Staring through the window of our bedroom into the night, I didn't see the quiet street lined with two rows tall, white, Edwardian houses, the old fashioned street lamps whose bright electric lights were reduced to flickers by the tree branches trembling violently in the cold, late October wind, or the small, red brick church standing across the road.
As I pressed my palm to the cool glass pane I saw a different view, that of a meadow bordered by a deep green forest set against the backdrop of distant, snow-capped Carpathian Mountains.
Bran...
I missed the ancient place in Romania, I had never really felt at home in this quaint quarter of London. But I couldn't stay there, I could only visit, walk through a time passage hidden inside the Bran Castle, a portal that opened each Halloween Night. And it wasn't as safe as modern London, not with the power hungry Vampire Council always scheming against Vlad, and now Junior who replaced him as the new prince, and Radu. Moreover, there seemed to be a new threat, too...
Vlad refused to take me back last year, he and Lucas went alone, leaving me, Lia and Aurora under Stoker and Alina's watch, in her small hotel in Bran village. The news he had brought back wasn't good, and it took him a few months before he told me everything, claiming that there was no reason for me to worry about anything I could do nothing about anyway.
But I was shocked when he finally said that Katerina had vanished. Not only because I loved my old nurse more than my mother, but because I knew that the existence of my other world depended upon her... That Vlad got in, and returned unscathed meant that she was still maintaining the charm, keeping the time pocket intact somehow, but how? From where? And for how long? Vlad also said that, according to the staff, she had received strange visitors days before her disappearance, but she didn't tell anyone who they were and no one dared to ask her.
I didn't understand it then, months ago, but I did now. I had received a visit from the Transcendentals a few days back, too. I had been warned. They knew about me and would be watching. Vlad didn't know about my visitors, I wasn't allowed to tell him; he knew nothing about my origin, about who Katerina was, and Clara...
It was the two of them I was worried about so much now that I could not sleep. If Vlad knew, he wouldn't have left me alone tonight. Busy as he was with Stoker, helping to cure the vampires of London from their addiction to blood, he only ever left me and Aurora alone at nights, when we slept.
He would be back soon now, the darkness beyond the window was beginning to change, morph into dawn.
As if Aurora could feel the change, or perceive my unsettling thoughts, she stirred in her cot and I walked towards her across the large room, my vampire senses guiding me through the almost perfect darkness.
She is so... precious...
I still wasn't convinced about this, about taking her through the time passage for a year long trip into a medieval world full of vampires. But I had to go... and I wasn't entirely sure that I would be coming back this time. I had to find Katerina and finally meet the creatures my mother had belonged to. They must leave us in peace, we did nothing to endanger them.
Should something happen to me, Aurora would still have Vlad to take care of her, and should the unthinkable happen and even Vlad... then... Then Junior would bring her back and hand her over to Lia and Stoker.
I pulled her blanket up to her chin then jumped as Vlad, fast and silent, materialised at my side-- his speed was something I would never get used to.
"You mustn't worry about anything," he whispered, pulling me close, bestowing a kiss on my forehead.
I sighed, wrapping my arms around his waist, tilting my face up for a proper kiss, feeling instantly better in his presence.
"I'll try," I said, when our lips parted.
It was the only thing I could promise.
***
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