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Adelaide was celebrating her sixteenth birthday when the old priest found her. He had approached her on the street walking home from school.

He seemed a benevolent clergyman asking for directions to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Then he began to speak with her about her school, her home, her family, questions that were less curiosity and more invasive. He became insistent in his questioning, wanting to know more about her, her friends, her life.

She tried to evade his pervasive probing as she dodged his hands reaching out to her, trying to touch her. He kept pressing with his questions and his grasping hands, becoming more and more infuriated each time she avoided him. It was when he began to accuse her of lewd acts of wantonness and how she needed to remain pure to fulfill her destiny that she broke away and ran home.

Her mother was frantically waiting for her, having seen all that had transpired in a mind flash that came to her unexpectedly, the strength of the vision forcing her to her knees. Adelaide melted into the warmth of her mother’s embrace, trying to hide from the eyes of covetous men. Adelaide saw the priest come around the corner with two men close on his heels.

Peeking out from her mother’s embrace she could see they were taking his directions.

Her father came running from the house but it was too late. When Adelaide was wrested from her mother’s embrace by one, her mother protested against her daughter being thrown into the arms of the priest, and then was stabbed in the chest by the other henchman. She slumped to the

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ground, a pool of bright red blood staining the sidewalk. Her father flew into a rage. He wrested the knife from the murderer and stabbed him in the heart.

He withdrew the dagger and spun to face the second assailant. He plunged the dagger into the chest of the second man, piercing his lung, leaving him dying on the pavement.

He turned, his eyes glowering at the priest. Hastily, the priest released Adelaide, who rushed to her mother’s side, crying for her to be all right. Her father turned on the priest, his fists pummeling the spongy body of the vigilante despite his attempts to shield his body from the powerful attack.

Only Adelaide’s wailing bought him back to reality. He let the priest fall to the ground and ran to his wife’s crumpled body. He gathered her lifeless form in his arms, her blood covering the front of his white shirt.

Adelaide’s father looked up with a murderous glint in his eyes. He searched for the priest to vent his rage at her senseless death, but the priest was gone. His eyes scanned left and right. The bodies of the two men lay sprawled on the ground. They were dead but it did little to appease his vengeful hate. His heart softened as he watched Adelaide weep softly at the loss of her mother. Bowing his head, he held his wife tightly against his body before laying her back upon the ground. Tenderly, he kissed her forehead.

He rose up, taking Adelaide in his arms and lifting her to her feet as he guided her away from the ghastly scene. She continued to weep until he put her in the passenger seat of his car, buckling her in. It was only when he sat behind the wheel of the car and started the engine that she snapped back from her daze. She began to struggle to release the belt, but her father placed his hand over hers, preventing her from unbuckling it.

“We have to leave her behind,” he tried to explain. “We need to get away. They’ll be back. For you.”

She wept softly as they drove off well into the night. They had up and left everything behind, heading over the George Washington Bridge, heading west. She had no idea where they were going, but she was too overwhelmed with her grief to ask her father. She had been warned every night by her mother,
Be watchful, for they are
coming for you
. She had never truly believed what her mother had told her. She thought it was paranoid delusion.

But her mother was dead.

12

Mia Bailey

The years had passed, and it still hurt. It hurt every time she and her father had to pick up and move. It hurt when she married in her senior year of high school to appease her dying father. She’d lost him less than a month later, and then lost her husband when she was four months pregnant. It hurt when she gave birth to her own daughter, knowing Richelle would never know her father. The craft she was taught, the powers that had lain dormant within her, came flooding back on the eve of Richelle’s birth. It came to her in a terrifying dream.

The
old priest, the one from her childhood, was there in the hospital.

Adelaide watched him as he stared at Richelle lying in her cradle in the
nursery. He watched her with an insidious gleam in his eye. He just strode
calmly into the hospital’s maternity ward. No one stopped him. After all,
who would think anything of a priest in a hospital?

He stood there and watched Richelle like a proud father, smiling and
waving at her through the glass. Adelaide shuddered at his seemingly caring
act, remembering only the demented behavior he had exhibited when she
was a small child. He then turned his head to Adelaide and smiled,
reminiscent of the final scene of
Psycho,
his grin full of silent malevolence
that reached in and took hold of her soul.

He didn’t approach her. He merely lowered his head as his eyes burned
into her mind. The smile fell from his face and was replaced with a
malicious grin. He glowered at her as he spoke. “You escaped me. But now,
she is mine.” He pointed to the nursery. Unable to resist, she followed his
gesture to see that Richelle’s cradle was empty. She screamed as the priest
laughed.

Every night for the past year she had dreamed of an empty cradle. And every night she would wake screaming, bathed in sweat.

It was that vision that kept driving her farther and farther from home.

Her parents were gone, her husband was gone. All she had left was Richelle.

She would move heaven and fight the fires of hell itself to keep her safe.

Whenever she felt the evil presence coming near, she would take Richelle and leave. The insurance from her late husband as well as her parents’

amassed wealth gave her the ability to disappear without a trace. Still, they seemed to find her. Then she would have to leave to start over again in a new city with a new name and new identity.

Of Night and Desire

13

In Detroit, she had redefined herself as a legal secretary for a major downtown law firm. She had worked for several partners in the prestigious firm. She made a decent salary and her hours afforded her ample time to be with her daughter, Richelle. They lived quietly, comfortably, at least until Adelaide would feel a foreboding sense of malice encroaching upon her as oppressive as a humid summer day.

As she did yesterday.

