around and around you go

The last thing Anna remembered was Emily promising she'd help her. Of course, Anna felt so numb as if she were practically out of her body. It was as if she were watching someone else with Jeremy. Not her true self, in her body.

She winced. Where was Emily?

She looked at her surroundings. Yes, it was faintly familar. Maybe. It had been a very long time since she had been here. She barely remembered the old plantation home. Now it was like a barren landscape. Life had once lived here. Emily's life. This was the home Anna's mother had found her. Emily had been a slave here as a child. She sensed some of Emily's bad memories. It was a sad life. Emily never knew her own mother nor her father.  Anna's mother had saved her, somehow and thankfully, Emily had always been loyal to her mother. Thus Emily had taken care of Anna.

A faint smile came to Anna as she recalled how her Mom had wanted to make Emily a vampire, because her Mom always wanted Emily with them. But witches didn't do that sort of thing. She couldn't betray her code of honor.

But now, as Anna looked down to see what was happening to Jeremy, there in that barren room that Emily had somehow spun around into a fine beautiful room for a queen, lit up like gold. Anna knew it looked like herself with Jeremy there in that bed. But it wasn't. It wasn't her at all.

As much as Anna wanted to fight it. What was really taking place between the two of them ...that was so spellbinding and sacred. The blood. The pleasure of it. Becoming united as one. A ritual of some kind. Anna thought her breath had left her body entirely. What was once bright was growing dim. Anna felt the vapor of her falling. Falling thin. Into nothing. Anna would have cried if she could. But  instead her whole world was spinning. Spinning. She felt as if she'd been put in a vaccum. Total darkness.

Anna caught her breath then. As if it had all been a bad dream. She awoke with her head on Jeremy's very cold chest. She looked around the room. So many fine beautiful things. Ancient and pure. Like an oasis of some kind. But Anna had to wonder if any of it were really real. Were she and Jeremy just a figment of Emily's imagination. Or just her puppets?