Epilogue

The day of my father's funeral was when I had to run. I was standing there with my sisters, holding a yellow manila envelope to my chest that was given to me by my father's will. My sisters thought it was cash but as we pressed our fingers against the package we deciphered that it wasn't, which was good for me since I knew Jenna would get jealous.

I remembered seeing this yellow manila envelope somewhere. It was when I was a young girl. I answered the door one afternoon and standing there was a tired looking woman with green eyes. "Can I help you?" I asked.

She smiled. "Can you give this to your Daddy?" She leaned down and put the envelope in my small hands.

"Okay," I said. I looked up at her. "Hey, who are you? Does Mummy and Daddy know you?"

The woman smiled; her eyes bright despite how tired she was. "Of course," she said softly. "Just tell him the package is from Charlotte Behr."

I closed the door and ran to Dad's study where he was writing something on sheet music. "Daddy!" I yelled, getting his attention.

He raised his eyes from the sheet music. "Yes Mabel?"

"There's a package for you," I said, holding it out.

"That's weird," he mumbled, taking it. "I didn't have to sign for it? Did your mom sign it?"

I gave him a look. I was little so I didn't know what he meant. "What do you mean? A lady just gave it to me. She said her name was Charlotte Behr, do you know her?"

Dad dropped the package suddenly and got up from his chair and pushed me aside. He normally never did that so I followed him out of his study and he walked to the front door and started to walk down the street screaming, "Desiree?!" I tried to follow him but Mum stopped me.

"Why is your father running outside like a mad man?" she asked.

"He's looking for somebody named Charlotte Behr but he is calling her Desiree," I explained. "Is Daddy going crazy?" Mum paled and got out her cellphone and dialed Dad's number.

"How can you be so sure about it?!" Mum hissed through the phone, trying to keep her voice low. "Max, you haven't seen her in years, what makes you think she just dropped in out of nowhere?" she paused as Dad talked. "Honey, I just come home. It's hopeless. You've tried before. You haven't found her, for all we know, she could be dead." She probably cut Dad off because she said, "I know Mabel said that but what if she was just pretending? Children have playful imaginations; she may have been one of them."

I wanted to say that I didn't imagine her but I didn't.

Dad later came home looking distraught and he wasn't himself the entire week.

My sisters were there with their husbands and children and I was there, alone. My husband died a couple years back in a car crash. We didn't have any children because I couldn't have any. When I looked at my sisters and how happy they were with their families I couldn't help but feel a bang of envy coursing through my veins like adrenaline.

The sky was grey and it was raining, but you can't really expect better weather here in Scotland. I guess the UK was fit for having sad gloomy funerals. Dad was buried right next to Mum. He promised her that when he died he would do that. Oliver was buried a few yards away from them.

Mum and Dad were never religious so there was no priest or anything. It was just us and the dead surrounding us, or so we thought.

Jenna was clutching onto her husband's arm sobbing into it. She had felt that she owed him a lot but she never acted to repay them. Her children, a strapping tall boy David named after his father and Sally, their daughter stood together awkwardly looking at their mother cry.

Then there was Isabel who looked like she was going to be sick like the day Oliver died. Her husband, Chris had to hold her so she wouldn't faint to all of this. Oliver, her son looked at his mother with sympathy, holding her hand while the two twin girls, Anna and Marie were holding each other crying.

I sighed and looked back at the freshly covered grave and hugged the manila envelope closer to me. I wished that Charles, my husband was there with me. If he was I would be crying into his arms while he held me and told me that it was going to be okay like the day we found out we couldn't have a child.

I knew when I would go home I would be pulling out a bottle of wine and watching telly.

But I never got to do that as a bunch of strange men surrounded us with guns. "Put your hands in the air!" one of them barked in an American accent.

"What the hell is going on?!" David yelled, throwing his hands up in fear.

"You are a threat to the world!" another one barked. "Now put your hands up!"

"Mummy?" Anna shrieked. "What's going on?!"

