Chapter 2

 

“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.”

-George Bernard Shaw

 

 

 

Two years ago:

            A lustful kiss was pressed against a blond girl’s cold lips, the boy grinning widely as she wrapped her arms around his neck with her hair twirling around his neck. She knew that he wanted to play around, so she nibbled down on his neck before blinking up at him with a hunger in her sapphire, white speckled eyes. “Are you sure you wanna do this, Orrie?,” the girl asked with a seductive drip to her voice, her head leaning against his strong built chest with her fingers caressed his smooth skin. The boy bit his lip hard in thought, towering over the girl like the tallest building that was in Avian. His dark brown hair was in his golden moon eyes, being down to his broad shoulders in a loose ponytail. Most of the girls were jealous of Abigail Ross that she had Soren as her mate, thinking that he looked like a tasty dessert for an after dinner meal. Abigail thought the same thing; moisten her lips roughly with her tongue since she had no idea where her cherry flavored chap stick was.

            Watching Abigail with intent eyes, Soren knelt down to her height and pulled her towards him quickly so her tiny stomach was close against his.                           

“I must be the luckiest guy to have you, Abby…,” Soren said, his words brushing against Abigail’s face with a warm touch. She blushed pink, making it look like a blush that was applied to her pale skin.               

   “And I’m must be the luckiest girl to have you…,” Abigail smiled, nuzzling her lips against his clean, ghostly neck. “Orrie, you know I miss the blood on your neck…I just love the taste…” Soren titled his head against Abigail’s straw blond hair, his nose being perfumed with the scent of her luscious hair.                

“I’m not a human hunter, Abby. I have my reasons, and you know that,” Soren snapped, closing his eyes at the sight of his friend Isaac dying of an incurable disease while lying down on the ground. His grip tightened on Abigail’s waist, his nails accidently digging far into her delicate skin. “Ouch!,” Abigail whined, smacking Soren’s hand to release his grip.

            “You’re such a soft heart for those weaklings, Soren.,” Abigail growled, pushing herself away from Soren’s chest with a passion of anger stirring inside her eyes. “They’ll never pass through a lifetime in Avian! You of all vampires should know that ….” Soren just grumbled under his breath, a sympathetic look digging into Abigail’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Orrie…can you forgive me?,” Abigail asked with a baby voice, sitting on the satin bed next to Soren. At first, there was no respond to what she had said to Soren, a dead silence going over the two. Then with a mind’s change, Abigail jumped when Soren sneaked his arm around her small framed waist. “Scared?,” Soren laughed, a generous smile painted over his slightly tanned lips. Abigail shook her head. “Why would I be?,” she whispered against his ear, sinking her teeth into Soren’s neck as the satisfaction of dark crimson blood poured into her mouth willingly. A small groan escaped Soren’s lips, closing his eyes as some of blood was trickling down his neck with no hurry to get anywhere.

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Two years later:

                Soren Abney walked towards the glass French doors with thunderous steps, a crossed expression inside his golden eyes. The maids in the mansion did a ballerina bow as he glided on past, the sun peeking out throughout the darkness of the sky. It was almost sunrise, being a bad time for half the vampires that breathed air in Avian. “Oh f**k!” Soren cursed out loud, now speed walking down towards the marble stairs that was at the end of the first floor. An elder women draped in gray was in the library reading an ancient book, translating the words onto another piece of paper for notes. “Don’t rush yourself, Soren, dear…,” the elderly women said over her stack of written papers, Soren ignoring her as he practically ran towards the spiral stairs leading down the chamber. He had forgotten his bracelet down in the chamber; it wasn’t just any regular bracelet. It was a bracelet that could allow any night vampire to walk in the daylight without getting burned to death. But the protection only lasted for two to three hours, not giving night walker a lot to do in the day time. It was only sunrise, yet it gave Soren ten minutes to get the bracelet, and then retrieve it back upstairs. So he had no time to waste.

