[Blood Archive Entry]
In Darian's hands was a medallion, roughly the size of his hand, richly engraved with runes and charms; it pulsed softly with unseen energy.
The medallion was made of pale wood, almost white in its color.
Darian flipped the object only to see the other side was engraved with a familiar symbol, a rhombus crossed by an 'X'.
He raised an eyebrow and looked at Rebekah; she noticed the gaze but kept staring at the object.
"This is your family's crest, isn't it?" Darian asked, to which Rebekah just nodded absentmindedly. "But what is it doing here?"
"Darian, flip it over again, please. I want to see the other side." She asked with a trembling voice.
"Sure," he said, flipping the talisman over.
They studied the engravings with much more care this time around.
A pentacle surrounded by the markings of the five elements.
"Was Elizabeth a witch by any chance?" Darian asked, confused.
The pentagram or sometimes the pentacle—a pentagram with a circle drawn outside of it—was the oldest and most common symbol used to depict witches or witchcraft.
"She could be…" Rebekah said. "But this… this belonged to my mother…"
"Huh?!"
She laughed dryly. "Yeah, it was the talisman she always carried around. The same one she used to turn us into-" she pointed at herself "-this."
For a moment Rebekah didn't speak. She just stared at the talisman, her jaw clenched, her eyes not quite tearing up but… shining with something bitter.
"Are you sure?"
"Darian, don't insult me. I would think I'd recognize my own mother's belonging."
"Sorry, it's just hard to think we would stumble upon something that belonged to the Original Witch in the middle of nowhere."
"'Original Witch'? Is that what they are calling her?"
"I mean, she was the witch that created the Original Vampires…"
"Yeah, that kinda makes sense." She shrugged and turned her attention back to Darian. "What I want to know is how you managed to find it."
He scratched the back of his head. "It has a smell to it…"
"A smell?"
"Yeah, it's kind of confusing… It smells warm, but I also smell regret, and a few other things. But mostly it's the energy it exudes that drew me."
"What the hell do you mean it smells of 'warm' and 'regret'? How would one smell this stuff?"
"Well, my senses are a bit more peculiar; I can sense things that most wouldn't."
"You are ridiculous, you know that?"
He simply shrugged.
"Anyhow, leaving that aside, I am also catching a scent trail from it. It's leading outside of this room."
"Right, just do your thing… I'll follow your lead."
Darian got up, and as he walked to the door, it snapped shut and locked itself.
"Now that's just rude."
Then he grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door, clean off its hinges.
Following the trail he caught when he found the amulet, they arrived in the room where the piano was.
Several bookshelves decorated the place, filled to the brim with encyclopedias and dictionaries that Darian was sure no one had ever read. Their only purpose is to set up the room ambiance.
"Bah! Such a waste of what could've been a perfectly good library."
"Darian, stop goofing around. I want to get this done as soon as possible, please."
"Sorry…"
He then followed the trail that led straight to the floor.
He tilted his head in confusion.
Rebekah noticed and asked, "What's wrong?"
"Supposedly, the trail goes straight into the ground."
"So, the basement then?"
"I don't think this house has a basement."
Darian walked up to where the scent led, raised a leg, and stomped hard. The wood gave way, cracking beneath his unrelenting might. Revealing beneath the floor a stairway sculpted in earth.
The duo looked at each other and descended the stairway.
It went down for a good distance before finally leading to a crude wooden door.
Darian opened it, only to see a room filled with macabre décor.
A bronze statue depicting a woman burning at the stake, dozens of black candles, furs, and skulls of several animals. On the floor, an inverted pentagram inside a Celtic knot was drawn.
The air in the room was cold, colder than anywhere else in the house. Almost the same temperature the car dropped to when the ghost attacked them.
"Lovely…" Darian said, his face frowning in visible displeasure. "This place reeks of the same scent of ghost Elizabeth, so I'm positively sure this is where the specter emerges from." White mist seeped off his mouth due to the cold.
As if to confirm his words, all the candles in the room lit up in green flames. A malevolent whisper echoed through the room.
"Yup…" Darian said while popping the 'p' with his mouth.
"If Elizabeth wasn't a witch, she was a hardcore fan of occultism." Rebekah joked, trying to mask her unease.
"You know what hardcore is?" Darian asked, surprised.
"I'm trying to catch up to things…" Rebekah answered, flustered.
"Yeah, sure." He gave the room a final look before turning back and walking up the stairway.
"Where are you going?" Rebekah asked as she turned and followed him.
"Back to the car. We got everything we could from the house; no sense in staying here any longer."
The two talked as they made their way back.
"You seem in a hurry to leave," she said with a glint in her eyes, "are you scared of the ghost lady, little Darian?"
He scoffed. "This place just gives me the creeps, so I want to stay here as little as possible."
"I second that."
"I know you do."
"So, what now? Back to the room?"
"No, we are going to the cemetery where she was buried."
"And do what?"
"We will dig her grave, pick her corpse up, and drag it all the way to that room. All of this before midnight."
"Yuck," she grimaced, "do we really need to do that? And why before midnight?"
"I'm not sure if we need to do it, but I would rather be safe than sorry. As for why before midnight, it's because I can only assume that she will be able to come out after midnight. So, we must be ready by then."
After that, they stopped by a store to grab some tarp at the insistence of Rebekah, who didn't want to dirty her car with a corpse, and finally made their way to the cemetery.