5 Chapter 5

Three full hours have passed. She was now in the guest room. Being seated by the windows, watching the rain and its wonderful scent, the earth, the fresh grass, it was all too much for her overloaded senses. She could almost feel the individual droplets. The rainy day wants her to relax, but her mind has been racing nonstop. She sighed and watched the magnificent flower garden outside. To her left was the farm and the far distant lake, with calmness from its core to the ripples that danced, reflecting the dark gray sky like the most sincere of smiles, yet Blanca stuck her nose in the air as she sniffed the cold and moisture of the distant lake.

How weird! Her senses had become supernatural. The mansion was a mile away from the lake, but still, she could almost feel the ripples of water, almost hear the waves and the raindrops as the deep hue of the lake became almost like a poetic song of the light that played upon its wind-dancing ruffles.

Earlier, after the deafening howl, Blanca tried to put the spectacle of what she had witnessed at Dimitri's farm out of her mind.

What did it matter, anyway? It was an enormous dark brown hound named Giant on his farm, acting like a tiny puppy. The hound was by far the largest of the canines she had ever seen, and the cutest, too. It wailed so loudly when it saw her. It jumped like it had found its mama and waggled its tail like it wanted some treats.

After the nerve-wracking shriek, they both ran to the farm and found it playing with the dramatic silver-colored flock of sheep, and the hound was pretending to attack while the poor sheep ran for their lives, and as Dimitri's words, they were just playing. Nonetheless, he never pegs a man who loves animals. But of course, it was refreshing to see that he was normal after all.

But what bothered her most was that she saw Dimitri eyed the sheep like it was some sort of delectable nourishment. How could that be? Was she seriously delusional? It was as if Blanca's senses were the only ones truly open at that time; she could almost visualize Dimitri drinking his fill from the sheep. Like... like she saw the echoes of what happened on the farm. It was like she was watching a CCTV recording. It felt like her other eye could see it. Dimitri drank the sheep's blood, while he licked his lips and his sharp fangs glistened in the moonlight. Yes, it was weird because she thought how foolish her senses could have been. Since her birthday, she has had weird visions or maybe hallucinations. Some sort of side effect from the medication to stop seeing things? Even her psychiatrist believed that she was just so overwrought and gave her medication to stop her nightmares.

"Dammit!" She grumbled under her breath. Hell, maybe she was just crazy and needed some sleep. Either she was alone and had witnessed something unexplainable, or she was losing her mind. Maybe some of both. She couldn't deal with all the implications of that idea, so she sought solace in the one thing that gave her any joy. Busying herself with her paranormal research.

Thankfully, her room had a wireless connection that made her research study easier as she busied herself with her ancient Acer laptop. Behind the door of her room, Blanca submerged a spreadsheet of data ranging from any paranormal report in Europe. It came out better than she had hoped. She gathered more information from the outskirts of big cities and conducted online interviews with some experts and paranormal enthusiasts, teasing her colleagues with the fancy grandeur of her room with the potential of an entire interview with Mr. Norton.

Her boss had sent a picture of some rumored vampire attacks from Scotland and Russia, werewolf attacks from London and so on. However, she set it aside and inspected another photo, this one a closeup of a pine sapling sprouting from between a crack in the crumpled pavement of a long-abandoned farmyard that was oddly familiar like Dimitri's farm. The images made her furrow her forehead. It was indeed an abandoned farm, near a lake, but oddly identical to Norton's farm. She had nearly a dozen more paranormal images in her apartment, scattered on her worktable, a wry testament to the stubbornness of nature and the foolishness of man's greed and arrogance.

Maybe amongst humankind, these creatures really existed, and perhaps she was one of them. Blanca had always felt something of an outsider, a silent observer, from the time she was a kid. She chalked it up to the fact that she had no parents – no family at all, except for the wonderful couple who had adopted her when she was a troubled ten-year-old, bouncing from one foster home to another. They were an upper-middle-class couple with no children of their own. They had kindly taken pity on her, but even their acceptance had been at arm's length. Blanca was promptly sent to boarding schools, summer camps, and, finally, an out-of-state university. Her foster parents, such as they were, had died in a car accident while she was away at college.

