Chapter 33

Lucas’s P.O.V:

“I warned you, didn’t I?” Dylan asked as he stood by the open window, twirling a piece of his golden lock between his thumb and forefinger.

“Rubbing salt on the wound, Dylan? Didn’t think you were the kind.” I answered, sitting beside the bed as Neema slept peacefully. The boy hasn’t woken up yet but we’ve already gotten news that Trisha has been ‘taken captive’ by the Vampire King. Now all I needed was a call from her, letting me know that she was safe.

“I didn’t want to be this blunt to you before, but seriously, Lucas? How could you not see the way she reacted every time Damien’s name came up?” Dylan shook his head at me in disappointment. “The connection that she has with Damien goes far beyond physical and I don’t have a single doubt in my mind that they’re soulmates.”

“And your point is?”

“Don’t hold it against her or Damien.” Dylan said calmly. “They can be your friends, allies. Don’t let jealousy ruin your future. Remember that our goal is to get recognized as a council. And right now, Damien has the power to secure that future for us.”

“I know.” I told Dylan, just as I felt Neema stir on the bed. “Neema? Hey kiddo, how are you feeling?”

Neema looked around the room groggily before blinking the sleep from his eyes and getting up. The kid looked a lot better now than when he’d first arrived at the den. He had more fat and his ribs no longer showed through his chest, but there were still shadows in his eyes. I had a feeling those won’t be that easy to get rid of.

“Where’s Trisha?” He looked around the room, still searching for her.

“Trisha went to Damien,” I told him the truth since it was pointless lying to the child. “She said she’ll send for you soon enough.”

Neema instantly looked alarmed. “Hey, it’s alright. You trust me, don’t you? I won’t let anyone hurt you, I promise. Don’t be scared.”

But Neema shook his head as he caught one of my arms in his tiny ones. “It’s not you! Trisha is in danger!”

I grew very, very still. “How?”

“That fire I told her about? The one that’s supposed to happen near Damien?” Neema continued when I nodded. “Damien doesn’t die in that fire; he’s the one that starts it. The one I saw dying in the fire…was Trisha.”

“Fuck!”

Trisha’s P.O.V:

“What the…?” I stood up on the stairs, ready to dash towards the flames.

“Don’t!” Damien caught my arm before I could move. “It’s only my room, not the entire castle.”

“But…father!” I looked back at him helplessly.

“Jonathan’s safe.” He assured me. “No one was near my room when the blast occurred. I’ve given out a message to clear the castle immediately.”

“Okay.”

Damien and I raced towards the front entrance of the castle, away from the fire and saw several of the maids and other staff running out of the castle in vampire speed; and some were even helping the human maids escape.

“We need to go inside, Damien.” I called out to him over the commotion. “There might be people still trapped inside.”

“No.” Damien replied firmly. “It’s a trap. And it’s all thanks to your very public appearance today.”

“You can’t protect me forever, Damien. We’ll have to face Vandal one day or the other.” I told him just as rigidly. “And that day just happens to be today.”

As the last of the servants rushed past us, Damien ordered them to stay away from the castle until everything had settled. “Vandal doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.” Damien told me as we entered the castle through the front. “He always has someone to do his dirty work for him. I’ve never seen someone who can manipulate people as well as he can. I wonder sometimes, if my mother was another one of his victims.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” I told Damien, even though I desperately wanted to believe that the Queen was another one of his victims. “There was a depth of pain in the poems that he wrote about his beloved, and I don’t think Vandal could’ve faked it.”

Just then, another explosion shook the castle to its very core and we both held on to the pillars to stay on our feet. Fire erupted from the ceilings and instantly, the drapes around us caught fire.

“Shit!” I cussed as the temperature of the room skyrocketed. “We shouldn’t have entered. It was a trap.”

“I told you,” Damien reminded me as he grabbed my hand and move towards an empty space where the fire hadn’t reached yet. “At this rate the entire castle would go out in flames. Trisha, I’ll need your strength.”

“Always.”

Damien held his hand out for me and I instantly put mine on top of his. I felt a spark as our palms touched but it was drowned by the fear and anxiety of being inside a burning castle. Damien walked closer to a wall and placed his free hand palms down on the surface and began to concentrate. It was a common knowledge that Damien could control fire, but to what extent? - That was known by only a very small number of people. He couldn’t just create flames from his hands, but he could also draw power from flames to extinguish them.

Just as he placed his hand on the wall, his palm began to glow with a red light and I saw the fire on the draped move like they were swaying in the wind. But there was no wind inside the castle; it was Damien himself reaching for the flames, calling them to him. And then I took a deep breath and let Damien draw strength from me.

As if sucked in by a vacuum, the flames immediate rushed to us in a swirling inferno, just as Damien let go of the wall and held out his hand…and the flames disappeared as soon as they came into contact with his skin. It was like magic. Fire from every direction rushed over to Damien, twisting and turning in the air to form one giant ball of fire that rushed towards us as if to engulf us. But as soon as the first of the flames touched Damien’s outstretched hand, they turned to nothing. Just vanished into thin air.

“I need more, Trisha!” Damien snapped halfway through absorbing the flames. “These aren’t normal flames!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, my nails digging on to his skin as I channeled all my powers into him. At the beginning, when I’d told Lucas that I had no powers, it was technically true. I didn’t have any powers on my own. But it was a whole different scenario when I was with another vampire. I’m what is scientifically called a catalyst. I could increase or decrease the intensity of another vampire’s powers, but on my own, I was completely useless.

“Stop.” Damien told me in a much lighter voice and I opened my eyes to see that all the fire in the hallway had been extinguished. But I knew for a fact that it wasn’t only the hallway that was now free of fire, it was the entire castle. And we had yet to find the source of the fire.

“I need to call Lucas, inform him of any danger,” I said reaching for my phone, but Damien stopped me.

“If you bring him here, then you put his life in danger too.” He said. “We need to get out of here. There’s only so much energy that I can absorb and I don’t think that was the last of the explosions.”

“But what did you mean when you said this wasn’t a normal fire?” I asked as we turned towards the exit.

“Vandal and my powers are more alike than anyone knows. The only difference is, the fire in his body cannot manifest into any physical form, but whatever he touches gets heated to such a degree that it doesn’t burn, it simply explodes.” He explained.

“So all these explosions just now…were Vandal’s doing?” My eyes widened in shock. Vandal was here?

“Yes, he’s inside the castle and he isn’t too far a-” Damien grabbed a hold of my arm and shoved me down to the floor just as the wall beside us exploded into a thousand pieces of concrete and flames.

“Indeed, my son,” spoke Vandal’s ominous voice once the dust had settled. “I’m never too far away.”

And then…darkness.