by Candy Crum
“Shouldn’t we avoid it then? And even if your future-self told you that—which I know isn’t possible because it would require time traveling through the subconscious, and you’re not able to do that—it’s still not an excuse to make a shit load of bad mistakes and hope for the best.”
“I don’t get it either, but I just know. I have to be there. Sam’s life is in danger. And I know I’m not supposed to be able to time travel through the subconscious, but Death can. Guess what else I’m not supposed to be able to do? Stop time, but I did today. Whatever he did to me when his hand wrapped around my heart changed me for good.”
Wendy nodded. “I can’t begin to understand how you have visions around Reaper lords, or how you’ve developed such a close friendship with one. I can’t understand why some of your powers are so strong while other more basic ones are weak. I’m lost here. All I know is I should probably trust you. If you’re absolutely certain about this, I will follow you. I trust you. But if you get hurt… You know I’ll never forgive myself, right? And I don’t want to sound like a heartless bitch, but you do realize you’re weighing a single life against the entire planet, right? Because if you die, Khia will win.”
“I know all that, but I still have to go. If I let him die, I’m no better than she is.”
Wendy sighed. “Alright then. Let’s do this.”
Pre-Order Shadow Born: Book 3 in the Reclaiming the Shadow Realm Series Click Here!
ASIN: B07F1D8VBF
The Therian Prince: The Therian Chronicles Book 2 (Click here to check it out!)
Prologue
The smell of smoke wafted down the main street of Yelizovo, Russia permeating through the doors of the businesses. People drove slowly as they watched the plumes rise overhead in thick clouds.
Boom!
Glass exploded onto pedestrians at the local strip mall. The ground shook, causing telephone poles to sway. Traffic slowed as local commuters came to a panicked halt. Fathers on their way to pick up their kids from daycare, mothers on their way home from work, people going out to dinner—everyone stopped and stared in shock as a second explosion rocked the little town’s main shopping center.
Boom!
Screams erupted from the area as the ground rumbled even harder, the buildings quaking as another—larger—strip mall began to collapse at one end. When the third explosion sounded out, everyone went into a panic.
For many, their adrenaline kicked in as they jumped back into their cars, trying to race away from whatever was happening in their small city of thirty-five thousand. Unfortunately for them, however, they had been stopped where they were parked—boxed in—as other people were frozen in fear.
Travelers in both the north and southbound lanes were dumbstruck, unable to close their gaping mouths or widened eyes as they watched both buildings collapse to the ground with an earth-shaking roar.
Then the real screaming began.
The screams were ear-piercing as filthy, blood-covered men, women, and children swarmed into the streets as they fled the scene. The smoke and dust now blocked the small amount of light that shone from the setting sun and heavy cloud cover, increasing the panic.
Zia, a young woman who had been on her way home from work, sat in the driver’s seat of her car. The engine ran as she prayed for an opening in the crowd. There was no way for her to move otherwise.
Her entire body shook as she watched the confusion and terror unfold around her. She could barely see anything, which only worried her more. There was no way for her to know who or what was attacking their small town, but they had gone to great lengths to do so.
“Mommy,” came a shaky voice from the backseat.
Zia turned to see her young daughter, Adrianna, had tears running down her face. That evening, she had been on her way home from work. Normally, she would have picked her daughter up from daycare after running errands, but today she had decided to get her first. She had assumed it would be faster.
But she had been very wrong.
“Everything’s okay, baby,” Zia said.
“What’s happening? Can we go? I’m scared.”
Zia’s brows furrowed as she felt her daughter’s emotions coming off her in waves.
She opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the sound of something heavy landing on the roof of her SUV. She jumped as her eyes immediately shot upward. At first, she had thought something had landed there—something that had been falling from the sky from the explosion. But then she heard the distinct sounds of footsteps.
Someone was up there.
“Mommy!” Adrianna said, the inflection in her voice telling Zia that her daughter was about to come completely unglued.
“Shh!” Zia said, her eyes locking on Adrianna’s. “Shh. Mommy needs you to close your eyes. Really tight.”
Without hesitation, Adrianna squinted her eyes closed and slapped her hands over them. Once Zia was sure the little girl wasn’t looking, she leaned forward and reached into the glovebox, pulling out a Smith and Wesson M&P. It was one of her favorites and one she kept with her at all times in case of an emergency.
Zia was no stranger to weapons or self-defense. Though she had been born in Russia to Russian natives, she had moved to the US when she was four and lived there until she was twenty-six. She had dual citizenship and had even gone into the US military at eighteen. She had spent eight years in the army but left honorably and returned home to Russia when her father had fallen ill.
A loud cheer came from on top of her car, followed by several more echoing out all over the place. She could hear more terrified screaming from all around her, and the man on top of her SUV laughed loudly.
