Darkness lapsed around me. The smoke from the building tore me up inside, I didn't know what to do.

The building was burning around us all.

I just wanted my mama to hold me again, but I can't, she had already been staked, Jonathan Gilbert.

His shadow danced above me tauntingly now. I can't hate him; it was hard to hate someone who believed they were doing right by the world. No matter if he had killed my mother.

His silhouette loomed ever closer to me smoky grey vision.

Vervain was still coursing through her blood, letting the lava engulf anything in its path and murdering any feelings she had of hope left.

A stake was raised above my chest, right above my unbeating heart that jolted for the first time a couple of months ago, just when I had met Jeremy Gilbert.

His scruffy brown hair, traumatised but uncertain and lonely eyes, The slightly crooked smile that placed itself across his face whenever I appeared at his bedroom window in the age of the night. The only human who had ever made me feel human in over my 500 years as a monster that I know I was.

All I ever wanted was to take away his pain by being there, now I was leaving him alone to deal with the pain life has given him too willingly letting his innocent mind be sucked into the pain that was what I lived.

I can now only hope my mama will meet me on the other side. Whatever is on the other side. The mystery I have never know will soon be revealed, I just want to see him one last time then I will deal with what I have to.

Please, god, just let me tell him I love him one more time before you take me, one touch. I'm begging you?

Then I felt it, the pain as wood pierced my chest.

I saw my flesh fade into a clouded grey as Jonathan walked away with a grimed expression.

Veins stood out from my moulding flesh.

My bones began to be brittle and myself, I slipped from the cage that once held my soul, if that's what you could call it.

I was flying, soaring through the sky to Jeremy's house.

There he was staring out the window waiting for me, but I shall never come.

"Anna? What happened to you, you're… translucent?"

"Jeremy, I love you so much, you made me feel alive for the first time in over 500 years and I thank you for that."

"What's going on?"

"I'm… dead… Jeremy, I'm so sorry." My hand reached up to him, noticing it take a more human appearance as the wind brushed past it.

"You can't be, you're here."

"I'm sorry."

"Who did it?"

"I will not tell you, you can't hate for me, anyway I get to see my mama again."

"Yeah, but I don't get to see you."

"This is your last chance, one last touch, one last kiss, one last love for me then I go and you move on. That's all we get, please let me have it."

"Come here." I floated to his arms, feeling their tight secure embrace enclose around my body for the last time. I felt safe and at peace.

His nose snuggled into my hair washing off on me.

"I love you Anna."

"Jeremy move on for me, don't wallow."

"Yes."

Then a golden light shone from behind me, it was time for me to leave, to go somewhere I didn't know.

Jeremy's body tensed as he saw it too.

"I'm not ready for you to go."

"Me neither, but we don't have a choice, this is where we part, but we will see each other again I love you Jeremy."

Then I was being tugged from his grasp as he placed a kiss onto my lips and I felt a tear slip from his eye down his cheek and then I was gone.

What hugged me next was the form of my mama, I was home with her again in 1864, waiting for Jeremy to come home too.