DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS
by
Mandy M. Roth
© copyright April 2004, Mandy M. Roth
Cover art by Eliza Black, © copyright April 2004
New Concepts Publishing
5202 Humphreys Rd.
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
Dedication
To my family, friends, and faithful red pen:
Each of you has stood by me and never tired of listening to me ramble on about fairies, vampires, and werewolves. The support you have shown has been amazing. Thank you, and thank you Andrea for taking a chance on the new kid.
Prologue
I lay in the field of flowers taking in the glorious scents. Violas were littered around me acting as a warm blanket to shield me from the cool night. The beauty of the shades of glowing and green and yellow pulled me to them. I plucked one up and put it to my lips, and took in a deep breath. Their fresh scent soothed me and made me feel at one with the earth.
Small white clouds formed against the sharply contrasting royal blue sky. I traced the edges of one with my fingers. I wanted to reach out and grasp it and cuddle it to my body.
I rolled onto my stomach and propped my chin up with my arms. My hair got caught under my elbow, and I freed it to relieve the tension on my head. From the corner of my eye I caught the fluttering of a small orange and black butterfly. It hovered above me a moment and I put my hand out towards it. Perching lightly upon my wrist, it sat motionless.
The white cottony clouds that I had been so desperate to hold turned gray. Suddenly, the sky grew dark and ominous. The crackle of thunder made the earth beneath me vibrate. Wind circled around me, pulling at the tiny blue sundress I wore.
There was a sharp pain in my wrist. I looked down--a gold snake lay in place of the butterfly. Like two tiny daggers, its fangs were firmly planted into my skin. Most people would flick the thing off, right? Well. I’m not most people; besides, this wasn’t my first go around with the dream. I had been having the dream long enough to know what was to come. I braced myself. The ground beneath me gave way and I found myself spiraling into a bottomless pit. The darkness surrounded me, and I knew better than to bother to scream.
I heard the familiar sound of a woman’s voice whispering to me. "You are the balance; you will bring light to the darkness."
Chapter 1
I pulled up outside of the main gate. The blood red sign that stood high in the air read "Necro’s Magik World & Supernatural Theme Park." I hated the idea of being here but you do what you have to do to make a living. Prior to working as assistant to the City’s Chief Paranormal Prosecutor, I hadn’t been able to keep a job to save my life. I had tried a little bit of everything, from being a marketing director to stripping. Hey, a girl’s got to make a living, right?
My friend Sharon got me the job at the Paranormal Regulators Law Offices. She had worked with my boss and now ex-fiancé, Ken, enough to pull some strings and get me a job. He hired me as his personal assistant, sight unseen. After a year of working for him, he started to catch on to the fact that I had some special skills. I started showing signs of extrasensory perception (ESP) at the age of sixteen and still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of using them. They would manifest themselves in the strangest ways.
I spent one week home from work because I couldn’t stand the noise anymore. I had started hearing what others were thinking and I couldn’t block any of it. The inside of my head had so many voices going on I thought I was schizophrenic. Ken came knocking at my door after my third day of missing work. I confessed my problem to him and he took me to see some friends of his. They helped me learn to shield myself from outside interference, so to speak.
Ken then asked me out for dinner. I felt like I owed him a huge thank you so I went. We made a better couple then I thought we would at first. After a few months he finally managed to get me into bed with him. We were in his posh two-story townhouse, going at each other like animals. When I climaxed, I threw my head back and felt a burst of energy come over me. It was like my body was being ripped into a million pieces, not pain so much as it was pressure--a pressure that I had no alternative but to release. Pictures flew off the walls, dishes crashed to the floor in the kitchen, and all of Ken’s paperwork started blowing out of the window.
That was my first brush with psychokinesis, and it scared the hell out of both of us. That’s when I revealed the fact that I was of magical descent, most likely faerie. I had feared it would scare him away. It did the exact opposite. He asked me to marry him.
I was a romantic fool, and believed I was truly in love. Things were so good for almost a year--that should have tipped me off. Then one night he told me he was going to stay home from the office. He said that he hadn’t been feeling well and was going to rest. During my lunch hour I stopped off and picked up some lunch for him. I used my key and let myself into his place. When I walked into his bedroom he was busy pushing his long hard body into some redhead. Needless to say, I broke the engagement on the spot, along with two of his bedroom windows. Mess with a magical chic and you get some major clean-up when she is pissed, just a little motto I think all should remember.
Ken spent weeks trying to make it up to me. He kept claiming that he couldn’t control himself, and he didn’t mean for it to happen. I asked what the redhead’s name was, and he didn’t know. I gave him the choice of being friends or being enemies. He settled on just being friends, and that’s the way we’ve been for the last six months.
Work’s been keeping us pretty busy with the rapid rise in the number of supernatural-related homicides in the city in the last few months. Prophets were claiming it was the beginning of the end, and people were finding religion by the droves. I thought Ken’s promotion was a curse. We’d been working sixty-five hours a week since he made Prosecutor, and there seemed to be no end in sight. We not only had the supernatural cases to deal with, we had everyday human cases to handle. It was the only way the City could justify having another Prosecutor. Tax payers would wonder why it was they had to pay for a Prosecutor who never saw the inside of a courtroom.
