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Chapter 12 – Fairytale
"Once upon a time, in a kingdom far far away, there lived a prince. This prince was brave, strong, handsome, and his name was Stephan IV. The prince was supposed to take the throne from his father, the king, and rule over all of the land after Stephan married.
"So Prince Stephan searched the entire kingdom for the fairest maiden that lived on the land. After several months, he found the woman he was looking for. She was a poor woman who lived by herself near the mountains, outcast by the people of the nearby village who said horrible things of her. Her beauty surpassed any other woman Stephan had seen; she had curly honeysuckle hair and deep blue eyes. Despite the discouraging rumors Prince Stephan heard from his people, he still wanted her as his bride. Her name was Courtney and soon after meeting the prince, they were announced to be married.
"The queen-to-be came to the castle by night, was active under darkness and slumbered during the day. Still, the townspeople warned the Prince of terrible things about his choice, but he ignored them all when looking upon her beautiful face.
"The night before the wedding, the troubled Stephan came to Courtney's chamber to discuss the townspeople's words with her. When he walked into her room, she sat before a mirror and did not cast a reflection! Immediately the Prince drew his sword, for he knew a being who did not cast a reflection was a curse one indeed. "Reveal yourself!" he shouted. His bride transformed into a beast and attacked him.
"Prince Stephan was brave and skilled and although the beast injured him, he stabbed her in the gut and she recoiled, "Ye shall pay for thy wickedness!" she shouted before escaping into the night.
"And Prince Stephan never saw the monster again and he took a different woman for his bride, and lived happily ever after as King Stephan IV." After I was finished, I set the book down and looked at the final illustration on the page. A disfigured picture of what the artist thought Courtney should look like for a watered-down children's book. That version of the story was one told to me as a child, modified to suit true events since Stephan did not live happily ever after; he died before fifty like every Lockett male after him, including my father.
Lucy sat very still as I read this story aloud and when I was done she did not speak a single word to question why I had read that tale at a time like this.
I ignored her stare and walked passed her into my living room. Everything made so much more sense now. The night of my birthday, Daniel had said he mistook another woman for me. He must have seen Courtney walking out of the club with Felicia, who led her alone somewhere and took her life under the moonlight. Weren't the skies only partially covered that night? Bite marks were on Felicia's arms and legs...
And the wolf attacks all around the city. They weren't from any normal gray wolf, but a vampire with a violent appetite in a wolf form. That's why the authorities and animal control couldn't find the beast; she was either sleeping, masquerading as a woman or a wolf under moonlight. Now for Courtney's personal intent; there were suggestions she had her own fledglings, suggestions she'd committed crimes against other vampires...
A knock came from the front door that interrupted my thoughts. A moment later Daniel burst into my apartment and rushed toward me, picked me up into a big bear hug that practically squeezed the air out of my lungs. "What. The. Bloody. Hell!" he shouted at me after he released me. I dropped back to the floor and gasped in a mouthful of air. "Where were you all day? What the devil were you thinking, leaving us to bloody worry about you? Like if some wanker got you in an alley or if some nit decided to take a crack at you in the street, we couldn't have known since you didn't answer your celly or anythin' of that sort!" His accent was so twisted at some points in his rant, I almost couldn't tell he was speaking English. My, he was so flustered! He pulled on his shirt to cool himself, since he looked like he'd gotten into a fight with that bloody lip, and ran his hand through his chocolate curls in hopes to straighten the mess. "Bloody...what the hell...FUCK!"
Both Lucy and I jumped at his outspoken way of expressing himself. "Danny, calm down!" I shouted back.
He bit his knuckle and sighed, trying to relax himself. "Right, right...apologies for that, mate." He started pacing after shutting my front door. "I was just worried, alright? All day I was making a big deal about you missing and you were probably just out for a walk or something... Where were you, by the way? I think I deserve to know, since I walked all the way from uptown to downtown; scary things happen in between those two places you don't want to know about." He looked to Lucy now and saw the worried expression on her face.
"Ah, sweetheart, sorry for the fright." he told her and walked over to give her a big comforting hug as well. "It doesn't matter, just as long as we know you're safe, lass." He turned to me and added.
I felt compassionately reassured. I'd never seen Daniel so worked up about anything before; except Lucy awhile back when she didn't answer her phone one day because she had gotten hammered at a bar the night before and went home with a friend. Daniel nearly had a heart attack when he knew she didn't come home from the bar that night and he had been ridiculous with his theories of what happened to her. I could only guess Lucy had experienced that rare overly-worried side of him while I was missing.