"You fucking blokes can't respect a mourning family?!" Jenna screamed at them, her hands not up in the air but crossed in defiance. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"

"Don't make us use these guns!" a young voice barked. My eyes widened when I realized that these were a couple of teenagers.

"This is a sick joke!" I yelled. "You bloody teenagers have gone too far! Good God, some of you are as old as Anna and Marie!"

"Put your hands in the air!" they hissed, certainly certain that they were going to have to take us by force.

"I don't believe you're going to shoot!" Chris challenged. "You're just a bunch of ki—"

But he never got to finish the sentence as he fell to the ground, his head bleeding from a bullet wound that went straight through his forehead and through the back. Crimson stained the wet grass and Anna, Marie, and Isabel began to scream in terror. "Dad!" Oliver shouted, running to his father but then shot down the same way as his father.

All the women were screaming except for me, who saw this in combat when I served my country. That's how I met my husband.

"Nobody move!" they barked again. "If anybody else dares challenge us or tries to get away, you will be killed. NOW HANDS IN THE AIR!"

Everybody else did but I stood my ground and glared at them. "Mabel, what are you doing?!" Jenna shrieked.

"I am not going to follow their orders." I replied firmly.

"Are you fucking cra—" But then I was yanked by my arm and suddenly I was running with a man around my age.

"What the hell are you doing?!" I screamed.

The man didn't say anything as we ran a couple of blocks and into a car. He shoved me in and then he got into the driver's side and jammed keys into the ignition and pulled out, hitting a few cars, like a mad man.

"Who the hell are you and where the hell are you taking me?!" I questioned.

"No time to explain!" he yelled in a Londoner accent. "We need to get out of here!"

"Get me out of this car!" I screamed, tugging at the handles. But it wouldn't budge and I realized it was child safety locked. "You're working for them, aren't you?!"

"I'm saving your sorry ass!" he replied. "I don't even know you but you're apparently my damn cousin!"

"What?" I asked, my voice getting low but rising as he swerved around a corner. "My mum and dad didn't have siblings!"

"Well I thought mine didn't either, but I guess not." he said, making another rough turn. "Nice to meet you Mabel, I'm Justin Williams, your cousin."

"How are you my cousin?!" I screamed again, holding on for dear life at his reckless driving. "This can't be possible!"

"My mother as she was dying started to scream that she was Desiree Stoll and that I needed to save my cousin, Mabel with the blonde curly hair from the American government in Scotland and she made me put on her shoes and 'teleport' here." he explained. I gave him a look of disbelief, looked at his shoes (they weren't old lady shoes, just regular men's shoes) and he smirked. "I know, I still can't believe it either but she said that they would come for us and they are. They already got my brothers and sisters and their families."

"What about your wife and kids?" I asked.

"I'm gay with no partner." he replied quickly. "Nothing to lose."

I leaned back in my seat. "I'm too old for this."

"Me too," he replied. "Now get out of the car, we're going on a holiday." I stumbled out of the car and he grabbed my arm again and screamed teleport and suddenly we were at the boarders of a village in a jungle.

I almost fell back in surprise. "Where the hell are we?" I asked. "And how'd we get here?"

"The Amazon Rain Forest," he replied, looking around. "We got here by teleporting. These shoes here are magical apparently."

"How'd you come up with this place?" I asked, staring into the village. I was scared that they would harm us because we invaded their territory. In the troops I had to deal with unwelcoming natives.

"Research," Justin replied airily. "I'm a doctor after all." He began to walk into the village and the villagers looked up and smiled at him. Some of the men walked up to him and they talked in some strange language. He gestured over to me and the men nodded gravely and then concluded the sentence with a pat on the back.

"What did they say?" I asked. "Are they going to kill us?"

Justin laughed. "No, they're not going to kill us. They're not savages you know. While doing research here I stayed with them and befriended them. We're save here since were in the dense part of the forest."

"I will bloody murder you if we die at the hands of those psychotic teenagers in this bloody rain forest." I growled.

