The Vampire Legacy III; Familiar Souls (3 page)

The cafeteria bustled with excitement
as Cristian walked in the next morning. People were yelling over
other people to hear the person next to them, and it seemed the
more people who talked, the louder it got. He spotted Chris Tanner
as he made his way through the crowd and he smiled when he saw
Taryn sitting with him.

"Well, well. Good morning." Cristian
smiled at her.

"Have you seen Sage?" Taryn asked him,
quickly. He looked at her then shook his head. "She's been missing
since sometime last night, and usually, she's the first one
here."

"No, the last time I saw her was when
she was with you, at the party." Cristian sighed and rubbed his
eyes. "You checked everywhere for her, though?"

It seemed that just as he asked it, he
heard a commotion out in the hallway, then someone, suddenly,
yelled that there was a fight.

The three of them got up and pushed
their way through the crowd to look at the two people, standing
tall, facing one another. One was a young man, whose hair was all
disheveled, bleeding from the corner of his mouth, and the other,
was Sage, who stood proud and angry.

"Sage!" Bobbie yelled, coming closer to
her friend. Sage put a hand up and continued to look straight at
the young man in front of her. "Sage, don't do this! There are
other ways to get your point across."

"Yeah, Witch!" The young man hollered,
as he stood there, smiling. "Why don't you just ride away on your
little broom stick and POOF, be gone?"

"You don't even know, do you?" Sage
said and stepped forward. Bobbie grabbed her arm as she started to
chant in Latin. Cristian watched the whole thing begin to unfold in
front of him. Sage continued to walk closer, as she raised her hand
and pointed a finger at the boy's forehead.

"Sage!" Taryn yelled out.
"Stop!"

Sage smiled as she looked at the
suddenly terrified young man and touched his forehead with her
pointer finger. He looked at her, wide-eyed, and scared, as she
suddenly screamed out several words in Latin. The boy turned and
ran, and Bobbie quickly grabbed her and led her passed Cristian and
Taryn, and sat her down on the nearest bench.

"What did you say to him?" Bobbie asked
as she stared at her cousin. Sage smiled at her, a humorous smile
then waved Bobbie closer. "This isn't funny."

"I told him to get out of my face!"
Sage said to her, quite loudly, and then watched as Bobbie backed
away. Cristian smiled at her then shook his head. Bobbie and Taryn
both looked at her in shock.

"Are you sure? No magic words, no hocus
pocus?" Taryn asked.

"No, no Poof, be gone, as he put it."
Sage shrugged. "Just get out of my face."

"She's telling the truth." Cristian
smiled at them, both girls looked up at him, quickly, as he stood
with his arms crossed. "I speak Latin, and that's exactly what she
said to him."

"Thank you." Sage said and stood up.
She looked at her friends then, suddenly, back at Cristian. "Did
you find who you were looking for last night?"

"Yes, thank you." Cristian replied. He
didn't want to discuss Justin's appearance, not in front of Bobbie
and Taryn, anyway. Sage nodded at him, then turned and walked away.
Taryn looked at Cristian, quickly, and took his hand. "She's just
upset, I'm sure."

"So, what was she saying before she
told him to get out of her face?" Bobbie asked as they sat at the
table.

"Some not so very nice words." Cristian
replied and sat down with them. "Tell me, is she really a
witch?"

"She knows things." Bobbie said,
rubbing her forehead, and then she looked sternly at him. "She has
some gifts and feelings, that aren't usually wrong. She has one
about you, you know."

"Yes, so I've heard." He answered. He
looked down at his books, then back up at the two girls. "Can you
tell me what those feelings are? I mean, do you know how she
feels?"

"She said that you weren't what you
appeared to be." Bobbie spoke up.

"And, she warned us not to get involved
with you." Taryn said, smiling. "She said that she felt darkness
around you. Where are you from?"

