A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire, #21)

Although I was raring to go racing after Jeramiah and Amaya to the cluster of rocks, to see what state my parents and grandfather were in, what use would it do? I had to get help. I had to wake someone!

I scanned the ground, and my eyes fell on River and Rose, who’d fallen and lay sleeping next to each other on the soil. There were others that I could’ve approached, but I instinctively moved closer to River. She had already helped me the first time, it should be both easier and faster to get through to her a second time… I just had to hope that the slumber Amaya had cast upon everyone did not preclude dreams.

I knelt on the soil next to her and closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly shut and trying to clear my mind.

The minutes that followed were agonizing, just sitting there in the quiet field, shrouded in darkness with my eyes closed.

Then, as I was beginning to give up hope that even a single person in the field was dreaming, I caught a glimpse of stars twinkling behind my eyelids. A vision emerged, a vision of a night sky. The moon was nowhere to be seen, but the brightness of the stars almost made up for its absence. Calm waves rolled beneath the star-strewn canvas, and floating in the midst of them was River.

She was lying on her back, sleeping, with an expression of profound peace on her face.

“River,” I called. “River, wake up.”

I descended on her in the dream, reaching out to grip her shoulders. I squeezed and shook her, just as hard as I’d done in her previous dream, but this time, she wasn’t budging.

Wake up, River. Wake up!





Chapter 22: Derek





Consciousness trickled slowly through my brain. My head ached dully. My limbs felt stiff and rigid. An odd warmth touched my skin. My heavy eyelids parted and I found myself assaulted by a blinding light. I was forced to clamp them shut and reopen them more slowly. I squinted, allowing my pupils to adjust to the change in brightness. I found myself staring up at a sun-streaked sky.

I tried to sit up, but my limbs would not obey my brain. I could only move my neck and the muscles in my face. I turned my head to my left to see Sofia lying next to me. On her other side lay Aiden. Both appeared to be in deep slumber. Sea spray wet my face and I realized that we were lying on a cluster of craggy rocks, surrounding by rolling waves. I recognized these rocks—they served as a landmark for our island’s boundary.

I wasn’t sure how long we’d been lying here. I guessed it couldn’t have been that long because, although Sofia and Aiden’s vampire skin had begun to singe, neither was too badly wounded yet. It wouldn’t be long though before their skin started to flake and peel away. A panic welled within me. Why weren’t they waking up? The pain should have aroused them by now. The only comfort I had was that they were still breathing.

“Sofia.” I spoke up, my voice crackling through my dry throat. “Aiden.”

Since I’d opened my eyes, my memory had been trickling back to me in pieces, and now the puzzle was complete. Sofia and I had been searching inside the farmhouse when an overwhelming sleepiness had come upon me. I hadn’t even had a chance to fight it before my eyes closed. I was sure that I’d fallen asleep before I even hit the floor.

“Uncle.” A voice spoke. A deep male voice. A voice that sparked a chill at the back of my neck. It sounded eerily familiar.

I strained to see who had spoken, but although it came from only a few feet away, a rock near my head blocked my view. Then I didn’t need to strain myself. A man holding a wide umbrella leapt on top of the rock and gazed down at me.

So this is Jeramiah Novak. My nephew. He looked less like his father then I’d expected—with long, dark hair tied up in a bun—although he shared the same cold, harsh eyes and hard, square jawline. He certainly had the height and build of a Novak, too.

I glared up at him, uncertain of how even to respond. Hello? Nice to finally meet you? I knew almost nothing about this man, while he had never met me, and yet he stared down at me with such hatred that one would have thought I’d been his enemy all his life.

“Nephew,” I replied in kind, clenching my jaw.

He leapt from the rock and landed near my head, still gazing down at me with a calm expression on his face, though his eyes glinted dangerously. I knew those eyes. I’d seen them before in my own brother. They were the eyes of a man who had nothing to lose.

“I’ll admit,” I said, glaring daggers up at him, “this is not the way I’d hoped our first meeting would go.”

His lips parted slowly from the hard line they had formed. “On the contrary, this is exactly how I’d imagined it.” I could see that he was being careful not to cast any of the shadow from his umbrella upon us.