Chapter 1

"Isabella, love, we cannot continue to do this. If our fathers ever found us it would be the end of us both, I have seen it!" She exclaimed, her blue eyes pleading with me to understand. Her visions had never mislead her.

"Then we can avoid it. We can run away. I could take two of my father's best horses and we could leave in the night. Make our way to the east. We could go to New York or even Paris in time, I know how you long to see Paris. We can visit the Eiffel Tower. Anywhere you want, my love. It does not matter. I will go wherever you wish." I was grasping at straws here as I saw the resolve in her eyes, but I could not let her go without a fight. I hated having to keep our love a secret. Pretending to be nothing more than friends. Especially in front of that vile little pig, James, which her parents had promised her to. He was deplorable and since the day he laid his beady eyes on her, the bane of my existence. He looked at her as if she was the cattle he would lead to slaughter. Surly I could not be the only one who found his blood-red eyes unnatural, but he was a man of high standing and extremely wealthy and the Brandon's were cold people who cared about little else than their reputations and their money. My sweetheart was not like that. She was everything they were not. She was kind and warm and had a heart big enough to forgive them every time they struck her down, though inside me my blood boiled at the thought of anyone laying their hands on her, regardless of whether they were her parents or not.

"I refuse to let you be married to that retched man. I cannot bear the thought of his filthy paws touching you. Deflowering you. Taking what we are meant to give each other. I love you. Please. We can leave and we will be happy. Together. Away from our families and no one would ever have to know. We would never see these monsters again." I was practically begging her now.

"I can't, Isabella. I cannot dishonor my family in such a way. I have a duty to my father and to my family. I won't leave with you. I refuse to be the reason my family is outcast and the reason for your demise. I have seen it. It is unavoidable. If we left together it would be the end of us both." Unshed tears had pooled in her clear blue eyes. I could see the love there, as well as the pain. She was so conflicted but again she is placing me and her family before herself, as she always has. Since we were little girls she has always been the most selfless being I have ever known and I loved her all the more because of it, but today I wished for once that she would be selfish.

"I will die a thousand times over if you leave me now. I do not care if it kills me in the end, I would rather die young, knowing your love than of old age by the side of some old man I did not and could not love. What kind of life could I have without you? Please. I just want to be with you. Please." By now her tears had spilled over and were freely flowing down her delicate face and yet she has never looked more beautiful to me. Yes, there was pain there and an overwhelming sadness that made my heart constrict in my chest, but I could see her unwavering love for me bursting through now stronger than it ever has and that, more than anything, terrified me. I knew I did not want to hear what she had to say next.

"Go home, Isabella. I won't change my decision." She said as she turned and walked away from me. I tried to reach out to her but I could not get a firm grasp on her wrist as she pulled away from me and took off running. She didn't look back once as I fell to my knees, watching her long, inky curls bounce against her back as her figure became smaller in the distance. I could feel my heart shattering and the pain almost made me sick to my stomach. I curled up on the ground and I cried. I cried for the love that we could never live out. I cried for the life I would lead without her. I cried for all those nights we had spent together in the meadow watching the stars as we held each other. I cried for my broken heart. But most of all I cried for her and the life I wished I could have given her.

I didn't know then that was the last time I would see her. Two weeks later she was pronounced dead. I went to her funeral and that day that I saw her name on a headstone, something inside me changed. I knew I could not stay in Biloxi anymore. Everything reminded me of her. It all felt so unreal and the pain the constant reminders caused was nearly unbearable.

The next day her sister Cynthia showed up at my parents' house to see me.

We were in my chamber, with the door locked, upon Cynthia's request.

"What is so urgent that has you riled up this way?" I asked Cynthia. She reminded me so much of my Mary Alice that it hurt to look into her eyes. Those practically identical blue eyes that seemed as if they could peer right through me. So similar to the ones that had felt like home to me not so long ago. I suspected that Cynthia knew more about Mary Alice and I's relationship than she ever let on and I was grateful that she never mentioned it.