I focused on the task at hand, taking a look around Necro’s Magik World. It had only been open for business for six years, but in that short time frame had managed to corner the market on ticket sales for theme parks. Someone had come up with the brilliant idea of having a theme park that revolved around the supernatural. By doing this the area had become a Mecca for the undead and magical creatures. At the park, demons didn’t have to hide who they were. They were able to live among humans without fear of persecution and mass pandemonium. I’d even seen some of the "employees" walking around downtown one night. No one looked shocked to see a vampire walking around them--just ran up and asked for their autograph.
Teenagers were heavy into imitating the undead, and of course, dead attire was all the rage. I wondered if creatures of the undead ever thought of sending thank-you notes to rock stars who ran around looking like death on stage. The more I thought about Hollywood, and rock stars, the more I wondered how many of the images weren’t an act. I knew that there had to be a few celebrities that fell into the category of supernatural, I just didn’t know which ones they were.
Necro’s Magik World was huge, or so I’d been told. While the park spanned over four hundred acres, it wasn’t all developed yet since they’d left room for expansion. They had picked the location wisely. They were close enough to the city to generate business, but far enough out to remain secluded and away from the watchful eye of others. People were eating up the idea of a supernatural theme park to the point that various spin-offs of it were popping up all around the world. There were restaurants, clothing stores, a
nd, believe it or not, a website. But hey, who didn’t have one of those, right? A computer literate Vampire, funny thought, huh! The park only operated during nighttime for obvious reasons. I didn’t know too many vampires that would be willing to sit out in the sunlight to greet guests. Here’s your ticket, excuse me while I burst into flames.
I still wasn’t sure about the outfit I had chosen. I had decided on a pair of dark blue jeans, flare bottom, (they made my legs look longer), and at five foot five I took all the help I could get. I had debated on wearing long sleeves or short because of how cool the summer nights could get, and finally settled on a red short sleeve top. When I’d looked at myself in the mirror I realized how casual I looked and decided to dress it up a bit with some silver jewelry and ended up wearing black sandals. I had chosen blue jeans because I always felt most comfortable in them. I had also been told that red brought out my best features--my eyes and my hair. I was ticked that I hadn’t brought a brush with me. I had left the house in such a hurry that I hadn’t taken time to blow dry my hair. I fumbled around in my purse until I found a hair tie. I gathered up the front and sides of my hair and pulled it loosely behind my head. I wrapped the tie around it several times and did a quick check. Little black wisps fell from it and framed my face. That was just the way I liked it. I had been thinking of cutting my hair off again. It seemed rather silly because every time I did it my hair grew back to just above my rear end within two months. My hair liked to be that long and didn’t take kindly to my attempts at doing anything else with it.
Being awakened out of dead sleep by Ken’s phone call did not suit me. I looked like crap. Sure, I was grateful that he’d ended my nightmare, but peeved that he’d wanted to go out in the middle of the night to question a master vampire. I made a mental note to sleep for two days straight whenever I got the opportunity, and to give Ken a piece of my mind.
I touched my face and decided that I didn’t have to fuss with much. I had been blessed with flawless skin. It was, however, rather pale. I tried tanning beds and hitting the beach every day for a summer and I couldn’t get myself to burn, let alone tan. I did my best to make up for the lack of color by adding a touch of blush to both cheeks and some lip gloss to my lips. I was so sick of everyone asking if I had collagen implants. I wanted to get a t-shirt printed that read, ‘Yes, I do see the light of day, and yes the lips are real too’. I grabbed my purse again from the passenger seat and fumbled through it until I found my eyeliner. I was big on the whole lining of the top lid with black craze. Prior to its recent revival, I had been seriously out of date with the look, but did it anyway. I loved the way it brought out my eyes, and I was into retro.
Satisfied it was as good as it was going to get, I got out of the car.
When I swung the door shut I thought that the car had finally had it. It was an ‘84 Thunderbird and it had seen better days. The roof was dented beyond repair, and it had no floor in the back right passenger side. Every time it rained, my seat ended up soaked because the seal on the door was missing. I tried to remember to lay a towel on the seat when I got out, but every now and then I would forget. My absolute favorite thing about the car was that I had to use my best judgment to find the right gears. When you put the car in park you were really in reverse and when you put the car in reverse you went forward. Parking had always been a guess because the spot for it was somewhere above the letters on the dash. The only thing the car had going for it was that it was paid for and it still ran. I was worried about getting my student loans paid off before I bought a new car. I figured I’d be paying for my loans until I died at this rate, and considering the fact that I was pretty sure I had Si (pronounced shee) blood in me that was pretty funny. Most Si were immortal, creatures of magic. The banks would just love me!
I walked towards one of the ticket booths. It was made to look like a mausoleum. Gray granite rock covered it and mythical creatures were carved into its molding. The man sitting behind the counter looked like a zombie. The makeup slathered on his face gave him the appearance of rotting flesh, and his costume looked as though he had just crawled from the grave to take my ticket--just looking at him made me smile. I assumed that they had real zombies working here, but this kid was obviously not one of them.
