Chosen: Book 1 in the Ancients of Light series (7 page)

Lorcan had thought her gorgeous in the
sparkling ruby gown that accented her creamy skin and onyx curls.
With his acute vision, the black cape that had draped her had not
been able to hide the fineness of her form within its dark folds.
She had stolen his breath and he had wanted, for the first time in
his life, to shirk his duties and drag her away so that he might
have seen if she still possessed the impish spirit that had been so
enchanting.

A frown took his face. The Chosen had been
destroyed that same night and for the five hundred years since the
witch girl had perished, the Realm had been in a cycle of unending
and vicious wars. The Light and the Dark were in constant conflict
and even the Witch and Vampire within the Ancient Light often broke
their tenuous truce to kill one another at the slightest
provocation. Those centuries had taken their toll, battle after
battle, and no purpose seeming to be behind any of it except that
of surviving.

Her death continued to pain him. He had
relived the brief scenes of when he had encountered her again and
again, during melancholy nights after horrific battles. He oft had
wondered what she would have brought to the Realm if given the
chance. He was certain that the girl had been the Chosen, the one
that could restore the Realm as Myrrdyn’s prophecy foretold. Lorcan
had begun to believe that had the little witchling lived to fulfill
whatever great role she had been destined for, these past five
centuries would not have been filled with gore and death.

He heaved a sigh and shoved his broadsword in
place. His thoughts returned to her frequently in times of great
trouble as though haunted by an unseen presence. Lorcan seemed
destined for eternity to regret a Sorcerer’s prophecy that would
never come to fruition. If Fate was bringing evil to his steps
tonight, he would fight in honor of that little witch that should
have been more.

CHAPTER 8

As he exited his room, the rumbling of the
men in their war gear and the voices of various members of the
Coven echoed off the stone walls in the hall below. The noise all
but overtook the sound of Jortha’s voice as he called above. “Sir,
Sir, you must hurry.” Lorcan glanced down and finally caught sight
of the witch, braving an entire room of Vampire this time. He shook
his head in disbelief. Jortha remained pale and had a noticeable
sheen of sweat on his brow, but he brushed vampires from his path
as though he were set upon by hellhounds. “Sir, hurry, there is no
time.”

The fact that Jortha seemed oblivious to the
three hundred Vampire milling around him created a knot of dread in
Lorcan’s chest. Lorcan shadowed to the young man’s side and the
room quieted. Jortha looked as though he would retch at any moment,
the pallor in his countenance growing, as his eyes shifted in the
direction of the panes of glass at the front of the keep. A
tremendous bolt of lightning split the dark sky. His voice hushed
and his eyes fell closed, “It is here Lorcan, she’s arrived.”

She? Lorcan frowned. With an encompassing
sweep of his arm towards his men, he marched with determined
purpose towards the heavy iron doors of the keep. He did not
shadow, but took measured steps. He would meet Fate’s latest
challenge this time, on his own time, his own terms. The thought
crossed his mind that he was turning bitter in his old age, his
thousands of years of existence weighed heavily on him. Jortha
trailed in the wake of the armor clad warriors filling in the ranks
behind their leader and again found his voice “At the gates, Sir,
at the gates.”

Catching Lorcan’s grunt of acknowledgement,
Jortha withdrew towards the warmth of the towering hearth in the
sidewall. Lorcan threw both iron doors open in a flourish of
strength and anger. Taking a deep breath of the unseasonably cold
night’s air, he briefly studied the gates. Continuing down the
stone steps and onto the grounds below, he eyed the high stone
walls that surrounded as far as he could view. Jortha had worked
his magic well to provide protection to those walls and no evil had
found its way through in well over a century.

Lorcan made the journey across the sloping
grass quickly to those massive metal gates that towered well up
towards the sky. He was conscious of the sounds of the metal
weaponry of his armed Elite and Coven warriors behind. Lightening
continued to wreak havoc in the sky above his home.

