Devil Inside

Death Thou Shalt Die

*AN - so here it is finally folks, the final chapter of Devil Inside, I'm sorry you have had to wait so long! This is not the end though. There will be a second book which I am planning to start within the next few weeks so please watch this space as I will send a message out to all my followers when the first new chapters are released :)*

It had begun to get dark, Elsa had lost track of how long she had been sat on the gravel path in front of a rose bush that had a small plaque resting beneath it. It was not in flower now, but she knew that when it was, the flowers were long and elegant with deep crimson, velvety petals, rich and luxurious. She knew that the name of the rose was ‘Thinking of You’ and she remembered her father telling her that they would always remember her mother, Sarah, as they’d patted down the damp earth around the base of the tiny, young rose bush fifteen years ago. She’d been two.

She shouldn’t have such a clear memory of planting that bush but she did. She could select memories from the deepest recesses of her mind and recall them with perfect clarity, as if they had happened only moments before; one of the many new abilities she was discovering all the time. She remembered too, going back to the bush many times with her father, sometimes when it bloomed with it’s luscious red flowers, sometimes in winter when it was bare and sprinkled with frosty dew. It almost looked more beautiful then, with tiny jewels of ice and water glittering in harsh November light.

What Elsa couldn’t recall, what she could never remember, was her mother. She knew what she looked like, she’d seen pictures of course. But she had never known her. She had always felt detached somehow when visiting the rose bush, even as a small child she knew that she didn’t understand the true meaning of those visits, she didn’t feel what her father felt, an aching sense of loss, a painful pull towards a person that was no longer there. As she got older, she’d stopped joining Marcus on his visits. She thought about her mother but she never felt her presence, not at the bush, not anywhere.

After all that had happened though, after finding out how her mother had really died and how that had affected her own life now in ways she could have never imagined, Elsa had begun to feel something she hadn’t felt before. A connection to her mother. She’d come to visit this memorial to see if it felt any different now. It didn’t.

Elsa had stayed all the same, it was quiet, and peaceful and she hadn’t had that for some time. The connection she now felt to her mother didn’t need a special place or a special ‘thing’ to make it stronger but Elsa knew she wanted to know more. More about the kind of woman her mother had really been, more about what she and Marcus had done working at Haven together, and more about why she had been targeted. Everything that had happened to Elsa recently, to the people she cared about, had started before she was born, Sebastian was right about that. If she ever hoped to get her head around her life now and come to terms with what she had seen and what she had had to do, she needed to understand where it had all truly begun.

Elsa smiled to herself, wondering for a moment what she had really hoped to achieve by coming here. Had she thought her mothers ghost would visit her and explain it all? That would have made it far too easy. Elsa was pretty sure she was not destined for an easy life any more.

A sudden, barely perceptible sound made her jump. It was an exhale, the sound of air passing slowly and gently over smooth, perfect lips, accompanied by the acrid scent of cigarette smoke. Elsa knew she was in the company of a vampire, no other creature could have snuck up so quickly and quietly. She tensed, waiting to see if the stranger was friend or foe. Her companion made no movement other than to bring the cigarette back to their lips and begin to inhale once more; Elsa could hear the faintest crunch of the cigarette being gently compressed between the strangers lips and she stood and turned quickly to face the visitor.