            The brass door was nearer than he expected, opening it with the little patience he had inside himself. The morning didn’t go too well for him, getting a daily lecture from the human hunter leader Carlo for not retrieving any wandering human prisoners that had escaped the night before. Soren told him that the two he had to go after had escaped, which half of it was true. One had died while running away from Soren while he just let the second go because he had a family to take care of. Anybody that knew Soren thought that he was often too soft on mortals, getting the ‘trait’ from his mother, who thought that drinking humans dry wasn’t the answer to life’s problems. Pacing himself down the stairs, the shackles that where hanging on the walls ringed death among its metal, a screech being heard from a mile away inside the chamber. A gold glow was by the railing of the metal spiral stairs, trying not to get near it without being harmed in anyway. Soren was thrown off the glow, thinking that it was a candle glowing until he saw who it was. “Hello, Soren. You don’t seem to be in a hurry today. ,” Cecilia smirked, her black eyes glinting with a sliver of sarcasticness in them. Soren rolled his eyes at her, brushing past her with a small force that caused the fairy to move back an inch. Cecilia didn’t say anything as she floated away from the metal that surrounded her fragile skin, clutching her twig arms to protect them from being burned.

                Nothing was getting any better for Soren, running into fairies that dwelled in the belly of the chamber. The fairies that worked for the Abney family often craved the darkness and solitude, not being like the other fairies that wandered the earthy grounds. They liked the daylight once in a while, yet the darkness was their whole life; their only home. The Darklight fairies also weren’t the kindness among the bloodline of the Daylights, having a foul mood if they didn’t get the Rovvana jewels they ate every other day to rejuvenate their colored glow.

            It took Soren about a minute longer to get to the main chamber room, a group of strong Darkbrights ganging up on him once again. He didn’t really get what the point was if the fairies knew that they weren’t going to win the little game they loved to play, seeing that Soren would have the control of the dice. Slamming the door behind his back, a hint of lilacs roamed around the room. It had stretched outwards to the vampire’s nose, putting dangerous chills up his back. “What brings you here, Abigail?” Soren sneered, opening up the cabinets to see if his bracelet was hidden in there. The scent of lilacs drifted even more closely, a hand touching Soren in the middle of his back.                                

     “You know that’s not going to work…,” Soren said, his eyes being distracted with finding his bracelet. Abigail sighed annoyingly, removing her hand swiftly to the side of her right hip. 

     "You’re impossible.” Abigail grunted, occupying herself with a bottle that seemed to be twisting to the bottom of cabinets Soren was looking in. Her blond hair had grown over the past two years, being about to her waist line now. She always had either up in a side pony tail or curls, hating the thought of having to cut it a boyish hair cut like she did the last decade. Her dark blue eyes darted around the room, eventually blinking back at Soren for a while before breaking the awkward silence that now grew between them.                

“Looking for something?” Soren turned around sharply, his eyes glued to the black beaded bracelet that was hanging delicately off of Abigail’s long fingernail.    

“Thanks..,” Soren said bluntly, picking off the bracelet with the pinch of his fingers to let it slip around his wrist.                   

"No problem.” Abigail shrugged, lacing her fingers around the disfigured bottle again with observant eyes. “So you’re going out again?” Abigail asked with no curiosity in her voice, knowing exactly why Soren had to go out in the sun.       

“My mother’s sick…” Abigail nodded with her eyes narrowed towards the ground.                           

"I know.” Soren cocked an eyebrow at Abigail, drilling his eyes at her shoulder.                   

“You should really get one of your ‘servants’ to fetch those herbs for you, Soren…it’d do you better. A lot better.” A little surprised by her sudden change of behavior, Soren just stared at her.                       

“You’ve changed over the past few weeks…..”

