Weak from blood loss, Sylvie had just found enough energy to stand and turn to face her spirit elders when their image blinked dark and cloudy. “No.” Sylvie screamed and watched the gentle hands turn into threads of despair that grew up from the gray ground with the innate feeling of her demon, Kigatilik. Lacking the blood to transform into any shape that could possibly free her, Sylvie desperately used the small shield that her true elders offered and swung it in arcs in an effort to break the strengthening strands.

  “Desperation leads to panic, panic leads to fear. Fear leads to regret.” Kigatilik ughed and pulsed a deeper and now shinier bck. “All the better. Fight us, the more you fight the more fvorful you become, Taini.” He jerked the shield from Sylvie’s hand. “Useless thing.”

  Deep inside, Sylvie knew that the shield would be pointless since all of the battle was taking pce down within the recesses of her own body. While she might certainly be in Oh’lidara, it was up to her to find the answer like she’d done many times before. Unlike other times, where she was in complete control of their battle, Sylvie could feel the influence of Enas behind what was happening. It was a matter of figuring out how to dey enough to find an answer.

  “You want a more formal possession?” Kigatilik taunted as his eyes kept their hateful gaze on the vampire. “Oh, I will happily oblige and take you over as you have witnessed for weeks now.” Kigatilik slithered away from Sylvie, drawing his form from around Sylvie’s legs. “Too easy.” He whispered, his voice dripping with bitterness and hostility. He floated right to Sylvie’s face and grabbed her by the neck, “Understand the panic and power.” Kigatilik twisted his cloudlike head in a complete circle, keeping his eyes firmly in pce. “All vampires.” He ughed, “All of them, at the same time. Every dark demon turned at the same time. A line of hate-fueled power all going back to the source. Every…single vampire.” Kigatilik ughed and began a series of slices along Sylvie’s cheeks to peel away her body symbolically yer by yer.

  While she expected pain to erupt through her body, Sylvie didn’t consciously feel anything. She knew what Kigatilik was doing, but there was nothing associated with the event. Ignoring the slow stripping away of her undead frame, Sylvie looked and listened to herself for any possible answer. Sylvie knew something was missing, something important, something vital but it was just out of reach and the only words she could hear belonged to Kigatilik.

  -There’s something in what he’s saying. I feel it.-

  Her mind flooded with images of every vampire struggling as she was, trying in vain to beat back and cage the animal that was slowly devouring their very essence.

  -Every vampire?-

  Sylvie kept asking herself and ultimately her true feelings broke through the spectral haze that Kigatilik had carefully woven into the battle that he’d tried to win. It was as though a damn broke and music filled her ears, light brightened her darkness, and a single well-known set of hands touched her body giving her life back to her. Visions of their journey. Chocote eyes that melted away and turned as bright as the sun itself. A myriad of touches against her cheeks and joy filling her soul. Love opened and was remembered with shared dances and spins to music, and lost looks into one another’s eyes. A welcome and image of devoted love appeared directly in Sylvie’s moonsight.

  Eclipse. An annur eclipse, a rare celestial event. Sun, Moon, and Earth in that order. Sunrays surrounded the edges of the moon as though hugging the lunar body and providing its own energy to enhance their combined beauty and devotion for a few minutes.

  -Casey.-

  Sylvie didn’t really need to say her partner’s name in her head, but she wanted to revel in her warm name and kiss every letter with her mind as she repeated ‘C-A-S-E-Y’. Mere seconds into the mindful imagined kisses, Sylvie felt a banced rush of blood fuel her body. Pain and panic were repced by passion and promise. A thousand promises and a thousand moments of passion. Love nestled deep within her spirit and Sylvie held open her hand and smiled as a little cage formed from the gray cy from Oh’lidcara’s battle-torn ndscape and Sylvie took control of her demon as she always had. “Not today, Kigatilik.”

  Anger. Insatiable hate. Ever-flowing chaos. Amid a swirl of emotions, Sylvie swiftly opened her full moon eyes and immediately spotted Casey looking down with her golden-sun orbs bearing down their full weight of love and joy, accompanied by the warmest grin that she’d ever seen. Just as the eclipse melted away the lies that had surrounded the small vision and battle Sylvie had, Casey’s heavenly brightness soothed the anguished feelings that were likely still feeding Archaios Enas. “Starlight, sun bright, all I see is my love tonight.” Sylvie whispered low enough that only Casey could hear the confession.

  “Oh Taini..” Casey almost shouted, but refrained and settled for a hidden kiss on Sylvie’s cheeks. “Your back..” She rained another series of kisses across Sylvie’s visage. “We all fell at the same time. I couldn’t move because of the sheer amount of emotional turmoil that the others had…” She paused, “...I am so sorry..” Casey grabbed Sylvie tight. “Whatever you all were fighting was … terrible. All of your worst-”

  “Demons.” Sylvie pced her index finger over Casey’s plump lips. “Something that you weren’t born with, Casey.” Sylvie cooed and grasped her lover’s hand. “You are all of our sunlight this Halloween.” Although her undead body was unphased by the sudden absence of warmth, Sylvie did feel the ground harden and turn to ice beneath her. A little shift away from Casey’s intense and passion-filled eyes brought Sylvie face-to-face with Archaios Enas.

  A neutral look shone in the white-specter’s red eyes as she quietly watched the spidery tendrils that had encompassed both Sylvie and Casey disappear. “Unexpected. A vampire without one of my beloved.” Enas floated closer to the couple. “Everything is as the book foretold, but it didn’t mention that I would have a blood-shell of my own to possess without having that shell rot away.” Archaios Enas tilted her head to the side and her bck-set eyes never moved. “A shell just for me. How lovely.” Enas looked away and watched as a few shadewraiths burst free of a few vampires that had fallen from the trees in their bat forms, having lost the internal battle that she’d started in all of them with her wail. “Yes, my beloved. Come to me, Archaios Enas will preserve your hostility until the song has ended.” With the command given, all of the new shadewraiths turned into small bck balls and traveled the length of the tendrils that sucked the anguish from the helpless vampires just before they turned to dust.