Resurrected

Me: Here's the next instalment. Things actually start happening here. R&R!!!

"Ah Lenobia, ma Cherie, do you 'ave a moment?"

Madame Adélaïde Ségaèle finally caught up with Lenobia at supper the next day, as she was twisting a piece of spaghetti around her fork aimlessly.

"Of course." She said, pulling her cup of coffee out of the way so that Adélaïde could sit down opposite her. The Frenchwoman seated herself and took a sip of her own coffee.

"'Ow is he?" she asked sympathetically.

Lenobia put her fork down. "Not well." She said, "He won't eat, he won't drink, he can't sleep."

"Poor boy." Said Adélaïde, "We will 'ave to shovel food down his zhroat at zhis rate."

"Well I'm certainly not going to be the one trying to restrain him."

She laughed. "Ah, I remembere, when zhey met."

"You do?"

She nodded, giving a chuckle. "Zhey tried to keep it from us but you know 'ow zhat works." She said, tapping her temple with her finger, before looking more glum, "Nastiya came to me minutes before she Changed, she wanted advice." She said, taking a bite of her bread roll. "Did you know..." she continued, swallowing, "She told me, zhat she could even 'ear his zhoughts sometimes."

"Even then?"

"Mais oui."

"Adélaïde..." Lenobia began, wording it carefully, "Is it possible, in, a situation like theirs, that such telepathy is still possible, even after death?"

The Frenchwoman thought for a moment. "I, suppose, in zheory. I 'ave never 'eard of it 'appening zhough."

"Ah gut, du bist noch da." Ah good, you're still here.

Both vampyres looked around to see Juliane place her plate at Lenobia's right and sit down.

"Morgen." Morning. Said Lenobia, sipping the coffee. She needed something stronger.

"Den Pferden geht's gut." The horses are fine. Said Juliane. She had let Lenobia sleep in today. Something Lenobia hadn't done since she was eight. It felt like a crime leaving the horses, but Juliane took excellent care of them, and the rest had been beneficial.

"Anglais, s'il vous plait." English, please. Adélaïde injected, snapping her fingers.

"Heve you heard from Erce yet?" asked the other Horse Mistress, peeling the lid off a yoghurt.

"Not yet. I only hope no news is good news."

"Cherie, do you zhink maybe zhat you should go with Monsieur Lankford to San Clemente?" asked Adélaïde.

"Do you think we should be there?" asked Lenobia suddenly.

"I zhink you heve a lot of credibility, as far as zhe Council is concerned, vhich could go in zheir favour." Juliane answered. "Plus, it vould give him somezhing to focus on, maybe zhe chance to avenge, so zhat her death vas not in vain, vould give him zhe vill to live a little."

"Can you see yet?"

"Ugh! A little bit."

In San Clemente, things were not going as well as Zoey had hoped. Quite the opposite. Heath was gone. And the Council had just sat there and watched. She had been physically sick several times, and spent hours crying, so much so that Aphrodite has eventually rolled over, clamping her pillow over her head. They had all agreed that Council resume tomorrow.

It was two o' clock in the daytime, their rooms shuttered and blinded, they were making a vague attempt at sleep, as Erce had suggested, when Aphrodite had woken up, screaming expletives. Now, holding a cold flannel to her face, Zoey passed half-heartedly her a glass of water, which she gladly took.

"Haven't you got anything stronger?" she asked, sniffing it and wrinkling her nose.

Zoey was pissed. She'd had enough for one day. "Sadly, no."

"Well damn."

"What did you see?"

Aphrodite exhaled loudly. "I was, in this, forest. I don't know where, it was just really, really cold. And there was this sign with like, funny writing on it."

"It's a start."

Aphrodite narrowed her eyes, annoyed, but continued anyway. "I was standing outside this mineshaft thing, I heard screaming coming from inside it so I looked down it. It was shallow, and lined with diamonds. Seriously I can't believe there were so many diamonds there and no one had thought to extract them."

"Focus much?"

"As I looked down, I recognised the voice. It was Professor Anastasia."

Zoey sat down next to Aphrodite. "Go on..." she urged.

