It took blood donations from me, Geo, Gwendoline, my grandparents, and a few volunteers from Desolation before Luthias’s wounds began to heal. Gwendoline administered an antidote for the werewolf bites. The one on his shoulder left an angry scar that she wondered would ever fade. Only time would tell if the antidote was strong enough to combat the amount of venom Jason’s bites injected.
We took the time required for Luthias to completely heal to rest our own weary bones and enjoy our children.
****
“Are ye going to give that lass a name?” Gwendoline asked as she quietly entered my bedroom.
I lay across my bed with Braedon on one side of me and my daughter on the other.
“Geo got to name his son,” I said. “Luthias should have the same privilege with his daughter.”
“That’s lovely,” she said as she stroked my daughter’s thick dar
It took some time before life settled down. Luthias left Verso when his week of further convalescing was up, but not before making love to me one last time. It is a moment I will hold deep in my heart forever.Gwendoline and I got back to work focusing on developing my magical skills. My grandparents set to work on a spell to enable werewolf hybrids to enter Verso. Gwendoline was allowed to monitor their progress, but we felt her emotional attachment to the situation might impair their progress. She grudgingly stepped aside and allowed them the necessary magic freedom they required.I saw very little of Geo, who had his hands full with being King. With the threat of Bartholomew’s army at a minimum, he was able to focus on bringing the kingdoms back to order. His first task was to find the residents of Verso who supported Pierre in his schemes and bring them to justice. He took the burden of ruling Vampire Land from me while I m
“Now Casey, what I want you to take into consideration is the fact that… through no fault of your own… you’ve led a very isolated life,” my grandfather said with a deep chested, and very serious, sigh. “In a few short months, you were exposed to more danger than any one person should experience in an entire lifetime. On top of that, you fell in love with two brothers -both of which are vampires-, had your hidden magical heritage brought to the forefront and expounded upon, became a vampire yourself, and conceived a child. I just think it would be prudent to slow down just a little. Let’s focus on this pregnancy and get you adjusted to your magical powers and… your vampirism… before you make such a serious and permanent decision as selecting which brother to settle down with. One will undoubtedly be crushed and it will more than likely impact their relationship. There can be no mistakes in y
I cradled my newborn son in my arms as I listened to Gwendoline and Geo conversing in low tones on the front porch. True to my promise to Gwendoline and my grandparents, I’d spent the remaining months of my pregnancy focusing on doing what was needed to assure a healthy baby, adjusting to being a vampire, and learning all I could about the responsibilities of being a Verso Witch, while Gwendoline determined ways to get around the magical block the vampirism created. It was this block that made me realize and understand why Geo wasn’t as adept to magic as someone born of two magical parents should be.Although they kept close contact with Gwendoline as to my health, wellbeing, and progress with both my adjustment from humanity to vampirism and lessons in witchcraft, Geo and Luthias respectfully kept their distance from me. They stayed close by for the delivery, but didn’t attend. This was something I was grateful for. I’d tasted what i
I forced the pestle against the herbs I’d carefully placed within the stone mortar with shaky hands. My lessons were more important than ever now that I was to become Verso Witch, yet I couldn’t focus on them as I should. My mind raced and my nerves were in overdrive. When Sybil married me off to Prince Charles, she’d secured my position as the queen of Vampire Land. Since I was still learning the political pros and cons of such a position, it meant little to me, but to Geo and Luthias it was an important position to hold. Now, only weeks after I’d delivered my son, I was expected to dive into the duties of queen of not only Charles’s vampire kingdom, but my mother’s mutant-vampire kingdom as well. I found it burdensome, overwhelming, and intimidating.The position of Verso Witch was so much more my style. I knew about magic and healing. I’d been raised around the healing aspect all of my life and I
“I want to kiss you,” Geo said as he moved closer, “but I won’t.I sucked in air and my heart skipped a beat in excited anticipation while almost falling out of my body from deflated disappointment all at one time. He was standing so close, I could feel what little heat his body emitted on my flesh. Vampires are like humans in so many ways. I attribute it to the fact that they started as humans and then were transmuted into vampires. Even the ones who are born vampires carry a semblance of human genetics within them. Whatever the reason, the rumor that they are cold as death is untrue. Most vampires run a body temperature of about sixty-five degrees. Since this is significantly lower than the human’s average body temperature of ninety-eight point six, they feel cold to the human’s touch. Because my body temperature was now similar to his, I could easily feel the heat from his breath as it caressed my face
I’d just finished saying my good-byes to Braedon, my grandparents, and Gwendoline when Geo entered the room. My heart ached at the sight of him. I longed for a few private moments with him before I left, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Since my grandmother’s discovery of our little tryst, we’d been given no opportunity to be alone together. I couldn’t complain about their actions being old fashioned since the laws of the New World Order also required couple supervision in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies that might result in poor genetics. It’s just that after having been free to be intimate with both of my sexy vampires, it was overwhelmingly confining and -in my opinion- a little ridiculous for my grandparents to insist upon supervising us after the damage was already done.I looked around the room and tried to determine if anyone, other than me, could feel the tension that radiated between Luthias and Geo, but they seemed
The first thing I noticed when we stepped into the rickety old barn that camouflaged the tunnel leading to the portal for Versa was how different it felt to me as opposed to the last time I passed through it. I was human then and my senses weren’t as acute. I found it unsettling when the atmospheric pressure assaulted my flesh as we stepped out of the passageway and onto the normal surface density of earth. It took me a moment to fight off the feelings of confinement and potential suffocation. Even though Luthias prepped me on the possibility of that happening before we started up the ladder that led from the tunnel to the surface, its intensity surprised me.“Is Verso underground?” I asked.“No,” Luthias replied.“I didn’t think so,” I mused aloud, “but the air is so different there than here. It seems odd, since all that separates us is a tunnel...”“We just
Gwendoline was clear about not wanting me to display my magical abilities outside of Verso during our mission. The journey to save Geo took us a significant distance away from Verso and required we make camp more than once before we reached our destination. Those encampments were created by Gwendoline by use of magic. Although I was capable of doing the same, her words rang through my head. I broached the subject with Luthias.“Admittedly, the comforts of an encampment provided by your magic would be welcome,” Luthias said, “but certainly not necessary. You didn’t have them when you journeyed with Geo to Sybil’s domain and you survived, correct?”“We did, indeed,” I said softly as my thoughts flashed back to the few nights we’d slept out under the stars and the romance that bloomed during that time.“You are beautiful when you blush like that,” he said as he moved in front of me to lea