Diary of a Runaway (BOOK #3)

The Chain

William

            "Ava."

            She continued sitting there silently, oblivious to my continuous calling of her name. Finally she turned around and spotted me. She only nodded in acknowledgement before turning to back to face the woods.

            I bent down to sit beside her. It was night now. Everyone else sat inside the house recovering from the recent events. The showdown between Hunters and Originals with humans as nothing but shadows ended quickly after Celia's death.

            The remaining Hunters could do nothing, whether out of shock or the Originals' pull. They exited the town square in a run, not even bothering to be chased by the vampire pack. Without their leader, what were they to do now? Derek presumed they would disband their league especially since they no longer had a base after the Originals inevitable attack. And surely all the research on the cure had been destroyed as well.

            The Original's and their vampire friends disappeared faster than they had came. Their leader--the faceless man who had killed Ava's mother--spoke his last words to us before snapping his fingers.

            "Oh," he had said. "Happy Birthday, Ava."

            And just like that, in the blink of an eye, they vanished as if out of thin air. The humans meandered back to their own homes. According to Derek, their compelled state was lifted soon after.

             So here we were. The Originals were still out there. We were left without answers all over again. The strange leader's words haunted me--surely he and Celia knew each other in ways that could now only be explained by him. Meanwhile one of our own remained missing in action. Word on Val was silent, but we could only assume the Originals were finding use of her elsewhere.

            And the girl I felt so much for sat in silence unable to cope with her own feelings.

            "I'm not going to say I understand how you're feeling right now," I told her, keeping my eyes on the still woods. "But I know that this is hard. I've met your mother. I've heard all the nasty things she said to you. I know what she has done. And I know that no matter how much you hate her, you can't get over the fact that she is you mother."

            "Was," Ava corrected me. "She was my mother."

            I sighed, throwing my head in my hands. "Alright. She was your mother. No matter what she did, she was your mother and she died today. That's hard, Ava. I was young when my mother died. I don't remember her. I can't imagine how you're feeling."

            She shook her head, searching for words. "That's the thing. I don't know how to feel about it. She wasn't a horrible mother, you know. Before she went on and became obsessed with finding the cure. She laughed. She sang. She was everything a mom should be. Even after my dad left...I could tell she was sad sometimes. I could tell--every year, when that day hit, she wouldn't speak to me or Val. But then she would come out and be this...this great mother that  loved us unconditionally--"

            She took a deep breath. I could tell she was trying so hard not to cry.

            "Maybe that's why her leaving hit me like it did," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "She went from being there to not. I didn't even know if I would ever see her again. When she showed up after putting me in that damn prison cell...I couldn't even think about it like a second chance. That woman was no longer my mother. She said she no longer claimed Val and me as her daughters, but the truth was, we could no longer claim her as our mother. We lost the woman we knew a long time ago."