(A Day Of Farewells.) Moonstruck's body had been carried home by the wolves. All around them, lightning flashed, thunder roared and Mala wept for the daughter of the soil. Softening the earth with her tears so that the grave would be easy to dig. Lucinda had sent back word with a small wolf, around ten years old, who came through the cornfield in jeans cut off at the knees, a fade brown t'shirt and kinky black hair. The boy's chocolate toned body stood at the door that was left open all night. The sun was coming up on their sorrow, fighting it's way through the drizzling rain. The boy, drenched from head to toe, stared around at the blood in the living room. He saw the occupants of the room with watery eyes of disbelief, turned towards his presence. The group had sat in chairs and had not moved since Moonstruck's body had left the Bloomfield's house. Nothing had been touched, nothing cleaned up and the boy, though young, also felt the blow of this heavy grief. He cle
(The Battle.) Opal had again fed and bathed the hybrid. It was a sort of routine now. As Opal went about the house, it was difficult to see only memories of Moonstruck. Her bagpack, her belongings here and there. Bruce went for an early morning jog because he could not bear to touch Moonstruck's blood, while Hercules and Doug did the cleaning up of it. She went back to the hybrid's room and was surprised to see her sitting up in bed, her back supported by the pillows. "Hi." Said Opal, she was taken aback when a response arrived because she had not anticipated one. "Hi." A small voice repeated like an echo. Opal went around the room drawing aside the drapes, opening the windows and letting in fresh air. A few windows had escaped the wolves entrance and the hybrid's room was one of them. The early morning sun was gentle to a vampire, like rubbing essential oils into the skin. It was when the sun had matured in the sky that it felt like their skin was cooking. "If you
(The Treasured Secrets Of A Hybrid.) Maverick looked around him. There was death everywhere, and it reminded him of the day of the Great War. He laid the hybrid gently on the ground. Then, with a great roar, he lifted himself and pointing to the moon, Maverick began to chant. With both his hands towards the sky, darkness started to spread in the globe of the newmoon. Opal had told him about the effect of a new moon on a hybrid, something he had not known during the Great War. Now that he knew, there was something he could do about it. "That is goblin magic." Jatray said surprised. She hurled a wolf's corpse that she had recently bled to death aside. She wiped her lips and spun around, trying to figure out the source of this powerful craft. "Maverick?" She stated shocked. She had long considered the Goblin King to be dead. Pulling her bow from behind her, Jatray launched an arrow across the battlefield. Maverick went down on one knee after the poisoned tip struck his c
(A New Sunrise.) "It is outrageous that you aim those weapons at me!" Jatray was adamant. She had watched as the Goblin boy had taken the Hybrid into the safety of the house. All was lost now. She contemplated. Izzy, the hybrid, Simeon, all because of the damn pregnant Vampire. Her mind screamed. Doug's back was towards Jatray being held captive by her own soilders. The Council cared not about his group anymore. The real threat was Jatray. Her hatred was the ultimate sin against life, nearly wiping out an entire specie. Jatray knew she was going to be executed, she had decided that if she was to die, she was taking Opal's baby with her. The fetus was already weak inside the mother and would not survive if she struck it under a newmoon. ****************************** Doug had one hand over Opal's shoulders as they watched Hercules draw back his breath into his body. His body jerked as one who had been shocked and then shaking his head, he sat up. "Is it over?" He
(A New Story.) The consequence of fiddling with time is that it alters the trajectory of events. If I had not caused an earthquake that loosened the temple walls, the stone tablets would never have slipped through the cracks and floated on the waters of an underground source that led them from Sicily to the sea. The Priest were all Immortal Spirits, that were rejected by heaven because they were not pure enough and rejected by hell because they were not evil enough. They lived in limbo, between the realms of the afterlife and guarded the treasure of the Immortals. Like a safety deposit box, Immortals took to them the things they could not keep and could not let go of. In order to preserve her records of a past she could not bear to part with, Jatray had brought her stone tablets to the Priest. Trusting that whatever it was the Priest would not be tempted to look inside and uncover what was there. Priest bowed to no-one but to the Creator and Medusa. She was their queen,
(Opal.)I flew above the clouds and through the windows of the old mansion. I wanted to be home before the storm. I hated storms.It reminded me of the day I died."Would you be needing anything else, Miss. Bloomfield?"Doug asked as the door opened."No thank you Doug."With that, he closed the door. I knew where he was going, as I looked through the windows and watched the clouds turn as black as a phantom's robe. Doug loved storms.It reminded him of the day he was given life.Why had I returned to the mansion?I asked myself. Yet after so many years, I felt compelled to come home. I grew up in this small town with its Ferris wheel by the ocean and endless fields of golden corn. I could hear the engines on the neighbouring farms shutting off from a long day of raking the soil for planting.Shutting out the sound, I wondered if anyone would recognise me. If they did, which Bloomfield woman would they associate me with?Looking up at the walls I saw pictures of the Bloomfield generat
(Opal's Rebirth.)Another clap of thunder had me scurrying beneath the blanket. I settled down and thought that, unlike Doug, I had not asked to be saved.Again my mind took another path down memory lane. I felt the recollection as if it was just happening, the hairs on my body stood to attention. There was a man in my father's study, the door was locked and I peeked through a crack in the wood.It was the loud arguing that had shaken me from the sweet, lullaby of sleep and I had tiptoed to the source of the disturbance. The walls of the study were lined with agricultural books and lately, my father had added some hardcover historical books to the shelves. Two half-filled glasses of brandy and an open bottle of liquor was on the wooden desk. There was the stench of fear in the atmosphere and my father was mopping at his face with a handkerchief. The light shone and cast shadows on the walls and the man took out a gun and aimed it at my father's chest. I felt faint but it all happened s
(Catching The Past.)As we drove down the highway I remember when there were more houses than trees and skinny, one lanes that horses had to squeeze by on as dust flew up into the carriages. I watched the world and watched it change before my very eyes. I saw war, peace, then war again, boats, cars being made, and then the invention of planes. Telephones, computers, microwaves, humans got really smart. Ball gowns became skimpy dresses, jeans emerged, ballroom music replaced by rock and roll, then pop music and yet this continuous change in the quest for a better way of living brought us down roads of destruction. I looked out the car window as Doug drove, trees became only decoration on the lawns of expensive, show houses.Finally, after half an hour, we started to enter the heart of Mala. Mala is a small island folded neatly at the edge of the world, at least that was how tourists described it. The land creased the borders of a sea frothing at the mouth, appearing like beer trapped in