Hi guys,
So, this is it: my first story, my first book. No cliches, no fanged boys who fall for the girl after two seconds. Are you ready for this story? Cause I am. Let me know what you think.
Lara Stein
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Copyright @ Lara Stein All Rights Reserved Copyright:
All the chapters and content of this book are copyrighted. All rights reserved by the author (Lara Stein) and any unauthorized copying, broadcasting, distribution, manipulation, or selling of this work constitutes as an infringement of copyright. Any infringement of this copyright is punishable by law. Any links, brand names or otherwise copyrighted material is not my own, and is not covered by my copyright. No copyright fragment intended.
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Chapter 1
22nd Street was a danger zone in disguise. Too many people. Too much noise. Too many variables in between.
The sound of my footsteps was smothered by the overkill of blaring music and shrill voices. I pushed myself through the throng of people, my mind restless, my pulse frantic. Thoughts and speculations increased their pace with each step. I had to find her.
Maria said she was somewhere close to Tamuré Club, an establishment with the kind of reputation that made you steer clear of its vicinity, even during daylight. The club was in the heart of the Crimson District, cradled by dozens of other bars with dazzling neon signs. There was so much color and so much life, you'd never have expected this to be one of the darkest and most dangerous areas of the city. I avoided this part of New York at all costs in the past. It was common knowledge that these streets were the most favored playgrounds of the undead.
What the hell was Maria doing here of all places? Why call me in the middle of the night, demanding I meet her within the hour, if not because something happened? I heard the agitation in her voice over the phone and it was too real to be neglected. Then the fact that she was gone all of a sudden, disconnected.
I had to find her and make sure that she was alright. I quickened my pace, bumping into leather-jacketed shoulders and muscled backs as I made my way through the terrain of partygoers.
By the time I reached Tamurè, my lungs were burning. I stopped to catch my breath and scanned my surroundings. My eyes traveled up and down the street, moving over clubs – pillows of bright color and light – to the darker corners of the area. This was a part of the city I had never been in before. One glance was enough. It was just like everyone said.
The streets in the Crimson District were always busy. No matter how old, no matter what kind of skin color, you would find them in the streets: a crammed mass of staggering clubbers in need of another fix. People of every age and flavor were queuing to get into Tamuré, and the line was long.
A group of girls stumbled past me – all drunk, all in high heels. They giggled, laughed in shrill, high-pitched voices, flashing their fake fang marks to anyone who cared to take a closer look. Somebody was throwing up beside me. Two guys with neon-colored hair were making out in the middle of the street. And no one gave a damn.
In another part of the city I might have fit in with my leather jacket and jeans, my long, brown, undyed hair. In another part I might have been able to mix and blend into the crowd: just a young, twenty-something on her way home. Not so here. In this zoo, I was the oddity.
Another breath. A long glance up and down the street. No sign of Maria.
If I wanted to find her in this jungle of contraries, it would take more than a pair of human eyes. I'd have to see past the maze of people and concrete, peel back layers of reality and make it bend to my own will.
There's a spot every witch has, a place deep inside that governs magic. I closed my eyes and reached for it. Pushed by the adrenaline in my veins, second sight snapped into place. Fast. Hard. The world around me was drenched in gray except for the colors of living beings in between. I could see the auras and read people's 'nature' with ease. My vision was sharp and clear.
The street was packed with translucent flickers, which was the way humans looked like in other sight. There were the occasional flickers of light red in there – maybe a handful of less powerful witches or shape shifters.
However, it was not their color that jammed a splinter of ice into my lungs and knocked all the air out of me. Because within all that translucence and redness I saw the one color that made me want to turn around, run, and never look back. The black spots were all over the place, saturating space with a darkness I had no name for. Their presence lingered behind and around me like looming shadows. I knew whom or what these auras belonged to. I knew their taste and their reading as much as I knew their nature. There was only one type of being that wore this color. Vampires.
