remained outside—it was no longer habitable to him. They couldn’t inhabit corpses. They could only hijack bodies that were still living.
The Elder tried in vain for several moments before, letting out another scream of frustration, he moved away from my body. Apparently having accepted that there was no way I could be of use to him anymore, he began to glide away toward the edge of the cliff… when another presence arrived—another veil of black mist, followed by a voice.
“What happened to the boy?” the hiss asked Basilius.
“This is all a result of the girl vessel’s incompetence.” Basilius’ voice dripped with rage. “She allowed him to carry an elixir all this time. He took it moments before I was able to enter him, and now… Now he is lost to us! All those years we waited, gone to waste! His corpse lies there, frozen and useless. Julie Duan is not to be shown her lover. She must be punished for this grievous error.”
“It is too late for that. I have already taken her to him,” the second voice replied.
Basilius screeched again.
“However,” the second Elder continued, “I assure you that her visit to the mountain chamber just now was indeed a punishment.”
“What?”
“I had taken Julie Duan to see her lover, as you promised her, and she was met with anything but relief… We discovered something… peculiar and wondrous.”
“What did you discover?” Basilius asked, his voice anxious.