"Ticket please."
I tried not to laugh. He sounded so ridiculous. The make-up and wardrobe were one thing--the overdone enunciation on his words was just too much.
"Gwen Stevens. I’m here to speak with Pallo." I had to bite my lip to keep from bursting out in laughter. He didn’t look amused and turned to pick up the phone. He hung up and looked back at me. "Mr. Pallo will see you shortly. Go through the red doors and downstairs, someone will meet you there."
Giving him a nod, I headed in the direction he had pointed me.
A gigantic limestone building loomed before me. The gray formed a sharp contrast to the small, landscaped flower beds that lined the walkway leading up to it. They were full of what looked to be lemon verbena and green sage. I thought it odd that someone would grow only herbs in a spot made for flowers
Stone gargoyles stood in the center of each bed. I felt myself shudder a little and wasn’t sure why a flower bed would get to me. Truth be told, I really didn’t like the idea of being at a place where they prided themselves on scaring the shit out of you, but Ken needed information … bad. I really hated the fact that I was his ‘girl Friday.’
It only took me a few minutes to reach the red doors. I stood around and waited for Sharon or Rick to show up. I had already been at the park for half an hour so I decided to give them another fifteen minutes. Sharon was usually late. She seemed to be on a whole separate time schedule. At the office we referred to someone who was late as running on "Sharon-time". Rick, on the other hand, had a military background and was always five minutes early. The fact that he wasn’t here yet should have really bothered me, but it didn’t. I was getting pretty brave in my old age, or pretty stupid.
My patience level was pretty low considering I had gotten little sleep due to my-oh-so pleasant dream. The fact that I was standing out here in the dead of night waiting for the people who should have been handling this themselves didn’t help much either. I gave up and used my cell phone to try and reach Sharon. I got her voice mail, so I left her a message telling her I was going to go ahead in and I’d talk to her later, and if I didn’t call her back in an hour I was probably dead. That was my way of making light of the situation, but my gut told me that there was some truth to that comment.
I looked up at the red door. The last thing I wanted to do tonight was go into a room full of vamps, but if I didn’t go now I would lose my nerve. I turned the knob and pulled the door open.
Instantly, I was hit in the face with the smell of dampness. I looked around and tried to get the nasty taste of stale air out of my mouth. I was standing at the top of a stairwell, which was lit by several torches sitting in sconces along the wall. The walls were stone and looked like the inside of a castle.
No, make that the entrance to a dungeon.
The steps were stone too, and rather steep. I wasn’t sure how anyone who owned and operated a multimillion dollar business ended up in a basement, but I trudged onward anyway. When I reached the end of the staircase I found myself in front of a large, heavy, metal door. The medieval theme was really starting to get on my nerves. I knocked on the door.
The door opened quickly and a man stood there silently, looking at me. His six foot five frame took up most of the door way. White waves of hair spilled onto his shoulders. Large green eyes stared back at me. His face was soft, with baby fine features. The sweet smell of honey filled my head.
I had heard that vampires smelled nice, but this was ridiculous. I wanted to lick him just to see if he tasted as good as he smelled, but I held back. Good girl.
He was dressed like he’d just fallen out of the 80’s. I half expected him to claim he was the guitarist for one of the big hair bands and not really a vamp at all. He had on black, painted-on
leather pants. His white shirt hung loosely from his body and gaped open to the middle of his stomach. Even in the poorly lit stairwell I could see how smooth and pale his skin was. When I looked back at his face, he was staring at me wide-eyed. He looked puzzled and a bit surprised. Imagine that--I put a vampire off guard.
"I’m Gwyneth Stevens. Kenneth Harpel sent me down to speak with Mr. Pallo." I extended my hand out to him, but he just stared at it.
A few seconds went by in silence. I had the strongest urge to bolt back upstairs and out the door.
"Please come in," he said, stepping to the side. "We do not get many new visitors here. I apologize for my lack of manners."
I’d never met an honest to God gentleman before. "Thank you. I’m sorry for coming at such a late hour, but Lydia phoned our office requesting I come to see Mr. Pallo tonight."
His green eyes widened. "Yes, Lydia, umm, come in please. I will get Pallo for you."
"So, do you have a name or is Def Leppard mega-fan all right by you?" I asked, dripping with sarcasm.
"I am Caradoc." He looked puzzled by my attempt at humor. I had been told once that modern cynicism sometimes got lost on the older vampires and persons of magic. Guess that was true.
"Caradoc, the name doesn’t sound familiar."
"Should it?" he asked me as I walked past him.
"No, I guess not. I just got the feeling that I knew you from somewhere."
Caradoc led me into a room with a large stone fireplace in it. Two red sofas sat across from each other. They were trimmed with beautiful gold leafing that made your eye follow the s-curve of the feet. A massive Serapi rug covered the floor. Cherry end tables flanked each end of the red sofas. Candles sat on them and dripped wax down onto the rich wood. I had half a mind to walk up and put a coaster under them to protect the integrity of the tables. I got the feeling that no one else here cared, so I let it be.
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