by L. M. Justus
Welcome to the Darkness
Darkness Trilogy Book One
L. M. Justus
Taurpio Publishing
Welcome to the Darkness © 2013 by Lisa Justus. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Edition
First Printing, 2013
Cover design by Derek Murphy of Creativindie Covers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Print ISBN: 978-0-9919368-0-9
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9919368-1-6
Other books by L. M. Justus:
EMILY AND THE ATTIC FAIRIES
THE MASTERY OF MIND OVER MATTER
Taurpio Publishing
Ottawa, ON
Printed in the United States of America
For my husband Chris, the most supportive spouse ever in the history of supportive spouses.
In loving memory of Heather, my BFF who taught me so much.
Reed
One Sunday in late October, I was in my room pretending to do homework when my father’s scream ripped through the air, followed closely by my mother’s.
What the hell?
I yanked my feet off the desk and slammed my chair down on all four legs. A high-pitched wail came from somewhere downstairs, sending a spurt of adrenaline through my veins. Leaping up, I raced across the bedroom and flung the door open. I emerged into the hallway at the same time as my sister, Sam.
“Stay here!” I yelled, switching into protective-older-brother mode. I dashed toward the stairs.
The screams had stopped. I took the steps two at a time, but halfway down I jerked to a stop, narrowly avoiding an airborne, soccer ball-sized object. As it flew past me, a warm, thick liquid sprayed my face. Sam started screaming hysterically, and I stood frozen with shock. I wiped the liquid out of my eyes, coating my fingers in red. Blood.
A man I didn’t recognize sauntered down the hall from our kitchen. His dark, curly hair was plastered to his head with blood and he wore a t-shirt and jeans covered with gore. He smiled at me, revealing two teeth that looked suspiciously like fangs.
He crouched, like a cat about to pounce. Then he jumped, inhumanly high, and landed at the top of the stairs between my sister and me.
I paused for a second because things were happening so quickly I didn’t know which way to run.
A moment later, my basic instinct to protect Sam and eliminate the threat kicked in. I darted up the stairs and jumped to attack the stranger. As I reached to grab him, he twisted around, grabbed me by the shirt and threw me backwards. I flew through the air, crashing through the wall of the downstairs hallway in an explosion of wood and plaster. I landed hard on the floor of our living room in a pile of debris. It felt like every bone in my body was broken, except for my legs, which I couldn’t feel at all.
I realized my sister had stopped screaming. I glanced around for something to defend myself with and spotted a splintered length of wood lying on the ground. It was a piece of the wall I’d just crashed through, and it would have to do. Vicious sparks of pain stabbed every inch of my body, but I managed to snap up my makeshift weapon just as he came for me.
He knelt next to me, brought his face inches from my own, and grinned. The blood of my family members dripped onto my face. I swung out, slashing at him with the piece of wood. He didn’t try to avoid me, so I gouged a deep cut across his forehead. His blood spurted into my nose and mouth and he laughed. I gagged on his blood as it trickled down my throat, and unbelievably, his wound healed itself while I watched. Then he struck, fangs sinking deep into my neck. I felt my life drain away and everything went black.
Unsure whether I’d been unconscious for a minute or an hour, my eyes popped open and time started moving forward again. I was still in the living room, and it was dark because the thick curtains blocked the daylight. Everything had a pinkish tinge to it.
I gasped when a sudden jolt of pain hit the center of my chest. Fiery snakes of agony radiated outward until they encompassed every fiber of my being. I stiffened with a sensation that felt like each cell in my body exploding. It hurt more than I could ever have imagined anything hurting and my silent scream froze in my throat. The sensation focused, as though each bone that had been broken was being broken again, one at a time. Or maybe it was more like each broken bone was reknitting itself back together, so quickly it hurt.
The pain gradually subsided, ending with a pins and needles feeling in my legs. My legs! I could feel my legs. I could feel everything and it felt so good not to hurt any more.
I lay still, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock over the fireplace mantle. The stench in the air was overwhelming: the metallic tang of spilled blood and death. I sat up slowly, afraid to see the carnage around me. When I glanced at the couch, I thought my eyes were playing a cruel trick on me, but no, it was him. That monster, lying there having a goddamn nap!
My rage was a growing ball of fire in my belly and my body shook. There was a strange tingling in my gums. I grabbed my discarded, makeshift stake and slammed it with all my might into the middle of his chest. It sliced several inches into his body, but he didn’t even flinch. Only the barest trace of blood showed around the entry point. Undeterred, I grabbed his arms and dragged him off the couch. I found him surprisingly easy to carry and stalked with him through the wreckage of my home: down the hallway, through the kitchen, out the back door, across the shaded veranda, and down the stairs toward the back yard.
The instant we entered the sunlight, his body burst into flames. I fell backwards and his body landed on top of me. I threw him off in a panic, and he flew through the back wall of the house, landing inside the kitchen. I rolled on the ground and madly patted out the flames on my clothes. The curtains in the kitchen caught on fire with a huge whoof.
“Nooooooo!” I yelled and crab-walked backwards away from the house. I watched in horror as flames consumed it.