"You go do that." he said, dismissing me.

It's been three months since then and I've learnt to settle into this life. Justin told me about his life. His father was a pub owner and his mother was a vocal couch who went by the name Charlotte Behr-Williams. His oldest brother was named Martin and he ran in the Olympics and then later coached runners for Team Britain. His second oldest brother was named Devin who ran the pub beside his father. Then there was his only sister Daniele, or Dani who was a tattoo artist.

He was the baby of the family like me who shared the same birthday as me. It was really creepy but I had enough surprises in my life so I didn't freak out like he did.

It took me a week to finally open up the envelope. When I opened it I was disappointed that it was just at notebook filled with messy writing. And I didn't start to read it until Justin found it and said it was his mother's hand writing.

So each night in our hut we would huddle around the candlelight reading it out loud to each other. When one of us got disturbed later on we would throw it back into the envelope and panic and a few days later read on.

I wondered what happened with my siblings and when I asked that out loud, Justin replied with, "Dead. All of them."

I stood there, not looking at him. "How do you know this?" I asked. "How could you possibly know?"

He shrugged. "I guess I know because the same thing happened to me. As they were walking into the hospital and I was walking out to take a breather they were shot down right in front of me." he replied, his voice solemn. "You can't escape the truth."

I sighed. "I wish I could."

"We all do." he replied back.

When we finished the book that his mother wrote as Desiree Stoll we sat there in disbelief. We couldn't believe that such horrible things could happen to people. I understood now why Mum and Dad never talked about their past or family.

Some nights I think about them. I think about Jacob Gardner and his daughter Katie and Monique Stoll and her twin boys and how innocent things were until the Gods got into the way. I think of how young they were when they were given their 'gifts' and how hopeless they were. Yet they still kept them.

Then I think about Jacob Stoll and his sisters, Hailey and Rosalie. I could have known them if they weren't manhandled by fate. I think about how short their lives were and how much war can have an effect on teenagers and kids. My time in the army wasn't the nicest but I couldn't imagine 11 year old me walking around slaughtering people for a cause that I didn't want to be part of.

Then I thought about Dad and his sister pulled into an inevitable fate. It made sense that she'd want to run away from it. Jenna said that Dad was a coward when she was mad at him. I wonder if she would have said that if she knew about what I know now. When you're a kid you think your dad is amazing and that he can do anything, well I still think that he can.

Dad and Mum worked so hard to make us have a better life than them and we never thanked them. I don't think they ever expected a thanks. My generation was the first generation in three generations not to be bastard children. We were truly blessed.

There are nights when I wake up screaming to the thought of how they would kill my family. Nightmares not as bad as the ones the generations before me had, but nonetheless nightmares.

I don't know if we'll ever be found. If we are, then we might as well be killed. Our family has caused enough havoc among this earth. There are more important things in life that are wreaking havoc to this world and the last thing they need is some pesky Stoll's/William's to go running around causing more of it.

Tomorrow I will stuff this in the yellow manila envelope and Chris will go out to America and leave it on a girl's doorstep. The watch he has (given to him by his mother) will make him travel back in time to this girl and we hope that she spreads this on the internet so the past will learn about this before it happens and prevents this.

If you are reading this and you just so happen to be a half-blood or whatever kind of blood you are. Run. Run as fast as you can and try to prevent this because this is what will happen in the future.

But for now, the world keeps spinning the same way it was before and I shall wait for the change. I hope when I open my eyes the next morning the world changes for the better, even if I don't know it yet.

Cheers,

Mabel Desiree Stoll

And that concludes the ending to the whole trilogy. It's been a great run but all things must come to an end. I hope you've stayed around for all of this even though it's been very long. I hope that the lives of Desiree and Vincent stick in your minds for a long time. And I think by now I can delete Why Should I Trust You since the whole story is irrelevant but who knows. I guess I need the voice of the readers.

Until next time, or maybe not, thank you for reading.

Love,

Marykate3000, the messenger.