"West Virginia." He spoke up, quickly.
Bobbie nodded, probably starting to agree with her cousin. "Listen;
don't let her go out into those woods alone at night, if you can
help it. It's not a place for a young woman to be."

"Sage can take care of herself." Bobbie
said and got up. "I think I'm going to track her down, actually.
See you later."

Cristian looked at Taryn and watched
Bobbie walk away. He glanced at the girl sitting in front of him,
then down at his hand.

"How did you three meet? I mean, I know
that Sage and Bobbie are related, but what about you?" He
questioned.

Taryn smiled and rolled her eyes. "I
met Sage when I was seven. Her parents died in a fire, so, she came
here to live with Bobbie who is my next door neighbor." She looked
at him, deep into his eyes and she smiled. "Why the sudden
interest?"

"My friend, Justin, the one she was
talking about last night, has seemed to take an interest in her and
I thought if I knew her background, Maybe, I could help her stay
away from him." Cristian sighed. Taryn looked at him, oddly, which
made Cristian smile. "The darkness that you mentioned to me, that
she had said she felt around me, well, Justin would be even darker
to her, but, from what he told me, she seemed to be attracted to
that."

"Sage attracted to anything seems kind
of funny in itself." Taryn said and shook her head. "She's very
much a loner, has never had a boyfriend that I know of anyway. In
fact, Bobbie and I almost believed that she was, well, a lesbian.
She never shows interest in anyone, let alone a man she meets out
in the woods one dark night."

"She's never mentioned any man to you?"
Cristian said, thinking that it was a little odd that Sage would be
a lesbian.

"Well, there was this one man that she
used to talk about all the time when she first moved here. His name
was...was...well, I guess I can ask her, but one day she just
stopped talking about him, this was about four years ago." Taryn
shrugged.

"That she stopped talking about him, or
when she started?"

"When she stopped talking about him.
She had always talked about him, since she arrived here." Taryn
smiled. "You don't think that Justin will hurt her, do
you?"

"No if I can help it." Cristian said,
softly, but then looked at Taryn. "Justin finds her, well, he calls
her unique and that may keep her out of harm’s way for at least a
little bit. The thing, though, is that I'm not sure how little a
little bit is."

"Maybe, we should warn her." Taryn
sighed. "But, you would think her intuition would warn her about
this man."

"It might have, and she might have
decided to ignore it." Cristian reached out, took Taryn’s hand, and
squeezed it. "I promise you, though, that I will do everything in
my power to protect her. You have my word."

Taryn reached over the table and kissed
him softly on the lips. Cristian smiled at her as she backed away
and prayed, to himself, that he had the ability to make good on the
promise. He didn't know why Justin was there in the first place,
let alone, how strong he might have become.

* * * * *

I stepped back out into the clearing
that I had been in the night before. The sun was just setting
behind the trees to my left and the night was pulling me to that
spot. I was dressed in a bright red sweater and a pair of black
jeans. My black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, exposing my
white neck, and my blue eyes, though they were not totally visible
in the twilight, scanned the area for any sign of life.

I waited for about ten minutes,
standing there in the middle of it, with my hands in my jean
pockets, watching the sky as it changed to a dark blue. The stars
started to appear over head and I decided that whatever had led me
there wasn't going to show itself tonight. As I stepped away, just
beyond the clearing I felt him, the waves of danger swept through
my body and I turned to see him standing in the pale moon light,
what little of it there was.

I thought witches celebrated the phases
of the moon." He smiled at me. I stepped back into the clearing and
looked at him, dressed in more normal clothing, a dark sports coat,
a white three-button shirt and blue jeans. His face seemed,
somehow, friendlier, as his hair fell down into his eyes. It wasn't
long in the back, but cut short and close to his head, but as it
came more around to the front, I could tell that he liked to hide
his eyes, which seemed to look right through me.

"The new moon and the full moon are
celebrated; they're more of a lesser Sabbath, then others." I
replied and looked at the sky. "It's only a crescent moon, and has
about seven days before it becomes full. Who are you?"

