A Shade Of Vampire 4: A Shadow Of Light(63)

My throat felt dry as I rasped my response out. “I want this to work out, Derek. Perhaps I’m being selfish with you… I don’t know. It seems like the only way we can be together. I want to trust Aiden, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I don’t. I’m scared that it’s a trap.”

“I can’t even wrap my mind around the idea of a cure, Sofia. It feels like too big a risk. The other vampire covens have made it clear that they are uniting and gearing up for an attack. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but they’re coming and we need to be ready for that. The island is falling apart and we’re barely keeping things together. If I allow hunters into The Shade and your father somehow betrays us… Do you realize what could happen?”

I nodded my head as I took care in weighing his words and responding to them. The atmosphere was tense and charged with emotion. I could practically feel Derek’s desperation oozing through me. I wondered once again if the cure really did work. What if it works only with Ingrid? I probably should’ve spent more time observing her. I felt like I was played by Aiden, manipulated into trusting him and bringing him to the island—a place he’d been desperate to find since he heard about its existence.

“Even if the cure works, Sofia…” Derek continued. “What’s going to happen? How am I going to defend the island as a mortal?”

I swallowed hard. I hadn’t actually thought that far. Was I expecting that all the vampires would simply agree to turn back into humans? Was I expecting that Derek and I would just skip out of The Shade and live normal, human lives? If Derek turned back to a mortal, he’d be powerless to fight against all these forces coming at him.

I couldn’t find answers to the concerns Derek was placing before me, and yet every bit of me was screaming that this was the way, that this was as close as we could get to true sanctuary at the moment.

“You’re supposed to take your kind to true sanctuary, Derek. That much we know is true, but what is true sanctuary?”

“You tell me.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t really know anymore, to be honest. I used to think The Shade was true sanctuary.”

“It couldn’t possibly be true sanctuary. The last time I talked to Corrine, she told me that she was the last of the witches capable of keeping The Shade hidden. The island is safe from human detection and sunlight only as long as she is alive. The Shade’s fall is inevitable.”

Derek’s bright blue eyes, illuminated by moonlight, focused on me, almost as if he was searching me for an answer, almost as if he were reminding me that I was supposed to help him find true sanctuary. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sofia.” His shoulder sagged in resignation. “Perhaps this is it. Maybe true sanctuary really is just an eternity of war and bloodshed and once The Shade falls, I’m doomed to find one haven after another to keep my subjects protected. Perhaps that’s my fate. Forever.”

I shook my head and stopped in my tracks to look him in the eye. “Derek, you can’t possibly believe that’s true.”

“Maybe you’re right… Maybe I need the cure… Maybe the only escape from this is mortality.”

His words lit up a fire in me that I couldn’t extinguish no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t know how to explain it to him or how to make sense of what was going through my mind, but I knew without a doubt that what he had just said was true.

Mortality was Derek’s true sanctuary.





Chapter 42: Ingrid


Bloody fools. They never should’ve underestimated me.

I couldn’t help keep the smirk off of my face as I made my way through the secret passages that Aiden introduced to me during our short love affair and midnight rendezvous into the secret garden. Aiden’s young protégé, Zinnia, had messed up big time when she had left me momentarily unguarded as I headed off to the showers. I knew how to find my way around the headquarters and quickly found my escape, emerging outside the gardens.

The moment I did, however, I knew I had a big problem. It was the height of noon and the sun was blazing right at me. The very moment its painful rays hit my skin, my suspicions once again proved true. I don’t know how it had happened, but Aiden’s cure failed. When I cut that glass into my skin and it healed, I knew that I was immortal, but when the sun began to irritate my pale skin, I knew that I was still a vampire.

Still, the dilemma before me was clear. I had to find a way out of hunter territory and out of the sun as quickly as possible or it would be the end of me. The sun’s rays weakened a vampire immensely. It would take ten minutes before it would begin to get beneath my skin and the pain would be agonizing. It would be a slow, painful death.

Trying to ignore the piercing sting of the sun, I used my agility as a vampire and scaled up the nearby wall. I knew that by that time, the hunters were already after me. I didn’t have much time to get away. I jumped from the top of the wall to the ground below and ran with lightning speed. I ran, ignoring the pain of my skin peeling away. I ran even when I felt blood coming out of the sockets of my eyes. I ran until I could no longer run, until the sun had completely worn me down. It felt like hours until I collapsed on the ground, every bit of my body writhing in pain. I knew I was miles away from hunter territory now and I looked up and discovered I was in the middle of a meadow, not quite certain where I was or how I was going to get out of there.