Abigail rolled her eyes. “I want you to at least trust me, Orrie. You know that…”                   

A small knot formed in Soren’s stomach, and not in a good way. The nickname ‘Orrie’ reminded him painfully on the relationship he was in with Abigail before they took different paths in their lives. Plus, the nickname knowingly annoyed Soren a lot. “Well, that hasn’t changed….,” Soren muttered indignantly, hearing a hardening huff from Abigail.

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            Checking to see if he had everything, Soren stretched and yawned with the bones in his back cracking with multiple sounds going toward his ear. The comment from Abigail about it didn’t bother Soren at all, the feeling of hope of getting out of the chamber room tingling to his feet as he opened the large wooden oval door to exit out. But Abigail stopped him in his tracks with mentioning about the ‘family sword’. The metallic colors of the chains lining around the chamber room seemed to shutter a bit at the uttering of it, Soren turning around with an agitated sigh. “It’s given to the one who’s chosen to be the protector of ‘The Key’.” Abigail titled her head an inch, seeming like she wanted to know more about it. That was one of the things about Abigail that just bugged Soren for some reason. He knew that she would give a certain look in her eyes, as if there was something else that you were hiding from Abigail. Soren knew a lot of the Lutador, which was required in the line of the eldest sons in the Abney family. But the thing was he couldn’t go speaking about the Lutador, his father not wanting the Unforgettables coming after the mansion to search for it. Even to Abigail, Soren couldn’t speak a word about it; only to tell her that it was just given to the next generation of being a beskytter. Soren was the lucky son to be the next beskytter. “I have to go,” Soren said without hesitation, slipping through the wooden door as he swore he could hear Abigail say something behind his back.         

When Soren got back up the spiraling stairs, a maid with fair skin approached him with a graceful bow. “Your father would like to speak to you, Soren,” Melinda said soothingly, her brown sausage curls lying carefully around her oval shaped face. “Okay, Thanks.” Soren gave her a tiny smile as he flew on by, Melinda bowing again before she started to dust off the counter top with a tinted blush on her face. Passing a few more of the maids and the main butler that worked in the mansion, a rough cough was heard from the first door on the first floor hallway. Soren entered the marbled hallway and poked his head into the frame of the door. A woman with long ruby red hair was propped up with about four pillows behind her back, her light skin showing that she was indeed coming down with a bothersome cold. Her face was flushed with pink, a pearl of sweat rolling down her forehead, and on the eyelids of her champagne sparkling eyes. Lifting her head up to take a sip of water, the woman saw Soren standing by her door way.  

          “Coming to check up on me?” Soren nodded like a child would when he had a good deed. “Well, thank you….but I don’t want your father waiting any longer….Now go,” Leslie said, coughing into a white handkerchief with another pearl of sweat coming down her forehead.              

Soren left as she commanded, not wanting to upset Derrick as much as the next person. He was a good mannered man, yet he didn’t like stalling; especially when he wanted to know something from someone else or to talk about personal matters. Soren debated on if he should suddenly ‘forget’ as he sharply turned the corner of the empty hallway. It felt like a small ghost town to some of the maids, swearing they could hear the whispers of the Abney ancestors in the middle of the night. Soren had never believed it until he had trouble sleeping one night, a child whispering something in an ancient language of decades ago.                         

            Then family room hadn’t changed for about four centuries, the same books still sitting upon the old shelves that needed replacing. The chairs would get a new covering about every other year, yet it wouldn’t help the metal feet that were rusting from the years of not being used and the cushions that were wearing out. The curtains where the real things that needed replacing the most, having tiny holes on the bottom of the edge. Nevertheless, it was a comfort to anybody that entered the room; a favorite to the older guests that visited the Abney mansion.  

