Obsessed (Book #12 in the Vampire Journals) by Morgan Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

chant
again. Tell me the chant that is the cure.”
    Caitlin fumbled
in her pocket and pulled out the notes she’d made when studying the book. But
they were soggy and the ink had run. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize
the page as she had read it. The words began to appear in her mind.
    “I am the sea,
the sky and sand,
    I am the pollen
on the wind.
    I am the
horizon, the heath, the heather on the hill.
    I am ice,
    I am nothing,
    I am extinct.”
    ____Caitlin
opened her eyes and the words disappeared from her mind. There was a long
moment where Aidan was silent.
    Caitlin wanted
to scream at him to hurry up.
    “Caitlin!” he
said at last. “I’ve got it. I’ve got it!”
    “Tell me,”
Caitlin replied hurriedly, feeling her heart race.
    “We’ve been such
fools! It’s not a chant at all.”
    Caitlin frowned.
    “What do you
mean? How can it not be a chant? I don’t understand.”
    “I mean that the
chant isn’t the cure,” Aidan replied, fumbling over his words in his
excitement. “The chant is a clue to the cure!”
    Caitlin could
feel her heart thumping with anticipation.
    “So what’s the
clue then?” she asked.
    “Caitlin! Think
about it. It’s a riddle. Directions. It’s telling you to go somewhere.”
    Caitlin felt the
blood drain from her face as she ran through the words in her mind.
    “I am the sea,
the sky and sand,” she repeated under her breath. Then, suddenly, it came to
her. “No. You don’t mean—”
    “Yes,” Aidan
replied. “S. P. H. I. N. X.”___
    “The vampire
city,” Caitlin whispered under her breath.
    Of course.
Before Scarlet had disappeared into harm’s way, Caitlin had been trying to find
the cure, to find a way to turn her daughter back from a vampire into a human.
She thought the words on the page needed to be read to Scarlet to cure her,
that what she had found was the cure. But no. What she had found were
instructions that would lead her to the cure. Caitlin had let her innate
anguish as a mother override the sensible, logical scholar she needed to be
right now, the one who would work out that the riddle was not a cure—but a map.
    “Thank you,
Aidan,” she said hurriedly.
    Her phone went
dead.
    Caitlin looked
up at Caleb’s expectant face.
    “Well?” he said.
    “I know where
we’re going,” Caitlin replied, feeling a twinge of hope for the first time in a
long time.
    Caleb raised an
eyebrow and looked over at his wife.
    “Where?” he
said.
    Caitlin smiled.
    “We’re going to
Egypt.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Lore stood on a
mound of rubble amongst the ruins of Boldt Castle. The blades from the lowering
helicopter made wind whip his torn clothes and ruffle his hair. He glanced around,
surveying the damage the plane had caused. Hatred filled him to the brim.
    He cried,
shaking his fist at the gaping hole in the side of the ancient castle. Then he
took a deep breath. There was no time to waste. His people would be dead,
eradicated, by the end of the night. Their only hope was to find the girl who
had stolen his cousin’s heart. And that meant killing anyone who stood in their
way.
    But the
Immortalists were panicking, startled by the presence of the helicopter. They
began zooming around the great hall, some streaming out of the castle
altogether, running off to their inevitable deaths.
    “What are you
thinking, son?” a voice beside Lore said, breaking him from his reverie.
    He looked down
to see his mother gazing up at him. Though Immortalists experienced
parent-child relationships differently from humans, Lore still respected the
woman who had fed him, clothed him, and seen him safely through infancy. The
thought of her death at the end of the night made his heart clench even more
than the thought of his own.
    “I’m thinking of
Sage,” Lore replied. “We used him as bait before and the girl came.”
    His mother
frowned.
    “You think
there’s still hope?” she asked, quietly.
    Lore could see
that weariness had crept into her eyes. She