Page 28 of Even Vampires Bleed
Except, all we do is wait. The warriors train, and we wait.
If it wasn’t for Léandre, I think I would have even lost my taste for reading. I’m bored, and the only saving grace of this downtime is the fact that I get to spend more time with Léandre. He reads to me before we go to bed.
I feel like Marie Antoinette, waiting for the guillotine to fall.
Because it might be calm and quiet right now, but it’s just the calm before the storm.
Or at least it’s how it feels for almost everyone else. For Léandre and me, the storm is already inside our heads.
Léandre’s storm has the form of a father who is barely there in mind, and mine, the form of a father who has yet to wake up.
I’m scared that he’ll wake up in the same mental state as Gabriel. I’m scared he could be worse, too.
But I’m even more scared that he doesn’t wake up at all.
The first sign we get that things are about to change for the worse comes on Friday night.
Some of us are gathered and watching a movie in the cafeteria when all of our holos ring at the same time. It lasts less than a second, stops, and then rings again.
Then all of our screens—including the movie screen— turns black for a second and a loading bar appears.
What the hell is happening?
The loading bar finishes charging, and in its stead, appears the face of a young man. His face looks surprisingly familiar, but I don’t know where I could have seen him before. He looks young, barely over eighteen. He’s sporting short black hair that makes his blue eyes all the more striking. Seriousness is all over his face, and there is also a hard glint in his eyes. He’s wearing one of those long white robe-like dresses with a hood the archangels always wear for official functions.
Someone off-screen is talking, but what that commentator is saying is barely registering in my mind though.
I think the commentator is presenting the guy on the screen and then it hits me what this is.
The guy in the white dress smiles, and it chills me to my bones. Then, on some silent signal that I don’t notice, he pops his wings out dramatically.
They’re all white.
This is the new Michaël.
“Ambrose,” I hear Angie mutter from the other side of the room.
It takes me a minute to realize why she muttered a different name. I’m staring at the same eyes.
This is Angie’s little brother, and from what she told me so far, this isn’t good.
It was to be expected after Michaël’s death, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but still I hate the feeling that we might have traded a monster for another one.
I hear Léandre gulp before I turn to look at him.
He’s staring at the screen, but it isn’t Ambrose on the screen anymore. There is a woman this time, one in her late twenties. She looks tall and skinny. Long blond hair frames high cheekbones, light green eyes, and pouty lips painted in a pastel pink.
Ambrose doesn’t really look angelic, but this one does, and it surprises me even more because I have no idea what she’s doing on the screen.
The commentator starts talking again as the screen view broadens, and we can finally see what the woman is wearing: a long, white robe-like dress.
“This bitch,” Léandre sneers next to me, and I’m once again surprised tonight, because it’s not like him to insult people like that.
“Who is she?” I ask him at the same time the commentator says, “Here I present you, Gabrielle.”
In the same manner Ambrose released his wings, Gabrielle does the same.
They’re obviously all white.
