Chapter 12- Apparition

I watched her in a trance-like state from the washroom as she removed the towel from her now dry frame, her wet hair hanging down her back and cascading into slightly unruly waves. I almost regretted to see her dress, and our gazes finally dropped to the floor. This was no time to panic, but rather this was the time to savor every breath of her; the very sight of her. I focused not on her weakness as a mortal, but on my strength as an immortal Lycan- a warrior. I would protect her from harm. It was a distraction that she could not afford to protect me, but that I could afford her. I would fight fiercely, but I would have my eye on her at all times. She had even more of a disadvantage that she had never fought before. Everything she did would be new to her and every mistake she made and learned from could be learned from too late, should the mistake be fatal. Everything she learned would be as she went; as she fought.

I stepped into the shower and pressed my face into my hands with despair. Now that I was out of her sight I could shed the tears that had been threatening to break through. I could not let her know that I was despairing for her. She needed as much confidence as could be spared, and I was doing her no service by allowing my face to show how afraid for her I was. I was a wretched, wretched fool, and if my life could be taken to save hers then I deserved death a thousand times over. I should never have given her the choice to come. My selfish desire to never be apart from her, and even her selfless and compassionate desire to help me, were not forces strong enough to save her from her own mortality. I had all but lured her here with the threat of being apart for a while, and it was at my hand that she would now face her own mortality rather than be saved from it. I had an obligation to have left without giving her the choice to join me. The joke was on me now. Of course justice would not be given to me; surely it would be she who would die, and not me. I could have returned to her safely when the war was over and have not lost her, but now I had condemned myself to more grief for however much longer I would live. It was an injustice; and injustice at my own hand, but an injustice nonetheless. And even more the injustice was the life I had robbed her of the minute I'd dragged her into a war she had nothing to do with. I had an obligation to be here, not she.

My thoughts shifted to the future that I could almost clearly see without her, stretching on bleakly for decades and decades until my mortal death. I thought of the endless nights I would lie alone. I thought of the insatiable desire for her, body and soul, that would burn in me forever at the mere thought of her. I thought of many hollow thoughts that I should not be thinking of, and the anguish they triggered made me hunch over, heaving with nausea. I finished showering, brushed my teeth, and put on some clothes, but stopped short at the sound of a male voice in the motel room. I peered around the door and froze. There, not two feet from Maya, stood Alexander Corvinus. He was completely translucent, an apparition, and he spoke to her.

"You must understand that you, Selene, Lucian and Michael are the last hope for both bloodlines. There is a hidden prophecy that neither of the covens have seen that is written down and concealed, never to be found: 'To end the war requires one female vampire, and one female Lycan in league with one another. The two warrior princesses shall possess the charisma and fierceness required to turn the hearts of them all and cause their ears to yield. Their will shall bend to the two princesses, and the diplomacy of each shall allow for the two warring clans to adjoin. There will be an end to the bloodshed for all eternity.'

"Do you understand, my child? You, Lucian, the female vampire, Selene and her Hybrid, Michael, must cooperate together to find this female Lycan. You will know who she is when the time comes."

His translucent form vanished, and I stepped cautiously around the bathroom door. Maya looked confused, and was frozen in wide-eyed disbelief. I knew I had missed some of what Corvinus had said to her, but I had overheard the most curious and interesting of all. A female Lycan? I had never seen a female Lycan in my entire eight hundred years, and I was suddenly filled with questions as to how many Lycans there truly were, and where they were all located. Who had created them? And had I gone mad? Or had I truly seen what I'd just seen?

"Lucian, did you just see and hear that?" she asked, reading my expression.

"Alexander Corvinus?" I confirmed, hoping that was what she meant.

"Yes. So I'm not going completely nuts here?"

"Apparently not. I thought I had gone mad."

"Who is this female Lycan he told me about?"

"I have no idea. I've never seen a female Lycan before. Men tend to have more strength, so we never turned a woman. The vampires needed slaves with strength. Someone from my Lycan clan must have done it. It brings up an entirely new concern about how many Lycans they may have turned, and where in the world they exist, and whether or not they keep their identities veiled and control their hunger for blood."

"Alexander said I would know who she is when the time comes. What in the world does that mean?"

"I wish I knew, love. What else did he tell you while I was showering?" I asked, making sure I had all the information I might need.

"He told me about Marcus and William, and everything he could about werewolves and vampires; everything there is to know."

"I am sorry that I did not get around to telling you about Marcus and William and our origins. I didn't plan on ever returning to England, and I had figured as a background story it could wait. I hadn't counted on having you with me during any of this war and you needing to know all of this here and now, so it wasn't crucial for you to know, like knowing my history with Viktor, in order to understand me. I am sorry though, my love. I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"Lucian, it's okay. We were just starting to learn all of the facts about one another. I don't hold it against you."

"There is nothing in the world that could make you angry with me, is there?"

"Not so long as you're honest and faithful, which you are," she assured me. And she was correct. She leaned over on the bed to where I had sat next to her now and kissed me, a gentle smile on her face. It was too much. In that moment I was so afraid of losing her that I began to kiss her with so much passion I thought I would burst. I would show her my love as though there were no tomorrow, which there very well may not be for her. I loathed myself, and, forgetting about this female Lycan Corvinus spoke of, I concentrated solely on being intimate with Maya. I kissed her with a fierce desperation for all of her; as much of her as I could breathe into my soul before we went off to fight the deadliest battle. Her intensity matched mine, and we clung to each other as we succumbed to each other's unyielding passion. I shivered with delight as her hands trailed down my back and around my hips as she sat in my lap, facing me. Our clothing was off as quickly as it had been on, and she gasped as I began to trace tiny circles all up and down her body.

