“Did he see you, Emilia?”
Despite the terror the Elder’s presence brought about, I couldn’t help but steal a smile at the recollection of how Derek’s deep blue eyes flickered with attraction and interest when he first laid eyes on me back in The Shade. “Yes, Master. He did.”
“Did he like what he saw?”
I slightly bowed my head as I felt the Elder’s hand fall on my waist and climb up my back. “How could he not? With what you’ve done to me, I couldn’t be anything but irresistible to him.” After being given knowledge of everything that Derek found physically attractive in a woman, the Elder gave me those features. I no longer looked the way I did when Derek broke my heart so long ago. I was irresistible to him now, and I intended to play up that advantage as much as I could.
I was still mulling over my obsession with the king of The Shade when the Elder painfully grabbed a fistful of my hair. I gasped, shocked by the sheer agony it brought about.
“I don’t like failure, Emilia,” he hissed. “Next time, you mustn’t fail.”
“Yes… Of course, Master…” I rasped out. “I won’t fail.”
“You are to return to The Shade, Emilia. I don’t want you staying up here, stinking up my castle with your failure. This little spitfire of a human has Derek Novak too wrapped up in her pretty little fingers. We can’t have that. He is too powerful a force to let the light have him. We have you to thank for that, don’t we, Emilia? Well, you need to fix this. We need to pull him right back into the dark. You’re going to do that.”
“What exactly do you want me to do, Master?”
His fist tightened against my hairline. “Bring on the attack of the covens. Lead it.”
The Elder managed to get all of the other vampire covens to go against Derek and The Shade. They had no idea he was behind all of it, of course, working behind the scenes, pulling at just the right strings. They’d long been threatening to attack the island and destroy it – something Derek had been desperate to prevent. The idea of attacking and destroying The Shade wasn’t one I was all too fond of, but there was no defying the Elder. “Consider this victory ours, Master. We will win.”
“No, Emilia. You won’t. I want you to lose this battle and I want you to be taken prisoner by Derek Novak. That’s how you’re going to get back in The Shade. Once you’re there, you should know what to do next.”
His plan took form in my mind and I nodded, as I then fully grasped what he was attempting to do. “I understand. And Sofia Claremont?”
He finally let go of my hair. “We will end her.”
With that, his presence swept out of the room like a powerful, foreboding wind; exactly the same way he arrived. Once he was completely gone, I found myself shaking so badly, I fell to my knees. I was a fool to try to convince myself that he was gone. I’d given myself to him a long time ago and he was a part of me that I could never escape.
The Elder was always with me. His touch made sure of it. He was a substance I carried around with me wherever I went.
Known as the original vampire. My Master. My father. A creature I had never once laid eyes on.
Chapter 1: Sofia
The moment I opened my eyes and woke up to the dim candlelight of my bedroom, I couldn’t help but groan. I turned to my side to check if Derek was beside me. He wasn’t. He hadn’t come to my room or called me into his for the past week. Another reason to groan.
I thought about the day ahead of me and felt like staying in bed forever. But I knew that I didn’t have a choice. I dragged myself out of bed, and started getting ready. Finally satisfied with my appearance, I stepped out of my bedroom and found breakfast already prepared on the dining table.
I smiled wryly at the sight of the food. Breakfast. Only here in The Shade could you say that you’re having breakfast in the dark of the night. I popped a handful of vitamin pills into my mouth and took a seat at the table. I made a mental note to thank Rosa and Lily for the lovely breakfast they had prepared.
I was sharing my quarters with Rosa, Lily and her children – seventeen-year-old Gavin, seven-year-old Robb, and five-year-old Madeline – and Ian and Anna. None of them were at home; they were hard at work already. Idleness wasn’t a welcome trait in The Shade – The Catacombs even more so.
Derek had recently assigned me my own team focused on keeping order among the human population of the island. This team of mine walked into my quarters just as I was about to have my first bite of toast. Ian and Gavin stepped into the room, followed by one of Derek’s guards, Kyle. They all took a seat around at the table.
“Looks like we’ve got lots to discuss,” Gavin announced, as he leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his red hair.
Ian glared at Kyle before looking at me. “What is he doing here?” He pointed at the vampire.
“Kyle has expressed interest in helping us here at The Catacombs and Derek gave him permission,” I explained, putting down my food despite the fact that my stomach was growling. “Okay… So you two are here. Shall we start?”
The men nodded at me.
“We can’t afford to still be fighting amongst ourselves once the covens attack. The riots have got to stop.” There’d been a lot of dissent within The Catacombs over the past weeks. The humans were getting restless after the vampires’ blood supply was blown up. What I couldn’t wrap my mind around was why they were getting at each other’s throats over this matter, while the vampires were the ones attempting to find a solution. “When was the last time we had a record of a vampire attacking one of The Catacombs’ citizens?”
Gavin and Ian exchanged glances.
Ian shrugged, scratching against his black hair. “I can’t remember.”
“So why are the Naturals still going crazy?”
Ian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “You have to understand, Sofia, that it’s always been this way. There never was order here in The Catacombs. Every day was a fight to keep yourself alive – if not against the vampires, against your fellow humans. The law of The Shade has always been survival of the fittest until you came along and started leading protests and whatnot.”
“Well, that’s a problem we have to solve. We need human cooperation during the war,” I reiterated.
“We can’t even get the Naturals to work together amongst themselves. How on earth are we going to get them to work with the vampires?” Ian frowned.