"She was sitting in the little diamond pit thing, she was seriously beat, she looked awful. She was weak, skinny, and really, really scared. She was shouting at me. I didn't understand what she was saying, it sounded like 'pomogi muhnee-eh". I leant down and extended her my hand. That's when I realised I wasn't seeing the vision as me, I was seeing it as Dragon. Like I was him, my hand was his. And, as she shouted, I felt this horrible, indescribable fear. And then, I was me again, Dragon's presence faded, I was standing there as me. Professor Anastasia didn't seem to notice, the diamond around her was beginning to melt, like water, and swallowed her, she just, fell through something that should have been solid. But when she was under it became solid again, it was vile, like looking at someone trapped beneath solid ice, drowning." Aphrodite took a breath, beginning to become distressed, "I tried to help her but my body wouldn't move!!!"

"Is that it?"

"No..." she trailed, "There was a smell in the air... It was Neferet's smell, like she'd gone and sprayed her skanky perfume everywhere."

Zoey absorbed this information like a sponge, her nerves fraying to their ends. "Emergency meeting needed."

Five minutes later, everyone was sitting in Zoey and Aphrodite's room, perfectly wide awake and serious. The Twins were sitting huddled side by side on Zoey's bed, Damien and Jack were sitting on the floor, Darius was next to Aphrodite, comforting her, and Stark leant with his back against the door. They all sat silently as Aphrodite explained again what she saw.

"Double weird." Said the Twins in unison as she finished.

"All this working out is like cracking the DaVinci Code." Said Jack, clasping Damien's hand.

"You said you saw the first part through Dragon, right?" asked Damien.

Aphrodite nodded. "Yep."

"Well does that mean that Dragon saw it too? Or at least the first part of it?"

"Maybe." Said Darius. "Then again he may not have done."

Damien continued. "And you said you saw a sign, was it a place sign or something?"

"Yeah, but I can't read it."

"It wasn't the Cyrillic alphabet was it?"

Aphrodite looked pissed. "How the fuck should I know???"

"Can you write it down?"

Scowling, Aphrodite did so, and Damien looked at the paper like a scholar marking a student's essay. "Yep, that's Cyrillic."

"How did you guess that?" asked Stark from the door.

Damien grinned intelligently. "Because Professor Anastasia was Russian."

"I don't suppose amongst your encyclopaedic brain archives there lies the ability to speak Russian?"

"No Aphrodite, I can't read it."

Zoey impatiently broke the argument. "So we know it was in Russia, which explains the cold. That's cool, I mean, that narrows it down to Russia, which is, by the way, only the largest country in the world."

Damien looked at the paper again. "I wonder who could read this?"

"Alright, let's move on, none of us are going to magically gain the ability to speak Russian in the next few days." Said Stark.

"You said it was a pit of diamonds." Said Erin.

Shaunee finished the sentence. "Yes, now that was super-weird, and must have been super-expensive!"

"And that it stank of Neferet."

"Weird. She's had a thing for diamonds since she left hasn't she? She was wearing a rather flashy number earlier today, looked like Pocahontas' necklace, only muuuuuch sparklier, didn't you see it Twin?"

"Twin, I gawked at it. I bet those were Russian and all."

"Guys!" Zoey screamed, her eyes still red from crying.

They both spoke at once. "Sorry Z."

Stark came away from the door and sat down next to Zoey, enveloping her into his arms and rocking her gently.

"But how is it relevant?" Everyone looked at Darius as he worded the question. "With all the other visions, there has been some connection, to Kalona, to Neferet, to Zoey's impending doom. How does this one fit in?"

"It's like it's telling you that Neferet was directly involved in Professor Anastasia's death. But I don't see why you should have a vision of her, but not of any of the other professors who were killed." Said Damien.

"But she wasn't, Kalona gave the order, and even then it wasn't specific to any one person."

"This is going to sound odd..." said Jack, "But, why Anastasia? Why not Lenobia? Anastasia was a powerful spell-caster, whereas Lenobia's affinity gives her very little means of defending herself in battle. Why would any sane Raven Mocker go for Anastasia rather than Lenobia? And why didn't Anastasia fight back?"

Erin spoke up, now sounding more serious. "Jack has a point." She said, "She had already taught us simple spells that would have helped her escape."

"I don't know... I don't know the answers to any of these questions..." said Zoey tiredly.

"We know Z, it all just makes very little sense."

"None of this shit makes sense." Aphrodite spat, "And there is of course, one major difference in this vision."

Zoey sat up a little. "What?"

