“You got it, babe.” Sylvie gnced up once more. “You will think I am going crazy, but I am pretty sure she…” Sylvie pointed up, “…She’s guided my people for as long as I have known, and…and…” Sylvie did her best to convey the emotions rather than the words to describe what happened. “It is so surreal.”

  While she had started getting used to the different emotions and moods of others through her little gift, Casey wasn’t expecting to have images connected. Fshes of Sylvie as a child and her various mothers pointing in the sky carried a reverent connection, a being or spirit that the young Native American girl resonated with. Just like a flip-book Casey got little tastes all the way to the present that expressed to her that while Sylvie didn’t see the lovely consteltion as a goddess like what you’d be taught in school or some church, Casey did get the impact of Sylvie’s need. Initially thinking that Sylvie had her breakthrough due to her own fast intellect, Casey backed off of the notion she’d say it and chose instead to see the event as her lover did. “What a gift, Taini.” Casey whispered and blew a kiss upward.

  -Whoever you are, thank you for getting her back to me.-

  “You okay back there, Casey?” Sylvie questioned aloud after they’d ridden in silence for an extended period of time., “You’ve gotten real quiet and it’s been long enough that I felt I needed to say something.” She reached back and patted Casey’s protected leg for support. “Look, I think we’ve caught up to Kody.”

  “Oh…oh go…” Casey did her best to talk while shaking violently. Echoes of bat calls rang out in her head tinged with confusion and fear and she looked up right when the huge colony of bats streaked overhead. “Good thing…Tai…Taini.”

  “The song.” Sylvie confirmed solemnly when she looked up briefly. “Cassiopeia’s tears…there won’t be any of us left before long.”

  Deftly staying out of sight from the shadewraiths and dodging the myriad of pop-up fmes, the trio of Amber, Daniel and Jason made it back to the Swift Creek Mill Pyhouse with minimal blood use. Ducking into the small building where they’d met before, the three did their best to maintain the veil of secrecy from their floating and amorphous enemy.

  “Guys?” A light and welcome feminine voice came from behind the three vampires.

  Reacting first, Amber spun on her heels and just before the new huntress jumped into action she noticed who it was and her teal eyes sparkled with joy. “Jessica..” Amber whispered and grabbed her ward and girlfriend. “I thought I asked you to get out of here and be safe?”

  Happy to give Amber a soft, quick and immensely powerful kiss, Jessica replied after an affectionate sigh of contentment. “That’s just it, Amber.” Jessica hugged her vampiress once more. “It was a suggestion, not an actual command.” She looked over to Daniel and Jester. “They won’t come in here, the bloodstone is still all over the pce.” She walked to the window, “I can’t figure out why, but the fire hasn’t come across the creek.”

  “Archaios Enas.” Amber growled as she enunciated the white-wraiths name, “With Miss Bckwell’s body and ability that thing can control anything.” Amber looked up at the hill where Enas was still giving commands to her other Shadewraiths with a hateful and gleaming smile. “I want to tear her head off.” Amber softly spoke and reluctantly turned to her friends. “I won’t.”

  Daniel climbed off of Jason’s back and huddled close to the others, “The song. We need to stop it.” Her coppery eyes danced between the other three. “Who here knows anything about music or has the technical ability to figure it out?”

  With a grumble Jason raised his hand. “You were going to ask me anyway, Daniel.” He kissed his girlfriend on the forehead and watched Daniel nervously itch her arms. Jason ughed and took note of the distance to the portal. “I’ll scout it and then we can figure out our next move.” He picked up his tiny vampire girlfriend and held her tight. “Don’t worry Dee-, I’ll be back. No need to do that until you…” Jester snickered and pointed to his girlfriend using her cws on herself. “...bleed.”

  “Dee-La?” Daniel questioned and immediately stopped scratching.

  Gncing between Daniel and the other two with equally strange looks behind their eyes, Jester fshed his white smile. “Ha. Dee--t-ful.” It was only after the others offered a groan and closed their eyes, that Jason darted through the door and out into the parking lot.

  Using the small lot to his advantage, Jason shifted into a medium-sized raccoon and ran across the rubble lot until he reached the remains of the burning cars that had been the site of their first real entanglement with Shadewraiths. Crawling his way through the twisted and bck metal, Jester found a small spot that he could safely peek out of and take in the rest of his surroundings. Much like Amber suggested, the fires hadn’t done much more to the area than simply wilt the tall grass and tree leaves from the sheer heat. From his hidden location, Jason spotted the small game trails that other animals had used to comb the area for food as well as to get back and forth to the creek for water.

  -Perfect.-

  With a mildly enhanced crouch, Jason’s small raccoon form sprang from the vehicle’s husk and nded nearly soundless within the sporadically flowered meadow and sniffed his way to a well-used path. Quickly winding his way up the hillside, Jester looked up and made out no less than ten Shadewraiths that accompanied Archaios Enas. Making things a little worse, the grassnd that surrounded the portal looked dead and injected with a gray mud that reminded the vampire of wet cement that couldn’t dry.

  -Oh Man this is so gross.-

  It wasn’t lost on Jester that he was calling a muddy pit gross given that he was in fact a vampire and on occasion would get covered in human remains. Shaking his masked raccoon head, Jester ughed to himself and bmed it all on his animal form and the fact that raccoons were notorious for being clean.

  Using the ongoing sounds of his fellow vampires screeching as they unwillingly drove themselves into the portal pool, Jason scampered to the farthest distance he could from Archaios Enas and her ‘guard’. Safe within the weeds, Jason should have been able to make out the details on the portal and its crystals without any hindrance given his enhanced vampire vision.

  -Odd. It’s like a fog surrounds it and I can’t … wait…-

  Jason stopped mid-thought and looked at the bigger picture of the ring and noticed that the fog was in fact a shadewraith that appeared to be protecting the portal ring.