by Apryl Baker
The
BlackBurne Legacy
Book 1 of the Bloodlines Legacy Series
By Apryl Baker
The BlackBurne Legacy
Copyright © 2016 by Apryl Baker.
All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: April 2016
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
www.limitlesspublishing.com
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-572-8
ISBN-10: 1-68058-572-X
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For my mother.
Table Of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
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Prologue
I run through the woods, the sunlight warm on my face.
The sounds of the forest blend into the wind that tears at my fur. The ground gives way beneath my paws as I launch myself through the trees. Never have I felt so free, so exhilarated. I own these woods. Branches tug, trying to slow me down as I bound through the maze of trunks and undergrowth. The cold autumn air smells of dying leaves—their moldy, decaying odor signaling the birth of fall.
I am home.
I slow, catching the scent of a deer, and weave between the trees until I see it. A doe stands before me drinking from the stream that winds its way down through the mountains. I admire the beauty of the animal. The deer’s gentle eyes are rather expressive. They glow with a shy innocence.
I inch closer, testing the wind. It blows toward me. My scent won’t reach her and I want a chase, a more challenging kill. As I ease forward, I make no attempt to hide the sound of the leaves crunching beneath me. I need her to hear me.
Turning toward the noise, she sees me and goes completely still for a heartbeat. Her eyes reflect her fear, her sudden panic.
Her tail twitches and she bolts.
Growling, I barrel after her, letting her think she can be fast enough to get away. Silly creature. As if she can ever be faster than I am. I live to run.
She streaks through the trees, and I let her have her way for a bit. I enjoy the chase. The sound of her deep, labored breathing drives me on, the smell of her fear making me a little crazy. The thrill of the hunt worms through me, building the sense of anticipation of the kill. I can almost taste all that hot blood gushing into my mouth. Her fear smells sweet to my senses and my hunger increases. I howl a challenge at her. She turns to start up the mountainside. I snarl and jump, taking her down in one leap.
My teeth bite into her neck even as she bucks beneath me, trying to free herself. Adrenaline surges—the exhilaration of the hunt floods my senses with her futile struggles. I have taken her down. She is mine. Victory makes my snarl all the fiercer in the face of her soft whimpers. Mine. All mine.
As I have no wish to make her suffer, I kill her quickly. Then I set to enjoying my kill. Her warm blood fills my mouth, coats my muzzle. I rip and tear at the flesh until my stomach is full and sated. The carcass I leave for the smaller animals. I am done, and there are others that are hungry.
Running softly, I splash into the creek to enjoy the feel of the cold water as I rinse the blood from my coat. The water always soothes me. I blink, more than a little sleepy now, and I think I might find a quiet place to rest. I step out of the water, and the unfamiliar scent hits me.
I taste the air around me. A sweetly bitter scent, not one I recognize, teases my senses. It does not belong in these woods. I start to track the smell, listening for sounds. I hear nothing, but the smell becomes stronger the farther out I search.
He jumps in front of me and shakes his head, warning me to go no further. Rage fills me. Who is he to tell me what I can or can’t do in my own forest? I growl a warning low in my throat.
He snarls at me in reply.
His head whips around as he too catches the scent I’ve been tracking. My gaze travels behind him.
A new hunter has arrived.
He stands silently watching us, an indulgent smile on his lips. I feel my first taste of fear gazing into that smiling face.
The hunter starts forward.
Chapter One
My fingers clutch the steering wheel. Get a grip, Alexandria. You can do this. I won’t be locked up again.
I bite down on my lip so hard I draw blood. My tongue flicks over the small cut, the tinny taste blanketing my tongue. People are everywhere—walking and chatting with each other. They look so…normal.
Normal.
It’s what I want to be, more than anything, I just don’t know if I can.
“You’ll be fine, Alex.”
I look over at my brother Jason, or Jase, as I call him. He’s only a year older than I am. We have the same blue eyes and our hair is the same shade as the coal this place is famous for. The encouragement on his face is enough to make me suppress the sigh aching to escape my lips. My brother is the one person I don’t want to disappoint.
“Of course, I’ll be fine.” I give him my best smile and force my fingers to relax their grip on the wheel. “We need to eat.”
Jason picked me up from Compton this morning and surprised me by letting me drive. Well, we’d shared driving duty. Compton is located in upstate New York. Jason made the drive and picked me up at exactly eight this morning. He’d been beat and made no fuss when I offered to drive. He’d slept most of the morning. I still can’t believe he trusted me enough to fall asleep while I drove. I’ve only had my license a few months. Not sure I would have been so trusting in the same situation. Considering he picked me up from the nuthouse…yeah, no way would I have let him drive. The little diner we stopped at, The Coffee Shop, is located in our new hometown of Jacob’s Fork, West Virginia. Jason swears they have the best burgers around. Considering it’s after nine on a Friday night with lots of people walking around, the diner itself is quiet.
