by L. S. Darsic
Unwanted Blood
by L. S. Darsic
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Copyright © 2014
This book is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead, other than those in public domain, is not intended and purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, re-sold, or transmitted electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
“Shit!!” I’m late for work, again. Of course oversleeping is not my problem since I don’t even sleep all that much, I guess you can call it a time management problem. I am notorious for being early and even on time, however there are just some things that make me forget how anal I am about being early or on time, that make me late. I tend to get sucked into something and forget about everything around me, including the clock. Take today for example, I have been in my dark room developing pictures for hours that I have no clue what time I even got in here. I love developing film the old way, it makes it feel so much more real to me.
Running through the house trying to find my work clothes is something short of an obstacle course. My house is small and from the 50’s therefore it is so cut up with rooms and door ways that I manage to run into half the walls. My arms and legs are going to have lots of bruises later, good thing I heal fast. After locating something decent to wear and trying to do something with my hair, I call it good and run outside to get my dog inside the house so I can leave for work.
“EGYPT!!!!!!! Get your ass up here! What are you doing? UGGGGGHHHH Why do you ALWAYS have to run around like a bloody idiot when you know I am late?!?!” yeah, I am yelling-talking to my big ass Doberman named Egypt who is out in the yard running around like a horse in a pasture. We have an odd relationship because I talk to her like she is a human that understands me and she looks at me and acts like she understands me. Guess I will be even later now while I wait for my yard horse to finish her laps. Finally she comes in with a smug look on her adorable face and I haul ass out of there. Good thing my boss is pretty easy going and doesn’t care or even notice if I am late. However, my anal tendencies still cause me to freak out and run around like an idiot with their ass on fire anyway.
I work for a travel website as a photographer, so to say I work a 9-5 job is a bit of a joke, again I still don’t understand myself when I feel like I am “late” to get to work when I make my own hours. Alas, trying to understand my thought process is near impossible so why bother trying. All anyone needs to know is that I am weird and I know it. Why be normal when everyone else in this world is? Weird stands out so I will embrace my weirdness.
Finally, after driving for 15 minutes like the hounds of hell are chasing me, I arrive at the office. I live and work in Chicago. After growing up in a small town, we’re talking 1 stop light small town, I love living in the city. It’s not too big and it’s not too small where you run the risk of seeing people you know everywhere. When I was growing up and having to drive an hour to the nearest city was not one of my favorite things to do so I made it goal number one to move somewhere bigger, goal number two, get away from the small town where everyone knows everyone else's business. My office building is a 3 story brick building full of windows, lucky for me, I work on the 3rd floor and have a great window office even though I am barely there since I travel so much. While nearly breaking my ankle running up the stairs I make it to my office only a half hour “late” which isn’t even really late, I digress.
Checking my e-mail I see that I have several new locations my boss Bruce, wants me to shoot photos for. I also see I have an e-mail from my best friend Presley who wants to get together and I have two other e-mails that make me groan. One email from my brother and one from my uncle. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family….but as you will soon find out, you can not pick your family as much as you would like to.
Once I set up a meeting time with Bruce to go over the new shoot locations he wants done and replying to Presley to say that I am free tonight, I tackle the dreaded family e-mails.
My brother Remy usually is a cold and uncaring dick to me. Everything he does makes me feel like he feels nothing but indifference and obligation towards me. With him as my brother for 25 years now, you would think I would be used to it, nope. Every time I wish for any sign that I am something other than an annoyance to him.
Alexandra,
Plan on being in Ireland for at least a month. Travel arrangements have been made and will be sent via courier by noon today.
Remy
Yes, that is the loving way my one and only dear brother talks to me. No more, no less. See how I wonder if he even considers me his sister and not just an obligation? Remy is a very important part of our family and is much older than me. He arranges everything for us and maintains the schedule therefore he gets to boss us all around. Yay for me. Since Remy is so wordy, my reply back to him is just as wordy as he is.
Remy,
Ok.
Alex.
Take that Remy! My next e-mail is a little warmer than my darling brothers’ e-mail. My uncle Reed is one of my nicer family members. He works hand in hand with Remy in the family business and I like to think of him as the softer side of the family but not much.
Alex,
How are you doing? I assume Remy sent you the information for your next trip. We assigned you with Jace and Xander for the trip and you will be meeting up with Anja when you arrive in Ireland. The trip will probably take a month. Make sure you bring Egypt with you.
Call or e-mail me if you need anything else and as always be safe.
Uncle Reed
Well shit, stuck with Jace and Xander. Son of a bitch.
