Reclamation (The Ravening #3)(33)
Author: Erica Stevens

"No Stonehenge was all you guys," Rosemary waved her finger as she answered him. "And believe me none of us have any idea what they were thinking, or doing, at that time."

Bishop rubbed a hand over his face as he lifted it to look at us. "No wonder you know our languages and can fit in so well. The languages on this planet are probably based off of yours. I mean even the name of your kind, Tintagelians, shortened would be elians or aliens."

"Your languages are based off of ours," Rosemary confirmed.

"I feel as if everything we’ve ever known has been a lie," Abby whispered.

"In a way it has been," Bishop agreed as he finally gave into the urge I’d been resisting and slumped onto the bed. "It really has."

"They destroyed your planet that long ago?" I asked.

"No, that is a more recent development, but they’ve always been a hungry species that has sought to curb that hunger in many ways. Cultivating species as a food supply became almost a game for them."

I’d already heard something like this from Cade so it wasn’t as distressing to me as it was to some of the others, but even still my blood ran cold and I had to swallow in order to wet my very parched throat. "Yeah I mean between destroying lives and a rousing game of rummy I would definitely go for the ruining of lives on that one," Lloyd muttered.

"Lloyd," Aiden said in a low warning tone.

"No, he’s right. I didn’t see it until I met Greg, but he’s right," Rosemary said. "We were wrong. They were wrong, but it is what they are. There is nothing to return to on our planet, not anymore. They’ve drained it dry. What was once a thriving planet with many different species, and lush rivers flowing throughout, is now dry and desolate; the rivers had divided the land into different masses that would be considered something like countries here. When our people expanded into these outer countries and began to eradicate species necessary for the survival of the planet, the rivers began to dry up as the suns baked the land."

"Suns?" Aiden asked.

"There were three of them," Rosemary explained. "Beautiful suns that all rose within an hour of each other, and set an hour apart from each other, so that the sky was alight with color for six hours every day. Not just pinks and oranges and yellows but also the most beautiful greens, blues and magnificent purples. There were even colors that you don’t know exist and could never imagine within a sky that was the most pure turquoise color you’d ever see.

"For awhile they tried to save Tintagel, they even imported species from other planets, but it was already too late for that. When the air became too bad for them to breathe they finally admitted defeat and left the planet behind for good."

I was so ensnared by her words that it took me a moment to close my mouth and process what she was saying. "It sounds like it was beautiful, you must have been sad to leave," Jenna whispered.

"Oh, I’ve never been there," Rosemary responded flippantly. "None of us have. I was born on Planet Earth to two Tintagelians who were born here also. In fact, no one other than The Ancients has ever seen our planet. Each of us is given a crystal that will show us pictures of what Tintagel once looked like when we hold it, but no one has returned to that planet in a hundred and fifty years."

Chapter 15

Cade,

Jenna sat down beside Bishop and put her head in her hands. "Jesus," she muttered.

Beside me I could hear the frantic beat of Bethany’s heart and smell the increased scent of the sweat on her body. I remained immobile, my face impassive. I knew all of this already, what I hadn’t known about was Bethany’s newfound thirst for blood.

Why hadn’t she told me?

I studied the gentle contours of her face and the freckles covering her cheeks and nose. There was nothing malicious or sneaky within Bethany. All she ever worried about was other people, and I was one of her highest concerns. She hadn’t kept it from me to be secretive, she had kept it from me because she had been concerned about how I would react, how I would feel. She had kept it from me because she knew that anything involving her could push me over the edge.

My teeth clenched, I took a deep breath as I cursed my temper and my inability to remain calm around anything that even remotely threatened her life. That would have to change from now on. I had to get better control over myself around her or I had to ensure that nothing was able to threaten her life anymore. I didn’t know how I was going to do that, but staring at the group gathered around us now, I had a feeling that this was the place to start.

I didn’t trust them, that was the last thing I would do right now, but looking at the humans by their sides I couldn’t deny that they were all different. This wasn’t some elaborate setup; one look at Rosemary confirmed that. Our people blended in well, but we couldn’t fake the kind of humanity that she seemed to radiate and yet I knew that she was one of us.

I moved closer to Bethany as I wondered if feeding from her would have the same affect on me over the next couple of weeks, months; years. I strangely found myself hoping so, hoping for something to help thaw the ice I felt still encasing me. I could feed from her and it wouldn’t injure her. My hands fisted as I inhaled the sweet scent of her and resisted the urge to take her from here and taste as much of her as I could right now.

Later, I told myself firmly. The most important thing was still her safety and keeping her alive. Leaving here now wouldn’t get us anywhere on that front.

"Why do The Ancients only have children once every one hundred years?" Bethany asked.

"They want their children on this planet and they want them in positions of authority, but each couple only has one child alive at a time," I answered.

"Why?"

"Because their children are the only ones strong enough to pose any kind of threat to them. They need their children for their power, but they won’t take any chance that they could possibly be outnumbered by them. Their children have an average lifespan of a hundred years or so, whereas the rest of us have a more human lifespan though we more often make it into our late eighties. When The Ancients children die, or are on the verge of death, they have another one," Rosemary answered.

"How much stronger?" Bethany asked as her amethyst eyes focused on me.

"Nothing that you haven’t seen so far, only heightened," I assured her as I ran my fingers lightly over her arm. I didn’t sense any anger in her as she learned about my family line but curiosity radiated from her. "We’re faster and stronger than our own kind by almost double. It has been presumed that The Fountain of Youth not only granted The Ancients eternal life but that it also heightened their reflexes, speed and strength. Eternal life isn’t passed onto us but the rest is. Though we are superior even before our eighteenth birthday our abilities become even more enhanced then."