I panted, trying not to hyperventilate. I didn’t know what to do, so I turned and ran. I sprinted as fast as I could away from the house. Everything was tinted dark red: the sky, the trees, the fields of our avocado farm. The ground was a blur beneath my feet; I’d never run so fast. In a matter of seconds, I’d already crossed our neighbor’s property. Their herd of cattle was grazing in the shade near the stream.
A bizarre instinct overcame me, and I ran over to the herd. I grabbed the closest cow by its ear and bit into its neck. Warm blood burst into my mouth and it was pure ecstasy. I couldn’t drink fast enough. I gulped and gulped until at last the world spun away into blackness once again.
A giant, rough cat’s tongue licked my face. I opened my eyes. A cow was leaning over me, giving me a revolting tongue-bath.
“Ack!” I shouted and pushed it away. The cow didn’t have bite marks on it or anything. Had I really bitten it, or did I imagine that?
I sat up, the reeking odor of cows filling my nose, mixed with the stink of burnt wood. Plumes of smoke in the distance rose from the wreckage of my home. Was that the flash of lights from fire trucks or police cars? Yes, it looked like the authorities had arrived in full force.
Should I run home, screaming for help? Images flitted through my brain: body parts flying, and blood, and being bitten by something that seemed a lot like a vampire. Vampires weren’t real though, so had I imagined the fangs and supernatural strength? I needed a chance to collect my thoughts and figure out what I was
going to do before talking to the police.
A line of trees, which ran along a small stream, bordered our neighbor’s field. In a desperate attempt to clean off some of the blood and burnt bits, I scrambled down the stream bank into the cold, refreshing water. I submerged my whole body and scrubbed every inch as though I could scrub away the horrific images in my mind along with the physical reminders.
At last I dragged myself out of the stream, my jeans and t-shirt were sopping wet. I turned away from my home and walked, trance-like, toward the nearest town.
King City, California, population: not very much. Big enough for fast food restaurants though, and I headed to the nearest one as soon as I got to town. It was early evening and the sun was just setting. I pushed through the door into the McDonald’s and went straight to the restrooms at the back.
I had the men’s restroom all to myself, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined biting a cow and drinking its blood, but I was scared an actual vampire had attacked my family, and maybe it had turned me into one too. Could vampires be real? I had no idea what to expect in the mirror. Would I look like a monster? Would I even have a reflection? I was pretty sure vampires in the movies didn’t have reflections.
I approached the sinks warily, and leaned sideways until my reflection came into view. I moved closer to inspect myself in detail, turning my head slowly left and then right. I forced myself to smile a huge, toothy grin. Nothing out of the ordinary. I leaned back with a sigh.
Of course I had a reflection. What scientific explanation could account for a solid object not having a reflection? Either I wasn’t really a vampire, or vampires’ not having reflections was a myth. My brown hair was a disheveled mess, and my clothes were stained and partly singed. Other than that, I appeared to be completely . . . normal.
My eyes were their familiar blue color. My Mom always called my eye color cerulean blue, and said it was her favorite color. My Mom. Oh, God. My Mom would never say that again. In fact, she would never say anything ever again. I swallowed past the lump in my throat and tried to focus on something else. If I refused to relive the horrifying events from this morning, maybe they wouldn’t become real. I desperately wanted to ignore reality for a little longer because I was afraid to acknowledge everything I’d just lost.
Despite my efforts to think about something else, my eyes welled up with stupid tears. I stumbled out of the restroom and rushed outside for some fresh air. I walked aimlessly for a few blocks, eventually plopping down on a bench at the edge of a small park.
My life had seemed so freaking normal, of course I’d yearned for something exciting to happen. Living with my parents and younger sister on a small farm in the middle of nowhere, I’d never realized how good I’d had it: how great it had been to have a home, to have my family, and to be . . . human.
The sun was setting in earnest now, and life went on around me. I sat staring into space, lost in my own thoughts.
Nathaniel
In the moonlit darkness just past midnight, Nathaniel crouched at the top edge of the tallest building in town. Although the tallest, it was only three stories tall, and all of its occupants were tucked in for the night. Like the predator he was, he gazed at the dim-lit, mostly deserted streets of the little town called King City. He scented the air for his nightly source of blood.
The thrill of the hunt had long since ceased to exist; the necessity of feeding was his sole motivation. The tedium of the patrols the Queen ordered Nathaniel to carry out lay heavily upon his shoulders. What exactly did she expect him to discover in this little city outside of San Jose? Perhaps some information on the whereabouts of the missing vampire, Panagos. He sighed and turned his attention back to the task at hand. Everything in his field of vision had a reddish tint, as his inexorable thirst rose.
He waited and observed the entrance to a pub a block and a half away from his position at the end of a row of quaint shops. At last, the tiny drinking establishment belched out a lone, tipsy customer. The man reeled drunkenly in an eastward direction.