He stopped short, a good ten feet from the
scrolling metalwork. His gaze was drawn down in puzzlement as his
foot crunched…snow. Lorcan heard the strength of his men behind
him, fanning out across the rolling grounds. His eyes began to scan
the area quickly, aided in the dark by his species’ exceptional
vision. The night was broken by gusts of cold air but the trees in
the forests that surrounded his fortress were unmoving. The scene
before him was bright under the light of a full moon. The snow – it
was not cold enough for such snow – coupled with the lightning
storm, contributed to a growing sense of unease.

His eyes drifted back to the gate and he
found her then, apparently at the same moment as many of his men,
as there was a collective murmuring among them. Shoulders bared in
a rich gown, the material was so fine it gave the appearance of fog
settled around her legs. She was on the ground, seated with legs
curled under and head bent forward. From this distance, only the
long fall of midnight dark curls over her face and arms, those
exquisite ivory shoulders, and the fluff of gown gathered around
her legs were clearly visible. All was becoming covered in the
falling snow. The female’s hands seemed to work together slowly in
her lap. She was otherwise motionless, settled on the far side of
the locked gate a solid thirty feet from where Lorcan now
stood.

If she was this great power, why did she
linger there? Why did she not enter and seek their end? The gates
would be no match for any magic that would bring this level of
alarm to Jortha. As Lorcan studied her, somewhat disbelieving, he
thought that if this little creature carried such immense power,
the Realm had surely just been turned asunder. All had yet to see
her face, but the ethereal looking form at his gates had fascinated
his attention and that of his men, he guessed, based on their
stillness.

The gates creaked open slowly of their own
accord, startling him out of his study as more lightning painted
the darkness overhead. Lorcan reminded himself that great beauty at
times hid great evil; the image of his deceased mother flashed in
memory as his hand readied at his sword.

A voice, whispering and nearly lost in the
soft fall of snow and the distance that separated them, broke the
night, “She adored you and would not seek your harm.” Her hands
continued kneading the layers of gown.

Eyes narrowed, he took another step forward.
Lorcan could not believe any of the Realm would dare speak to him
of his mother, “Were your words for me?”

In the same soft tone, “More for your mother
than for you…but for you, I suppose, since she is no more.” She
shrugged daintily at that, as if presuming her answer should have
been known to him already. Another whisper, with certainty, “Though
you share not the prejudice of your kin towards the
Witch…Vampire.”

Anger blazed on Lorcan’s face at the
reference to his mother and his steps quickened in her direction,
accompanied by general murmurs of caution from his Elite. Lorcan
waved them off, he needed not the reminder. His warriors held back,
readying and watchful. Within arm’s reach of the creature he
stopped again, witnessing that her hands were not worriedly working
the folds of her gown as he had thought. The fingers were taught,
tensing claw-like and relaxing repeatedly in reflex, and stained
red. Her nails were actually shredding the gossamer material
gathered in her lap.

Though the scene was being witnessed by
hundreds of warriors, at this moment none existed but the two
before the gates. Lorcan’s tone was icy, “What know you of my
mother?”

“Apparently more truth than you….Lorcan.” Her
inability to locate Myrrdyn tonight had caused her to seek the
Vampire warrior; she instinctively trusted him and she needed his
protection. Kaitriana had not intended to insult him nor broach the
subject of his Witch mother, but the pain, fatigue and hunger
plaguing her now made her testy. She was not in the mood to argue
vampires and the falseness of their beliefs.

Anger rising, apparently she knew her enemy
by name while he had no inkling of her origin or purpose, Lorcan
still managed to check himself and he stepped no closer in response
to her taunt. She had kept her head down, the curtain of her hair
continued to hide her face from him. His ears and all those within
the yards of the keep were keen enough to hear her sharp intake of
breath, accompanied by an ever so slight moan of pain. The girl’s
hands extended shakily from the skirts of her gown, still tightened
in a claw-like grip as though in reaction to immense suffering. Her
fingertips scraped over the snow, raising dirt as she hunched
slightly forward.

