Free Blood of the Gods (The Vampire from Hell Part 5) by Ally Thomas Page A

to us and gave Grace his leather jacket.  “You may need this,” he said.  To me, he added, “This is the weirdest judgment day I’ve been to yet.  I need more to defend you with.”  Then, in a flash, Demetri vanished and only a cloud of black smoke remained as it drifted over us.  My heart sank.  My Judgment Day was already underway.
     

Chapter 12
    (Grace’s Diary)
     
    ***
    “ Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. ” ~ 1 Peter 4: 5
    ***
     
    As Demetri draped his jacket over my shoulder, I saw Jax nod to us and stand up on his hind legs.  Then he shifted from a white wolfhound puppy into J, G’s son and Rayea’s mentor.  In shock, I bumped shoulders with Rayea.  We both jerked upon seeing J alive again.  I knew her eyes were probably as wide as mine were.  I tried my best to remain calm.
    After reading Rayea’s book, I had learned that J had almost gone dark when he had attacked her that night in Max’s bar, the Golden Skull.  That was the night I had been forced to sit at a table in the back watching J and Rayea’s sister, Stephanie, drink and carry on.  Even though J attacked her, Rayea had tried to save him because she admired the man immensely.  Unfortunately, she had failed.
    I felt Rayea move away from Blick and me, probably because she wanted to run up and hug the tall, distinguished man.  Blick refused to let her go join him.  I heard Blick’s deep voice.  “Later,” he said.  J heard Rayea’s protests and raised his head in our direction, smiling politely.
    Speaking to the crowd, J pointed at Rayea and Blick.  “The vampire confessed her love for the wolf god. That should be proof.”  J threw his hands about in wild gestures.  His clothes were dirty, disheveled, torn, and stained in blood.  He wore the same khaki green T-shirt and black jeans, now shredded and faded.  The clothes barely clung to him.  His feet were bare and he looked like he had just crawled up out of a grave.
    I glanced around to see whom in the crowd he was talking to, but I could not identify the party.  He continued his debate in Rayea’s defense.  “She proposed to him!  That should be enough proof!”
    In her journals, Rayea had written about this man she admired at some length and went on about his wardrobe of Italian suits he had in some detail.  He had shown her several powers she now called her own.  The best I could figure out about J? He was an expert on vampires, and yet was not one of us.  I wondered what was so grand about him as he stood there lamenting in his torn and faded rags.  Why did Rayea need to be defended?
    Bursts of white lights shot through the crowd of people of Valeria, the former souls no longer imprisoned in bones, the walking dead of a forgotten land that Rayea had set free.  Two of the three wolfhounds standing near us shifted as well and appeared as humans, or technically as gods I realized.  G, J’s father and Max, my former boss at the Golden Skull emerged from their canine shapes.  Immediately G walked over to his son, hugging him for a very long time.  Once their embrace ended, G put his fingers to the side of his son’s face and closed his eyes for a moment.  A whirl of golden light flew around J.  When the light faded away, J stood before everyone, clean and shaven, in a white suit with bright blue tennis shoes.  “One always needs a hint of color,” G chuckled.
    J nodded and flipped his feet up once or twice as if he was doing a two-step dance.  He hugged his father again.  Their bond was solidified again, I thought.  A pain of jealously filtered to my heart.  I had no family, only Demetri and Rayea who was finally facing a judge and jury we couldn’t see.  What if I lost her?
    “Since this seems to be our impromptu judgment trial for the accused, I’m glad to be here with you all today.”  G walked over to Rayea, Blick, and me and held out his hand to Rayea.  “My dear, are you ready to do