A Blaze of Sun (A Shade of Vampire #5)(22)

For five years, it was just my mother and me. I looked after her like I promised my father that I would, but in a place like The Shade, life was too fragile. My mother was late in coming home one night, after working as a hairdresser at The Baths. It was the winter season and though it never snowed in The Shade, that night was particularly cold. She contracted a cough that she never quite recovered from. Her lungs were weak and none of us had any clue how she could possibly overcome the sickness that she had.

My mother was unable to go to work for months. Because of this, she was seen as one of the weaklings of The Catacombs and was killed at The Shade’s legendary human culling. I was fourteen years old when I lost her and it felt like I had nobody left. Then I met Anna.

She was a year older than me and the moment I saw her, I knew that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. It’d been a week since my mother’s death and I was still in mourning.

Anna came to my quarters and for a moment, she just stood by the door and gave me a sad smile. She was holding a white rose in her hand, a rose as white as the dress she was wearing. I remember looking up at her and wondering if she was an angel. She was so beautiful.

I actually flinched when she approached. I could almost swear that she was radiating with light. She knelt on the ground beside me and laid the rose in front of me. She kissed me on the top of my head – a gesture of affection that no one in The Shade – not even my mother – had ever done for me before.

I didn’t know how to react to her, but I was so thankful that she was there. I began to sob. I was embarrassed at first, because I hated to make an impression that I was some sort of weakling, kneeling in front of a beautiful woman, crying like a baby. My embarrassment quickly faded away, however, when she just began to cry with me.

The look in her moss green eyes as they glistened with tears, tears she shared with me, was forever etched in my memory. Anna was a complete stranger, but that day, she chose to mourn with me, to join me in my sorrow. She owned my heart since, but then she owned the heart of many men in The Shade.

It was hard not to fall in love with a girl like Anna. She was one of a kind. Aside from possessing a physical beauty not easily matched, she was fun-loving and good-hearted. She always had a smile on her face. And it was easy to catch her humming a tune or dancing to the beat of her own drum. She was joy and laughter in a place that only knew sadness and tears.

We should’ve known that it wouldn’t take long before she would catch the eye of one of the vampires in The Shade. Felix. He wooed her. He didn’t abduct her or feed on her. He wanted her light just as much as we did. He was always in The Shade, showering her with gifts, giving her special favors.

I couldn’t blame Anna for falling for him. None of us men at The Catacombs could match the way Felix relentlessly pursued her.

Anna broke many hearts when she professed her love for Felix, and yet, we were happy for her. We were happy for him. We all thought that he was madly in love with her. He had us all fooled. After a year of keeping Anna in his penthouse, he returned her to her chambers at The Catacombs, but she was no longer her former self.

She was insane and child-like, afraid of everything and everyone. She was an empty shell, devoid of life, laughter and light. Everyone knew upon seeing her that we lost her the moment Felix took her away from The Catacombs. He broke her. When I saw what happened to Anna, I lost all hope that goodness could still be found in The Shade.

Then came Sofia Claremont, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Chapter 13: Kyle

Brigitte was the mayor’s daughter. She was kind, beautiful, sweet and down-to-earth. I was in love with her, but then so was every bachelor in our town. I had an advantage against all them though. I was her best friend. My father was her father’s bodyguard. For this reason, our family was given our own cottage within the mayor’s estate.

I grew up being the envy of all the other boys in school, because I always got to be around her. We were such close friends, everyone thought that we were sweethearts. We weren’t. In fact, I had to endure being Brigitte’s confidante all throughout our days in school. She told me about every boy she liked – none of them being me. I hated hearing about them and how much she liked them, but I loved listening to her talk, so I bore the heaviness of heart her every story brought me.

As we grew up, she left the estate to go to nursing school and I stayed behind to be my father’s apprentice, since we couldn’t afford to have me go through university. We wrote letters to each other frequently. Again, she told me about the young men she fancied and also those that fancied her. I found myself happy whenever she rejected one of them, and though I was hurt on her behalf when she was heartbroken, I was also relieved. I always believed that we belonged together.

By the time she returned, she was a woman in full bloom and I was even more stricken by her. I was also assigned the job to become her bodyguard, something that pleased me at first, because I would get to spend more time with her than anyone else. However, I soon realized that it was cruel and unusual punishment, because I had to stand in the sidelines as she fell in love.

I will never forget the night he broke her heart. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to punish him for making her feel like trash. I couldn’t imagine how he couldn’t have seen how beautiful a person she was.

She was so heartbroken; she was bed-ridden and sick for three days, so sick that I wasn’t even allowed to visit her. After the end of the third day, she finally allowed me to come to her chambers.