Page 36 of Sleeping With the Vampire

“Have you had any visions….dreams…lately? Like the last couple of days?”

He nodded. “There is one, it is…bad. Awful.”

I sat up.

“Tell me,” I commanded him.

“It’s always the same. It’s dark and there is a storm. Lightning, very close by and it’s frightening. Then this man appears and he grows bigger and he is covered in blood and he is laughing, and his laugh grows bigger and louder until I can’t take it anymore.”

I nodded. “Is there anything else?”

“A girl…” he said slowly.

“Sometimes, there is a girl. Sort of, in the back, just standing there.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

He shrugged helplessly. “She’s pretty, very pretty?”

Finn took the boy by the arm, started pushing him out of the room. “That’s enough,” he said. “The king must rest.”

“No,” I interrupted. “That was very good, Robbie, really.”

Then I said, “I am promoting him to the house. See to it that he gets a room nearby. And anything he wants to eat, have you been yearning for something?”

Robbie’s eyes lit up. “Well, not for food, Sire, but for my sister.”

“Oh? What about her?”

“She was in Ginnerlong. But I haven’t heard from her in so long. If I could maybe get a message to her? Find her.”

I told Finn to get it done.

Then I needed time to think.

Alone.

Chapter 13

Izzy

I woke up early, feeling refreshed and energized. I must have slept for fourteen hours in the same bed where I had grown up. Our home, a simple clay and adobe hut had been rebuilt after the attack in which my father and brother were killed. Then men working on it had built extra rooms and a court yard, where my mother had put big pots with flowers.

My father told me they had chosen to stay in the desert as it was too hot and sunny for vampires and the climate was so harsh that most people stayed away. Even though it wasn’t the first choice for my mother either, she had planted some trees and watered them from one of the wells that had been dug around our property.

She made it home.

Even after everything that had happened here, it was still the place where I felt safest. After everything that had happened over the past few days, it felt surreal to wake up here, to hear the silence and know that in this part of the world, at least, all was well.

For now.

I got up and went looking for my mother, finding her outside, sitting under a tree, her eyes closed. She wore a big white dress, her hair was loose and wild and there seemed to be so much peace around her.

She opened her eyes and smiled at me.

“Rested?” I nodded.

“There is food in the ice box,” she said.

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