I hear the car door open and look over to see Jason getting out. He unfolds his six-foot frame from the car and stretches. He’s much taller than my five foot eight inches. I’m tall for a girl, but he dwarfs me now. I’ve missed so much.
Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and open my own door. Baby steps. I can do this. It’s much harder than I thought it would be, but I force myself out of the car. Jason gives me the biggest grin. I don’
t think he thought I’d actually get out. Honestly, I didn’t either. This is my first outing outside of the nuthouse in…I don’t even know how long.
The inside of the diner is just as quiet as it appears from the outside. Jason leads me to a booth near the back. The place looks like the seventies threw up in here. The orange vinyl of the booths and the chairs definitely needs some repairs. Several are ripped. A dingy, stained black and white tile floor adds to the retro look. The green tabletops and counter only enhance the outdated look. Ugly wood paneling on the walls screams for an update. The place is hideous, and I adore it.
The girl who comes over to take our order greets Jason by name and gives me a once over. I raise my eyebrows just a little. She’s definitely sending off a jealous vibe as she writes down my food order.
“So is that the future Mrs. Jason Reed?” I tease.
Jason snorts. “Not in this lifetime.”
“Aww, the future Mrs. Reed will be devastated.”
“Michelle and I dated,” he admitted. “She’s mad I won’t get back together with her.”
“Michelle the cheater, Michelle?” I ask. He’d written to me two weeks ago about her. Jason really, really liked her, but she’s a serial dater. My brother is a one-woman kind of guy, and he expects the same from the girls he dates.
“Yeah.”
I wince at the hurt on his face. I wish I could do something to take his pain away, but I can’t heal his broken heart.
“Well, college starts soon.” I try to sound perky and upbeat. “You can find the perfect Mrs. Jason Reed there, I’m sure.”
He gives me a wink, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll be right back, Alex. It’s Dad. I’m sure he wants to know where we are. You’ll be okay for a few minutes by yourself?”
I give him a thumbs up, and he stands and walks outside. Dad has been texting nonstop for the last three hours. He’s worried. It’s not every day one child goes to pick up the other from a psychiatric facility.
Michelle brings the food a few minutes later and plops it down. Her eyes scan for Jason, then settle on me, their brown depths full of jealousy. “Where did Jason go?”
“Phone call.”
She stares me down, ready to lay into me, I’m guessing, but before she can say anything, a customer comes in and takes a seat across from me. I get the stink eye before she stalks over to take his order.
I glance at the guy, but the ex-future Mrs. Reed is blocking my line of sight. I can hear his voice, though. It’s deep and rich and oddly enough sends shivers down my spine. My hands come up and rub my arms in response. Weird.
“Sorry.” Jason slides back into his seat. “Dad’s being Dad. So, what do you think of the burgers?”
“The ex-future Mrs. Reed just dropped them off,” I say with a laugh. “I haven’t even tasted mine yet.”
“What are you waiting for?” He gestures to my plate. “Eat up!”
I’m not used to a lot of greasy food, so I want to scrunch my nose up and say no, but it does smell good. My stomach picks that moment to remind me it’s empty too.
I pick up the potential artery-clogger and take a bite. An explosion of flavor bursts across my tongue and I let out a small moan of pleasure. We never had food that tasted like this at the facility. Jason grins at my reaction and digs into his own food.
We eat quietly for a few minutes, both lost in our thoughts. I wonder what Dad said to him. Jason has his own apartment near campus, and I’m going to be staying with him while we both attend Appalachia University located here in town. My family gave up everything and moved to this sleepy little college town so I can get a fresh start. We’re strangers here, and I don’t have to worry about wagging tongues.
Dad and Emma want me to stay with them, but Jason argued against it, and I agree. I love my parents, but if I stay with them, they’ll be watching me every minute, waiting for me to slip up so they have a reason to send me back to the crazy house. I know they love me, but no matter what happens, I will never go back.
“We’ll go shopping tomorrow for furniture and stuff.” Jason licks his fingers. “Dad wants us to stay at the house tonight. I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“It’s fine, Jase. Dad just wants to make sure I’m not gonna stab you in your sleep.” He grimaces and I cringe. Bad joke. Stabbing my brother is what put me in my predicament to begin with.
“Sorry,” I mutter and lower my head, my curtain of hair swinging forward to hide my face.
“It’s okay.” His voice is calmer than mine. “You didn’t know what you were doing, Al. I know it wasn’t your fault, and you’re better now.”
