The Fire Within (The Fire of The Soul Series) (24 page)

"Because I was ordered to by my King! Victor
has declared war upon the Skin-walkers. We need everyone to help us, to fight
against them. He knows that I am the only one who would be able to get through
to you, that I am the only one of his people that you would listen to, and so
knowing what I am here, I accepted the task," I reply, almost whispering
the words to her. She walks away from me, her gold hands reaching up to play
with her fiery red hair.

"Emma, please just listen to me," I beg,
she refuses to turn around, refuses to look at me again and I know that she
will not listen, that she cannot stand the sight of me.

"No Adrian, I've heard what you have come to
say, and I will think about helping Victor. Not because you have asked this of
me, but for the benefit of my people, for if our world ever fell into the
Skin-walkers hands we would be one of the first Kingdoms to fall, after the
Vampires of course," She has turned around while she is speaking, if only
to look at me once more before she banishes me again. "You should leave
Adrian, while my warriors still listen to my order to leave you alone."

"Are you banishing me once more Emma?" I
ask having to know the answer, she sighs heavily her eyes never leaving from me
though the grace that she possesses has left her.

"No Adrian, I am not banishing you again, but I
wouldn't suggest coming back too soon, my people still see you as a
felon," She says smiling softly. This is the best news that I have heard
in so long, and I quickly stride toward her, embracing her in my arms once
more.

"You won't regret this Em," I say softly,
not being able to hold back the grin that is spreading across my face. It must
be infectious because soon she is smiling as well.

"You better hope not Adrian," She says,
quietly before reaching up on the top of her toes and softly kisses me, only
once but enough to give me hope. I kiss her more fully as I draw her in
tightly. I can feel her starting to smile, and I place one more kiss upon her
lips before I let her go. I start to walk away from her, trying to hide my
smile but I cannot do so to save my life.

"Oh and Adrian," She calls her smile still
firmly in place, her azure-silver eyes shimmering softly. "Fog is waiting
out front for you." I blow her a kiss and bow lowly to her, and she laughs
softly, the sweet melody continues to ring in my ears as I bound down the
stairs and mount Fog. The image of her happy and smiling, the ghosts of her
kisses stay long with me even though Antadova and Emma-Leah are far behind me.

No-one not even Shade - who is within range of the
Black Mountains - can hear the pained screams of tortured victims echoing out
of it's darkest corners. No-one knows that two nomads lay dead in the Mountains
that evening and that one, the only female member of the Cantu coven, is able
to escape the terror of a deadly monster no-one could ever describe.

Christian's P.O.V

The throne room is empty, there is no on-going party
from the night before, and there is nobody there except myself. The silence is
empowering, relaxing, I feel as if here, alone I can be everything I am without
wearing a mask. I have no tricks to perform, no minds to befuddle except my
own. How this silence calms my soul, this silence is like balm on an open
wound. This
silence
is bliss. However, things are not truly ever silent,
my mind never stops for a moment, and then there are all the dreaming souls,
and their whispering voices that bounce around inside of my skull. Though there
is no noise, there are
always
voices, saying one thing or another. I sit
here, alone in the dark, silent room, my feet dangling over the side of my
throne, a position I always find myself in, staring up at the blank ceiling,
trying to imagine the night sky that I know
she
is looking at.

I sigh, the air rushing through my lips, puffing
before me in a cloud of white, in the chill that has come with the night. The
coldness does not affect me, as it may have once done, when I was so much more
innocent, if anyone could believe that I was once such. I sigh again, as the
thought of her believing that I was once innocent enters into my mind, I banish
it as soon as it comes, but I can never erase the fact that it was there
completely. She could never believe that I was once innocent, nor worth loving.

Any chance that I had once had of winning her over,
were gone the moment I allowed myself to be the embodiment of a 'Skin-walker';
lusting, carnal, deceitful, possessive. She was never meant to be mine to start
with, but it doesn't mean that I still don't
want
her. Her lips, her
skin, her blood. I want to possess
all
of her, and the only way that I
can capture her is with that bloody Vampire gone!

The anger that burns through my veins forces me from
my chair, sending me into a quick pace across the large expanse of my throne
room. These thoughts won't ever leave my head, my mind is never silent, and
voices whisper and try to use me to their will. I never have a moment of peace.
I find myself falling to my knees, my hands pounding against the marble floor,
coming away bloody from cuts that I cannot explain. Quiet, all I want is
silence, peace!
Why
is it so difficult to get some silence! From the
corner of my eye I see the quick spark of moonlight hitting against glass, and
then I can smell it, the sweet intoxicating smell of alcohol. My one escape
from all the noise!

I move with an alarming speed but I hardly seem to
notice it, as I make my way across the room to the far corners. There before me
is sweet bliss, the remedy of all this noise, the only drug that I crave. I
pour the hardest liquor of them all, knowing that if it didn't kill me, it
would at least knock me out for a few hours. I hold it up almost in a mockery
of a toast, as I look at the crystal clear liquid. I've never drunk pure Unicorn
blood before, it was
always
with something else, the effects of the
blood is unknown, it could very well kill, me but I am willing to pay that
price, if it only brought me silence.

"What doesn't kill you makes you
stronger," I whisper, breathing the words heavily. I look at it for one
more moment before I bring the cold glass to my lips, drinking the liquid is
like drinking in air. It's tasteless; it doesn't even feel like it's there! But
I can feel myself getting woozier, thirstier. The first glass isn't enough, I
need
more, I have to drink until I pass out, upon the cold, hard marble floor. I
need to go to the very place inside of my mind where there is no noise, where
all
is silent. Let the world around me burn and fall, to hell with them all! Death is
the price I must pay, Silence is the one thing I long for, more than
her
anyways.