I fisted my hands and forced the range of awareness to widen, while my senses fell deeper into the gray depths of second sight. I moved forward into the street, staying close to the club. If Maria was there I'd find her. Minutes passed as I moved and searched, searched and looked. A solitary, fading red aura to the left of Tamuré Club made me stop dead in my tracks and tear my eyes open.
There was a deep, inexplicable certainty that I knew whom this aura belonged to. There was this feeling I would have known that aura even if it were drowning in a sea of magical red. It was Maria's. And she wasn't alone. She was with a vampire.
I sprinted forward without thinking, panic distorting the interplay of consciousness and perception. The world shook and moved in time with my feet as I bolted into the next side street. Shaky hands drew out the gun tucked into my jeans. The item felt alien and heavy. Whatever little knowledge I had about guns was gone – just like common sense bowed out an instant ago. I didn't know what I was doing, couldn't think past the rising panic. There was only one thing I was sure of: I had to get there in time.
Gun in both hands, I set one foot in front of the other and rushed further into the deserted side street. I couldn't make out anything apart from noises coming from the main street and my own heartbeat. To top things off, I was blind as a bat. Somewhere in the back of my head the information registered.
I centered myself and called for my magic. The air around me came to life and something in my core shifted. There was structure and there was reason behind the element's makeup. There was power in the air. And it was mine.
I felt for the shapes and let invisible fingers brush objects and shapes around me. I was standing in the first quarter of the side street. An animal, probably a cat, was curled up, hiding behind a trash can about thirty feet away from me; a bottle of something – Alcohol? Beer? Did it matter? – lay abandoned at the corner to the backstreet.
It was there, right there at the very end of the street – a disturbance in the aerial landscape. I heard someone moving. I approached the noise, trying to think past the maze of panic. That was when I started hearing the sucking sounds.
I cocked the gun before I even realized it. The hollow sound of my feet pounding on the pavement was like a quickening staccato. My pulse went crazy in my veins. Together with an unhealthy dose of fear it threatened to knock my knees out from under me. I jumped sideways from behind the corner and right into the next alley, gun raised. The wetness pooling in my hands made holding the gun virtually impossible, but my fingers were ready to pull the trigger and shoot.
The club's sign was the only source of light, casting the side street into a pinkish neon color. I saw them less than twenty feet away, close to the back wall of Tamurè. The vampire knelt above Maria's unmoving body, its back facing me.
Time seemed to slow down as I watched and forgot how to breathe.
Unnaturally white hands drew something out from Maria's jacket. It was a pendant or amulet, glistening eerily in the pinkish light. The vampire held it in his right hand, just above her body. He didn't seem to notice my presence.
The blood rush must still cloud his senses.
I shot without a warning. The silver bullet cut through the air like an arrow, biting into sun-deprived, white flesh. I shot him in the back, intending to hit him straight in the chest from behind. The echoes of the shot hadn't reverberated fully, when the vampire jumped to his feet, baring his fangs at me.
I missed. I cursed under my breath.
You just gave away the best shot you had.
He must have been quite old. I could feel his power hitting my walls of air like a fist pounding on a wooden door. I got my first good look at his face and saw it. A smear of blood coated his chin and lips.
I drew back, raising my gun, and for a moment our eyes met. The creature stared at me. Its shape was bathed in pink neon light, owning the stillness only the undead possessed. I stared back into predatory black eyes that lacked the heat of the chase and other primal instincts prone to animals. There was nothing but a cold certainty of death.
The world tipped and tilted as reality folded in on itself only to morph into something else. My vision was narrowed and distorted. Everything felt unreal. I was facing one of them, and I was alone. Fear detonated inside of me – mortal fear that reeked of decay and rot. Did the vampire see it in my brown eyes, or could it smell the fear on me like a cheap perfume?
The vampire moved with unnatural speed, and suddenly he was only two feet in front of me. I screamed and fired blindly only to stare into thin air the next moment. The vampire was faster than I anticipated. I never saw it coming. He struck with the force of a sledgehammer as his fist connected with the side of my head. Pain exploded behind my eyes. I went down and hit the ground.