She was never one to mourn the past, yet some nagging feelings overrode her hopes. What if her real parents were still alive and looking for her? Was it too bad to hope again? She had been hoping and wishing for their sudden appearance in her life, but she waited for years and none came. She no longer cares, of course... Blanca sighed and turned off the laptop, heading back downstairs to think about snacks. She hadn't been in the kitchen for two minutes before a voice came from behind her.

Gabby had generously asked her for refreshment over the past two hours, just to make sure Blanca was all right. "Miss, would you like to have some chocolate cake in the garden shed with a freshly brewed Arabica coffee?"

"That would be lovely, chocolate cake is my favorite, Gabby, Oh, thank you so much for being so thoughtful. I need coffee like I need air to breathe if you know what I mean."

"Just like Dimitri, he had the same idea…"

"Ow! By the way, Gabby, was he always like that?"

"Like what, Miss?"

"Hmp-aloof? didn't know how to smile? and s-so you know-so-"

"Silent, Miss?"

"Hmp-that too." She smiled while Gabby busied himself preparing her coffee.

"Well, he wasn't always like that, but indeed, he was possessive in a good way. He was demanding, but he was kind. He always worried about gardens and farms, and was as protective as a big brother could ever be.

"Big brother? Hmmm! Where is he, by the way?"

"He left before lunch, but he will be back before dinner, I suppose."

"He left with his bodyguards?"

"Mr. Norton does not need a bodyguard, I can assure you," Gabby replied as he gestured to her to follow him towards the garden. "He always insisted he would be fine by himself. He was actually in need of some solitude." Gabby added as he settled the coffee tray and a slice of cake on the table and Blanca settled down and sipped her coffee, "Damn, this is amazing." Gabby smiled as she took a bite of her chocolate cake that earned her a series of moans. "Hmmm, this is heaven." But she halted mid-sip when she felt him.

Dimitri... It was Dimitri. She could almost sense him, feel him. She felt a niggle of mild annoyance that she might not have any alone time tonight. Dreams, those dreadful dreams, she neither understood nor had any idea of what they were. Blanca paused. She found herself peeking into Dimitri's mind and finding only a huge dark wall. So empty, so bleak, so dark... then it was like she had been pushed away by him with a force so powerful that she winced in pain with the sudden force.

"Miss, are you alright?" Gabby asked, and she nodded. "You look suddenly pale, Miss Vergil."

"I just, um, got a headache." She replied with a forced smile.

She grumbled under her breath, almost like she was being pushed away in a manner that was so unfamiliar, it was painful, her heart wanted to cry. She was being disregarded again, like some old rug, and she was not happy about it. Her tears threatened to fall, but what bothered her the most was how Dimitri could have known how to push her away. She has had this ability since she turned 23 last December, and since then, she has practiced it often, and those who knew about it called it telepathy, but to her, she called it cursed. She could read minds like they were open books, but knowing that Dimitri was far away, how did she manage to read him?

Then out of nowhere, Dimitri appeared from the other side of the garden shed his dark golden head and striking features waiting on the manmade pond. A reproduction electric lantern light stood on the path walk just off his front steps. The soft pale yellow glow wrapped itself around him as the rain continued to glisten as a golden cloak draped over the night itself. There was something ominous, yet compelling, about his pale, deep blue eyes, which were staring straight into her.

She just looked at him but thought it best not to remove her cup of coffee from her hands. Dimitri stepped in front of the wedge of open space and glanced at the tight, well-trimmed bush that stretched taut between them. When his eyes met Blanca's again, he gave her a vague smile, as if he thought it amusing she would expect to bar him so easily if he truly wanted inside her head. "So, Blanca, I guess you and I have something to discuss?" His voice stroked her senses like rich, dark velvet.