Aphrodite rolled her eyes. "Would you dorks get a clue? I have always had visions of future tragedy. This is the first vision I have ever had of someone who is already dead."

Lenobia was not sure if she was trusting her gut, or if she was clinically insane. At this rate, she was very probably both. After having received a phone call from Erce telling her that Zoey's human consort had been killed, she had almost thrown her phone at the nearest wall. No news had definitely been good news. She had very gratefully accepted Rosalina's offer of breaking the horrible news to the boy's parents, and decided that enough was enough. She turned her head to the side to look at Dragon, who was asleep, but far from peacefully. The past few hours had flown through her grasp, and the two were on the Spanish jet to San Clemente. She watched as he tossed and turned in his seat, and tried desperately to pretend he was dreaming of something pleasant. Try as she might, she couldn't follow her own advice and sleep on the plane, not when things were as they were. The speaker above their heads came on, and a female voice spoke clearly. "This is your captain speaking, the cabin crew wish to inform you that we will be touching down in San Clemente in approximately ten minutes. Please keep your seatbelts fastened as we prepare to land. The time in San Clemente is nine thirty am, thank you and enjoy the rest of your flight."

The speaker seemed to wake Dragon from his slumber with a jolt. "Easy..." she said, "Are you alright?"

He looked close to tears again. "It was worse this time..." he said, breathing hard, "She was beneath the diamond..."

"Lenobia looked confused. "Beneath it?"

"It was like, like she was drowning under a sheet of thick ice..." he shuddered, "I tried, I tried and tried but I couldn't get her out..."

Lenobia was about to say 'it was only a nightmare', but just as she opened her mouth, his hands clasped at his head, and he screwed his eyes shut, like he had a monster-migraine. "What is it?"

He said nothing for a few minutes. "I can hear her..." he said, keeping his eyes closed, "She keeps begging me to help her... And..." he bit his lip, "She says something about her necklace... But it's so faint..."

"A necklace?"

"The one her father gave her for her sixteenth birthday..." he said, "It's diamond, set in gold... You've seen it, the one she always wore to the Eclipse Ball."

Lenobia remembered. She also remembered wondering how wealthy Anastasia's father must have been to afford it. "Why is she telling you about it?"

"I wish I knew..." he said.

"Did it mean very much to her?"

Dragon sat back in his seat as the plane landed. "Yes. She was incredibly fond of her father. It is the only thing she had left of her family."

Getting off the plane, Lenobia was relieved to finally see Erce standing there waiting. She only wished she could have seen Erce under less pressing conditions. They might have gone riding, talked horses for days on end, but both of them knew there was a job to be done. Erce took them back to her apartment, taking them in as personal guests, and made them some food. Later, as Lenobia was getting ready to go to bed, she heard a knock on her door. "Avanti!" Come in! she called.

Erce appeared around the door. "May I come in?"

"Of course." She said, brushing her hair slowly.

"I need to talk to you about something." She said, "But I didn't want to talk about this earlier, not in front of Dragon..."

"What is it?"

She looked pained to be reduced to spreading gossip. "You will find this odd..." she began, "There have been, mysterious goings-on, for want of better words, inside the Council walls." Said Erce seriously. "Neferet thinks that she is being haunted."

Lenobia blinked and frowned disbelievingly. "Haunted?" she said, exaggerating the word.

Erce nodded. "Strange things have been happening around her, in plain sight as well. Doors slamming, cold winds blowing, things being moved. The senior Council members have seen things float right before their eyes. Voices whispering, screams being heard. And Neferet appears genuinely worried by it."

"She appears genuinely worried about a lot of things." Said Lenobia scathingly.

"One of the Council's servants is a rider at my yard, I get a lot of inside information from her. She overheard Neferet arguing with Kalona about it."

"Is she trustworthy?"

Erce nodded again. "Yes. She heard Neferet protesting to Kalona about it, asking him to set the Raven Mockers on it. She was also going through their library, trying to find some sort of exorcism. It's quite bizarre."

"You think it's possible?"

"If it is possible to talk with horses, I suppose one may consider it possible for ghosts to exist."

Lenobia remembered one detail, and with a sweeping realisation, she thought she knew where this was going. "Why didn't you want to talk about this in front of Dragon?"

Erce listened for a minute to check that Dragon was still in the shower, before speaking. "Because Neferet is convinced that the ghost is Anastasia Lankford."