"You're bleeding," Lucy noted in a concerned tone. She touched his lip to wipe the blood off and he winced when her hand brushed a bruise on his cheekbone. "Sorry! What happened?"
"Scary things downtown, love." he started, wiping his lip with his sleeve. "Some faggot came onto me in a bar downtown when I went in to ask if they'd seen you, Ally." he glanced to me and I looked at him oddly.
"Why would I be in a gay bar?"
"I don't bloody know! I was desperate to see if anyone had seen you, thanks for appreciating I was worried." I silenced and let him continue. "Anyway, I tried telling the poor wasted guy, very kindly mind you, "I'm not into men," you see, but he didn't get the message and tried molesting me right there in the bar!"
Lucy and I couldn't help but giggle. He shouted at us to shut up and became very flustered again. "Did the drunken gay man hurt you, Danny?" Lucy teased.
"Not exactly. See, I had to set the guy straight, no pun intended, so I just gave him a friendly punch to the face. Nothing too rough or violent, just something to set his senses on the right track and get him off me. Well, turns out the faggot had a mate. A big, burly bloke who decided he didn't like me punching his little boyfriend." he told us hotly.
"So you didn't get beat up by the drunken gay guy, but the sober boyfriend decided to kick your ass?" I couldn't contain my laughter.
"Yes!" Lucy and I couldn't stop laughing. "What the hell, guys! I thought you'd show me a little compassion for getting my ass kicked while I was lookin' for yours!" He pointed at me and I stopped.
I remembered I had somewhere I needed to be, someone I needed to see and get answers from...
And I needed these two out of my hair until tomorrow, when I would explain everything. Well, almost everything.
I darted over into the kitchen and came back out with a bottle of the finest French wine that was in a cupboard hidden behind my microwave. "Here." I said and presented the bottle to them. "An apology gift for making you both worry and go to all this trouble. Go home together and enjoy." I said politely and suggestively. Daniel was overjoyed and took the bottle but Lucy was not convinced. She'd seen me when I walked in, she knew something was obviously wrong but she also knew I didn't want her to worry right now.
"Okay. Goodnight, Ally." she said sweetly. They both embraced me and headed for the exit. Daniel winked at me with the wine before closing the door behind him. I grinned when knowing at least one night was going to go well. Now I needed to worry about my own.
I changed clothes from the ones given to me at the vampire mansion and headed to Luke's via cab after that.
For the third time I found myself in front of this place, with my hands on the cold black iron bars of the fence surrounding the mansion that belonged to Lucas the vampire. I could hardly see a thing besides the vegetation the street light allowed me to see in the yard. I took in a breath and moved toward the gate; it opened slowly with a shrilling creak.
Some other noise paralleled the gate and I turned my head to the left where I thought I heard it. Nothing seemed to be along the sidewalk, but I could have missed anything in the darkness of the night.
A flash caught my eye from Luke's mansion. Through the windows, each room's light turn on one by one until the entire house was lit. I ignored the noise and saw this as a sign of invitation from Luke to welcome me inside.
I closed the gate behind me and walked up to the lion head knockers on the oak doors. Before I could reach for the handle, the door opened for me and he was standing there, perfect and pale as always. He was very cleaned up, and actually managed to put on a shirt for this encounter. But it hardly helped considering the button-up front only used two of the buttons and his matching dress pants still clung low to those inviting hip bones. His hair was neatly combed back on his skull and, dear god, what cologne was he wearing? I felt so under prepared compared to his tidy appearance.
"I expected you sooner." he told me inquisitively as I walked inside.
"Missed me that much?" I replied sharply, but playfully. I hoped he wasn't suspecting anything. As Taylor instructed me, I focused my thoughts on some other event in case Luke decided to look into my thoughts. I don't believe he did.
I heard the door click shut behind me and my eyes traveled over his home once again. The fancy interior had been cleaned drastically from the last time I was here. There used to be a layer of dust covering every object, sheets over some furniture and altogether looked as if the house was abandoned. Now, everything was just as clean and arranged perfectly; the trinkets shined, the furniture suitable and each cobweb had been carefully lifted away. Perhaps it was just the exquisite and attractive style of the room, but it reminded me of the palace back at home. My focus faltered for a moment as I remembered one of the many maids from my childhood, how she had to make sure everything was always flawless before guests could enter our royal home.
