Sensitive to the Light Immortal Bloodlines I

Sensitive to the Light (Chapter 20)

Dedicated to jewel1307 for not only taking the time to fan, read and vote for every chapter so far, but also for being kind enough to leave some beautiful and encouraging comments AND helping me out with fixing some mistakes that I'd not noticed.

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I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this chapter out, but there are a few bits and bobs lurking in this one.

HINT: The Devil is in the detail... Mwahahahaha ',..,'

Also many, many thanks to NicholasFewell for suggesting the wonderous accompanying soundtrack... It still makes me jealous that other women can play guitar whilst I'm confined to Bass :(

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I made a mental note of the fact that I had just witnessed Isaac blatantly abandon his usual stoicism at the mention of an eclipse.  I got the impression that it was a very rare sight to be seen and filed it away under ‘potential leverage’ in case the need ever arose.  

I mulled over the rather one sided conversation we had just embarked upon and concluded that I was seemingly cohabiting with a bunch of ragtag vagabonds from the seventeenth century.  It was a decidedly odd situation to say the least.

As I hugged my knees to my chest underneath the duvet, I realised that although my hair was still dripping wet and I was wearing nothing but a towel under the covers, I wasn’t the slightest bit cold.  I hadn’t been cold in the woods either when I woke up in the dirt covered in blood.  In the rain.  I didn’t feel cold in Castlewood wearing only soggy socks and pyjamas.  

It had to be the fact that I was now apparently Immortal, there was no other reason why I wasn’t frozen half to death by now.  I had felt cold when I was first brought back here, but as Ann had explained, that was my body's reaction to shock.

Does this mean I’m not in shock any more? That I’ve somehow accepted what I have become so quickly?

I swung my legs over the other side of the bed and got up, walking towards the fireplace and wrapping the duvet around me as a trail of down followed my path.  I pulled a miniature shovel from the veritable armory beside the fireplace and began to scoop coal from the scuttle into the grate. I piled logs atop the coals and lit some scraps of newspaper,  resting in a crouch balanced on the balls of my feet as I waited patiently for the fire to ignite.  The routine of rousing a hearty fire relaxed me a little; it was something I had become very used to at my decrepit farmhouse.

Once I was satisfied that the flames licking their way over the logs were going nowhere anytime soon, I retreated back to the bed and engulfed myself in the giant duvet before wriggling out of the towel and kicking it on to the floor.  

Without the pounding water of the shower or Isaacs recollections of the past, the room seemed still and stagnant.  Bits and pieces of the words being exchanged downstairs drifted up through the floorboards but I couldn’t make out if it was a conversation, a debate or a full blown argument; I didn’t want to know, it was as if my life was becoming more surreal by the minute.

Hellhounds, the Devil’s Bargain, no relief, the Four Horsemen, Blood...

I grabbed one of the pillows next to me and flung it over my face to try and block out their voices.  The only thing I managed to block was my air supply.  Huffing in exasperation, I pulled the pillow off of my face and stuck it under my head, looping my arms above my shoulders and intertwining my fingers so the pillow was pushed tightly against my ears, shutting me off from the outside world.