“You’re supposed to take your kind to true sanctuary, Derek. That much we know is true, but what is true sanctuary?”
“You tell me.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t really know anymore, to be honest. I used to think The Shade was true sanctuary.”
“It couldn’t possibly be true sanctuary. The last time I talked to Corrine, she told me that she was the last of the witches capable of keeping The Shade hidden. The island is safe from human detection and sunlight only as long as she is alive. The Shade’s fall is inevitable.”
Derek’s bright blue eyes, illuminated by moonlight, focused on me, almost as if he was searching me for an answer, almost as if he were reminding me that I was supposed to help him find true sanctuary. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sofia.” His shoulder sagged in resignation. “Perhaps this is it. Maybe true sanctuary really is just an eternity of war and bloodshed and once The Shade falls, I’m doomed to find one haven after another to keep my subjects protected. Perhaps that’s my fate. Forever.”
I shook my head and stopped in my tracks to look him in the eye. “Derek, you can’t possibly believe that’s true.”
“Maybe you’re right… Maybe I need the cure… Maybe the only escape from this is mortality.”
His words lit up a fire in me that I couldn’t extinguish no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t know how to explain it to him or how to make sense of what was going through my mind, but I knew without a doubt that what he had just said was true.
Mortality was Derek’s true sanctuary.
CHAPTER 42: INGRID
Bloody fools. They never should’ve underestimated me.
I couldn’t help keep the smirk off of my face as I made my way through the secret passages that Aiden introduced to me during our short love affair and midnight rendezvous into the secret garden. Aiden’s young protégé, Zinnia, had messed up big time when she had left me momentarily unguarded as I headed off to the showers. I knew how to find my way around the headquarters and quickly found my escape, emerging outside the gardens.
The moment I did, however, I knew I had a big problem. It was the height of noon and the sun was blazing right at me. The very moment its painful rays hit my skin, my suspicions once again proved true. I don’t know how it had happened, but Aiden’s cure failed. When I cut that glass into my skin and it healed, I knew that I was immortal, but when the sun began to irritate my pale skin, I knew that I was still a vampire.
Still, the dilemma before me was clear. I had to find a way out of hunter territory and out of the sun as quickly as possible or it would be the end of me. The sun’s rays weakened a vampire immensely. It would take ten minutes before it would begin to get beneath my skin and the pain would be agonizing. It would be a slow, painful death.
Trying to ignore the piercing sting of the sun, I used my agility as a vampire and scaled up the nearby wall. I knew that by that time, the hunters were already after me. I didn’t have much time to get away. I jumped from the top of the wall to the ground below and ran with lightning speed. I ran, ignoring the pain of my skin peeling away. I ran even when I felt blood coming out of the sockets of my eyes. I ran until I could no longer run, until the sun had completely worn me down. It felt like hours until I collapsed on the ground, every bit of my body writhing in pain. I knew I was miles away from hunter territory now and I looked up and discovered I was in the middle of a meadow, not quite certain where I was or how I was going to get out of there.
I looked around me and saw a log cabin on the horizon. The small house was only a couple of hundred meters away, but it felt like it was an ocean away. I dragged myself toward the home, my charred skin beginning to emit smoke, the pain of the sun digging in to my very bones. It felt like a million needles being repeatedly jabbed right through my skin to the core of my bones. Over and over and over again.
It took all of my might to drag myself toward the cabin. I wondered if it was a trap set by the hunters. I even thought that it could be some sort of optical illusion, but at that moment, whatever it was, that cabin was my only escape from the punishing rays of the sun.
I couldn’t have imagined how grotesque I looked as I crawled up the front porch. I felt like all the liquids had been drained from my body and I was dried and shriveled up. One look at my hands made my stomach turn. Both looked like rotting flesh. I pushed the door open and lost all control when I saw a young woman, who couldn’t have been any older than Sofia, descend a wooden staircase. She shrieked at the sight of me before I charged for her and devoured her, drinking down every single drop of her blood.
By the time I snapped out of my black out, I was surrounded by three dead bodies and the sun was no longer shining. I couldn’t help but smile as I rose to my feet. I’d done it. I escaped hunter territory. I sought out a mirror and was pleased to find my body restored, even though my skin was still stinging.
Gathering my wits about me, I knew that I was just lucky and that the hunters were surely after me. I found a cell phone in the pocket of one of the teenagers I had killed. I then searched the cabin for clues about its address, before dialing Natalie Borgia’s number.
My message to her was simple: “Wherever Borys is, let him know that I’m alive and that I need him to get me.”
Within a few hours, a helicopter arrived. At first, I thought that it was the hunters’ and I was beginning to panic, but when I saw Borys, I sighed with relief. I ran into his arms, tears streaming down my face.