Amnesia Bites (Shady Arcade Book 1)

by Sharon Stevenson

  She couldn’t force in a breath. She knew this was it—she was going to die. Closing her eyes, she stopped trying to fight it. That was when his grip slackened. What the…?

  He fell on top of her like a lead weight. She pushed hard to get him off and rolled out from under his heft, aching all over as she moved. She didn’t take her gaze from him, and he didn’t move as she gasped in a few panicked breaths, trying to stop the shaking that her limbs were doing. He was out cold, blood trickling through his blond hair to his forehead. She looked up and saw Amira standing over her, half a vase in her hand and shock in her big, dark eyes.

  “Call an ambulance,” Chloe said, her voice strained and quiet.

  Amira was quick to glance around and grab the phone. Her voice sounded far away as Chloe moved towards Zack, pulling herself across the floor, too weakened to trust her legs to carry her. He was breathing shallowly. She looked at Larry helplessly standing frozen in place, a look of horror in his eyes and blood staining his mouth.

  She cleared her throat to command the vampire. “Larry, come over here and heal Zack’s wound.”

  Her voice was still a reedy whisper, but the vampire did as he was told. She breathed a relieved sigh and rested her shoulder against the wall, taking one of Zack’s limp hands in her own. He started to whisper quietly, and she leaned in closer to hear him as Larry finished his job and backed away.

  ***

  “I don’t know why you’re still speaking to me, Audrey. I know you’re not real.”

  His big sister sighed, and he imagined her fussing with her red hair as she usually did when she was frustrated.

  “You can’t believe anything a vampire tells you. Didn’t I already teach you that?”

  “Well, you can teach me how to be dead now. I’ve been killed by now, surely.”

  “You’re alive, little Z. I can feel it. I would know if you’d been killed. I promise.”

  He snorted. “The promises of imaginary friends mean nothing.”

  “Okay, then,” she said. “I give up. Just promise me one thing.”

  “It depends what it is.”

  “Don’t leave Shady Pines. It’s safe there. They can’t get to you there.”

  “I’m telling you they did.”

  “And I’m telling you you’re not dead.”

  ***

  Chloe frowned, not sure what to make of the strange one-sided chat. She smiled when Zack’s eyes seemed to focus suddenly. He moved his head slightly towards her, and she stroked his overlong dark hair back off of his face. “You’re alive.”

  He smiled back wanly. “So I’ve been told.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Being in hospital wasn’t one of Zack’s favourite things, but Chloe had brought him his gloves and she visited with food so he wouldn’t need to depress himself with the standard hospital fare. He was glad to know he was only going to be in for the night this time. After she put the bag down in front of him, she sat down and promptly stood back up again.

  “I should go.”

  “Stay,” he said. “I’m still kind of fuzzy on what happened.”

  He could mention it because he’d lucked out and gotten a private room. He knew Bridget had tried to kill him, using Larry. He didn’t really want to think about it if he was being honest, but he didn’t want his rescuer to leave, either.

  “Well,” Chloe started, scratching at her head. “Bridget must have been working for a clan. It’s the only reason she’d have for trying to turn you.”

  “She wasn’t trying to kill me?”

  Chloe’s smile was small as she shook her head. “If she’d been aiming for that, she wouldn’t have been able to order Larry to lay a hand on you.”

  He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to.” She cleared her throat as her voice dried up. “There was no reason for her to kill you. She was definitely trying to turn you, and the chances are her clan will keep sending vampires to Shady Pines to try and take you. The good thing is, now they know what she was up to, the Council is coming up with increased plans to keep vampires out of town.”

  He took it in, wondering when it had become so normal to talk about vampires. He wondered if he’d even known about them before he’d lost his memory. Fear lingered at the back of his thoughts, but he refused to give it any wiggle room. This was one conversation he didn’t want to space out on.

  “So I’m safe here.”

  He remembered the weird talk he’d had with himself. It was strange. He didn’t usually remember his dissociative episodes. The conversations with ‘Audrey’ had been different somehow. He wondered if there was a reason for that. “Can I ask you something?”

