Transformed (The Black Rock Series Book 1)

by Luna James

  Copyright

  Transformed is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  TRANSFORMED: A NOVEL

  Copyright © 2020 by Luna James

  All rights reserved.

  Editing by KP Editing

  Cover Design by KP Designs

  - www.kpdesignshop.com

  Published by Kingston Publishing Company

  - www.kingstonpublishing.com

  The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means—including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  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

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Waking up, I realized I was lying on a riverbank. When I opened my eyes, I could see millions of bright stars, and my head instantly began to throb. I raised up to look at my surroundings, but the motion of sitting up made my head throb even more. As I looked around me, I noticed I could see and hear everything clearly. All the different sounds were too loud and added to my painful headache. As I became more coherent, I knew something was wrong with me. The last thing I remembered was walking to my car in the parking lot of Rick’s Bar & Grill after I got off working there.

  Lying on the ground just a few feet from me was an unconscious man. My first instinct was to go over to him and see if he was okay, so that’s what I did. When I got closer to him, a burning feeling started in my throat. It felt like someone had taken a hot poker and thrust it down my throat. It burnt so bad, it made me cough. After my coughing fit, I screamed in pain.

  The man was lying on his side with his back towards me. I gently pulled on his shoulder so he would be lying on his back. There was a massive gash across his right cheek. The scent of his blood was strong. It smelled like honey and made my throat burn with more intensity. I also felt a severe pain coming from my teeth.

  “What the hell is going on with me?” I mumbled in confusion. I needed to focus on helping the man, but the pain I was experiencing was consuming me.

  I looked down at the man and examined his injuries. It appeared someone had stabbed him in the stomach. The instant I saw the blood oozing out of his wound, I lost control of myself. Straddling the man, I turned his face to the side so his neck was accessible and bit into him.

  After I had drained the life out of the man, I realized what I’d done, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had just drank this man's blood and killed him! Emotions flooded over me. All I could do was kneel beside his dead body and cry.

  “Oh, my sweet Victoria. Don’t cry,” I heard a male voice say from within the trees beside the creek.

  “Who’s there?” I asked, raising my head.

  I looked in the direction of the voice. There was a figure coming towards me. How in the world am I able to see him so clearly in the dark? When he came into view, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Sebastian Vaughan, who was a frequent customer at the sport’s bar I worked at.

  “Sebastian? What are you doing here?” I asked, as I struggled to stand up.

  Sebastian continued slowly walking in my direction. “I am here, my sweet Victoria, to make sure you completed the transformation,” he replied.

  “Transformation? What are you talking about?”

  “Transformation into a vampyre,” Sebastian stated, as he got close enough to look me in the eyes.

  “A vampyre?” I laughed. There is no way he just said transformation into a vampyre! I must be dreaming. “Vampyres aren’t real!”

  He grinned. “Yes, they are my love, and you are one now.”

  I closed my eyes hoping this was a dream, but when I opened them, he was still there. Dropping to my knees, I cried uncontrollably. Sebastian came over and knelt in front of me.

  In a warm tone, he said, “Victoria, I know this is a lot to take in, but we really need to dispose of this man’s body before someone sees it.”

  “I killed someone!” I sobbed. “Oh my God! I drank somebody’s blood! What the fuck?” Covering my face with my hands, I cried even harder.

  Sebastian wrapped his arms around me in a soft embrace. “It’s going to be okay my dear. I promise. Come with me to dispose of the body and then I will take you somewhere to explain everything,” he pleaded.

  “Why? Why did you do this to me?” I screamed. The realization that he was being honest began to set in; I had been turned into a vampyre.

  “As I said, I will explain everything to you. We just need to get out of here right now!” Sebastian demanded.

  Standing up, Sebastian offered me his hand. I pushed his hand aside and got up. He picked the man’s body up, threw it over his shoulder like it weighed nothing, and walked into the woods. Reluctantly, I followed him.

  As I followed Sebastian, I thought about what I knew about him. He came into Rick’s often. On numerous occasions, I was his waitress. I recall him mentioning he recently moved to Black Rock, Virginia, from the West Coast. That’s all I could remember about him.

  Sebastian took me to a spot on the mountainside where there was a deep hole in the ground. After tossing the man’s lifeless body into the Earth, he started covering the body with dirt. I stood there and watched him still thinking I was dreaming. There wasn’t a snowball's chance in hell I was going to help him bury the man. I may have killed him, but I didn’t have control of myself when it happened, and that was Sebastian’s fault.

  After he buried the body, Sebastian insisted I follow him to a cabin in the woods he owned. He turned, facing up the mountain, and jumped. When he landed, it was at least one hundred feet up from where I was standing. He stood on a big boulder sticking out of the mountainside, looking down at me. “Come on up, Victoria. All you have to do is jump,” he teased.

