Set five years after the events of 'Daughter of Darkness', the ruling family of Regnum Infernale receive a peculiar visitation from their distant past. The visitors urge them to undergo a dangerous magical feat that could change their world forever...
It has been four years since I was found and came under your wings at the Hawthorn School for Exceptional Young Men. I failed to write to you, even though I had sent for all of my belongings, courtesy of John Vanderbilt, to be brought back to my home not far in the suburbs of Los Angeles where I lived before all of that... before meeting my soul mate, Melanie DeLongpre-Cross.
On the fateful night of August 23, 2015, I ran away into the night with her. John thought I'd gone mad when I went into the room we shared during our stay in New Orleans to pack my things, but bid me farewell anyways. I did not expect him to be the kind of man to hug, but he hugged me. I last saw him when he dropped all of my luggage off. I thanked him, and he was on his way. I was Alpha, but did not care any less of this as long as I had my Queen by my side. Being a student meant I was stepping on a stone that led me to my destiny.
Melanie and I were happy up until a year ago. We were married three years. We settled in my home after we went to a justice to get married. We had shared such passion that I never knew before. We had travelled – to my home city of London (my family liked her), to her part of Virginia (needless to say, her parents did not like me, nor did they like that we married without the ceremony)...Rome, Athens (she'd been there before and she liked it enough for me to take her there again), Paris... Madrid, Tokyo... once to Bora-Bora and Hawaii. She'd unfortunately lost two of our would-be children until we had a positive pregnancy test in the autumn of 2016. I was thrilled to have a little prince or princess.
I took care of her when she was with child – I provided with two jobs. I gave music lessons and worked in a library. Yet there was something...wonky... about her pregnancy. Within two months, she had grown full-term. We went to the doctor for an ultrasound, and she near-fainted. Melanie could not see the screen, but I could. It shocked me, chilled me to the bare bones... I saw something... inhuman. It was clawing against something, chewing on what looked to be another baby previously undetected in her womb. I heard the doctor even quit her job. I ended up finding her, and she wanted to meetwith me in a Catholic Church, where she felt safe enough... she told me she hadquit because the baby resembled a demon and it frightened her; so much so, that she became a born-again Christian. The giveaway to her was the sight of cloven hooves. A demon, of all things. In what Universe? She'd gone mad, I thought.
Needless to say, Melanie gave birth a month later. It pained me to see her in agony. She nearly died. She lost so much blood. I had to use vitalum vitalis to give her any chance of survival, and she made a full recovery. I was allowed to hold my child, a son, after he was cleaned up and examined. However... the baby was human. Fully human. Yet... I felt this strange feeling of dread. I looked up. Melanie had been asleep, and in the corner toward her left side in the hospital room, I could see this cloaked figure in black with a white, wrinkled face. That was the start of my madness.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