"This will not be our last time," she hissed through her teeth as I kissed her neck.

Tears welled in my eyes, and I pulled her on top of me, kissing her mouth, her forehead, her cheeks, her neck; anything to keep me from completely breaking down. I channeled any sadness I began to feel into passion as it washed over me in waves. The more I kissed and caressed her, the louder she moaned, her fingertips massaging into my most sensitive muscles all over my body. I cried out her name in ecstasy tainted with grief, and began to breathe harder when she allowed me to enter her at last. As much as my body longed to thrust harder and faster each time our bodies ebbed and flowed, my heart begged me to slow down and prolong this moment as much as I could, but every time I did slow down she would pick up on my distraction and increase the pace, forcing me to meet her at that sweet intersection where our bodies were closest with her rhythm. Sweat dripped from my forehead and from every pore, saturating the sheets below me as I tried and tried to fight off the end, but it was useless. The more I fought it the more tension there was in my muscles, which only brought me closer and closer. Her sweet moaning and sighing of my name only resonated in my mind, causing that ache for release to become more urgent. I found myself uttering her name over and over again, each utterance closer and closer to the last, until at last I was so lost in her that I forgot all about resisting and gave in completely. For the next several moments I was lost in the waves that rendered me powerless, gazing helplessly into her vast and expressive eyes as we released in complete synchronicity and longing for more. We shouted each other's names at the same time, and grasped each other's hands tightly, toes curling, legs entwined, bodies rigid and not daring to ease a muscle until we were sure the last wave had rippled through.

Through my deep panting, I whispered hoarsely to her, "I will fight like hell to be sure of it. This will not be our last time because I will not allow it to be."

She kissed me deeply and stared into my eyes lovingly. "I know you will. I love you, Lucian."

"And I love you too, Maya. You must have been born to be a part of my world for Alexander Corvinus to appear to you after his death and tell you of a secret prophecy. It's like you were given the gift to talk to angels. Or it must be that you are the angel," I sighed.

"I don't know about that. I'm no angel, but I know for certain that I was meant for you."

I pushed her hair back from her forehead, and she pressed hers to mine.

"I am a selfish fool," I lamented. "My bringing you here was wrong, and almost cruel. If you are so much as wounded I fear I will never stop loathing myself."

"Stop," she insisted, a strange new confidence in her voice. "I'm glad you gave me the choice to come. I could never just sit around while you're fighting like hell for something that matters and something that's right. I know that I'm a mortal and that I've never fought before, but you have to give me some credit. I'm an intelligent woman, and I'm strong-willed, and people used to go to war all the time throughout the centuries, sometimes with no training, and no experience, and they saw the frontlines of battles and became heroes, and most certainly survived. I feel a strong pull to be here, and I have this strange confidence that it's all going to be okay."

I felt guilty that I indeed hadn't given her much credit, but it was only out of fear for her life and being without her, and out of my love for her and obligation to protect her. It was in this moment that I realized just how poorly I had failed to instill the necessary confidence in her. I was so proud though, that she had found it all on her own.

"I am sorry, my darling. I truly am. And here you are, speaking with the ferocity of a warrior. I trust now that you will reign with your relentless drive in battle. I cannot and will not doubt you any longer. I only fear for you because you are a mortal. Please forgive me that I cannot completely eradicate every ounce of my fear. It is only because of how much I love you."

"I know," she whispered. "But you have to trust that if we're meant to be together that we won't easily be separated. I have enough faith in that single fact to trust myself against the vampires, as afraid as I am, too." She took my hands in hers, and I laid my elbows gently at our sides. "Just stick close to me or be sure one of the Lycans is near me as much as possible, and I have no doubt it will be alright. Now please, just kiss me and let's enjoy this moment together. We won't get a moment's peace until we return to Seattle with a bunch of men nearby, now will we?" She winked.

"Not unless you enjoy an audience," I chuckled.

"Um, no. As wonderful as I'm sure your Lycan friends are, I prefer my only audience to be you when I'm moaning your name like that, or when you're moaning mine." She blushed.

I kissed her and smiled. "You're wrong, though. You are an angel. You're my angel."

She sighed my name into my mouth, allowing our kiss to linger. "And you're mine."

This mortal angel, the one I loved so dearly, was hand-picked by Alexander Corvinus to help us find a female Lycan who would put an end to this raging war. I was amazed with her in so many ways. She was an angel who could speak to angels. As my awareness vanished into the heat and passion between us once again, I forgot all of my fears, and let the ferocious passion of the Lycan within take complete hold of me in the bright silver sheen of the full moon illuminating our emblazoned forms through the window.

A/N: As weird as this sounds, the song "She Talks to Angels" by The Black Crows was my inspiration for this chapter. I was originally going to make the apparition be of Sonja, but then I realized that might be a little too weird to have his dead love and his new love talking, especially since he sees part of the apparition; also that it didn't quite fit the story for the apparition to be her. By making it Corvinus, it helped me tremendously in setting up the story for some of the ending chapters.

I'm thinking of including my playlist for this story in an author's note in the last chapter of the story. Let me know if you'd be interested. Some of the lyrics to some of these songs fit the story and the general story of "Underworld" so well that it's unbelievable.

Also, I hope you took the word "emblazoned" figuratively enough, and didn't think I actually meant that Lucian and Maya were on fire, lol.