Chapter Ten

As Helen was sleeping, four heavily trained men climbed up through her window. The leader glanced around the room, checking for any others. Seeing none, he walked silently to Helen's sleeping form. He injected her with a strong sedative, then bound her wrists and ankles.

"Alright men, get her in the truck. Ivar wants her at there by dawn."

The others quickly disarmed her, and tossed her down to the man waiting in the parking lot.

When Helen awoke, she found herself strapped down to a lab table, in a sterile looking room.

She heard the man who was clearly in charge stalk over to the table, and say to the lead scientist,

"Turn the table."

The scientist nodded and flipped a switch. The table immediately stated to rotate. Helen felt soreness in her back as she realized that her wings were spread open across the table.

Ivar gently stroked her soft secondary feathers, and Helen wished she could punch him. She knew that voice...

"Hello Helen, nice to see you after so many years."

Helen's eyes went wide as she remembered that incident almost one hundred years ago.

"Ivar." she said, mustering every ounce of ice and menace into that one word that she had. It was quite a bit.

She couldn't see it, but he raised his eyebrows and said "So you do remember."

Of course she remembered. How could she not? He used to be her friend.

When she was very little, Ivar had lived in the house next to hers.

Helen remembered a conversation they had when been just five...

Helen closed her eyes as her best friend enveloped her in a hug as she sat in the branches of the apple tree.

Laughing she opened her eyes and dropped down to the ground. Ivar sat next to her as she pointed out two young swans who were chasing each other around in the pond.

"Ivar! They look like they are copying us!"

"So they do!" said Ivar

She wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion and said "I winder if they actually are coping us. Maybe they are smarter than they seem."

He suddenly jumped on top of her and started tickling her. "And there you go again! Always studying things. If you could take the world apart and look at the pieces for hours, you would!"

She was giggling far too hard to reply. "Ivar, stop!"

He did and when they both calmed down, she rested her head in his shoulder and said "Ivar. Let's be best friends forever."

He nodded his head in agreement, and then the day ended perfectly.

That had been in the Summer, just before his Father had died by the gun of another man. After that, all communication was broken off from his family when they moved to Ireland to live with his Mother's family.

Twenty-five years later after John killed that woman in an alley, she was wandering through the alleys when she bumped into a rather handsome man. He had seemed strangely familiar...

"Ivar! I haven't seen you since I was five!" she greeted him with a happy smile. He greeted her with a gun pointed at her face.

"Hello Helen."

"Ivar?"

"It has recently come to my attention that you have injected yourself with Sanguine Vampiris. I need a sample of your blood."

Knowing that he would just tighten his grip on the trigger she replied "What for?"

"To heal my father"

Now she was really worried. "Your father has been dead for twenty -five years!"

He just set his jaw and said "Don't test me, Helen"

He then lunged forward and sliced at her arm with his long, sharp knife as she stumbled backwards and tripped. He succeeded in creating a gash in her arm, but before he could collect his prize, he was knocked off his feet by something moving very fast. A second later, James and Nigel ran up the alley in an attempt to catch up with Nikola. Nigel collected the unconscious form of Ivar Stonekrel, as James and Nikola helped Helen to her feet.

"Helen?" Nikola asked as James inspected her wound.

"I'm fine."

James snorted. "You may wish you were fine, but you certainly are not. You're in shock after seeing John again, and from your encounter with, er, him,. Also, this wound is fairly deep. It's going to need stitches, but you should be alright. Who is he anyway?" he asked, indicating Ivar.

"He's no one." she hastily replied. They left it at that.

Ivar then woke and ran off into another alley. Nikola made to pursue him but Helen, not thinking clearly, stopped him.

As the table turned around, She studied his face. She almost cried when she saw him. He still had fair curly hair, pale blue eyes, and that scar on the side of his face from the time they had been pretending to be birds and he had cut himself on a low branch near the pond.

"I'm just going to cut right to it: What do you want, Ivar?"

"You know why you're here, Helen, I need your blood."

"Ivar! Stop! Your father has been dead for over one hundred and forty years!"

He grinned and flipped a switch. Helen gasped. The wall in front of her slid away to reveal a cryogenic chamber, in which was a perfectly preserved Glendon Stonekrel.

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SO sorry for the long wait, but school got in the way. Everyone gets a Nikola shaped cookie as a condolence...