Page 47 of Eternal Obsession

I know this taste.

So tired, pulled down by exhaustion, I tried to recall how I came to be here. Sleep dragged at me until I surrendered.

When I awoke, horror struck me that I still lay on the stone. My eyes were open to a bleary vision of Orpheus peering down, in his hand a silver chalice.

I had drunk from that cup.

“You dreamed of her,” he said, “as I dreamed of Sunaria when I was turned.”

I sat bolt upright, aware that something was wrong. I looked down at my pale hands, startled by their lack of color, and turned my gaze to the imposing pillars, wary of the sharpness.

“Head south for Salisbury Cathedral,” Orpheus said. “Hide deep within its chambers. If the sun touches your skin, it will kill you.”

I leapt off the central stone and searched the ground for my knife. It was gone. My surroundings were foreign. Something had drastically altered.

“Best hurry. The sun knows your name,” Orpheus said.

I was relieved to still be alive. “But I thought you⁠—”

“I am not a gentleman. I, like you, am a vampire, and therefore, I do not keep my promises!”

Orpheus was gone.

“Alex!” I screamed.

I sprinted toward the center of Salisbury.

On eventually reaching the cathedral, I recalled visiting it as a young boy, and from memory—and indeed necessity—found my first new hiding place. The doors to the cathedral were open allowing me to swiftly enter the large tenement.

Overwhelmed, tears rolled down my cheeks and onto the floor. I staggered down into the basement and pushed open the door leading to a burial chamber where I crouched low. My world dissolved. Praying with what strength I had left, my mind was full of thoughts for Alex, Catherine, and my father. On returning to the castle, I would be a dead man. The very thing my father hated above all.

My father would be furious.

“You found it, then?” Orpheus’ voice startled me.

“What have you done to me?” I yelled.

Tears streamed down Orpheus’s face. “You see, it’s like this,” he sobbed. “I miss Sunaria, I cannot go on without her. I have done what I came here to do, and now it is over.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Alex? Is he safe?”

“I am here, am I not?”

“Then we are even?” I said and rose, readying for my attack.

He paced, a broken man, lost to his pain, as grief consumed him.

“Jadeon, at first darkness, go back to Stonehenge. There you will find my remains upon the altar stone. Separate and pour my ashes into the stones. If I cannot be with Sunaria in this world, then⁠—”

He was gone.

The room was dark. I had been so intent on finding shelter that I had not realized this before. I looked around for the lit candles and was shocked to find none. I could see in the dark. My vision clear, I glanced around the room again, taking in my surroundings.

I cringed at the sight of the coffin, the lid half off, exposing its red velvet lining. I studied my pale hands, wary of their luminescence, bit my lip nervously and flinched with the jolt of pain. I examined my teeth, running my fingers along my incisors, alarmed to feel they had become sharp. Impossible.

An unfamiliar hunger came over me, and with a refined sensory acuity, I scanned the cathedral for the presence of others.

Horrified, I cried out. “What have you done to me?”