The chain memory was broken when Luke's cold fingers gently peeled my jacket off my shoulders and set it on a coat hanger. "I cleaned since the last time you walked in here." I didn't miss that he mimicked my words from the night before when I accused him of breaking into my apartment. I laughed dryly and muttered a subtle thank you for the polite jester.
Just another moment of silence and I would have gotten straight to the point of this rendezvous, but Luke was keen on keeping a calm and very thrift conversation. "Would you like a tour?"
I opened my mouth to say something else, then closed it when actually hearing the question. The answer was "Yes," but we really had more important things to be discussing in this moment. "Let's procrastinate the core of this conversation, shall we?"
He ignored my comment and set a firm hand on my lower back to guide me to the large living room. I recalled walking in there last time since the spiraling stairs were to the side. "Perhaps if it was more than just me inhabiting this building, this room would be used as a gathering place." Next were the dining room and a small ballroom that had glass doors opening to a lovely little garden-path in the back. This one was nowhere as big as the one at the Vampire's Mansion, but I quickly dismissed that thought as Luke brought me through a hallway to a study.
The room was private, peaceful, compensated with everything a scholar would need, or for just relaxing in. The library branching off from the study room was nothing less than impressive and very attractive with its old-fashion-like feel. Candles and oil lamps were the only things giving this collective room light. It was here Luke ended his little procrastination stunt he called a tour and shut us both into the room. "Feel free to look around. We have all night, after all." He grinned suggestively and I suddenly felt unsure of being the only human in the room, for the second time tonight.
I grabbed a candle sitting on the edge of a desk and made my way around a book shelf just to browse at the titles. I was curious to see just what subjects a vampire kept in their own personal library, and Luke must have brought me in here for a reason. Everything I wanted to know must be in the books.
I was amazed. There seemed to be endless amounts of titles just as well as subjects. They ranged anywhere from Shakespeare's plays to Homer and Dante; from great history books and art encyclopedias to personal diaries of famous people all throughout history. Most books were in English, but some were French, others Italian and a few other languages I didn't recognize at all but probably derived from Asia. When I believe I was in the fiction section of the assortment, I laughed quietly when seeing Bram Stroker's Dracula and an assortment of other fictional novels dealing with vampires.
"I find it humorous as well, with me being a vampire. I felt compelled to own copies of the 'vampire classics.'" I nearly dropped the candle when Luke's voice was right next to my ear. A silent gasp in took with a breath as his chilling fingers slid around my shoulders and traveled along to my neck. "So tense." he told me in the other ear.
"I wonder why." I shot back to him with the steadiest voice I could manage. There were more important things on hand to be brought up, and even though I was about to receive probably the most glorious neck massage ever, I turned sharply around to break the contact with his hands. I regretted doing so as I had spun right around to meet his body, which was already standing close and I became trapped between him and the bookshelf.
He smirked and extinguished the flame of the candle with two fingers. I objected to his actions but he just chuckled and pressed against me in the darker moment. "Luke!" I objected again. This playful banter he had going to distract us from the reason for being here was becoming ridiculous! I closed my eyes with my palms on his masculine chest and tried to gain the strength to push him off. Naturally, it was very useless. I don't think he even budged against my obvious strain, but when feeling him shift upwards under my fingers, I saw him reaching for a book on the highest shelf above my head.
"Try this one."
Luke handed me a book with no title and a blank navy cover. It was very old, very dusty, and the pages, as he opened it, were aged to a yellowish tint and the words within looked as if they were hand written. I glanced at the shelf he pulled it from; it was full of the identical title-less books like some sort of old encyclopedia collection.
"The history of vampires, written by vampires, for vampires eyes only."
My mortal eyes widened and a small smile came to my lips as I looked from him to the book. I tried soaking in what the text said but I realized quickly it was written in Latin. "Written in a dead language for the dead?" I added comically.
He laughed genuinely, and it was probably the most beautiful sound a voice could make. "I like to write in Latin." he defended calmly. Next he led me over to a lamp resting on a desk beside a comfortable lounge couch.
"Wait." I stopped, holding the worn book in my hands. "You wrote this?"