  Her eyes widened for a second and then she nodded slowly.

  “What happened the night they first came for me?” He wasn’t sure she’d know, but he had to ask someone, and she was the only one he knew who might actually answer him.

  “You mean, the night you lost your memories?”

  She said it quietly as if she was afraid someone might overhear her.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Bridget told me vampires caused my memory loss. I don’t understand why they didn’t turn me at that point. Something must have stopped them, I suppose. I feel like I must be missing something.”

  Chloe bit at her lip.

  “You’re not supposed to speak to me about it, right?” He knew there had to be something. Some reason he wasn’t allowed to know. He sighed. Did he really want to do this? “I need to know.”

  “It’s…” She took in a slow breath. “You weren’t alone that night. The vampires left you for dead. They took your family. It seemed like they didn’t want you or maybe something stopped them from finishing. No one could understand why, but that’s what happened.”

  He let it sink in. “I had a family.”

  “Two brothers, one sister,” Chloe told him.

  “Audrey,” he said, watching Chloe’s face.

  “You remember her?” Her voice softened.

  He wasn’t sure what to say. He knew what Audrey looked like, and he’d been having strange conversations with her inside his head for months. He felt his face flush. There was no way he was telling Chloe any of that. It made him sound insane. “I think I kind of do. I don’t know how.”

  “Well, it’s something,” Chloe told him. “Maybe it means you’ll get your other memories back.”

  “Maybe,” he said, wondering if he really wanted them back. “I had a family.”

  She nodded. “I should go. Visiting hours are over, and I have to make a statement to the necromancer’s Council.”

  “You weren’t one of them,” he said. “The necromancers who were assigned to watch over me, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t.”

  “Thanks for saving my life.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “It was nothing.”

  He watched her leave, his head reeling. He’d had a family. Vampires had taken them, but they’d left him behind. They’d taken everything that mattered to him: his family, his memories. He was nothing without them.

  He remembered what Audrey had said to him, the one promise she’d wanted him to give her. He was not to leave Shady Pines.

  He had an awful feeling he was going to have to break that promise.

  Zack goes looking for his family in

  Sweet Oblivion

  Read on for the first chapter

  Shady Arcade Book Two

  Sweet Oblivion

  Chapter One

  “She’s never going to want to see me again,” Larry complained in a whiny tone for the tenth time that morning. It was all he seemed capable of doing anymore.

  Chloe rolled her eyes. Babysitting a lovesick vampire was the least of her problems. But it didn’t matter how many times she told him he needed to snap out of it because his existence was at stake right now, he couldn’t think of anything but Amira.

  Is this what I’ve been like? She really hoped not. Losing
Zack had hit her hard, but they’d been carving out a life together before he’d been left for dead and hit with a vampire induced bout of amnesia. Ten years didn’t usually just get erased overnight.

  “She saw you drink blood, Larry,” Chloe told her friend as she checked over her handbook. “It usually takes a girl a week or two to get over that kind of thing.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and fell back in his seat dramatically. In spite of the irregular showering and unwashed clothes he was wearing, he looked like something out of a magazine. An aftershave ad featuring a hunky guy with a sullen stare…

  Chloe snapped out of it. She had to stop looking at him like that. He was just her friend and she was sort of his guardian, for now at least. He wasn’t a potential rebound, no matter how good he looked these days. Vampirism had agreed with him. That was all. She took a breath, and he was standing over her when she looked up again.

  Shit, she thought. Did he notice the way I was looking at him?

  “What are you…”

  “You have to call her for me,” he said, holding out his phone. “Please?”

  “What makes you think she wants to talk to me?” Chloe had to ask. The girl had freaked, and that was putting it lightly. “It’s only been a week, Larry. Give her time.”

  “I can’t.” He held the phone out until she took it.

  She sighed. He held her gaze with his sad eyes until she relented and dialled Amira’s number. The girl let her phone ring out. Chloe smiled wryly. “I’ll try again later. Okay?”

