Happily Never After Could Happen to Us

Leo

I took Victor’s advice with Rider’s class. It was easier to just sense where she was going to move rather than to wait around for her to actually make the move and then try to block it. Once I started getting the feel of swordsmanship as Rider called it, I began to look a little more graceful with the sword. I looked like a drunken monkey compared to her, but I was getting a lot better.

“Good, now you defeat your opponent by matching blades and using blunt force to get your blade at an angle to kill, or wound them, depend on if you’re fencing or fighting for your life. Or you could always just take the sword,” she demonstrated as she pressed the sword down on my arm and then began twisting it, “and twist their blade to an odd angle so that they are forced to drop their sword, and you win.”

“So like this,” I asked as I cocked my sword to the left. She wasn’t expecting it and her sword slid down the length of mine until I twisted the handle and gave the sword a sharp jerk. Her sword went flying in the air, and she grinned proudly. She reached her hand up, never taking her eyes off me, and caught her sword.

“Exactly, just make sure you get it away from them, but not so that it angles back down to hit you in the head blade first,” she laughed. I rolled my eyes.

“I’m just getting started,” I laughed.

After about two hours of sword fighting, I noticed something for the first time. The finger I had placed Vincent’s ring on the day mom gave it to me felt wrong. I hadn’t worn the ring in almost a week, but I felt weird without it. Also, the silver sword on the wall with the sapphire seemed to be calling me.

“Do you honestly think that you could possible handle a sword like that,” Rider questioned as she caught me staring at it once again.

“Yes,” I laughed. It wasn’t my laughter though. I felt a surge of energy flow through my fingers as she took the sword gently off the wall.

“I can barely hold it with one hand, and I’m a nine hundred year old vampire,” she gasped while trying to carry the sword one handed.

“That’s because it doesn’t like you,” that voice that sounded like me, but didn’t belong to me answered. My feet began to move towards the blade and I hadn’t told them to move. My arm reached out, and I hadn’t instructed it to. This was getting to be a little to weird for me.

“Oh, and it likes you,” she hissed as she put the blade into the floor.

“Yes, it does,” I answered, just think my voice but not my choice of speaking.

“Alright,” she stated as she held the handle out towards me. “Pick it up!”

I smiled, voluntarily, as my hand wrapped around the blade. Her silky pale skin brushed my hand as she released the sword, and I could have sworn I saw a blush creep across her face. I lifted the sword gently and gracefully. It was as if a new person had taken up residence in my body and they knew exactly how to use a sword.

I stood there slashing and lunging in the thin air. I could feel Rider’s gaze on me as my stance because all to smooth. She hadn’t taught me any of this, but it was as if this sword gave me a new sense, a new mind to use such a delicate and dangerous weapon.

“You handle such a blade with precision, and I thought you couldn’t fight,” she stated almost cockily as she grabbed a less fancy sword from the wall. Her sword was made with French style, and I couldn’t exactly tell where the sword I held originated, but I knew it was made for me.

“That’s because this sword knows who I am,” I actually used my own voice for the first time in five minutes. “It was made by my ancestor for me.”

“That is right, Kegan did descend from the Lord himself,” Rider mused as she slammed her sword down on mine. I grinned as I pushed her sword back up into to the air giving me just enough space to reach out and grab her throat.

“And so did I,” I hissed. My eyes began to sting, and I knew Rider wasn’t doing anything to me because her eyes widened.

“Silver,” she whispered. I didn’t understand it, but I released her because my eyes felt like they were burning out of their sockets. “Quickly get Zora,” Rider shouted to someone I couldn’t see. Then I realized something, I was blind.

I started to try and breath, but I couldn’t my lungs felt like they were giving away on me. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. I could hear Rider frantically saying something, but I couldn’t understand her. My senses were dwindling away from me, and I didn’t know what was going on until an image flashed before my eyes. No, it wasn’t an image; it was more like a home video.

A small girl, about seven or eight years old, stood on her tip-toes as if she were a ballerina in her tiny pink tutu. Her chestnut hair was swept up into delicate curls which were pinned out of her eyes. Her eyes were so blue; they looked like lightening bolts that fluttered across the sky. I could tell she was human because she wasn’t as graceful or as light on her feet as a vampire. But there was something in her smile. A warmth that I had never seen from any one; child or adult, human or vampires, animal or man, was in that little girl’s smile. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. A woman with hair the same color as the girl’s smiled and clapped as the girl spun around the room.

Suddenly the door burst open, and a man with the same eyes as the little girl stood there. His face was hard and cold and those eyes held no sweetness like the little girl’s eyes. I cringed for her as the man grabbed her by her arm. The woman cried out as the girl was passed out of the door to a pale ashy vampire. The girl shook with fear and her blue eyes let go of one single tear drop. I saw, but did not hear, her say the words ‘why daddy’ before the door closed behind the man. He looked at the woman with disgust as he began to pack his things.

As quickly as the vision started, it ended right before my eyes. I was appalled by the sight of something so wicked. How could someone give a child as beautiful as that to a murderous vampire, and then look at their spouse with so much disgust before packing? Why would a man leave his family like that? I also realized that the vision had reminded me a little of my own messed up family.

“Leo, I want you to take deep slow breaths. Just breathe, in and out. That’s right,” a woman with slightly tanned skin instructed me. She had beautiful hazel eyes, and her hair was dirty blond. She had a nice face, one that seemed like the woman’s in my vision, but it wasn’t the woman I knew she couldn’t be.

“I,” I tried to talk, but she shushed me.

“Zora, let him speak,” Rider hissed. “What happened?”

“I think I had a vision,” I answered stupidly.

“What did you see,” that Zora woman asked.

“A man gave his child to a vampire, before leaving his wife for dead,” I answered as I went through my memory of the sweet yet gruesome vision.

“That sounds like a case we had over five years ago,” Rider stated absently.

“Cassandra,” Zora whispered so low that I almost missed it.

They began talking in hushed whispers so I stopped paying attention to them. Instead I silently vowed to find the girl who had to be at least thirteen or fourteen with the sweetest smile I had ever seen. I vowed to save her even though I knew nothing about her, I promised myself that she would be safe.