The True History of the Cullen Family

Truth or Death

Now we go back to Leah, who is still unhappy since she had a huge fight with Sam hours earlier. She had grabbed a pillow and blanket and said that she was staying with her mother for a while.

"Come on, Lee," Sam complained as Leah packed her bags. "How was I to know that Taha Aki would punish us for exiling you?"

Leah snapped, "And if you claim to have played the fool, I'm not buying it. Now please move so I can leave."

She pushed Sam aside and stormed away. Sam was upset that Leah was leaving him without so much as an apology from him. But just then, the sky shook and a voice boomed out, "YOU MUST SEEK THE TRUTH! SEEK IT NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!"

After that, Leah and Sam didn't say another word to each other for the rest of the evening.

*****

Jacquelyn was sitting under a warm shower. She felt strangely odd upon waking up and not knowing what had happened last night. She had remembered Jasper sitting beside her, but what had happened next could never be recovered.

Minerva slithered next to her and said, "You need to go out into the gardens. Only in the gardens can the spell that turned us into snakes be reversed."

Jacquelyn frowned, remembering what had happened seven years ago in a garden-like setting: her mother, Irina Ulrich, died after she was bitten by a king cobra snake in the Amazon Rose Hotel when Jacquelyn was just seven years old. Also, Gus and Minerva's parents, Styrax and Cardea Von Ninglied, were killed by the snake as well, with Cardea casting a spell on her children that turned them into snakes.

Jacquelyn stepped out the shower and was surprised to see herself going from her deathly pale color to a near-healthy color and her dark hair giving way to the blond that was sprouting underneath. She said to Minerva, "When do we need to go outside?"

"Tonight," said Minerva. "Mother said that the spell is going to wear off and in order to completely remove the spell, we must use the three objects that she left behind, and they must be bathed in cold fire."

"Cold fire? You've got to be kidding me!" Gus cried out as he slithered into the bathroom. "There's no way that you guys are going to be able to have a cold fire. Doesn't fire usually BURN things?"

"Not mother's fire," said Minerva as she glared at her brother. "We have to carry her instructions to the letter if we want to be free of this spell. Now, we're going to need father's wand and mother's mirror, plus a piece of the cobra's tail and meet in the garden. It has to be tonight."

Jacquelyn said, "And then how do we light the fire?"

"We light it using the blood of a cold drake," said Minerva. "Now we must get going now while we still can."

Jacquelyn nodded and went to get dressed while Gus said to Minerva, "This doesn't sound like a good idea, Minerva. What if it doesn't work?"

"It will work, Gustin," Minerva snapped at him. "It must work."

Jacquelyn found herself staring at a piece of the cobra's tail, the part that Irina had torn off while trying to protect her daughter from its venomous bite. Suddenly, she remembered fighting off the snake with her sword. Was it true that both she and her mother had face the same snake, and yet one of them escaped alive?

If that were true, then why did Jacquelyn survive and Irina did not?

*****

Camille stared out the window of the car that was taking her and Caroline out of Germany and straight to Rome, Italy. Once there was a window of opportunity that opened (i.e., Leopold going away for a long journey), Camille took no chances and packed herself and her daughter up and left in the dead of night. Or was it night, as the red skies made it impossible for her to tell night from day.

Caroline said very little during the journey and Camille found herself unable to keep up a polite conversation with her daughter. She began to wonder why they were drifting apart all of a sudden. They had never been close to begin with and now, they had become almost strangers to each other.

Camille wondered had it all began on the day that Caroline was born? She remembered that day Caroline was born, on March 15, 1667. As soon as she was presented to her mother, Caroline had been banished to a room in the back of Camilla's house with only a nurse and tutor for company. Camille saw very little of Caroline during her childhood, preferring the company of the rich Germans that surrounded her grandmother and she longed to be in their world.

Camille said to herself, "Am I a bad mother? Did I mean to push Caroline away when I should have nurtured her? Can I truly give up my life to protect hers?" She did not know the answer to that question, but little did she know that there would be a riot that would result in her losing her only daughter forever and a cruel reminder of what she had done three centuries earlier...