The Venantium Auallonia Trilogy: Midsummer Sky

Chapter 1: Requiem

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain...But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else."

˗˗Ursula K. Le Guin, the Ones Who Walk Away From the Omelas

Images flash through from my memories. Amber's face was still and peaceful as she embraced her eternal slumber. The only aspect of her that wasn't peaceful was her eyes, speaking of fear, anger and mistrust. Amber's stormy grey irises that had once reminded me of calm seas, glared at me intently but absently. I kneeled before her grave; the casket opened wide. I felt the strongest need to pray, but fear struck my vocal cords; disabling my speech. She began to whisper something. I couldn't completely make it all out, but I caught the ending of whatever she was saying: "Till brightness and summer-tide shall come." A gust of wind burst through the graveyard, and, somehow, Amber's casket caught on fire. As the flames licked and kissed her, her body began to burn, and she screamed. Amber screamed out her final unintelligible words, and suddenly the image changed. It twisted and molded to form a new memory, but this one carried far more pain. It was the day Emery left me. Emery's face calm but fierce as he spoke to me, "You know that I have no control, Dawn, YOU KNOW THAT!"... "Charlotte...she poisoned Amber's blood."

I remember the anger I felt as the tears welled up in my eye, as my walls of safety and comfort crumbled before me. Emery was leaving and I had no choice in the matter. "I risked my life for you. I risked my entire life to save your ass, Emery! I risked my best friend's life for yours, and she was killed because of us. She was killed simply because I loved you, and this is what I get? You leave."

Emery's crystal blue eyes were sad, he had no other choice, but there was love written in his voice. "I will love you...more than forever, nothing else will satisfy. Do you know the quote from a Midsummer Night's Dream that states love?"

"' Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind. Therefore is winged cupid painted blind,'" I quoted. I remember begging him to stay. Pleading for him to just stay here with me, I didn't care what it took to keep him within my arms. So what if someone thought my love for him wasn't true? All that mattered was that I got to keep him in some way. I felt that his love for me was real, and of all the poems and songs in the world; I truly believed it. Emery wrapped his arms around me as I stared out into the inky night sky. The stars were bright and ever present, but now my Emery never will be. He handed me a locket; the Claddagh one I have always wished for.

"My heart is yours for you to always remember...always," he whispered into my ear... "May the road rise with you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again... may God keep you in the hollow of His hand."

Like the snap of a finger, my mind clicked back to the former nightmare like a lightning strike, and Charlotte grinned at Amber evilly, shoving her hand through Amber's rib cage and tore out her still beating heart from her chest.

I awoke screaming my lungs out. My eyes were burning, and my heart pounded in my chest as I scrambled to sit up to breathe. This is the same result that I have had every night since Emery left. The same nightmare mocking me over and over, and it never changed. Slowly, I began to recover, and I opened my eyes to greet the morning.

Wiping my eyes, I peered over at my alarm clock to check the time. It was 9:55. Today is one of my only days I didn't have to be in early for work. I didn't have to be there until twelve, so I was in no rush to get up. Instead of rising from my bed, I decided to sit and ponder my racing mind. One would think that I would have recovered from those devastations. I had learned that all my fantasying over vampires since I was twelve was something that became real. Only it wasn't as romantic and breathtaking as one may think. My best friend, Amber Summers, was killed about four years ago. Her heart was ripped out by a rogue vampire, bent on revenge I might add, named Charlotte Nox. Charlotte, being almost six hundred years old, was dead set on persuading me of willing giving up the only love of my life, Emery Winchester, to save my own life. Sometimes I wonder why she didn't just kill me instead of Amber; I think she has some kind of twisted plan for me in the long run. Those thoughts don't matter much to me though, because by killing Amber, I willing gave her Emery. A life for a life. That was the most paralyzing moment of my life. I didn't want to let him go, but I had to. I couldn't let her kill Maverick, too. Maverick King, despite his ignorance, was a dear friend and my Nephilium Guardian until the day of Amber's funeral. Maverick and I had a history that was darker than most. A few years before he tried to molest me at a drunken Halloween party; the same night I met Emery for the first time while walking home in my torn and attacked clothes. Despite his actions against me, he didn't remember anything from that night. So he made it a mission to make up everything he had ever done and said to me. I didn't realize until sometime later that he was really something supernatural like Emery; only he was of the light and Emery was of the dark. Nephilium Guardians were sworn soldiers of heaven's Arch angels; beings of half-blooded angels and the other half human. These soldiers, or more specifically Guardians, were created to protect and guide Potential Guardians or special assignments like myself. I was told that I was not a Potential Guardian, but something more that I was not allowed to know about until the time had come. Clearly, the time for me to know hasn't even come yet.