Deamhan Read Online Free PDF Page B

about these dangers. And Remy and Alexis’ reaction to her last night proved that the creatures remained unstable.
    Still, the Deamhan had turned a total one eighty from their Dictum. Some of its rules were simple, yet explicit: maintain secrecy, dispose of human remains, and respect the Ancients, the oldest of the Deamhan. Something caused them to sway from those rules decades ago and Veronica blamed that something on her father and The Brotherhood. Her father declared the city an off-limit zone for all Brotherhood members, right around the time she boarded her flight. It was typical Brotherhood behavior.
    Veronica finally pulled herself from the couch. The bright sunlight crept through her window and blinded her. She twisted the window blinds to block the rays and smiled to hear and see the birds chirping outside her window. When she opened the window, the smell of wet leaves and dew entered her nostrils. Below, the sidewalk came alive with cyclists and rollerbladers. The Jubilee Coffee shop across the street spilled its patrons onto the sidewalk. The clear blue sky showed nary a cloud.
    “This is the Minnesota I remember,” she said to the robins beneath her window ledge. The Minnesota that surprises me when I least expect it.  A beautiful state with breathtaking scenery, lavish forests, and ten thousand lakes.
     And Deamhan and vampires.
    Little did its residents know what lurked in the city and slithered from the burrows at sunset.
    She sat back on the couch, wiping the morning sweat from her forehead. The smells and the scenery made her think of her mother and her childhood. Reliving her childhood without the tragedies became her one thing she wished for in her teenage years. Just the thought of her mother coming back home from her assignments felt like needles puncturing her skin. One Saturday evening, at the age of five, Veronica used bright pink crayons to scribble a Welcome Home sign for her mother while she sat on the dining room floor of her parents’ shabby two bedroom apartment in south Minneapolis. Her father paced back and forth in the living room, puffing on his tobacco pipe.
    On her piece of construction paper, below her child-written words which read “Welcome Home,” she’d drawn three stick figures in black of mom and dad with her in the middle. In the foreground she attempted to draw a pyramid. She’d never seen one before but from what her mother told her, it was a huge triangle with four huge and uneven bricks.
    The front door creaked open and she had jumped to her feet. With her drawing in hand, she raced to the door and collapsed into her mother’s arms. The smell of wet leaves emitted from her brown wool jacket. She watched her mother reach into her purse and pull out a sandwich bag filled with dirt and small pieces of limestone.
    Veronica took the bag and ran back to her safe spot on the dining room floor. The beautiful limestone and rough speckles of sand sparkled. She poured a small amount in the palm of her hand but her excitement was short lived when she heard the deafening sound of her father’s hand hitting her mother’s cheek.
    Veronica didn’t remember if her father had really slapped her mother’s face, or if the abundance of the memory caused her to think he had.
    She rubbed her eyes with her fists to erase the vision.
    On the other hand, she felt thankful that her mother still appeared so lovely and fresh in her dreams and memories. She knew her mother believed in what she was doing, but Veronica had never understood the reason she’d involved herself in The Brotherhood. It wasn’t like her father’s side of the family, who had a history with the organization. Her mother started at the bottom and, over time, she’d moved up in the organization’s status to researcher and she was good at it. The Brotherhood’s historical research department in San Diego often sought her mother’s opinion on the Deamhan. The staff and administration admired and respected her mother at