The feeling overcame her as she was preparing breakfast, her vision attacking all of her senses. The power behind her vision—the heat, the pain, the nausea—left her a quivering mass on the floor. Richelle ambled into the kitchen to find her mother holding her head, frying pan upturned with the morning’s scrambled eggs lying on the floor and the dog happily licking them up. Richelle rushed to her mother, but Adelaide waved it off as a simple accident and bustled her off to school.

However, it wasn’t an accident. She had seen the future in great clarity.

Her future. And she was not afraid, at least not for herself. For Richelle.

After she sent her to school, she took the day off from work. There was a lot to do in such a short time. When Richelle returned from school, they had an early supper and went to bed. They needed the sleep before leaving this morning.

Adelaide knew Richelle didn’t want to leave. She had already moved so many times in her young life. It seemed like whenever she trusted enough to make friends, that would be the time they would have to leave. But this time was different for both of them. Richelle, with her innate sense, seemed to understand that but was reluctant to leave. Adelaide didn’t have the luxury of naivety. She knew the harsh realities of life and was determined to shelter Richelle from them, for as long as she could.

“Hurry, Richelle, hurry!”

“But, Momma, I don’t wanna go.”

Eight-year-old Richelle Sommers held tightly onto her mother’s hand as she was pulled through the streets of a northwest suburb of Detroit. It was early, the morning stars just starting to fade from the evening sky. There were no people on the streets, just the faint sounds of a nearby freeway with the few nighttime travelers that were speeding along.

14

Mia Bailey

“Richelle, please, we need to get away from here as fast as we can.”

Her voice was unsympathetic to her daughter’s plea, but rather held a quiet resolve.

“Why, Momma? Why do we have to leave?” Richelle wailed, crying softly. Part of her understood the urgency to escape. But she was still a child, unable to cope with the upheaval or the pain of leaving everything behind.

“They’ve come back, baby. We have to get away before they find us,”

she cooed as she gripped her daughter’s hand tighter and brought it to her waist in a reassuring gesture. She continued hurrying down the street and had turned the corner when a tall figure stepped out from the shadows, blocking the sidewalk between Adelaide and her car. She stopped short, shielding Richelle with her body as she took two steps back. She quickly turned on her heels and went in the opposite direction, but another figure, slightly taller, stepped out from behind a row of tall hedges.

She stopped short again as her heart, on the verge of exploding, began to pound in her chest. She looked back to see the first figure walking toward them, his heels clicking on the sidewalk like a time bomb. She turned to see the other figure stalking toward them, trapping Richelle and herself between the two of them. She quickly scanned her surroundings, looking for a means of escape. She grabbed Richelle’s hand and ran across the street. As she reached the sidewalk,
he
stepped out from the shadows.

His ghostly white skin all but shone under the dimming streetlight. His sunk in at his cheeks, made his eyes protrude, bulging from their sockets and shooting daggers at her. His scraggly green-gray hair stuck out from under the brim of his minister’s hat. He smiled at her, his crooked teeth stained yellow with age. He looked ancient and decrepit. She had no idea how old he was, but her family had been running from him for nearly thirty years.

She felt a chilling tingle in her spine as he spoke.

“I’ve come for her.”

* * * *

Valya opened his mind to the city. Dawn was approaching, and he
needed to know. He had felt an impending sense of doom since rising with
the moon. He could feel destiny calling to him, drawing him into the night.

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15

The oppressive smell of death permeated the air and surrounded him. He
couldn’t pinpoint where the danger was coming from, but he could feel that
there was no escaping it.

Fate had chosen a thread from the tapestry of life.

There would be a death tonight.

Up till now, it had not happened. But it was near.

He opened his mind to the night, absorbing the sounds, the smells, the
sight into his dark soul. He had walked the Earth for several hundred years.

He had seen many things, and had done much evil. He was known as The
Guardian, a hunter seeking out those who preyed on the suffering of others
to feed the dark hunger devouring their spirit. Each rendered judgment was
another stain on his soul, stripping the color from his world.

Without color, all he could see was the black and white in the world
around him. There was good and evil, right and wrong, black and white.

Compassion had slowly seeped from his body and faded away as the hues of
the spectrum faded from his vision. There was no compassion, no sympathy,
no empathy, no…love. He had searched for a hundred years, longing to find
his life mate. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait for her. He
could already feel the pull toward the darkness.

He could hear the voices of the others who had gone before him. The
Destroyers. He could hear them whisper on the night wind to forsake his
search and join them. He listened to the voices as they tried to entice him
from the light. He listened to their persuasive arguments and the promise of
power and wealth. He had followed the whispers, finding The Destroyers
and ending their misery.

Yet there was another voice in the night, calling to him and beckoning
him to remain steadfast. Although unknown to him, ancient wisdom shared
among Immortals declared it was his life mate’s spirit calling to him,
leading him to her.

He yearned to follow the soft and lilting alto, which more than spoke to
him but sang in its melodic tone. Each night, it seemed to grow softer, while
the voices of The Destroyers became more insistent. It was harder to hear
her, to be soothed by the calming resonance.

He didn’t know how many more nights he could stay strong and refuse
the enticements of the whispers. He didn’t know how many more nights he
could bear to be alone, wandering the streets of the city, searching for love

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Mia Bailey

and finding only evil. As a Guardian, it was his purpose to dispose of the
evil that plagued humanity and his people. He was growing weary. Without
love, he sought the peace of eternal night, The Final Sacrifice.

The stars were fading from the night sky, and the ill-omened sense of
boding evil had not dissipated. He reached deeper into the night, letting his
mind wander through the city, trying to sense what destiny had fated for him
this evening. It was difficult to get through the minds of the city dwellers.