Nathaniel leapt off the roof of the building and landed on the street below in near silence. Before the victim had a chance to register his presence, Nathaniel darted to block the man’s path and capture his gaze. He whispered soothing words to put his prey into a relaxed trance. The human held completely still and did not utter a sound when Nathaniel bit into his neck, and quickly drank a pint of blood.
After Nathaniel had taken his fill, he licked the two punctures to heal the wounds with his saliva. He released his prey into the gloom of night, relatively unscathed. The fresh infusion of blood seeped into his veins, and the drag of death drew him down. He leapt onto the roof of the building beside him and lay down for his death sleep. He half wished he would never wake up.
With a sudden intake of air, Nathaniel awoke with a start. His heart resumed a slow, but steady beat. A quick glance at his watch showed him he’d been dead for forty-seven minutes. In the early days, he was out for almost a full hour after each meal, unless it was an emergency feed to replace lost blood from an injury. After over two hundred years of nightly feedings however, the amount of time he lay in a state of death afterwards had grown gradually shorter. He knew Panagos required only slightly more than a half hour of death after each feeding as he approached four hundred and fifty years as a vampire. This was also the likeliest explanation for Panagos’ recent hiatus. Vampires close to five hundred years tended toward insanity, eventually meeting the sun by choice to end their long existence. A strict ritual typically accomplished this, yet Panagos had simply disappeared without a trace two nights earlier.
Nathaniel regained his perch at the apartment building’s topmost edge and recommenced his survey of the surrounding area. An odd scent caught his attention. Something peculiar he hadn’t sensed in quite some time; the moss and fennel smell of a newly made vampire. He moved in a sudden blur and leaped from rooftop to rooftop towards the source. When he reached the end of the block, he jumped down to the street level once more, crossed the main road and entered a small park. He followed the narrow pathway, which wound through the center of the park, as a light breeze stirred the leaves of the trees to either side. The light of the sparsely placed lanterns revealed the abandoned state of the park, with the exception of one young man, or teenager perhaps, who sat on a bench and stared into space. His eyes flickered to glance at Nathaniel, but returned to a vacant stare almost immediately.
How curious, Nathaniel thought. This young man was clearly a newly made vampire, but where was his maker? It was standard procedure to kill newlings without a chaperone, but Nathaniel approached the bench to address the boy and hopefully find some answers first.
“Where is your maker?” Nathaniel said, wasting no time with introductions or pleasantries.
The young man swept his errant locks of brown hair out of his eyes and regarded Nathaniel with a look of complete incomprehension. “What?”
“Your maker. The one who made you,” Nathaniel said with exceeding patience. “The one who made you a vampire.”
Ah, now there was a spark of interest at last, the young man’s blue eyes widening. “The . . . the guy who did this to me? He’s . . . uh, he’s dead,” he answered.
“Dead? How is that possible?”
The youngling remained silent and searched Nathaniel’s face as though contemplating whether to answer the question. He frowned and said, “Who are you?”
So much for dispensing with the introductions. “My name is Nathaniel,” he said, with a slight bow of the head. “And you are . . . ?”
“Reed,” he replied with narrowed eyes.
“Reed? Is that your given name or your surname?”
“It’s my first name,” he replied, looking somewhat affronted. “My last name’s Hennessy.”
“Ah, then,” Nathaniel pondered for a moment. “You’re Irish I suppose?”
“What? No . . . do I sound Irish? I mean, sure, way back somewhere on my father’s side there’s some Irish ge
nes. Anyway, who the hell are you? And I don’t mean your name.” Reed stood up and glared down at Nathaniel. The boy was a good four inches taller.
His hands raised in supplication, Nathaniel said, “I apologize if I have caused offense. I merely endeavor to determine how you arrived at your present situation. It is an odd situation, I assure you. Perhaps I may be of some assistance if you would be so kind as to impart your recent experiences to me.” Although it was much more likely he would have to dispose of the boy, but he did not intend to make this youngling privy to such information.
“Fine then,” Reed replied, and relaxed his stance. “I was attacked, in my home. My family–” and here he paused, obviously having some difficulty retelling the events. “Some psycho guy attacked my family. He slaughtered them. I thought I was dead too, but then I woke up. He was having a snooze on my couch, so I grabbed him, ‘cause I was thinking I’d drag him out back and chop his damn head off. The second I stepped into the sun with him though, he burst into flames, and I threw him off me and he landed in the house. The whole house burnt down with him in it, so he must be dead.”
“May I ask what this ‘guy’ looked like?” Nathaniel replied, realizing something about the account bothered him.
“He was maybe five foot nine or ten, and he had black, curly hair–”
“Panagos,” he hissed. So . . . Panagos had indeed succumbed to insanity and lost control. He should have gone to meet the sun long before now, rather than cause a situation that had surely attracted the attention of the human authorities. Any vampire who risked the exposure of their kind was eliminated, however this was clearly a moot point as far as Panagos was concerned. Still, it was possible some “clean up” was required to cover anything that might appear out of the ordinary. Nathaniel thought for a moment longer to review what the newling had said. “Hold on a moment. You said you stepped into the sun with Panagos, but you must have meant you pushed him or perhaps threw him out into the sun’s light?”