But I’m not. I refuse to tell him that, though. I fooled everyone into thinking I’m better. If he only knew how messed up I still am. Like right now, I have my hands under the table because they’re starting to shake and that old feeling of the walls closing in on me is creeping up my spine.
Just thinking about what I’d done to my brother all those years ago can send me spiraling back to that dark corner of my mind, and the panic tries to choke me.
The nightmares started when I was little. Really awful, terrifying ones. I can never remember anything but flashes from my dreams, but they scared me silly. Still do.
As I’d gotten older, the nightmares worsened. The doctors diagnosed me with night terrors, not uncommon in a child who’d gone through what I had, they’d assured my dad. I’d been sent to a child psychologist, but it hadn’t helped.
By the time I hit middle school, I barely slept. I’d started to panic all the time and I couldn’t understand why. Between that and the nightmares, I’d developed insomnia.
It all came to a boiling point when I was eleven. I don’t remember most of it, but what I do remember is more than enough to haunt me.
Rain. The sound of the rain beating against the windows is what I remember most. It made me sleepy, and I’d drifted off. The bell woke me and I’d jumped up, startled, knocking all my stuff to the floor. The kids had snickered and pointed at the weird girl. I’d brushed it off until after my next class.
There was one girl in particular who seemed to delight in tormenting me. When I’d approached my locker, I’d seen her and her cronies standing there, showing something to the kids clustered around them. They were all laughing.
When I got closer, I saw she was holding up my school planner, which I must have dropped earlier, and instantly the panic I’d barely kept at bay surfaced. She knew about my shrink. Not only did she know, but she was showing anyone who’d stop and look. I kept the appointments scribbled in my planner so I wouldn’t forget. Everyone had been staring and laughing at me. The panic hit hard, forcing the air from my lungs.
She’d leaned in close to me and whispered something in my ear. To this day, I still don’t know what she said. The doctors said I blocked it. Whatever it was had caused me to snap.
Fear and panic were replaced by a blind rage unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. My vision changed. I saw in shades of red, in heat signatures. I’d almost reached out and grabbed her. The urge to hurt her burned like a desperate need. Images from my nightmares had crashed into me like an ocean wave hitting the rocks at high tide. Flashes of sharp, snarling teeth overwhelmed me. All I’d felt was the need to hurt her, to do something really terrible. It had scared me so badly, I’d flung myself away from her and run out of the school, unaware of anything except the need to outrun my desire to cause her harm.
Jason found me a few hours later hiding in the park below our house. He tried to help me, and I didn’t know it was him. They told me I’d stabbed him with a sharp stick. I don’t remember doing it. All I’d seen were the creatures from my nightmares. He managed to half carry, half drag me home, all the while bleeding from the deep wound in his thigh. How he’d done that as hysterical as I was, I don’t know. The images from my nightmares wouldn’t go away. They were all I’d been able to see at that point and were so real to me that reality became a vague dream. My mind went somewhere else for
a little while. I woke up a few weeks later, afraid and alone, strapped to a bed. Compton Psychiatric Academy had been my shrink’s solution. I’d spent the last nine years learning ways to calm my panic and act normal. I did learn a lot at Compton, but I won’t ever go back there. It was a prison, my every move watched, analyzed. They made us all feel crazier than we really were.
In order for them to let me out, I’d needed to prove to them I was getting better, so I did what I had to do in order to escape. It’s not hard, really. You just have to consistently tell them what they want to hear and take the meds. I hate the meds, though. They make me feel all zombiefied.
If it were up to my dad, I’d still be there. I’m legally an adult now, and as long as the courts think I’m sane, he can’t force me to stay.
Fingers snap in front of my face and I jump. I look up to see Jason staring at me, concerned. I give him a half-hearted smile. “Sorry, just thinking about everything.”
“Well, stop thinking about the past. We can’t change the past, only live in the here and now.” He tries to sound wise, and I laugh. Emma, he is not.
“Can I get you two anything else?”
The venom in the words causes me to look up to see the ex-future Mrs. Reed glaring down at us both. Hostility rolls off of her.
“Can I get a box for this?” I ask, gesturing to my uneaten food. Thinking about the past might have curdled my appetite, but I’ll be starving later.
“Anything else?” The words tumble out, the anger so thick it’s palpable.
“How about a smile with that awesome customer service you’re giving us?” I ask in the most innocent tone I can manage.
A laugh rumbles from the table next to us, and I glance over. The greenest eyes I’ve ever seen meet mine. I shiver, looking into their depths. He may have laughed, but there is no laughter in his eyes. Just a cold emptiness.