Forgiveness

Return to Garside Grange

Chapter 1

**Erin's POV**

After being chased by Ramanga's Shadow Warriors in Paris and almost being dusted, this wasn't the welcome Erin had expected when she knocked on the front door of Garside Grange.

It had taken her months to finally decide to return to this place, after everything that happened... And she had not seen any trace of Malik since after the incident with the Shadow Warriors.

In front of her stood Ingrid with a confused look and soon after, another figure appeared beside her. She took a whiff. A breather?

"Hi", Erin said meekly, unsure of what to do.

"Erin. What are you doing here?", Ingrid asked with suspicion and disdain in her voice.

"Ehm..., well I wanted to see how you were doing?", Erin said, only half-lying. In truth, she wasn't sure why she had returned. She just didn't know where else to go.

"Okay...", Ingrid said drawing out the syllables. "Vlad's not here."

Erin was stunned at Ingrid's blunt statement but quickly recovered.

"That's...okay", she said, and even though she wouldn't admit it, she felt a tinge of disappointment at that.

"Wait a minute? Weren't you supposed to be dust...?", Ingrid asked with confusion.

"What?", Erin gasped.

"Malik told us all of your untimely end by the Shadow Warriors in Paris", Ingrid said deviously, a smile slowly creeping onto her face. "My, my, how wrong he had been."

"So, you all thought I was dust?", Erin asked baffled. The unspoken question hung in the air, but Ingrid caught on quick.

"Yes. Vlad too", Ingrid answered with a smirk. Oh, this would be interesting.

"Is he here?", Erin spoke with a mixture of fear and curiosity in her voice.

"No, but he should be coming here soon, with Talitha, his girlfriend". Ingrid enunciated the word 'girlfriend'.

Erin scoffed, trying to look unbothered by the revelation that Vlad had moved on faster than she had thought.
"Okay", she huffed.

Then, a face popped up behind Ingrid, with an enormous grin and sparkling eyes.

"Now, who is this, Ingrid?", he said in a heavy accent and placed his hand on Ingrid's leather-clad shoulder.

To Erin's surprise, Ingrid let his hand stay there. It seemed that Vlad was not the only one who had changed while she was gone.

"Come in", the man, who she then found out was called Piers, said. Ingrid shot a dark glare at him but held up the door for her anyway.

"Come in, half fang. I haven't got all day", Ingrid snared.

Erin stepped inside and looked around her. The entrance was almost the same as before, but now there was some form of weird hanging sculpture there. But before she had time to look at it any closer, she was practically shoved forward by Ingrid.

"I guess you can stay in your old room", Ingrid said with more than a little reluctance.

"Ok, thanks, I guess...", Erin said and speeded up the stairs to the room she used to stay in.

For a few hours, she occupied herself with reading an old copy of a book that she had stashed in an old bookshelf, but when her eyes started to droop she stopped reading and climbed into the dusty coffin lying in the middle of the room.