"Some of it." he replied and seated himself on the arm of the couch. I followed in the cushion next to him. "Each of those books on the top shelf are collaborations with different vampires on various subjects. This volume is one of the last. I was fortunate enough that the publishers were constructing it in my age and wanted my input; mostly about events I witnessed and were a part of that were later considered significant in vampire history. The earlier volumes were produced long before my time by elder vampires, over a thousand years old, but most of them have died out by now. The ones who haven't stepped into the sun are within the earth, dormant."
I listened carefully. "You'll have to translate some of it for me, but some other time." I said and set the book in his hands. I pondered over what I wanted to ask him next as he set the book aside. "So, how old are you?"
"It depends." he dipped his head thoughtfully; I watched his neat blond hair fall over his eyes. "Do you mean how long it has been since I was changed or how many years I've walked the earth?"
I thought over this for a moment. "The prior, and how old you were when it happened. How did it happen? Who turned you?"
"In eighteen years I will be five centuries old, age twenty-four, I was changed against my will during a hunt by a vampire who was killed for treason."
Perhaps I shouldn't have asked so many questions at once if he was going to mold the answers together like that. "So, four-hundred-and-eighty-two?" I waited a moment as we looked at each other and he nodded. "What treason did the name-less vampire commit?"
"His, or I should say, their crimes were breaking vampire law. There was a young, ignorant, rogue group of vampires long ago who slaughtered ruthlessly, mortals and immortals alike, and did as they pleased without trying to hide what they were. Revealing one's self as a vampire is against our law, and killing our own, unless they are uncontrollable fledglings under that vampire, is also against code. Another they defied was to change a large amount of people and not take up the proper responsibility with those fledglings. Such as, giving insight to newborns of our law and what we are. I was one of those unfortunate who they changed and they abandoned to writhe in the vastness of immortality alone." He looked over the volume I had in my hand with a dark glint of a buried emotion in his eye. "Their names are not important. Later, after I found some of my own kind, I learned who the group was and that they had been executed. From there, I journeyed on in my new life."
I mulled over his words for a few seconds to make sure I grasped all he was explaining. "What did you do? How have you coped with immortality in all that time, Luke?"
He looked in a different direction and his eyes glazed over in thought. I sat patiently, but very vividly interested, and he turned his head my direction again with a small smile on his lips. "That question has many aspects to it that will take more than the rest of this night to answer. Some things I'll need to show you, since I can't really explain everything in words. I can see that you want the story of my life and nothing less than that."
I was disappointed and almost poked my bottom lip out to pout. He was right about what I wanted though; if he was going to finally tell me about himself, I wanted the best story possible. I glanced at my watch; a little passed one. "I guess that means I should come back tomorrow night."
"Yes, and for a few more nights, Allison. You want to know quite a bit and we could go over it all in one or two nights, but I recall you have a job and I haven't made an appearance for mine in awhile. Perhaps if you come over sooner, tomorrow..."
I nodded and directed my thoughts away from why I was late tonight. He arose from his seat and started walking towards the door to show me out, but I didn't move from my place. I stood and tapped my foot once on the ground and he stopped in his tracks. He'd been expecting me to follow and listen to everything he said? I crossed my arms and gave my best impenetrable tone.
"The night is not yet over and I'm not leaving, Luke. For some reason you keep avoiding the most inevitable question of them all: Who is Courtney V and what does she have to do with me?" I wanted an explanation, I wanted something other than avoiding the subject, like Taylor had when he told me Courtney committed crimes and had relations, but hadn't cared to explain what crimes or what sort of relations. I needed his answer anyway, but I wanted to know about Courtney just as much as Taylor did and I was prepared to go to drastic measures to draw that answer from the abyss of his knowledge.
Luke slowly switched heels to face me. The couple of yards between us hardly mattered with the dense atmosphere I had just cloaked us in. I planted myself to the ground, arms tied and eyebrow raised almost to a point of viciousness. His expression was blank at first, but after seeing the impatient determination on my face he frowned indifferently and hummed darkly. In the blink of an eye he came close to me, just a centimeter off from my body. My senses expected collision and I fell back without meaning, and right as my bottom landed on the couch he had kneeled down before me and took each of my knees to a side of his torso. I moved my hands to push his chest from between my legs but he caught my wrists in the air and pinned them awkwardly; one hand at my side and the other behind my head, which forced me to lean back against the furniture and gave him an easy place to rest his body quite comfortably on mine.
