Semua Bab Leesa's Advent: Bab 191 - Bab 200

The first thing Leesa did after Rave dropped her off at her dorm was head for the showers. She was anxious to see her friends, especially Cali, but that was going to have to wait for a bit. Getting cleaned up—and washing her hair, especially—was a bigger priority.She had learned a lot about volkaanes staying with Rave for the past three days. One of the things she learned was that volkaanes didn’t bathe. They didn’t need to. Their inner fire kept germs and other bacteria at bay, and their heat dissolved things like mud and grease. If they got dirty with something more stubborn, they simply wet a cloth, warmed it with their inner heat, and wiped the spot clean. Their clothes seldom needed washing, either. She thought about Dominic, who owned only one set of clothes, but they were always fresh and clean. She wondered if that particular wizard’s trick was somewhere in her book of magic—while it wouldn’t be of much use for battling evil

It was nearly midnight when Leesa finally closed her magic book. She had read the section on dreams several times and discovered that the dream power was among the most complex and least understood of all waziri powers. Complete control over dreams was beyond even the most skillful of wizards—which she certainly was not.Still, she had shown ability in this area even before she realized she possessed magic, having had four dreams that seemed to have come at least partially true. Those visions had arisen on their own and had been completely beyond her control or understanding at the time, but they certainly demonstrated she possessed some power in the dream realm. Now if she could just learn to harness it a bit.There were lots of details in the book—more than she could possibly digest in just one evening of reading—but she thought she had gotten a good start on the basics.It seemed there were two basic parts to controlling dreams. The first wa

Forty some miles to the south and east of where Leesa finally closed her book of magic, Kristi Brolen could not believe how different everything had suddenly become. Just a little while ago, she had been lying on her back, for who knows how long, unable to move anything more than her eyes and eyelids. All she could see were branches and the sky directly above her. The only thing she could remember hearing during all that time was the silver-haired woman’s voice. And her sense of smell had been even more useless.Now here she was, racing through the trees at impossible speeds with seemingly no effort at all. She ran half a step behind Marcio, with Dara and Genevieve following behind. Her senses, so limited for so long, had heightened to a degree that was unimaginable. She knew it was night—she had never seen so many stars in the sky—but she could see details that previously would have been invisible to her on even the brightest of days. Her hearing had also b

The four vampires headed back toward their cavern. With several hours left before dawn, they were in no particular hurry, especially Kristi and Marcio, who trotted side by side. Dara and Genevieve were not in any rush to leave the cool, fresh open air either, so they did not begrudge the slow pace of their companions.Eventually, with less than an hour before the gray fingers of dawn began to paint the eastern horizon, they arrived near the entrance to their sanctuary. Marcio drew to a halt a few hundred feet from the opening, out of sight of anyone who might be watching from inside. The others stopped beside him.“We’re here,” he told Kristi. “The entrance to our cavern is just ahead.”“You live underground?” Kristi asked, surprised.Genevieve grinned. “Where did you think we lived, in some beautiful glass house in the middle of the woods? You’ve been watching too many movies.”“I, uh, hadn&r

The next week passed fairly uneventfully, for which Leesa was profoundly grateful. She practiced her magic every evening, caught up on her schoolwork, and even managed to somehow score an A on a history test, despite the tumultuous weekend and missed class time of the previous week. Without Dominic to help her—and without the extra magic from underground in the volkaane settlement—her progress with her magic was slow. But at least it was steady.The zombie story in Ohio had died down, at least on the television news. It was still all over the internet, of course. The bodies had been spirited away to a hidden government research lab, but that didn’t stop the bloggers and conspiracy people from posting their opinions. The most popular explanation for the creatures seemed to be secret medical experiments gone awry. Other theories included a toxic waste spill, a terrorist attack, aliens from outer space, a plague of some kind, and even global warming, though Lee