Midnight Solstice

Chapter 27

Picture: Michael Morgynstein
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   The three of us made our way to the front entrance where Lorne would enter. We remained silent for the longest time before Felix spoke.
"Do you think that he'll bring Gracie?"
  "He probably will." Demetri said.
  "I'll see if Katerina will tell Jayden." I sent a quick text to Katerina. She replied okay in an instant. They don't call it instant messaging for nothing. I had to stop myself from laughing at my horrible pun. The time passed quickly, and before we knew it, Jayden came running over to us.
  "Is she here yet?" He asked out of breath. Felix laughed.
  "You are really crazy over her, aren't you?"
  "We're just friends. I haven't seen her in a while..."
  "A while? As in two days?" Demetri teased. I could sense Jayden's annoyance.
  "Well, at least I can tell a girl that I like how I feel if I really wanted to...speaking of which, how's it going with Brynn lately Demetri?" Felix and I laughed while Demetri rolled his eyes and scoffed.
  "Oooooohhhhhhh...." Felix said. "Shots fired little buddy." He gave Jayden a high five.
   "I'll let you have that one this time Jayden." Demetri told him just as the front door opened. Sure enough, Lorne walked in with his daughter close behind him.
  "Hi Gracie!" Jayden exclaimed.
  "Hey Jayden. Can we go talk to Kat before she leaves?" She asked him.
  "Sure. I was thinking the same thing myself." He took Gracie's hand and the two began their journey down the hall.
  "I really hope they don't get lost again...it took me forever to track them down last time." Demetri said.
  "Alright you three, where are we headed? I'm sure you don't want me to tell you my wonderful story out in the open." Lorne asked us, not wanting to waste any time.
  "We can head to the supply closet." Felix said with a wink.
  "Because that sounds completely normal." Demetri muttered. Felix lead the way to the supply closet (he needs to work on being more discreet in English). Once we were there, Lorne sat down in one of the officer chairs.
  "Where do you want me to start?"
   "Wherever you feel is necessary." I told him.
   "That could be anywhere. It depends on what you want to know and how much of it you actually need to know."
  "We need to know everything from when this whole experimentation crap started." Felix said.
  "No, how about you start where you first met Fern. You were her consort right? How did that happen?" I asked. He sighed.
  "I wish you didn't ask me that. But I have to give you a little bit of my background before I tell you that. My mother was originally from Russia, but moved to Italy to be with my father after they met while he was on a business trip. My father left my mother after I was born. He died shortly after. My mother is still alive...somewhere in Italy the last time I checked. Michael and I were very close as we were growing up. It was just the two of us and my mother. We were never a normal family though. Everyone always thought Mother was odd...and at times she could be, but she was a normal human; we all were."
   "I never knew anything about the supernatural before I met Fern. Neither did Michael. She was the first supernatural person either of us had every met. I met her during my senior year of high school. She didn't go to public school like I did, but she was homeschooled by her father. We all know him today as Kind Alucard." He took in a shaky breath.
  "I met her at a bakery in the town that I lived in during that time. She spilt hot coffee all over me. Fern followed me home, almost begging for forgiveness. I told her that there was nothing to be sorry for, and that she shouldn't worry too much about it since everyone makes mistakes. She broke down crying right in front of me."
   "After that, I remember that we sat down on a bench and just talked. She told me about how everyone in her family expected too much from her, and that she had never met a person who could easily forgive people like I forgave her. She asked me if we could meet again, and of course I told her yes. I mean, I felt so sorry for her that I couldn't say no. Somehow she made me feel so happy though. It was probably because there was a beautiful girl who was my age talking to me. You know how that teenage hormonal crap works."
  "We met at that bench every week. We sat and talked for hours. One day, mother got worried and sent Michael out to find me. He was finished with high school and had just started college at the time. His style was really bad and he had this god awful hair cut too..."
  "Lorne..." I started to say.