"Luke," I made my voice sound as rejecting and annoyed as I could as I struggled underneath his body, but his lips crashed over mine and a groan of protest came from me before a moan of pleasure. I hadn't realized he freed my hands, his circled my back and mine wrapped in his hair; until I felt the cushion shift underneath me and I had been repositioned to lay flat, with his weight crawling over mine.
I knew exactly what he was doing, he was distracting me from the question I had just asked him! Perhaps too soon for his tongue to caress the inside of my mouth with a great skill I had not experienced from any other, I yanked vigorously on his hair until he parted from me and yelped in pain. "You're still avoiding the question, damn you!" I shot at him as I untangled my hands and pulled out from under him. He growled and touched his hair where I might have pulled a few strands out...
"I delay because you won't like the answer." he told me in a hushed voice. He gathered himself to sit up and took the care to angle away from me. He let his forehead fall into his hands, like any troubled man, and I leaned close to his ear.
"I probably won't if you say I won't, but that just interests me more. I know you have relations with her, so why don't you start there?" I was pressuring him so much in tone and actions.
"You sound like a jealous girlfriend, and that's not a good image for someone of your standards." he spat sharply at me. I winced at the tiny bit of verbal abuse, but I could tell he didn't mean what he said. Now, instead of seduction, he was using his darker element to keep me from the subject. I was determined to convince him to tell me what he knew. He drew me here just as I wanted him and the knowledge he held, why was he hiding it now? I believed, over all, that I deserved to know what had to deal with me and my family. Regardless of Taylor, and vampires and the history of vampires.
He wouldn't look at me so I drew my finger under his chin, but he nodded his head away from my touch. "Look at me." I commanded. A flare of dominance that was coded into my royal blood expelled now. I grabbed his chin, as he did to me the night before, and his neck moved to obey where I jerked it. We stared directly into each other's eyes for a moment and I asked him to tell me about Courtney. "This isn't a trick question." My tone had grown suddenly softer and somewhat illustrious compared to the demands I was making earlier. "Just tell me how you know who I am, and what Courtney has to do with me and my family and what she doing right now in this city. Slaughtering innocent citizens in the dozens right out in the open, why?" I shifted and moved closer to his stunned face. "Please?" I added more breathily, and let my lips just barely brush his own parted ones. Dare I let myself act in this way, but I was rather desperate at this point against his difficult resistance. He leaned closer into my kiss with a force, but I pulled away and set a finger on top of his icy mouth. My look was expectant, and finally when I had just a tiny bit of control over his actions, he submitted to the question.
Luke stood quickly and began pacing along the design on the library carpet. "Dawn is in three hours, but you'll want to leave before then when I tell you."
My patience was running thin and his voice was calm but growing in intensity. "Try me, Luke." I wasn't sure what to expect.
His pacing stopped and turned to face me. "Courtney Vengeance has everything to do with you and your family, Allison. That legend of Stephan IV and Courtney the vampire is based on truth but the version you know is completely preposterous. I was there, you must understand, when Courtney set the curse upon your family so long ago in the past. It is she who has held a grudge over the Lockett's and killed every man in your ancestry since Stephan." I listened passively but I felt a strong emotion of anger and denial building inside me. I watched Luke's fists tighten as he went on. "I knew exactly who you were the first moment I saw you, not because I could see your thoughts and memories, but because you are the spitting image of her, Allison. Did you honestly not notice the physical similarities between you and her? You are a fool to believe your country's old folk tales of Courtney always being a monster. It wasn't always so!"
He was defending her with a striking tone that made me hang my head in my hands. I needed to calm my thoughts and heating emotions. Was everything he was telling me true, Courtney had killed my family all along and passed on the dread of the curse in every generation? One vampire put my entire family in a fear of inevitable death? "No..." I muttered shakily. I wanted to deny it all, but there was no reason for him to lie.
"Don't be foolish. You are many things; persistent, ambitious, beautiful but foolish isn't one of them!" he was shouting now. I was drawn back but anger was still swirling inside me like a vortex. I took deep, even breaths, but Luke's words hit me over and over again as my mind replayed them.
"Why would she kill my mother, then? She certainly wasn't a Lockett male. She didn't even have the Lockett blood!" I tried not to shout but the rage was climbing.
