Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Instincts.
My voice sounded distant when I spoke again.
“Halloween night… Garway church. Moonlight on the gravestones, and you, and me. Running. Dancing.” I kept my eyes closed. “The ritual. That’s what I hear, Hans. Ritual.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Let it flow.”
His encouragement kept me there, staring into the darkness in my imagination, and this time I saw images there like motion paintings in the depths. Like an overlay of instincts on instincts that didn’t make any sense. Imagination within my imagination.
I saw Garway church, and I saw us there, me and Hans. I felt my bare feet on the grass as I spun in the grounds like I used to do when I was a little girl, but I wasn’t young anymore. It wasn’t just Hans’ legs I bumped into when he appeared in front of me this time. My whole body pressed against his, and his lips met mine.
And then it ended. The motion paintings stilled and disappeared. But they left something.
I opened my eyes.
“I’m going to taste your blood,” I said, with crystal clarity.
He nodded gently.
“Yes. I’m certainly going to give you your first taste.”
“Am I going to be a vampire?”
“That will be your choice, Katherine, not mine.”
It was an easy choice to make.
“I want to be a vampire with you. I’m not going to lose you this time.”
He took my hand and kissed it.
“That’s a beautiful statement, but it needs to be the right time. You’re still a youngster in the world. You still have early sunrises, and afternoons with your friends, and twilights in the meadows to enjoy.”
The idea of having friends still felt alien to me, let alone having friends back in Orcop. I’d been an outsider my whole life.
“Do you mean the other witches?” I asked him. “Are they going to be my friends?”
“The witches and the blood players, as well as all the people you’ll meet now you’re allowed to become who you truly are.”
The thoughts were exciting, but that didn’t change anything. I wanted to be a vampire with Hans. I’d known that in my soul from the very second he’d chased me along the cobblestones. My soul was just singing a lot louder with Mary’s voice along with mine.
Hans was still an awful lot better at reading thoughts than I was. He was still holding my hand as he gestured further along the wall.
“Do you want to look in the mirror of old times? Do you want to see yourself as you used to be?”
He led me further into the room until we were standing beside the window, and there, up on the wall was a painting. A portrait of a woman that made me gasp.
It was me, in times gone by. Her eyes were like mine and her smile had the same quirk as mine, with one side raised slightly higher, and she even had the same dusting of freckles on her forehead. But Mary’s hair was longer and lighter. She was wearing a simple dress in white, sitting by Garway spring. I recognised the low walls on either side.
But there was something else behind her smile and her simple white dress. A tiny tickle of want in her that most people wouldn’t have seen, just like the one in me.
She wanted to explore the pleasures of the flesh with Hans. Like I did.
“I didn’t know you’d look so much like her,” Hans told me. “I knew you were going to be her soul reborn, but I didn’t foresee that your family chain would be strong enough to give you the same beautiful eyes and smile and grace.”
There was something so eerily stunning about seeing myself like that, in ancestor form. I’d sat in her position many times as a younger girl, oblivious to the fact I’d been there in a life gone by. Mary had been lucky enough to see the spring in its gorgeous flowing glory. She looked as transfixed by the spot as I’d always been.
“It’s an artist’s interpretation,” Hans said. “But it’s very accurate.”
“Who painted it?”
His eyes spoke louder than his mouth did. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know the answer.
“Yes,” he said. “I painted it. This must have been at least my fiftieth effort. The image was imprinted in my mind for a long time before my paintbrush could do it justice.”
“I didn’t know you were a painter.”
“I’m not. I’m just well-practised in many things. I can play five different instruments at orchestral level and speak almost every language in the world.” His eyes were mischievous. “Who knows, little one. You may well be an awful lot better than I am at any of them in a few hundred years.”
He fascinated me more and more every second, if that was even possible.
We both stood looking at the portrait of me on the wall, and it was a stunning silence. I felt so assured in myself standing there, as though I’d truly come home to life. My thoughts sounded more wistful in my head, my intuition speaking at a deeper depth, and I was confident in my own heart. No longer just a girl running away from Orcop, afraid of being myself.