to find out for myself first.
“Go, enjoy your wife, I will call you back later,” I said hanging up to the sound of him cursing me, no doubt for leaving him in the dark. Adam loved a good puzzle as much as the next geek. Hell, but from what I had been told, he and Amelia would often be found hunched over a crossword or some new challenge bought for them in the way of some plastic, multicolored puzzle cube.
But as for me, well this was challenge enough and it just looked to be one I had just cracked...finally. So, after throwing my phone down on the table, I shifted the box closer to me. Then I lifted my right hand to my mouth, one that had already started to heal. After this I let my fangs extend and bit hard into my own flesh, deep enough to make it bleed thoroughly. Then I removed the map and allowed my blood to pour down into the box.
In seconds it started to unfold before my eyes making me curse,
“Fuck me…it worked.”
That was when it all started to make sense, as seeing her hand bleeding had obviously been when she had discovered the box’s secret just as I had. Because once the box was flat, it was easy to see the channels of blood that had started to fill. Channels that were there for a reason.
But for me that reason became something else entirety as I placed the map over the now flat piece of wood, watching as its destination started to seep through the paper.
One that included a name.
One I knew all too well.
“Gods, can it be?” I muttered in astonishment as I looked up at the painting above my fireplace. And for the first time in a long time, a real grin emerged as that reason became one that mirrored both my past and my future.
After this there was only one thing left to say,
“I’ve got you now, my little ?em?ā…”
“I’ve got you now.”
Amelia
Chapter 20
Now and Forever
The second the song came over the radio, I cursed that my hands were full and was therefore unable to turn off the beautiful notes of Lady Antebellum’s, ‘I run to you’ quickly enough. It had been nearly two months of banned love songs and as the lyrics seemed to tell my life’s story it was of little wonder why…
‘I run from hate, I run from prejudice, I run from pessimists, but I run too late…I run my life, or is it running me?’
And wasn’t that just the question right now I thought as I struggled to the table with yet another armful of research papers my friend Yosef had given me. Damn my Spotify account recommending songs!
I quickly got to the table only dropping a few scrolls and one book, doing so just as the lyrics continued with…
‘Run from my past, I run too fast, or too slow it seems… when lies become the truth…’
“Yeah you can say that again!” I said picking up my fallen articles with annoyance and slapping them back on the counter just before grabbing my tablet and turning it off just as the beat kicked up with,
‘That's when I run to you… this world keeps spinning faster, into a new disaster so I run to you…I run to you baby’
“Nope, not now and not ever,” I commented as I killed the music and the second I did, that was when I felt it. Like a presence so powerful it sucked all the energy from the room and left me near gasping for breath. And that difficulty in breathing wasn’t just from the moment you realised that you were no longer alone, but it was more when you realised who it was that stole that solitude from you. Because when you were on the run there was only one being out there you hoped not to find in the room with you…
The hunter.
And I knew my time was up when the first words spoken that smooth hypnotic voice of his that told me,
“Now that is a shame.”
I sucked in a deep breath, placed my hands on the table just to steady myself as his name slipped from my lips,
“Lucius.”
Then I felt him stepping up behind me and I tensed as I heard those forbidden words whispered in my ear at the same moment he took possession of my body. He did this by gripping my arms and pulling me back against the strength of him,
“Found at last, my Khuba.”
I