Luke's voice grew dangerously calm. "I'm not sure exactly, but she cares nothing about the lives of the mortals and she kills with an unstoppable horror and delicacy. Drawing blood, from the mortal or immortal is all that makes sense to her. She doesn't have any other reason to exist except to kill." He paused and jerked a hand through his hair. The neatness of it was lost, as was the expectations of this night. "It's a possibility she was enraged with you and your mother's tactics to stay away from your country and her curse."
"Then, then why hasn't she come after me yet?"
"She already has."
My eyes widened with misunderstanding. "What do you mean?"
"Felicia's murder. The slaughtering at the movie-lot when you happened to be there. She's trying to get your attention and send you a message. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if she attacked one of your closer friends next."
"Don't say that." I snapped back at him in a harsh whisper. I was very silent and shaking slightly as I thought over what Luke had just told me. So Courtney wanted me? Or, she wanted my family's blood. And I was the last of the Lockett's, refusing to go home and marry... But why did she want these things to a point of pure madness?
I stopped my questioning as a different realization set in. "Wait. You said you were there when it began. You were there when all of this killing continued right in front of your eyes?"
"Yes." he answered solemnly.
"And, according to legend, the time that my family was cursed was about three-hundred years ago, and you're close to five-hundred." I stood from my seat on the couch as my mind began to calculate what this all meant. Luke watched me inquisitively as I circled around him. "That means around two-hundred years of strength over another vampire. You are strong, are you not?" He nodded but narrowed his eyes to try and figure out what I was getting at. "If you know the truth about everything, why didn't you ever try and stop her?"
He raised his head and answered a little too quickly for my liking. "I'm the only man she respects as an immortal. Why should I break that alliance?"
I stopped and shot daggers into his icy blue eyes. I couldn't reply to that. I couldn't say "Hm, well, the woman standing in front of you right now that you've been lusting over the past week sure isn't a good enough reason. No, not at all. Might I remind you that the other night you couldn't even control yourself around said woman and were ready to take her right in the very public alleyway?"
"I can't believe you." I shook my head as my voice was laced with distaste.
He caught the error of his words too late. I was storming out of his mansion. I yanked my jacket off of the coat hanger when reaching the entrance, I might have ripped the material, but I didn't care. When I opened the door, he tried to stop me by setting his arm in the doorway. I dodged under it.
"You haven't even given me a chance to explain!" he called after me.
I stopped my dramatic exit halfway through the yard and spun around. "Oh, you will, Lucas. You will when I come back tomorrow, goddamn you!" I was shouting. I don't think I needed to be but I was angry, and blinded, and tired. I didn't want to hear the story behind the why right now when I was this angry. I didn't care that I was walking away from a god-sent body standing in the doorway like some sort of love-sick super model (because that's what he was). I just had my biggest question answered... The answer to the Lockett curse was that Courtney, that beautiful sinister wicked devil, was behind it all. I turned around again and ran to the gate. "And you know what else? You were absolutely right. I didn't like the answer one bit!" I probably sounded silly by shouting a bunch of nonsense like that just because I was angry.
But it didn't matter. I ran to my apartment and slammed the door closed and locked my dignity in a box while I kicked and screamed so childishly for those few minutes of steaming.
And then I passed out on the bed from pure anticlimactic events.
That night I dreamed of the horrors of dancing in a vampire's ball. Julia had brought me back again, all dressed up for round two. I was in Taylor's arms and he directed me toward another couple on the dance floor, Luke and Courtney, who were in a comforting embrace with the music. They were both gorgeous, and it hurt me to see them together in such a way. "You failed me." Taylor said simply. And I awoke with an invisible pain of fangs in my neck. When checking my neck in the mirror, I would find no injuries, once again.
It was light outside when I awoke, and when glancing at the clock, I was already late for work. I sighed and made my way to the window to open it and let the breeze drift through my sloppy morning wheat and russet hair. The rage had passed, now I only had a clear head and certain emotions on a string to express. I was ready to go back to Luke's tonight and hear his story of Courtney and how she became a vampire and why she held this immense grudge over the Lockett generations to come.
So it had begun. After that, I could move on to the next step: I knew what the curse was, now I had to break it before I could return home.
A/N: Shout-out time! SoldierDudette, brunette-in-black, MercedesRavenAngelous, Strawberry Moons, James the wolf, fullmoon13-warewolf, Mistress Claudia, zflames4me, emogirlisdead, Shae, and several others who watch me silently! Edit: unimaginable insanity