Prologue

New York.

New York was also known as The City That Never Sleeps.

Indeed, it was an active city, always. At every hour of the day, every day.

It didn't matter if it was past midnight, you could always find families strolling happily while admiring the beauty of such a frenetic city.

But even such beautiful cities had their own dark side. In a city full of tycoons and celebrities, in the dark, there were also beggars, drug dealer or killers.

In one of the hundreds of streets of the city, under the dying rays of the setting sun, there was a girl, she seemed nineteen at most, walking around as if she had lost her map and had nowhere to return to. Her name was Vega, as the Harp Star: one of the most shining stars of the firmament.

Vega was so absorbed in her own world that she didn't notice that she had come to an alley that everyone avoided. It was said that in that alley a lot of girls had disappeared before, although they were found after a month in Central Park, no one knew how and why they disappeared. The police tried to interrogate those girls, but they claimed they didn't remember anything. And after a thorough checkup, it turned out that the girls only had mild anaemia.

There were lots of speculations about that accident: some said the allay was haunted, others that a woman was brutally assassinated near that place. Because of this a lot of exorcists were called, but nothing seemed to work: girls continued to disappear every month and every month they reappeared in Cetral Park.

The disturbing silence was broken by the sound of something metallic colliding with the tarmac.

Vega was jolted awake from her thoughts. She looked down looking for the source of that sudden noice and realized that she had accidentally kicked an empty can of cola.

She sighed deeply, while she was turning to leave she noticed a black cat looking at her with it's huge golden eyes. It reminded her of her sister: she loved cats, to the point where she used to always carry a pack of cat food in her bag and as time went by also Vega picked up that habit.

After placing a handkerchief on the ground she poured over the cat food, after that she distanced herself a little bid to allow at the kitten to eat, after all felines were wary animal. She sensed a long lost feeling of satisfaction as she watched the cat eat.

Suddenly the kitten straightened up as if something had alerted it. It hissed defensively towards the darkest part of the alley and started to retreat and under Vega's bewildered gaze it disappeared. She turned around trying to stop it, but to no avail.

The lane returned to it's disturbing silence, then she heard it again: the sound of an empty can hitting the tarmac. Vega held her breath, she forgot: felines were natural predators and they would escape like that only when they sensed great danger.

When she tried to turn her head to see what frightened the cat, she felt a slight pain in her nape and everything went black.

The only thing she could remember were the feeling of something warm enveloping her and the scent of sunflowers.

And pure darkness.