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Shawn
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Once we had showered and gotten ourselves cleaned up Dietrich and I started to talk more in depth about what things were changing in our lives now that he was the Vampire King and I was a Hybrid, half wolf and half vampire.
Dietrich had apparently been told by the Goddess herself that she was gifting him with new powers. He said he was the only one who could create Hybrid vampires. She said he could speak telepathically with the other vampires like Trinity was able to do, and that he could now control multiple targets at once with his puppetry skills.
All of that was cool and all, but what was different about me? Aside from me needing blood to survive and basically being immortal. It had hit me after the shower that I no longer had a limited lifespan and I could actually spend eternity, or near it, with Dietrich. That really put a new meaning on the phrase I will love you forever. But I knew that I would love him, forever and even beyond that.
Those were only two things I knew that had changed about me. It wasn't bad or anything, but I had hoped there were more, you know. I became the first of my kind shouldn't I be able to do more.
"You can try some Vampire tricks." Dietrich had suggested playfully.
"Like what?" I looked at him with confusion.
"You know, like shadow walking. And having your fangs come out at will, and we should see if your wolf can shadow walk too."
"Ok." I was smiling now, excited. "Where should we practice?"
"Let's go to our spot up the mountain. It's special to the two of us now, isn't it?" I grinned when I heard this. The place he was talking about used to be the place I went to clear my head when I was having a bad day, because it always made me happy. And it was where Dietrich and I had started to make real advancements in our relationship. I was so happy that he now considered it our spot.
Twenty minutes later we had reached the place we wanted. It was just a simple little bluff that looked out over the river below but to me it was a place my soul would always call for.
"Now, don't be upset if you don't get it right away, and don't push yourself, you're still injured." Dietrich was just a mother hen sometimes, doting on me like I was a fragile little piece of glass.
"Dietrich, babe, cool it." I grinned at him as I saw the shocked look on his face when he heard me call him babe. Uh oh, I think he liked that a bit too much.
"Alright, I'll cool it, so long as I get to step in if I think you're pushing yourself too far."
"Fine,that's just fine." He was the one who had to teach me how to be a vampire as it was.
"Ok, let us begin."
Dietrich told me what to do, and how to perform the Shadow walking then. The problem was that there weren't very many shadows for us to work with. We were quite limited really.
"Well, in theory, you would think about where it is that you want to end up, looking ahead of you at all times, and getting a good picture of it in your head. When you are first starting out it will take you a long time. And don't be discouraged if you end up somewhere slightly off course, as long as you are in the general location you're doing good enough."
"So, should I try for the tree line or the shadow of the mountains first?"
"Try the trees, if you miss you will end up in between them. If you miss with the side of the mountain you could run into it, or off of it." Dietrich laughed though it looked more like an automatic response rather than him actually laughing at the idea of me shadow walking off the mountain.
"Ok, here I go."
I took a deep breath to steady myself and thought about where I wanted to end up. I was aiming for the closest shadow to me in the tree line. I was going to warp from the shadow that Dietrich was creating and go into the other shadow at the same time.
Dietrich had explained to me while we were preparing, that you can't use your own shadow to warp, or shadow walk, but you can use someone else's. I found that odd but I guess it was just something I would have to accept as fact.
And apparently it wasn't so much as walking through shadows, it was more like stepping from darkness to darkness. Apparently a vampire's body could become something akin to smoke in the dark and that was how we managed to move from shadow to shadow. And, we could take other people with us when we did it, whether they were vampires or not.
Look at me saying we in my head like that, like I was some veteran vampire or something. Would Dietrich be happy if he knew about it? Probably.
Ok, this was it. I was done preparing myself. It was time to move from shadow to shadow.
I stepped forward and into Dietrich's shadow, all the while looking at where I wanted to end up. I was aiming for a spot about four feet away from the tree directly in front of me.
Oh Goddess, I was nervous. But I didn't let that stop me, I wanted to move like Dietrich did.
And when I stepped I moved in the blink of an eye. It felt like my body had been pulled rapidly by some string attached to my belly belly button. It was strange and exhilarating at the same time.
But the major thing for me to focus on was that I was exactly where I had aimed for. I was exactly four feet away from the tree on the precise spot of the ground I had focused on.
"Dietrich, did you see that? This is exactly where I was aiming. This is right where I was trying to land. I can't believe that I did it." I turned around and smiled at him, only for me to be looking into a face so full of love and adoration.
"Yes my love, I saw it. You are a natural." Dietrich was radiant and handsome as he looked back at me. "I am so proud of you."
"I'm going to come back to you know."
"Alright, do just like you did last time."
"Got it."
I nodded my head and firmed my resolve as I went to move back to his side. I concentrated on the spot I wanted to end up and stepped. And right then, right as I was stepping forward, the clouds shifted and changed the size and shape of Dietrich's shadow.
I was aiming for the top of his shadow, near where his head was at the end of it. But now the top of his shadow was close to the edge of the mountain.
I had already stepped and I already had that thought in my mind, so that's where I ended up. I felt my left foot come down right at the edge of the rocky surface, my right foot ended up on nothing.
I didn't scream. It never even occurred to me that I should scream. I felt the ground slip away and then there was nothing.
What the hell am I doing?
That was the only thought that came to my mind as I started to fall. I didn't know if the fall was going to hurt. I didn't know if the fall was likely to kill me or not. It was pretty far down and I would be banged up pretty bad. But I was also a Hybrid now so I didn't know how it would affect me at all.
I hadn't even fallen three inches though, by the time that I stopped. One second I could feel that weightlessness that you get, that stomach dropping sense of plunging to the earth, and then the next second I just felt as if I was being suspended weightless in the air, like I was flying.
I turned my head then, to look at Dietrich, and saw that he had shot his puppet thread out toward me. The thread was wrapped around my waist, my legs, and my arms. I was cradled in it gently and hadn't even felt the thread touch me at all.
Dietrich used those threads to pull me back up and onto the ground, running to me in a rush as he did so. His arms were around me before the thread had even fully retracted. I hadn't felt the thread at all but I definitely felt the crushing strength of his hug as he pulled me close.
"Dachte ich hätte dich verloren, Geliebte. I thought I lost you my love." I could feel Dietrich shaking, his body tense as he held me in his arms. "Bitte, erschreck mich nicht so. Please, please don't ever scare me like that again Shawn."
"I'm right here, babe, ich bin genau hier."
We stayed like that for a few minutes, clinging onto each other and kneeling on the ground together until the shaking in Dietrich's body finally subsided. When he finally pulled away he pressed a kiss to my left temple, a firm press of his lips as if further proving to himself that I was still there.
"I'm OK, my love, I didn't fall at all. And I probably would have survived even if I had fallen."
"That's not the point. I almost lost you recently, and now I almost lost you again. Please, stop scaring me so much. I may be immortal, but I am not impervious." I felt tears falling onto my cheek and looked up to see him crying with such a hurt look in his eyes.
"I will never leave you, Dietrich, I love you too much to leave you."
"I love you too, Kuchen, I love you so much."
It felt like Dietrich was holding onto me forever by the time he had finally let me go. He may have pulled away but his touch was lingering even after he had helped me to my feet and stepped away.
"What we need, my love, are more shadows, and more control over the light." Dietrich glared up at the sun then. "I wish we could make things darker."
Those words had barely come out of his mouth when we were plunged into darkness. I wasn't afraid of not being able to see, as a wolf I have great night vision, but I guess as a Hybrid I have perfect night vision. I could still see everything, it was just more or less in black and white at first until I grew used to it all.
"Whoa." That was all I had to say. There was just too much that had happened lately for me to be too surprised by any of it anymore.