Her jaws clenched with rage as she pressed the mag release on the side of her gun, the magazine falling free. It was fully loaded. Pushing it back inside the gun with a hiss, click, she pulled back the slide and turned the safety off.
“No matter what you hear… Don’t open your eyes, milaya devushka,” Zia said. She always spoke English to her daughter, but the little girl loved hearing her mother call her pet names in Russian. It always soothed her, and Zia needed the girl as calm as possible at that moment.
Zia’s eyes widened, a scream lodged in her throat as she clamped her free hand over her mouth and bit her lip to keep herself from letting loose. A woman seemed to appear out of nothingness—a blur as she moved. She ran forward and grabbed hold of a man running through the parked cars, eyes glowing bright red as she buried her teeth in his throat.
With no more than the twitch of her hand, the man’s head was pulled from his body. The bloodied stump of his neck landed on her windshield before rolling down across the hood and onto the ground in front of her car.
“Mommy,” Adrianna whispered.
“Not right now, milaya devushka. Mommy needs you to be very quiet.” It was all she could do to keep her voice calm—especially with the woman’s cold eyes and bloody smile turned toward her.
In the blink of an eye, the woman was gone. Zia had no time to react to what was happening before her SUV door was completely torn from the frame.
Zia immediately looked left to see the woman coming at her with her jaws wide, razor-sharp teeth bared and ready to bite into her.
“Not today, bitch,” Zia said.
Holding the gun in her left hand and eyes never leaving her target, Zia thrust her left elbow hard into the woman’s throat as she clicked the release of her seatbelt with her right hand. The woman was caught off guard, falling back a few steps. It didn’t take long for her to recover, but it was enough time for Zia to extend her hand and pull the trigger, firing a shot directly between the woman’s eyes.
There was a scream from the backseat, and she quickly called back, “It’s okay, baby! Keep your eyes closed and get on the floor! Mommy’s fine!”
The man that had been on the roof of her SUV jumped down then, and she turned in time to see that his eyes were just as red as her first opponent’s had been. He grabbed her arm and yanked her from the
car—immediately pulling her shoulder out of its socket and making her feel incredibly grateful she’d had the foresight to unbuckle herself.
The gun fell from her hand as she cried out, only narrowly missing a snap from his jaws as she clumsily twisted toward the arm that still held her. She took a quick, deep breath to prepare for the intense pain, grabbed his arm with her good hand, and twisted herself around again.
She ground her teeth together, fighting another painful cry as she bent forward and used her strength to throw him over her back and onto the ground. Thankful he had let go of her arm in the process, she quickly stood and stomped down hard on his head.
But there was no give.
Her eyes widened. She’d once had the unfortunate experience of having to kill someone that way while deployed with the US Army, but the side of that man’s face had crushed under her boot. This time it didn’t. In fact, the man now on the ground below her only smiled in response.
“Nice try,” he said with a laugh as his arm moved like lightning, grabbing at her legs and pulling her to the ground.
In an instant, he was on top of her. She prayed for the best and thrust her head forward, the bridge of his nose surprisingly crushing under the blunt force of her forehead. His eyes immediately closed as black blood spurted out all over her. She searched with her right hand, and relief flooded through her as she grasped the gun.
“You’re going to die slowly, bitch,” the man said as his red eyes finally opened.
She watched his pupils dilate as they fixed on her, but he obviously hadn’t seen anything except her face. As he moved forward, she pressed the gun under his chin. His eyes widened only a split second before she pulled the trigger, closing her eyes as the tarry, black blood and brain matter rained down on her.
With a hard thrust of her hips, she pushed him off to the side, slowly standing and wiping her face with her clothes. She made her way over to her SUV and looked inside. Her daughter was curled up in a ball on the floorboard with her eyes squinted shut and her ears covered with her hands.
Zia wanted to say something but decided against it. Adrianna was safer there, and she didn’t want the four-year-old to see her mother injured and covered in gore.
Zia used her right hand to painfully lift her left, setting it on the shoulder of the driver’s side seat. She then placed her shoulder against the frame and lowered herself as she rotated her body a little. She groaned loudly as her shoulder popped back into place.
A loud roar boomed out overhead as a colossal shadow passed through the smoke. It was louder than any lion or tiger she had ever heard on any documentary or seen in any zoo. She crouched down a little, looking around in the smoke and dust cloud that had shifted around her as the monster passed overhead.
A second roar thundered out, but from somewhere else, and then a third, fourth, and fifth. They were everywhere.
“It’s working!”
She turned to see a woman with bright red eyes and blood all over her face standing roughly ten feet away, staring at the sky with wide eyes and a large, bloody smile. Unable to help herself, Zia lifted her hand and pointed the gun.
“Keep attacking the humans! The Therians have come!” the woman shouted, clearly not paying attention to Zia.