  I raised my middle finger up at him. “Screw you!” I yelled.

  “Aw! Come on, Victoria. You are a vampyre now. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

  How is it I can hear him so clearly without any effort? Then I noticed all the sounds around me. From a distance, I could hear a deer grunting. I looked around to see if I could see the deer, but I couldn’t see one.

  Sebastian interrupted my thoughts. “Are you coming or not?”

  “Okay!” I shouted up to him. “I will try.”

  Making sure my feet were firmly planted on the ground, I bent my knees and jumped. Within seconds, I was standing farther up the mountain from him on another boulder. Surprisingly, it felt amazing. As I was in the air, it felt as though the world around me was in fast forward.

  “Well, look at you. You did it on your first try and didn’t even hit a tree.” Sebastian remarked, laughing as he leaped. Within a second, he was standing beside
me.

  “Yes, I did,” I said, irritated. “Sebastian, I didn’t come with you to learn to jump through the mountains. I came with you because I have questions that need to be answered!”

  Sebastian smiled. “I know, Dear. Follow me to the cabin. It’s not far from here. We can talk freely there.”

  We traveled just a short way to a small rustic cabin sitting on top of the mountain. It looked lived in; as if it had many stories to tell. The cabin had a small front porch with a swing. The tin roof had obviously weathered many storms and was showing its age with patches of rust. It looked like something out of a Bob Ross painting.

  When I walked into the cabin, it surprised me to see the décor. The small living area looked like a beautiful antique store with Victorian-style seating and a large oval-shaped oak coffee table. The walls, however, were adorned with various hunting rifles. Each rifle appeared to come from different eras in time. Off to the side of the living area was a small kitchen that had a more contemporary style.

  Sebastian took me into the kitchen. “Sit.” He gestured with his hand to the small kitchen table.

  While I did as he instructed, he walked over to a cabinet and took down two glasses. Then he got a bag of blood out of the refrigerator. It looked like one of those bags used when people donated blood. Sebastian poured it into the glasses. Then he microwaved them. After he had warmed the blood, he came over to the table and sat down.

  “Here, drink this. It is sometimes better to drink from the bags than to kill someone. You are new, which means you will not be able to control the cravings,” he explained, as he pushed the glass across the table to me.

  “Why me?” I inquired before I took a sip. It surprised me that the blood tasted pleasant. Not as satisfying as the man did though.

  “Because you are unique love,” he replied.

  “How’s that?”

  “Victoria, you have a special heritage. You have an ability I wanted to see intensified.” Placing his elbows on the table, he leaned forward.

  “Heritage? How the hell do you know anything about me?” I probed. “Oh, and why in the fuck was I out in the woods with you?” I was getting very irritated with him. Why did he know things about me? Hell, I don’t even know much about my family. I didn’t have many family members. My mom, Jennifer, and stepfather, Russell, raised me. Russell has a son, Derek, from a previous marriage who is a year younger than me. My biological father, James, died in a car accident when I was a baby. That was all the family I had.

  He grinned at me. “I knew you were special from the moment I met you in Rick’s, so I researched you and found out everything there was to know. When I decided to change you, I followed you out into the parking lot. Then I talked you into coming out in the woods.”

  “I don’t remember you talking me into doing shit!”

  “Of course, you don’t, I used mind compulsion on you.” Sebastian grinned.

  “How dare you?” I screeched. “What made you think you had the right to mess with my life?” My hands began shaking. Suddenly, the glass in his hands shattered. Shards of glass penetrated his skin. Blood poured from the cuts.

  “Wow!” he cried in amazement. “That’s what I am talking about Victoria! I bet you did that without thinking!” He was obviously taken aback.

  “Did I cause that?” I whispered; my gaze fixed on the broken glass shards in his hands.

  “Indeed, you did, my love.” He beamed with joy.

  Placing my glass on the table, I leaned back in my chair, my arms crossed over my chest. “So now finish explaining why you wanted to turn me into a monster,” I demanded. I knew I needed to calm myself down somehow, but I didn’t know how. Sebastian had done something that could never be reversed. I knew enough about vampyres from movies and books to know the only way out of this was to die the true death.

  “Call it boredom… call it curiosity. Either way you choose to look at it, I wanted to make you a vampyre,” he said arrogantly as he rested his elbow on the chair arm and put his chin in his hand. “I wanted to awaken your telekinetic abilities. Being a vampyre is the most extraordinary thing one can be. I knew if I turned you, you would be magnificent.”

  Boredom? This guy ruined my life because he was bored and curious! And my abilities…what’s he talking about?

  “Sebastian, you ruined my life!” I yelled. As soon as I yelled, the house shook. I could hear the rifles on the wall bouncing. Taking a deep breath, I try to calm myself. “What do you mean by abilities?”

