Bloodfire

Five years later…

He stared down at the child's lifeless body lying in the pool of blood. Seeing it, all he could feel was rage and sorrow that ripped through his chest. Sinking to his knees, a sob tore through his throat. "I'm so sorry…I failed you. I failed to protect you…" Sobbing even harder, he crawled over to the child's body. Lifting up the limp form, he cradled the small body to his chest. He lowered his lips to the child's cheek, kissing them gently. "I'm so sorry…"

It was a long time later, he wasn't sure, when a crazy thought came to his head. It was sheer insanity, this thought. But he was insane with his sorrow, in that moment. All he could feel was an overwhelming guilt and sorrow. Tenderly, he lowered the child's dead body onto his couch. He didn't care about ruining his furniture at this point. All he wanted to do was make the kid just a little more comfortable. Then, he leaned over the child's body, praying to all the gods his crazy idea would work.

Ten minutes later, feeling weaker and a little empty, he watched in elated relief as the kid's chest rose, just a little. It was just the smallest amount. Just a slight change…But it let him know his idea had worked. Briefly, a joy so great it nearly stole the breath from his lungs filled his heart. But just as quickly, he took in the dark bruises covering the child's face. Rising to his feet, he smiled. "Don't worry, kid. I'll be back, I promise. I have something I have to take care of first."

O O O

The dark form cradled the weak body to it's chest. It's touch was gentle, tender, careful of all the bruises and wounds on the child's body. "No one's going to hurt you ever again," it promised the child in a darkly threatening voice. "I'll kill all that try."

Five blocks away, lighting up the deep night like a second sun, a house was burning. As the dark shadow kept sulking through the night, careful to be silent and unseen, a slow grin spread over it's face. "I'll burn them all," it laughed quietly. "They'll burn and bleed until there's nothing left of any of them."


A/N:

So, this may seem a little confusing with how it ended, but trust me...All of this 'epilogue' will make much more sense in the next book.

The (tentative title, subject to possible change later on in the story) is Secret Heart. So, as I've done for the past two books, the chapters will be referred to as 'Locks'. If the title changes though, I will be sure to go through and change everything to reflect this. For now though, I hope you enjoyed Bloodfire.

For any worries on 'You left the whole stuff with the HRD hanging, we didn't see what happened!'

Trust me, you'll see what came of that in the next book. As I said before, Secret Heart is going to have a lot more action (on all the many fronts) than the last two combined.

But anyway. I want to thank ALL OF YOU GUYS!

This was a crazy ride, with lots of weird stuff that happened on it. But I loved every second of it and I hope you all enjoyed it as well.

Thank you to everyone who left me reviews. And I hope that even more of you will let me know what you thought of this story as a whole, if you didn't review every chapter like some of my readers (you know who you are). And if you do, I'd be really thankful.

But now it's time to move on. I already have the first chapter of Secret Heart written, so I'll be posting that in just another few minutes. And just for the fun of it, I made sure to start out the first chapter with some funny content and a TINY bit of fan service, for those of you who can imagine it all in your heads, lol.

See you in Lock 1!