There are no rules or action patterns where survival is concerned. Stronger? Smarter? Better? Doesn't mean a thing. All that counts is that you are the one coming out alive. I didn't know if I was going to survive this night, but I knew that it was either move or die. I let myself roll, crawling away from him clumsily only to end up in a half-crouch. I blinked away disorientation, scanning pink-neon-darkness. I couldn't see the vampire, at least not with my eyes. I closed them and reached for that switch inside.
Second sight slammed into me until the world was drenched in bleak grayness again. The dark smudge was right behind me. I whirled around in one smooth motion and shot twice. The hissing sound coming from the vampire confirmed that at least one bullet hit home. I shot again and again, emptying my clip. The vampire staggered back, stilled, and vanished in front of my eyes. I tensed, trying to see and sense what could not be sensed by human senses alone. He hadn't vanished. I knew better than to count on luck this night.
I closed my eyes again, focusing on the otherworldly vision of second sight. My breathing was erratic. My pulse jumped in my veins, spurred by panic and adrenaline. But all I could see was auratic gray around me. To my utter surprise I found that the vampire was gone. We were alone.
I shoved hair out of my face and turned around. My eyes couldn't seem to focus on the shape lying on the black asphalt.
"Maria!"
No response. I ran to her and dropped to my knees. Her eyes were closed. Her throat was ripped open, blood streaming down from the neck. I pressed my right hand on the wound, trying to ignore the sick sensation of red wetness on my fingers. I searched for her pulse on the other side, listening intently, but the violent beating of my own pulse covered anything I might have heard.
However, I didn't need to hear. I felt it. There was no pulse. She wasn't breathing.
The world slipped and faded away in the cold night air. Her body seemed to be colder than it should have been. I looked around wildly. There was nobody but me in that street.
I started resuscitation with the determination of the desperate. I pushed and pressed until my arms were numb, until tremors walked up and down my body in twos and threes. Until I gave up. I shouldn't have given up. So why did I? The answer to the question never came.
I think at first I talked to her. Then I screamed and yelled at her.
Too late. You're too late. A voice kept whispering the words over and over in my mind.
It took longer than it should have for the information to settle in. And once it did, I couldn't even stand hearing my own voice in my head. The taste of vomit started creeping up my throat, slowly arresting my mouth. I crawled away from her, throwing up violently.
I blinked past the tears, panting heavily once it was over. Sounds and perception, anything above my lungs heaving violently, came to me slowly. There was darkness all around me. I was kneeling in the deserted street – alone. My friend was dead. The past had repeated itself.
The power exploded, and my magic shot out like a tsunami – a vent for the desperation, the madness inside. I heard glass shatter around me and car alarm systems kicking off, without really caring. The tears came, ugly and hot. Nothing mattered.
* * *
I think part of me stayed there in that alley. Just as dead as she was.
Some things were essential to me, things I didn't even notice, but took for granted. The world I was living in was a dangerous one. Times were unstable, but I was living in my own microcosm of fake-safety and I liked it. All it took for that microcosm to shatter and implode was one night, one damn night.
People died. We all did. It was a universal law, but losing someone you cared about wasn't something you just got over. Death was too vast, too terrible and too overwhelming to simply accept and walk away from it. A part of my little world had been ripped out, and the realization of that hit me in waves and small doses.
I don't know how long I stayed in that numbed state of shock, how long I refused to look at what happened and what would happen once I dared face it. Maria was dead.
Our friendship started out in a weird way, but it was one of a kind. Maria was always the stronger one. Better in so many ways. She was the kickass witch that got into the Circle's Force, solving crimes, catching the bad guys, doing everything I dreamed of. I was the witch who remained in the academic field and told herself she liked it there.
I knew what would have happened if it was me dying out there in that alley. Maria would have done everything to bag the bloodsucker that killed me, and not give a damn who got in her way.
It took time, but the resolve manifested like smoke rising from ashes. I'd do what she'd have done. I stared at myself in the mirror, long and hard. I wasn't sure who or what I was seeing, but I picked myself up. Numbing my emotions. Becoming the witch that could have saved her.