DARK QUEST (Sample)

Chapter Twenty

She walked beside him and offered her face to the forest wind, inhaling its scent, glad to be out in the open again. She glanced at the horizon and noticed that the sun had almost sank and only the end of the sphere could be seen and its weak rays. She glanced at Jason who was standing beside her, staring at the horizon too.

"It doesn't affect you, does it?" She asked him.

Jason didn't take his eyes off the horizon. "No, its power is at its weakest for now. Sundown is all I ever get to see." He said.

"What would happen if you are caught in the sun." She asked again.

He glanced at her this time and said. "I cease to exist." He simply said and walked away not comfortable with the topic and she followed and caught up with him.

She noticed that since they had been touring the castle, they had not come across anybody and most of the parts in the castle were draped in thick cobwebs or untidy and the courtyard was littered with dried leaves that had fallen from the surrounding trees in the courtyard.

"Do you live here all by yourself?" She asked.

He nodded. "Just Doblin and I." He replied.

She looked around the quiet deserted courtyard that looked gloomy, old and lonely. "Don't you get bored?" She asked.

"I could easily live in the city if I want to or the town but I chose this place for specific reasons besides it being my home several centuries ago."

"Specific reasons?" She inquired.

"I isolate myself from the humans. We vampires have a strict law that guards our secret from the knowledge of humans. We saw how they treated witches in the past by burning them at the stake and we, the vampires, had our hearts stakes. So it is best we keep a low profile to hide who we truly are from these ignorant generation."

"Well, not all of your kind are really adhering to keeping a low profile. victims, especially girls turn up dead, in alleys almost very often." Evelyn said.

"I'm not to blame for that, it's no doing of mine." Jason replied and stopped before a tree whose limbs were broad and extended above all other trees in the courtyard and Evelyn would have sworn that she noticed a subtle smile on his face before it vanished as quickly as it had come. "I had a kid sister once, Ella, she was called." He stated, glancing sideways at Evelyn.

"she was very adventurous and loved to climb this very tree because it was the highest in the courtyard and she would climb it to the last branch to view the plains, the meadows, the brook, the borough and the forest during sun rise and sun down despite the protests of our parents... She said the world looked different but extremely beautiful as a combined whole by viewing it from the tree."

Evelyn listened without a word and gently placed a finger on the trunk of the tree, caressing the bark softly. "What happened?" She asked and just immediately she jolted into a vision. She heard the laughter of a girl whose hair was knotted in bunches at the sides of her head with blue ribbons that complemented her eyes and she also had a sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks. She was ten and agile and laughed a lot.

She suddenly saw another scene of Jason looking not too different from how he looked now, looking up into the tree with an angry face and yelling at her to get down the tree and return his new violin while Ella laughed down at him from the tree, playing the violin with a bow to spite him.

Another scene appeared again of Jason, who was looking pale and strange, standing aloof in a bush in the courtyard and peeking at Ella who was not smiling climb up the tree and sit solemnly on one of the branches. Moments later, Evelyn saw Ella nodding off, asleep and suddenly toppled off the branch down the tree to her death to a quick death which shortened her startled scream while Jason just watched sorrowfully from the bushes.