Jace and Xander are my cousins and big pains in my ass. “They are family and I have to love them” has become my mantra. They aren’t bad guys and I do love them but my gosh they are so protective of me that I can barely go to the bathroom without one of them following me. They are also twins and gorgeous so of course women flock to them like sheep to a shepherd, not to mention their over inflated egos as a result. Anja Carro is an old family friend, I have known her basically since we were born. The twins have the hots for Anja but she treats them like they are her brothers, which helps deflate those egos a bit and gives me extreme joy to sit back to watch as she shoots them down.
After dealing with family e-mails I turn back to my work life, one of the few things in my life that I have a say in, sort of. My meeting with Bruce goes well and shocking! I have to go to shoot some photos in Ireland and Scotland! Of all the luck. Alright, so I'm being sarcastic. When my family has work for me they make sure it has a good cover and that cover is me doing photo shoots for the travel website. My family owns the travel website along with several other successful businesses and Bruce Carro is yet another family friend.
Chapter 2
Maybe it would help if you ha
d some background on my life….
I grew up in a very large family. My family is very close and all live within walking distance from each other. Currently there are 55 of us in the Stiggero family. Everyone in our family has light hair, olive skin and bright green eyes. Growing up in a small town where half of them are your family, you are a bit sheltered I suppose. My best friends were my cousins and anyone who wasn’t family was nothing more than a stranger. There is another family who we are close to and consider them “friends of the family” and they are the Carro family. All my life we were told our only friends could be my cousins and the Carro family who lived about an hour away from us. Let me tell you how bad this sucks when you are becoming a teenager and started to think boys were cute. I had to hang out with my cousins who were family so they were not even close to an option and the Carro family who I’ve also grown up with, not many options out there for someone like me.
The Stiggero and Carro families are direct descendants of Angels, yep, you heard me, Angels. This makes us nephilim, which is the product of an angel and a human getting it on, if ya know what I mean. For more years than I can count, these two families have been together. If anyone wants to get married and have kids, you have to marry and have kids with someone in the other family in order to keep the blood lines clean. Why does that matter? Well because we have special things we can do as a result of what we are and it is our families’ duty to continue to carry on those abilities, blah blah blah. So this means our lives are not really our lives. We are dictated to, based on the family needs. I wanted to move away from the small town and become a photographer. Well I had to move to Chicago since it was still close to home and I had to become a travel photographer to use as a cover so, my family bought a travel website so I could do so. All for the good of the world, right?
We have only had one family member go rogue, or so we call them, and not follow the family line. My uncle Ethan fell in love with someone who wasn’t in the Carro family and refused to leave her, so instead he left us. I was very young when that happened so I don’t remember much but I do know that has left a stain on the family since then. Now they are even more anal about who we spend time with and what we are doing.
As Nephilim our duty is to be the eyes, ears and army for the angels here on earth. We have been given special abilities for a purpose so we must use our powers for good. I feel like I live in a make believe good versus evil action movie sometimes.
One of the most important jobs my kind have is making sure no one knows about us and the “others” that exist in the world. The “others” is what we call those who are not nephilim or human. So the half demon- half humans, vampires, werewolves, pixies, trolls, etc. are what we consider as “other”. If we find out the “others “ have been doing things that could draw human attention, then someone in the family is sent out to “deal” with them. Dealing with them means anywhere from an ass kicking to sending them back to meet their maker. All depends on the situation. I guess you can call us the police of the world. Yay for me.
My full name is Alexandra Carro Stiggero. Since we come from one of two families we always have the middle name of the family our mothers' belong to and we take our father’s last name. At the age of 13 we begin to gain our abilities, up until then we know nothing of the family secrets. Each member of my family has the same core abilities with 1 or 2 extras on top that are specific to that person. We all have the ability to move at super human speed, super human strength, fast healing, we can sense each other if we are in the same area and the only way we can die is by beheading. We usually all look like we are 25- 35 years old which is when our aging slows down to a snails pace and we gain the full extent of our abilities. From the time someone like me gains their full abilities we age about 1 year for every 100 years. So my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles all look young, neat right? Um no. Its kind of weird to walk around the grocery store with my grandmother and people ask if she is your older sister or when you see “grandma” walking around in the new shirt you just bought. That shit just isn't right sometimes.
