When Sarah Solomon took refuge in an old cottage in the woods, she knew it would only be a matter of time before the monsters came a' calling.
Cursed with a power she neither wants, nor knows how to harness, Sarah has become a target, but who is he...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Two Months Later
Life before Michael had often felt like one long, arduous torture. Watching the clock tick down to sunset as if it were a timebomb waiting to go off. The days themselves had sped by unmercifully fast and yet the nights were endless. Time would stretch and lengthen, the darkness always pressing in, pressing down, keeping the sunrise out of reach. And round it would all go again, in another cycle of hours, minutes, agonising seconds.
So, how could it be that the two months since he had left felt longer?
Instead of counting down to sunset in fear of nightfall and all that came crawling out of the dark, I counted down for Michael to wake so I could speak to him or see his face on videocall.
When Michael had been reunited with Vince, Maz, Dame and Bailey, we'd had a brief call so that I could see that all was okay and then they'd left the beach house in Kent to find safety in a new location. I took heart in the knowledge they were all together again but seeing them all so happy only made the loneliness I felt deepen into something raw and painful. If someone had told me I'd come to yearn to be in the company of vampires, I'd have thought them insane, but I did yearn for it.
Since then, I'd kept in contact with Michael after he'd reconnected with Montague, taking Vincent with him on his mission to find William, their travels taking them to Hamburg then onto Krakow. While I'd hated the separation, the fact I could speak with him helped make the days slightly more bearable, that was until he reached Prague.
Three days without contact. Three days without a single call. Three days without a single text.
We had talked about the chance that contact might not always be possible. We had no idea what kind of security William Jonson would insist upon if Michael found him. The trueborn's mission had been steeped in secrecy since the sixteenth century, but modern times had brought new technological obstacles such as cellphone surveillance and GPS tracking. I always knew that there was a possibility Michael would go off-grid at some point, but the sudden absence of all contact had still hit me hard, as if someone was constantly ripping off the band-aid and reopening the wound.
I had no idea if he was safe. No idea if he was in trouble.
And no idea if Marcus had been right about the irresistible pull of one's own species.
What if Michael had found everything he had ever been searching for with the other trueborns? What if he didn't want to come back? What if he no longer needed me, like I needed him?
Gritting my teeth, I tried to push it to the back of my mind and focus on the fact my body was screaming at me as I ran, with fake Jason Statham by my side, who was barely breaking a sweat as we worked-out side by side on the treadmills in Marcus' gym.
I'd dreaded the idea of being left with only the cold, unyielding personal bodyguard, and Marcus for company, but when Jason had mentioned the possibility of taking up a daily training schedule, I'd jumped at the offer. Mostly it was out of sheer boredom – because it turned out I was shit at staring forlornly out of a window – but I needed the routine badly and saw no harm in ensuring I was up to speed in protecting myself.