The sweet intoxication is bliss; all is silent as I
watch the world burn around me. I feel nothing, no pain, no sorrow, no love. My
heart, my mind, my body and soul seem to have stopped functioning. I see angels
fall from the heavens, and demons crawl out of hell. Intoxication, sweet bliss,
the calming balm on my tortured soul. The demons feed on the angels, their
blood, and their flesh. It is all food, a welcoming feast for the demons and I
sit there, and wait for them to eat off of me too, I wait for my skin to be
ripped apart, to burn and wriggle and crawl as if I was going through the
change, I wait for my blood to pour freely but it never comes, all I do is sit
and wait and watch. Hell, I don't even know what I'm watching, is it just the
thoughts of a mad-man who’s given into the intoxication of a drink, or am I
watching the past, or worse yet the future?

I don't know when I pass out, but the effects of the
crystal clear blood, change from torturous, insane imagery into a soft peaceful
place. I know it well, the no-man lands before the shore-line. A place I had
visited recently, not only in my mind but in person as well. She's there too
and so is a small boy, with blue eyes and blond hair, whose smile is
infectious. I want to pick the boy up in my arms, and hold him close. I want to
kiss her on her red lips. The desire to possess them both is no-where to be
found within me. Perhaps this is what it could have been like, if I was
some-one else.

When the boy sees me he cries out for his father,
and I am instantly afraid that I've already terrified him by simply being here,
then she turns around and there is joy and love in her eyes and I melt at the
core.

"Anna," I whisper, her name is like a
prayer on my lips. I wish to take her in my arms, to kiss her, to love her but
I cannot do that in front of the boy.

"Hello Love, where have you been? We have been
waiting for you," She says to me and then kneels besides the little boy
again - who cannot be more than five years old - and says to him "Go and
say hello to your Papa, Chino." Chino, my son, turns around and runs to me
throwing his little arms around my waist. I look to Anna, and she nods her head
in allowance, as if giving me permission to hug my son in return.

"Hello Papa, I've missed you. Will you come and
play with me and Mama?" I nod my head at my son, unable to speak. I look
back up at Anna, and I see the answer of whether this could be as real as it
feels. Her loving eyes hold no deceit, and I know that this must be real.

I spend time with Anna and Chino, enjoying the sweet
bliss of having a family with Anna. It feels unreal to explore in the
sensations of the dying, and I know I'm dying to have dreamed up something so
innocent and sweet.

Pain courses through out my body, and the vision of
Anna and Chino vanishes as I start to see red. I scream out their name, calling
them to come back to me, to stay with me during my last moments, but it's too
late they're gone, and I'm screaming at dead air. I can hear voices echoing
around me, and the sharp noises bounce around my skull, the silence is gone and
now that the noise has return I realize that Anna and Chino had hardly spoken
at all.

"He's coming around," A female whispers, I
can feel strong, familiar hands on my shoulders, and through the blur of my
vision I can see Fawkes' flaming red hair above me.

I try to say his name, but nothing comes out but
white foam that flows down rapidly from my mouth. "Sir, you need to
swallow the stone. You'll feel better, I promise." He says, but I don't
want to feel better, I want to be back with Anna and Chino, but they are gone
and they aren't going to come back, not unless I continued to live and
made
them apart of my future. As hard and as big as the stone is I force it down my
throat, swallowing it whole. The nutrients within the stone allows the toxins
of the Unicorn's blood to ebb away, allowing the body to heal from the damage
that the toxins has caused. I know all this because it isn't the first time
that I had attempted to make everything silent, this isn't the first time that
I had tried to kill myself.

They try to help me, try to help me get better, but
I send them all away and request to be left alone. Fawkes does a sweep of my
room and takes away anything he believes that I might use to kill myself with,
after that he mainly leaves me alone even though he sends people to guard my
room.

Although the room itself is silent, the noise of
people’s thoughts echoes around me, their concern, their worry, and their
arguments. I find myself concentrating on an argument; it is between Fawkes and
the woman from before. I do not know her name, but she has been popping up
recently every time I seek Fawkes out.

"There were two people entering
into our territory this evening. A Shape-shifter, and a Pure-blood
Vampire," The woman says, her eyes are burning with fury. "We need to
alert Christian, he needs to be aware of what is happening within his own
Kingdom!"
Her anger burns through her words as her
voice reaches heights that hurt my ears and makes my head throb.

"I know, Talia, I know! But if he
knew the Oath Brother of his 'arch-nemeses' was here then he'd be in an even
worse state than before. We need to quietly ease him out of the state he's in
before we can allow him to know".
I repel my mind away
from their conversation, and sit up on the bed. I have a choice, do I get up
and deal with the situation that I was not intended to know about? Or do I
remain here, wallowing in my self-pity and sorrow, allowing my life to slip
away and the chance to gain my future pass by? The decision is easy to make,
not only because I think of myself but I think of my people, who are feared and
hated by our world simply because of
what
we are. Not only do I deserve
a better and brighter future, but so do they, and so I get up, moving my limbs
slowly to check that they are still functional. I shift only slightly, to make
myself more presentable, and not to look like someone else.

I open the door and I find that the two guards have
fallen asleep at their stations, how pathetic they are at their task. I could
have been doing anything within my room, and they would not have known what I
was doing in their state. I quickly make my way to my throne room, where I had
last seen them.

They are standing by the table in the far corner,
the one that I had found the Unicorn blood on. They are arguing about what to
do about the blood, when they are startled out of their conversation at the
click of the door locking behind me.

"You should be-rid yourself of that woman
Fawkes, if she is as much trouble as she seems," I say softly as I cross
the room to join them. He seems to stiffen for a moment, whether it's about my
comment or the fact that I'm actually here, I cannot say.