Chapter One:
Prisms of light fell upon Madelyn Ingram's face as the first rays of sunlight shone through the window pane. Her eyes were fixed, eerie in their intensity. "I want you to tell me." She whispered from between clenched teeth.
"And is there any reason why I should?" Luna Morrell asked calmly, reasonably almost.
"Wouldn't you want someone to know before you died?" She asked, appalled.
Luna seemed to stare through her rather than at her and Madelyn found it unnerving as the woman slowly shook her head, saying no in her attitude but with a gentle sight she began her tale and it started twenty seven years ago…
27 Year Ago
"Go and hide now." Tisiphone Drache whispered in her daughter's ear, a puff of sweet perfume as her long hair brushed her daughter's cheek, her shoulder, her arm.
The four year old ran toward the cupboard beneath the stair case, closing the door behind her. There was already a blanket and pillow in the cramped space, and a small electric lamp offering a small orange warmth in the darkness.
She listened to her mother's skirt slither across the wooden floors, the polite knock on the front door. "Come in." Her sweet sweet voice. Little Luna had always loved her mother's voice, and sometimes she would sing her to sleep, the songs of her ancestors in a language that meant nothing and everything to her. "Tinúviel elvanui, Elleth alfirin edhelhael..."
"I can't stay long." The man's voice was clipped and cold.
"I might persuade you." Tisiphone purred.
Their footsteps creaked through the house, she could smell them as they passed by the cupboard, her mother all honeyed perfume and the man who smelt like expensive aftershave and the faint tang of human blood. To her young mind Luna didn't know what they did, she only heard the deep rumble of laughter, the sighs of pleasure and the smell.
When the man left her mother would in time come to the closet and her perfume would waft toward her and she would know to wake and go to her mother's arms. "Let's go to bed, my love." She would burrow her head into the space between her mother's neck and shoulder where the scent was strongest and close her eyes to sleep.
Luna knew only safety, only love, only the semi-darkness of the cupboard and warmth of her mother's arms.
Every time the man came to visit she would go to the cupboard and be quiet. As quiet as a mouse. Her mother would move in her long dresses and skirts, the fabric soft and slithering across the wooden floors. The man would speak in his brusque way but thereafter tender noises would be heard from the other room, sounds muffled by the walls, by the blanket Luna wrapped around herself.
Until one night there was no polite knock on the door: the door was kicked in; Luna was torn from the thin veil of sleep and shivered in the wrap of her blanket as people stomped into the house. "Take the Drache bitch." A woman's voice hissed.
She later heard her mother's reply. "What are you doing, Evelyn?"
"Royle is a Lord of the Night, you have corrupted him, you have made his House weak; for this you must be punished." The voice dripped venom. "You are a seductress. A whore. A vile creature."
"Where is Royle? Let him come and say these things to me and not hide behind his crony."
"You have ignored all of our warnings."
"Where is Royle?"
"By sanction of the Vampire Court I'm putting an end to this madness-"
"Where is Royle?"
"He's where he belongs." Evelyn Halisaret said with a pause between words. "And you will go to where you belong."
"No." Her mother's voice erupted in a scream.
Luna had been holding her breath, listening to them talk, not comprehending anything but her mother's scream which soon died and then silence the silence followed.
Moment or minutes, she could not accurately describe the passage of time, the cupboard door opened and her vision filled with the starlit eyes of a vampire, his white pale hand reaching for her and clamped around her ankle. The icy touch chilled her to the bone. She was dragged and she fought, kicking and screaming until the vampire held her in his comfortless arms.
The vampire was as white and smooth as marble and incredibly beautiful, his peridot eyes were bright as if lit from behind by the sun. "Halisaret, I've found a child." There was no venom in his voice, just a strange and soothing calmness.
He carried her into the room where her mother was and Luna's eyes were assaulted with red, the deep dark rich blood of death and the bright red shades of shallow wounds; the scent of it was like a fist rammed up her nostrils and she clung to the vampire, her small hands fisting in his jacket, she pressed her face against his cheek and pressed her lids tight together to try and hide from the sight.
"Whose child is this?" Evelyn Halisaret demanded. The vampire was a petite, slender creature with ivory skin and cropped dark hair. She was stained with the blood of her victim.
Tisiphone Drache could not speak, her chest barely rose and fell with the last breaths she would ever take and then nothing. Silence. Stillness. The diminutive vampire kicked the corpse as if it were not once a person vibrant and full of life. "Whose child is this?" She demanded again but the flesh free of its spirit would not answer. It could not.
"What should we do with her?" The green eyed vampire's voice vibrating through Luna's small body.
"Get rid of her, Lambert." Evelyn Halisaret said coldly.
"She's a child." He said, appalled. Luna felt his arms go tighter around her and found comfort as only a child could. "She has committed no crime."
"Then let her go I don't care."
He moved away, he was no longer grasping onto her but she now clung to him, still unable to open her eyes whilst she was riddled with fear and confusion. "Where are we going?" She whispered fearfully into his ear.
He didn't respond but he extended a tendril of psychic power that put her into a deep and unnatural sleep.
Miss S