“Yeah, I’m gonna have to say you’ve had enough fun for one day,” Zia said.
The woman turned her eyes on Zia then, her happy smile turning into something darker as she took the first step forward. Zia had only needed the woman to look at her to make sure she got the shot she wanted.
Squeezing the trigger again, she shot the woman in the forehead, not wanting to take the chance of shooting the monsters anywhere else. Though she didn’t believe in the supernatural until then, she had seen enough movies to know the head was the best way to go. A bullet through the brain killed most things.
Zia jumped, nearly dropping her gun as light erupted all around. She turned quickly as intense heat reached her. Her eyes widened again as she saw fire lighting up the street.
“Bozhe moy,” she said under her breath. “That’s im—fucking-possible.”
Another roar sounded as a dragon stepped onto the street, partially hidden in smoke, dust, and the shadows of the setting sun. It was so enormous, it simply scooped cars out of the way with its talons on its front feet.
Something blew past her in a rush, the air shifting around her as a black blur moved through. She watched in absolute silence as the dragon turned and caught one of the attackers—a man she knew had to be a vampire—in its powerful jaws and ripped him in half.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend… she thought with determination.
Not today it isn’t, a soft feminine voice said in her mind.
Zia turned to see a woman standing several feet away, a confidence about her that hadn’t been there with the others. Her bright red eyes focused on her. She looked at the ground, then back to Zia.
“Impressive,” the woman said. “You’ll make a powerful warrior.”
Zia lifted her hand, but shadows seemed to burst from the ground, wrapping around her wrist and flinging the gun from her hand.
“Brave… But stupid,” the woman said as she took steps forward. With only a twitch of her hand, inky blackness wrapped around Zia and held her tight.
“I will never fight for you,” Zia spat.
The woman laughed. “Oh, but you’ll fight for the Therians? You don’t even know them.”
“If that big son of a bitch over there eating your cronies is a Therian, then yeah, I’ll fight for them.”
The woman laughed again. “That’s your humanity talking, child. You have yet to even brush the true level of your potential. You took three of my children down, and all you suffered was a nasty dislocated shoulder—which you fixed yourself? You are a goddess, and I can show you that. I can show you your true potential. You’ll see. When you wake, you will love me. You will be so fiercely loyal, in fact, that you won’t even question ending the life in the backseat of that car.”
Zia’s blood ran cold. “I… would… never.” Every word came out icy and dark, and Zia hoped the woman could see the fierceness in her eyes as she spoke them.
“You’ll see, my child. I’m going to bite you, drain you, and let my venom turn you. When you wake, you’ll have so much power. But you’ll also be starving. And do you know where you’ll find your first meal?” The woman smiled as she tilted her head to the right a bit, looking in the direction of Adrianna.
The woman stepped closer. “My name is Nadya, and I am your queen. Well, not now… But I will be the moment you wake up. Relax. This pathetic human existence of yours is over now. You are mine, and I am yours.”
As Nadya put her hands on Zia’s shoulders, ready to lean in, Zia gave a dark smile of her own. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Kill me. Kill me now. Because when I wake… I promise you… I am going to spend my entire life hunting you down. I will fight alongside the Therians, and I will bring hell directly to your doorstep. I will never allow you to get away with taking me from my daughter. My face will be the last thing you see.”
There was a pause as Nadya seemed to consider her words. Then, the vampire’s confidence returned, and she smiled again. “Once you turn, the Therians will want nothing to do with you. You will be one of us—one of the damned. From the moment you open your eyes again, you will be their enemy. I will be all you have. Threaten me all you want. Tomorrow? You’ll be begging my forgiveness.”
Zia didn’t respond. She couldn’t. The vampire’s hold took Zia as her body willingly turned her head—no matter how much her mind screamed not to—exposing her throat to the queen of vampire kind.
Their kind.
Her mind screamed for her to fight, but her body did as the queen willed. When the bite came, Zia was surprised that it was as gentle as it was, especially after all she had said. But as she felt the heat burning through her veins, her adrenaline spiked, knowing the queen was making good on her word.
As Zia’s heart b
egan to slow, her eyes growing heavy, she felt the queen withdraw and gently place her in the driver’s seat with her shadow magic. As she heard another explosion accompanied by a loud roar, Zia offered one last thought.
I’m coming for you… Soon.
She could faintly hear the sound of a laugh outside her window before another explosion rang out. Somehow, Zia could feel Nadya’s almost immediate retreat. She could no longer feel her presence; a presence she had no idea she had become aware of on such a strong level.
Nadya responded from some the far distance. I’ll be ready—if you survive this part that is. The Therians will smell the change in your blood.
As Zia drifted completely off, the last thing she heard was Nadya telepathically repeating three words over and over again.
One of us…