Page 26 of Cursed Lifeline

When the last of the sun has finally set, my mother goes on.

“When the Magister Council placed the calling on my life to become a slayer, not everyone in my coven was pleased. Sensing impending danger, my parents tried for years to find a way to break the calling on my life. When they were unsuccessful, they decided teaching me and honing my skills was the best protection they could offer against the undead I would eventually be forced to face.”

“As you’ve taught me,” I sigh. “Is there a point to this bedtime story, mother?”

She gives me a stern look, but behind it, I sense she understands how much I am hurting. With a sad voice, she says, “As legend tells you, nothing they taught me stood up to your father’s charm, and nothing anyone in the Devine Raven Coven could say or do could break the way we felt about each other.”

“I know all too well how those feelings can drive someone mad,” I hiss. “Tell me there is a way to stop them?”

She shakes her head sadly, crushing what little hope I had moments ago started to feel.

“Unbeknown to me or your father, one of the spells someone cast contained a misfortune. A curse. One that would be passed down to any children that may come from the union my coven was desperately trying to stop.” My mother’s eyes fill with tears. “When your father changed me, it altered everything. For in that spell, the curse was attached to a union against my will. When I became a vampire against my consent, the curse was activated. As parents, your father and I would be forced to watch our children make the same mistakes we did as penance for a union that couldn’t be stopped. Only the stakes would be higher. The feelings, emotions, connections the future generation would feel for each other would be undeniably stronger and drive them towards a mad, tragic end. ”

My face falls as I whisper with heated rage, “How do I break the curse?”

She doesn’t answer. My words hang in the silence between us. Angry. Bitter. Unforgiving. Eventually, she shakes her head from side to side as a tear falls grievously down her right cheek.

“I don’t know,” she eventually cries. “To be honest, I didn’t think it was true, or that the curse was really a threat. Not until I heard what happened in France. Not until I saw the way you came home a week ago. I...”

She stops speaking, and her silence gives way to fearful panic that seizes my damned heart and swallows my next ill-fated breath.

“You’re telling me there is no way around it?” I snap. “That I’ll be forced to fall in love with the slayer, turn her against her will, and ultimately make my deathbed when I can’t control my hunger for her?”

She violently shakes her head no.

“Like I’ve always told you, Angel, the future isn’t set in stone. Anything is possible. It’s what you make it. You can change the outcome. You can write a different ending.”

“Yeah,” I hiss. “How’d that work out for you, mother?”

“If you’re smart, you’d learn from my mistakes, Felix,” she snaps. “From your father’s mistakes.”

“If that were the case, and I was smarter than my old man, I would have kept my distance and not have already gone and fallen...”

Her eyes grow wide as my words fall short.

Furious with myself for the truth I almost let slip past my lips, I stride past the Queen of the Damned to the entryway of her oppressing sanctuary. I’m almost at the front door when she calls out, “Felix!”

I halt, but I don’t give her the satisfaction of turning around. She mists to my side and hands me my gloves. Hand on the doorknob, I hang my head and take them angrily.

“You have more of me than your father inside your heart, Angel.”

“It’s not my heart I’m worried about, mother,” I hiss as I fling open the door. “It’s the thoughts running through my cursed mind. The ones telling me to do things, forcefully, violently. It’s the soulless carnal need that scares me. It should scare her, too. Unfortunately for all of us, it doesn’t.”

I march off into the night as my carriage pulls up right on time and quickly descend the steps of my mother’s estate. She calls out to me from the doorway, but I refuse to listen to any more of her nightmarish tales of curses that inevitably swallow all hope and leave me more damned than when I lost my soul. Taking hold of the doorknob to the coach, I hoist myself up on the carriage step and hastily cocoon myself in the body of the cab. The brisk sound of the driver’s whip echoes through the night as I close my eyes, the carriage quickly jolts forward, and I ease my head back against the plush, white silk, back stay.

“Tough day,” Dimitri taunts.

Opening one eye, I glare at him and Talon in warning before flipping him a vulgar gesture and closing my eyes once again. He chuckles, and it fuels the anger, the bitterness, the sadness building inside me.

“Ah, well,” he joyfully sighs. “We’ll be back in France by daybreak. Your craving will soon be satisfied.”

But he’s wrong.

My appetite, my hunger, it’ll never be fulfilled.

Which makes me wonder, if it wasn’t for the curse, would I even desire Esmerelda at all?

Esme, my heart sighs as we drive on into the night.

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