Resting his back against the velvet red chair by an earthly colored desk, Derrick ran his stretched out fingers in his dark black hair and closed his eyes. “Where is that boy?” He mumbled silently, his left hand resting on the arm of his favorite chair. A beaded bracelet was hanging off his left wrist, a tiny rounded pendant with a dark red ruby stuck in the middle. It was the one Soren had, except with an addition. Eying the pendant, Derrick steadily pushed himself off with an oak walking stick to help him along. He didn’t look as old as everybody thought he was; looking about in his thirties to human eyes. Yet he was only about in his younger hundreds, his knee getting badly wounded in a battle he was centuries ago. The thought of his wife made him want to stand strong, worrying if Leslie would make it through the cold that had caught her. Derrick knew that sicknesses would usually take Leslie’s energy away, making her unable to take care of the younger children that spent the night in the Abney household.                                     Leaning against the wooden desk to rub his bad knee, Derrick saw a tall figure came slowly through the doorway with a mannered pace. “What took you so long, Soren?” Derrick demanded, letting his walking stick hit the side of his good leg.         

"I was getting something.” Derrick didn’t say anything, staring at the bracelet that Soren now had on.                            “So what do you want?” Soren cocked an eyebrow up, his dark hair falling across his pale face. He observed his father rubbing his temples on his head, knowing that he was going to most likely talk about two things: Abigail or his job as the beskytter. It seemed that it was all Derrick would talk about with him, seeing that he was the eldest out of the four children. “I wanted to talk to you about a personal matter that may seem different than from what we’ve been talking about for the past couple of months….it’s about the Key.” The word ‘key’ caught Soren’s attention, making him stand up straight as he listened carefully to Derrick’s words. “The console has felt its presence in Avian. They want the beskytter to go out and look for it so it doesn’t get into any danger. The console thinks that it’ll be a wise thing that the Key is protected in our house since ‘they’ don’t know about our house…yet. I would have you bring it to one of the other safe houses, but Lucas McCray told me that ‘they’ had found out about the McCray house years ago, so it’s not too safe.” Derrick paused, clutching the edge of the desk for support. His knee was making complications again, yet he wouldn’t admit it. “So you must go find the Key before any of those creatures find it.” Soren nodded somberly, almost walking away from his father before a though occurred to him.                               

“Does the console know if the Key’s a man or women?” Soren asked curiously, watching Derrick sigh at him. 

"A women."        

“How do they know?”        

“Lucas knew, so he told the console.”                                                  

“How does he know?”

Derrick folded his arms across his chest, glaring at Soren with an irriated expression on his face. “I don’t know, but quit asking me questions and get the herbs for your mother before searching for the Key.” Soren nodded once again, walking away from his father as he flew out of the door way. He was glad that they didn’t speak about Abigail, knowing that it would turn out to be the same argument that it would always be. ‘The Ross’ and Abney’s must be bond together, even if it means having no affection for one other!’’ Soren could still hear Derrick’s words from the last argument they had about the Ross and Abney families not getting along, the older generation of Abney’s thinking that    the Ross’ were working with the Unforgettables to get the family sword. Of course, nobody believed them since they thought that they were just talking nonsense. Derrick enjoyed the Ross’ company, especially Abigail’s. It was why he put the two together in the first place so that the Ross’ and Abney’s would finally realize that it was mistake to mistreat one another. But Soren thought it was a mistake to be with Abigail in the first place, yet infatuation played a huge role in wanting Abigail Ross as his.     

            Slipping on his light leather jacket over his plain white t-shirt, a boy about eighteen or nineteen with platinum blond hair and violet purple eyes came running up to Soren with a plastered smile upon his perfect white teeth. “So are you going out to hunt later on today?” Soren rolled his eyes.                         

“No, I’m not…I’ve got things to do..” Todd was next to roll his eyes, tucking his hair behind his ears.                         

“The a*****e got you doing his dirty work again?” Todd questioned, eying a red haired Daylight maid that was washing one of the higher windows, her wings fluttering around her like bird’s wings.                    

“You could say that…” Soren shrugged, his almost short, dark chestnut hair getting into his golden eyes again. Todd put his hands into his pockets, watching the sun hit the windows around the house.                       