"Well, that's direct." He said as we
stood ten feet apart. "I told you last night who I was."

"No, you just gave me a name. It could
have been anyone's name, not yours. I want to know who you are." I
said and knelt down by the rocks. I took a lighter out of my
pocket, along with a small can of lighter fluid and started a fire
in the same spot I had it the night before. I looked up into his
eyes as he stepped closer.

"Who do you think I am?" He asked me. I
stood up and walked towards him, stopping only a few feet away,
just out of arms reach.

"Darkness." I whispered.

"Darker than you've ever known." He
replied, and then smiled at me, looking over my body, and then he
stared me in the eyes. "Are you always this brave?"

“
No, I'm a coward." I
replied, stepping back, to the other side of the fire, and looked
at him from across the flames.

"Tell me, witch, who are you?" He
asked. I, who usually found the word "witch" a distasteful way of
describing me, found that I like when he called me that.

"My name is Sage." I replied and
watched him sit down just to my left, on the ground. I, slowly, sat
down myself and watched him out of the corner of my eyes. "What are
you doing here?"

"I told you last night that I live off
this land." Justin looked at me, his eyes narrowed and he leaned
towards me. "What are you doing here?"

"I live here, with my cousins." I
replied and backed away from him. "Are you related to
Cristian?"

"In some way, yes." He
answered.

"What does that mean?" I asked him.
"You must be a brother, right? If you feel the same, you must be
the same."

"I am what you might call a blood
brother." He replied and took a stick from beside him and played
with the fire. "You know more about us than you think,
Sage."

"All I know is that you're here,” I
said, feeling another presence coming closer and I got up, "and, I
shouldn't be."

"Why?" He asked.

"It's dangerous for us to be together,
Justin." I replied. He stood as I backed into the woods. "Meet me
on the full moon."

"At dusk?" He asked. I whispered a
faint yes, and then there was nothing but silence.

Chapter
2

August

His eyes fluttered wildly as he dreamed
of a time that, in his mind, was not all that long ago. In his
ears, the sounds of guns firing close to him seemed to echo through
his head. Cannons, which were being set off in the far distance,
rocked the ground where he stood as the cannon balls hit their
targets or close to them.

He looked around, panicked and alone,
and then jumped into a stream, where he could use the eroded banks
for protection, for a hiding spot. His blond hair, caked with dirt
and grime, seemed to stick to his forehead, and his brown eyes
scanned the area around him for enemies. An explosion shook the
Earth under him and he ducked as the dirt flew at him. Branches and
limbs from falling trees landed beside him. That blast had hit
quite close to home.

Michael opened his eyes, glanced around
the stream once more, and then he climbed out of his hole and made
his way through the thick smoke towards the land just beyond the
fighting. Once he was there, and looked up at the blue sky, he felt
the heat of a bullet as it entered his abdomen, and he looked up at
a young man with dark eyes, as he smiled down at Michael from up on
his horse.

"Serves you right, traitor!" The boy
smiled evilly at him, then turned his horse and rode off. Michael
looked down at the wound, which he covered with both hands, then at
the road ahead of him. He began to walk, as he watched the sun set
just beyond the trees.

Darkness fell, bringing with it a
terrible spell of freezing air. Michael huddled under the cover of
a tree and pressed his hands against the wound with whatever
strength he had remaining. He shook with weakness and fear, but he
tried to hang onto life. And, as his eyes blackened and his world
disappeared, he saw a hand reach down for him, but then he saw
nothing.

When he opened his eyes and looked
around the room that he was in, Michael saw a room full of very
elaborate furniture, mirrors, vases, paintings and priceless
heirlooms. A large fireplace held a blazing fire within it, from
which came the heat that filled the room. He had never seen such a
place, at least not where he had come from. The town that he had
lived in was quite poor and the only man that owned anything
employed everyone in town.