"Mary is not dead, Isabella. They sent her away to an asylum. I do not know where it is, but I overheard them discussing it and I was there when they took her, with her bags packed and all. They wanted to 'fix' her because of her visions. They tried to have her exorcised last week and when her visions kept coming my father said it was insanity and he did not want it to taint our 'good name'." She was fuming and I could feel the hatred she harbored for her father radiating from her in waves. I knew the pain Mary Alice experiences due to her parents mistreatment of her and how Cindy hated seeing her baby sister in such a state. We saw how she struggled with her visions and how terrified she had been when they started. Even she believed she was losing her mind in the beginning, when she would lose sight of everything around her and she had what seemed like memories of actions that had never taken place. I remember holding her while she cried in fear of being sent to the very hell her own blood had condemned her to. And yet hearing this, I had never felt so relieved in my life.

"She's alive?!" I exclaimed. I knew it. I would have felt it in my heart if the other half of my soul had departed to the world of the dead. "I have to find her. I have to get her out of there. She is not crazy, Cindy. You know she's not. I can't leave her there!"

"I wish you the best of luck, my friend. But now I really must be going. Father will be furious if he finds out I left the house. Tell no one of this. And I hope that you find her. Be well, Isabella. And take care of her." and with that she stood up from my bed and rushed out the door and that was the last I saw of Cynthia Brandon for some time to come.

During my search I came across a woman by the name of Tanya. She was the most perfect being I had ever set my eyes upon and I found that she too had a kindness in her almost as deep as my Alice. She was a traveler and she told me she was searching for her sisters and I shared my story with her of how I was on a quest to find my lost lover. Over months we traveled together and I came to know her and consider her almost like a sister of my own. I was an only child and I always longed for an older sister like Cynthia was to Mary Alice. Someone to look out for me and not want anything in return other than my happiness. She claimed she knew deep down that she had to help me on my journey in some way and we had grown to trust each other in time.

She revealed to me her secret on evening as we were passing through Iowa. It was a quiet night and there had been no one else around and we had been enjoying our solitude when suddenly she told me she had something to share with me. Throughout the rest of the night she told me the tragic story of her mother and how her family became vampires.

One night three red eyes came strolling into their peaceful village, she said they were like three avenging angels. Leaving nothing but destruction in their path and spilling the blood of any soul unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Sadly two of those souls were her mother, Sasha and baby brother, Nathaniel. They had drunk her four-year old brother dry but due to their over drinking they did not have it in them to finish her mother off, so they just left her there screaming in agony as the venom scorched her veins and killed her from the inside. When her mother awoke again her eyes too were blood-red and she turned on her daughters. Tanya however claimed that she could not stomach the guilt of taking the countless lives of innocent people to sate her own monstrous thirst and she could see it in her sisters' eyes that the guilt was beginning to wear on them as well. One day after years of draining innocents there was a gruesome battle that almost ended in her killing her own mother, but her sisters intervened before it escalated to that. Being the loyal daughters, however, Tanya's sisters, Irina and Katherine, sided with their mother and continued to pursue human blood to sustain themselves, so Tanya left to wander the world to find a cure or an alternative of some kind and if she could not find one then she at least hoped to find peace with herself and accept what she had become. The alternative, she stated, she had found years ago and now she was off in search of her family so that she could convince them to convert to her ways, so they could be a true family once again.

I thought she was a raving lunatic at first until she took my horse and drained it dry right before my very eyes. At that point I begged her to change me. My Mary Alice was out there somewhere and this would help me get to her faster, I would be strong enough to protect her. It would give me all the time in the world to find my love and we would finally have the life we always wanted together. We could truly be together forever. And after much discussion and gruesomely detailed recounts of Tanya's first years as a Newborn I made the decision and she changed me and we continued on our journey. The rest, as they say, was history.

I had spent the last 108 years desperately searching nearly every corner of the country for any sign of my lost love, but to not avail. I had convinced myself all those years ago that she was still out there somewhere. Convinced that I would have felt it if she had died. Maybe she too had become an immortal and was waiting for me to find her so we could be together again.

I had checked all the asylums in Mississippi and over the years I had been to every institution in the continental US, but I never found any trace of her. It was almost as if she never existed.

After nearly a century of searching for her I had started to lose hope. Logically I knew that she was likely dead. No human could live this long and what were the chances that she too had met a vampire willing to change her and give her a life of eternal youth. I had to accept that maybe it was, in fact, time to move on with my existence. I did have forever, after all, and that was certainly too long a time to spend with a broken heart, roaming the earth alone. Maybe it was possible I would find my mate in someone else, but deep inside myself I knew that she would always have my heart and that love that I had for her that still burned so deeply within my soul is what kept my hope alive. Even if only barely.