She padded back to the bathroom and set the book down on the tub ledge. Maybe she would just scan through it. It couldn’t hurt. She took off her housecoat and slid into the tub, letting the hot water soothe her aching muscles, and closed her eyes for a few seconds. After a few calming strawberry filled breaths, she reached for the book, holding it up, well away from the water and started to read.

What you are about to read is an overview of what you can expect before and after you are found. I speak from experience and can guarantee that you will be found. It may be in this lifetime or in one to follow, but you should know it is inevitable. You have been marked by a vampire’s soul. The journey you are about to embark on will not be easy. At times, you may be blinded by love or overtaken by hatred.

From this point on you are no longer the master of your destiny. It is imperative for you to forget the notion that you have the power to control your own fate. Your path has been chosen for you and whether you like it or not always remember you canNOT run from destiny.

That’s not very encouraging, she thought, rereading the warning. She considered putting the book down and not going on. If it started out like this, it couldn’t possibly get any better, but curiosity got the best of her and she kept reading.

A Brief History of the Mark

The first thing you should know is that soulmates are real. They are not just some romantic idea. We are made for one person and one person alone.

When it comes to souls, the alchemists were close to the truth. They believed that we are not born with a soul but only with sparks of spirituality and our purpose in this life and every life to follow is to find our souls. This is not entirely true. Our purpose is not to find our soul but to find the missing half. Our twin.

Since the beginning of time, souls have been divided equally amongst men and women. The theory is that we are destined to spend our lives searching for our other half, over countless reincarnations, in hopes to become one again.

With that bombshell, Amelia wondered how much weirder this can all get. Reincarnation wasn’t possible. Of that, she was certain. She was more of a “big bang theory” kind of girl. She looked for the scientific explanation, and reincarnation was, without a doubt, not it. Halfhearted, or at least that’s what she tried to tell herself, she read on.

The second and probably most important thing you need to know is that vampires do exist. The sooner you accept this, the better off you will be.

As for the mark, I have found records of it going back at least a thousand years. Throughout time, the stories have been altered, but they all hold a similar tale of a witch finding her lover dead—drained of blood by a vampire.

Heartbroken over her loss, the witch wanted to avenge her lover’s death, so she stripped all vampires of their souls, casting them out to wander the universe. Once the souls were taken, she then cursed the vampires with an eternity of emptiness and condemned them to always be searching but in the end never able to find their souls.

What the witch did not consider is that nature always finds a way to maintain the balance between good and evil. This curse shifted the natural balance by creating a breed of soulless, bloodsucking monsters.

To rectify this disturbance, nature took over, gathering the lost souls and joining them with their human twins. The humans were then marked with the soul’s symbol, giving the vampires a chance to find their souls. Through the mark, a bond formed between the vampire and their soulmate allowing them to keep in touch with their humanity.

In the pages to come, you will learn the stories of two individuals who wore the mark. By no means do we claim to be experts on this subject. We can only hope that our stories will help others with the trials and tribulations that are to come. Learn from our choices and let them act as a guide on your journey.

Amelia closed the book and let it drop to the floor. She had Mitchell’s soul? How was that even possible? She guessed it explained the connection, but was it just his soul that was entwined with hers or was it more? Was he also her true love? That’s what a soulmate was, wasn’t it? The questions burned through her brain, swirling around in a whirlwind of puzzlement. The hunger for knowledge, to learn the unknown was taking control of her and she knew she just had to keep reading. She had to know more. What was happening to her? What was happening to him? What more was to come?

She pulled the plug on the tub, dried off quickly, pulled on her pajamas and took the book back out to her room. After snuggling up in a cozy blanket on the comfy chair, she dove back into the reading.

It was deeply engaging, and if she hadn’t seen with her own eyes that vampires were real, it would have been a great story. But with her newfound knowledge, it all seemed just too real as she flipped the pages, reading as fast as her mind could absorb the words.

The dreams are not really dreams. It took me a long time to figure this out. My soulmate enlightened me after years of questions. Your vampire has many supernatural powers, one of which is mind control. With your link, they are able to not only control your mind but your spirit and soul. They can pull your spirit out of your body at will and bring you to them. This is why the dreams seem real. They are. You are really there.

