After the Fall: A Vampire Chronicle (Book One) by Mary Ellen Gorry Page A

emergence of the First Hunter. I could not discern who the author of the text was, although the monks of San Pellegrino claimed it to be a prophet of some sort. As far as I could tell, the text spoke of the Hunter, who was yet to come, and the words were as follows:
    From the middle mountains emerge both dark and light,
    and Janus will be the god who governs them.
    They will be blind who seek the answers,
    though the veil of darkness is but an illusion.
    Be forewarned – that which is so close to the eye and the heart becomes invisible.
    The shadow will disappear with night. May God protect us all.
    The text is now long gone, crumbled into dust, and I know not what it means.
                  Lorenzo, as well, knew not what it meant, only that if he found enough passages, even the most bizarre ones should start to make some sort of sense. At least, he hoped so. He was about to start reading again when there was a knock at the door. He slowly stood and walked the length of the room to answer it. He looked through the peephole and, undoing the chain, opened the door.
                  “Well,” he said to the person on the other side, “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”
     
                  Christian didn’t return to the hotel room until dusk. He had spent the last few hours scouring the city from top to bottom, anywhere he thought Caroline might have run to. As each hour passed, he became more and more worried. What would he do if he didn’t find her? What would he do if the next time he saw her she was lying dead on a slab in the morgue? He had to find her, and yet the more he looked, the more convinced he became that he she was gone. What else could he do? He vowed to keep looking until there was nowhere else to look. Still, once darkness had started to fall, he realized he would have to return to the hotel to check in with Lorenzo and get some supplies to protect himself with; he didn’t want Lorenzo to worry about him the way he was worrying about Caroline.
                  He should have known she would take off, but he had thought she understood the danger she would place herself in if she left the sanctuary of the hotel. Obviously, she was stupider than she looked, because now darkness was falling, vampires were roaming, and she was out there somewhere, very much alone.
                  The elevator stopped at his floor, and he got off, racing to his and Lorenzo’s suite, throwing open the door.
                  “Lorenzo, I’m-,” his words died in his throat when he entered the room and found himself looking at not one, but two people sitting. Lorenzo was seated comfortably in one of the chairs, and across from him, on the sofa, sat Caroline.
                  Christian was so stunned that words failed him. She looked like she would rather be anywhere in the world but sitting in that room, but she was there. It was she who finally broke the silence.
                  “I wasn’t going to come back,” she said, and he heard the defensiveness in her voice, “but once it got dark, I realized I had nowhere to go and no one to turn to, so…” she shrugged, “here I am.”
                  A wave of relief rushed over Christian, followed by a wave of anger. He was furious with her. She had scared him half to death. He thought he was going to find her dead. Instead, she had been sitting here, maybe not happy, but at least safe.
                  “Do you know the hell you put me through this afternoon?” he finally exploded. “I thought the next time I saw you was going to be in the morgue.”
                  She frowned, and he could see that he was jump-starting her own temper, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He had never been as scared in his whole life as he had been this afternoon.
                  “Do you know how stupid you were? You could have died