Shadow Realm Reflections

[Lofyn (DELETED 481)]

The blonde killer had finally been given a last shred of will to live when the owls swooped on her, seeking a place in the wilderness to bury herself and endure the next twenty-four hours. Now, she was stuck again. But it felt a little different. It was like something giving her a break. Her cares felt eased.

"Better not be some fuckin' goddess wanting to make me something important," she muttered, trying to kick a rock in the shadows. Of course, her foot passed right through it.

Vivianna had never been a very religious person. Her religion had been dance, the only thing she could feel comfortable in. Her grandmother had tried so many kinds of dance it made almost no sense. Bellydance was her thing, her perfect. It was the place she excelled best.

But then there were the swimming pools. She could hold her breath for almost four minutes and had recently been considering using her money to purchase a custom-made mermaid tail. Her little brother had always said she'd make a great mermaid with her really long hair.

Her siblings hated her. When the damnable radio broadcast had pronounced her a vampire, she was immediately on the phone to her youngest brother, trying to convince him that she truly wanted to help humanity with her new life. She could perfectly recall that entire conversation....

"What was that broadcast talking about?" he asked, obviously in their mother's presence.

"Tyler, please believe that I don't want to hurt you. I wanna help you. You, Simone, and Karen keep me sane," she insisted. "Did Mom hear the broadcast?"

"She did. She doesn't want us to..."

Viv got the message, even as her mother Jaqueline took the conversation over.

"You listen to me, you *****," the woman said, "if you ever call my children again, I will personally seek you out and murder you. And if I can't do that, I will definitely be calling the cops in on your ***."

"Jaqueline, please," Viv had scoffed. "If I was afraid of you, I wouldn't have killed your precious Tony that night."

A sharp hiss of breath was heard, before Viv clapped the phone closed and threw it against the wall.

That was the day Vivianna Mia Devin had truly died. She still used her own name, not having the will or the money to have it changed, but in her heart, Vivianna was dead.

She was nameless.

Her sire had taken a name from Germanic mythology. The blonde had spent some time researching the names of gods and goddesses from that region after that, but she couldn't figure it out; why she had no inspiration to select just one.

Now, as she looked around her, there was only one name in her mind, that of the Norse goddess of infidelity. Why it was that name, she didn't know, but suddenly, it became clear. That was her new name.

Her new name would be Lofyn.

[Lofyn (DELETED 481)]

The fade. How many times had she been back here before? How many days had she dreaded her return? The peace she felt this time, this visit, was different than anything she'd felt previously. Perhaps it was the death of what had been human in her, easing her fear concerning this place.

But that wasn't right. She still held human emotion in her. She still felt that love, however odd it might be, for the woman who had ended her human life. She felt the hatred, coursing through her spectral shape, for the one whose ignorance and vileness had led her back to this place. She felt the joy at soon seeing her serpent, Baby, once more.

No, her human identity had died. That was what it was. She still had her emotions, but her human identity would never resurface, and that was all right with her. She could help the humans in her own way.

The humans. Remorse filled her as she floated toward the nearest rip between Life and this horrible place called the Shadow Realm. She felt that she couldn't yet pass through it, but it seemed a decent place to wait.

Of course, if she'd known that someone else would pass by, attack her, and cross through, she wouldn't have waited there.

"******* *****!" she shouted through the rip, not knowing whether the specter was male or female, or even who it was. She could feel the weariness settling on her figure as she drifted not too far away to sit and wait...wait for the chance to pass through herself.

But, her mind would not leave her alone. Lofyn felt the weight of the woman's death too heavily in her spectral limbs. It was a burden, one she would never escape.

She grudgingly admitted Robert was right in that one thing. But the humans needed to know that there were dark-hearted vampires wandering their midst side-by-side with the good ones. She wasn't one of them, but she was still a vampire. And vampires needed to feed. Who could protect them from a menace that walked at their sides, waiting for the right moment to sink in their teeth, drain enough blood to get by, and send them off, dazed, as though they were drunk or drugged?

No one.