Huh. Made sense, Amelia had seen Luke do some kind of mind, brainwashing thing on Tyler. What had he called it? Persuasion. And she had always thought that the dreams had felt like real life. Amelia tried to figure out the science behind it but only hit a bunch of brick walls. She didn’t want to admit it, because, well, it was crazy, but the only explanation was magic.

He bit me today, only after I asked him to. He is scared that I will regret it but I know I never will. I have never been so close to another. He loves me, of this I am sure. I can feel everything he feels, pulsing through me like waves of radiant light. We can speak without words now, communicating with our thoughts. Even when he is not at my side, I know that he is out there, thinking of me and wishing we were together. He truly is my soulmate and I thank the stars above that destiny has brought us together at last.

Amelia traced the words lightly with her finger. Maybe it wasn’t all bad. She tried to imagine what it would be like with Mitchell. Could she let herself forget the monster she had seen? The betrayal? The deceit? If she could, then maybe, just maybe, they could be… happy. As if her heart and soul knew what she was thinking, she felt a jerk, rough and forceful, around her heart that almost pulled her off the chair, compelling her to run to him. She took a few deep breaths, and pushed herself to read on, not wanting to admit that that’s exactly what she wanted to do. The stupid starry-eyed ideas were quickly extinguished as she continued.

You must watch out for the bite. It will ruin you and it will only cause you a great deal of pain. I think she did it to me to try to help me accept her. I can see that now but when it happened, it only made me hate her more. It strengthened the link between us and my thoughts, my decisions, everything that made me who I was, were no longer in my control. I spent most of my days writhing in excruciating pain. Any decision that I made that she did not condone caused the pain, burning from the inside out, collapsing my lungs so I could not breathe. She could not stop it and at the time, I believe she did not want to. They are all monsters first and foremost…

****

Amelia was startled awake. There was a noise… the soft click of her bedroom door. She bolted up to her feet, letting the book and blanket fall to the floor with a dull sounding thud. Her eyes were fuzzy, still half-asleep and she blinked a few times to clear the sleepy haze.

Eric, green hair standing up (he obviously hadn’t bothered to brush it) was standing at the door dressed in gray jogging pants and a sweater, grinning at her.

Amelia groaned, and plopped back down into her chair. “Now what?” she snapped, annoyed that he was back again. Hadn’t he just left like an hour or two ago?

“Get dressed,” he said, not bothered by her tone or her glare. “Time for your morning run. No one wants to deal with grumpy Millie today.”

She stared at him blankly for a few moments and when he just laughed at her, she glanced over at the window. The sun was just starting to peak over the tree line in a soft, orange glow. She looked at the clock: 6:45. No wonder her bones hurt and muscles felt so stiff. She had slept sitting up in a chair all night.

Eric snapped his fingers and tapped his foot on the floor. “Come on, Millie. Everyone will be up soon so if you want to go you need to go now before his highness,” he paused to give a dramatic eye roll and bow that could have given Angelle a run for her money, “wakes up and tries to forbid exercise because it’s dangerous.”

Despite her morning grumpiness, Amelia laughed. That was the one good thing about Eric. He could always make her laugh. “I’ll be ready in a minute.” She jumped up, grabbed a pair of light blue jogging pants, a t-shirt, and a matching light blue hoodie and dashed into the bathroom to change.

In seconds, she was ready, shoes on, hair retied into a loose bun—so loose that it would probably fall out, but the lump on her head was still throbbing and the pressure stung—and she was padding her way across the room to the door. “Go out the patio doors,” Eric said, stopping her just before she went out into the hallway. “Someone’s moving upstairs.” He glanced up at the ceiling, looking as if he was trying to pinpoint exactly who it was. Amelia also looked up but she couldn’t hear anything. Maybe they really did have super hearing powers, she thought and was about to ask when he continued. “We need to sneak out so keep quiet.” He gave her a wicked smile. “And try not to think about where we’re going. If he’s paying attention, he’ll know.”

Amelia giggled and followed Eric out the back. They tiptoed down the steps of the terrace and slithered around the house, keeping close to it, out of sight of the windows. She focused her mind by reciting over and over the table of elements in the hopes that if Mitchell started to listen into her thoughts, he would assume she was studying.

When they made it to the front, all her excitement vanished. She hadn’t realized how open it was; a good twenty-five feet of wide-open lawn stretched out in front of her. If they tried to sneak across it, they would be seen for sure. She just knew it.