It was nearly two o' clock when Sapphira arrived at Talera's house. Her parents were always happy to see her. They liked to see Talera associating with a Witch family who were closely descended from the Harmans. She walked quickly up the long gravel drive which led to the immaculate white mansion in which the Bluebells lived. It would be good to see Talera again, Sapphira had not seen her since the Circle Daybreak meeting last month. The door was a dark blue, the same colour as a bluebell, which had been done on purpose. Sapphira skirted this door however and went down the side of the house to a door painted with a black dahlia. The front door was for the humans, or vermin (as a lot of Night Worlders called them), and the side door for those in the Night World. this arrangement worked quite well, especially if you were doing something you did not want humans to see (this is very important for Vampires, for obvious reasons!)
     Talera was there at the side door to meet her. Sapphira had never needed to inform Talera that she was coming round. As a Witch, Talera knew instantly and was always waiting for her when she arrived. "You wanted to talk to me about something?" Talera asked, her clear grey eyes looked at Sapphira from under her waves of auburn hair. Her face had a very delicate bone structure and her stature was slight. She seemed to be very fragile and was often mistaken for a child. Her beauty was astonishing, a human with pale skin, grey eyes, and auburn hair would have probably been considered ugly, but Talera carried it off with her grace and delicate bone structure.
     "I want to ask you about a Vampire called Ebony Blackthorn. Do you know him or know of him? I met him last night and I would like to find out more about him as he was a real mystery."
     "Ebony Blackthorn! A nineteen year old lamia Vampire with a known dislike of all humans and most other Night Worlders apart from Vampires. Rumour has it that he used to be the leader of a Night World gang. I would keep away from that one if I were you Sapphira. He is now totally under the thumb of Hunter Redfern and by all accounts, he isn't a very nice guy. Anyway he isn't your type!"
     "I know, he just struck me as unusual and I wanted to learn more about him. It's not as though we're soulmates or anything!" Something inside Sapphira snapped in recignition. 'It couldn't be? Could it? No, not him! The other half she had been waiting for forever couldn't be one of Hunter's spies! It couldn't be!' She quickly hid her feelings inside, it wouldn't do for Talera to see what she suspected about Ebony.
     Talera flashed her a big smile at that comment. they both had long conversations about finding their soulmates. Since they were in Circle Daybreak, they knew exactly what it would mean, and Sapphira know knew she had found hers. But she didn't want it! "Well while you're here, why don't we work on a way to find ours? After all, just about everyone else in the Night World had one now, even that Vampire, Quinn!"
     Sapphira nodded, she couldn't think of anything else to do. She and Talera went indoors. The whole situation was now resolved in Sapphira's mind. Ebony Blackthorn was an enemy of Circle Daybreak if he was associated with Hunter Redfern. Therefore she would forget that he ever existed, even if he was her soulmate and find herself a nice human or a Witch to go out with, after all, Ebony really wasn't her type!

     In another part of town, someone was having more trouble forgetting that encounter. Ebony Blackthorn walked down Rose Street in a daze. He kept seeing that girl's sapphire blue eyes looking at him all day. Why hadn't he stayed to learn her name? Okay, so he was a Vampire, and she was a Witch and this whole situation was crazy, and there was no way that she was his soulmate! But he just couldn't forget about her. Last night was supposed to have been his last night in town, but she had interfered with all of that! He was to report back to Hunter on the whole Circle Daybreak thing.
     Human soulmates! How stupid, they were just vermin and not worthy of being anything other than lunch! Okay, so maybe he didn't kill them anymore out of pity, but he certainly felt that they were inferior to the Night Worlders. Witches were lower than Vampires certainly, after all, they had started this whole Circle Daybreak thing in the first place! Look where that had got them, burned at the stake and lots of other unpleasant ways of dying! He would give humans something, they were inventive with their ways of killing people!
     No self-respecting Vampire would be so stupid as to go along with it! Until recently that was. Now there were rumours that Ash Redfern and Quinn were in Circle Daybreak and both had human soulmates! Hunter was right that such a situation could not be allowed to continue. Now if he could only get blue eyes out of his head he could do something useful about it!
     He stopped suddenly. The signpost had caught his eye. It read 'Rose Street' and something from last night flashed through his mind... sapphire eyes, Rose Street... Sapphira Rosewood! Her name was Sapphira Rosewood! He had caught it when she had yelled down the road, but he hadn't been paying enough attention to hear properly. Another memory hit him then, of reading that name on a list of suspected Daybreakers! Somehow, that didn't matter to him, all he knew was that he must find her and soon. He needed her in a way he had never felt before. No matter what his head told him about keeping away from Witches and how stupid the whole soulmate thing was his soul and heart over rode every sensible part of his mind. He knew that he had to find her before Hunter decided to act against Circle Daybreak, if he did then nothing on earth could save her from Night World law, not even him!

     Hunter Redfern sat at his desk. He was leafing through several reports. They were reports on Circle Daybreak. He needed to make an example of some of them. Not those important enough to be seen as martyrs, but that have been with the Circle long enough to make an impact. He ached to stake Quinn, or Ash perhaps, but they were not low-key enough to make the right impact. He entered the names of those who fitted this category into the computer in front of him and set the program to choose three names at random from the list. They would be his examples and would hopefully help curb this disease that was spreading through the Night World like a plague.
     A beep from the machine told him that the selections had been made. The screen displayed:

A broad smile spread across Hunter's face. These three would be made an example of at the Night World Coucil meeting after the Samhain celebrations. The timing would be perfect and this would be the beginning of the end for Circle Daybreak.

to be continued!!!!!!!!!!!

Part 3

Stories Inspired by

My Fan Fiction

Index