A Shade of Vampire 91: A Gate of Light - Bella Forrest Page 0,1
an integral part of his being. Even if nothing else had really gone our way, at least Hammer had been returned safely.
I closed my eyes for a long second, trying to find the feeling I had experienced before. A shimmering gash had ripped open here at some point. Faint tendrils of its energy had been left behind, like fingerprints of an era long gone. The Daughters’ pink mist from The Shade had picked up on portal residue from up to six months earlier, so it didn’t shock me that I could still sense traces myself. I only needed a little to build on. It was something I’d learned after the Flip: if I could find a smidge of energy to latch onto, I could then construct my own layers on top of it and hopefully, eventually, summon a new portal. I’d had to figure most of this out on my own, too, and I wasn’t even sure it would work. Maybe all I needed was just my own power. No one else could teach me. This stuff didn’t come with a user manual.
Slowly but surely, my nerve endings expanded like corn popping in a hot iron pan over a blazing fire. Pop. Pop. Pop. Sensations came to life, one by one, until I was one with the universe and directly plugged into the atoms of the cosmos. The best I could describe this process was like an in-depth meditation, though I wasn’t yet sure how I’d gotten to it. My instincts had never steered me wrong before, however. I’d ridden the wave this far, and I knew I was on to something.
I could feel it in my bones.
Every time I tried focusing on the shimmering gashes, every time I fed on the ghost of portals past, my whole being vibrated and followed a quiet, electrifying pattern. My skin tingled, every pore pricking. The current danced down my spine, tumbling and tickling along the way. There it was—the jolt I needed. It was just inches from my reach, and I was desperate to get to it.
Alas, it slipped away. The more I tried, the closer I got. But never close enough. “Damn it,” I cursed under my breath, normalcy taking over and dragging me back into the real world. Well, a copy of the real world, anyway.
“You’re frustrated,” Brandon said, startling me as he emerged from the darkness on the other side of the clearing. He walked toward me, and wisps of it curled off him like black smoke. “The more you push yourself, the closer you will get, and still… you won’t reach your destination.”
“You seem to know a lot about my power,” I replied with a sulking grumble. “Also, you suck at encouragement.”
He shrugged. “It was a statement of fact, not an encouragement. Anyway, I’ve seen something similar before, a very long time ago. Many souls have passed through Purgatory, Pinkie. Souls of hybrids that weren’t ever supposed to be born. Life found a way, however—and so did death, for they came to my door, in the end.”
Brandon’s darkness faded slowly, leaving only his true form, clearer than ever before. The blue fires in his eyes flickered white more often than before, and especially when he looked my way. I’d identified that as a sign of an intense emotional state, though I wasn’t sure what emotions were at play here. I knew what emotions I would’ve liked from him, but I didn’t dare wish or even imagine it when I peered into his eyes. His black hair poured down his back in slick, shiny braids with silver threads at the end. The leather of his vest stretched across his torso, his broad shoulders and narrow hips forming an athletic yet elegant frame. The chain links on his shoulders jingled faintly with every step that he took, as did the steel and silver buckles on his knee-length boots, and I was breathless once more.
He was a dominating presence in my life, and I had not gotten used to that yet.
“You’ve met people with powers like mine before?” I asked, keeping a sullen frown on my face as a means to mask the rapid beating of my heart. Brandon had already admitted to having a soft spot for me, but I didn’t know what to do with that, nor what the next step would be. I was permanently nervous around him because I wanted more, and maybe so did he… but neither of us had made a move.