  “Victoria, you have telekinesis. Your abilities have always been in you, but you couldn’t access them until now,” Sebastian informed me.

  I was shocked by what I just learned. I have always felt different than everyone else but didn’t know why. “You gotta be kidding me!” I laughed.

  “I would not kid about something like this,” he said sternly.

  “So, not only am I a vampyre, but I can move things with my mind? What the actual fuck!” I bellowed. I had to get out of there. There was no way I could stay and talk to him. Hell, I didn’t even want to be in the same room as him. I got up and walked towards the door.

  “Please don’t go, Victoria!” he pleaded.

  “Sebastian, I would suggest you leave me the hell alone right now! I honestly don’t know what I am capable of,” I replied, grabbing the doorknob.

  “You have to be taught how to control your cravings and your abilities before you can go out into the public. What would you do if you killed someone close to you?” he asked, as he stood up from the table.

  “I wouldn’t want that to happen, but right now I have to get away from you so I can calm down.” I walked out the door and slammed it shut.

  I had no idea where to go. All I knew was that I had to get far away from Sebastian. As I ran down the mountain, I was surprised at what happened. It was like I was running over a hundred miles an hour. I was at the bottom next to the river within seconds.

  Dropping to my knees on the riverbank, pebbles digging into my knees through my jeans, I started to cry. So many emotions were coming over me. I was mad and sad all at the same time. I wanted to go back up the mountain and kill Sebastian for ruining my life. I’d never wanted to hurt anyone until now. I knew I had to try to control my emotions, though, because I could feel my entire body trembling. The surrounding rocks on the riverbank were floating in the air vibrating as well.

  “Victoria,” Sebastian whispered.

  I jumped at the sound of his voice. The rocks hit the ground with a thud. “What?” I screamed.

  “Sorry to have startled you, Love. I had to come after you though. You can’t be out here alone until you have learned how to control your hunger and abilities,” Sebastian stated softly.

  Before I could control it, a small tree branch that had broken and fallen to the ground came flying past me and went into Sebastian’s stomach. He dropped to his knees grasping the branch.

  Although I was shocked at what I’d done, and wondering if he’d be okay, I stood up and marched over to him, screaming, “I told you to leave me the hell alone!”

  I turned and ran up the mountain to get away from Sebastian. My mind was going crazy with everything that was going on. When I finally stopped running, I had crossed two mountains. Nothing appeared to be familiar. Everything looked the same in the forest, so I closed my eyes and listened. The sound of every single animal and insect around me for at least a mile seemed as if they were only inches away. I could also hear cars. But then I heard something walking near me. At first, I thought it was an animal. Keeping my eyes closed, I strained to listen. I could tell it was a person walking because there was only the sound of two feet.

  “Sebastian, I said to leave me the hell alone!” I screamed in the direction of the sound.

  “I am not Sebastian,” I heard a man say softly.

  When the man spoke, I could tell which direction he was coming from. I turned around to find a man standing about twenty feet from me. He was extremely tall and didn’t look muc
h older than me. He had long, black hair that hung past his shoulders and ended at his chest.

  “Who are you then?” I asked.

  “My name is Damien,” he answered, sauntering toward me.

  Damn, he is attractive as hell. He was dressed in a black tee-shirt and black denim pants. I instantly forgot about my troubles.

  “Why are you out here in the woods, Damien?” I asked, my gaze languidly taking in his body.

  “I come out here often. It’s a perfect place to come for reflecting. Plus, I live not far from here,” he answered, closing the distance between us. My heart began to pound in my chest, and it felt as though there were butterflies in my stomach.

  Damien took my breath away with his presence. I could smell him; it was intoxicating. Who is this gorgeous stranger? Whoever he was, I didn’t sense any danger.

  “Why are you out here in the woods? It is dangerous for a young lady to be in the woods alone after dark,” he said with a concerned expression on his face.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. “It’s a long story. Let’s just say I’m out here clearing my mind.” I smiled.

  Cocking his head to the side, he studied me. “Why did you think I was Sebastian?”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s just a guy who has been harassing me. No worries.”

  “He is my brother.”

  “Your brother?” I asked, shocked. This beautiful man standing before me was related to that monster. Ain’t no way. They didn’t even look alike.

  “Sadly, yes. He is my younger brother.” Damien’s face scrunched up in an expression of disgust. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “Thank goodness we don’t look that much alike.”

  “I just thought that,” I laughed awkwardly.

  “I know,” he acknowledged. “I’m a telepathic vampyre. But don’t worry, I only do it when I am curious as to what someone is thinking. Usually, I try to block it out. It can be very annoying.”

  “Wow! That’s crazy!” I raised my hands in the air. “What the hell else am I going to learn about tonight?”

  “I can sense you are a new vampyre. Is that why you thought I might be Sebastian?” he asked.