"Well, have fun doing whatever the hell you’re doing, then…,” Todd said, waving to Soren as he walked away from him, thinking about the red haired Daylight that worked every day in Abney mansion. Soren chuckled under his breath, digging his hands into his pockets with nothing in the inside of them. When he reached the front doors, the old butler opened the doors for him with a mellow aurora around him.  

“Uh thanks, Nicholas.” Soren said as he walked past the butler, not hearing a word as he could feel the warmth of the sun beams hitting his ghostly skin. Sticking out his hands to have them feel the sun, his skin started to turn into a fair skin color, having a touch of a tan to his skin as well. His golden eyes got lighter as well as his dark brown hair, turning into a lighter color of brown. A yawn escaped his lips, stretching as he walked down the huge cobbled path that lead away from the mansion. The rose bushes grew beautifully the brick walls, the small thorns sticking off of the green vines as he approached the end of the pathway. The heart of Avian was about three blocks away from him, Soren watching the citizens chattering with each other and the girls’ ooo-ing and awing as he got closer and closer.                        

"I wonder what Alex has for herbs?” Soren thought to himself, wondering what kind of herbs he should get as the groups of the girls pretending not to stare at him let out a stampede of giggles while they stood by the water fountain that was in the middle of Avian. Before they could giggle again, a small commotion was heard from afar, a clash of pots falling down on the ground as a few people gathered around to see what was going on.

 

Author's Note

Credit for Soren's name: Underworld
Lutador: Fighter in Portuguese (freetranslations.com)
Beskytter: Protector in Norwegian (freetranslations.com)
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Update 4-5-08: The scent on Abigail is just a lilac perfume...you'll get what I'm talking about when I post Chapter 3 up.

Reviews

[Lauren Xena Campbell]

It has to be said you write an impeccable story. And just as I was really really getting into it, you end the chapter! Loving the contrasting worlds between this chapter and the last. You've made me very keen to find out more about your vampire world and what other mystical animals could lurk there. I'm guessing Soren is probably going to have a romance with Harriet, or if not a romance something equally as 'interment' like sucking her blood or having to kill her.

But as I have said you have me interested and I'm now off to read the next chapter, as I'm still eager to see what is going to happen to Harriet.

[Ice Queen of the Vampir..]

Mmm, I love Underworld and the name Soren. This chapter is awesome and the story just keeps getting better and better. Fantastic work!!!

Heather

[Damon Ross Cottrell]

This piece flowed much better than your previous chapters. Your creativity is really showing through in this chapter. Abigail is a mystery to me. I want to know what she is up to-- if anything. I also love the fact that she calls Soren "Orrie" to annoy him now. Derrick is interesting. I like the idea of an immortal vampire still suffering from a old war wound. Soren needs a bit more to his character than rolling his eyes and getting his hair in his face. I really want to know what he is thinking and feeling beyond the descriptions of his actions.

Your grammar has improved since the last chapter. I saw a few of the same old mistakes, but not nearly as many.

Notes:

Aurora-- means dawn. did you mean aura?

[Captain Blackheart (The..]

An intresting piece Nicole, I like the way this is going and find it very intresting. You have a keen eye for detail that makes the story into a bigger picture. Keep writing them :)

Brilliant!

[Marie]

Great chapter.

[Brenda Sue]

Enjoyed reading this piece, can't wait to read more. Wonderfully penned.

[JC Fox]

LOVE that movie! Great Chapter!

[smiggle wiggle]

You're terrible! Here you had me believing I was going to be reading Chapter 2 but it's just a quote!!! AAAH!! Write more soon!

[Lauren Xena Campbell]

That's cruel! I'm keen to read more! Will write reviews on the rest of it later, haven't got time at the moment. Am really engrossed thought. And that really is cruel!

[DarkAngelWriter]

OMG! YOU A*S!! I THOUGHT THERE WAS MORE!!! *lotsa f*****g tears!*