  He sighed and sank back into the couch as if he was liquid. “Later. Okay. Later.”

  She put the phone down and picked up the book. She’d found nothing to tell her what she was going to face for what she’d done. The Necromancer’s Council had remained tight-lipped throughout her statement. She’d been told to take the week to train Larry and that they’d arrange a hearing. Her stomach was in knots. She could still see their blank expressions as she recounted the night she’d almost lost Zack for the second time. Her voice had been cracking, and it wasn’t just because of the bruising Kenny’s attack had left on her throat. The Elders had remained unemotional. She’d bitten back tears and tried to keep her face straight as she shook inside, terrified at what was going to happen to her. She’d killed a vampire. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought she’d do. She shouldn’t have needed to. Her abilities to command the dead should have avoided that kind of situation. That was going to be what they told her. Her excuses wouldn’t matter.

  She’d had one choice to stop Larry. Kill the vampire who’d commanded him to drink from Zack. She couldn’t have countered Bridget’s will with anything else. By the time she’d commanded Bridget to get Larry to stop, it would have been too late for Zack. With the added threat of Kenny in the room, she’d had no other choice. She couldn’t let Zack die. And that was what was going to put her behind bars or wherever they actually sent necromancers who killed things.

  “Try again?” Larry asked, hope in his mournful eyes.

  He was like a kid, a big, blood-thirsty kid who’d be without a guardian soon enough. What was going to happen to him when she went away? She dreaded to think. If he wound up with someone like Kenny he’d turn out as badly as Bridget had. She didn’t want that for him. It wasn’t his fault some vampire had shown up and turned him. She sighed and picked her own phone out of her pocket. She’d been waiting for the call from the Council for what felt like forever. It was time to stop waiting around for her death sentence. She called Amira. The girl picked up cautiously after a few rings.

  “Chloe?”

  “It’s me. How’ve you been?” She felt the air move as Larry darted to her side. He knelt down beside her, listening in on her conversation. It should have been weird, but she’d gotten used to his invasions of her personal space in the last week.

  “Is that a trick question?” Amira sounded hurt.

  “It’s not. I… you saved my life.”

  “And you’ve been lying to me for who knows how long.”

  Chloe winced. “It’s not… we’re forbidden from telling humans. It’s a law, it’s not…”

  “You knew Larry was… one of those things?” She sounded irritable.

  Chloe watched Larry’s face drop. “He was turned by a vampire recently. It wasn’t his choice.”

  The pause on the line made her stomach twist. She didn’t want to lose Amira as a friend, but she wasn’t sure she was getting any say in the matter.

  “I liked him.” Amira sighed. “This is just… I can’t even…” She sighed again.

  “He’s not dangerous,” Chloe said.

  “Tell that to Zack’s neck,” Amira said.

  “Bridget used compulsion on him. She used it on you both. She’s gone now.”

  “Compulsion? This just gets grosser,” Amira told her. “What about Larry?”

  “What about him?” She watched the hope start to return to his eyes.

  “Can he use that? Like, on me? Oh my God. How do I know I even really wanted to go out with him? Maybe he just made me say yes. Maybe I never really wanted to kiss him!”

  Chloe winced. “He didn’t use it. He doesn’t know how. Amira, I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry you got mixed up in this mess.”

  “I don’t know if sorry covers this,” Amira said, pausing after she spoke. “Can you just tell Larry to stop calling me?”

  Chloe watched him slope off to his room, the sound of the door closing softly behind him making her sigh. “I’ll tell him.”

  About the Author

  Sharon Stevenson lives in Scotland with her husband. She spends her spare time creating entertaining fantasy worlds full of strange creatures and unconventional characters. The Amazon bestselling Gallows series follows twin demon trackers Shaun and Sarah Gallows through fictional Scottish towns as they come up against various supernatural threats, while their biggest problems are caused by their own personal demons. The Raised series is a magical take on zombies, set in Edinburgh and Las Vegas, and following the after death adventures of twenty-three-year-old Pete and his friends.

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