The Forsaken (Book Three in The Illusion of Certainty Series)

Prologue: What If It All Means Something?

*~ Part Three~*

What If It All Means Something?

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —

            Nameless here for evermore

-The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Prologue

In my life I’ve learned when things get to be too good to be true, they usually are. Everything goes to shit and I’m left holding the bag. My family loves me and up until recently I was a well adjusted teenager. I just happened to be the first child born to a Slayer and one of the Tainted races. I was part Slayer, part Panther, a Hybrid.

First.

Slayer.

Hybrid.

Ever.

My brother, Sebastis, was the second but he didn’t have a trace of Slayer blood in him. No one really knew why but that was my brother, unique in his own way. He walked, talked, breathed just like my father. The great and honorable Tiberius Vertigo. Me? I took after my mom. The strong and loving Sybil Vertigo. And what, might you ask, makes me so special? Why wasn’t there more Slayer Hybrids like myself? Well all Slayers are rendered sterile when it came to the Tainted Races. We were only supposed to be able to breed within the Slayer lines. And there weren’t many left so you always ran the risk of inbreeding. My Mother, however, proved to be the exception to the fine rule. Me, on the other hand, I was almost completely sterile, no matter who I tried to “mate” with. We’d found that out when I’d been nearly gutted by one of the teachers at my school.  I’d been given two guards, my Guardian who was assigned to me a million years ago, and a Vampire.

My Guardian, Luke, has been around a long time. He doesn’t age and he has yet to tell me exactly how old he is. He could take any form he wanted and right now he appeared to be the same age as me, seventeen. He’s my best friend.

The Vampire…well that’s where things got interesting. He started off at school pretending to be a normal student. I’d fallen for him and let him bite me once in a moment of weakness. Truth was I loved him. He loved me. We just couldn’t be together. So in hopes of escape from watching me with another guy, Michael fled the kingdom of my school and back to Vampire Domain, where most Vampires live. I was requested to visit and during my visit, things got a little…messy. We were forced into the Blood Trial. A test that the Vampires perform in order to turn someone important, me, into a Vampire, completely erasing their natural born destiny. Not really a test but the Vampires are generally twisted. They didn’t succeed though and I’m still me. But Michael and I had exchanged a certain bodily fluid. Now I could dip, dive, and duck into his mind whether I was conscious or not.

He came back to school with me in order to protect me from a certain boy…

Well he wasn’t a boy anymore. Aidan Hanover. The cause of all my current pain and torment. He’d loved me since he first saw me and that love had driven him to do some pretty stupid things. He’d plotted with the Vampire Elder, Jason, in hopes of keeping me alive. Jason told him that Michael would take me away from him. Aidan didn’t like that too much. We started dating and it was rocky to say the least. In the end, I’d given up a piece of myself to him, only to find out the truth. He fled school grounds and was changed into a Vampire because he thought I’d been changed as well. I loved him, he loved me, and now I was in a constant state of depression. My name is Georgiana Vertigo and my life pretty much sucks.