The Venantium Auallonia Trilogy: Midsummer Sky

Chapter 9: Spirit Walk

"We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart."

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

The United Kingdom was a place far more intimate than Cape Cod. I immediately fell in love with the old world uniqueness of the towns and the sights. Unfortunately, I didn't get to enjoy it for very long. Rhiannon's story combined with the knowledge that Patrick was dead, the random murder sprees that were all linked back to me in the world the Nephilium Guardians and humans. The rest of my birth family had gone missing, and these three new people not including Maverick, Gabriel, and Aiden, were the only people I had left in my life. I could say I was truly alone, but that would be ultimately lying to myself. It was a physical lie, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an emotional one. I felt like I was being guarded by my new, human boyfriend, who I only knew so much about, but he had done so much to prove himself, Aiden, the oldest known vampire in the world and my closest friend and ally, and Maverick, a Guardian who once upon a time loved me more than his own life. So much that we ended up not seeing each other again. Yet he was here now, defying the direct orders of his elders on the Light Council in order to protect a friend and discover why he was dragged into all this hunter nonsense along with us. I couldn't have asked for a better support system that's for sure. After that long, and frankly sickening, afternoon, we decided to board a ferry to cross over to England where our first guess as to where this mythical pendant was. The amusing part about all of this? This was literally all a guessing game. We had no idea if this first idea was the right place or not, because all of our facts and plans were based on myths, riddles, and folktales. Rhiannon claimed that they were all like cyphers that took years to learn how to decrypt them, and thankfully she spent most of her life learning them.

According to her, we had to go to Highgate Cemetery and look in the grave of one of my ancestors by the name of Sonya Mikӕlia Pendred, the last known Spirit Hunter of the Venantium Auallonia. Her former existence didn't mean much to me, all of this was foreign to me. My birth family was always a mystery and the fact that we had to look for my great great great great grandmother's grave was an uneasy feeling. If I had been kept by my family, my name would have been Alexandria Aria Rose Pendred and I would have been born into a family of Nephilium Guardians like Maverick. Father time must have had his own plans, because even if I was part Guardian, it would never matter now. For now, I am a part of something new and unknown: a race of hunters that protect the mortal realm from the overcoming of darkness. And I had accepted my fate with full consequence no matter what this cult by the name of Legion claims they will do, and they kept their word. I have no blood relation left.

The shades of grey, white, and black gravel crunched repetitively beneath my combat boot clad feet as we approached the entrance to Highgate Cemetery. Wind whipped our hair harshly, and the night was as cold as iron. Gabriel, being someone who loved to prove himself right, handed over his thick fleece hoodie to me; insisting he didn't feel the cold and my teeth were chattering really loud. I wanted to protest, and tell him I could handle the brutal weather but I took it instead; smiling to myself at the warmth left over in its sleeves and the comforting left over scent of his cologne that I felt drunk over every time it hit my curious nose. The warmth of the hoodie made me wish I had brought warmer pants, but thanks to Legion again all of my clothes had been burnt to a nice golden crisp. What a week!

The intricate design of Highgate loomed up before us, and Aiden began to withdraw something from under his heavy wool coat. A lock breaker, which he then used to break the chains of the gate's metal lock.