A Gift of Three (A Shade of Vampire #42)(26)

Jovi looked over at his sister in astonishment, his face paling.

“What the hell?” he breathed, jumping up to race over to her bedside. It looked like Aida was experiencing a similar thing to Vita. Her body had arched upward off the sheets, her limbs stiff as the howl continued.

“It almost looks like she’s turning,” Serena exclaimed. “What is happening?”

“Of course she’s not turning!” Jovi replied, trying to soothe his sister and roll her over into the recovery position before she started fitting in the same manner as Vita. It was horrible. I glanced briefly at Serena—she was traumatized, and I half worried that she was about to succumb to the same mysterious state as her friends.

“Serena, go and get help—just run down the corridor, knock on all the doors!” I commanded her. The girl raced to the door, but before she’d stepped through its frame, the room was blinded in a flash of bright, yellow light.





Serena





[Hazel and Tejus’s daughter]




I saw a blinding flash of light, and closed my eyes against it. A jolt in the pit of my stomach followed swiftly, making my insides feel like they were being squeezed, all the blood rushing from my head. The light vanished, and I slowly opened my eyes, turning around to see if the others had just shared the same experience.

They were gone.

Or I was.

I glanced wildly around the room, too panicked to fix my focus on one thing. It was different. I wasn’t in the fae palace, or if I was, it was a different location entirely to the one I’d just been in.

Where am I?

My brain just couldn’t compute that a moment ago I’d been about to leave my room, and now I was standing in a completely different one…and my friends! Vita and Aida… where were they?

I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.

Focus, Serena.

I tried to steady my racing heart. When I was ready I opened my eyes again, and started to properly observe the room I was now in. One of the strangest things, which indicated that I was no longer in the fae palace or even on the fae star, was the fact that outside it was daylight. I walked over to the nearest window, one of three dusty glass frames that ran alongside the room. Peering out, I saw a pale blue sky. Where it met the land on the horizon, I saw miles of rich, verdant forest—more like a jungle, if anything. In some places the green was so bright it was almost neon, the trees and plants wide-leaved and tall, growing thickly in some places, and in others parting to make way for streams and the natural slope and rise of the land. It went on for miles, bands of heated haze blurring its sprawl off into the distance.

Directly below me—I must have been on the second or third floor of a brick house—there was a lawn. It was wild and overgrown, some patches burnt by the sun, the grass growing tall and unchecked in others. Around the edge of the lawn, the grass was overtaken by swampland. Trees grew from the muddy earth, their thick roots dipping down into the murky waters, vines strangling their trunks and moss hanging limply from their branches, looking like wet rags.

Where am I?

This place looked like a strange dreamland, the colors and humidity far removed from what I was used to. Turning away from the window, I studied the room I was in, hoping it might provide more clues. It was old, that much I could gather straight away. The room had been painted white, once, and now was yellowing in places with plaster coming away at the corners. The wainscoting, in a pale blue paint that matched the sky, was bubbling and peeling in the heat. The decoration in the room was simple and sparse, a large, iron-framed bed in the middle with mildew-stained white sheets. A cupboard stood in one corner, made of polished pine, next to an old-fashioned dresser. I inspected them, the creaking of the wooden drawers echoing too loudly for comfort, but both proved to be empty anyway. There was a small fireplace at one end, not swept clean—the ashes were so pale with age that they resembled little more than dust.

Finding even fewer answers in the room, I picked up an old poker by the fireside and decided to explore the rest of the house. My one small, iota of hope was that I wouldn’t be alone here… I couldn’t hear anyone, the silence had so far been almost deafening, but that didn’t necessarily mean I was alone. With a slightly shaking hand I held the poker as firmly as I could, and pushed the door to the bedroom open.

It opened into a corridor, about eight yards or so in length. It was gloomy here, with no windows opening out into the sunshine. It was cooler though, and I stepped out of the bedroom. I waited, trying to hear something, anything, that might indicate the presence of another.

When only silence remained, I moved further along. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I started to notice more evidence of a once-grand home turned shabby and worn from neglect. I also became much, much more afraid.

The hallway was wide, and on either side of me objects and bookcases were piled high so that the house started to resemble a junkyard. I jumped as I caught sight of two beady-looking eyes staring down at me from a shelf, only to realize, in disgust, that it was an animal that had been preserved and stuffed—it looked like a fox, its body frozen mid-jump, its teeth and claws out and ready to pounce on its prey. I started to notice more examples of foul taxidermy, creatures that I recognized as belonging to Earth: snakes, lizards, owls, even a yellowed swan. I peered more closely at the books on the shelves. The volumes were thick and old, their pages yellowed. My heart sank as I made out the text. These were written in a language that I didn’t recognize, and didn’t perceive as belonging to Earth—unless it was some ancient text I wasn’t familiar with, like Sanskrit. I slid the book back where I’d found it, and froze.