He witnessed it at the same time a faint
trace reached his senses; a smattering of blood was on the bodice
of her gown, much more of it smeared over her arms. Anger abated
slightly for the moment with the realization that the creature was
suffering. Lorcan released his hand from the sword and in direct
opposition to his cautionary nature he squatted closer to her
level. He scooped up a handful of the powdery snowfall, patiently
sifting it through his fingers. He provided her a minute,
attempting to allow her to regain some composure before he pressed,
“You are injured?”

Her head remained lowered and Kaitriana eased
back as the wave of pain slowly subsided. She refolded her hands
demurely in her lap and followed with a short, rueful laugh. “I
have been tending my injuries for nearly half a millennium, Milord.
At this moment I am in pain, yes… but this blood is not mine, nor
have I been injured during all the bloodletting that has left me in
such a state.”

Lorcan was appreciative of the response she
gave though her words were a bit odd. ‘Milord’…her language was
dated. Damn, if the creature would just push those curls back so
that he could see her eyes and ascertain her intentions. Lorcan did
not lie to himself; he was curious and cared to see if she was as
pretty as he was imagining. How he could feel such intrigue towards
a supposed threat he could not gather, but there was something
about her that pulled at him on an instinctive level.

He could not garner a clear scent of her
either, which perplexed him further. She did not reek of any of the
Witch Castes. Her scent might be masked somewhat by the blood that
marred her skin and gown, but to be undetectable to one with his
senses was odd indeed. In order to be responsible for the death of
the magnitude described by Jortha, the little thing must be Ancient
and of one of the stronger Castes.

Those delicate shoulders raised, just enough
to send snow cascading from them as he watched, “I am not an
Ancient…nor nearly so old as you...”

Lorcan stiffened; was she probing his
thoughts?

As if to confirm, Kaitriana slowly lifted her
head, raising her face to his view. The effort cost her. The
splitting in her head amplified immensely with the slight movement
and her body felt as though it were being torn apart on the inside.
Her nails began shredding the fabric of her skirts in earnest again
as she attempted to control of the shrieks of agony that wanted to
escape her.

Lorcan took in the pain etched in her face,
the tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and the pallor of her
skin. He understood immediately her issue, noting the tips of tiny
white fangs and the marks they had had left on the bottom of her
lower lip. Those observations registered with him simultaneously
through the impact of a shock that nearly knocked him back
physically. Lorcan’s gaze locked on her. Those eyes swimming behind
the pools of tears appeared as shards of ice. There was no sparkle
within them at this very moment but those eyes had haunted him for
centuries. He knew them well and only one in the Realm had ever
possessed that amazing look.

CHAPTER 9

Lorcan’s entire body weakened in a rush,
requiring all his brute strength to keep himself steadfast. The air
expelled rapidly from his lungs as he began counting; Lorcan
realized he was crazed even as he did it. Eighteen…eighteen little
freckles smattered across the beauty’s face. The creature at his
feet was the very image of the beautiful witch that had been burned
to memory nearly five hundred years before when she had fled at the
Festival of the Moon. Kaitriana. Did he whisper it aloud?

Maybe he did, he thought a smile was taking
her lips before she gasped in pain again. The fang on the right
side pierced her lower lip as she arched back in agony. There was a
rumbling among the men behind him. They were aware too that she was
near the end of transitioning. The pain of the process that changed
one into the Vampire form could cause a strong warrior to beg for
death. Blood traced from the corner of her mouth and this time he
could scent her. Lorcan reacted, his fangs extending sharply.

He closed the distance between them in less
than a blink. The streaks of light in the sky were nearly unceasing
now and Lorcan thought it may be connected somehow to the pain she
suffered. Heedless of the female’s current state, he knelt down in
front of her; his hands tightened around her arms and he gave her
body a hard shake. He was uncaring when she responded with a
tortured cry. Lorcan was greatly tormented now too, the brief
feeling of relief and hope that had risen in him had been
extinguished just as quickly. The despair he had felt earlier this
night increased tenfold as he gazed down at the being.