  "I'm sorry, I'm getting side tracked. If you saw him then, you would know what I'm talking about. Consider yourselves blessed that you didn't have to see that."
"Anyway, Michael found me and as soon as he saw Fern, his whole body started shaking. He asked Fern if he had met her before. She said no. Then he dragged me home. Later that night he told me that he had a dream of someone who looked exactly like her, drinking the blood out of me. I laughed it off and told him that he was crazy and jealous because I had a "hot girl talking to me and he had no one because of his god awful haircut." As I remember it that especially made him angry. But I shouldn't have laughed it off like I did. That was our first introduction into the supernatural world."
  "I kept talking to Fern, regardless of what my brother saw, but Michael kept seeing her as well. I fell in love with her just as she and Michael fell in love with each other. That killed me more than anything, but Fern always had seen me as a good friend, so we still had our weekly talks on the bench whenever she could get out."
"Fern eventually told us that she was a fae, and that her father was putting her through intense training to become the next fae High Priestess. She told us all about the fae religion and their goddess. Fern said that her goddess spoke to her and told her that she needed to tell us about the supernatural world. And so she did. From that point on, I second guessed every person that I saw; I started looking for traces of anything supernatural in my every day life. I wanted to know everything about the world, now that I knew that their were supernatural elements in it."
"It was about this point in time that Fern started to form her theories about developing and expanding supernatural gifts. She had just figured out that she could erase the memories of others and it fueled her curiosity. As much as I would hate to admit it, she was the one who started the whole inner ability thing. What her people called "a gift from her goddess" she called "embracing her inner abilities" which is something that unfortunately continues to be the cause of all of our trouble as the years roll by, even now."
"Soon enough our knowledge of the supernatural got us into trouble, before that did. You see, Alucard wanted Fern to marry this fae man named Spencer who was an arrogant snob. Alucard didn't approve of the relationship between her and my brother, and decided that he would break her out of the relationship as soon as he could, but Fern hated Spencer so badly. So she tried to run away but she was caught by one of Alucard's guards. As a punishment for that, Alucard hired a vampire to turn Michael so that she couldn't mark him as a fae, as she had planned to do. Alucard was a bit theatrical back then, and he certainly wasn't the man back then that he is now. He mellowed out with old age."
"She was so enraged by her father's actions, and she wasn't going to let her father get away with hurting Michael. As much as I'd hate to admit it, Fern was more like her father than any of us has ever realized. She knew there wasn't anything she could do that would hurt him enough, except for if she left her father's world and never went back. And that was exactly what she intended to do. But she couldn't leave us behind since he would have taken his anger out on us if she had, so Fern took us along with her."
"Michael and I told our mother that we were going to study in the American colleges. We printed fake acceptance letters and everything. Fern stole a lot of money from Alucard's vault that he has in the fae district and we used it to build our lives in America."
"Alucard had received word about what Fern was going to do. But instead of killing us and forcing her to stay with him in the fae district, he approached me and asked if I would watch over her for him. Fern was stubborn when it came to Michael, and he and I both knew that Fern wasn't going to change her mind. I told him that I would; mainly because I felt sorry that he had to lose his daughter all because of who she loved. I also did it because I really didn't want to leave."
"I thought things would be fine if they just talked things out. But Fern told me that the thought of that alone was ridiculous. The way I saw it, if I talked to Alucard and let him know what was going on, if Fern ever wanted to make amends with her father, it would be easier for both of them. So I promised Alucard I would give him some insight and the three of us left for America."
"Once we got there, Fern started to grow weaker. She was still a young fae, so being away from the older fae had weakened her. The vampire part of her fae DNA soon took over and she needed blood. But we didn't know where to get it. I volunteered mine until we could find somewhere to get blood for her. That's when I pledged myself to be her consort. She wasn't officially the High Priestess, but she was the closest thing that the fae had to one so my oath to her stood firm."