Semua Bab Leesa's Advent: Bab 251 - Bab 260

“So, why did we have to get away from your dorm?” he asked Leesa. “Were you worried there might be volkaanes coming around?”Leesa knew she had to be careful with her answer—she did not want to give Stefan any hint that the volkaanes’ magical fire had been weakened. If the vampires knew that their long time foes were vulnerable, they might decide to go hunting.“No, not that,” she said after a moment. “Rave has been gone for more than a week, and I don’t expect him back for a little while yet.”If Stefan was at all curious about Rave’s absence, he gave no sign of it, for which Leesa was glad.“What then?” Stefan asked. “If not volkaanes, what should a vampire be concerned about?”“Have you ever heard of xenorians?”As usual, Stefan’s black eyes remained expressionless—black mirrors, Leesa usually thought of them as, except

The night was another cold one, with a cool, damp wind blowing out of the northwest. As the cold air streamed across Leesa’s cheeks, she thought that spring sure seemed to be taking its time arriving. She didn’t know if this was normal for Connecticut—after all, this was her first New England spring. One of her classmates had said something about March “coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb,” so she guessed this year’s weather was probably not all that unusual, not if there was an old adage about it.The cold did not bother her at all tonight—not when she had Rave holding her hand. Even with him obeying her strict instructions to keep his magical inner fire completely in check, she could still feel his natural heat flowing through her hand and into her body, warming her as they walked.They had gone barely half a block from the dorm when Rave suddenly stopped.“What’s the matter?” Leesa asked

Earlier that same day, BSI agents Smith, Jones and Rome were enjoying a hot breakfast of eggs, sausage and pancakes in an old mom-and-pop eatery across the street from their downtown Middletown motel. The men sat on one side of the worn blue vinyl booth with Rome across from them. The food was surprisingly decent and the coffee was very good. In the middle of lifting a forkful of sausage to her mouth, Rome suddenly froze.Both men immediately stopped eating and looked at her sharply.“What is it?” Smith asked.Rome lowered her fork to her plate. Her eyes narrowed as she slowly moved her head from side to side. Her eyes were only partially focused—she did not really seem to be looking at anything.“Something has shifted,” she said after moment. She held up her hand, forestalling any further questions from her companions.Smith and Jones watched her silently. Concentration turned her already severe features into a sharp

As Leesa predicted, her ride in Rave’s arms was all too brief, seemingly over almost before it had even begun. She told Rave to put her down at least fifty feet from the hidden gravesite—far enough, she hoped, to be safe from any lingering danger from the black magic. Dominic had done a good job concealing the spot beneath which the black waziri were buried. She could not tell exactly where the remains of the evil wizards rested, but the condition of some of the trees gave her a pretty good idea of the general location. As spring warmed the land, green buds and new leaves were beginning to sprout from the branches of most of the trees, but there was a small group whose branches remained as barren looking as in the dead of winter—the result, she was certain, of the black magic seeping through the soil into their roots. She wondered if any of those trees would ever bloom again, or if the evil magic had killed them. Using the bare trees as her marker, she made sure sh

BSI agents Smith, Jones and Rome gathered around a marble headstone in one of the Middletown’s cemeteries, the one closest to the Weston College campus. Beneath the marker, the sod had not yet completely grown back over the recently resealed grave, leaving narrow seams of dark brown dirt visible in the otherwise green grass.After returning from their drive across the river, they had decided to renew their investigation in the place where they had started it—at the graves of the three bodies that had been reanimated into the zombies who had attacked the girls dormitory. They hoped the dissipation of the strange spell that had been blanketing the entire area would allow Rome to sense traces of magic she might have missed the first time around.The afternoon shadows cast by the still mostly bare branches of the few trees scattered around the graveyard were beginning to lengthen as the sun began its slow descent in the western sky. The nearest tree spread a da