When someone in my family reaches the ripe old age of 300 years old they get the option to go into what we call is the “sleep”. When someone goes into the “sleep” they are in an undisclosed location and guarded over by a protective spell so no harm comes to them. There are currently 16 members of my family in the “sleep”. They do this in order to take a break. Who knew you needed a break at 300 years old? The break is for a set time that is determined by the person who is in the sleep. They decide how long they go, for some its 5 years and others it could be 100 years. All depends on how sick of the family you are, right? All the family members who are in the sleep right now I have never met so they have at least been in there for 25 years. Can’t wait to meet more family when they decide to wake up which is a whole other weirdo problem. No one is allowed to know when someone will wake up, so one day they aren’t there and the next they just show up saying “Honey I’m home!” Since I have yet to experience this it just seems way too weird for my small brain to wrap around.
Chapter 3
Now that you have had a small family history lesson back to real life….
It has been weeks since I have been able to see my friend Presley, so tonight I am going to live it up before my little jaunt to Ireland. Presley has been my friend for a few years now and she lives two houses down from me. She has no clue about my life and thinks I just travel a lot for work as a photographer, like I said before, good cover made up by the good old family. Presley is a beautiful brunette who is tall, bright and feisty, where as I am tall, blonde and reserved. Presley is also the person who watches my house for me while I am away and my personal stylist so I don't run around looking like a bum.
After work I run home to deal with Egypt, my crazy horse dog and get ready to head to the bar to meet Presley. My life is complicated so I like to keep the things I can control as simple as possible which means, I dress relaxed and don’t spend a ton of time on my hair and makeup. Thanks to my nephilim genes, I have great skin, hair and body so it doesn’t take much for me to look presentable, I suppose. My style is jeans, a nice shirt and sandals or heels depending on where I am going. So tonight I am in my usual flip flops, jeans and a peasant shirt to complete the look I am barely aiming for. I arrive at Fisher's Bar and Grill early and find a table towards the back to wait for Presley. After ordering a beer and some pretzels I see Presley parading her sassy ass in the door like she is a runway model and back to where I am sitting.
“Hey Pres! I missed you” I say while standing up to give her a hug
“Hey babe! Long time no see, you bitch. It’s about time you dragged your ass out!” Presley says as she hugs me back. Ah, good ole Presley. I can always count on her to swear at me in an affectionate manner.
“Ah, yeah..... I know, Pres. I just have been busy. It’s my job to travel you know. Besides, it’s not like you don’t have Jake to keep you busy….in bed” I shoot back at her knowing full well this will distract her from talking about me and my travels.
“OMG Alex, you have no idea how sweet that man is on me. I have him wrapped around my finger” she squeals while holding up her finger as if he is wrapped around it literally. Presley is a serial dater and always has to be in a relationship of some sort. But that also helps me because she is always so busy with her newest boyfriend that she doesn’t notice that I keep my distance. It’s not that I want to shut her out, it’s more like I have no choice in the matter.
“So how long are you staying in town for this time? Are you ever going to leave Egypt with me so I can love on her all the time while you are away? It’s not fair.” Presley pleads with me with puppy dog eyes. Egypt and Presley have a weird relationship. Presley hates animals and will avoid them at all costs, except for Egypt. It makes no sense why she loves Egypt, maybe she has some weird voodoo power over her? Besides, Egypt goes with me everywhere. She is probably the most traveled dog on the earth. Anytime I travel it’s by private plane,
car or boat, so Egypt is able to stay with me the whole time. Otherwise I don’t think I would have been able to keep her.
Two years ago I found this tiny little puppy on my front step shivering in the rain, so I took her in and have loved her to pieces ever since. Good thing I was home that night.
“Pres, you know Egypt can’t stay with you. She is over 150lbs and would destroy your perfectly put together house. Not to mention you would have trenches to China dug in your back yard. You two would not be best buds after that” I explain. Hopefully she doesn’t push because there is no way I am leaving my dog behind. She is my best friend. Oh god, that is so pathetic. My best friend is a dog. What has the world become, my life is so lame.
“Alex! Hellooooo?” Presley snaps me out of my mental pity party.
“Sorry Pres, just thinking about all the crap I have to get done before I leave again. I’m going to Ireland in 2 days for about a month, so I will have to pack more.” I explain. I know as soon as I talk about packing she zeros in on it and all talk of Egypt is done
“Ohhhh! Ireland sounds awesome! Think of all the men in kilts you can flirt with….maybe see what is under those kilts? Ohhh we have to make sure you pack some flirty fun stuff. How about I come over and help you, I don’t want you to embarrass yourself over in Ireland!” Presley is like my personal shopper and keeps me looking decent since I don’t really care what I wear. Lucky for me she keeps up with the styles.