Life Bound: The Shadow World Book 1

by Aubrey Winters

  The circle of salt lay mostly undisturbed in the middle of her room, with other evidence of the incident remaining similarly untouched. One of the dresser’s drawer doors cracked in half, presumably from when I tackled Kol and threw us both into it. A chill crept up my spine when I accidentally looked toward the broken window. With everything that happened in the last few hours, I applauded myself silently for keeping calm as I browsed through the rooms, even though I’d come so close to death just earlier today. It wasn’t easy. I could feel the tendrils of panic brushing against the edge of my mind every few minutes. Forcing a deep breath, I imagined myself as a fearless heroine and the panic was a monster to be slain.

  The pride quickly dissipated as I approached the spot where Nana disappeared—there was truly nothing that showed any hint of magic. If I hadn’t witnessed it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed that anyone had disappeared from this room.

  We furnished our rooms similarly, and we were both quite organized, so there wasn’t much for me to check. Her phone was missing, and her laptop was locked. After five failed attempts to unlock it, I gave up, worried I’d wipe the entire computer by accident if I kept trying.

  I almost left when I noticed the small white corner of an envelope peeking out from under her bed. The shadows hid it just enough that I almost missed it.

  It was a pile of white envelopes of all sizes wrapped together with elastic bands. The ones on the bottom were yellowed and crinkled with time. They were all addressed to Nana at each of the various addresses we’d lived throughout the years. The name on the return address was always the same—Alice Beckett.

  I’d never noticed anything there before, but with all this recent information about Nana, I wouldn’t doubt that she had always hidden these envelopes under her bed. It was likely she stuffed it back there in haste, or was less careful about it since I was still meant to be at school.

  A chill crept up my spine when I realized Nana had kept correspondence with someone throughout the years and I’d never even heard of the name before.

  The latest letter, dated just a month ago, was a short one. Alice responded to an update about how close I was to finishing college, and how happy she was to hear that I was doing well. She said she missed Nana and hoped to see her again soon. That it had been too long since the last time, despite the risks. Alice signed simply with the letter “A.”

  What risks? Who was Alice Beckett? How was it she kept in contact with Nana for all these years and I’d never heard of her?

  I sorted through several more letters before it felt too disrespectful to continue opening them. The old correspondences contained no hint of where they met or how they knew each other, much less any useful information about where Nana might be right now.

  Carefully wrapping them back up and tucking them under Nana’s bed, I kept the latest one. It had a return address, so we could start our search there.

  Although Nana never mentioned Alice, it seemed like she was the only person Nana kept in touch with after all these years, based on how ancient some older letters looked. Maybe she would have some answers for me.

  BY THE TIME I FINALLY left the house, I’d filled my bag to the brim with clothes, my laptop, phone charger, and other essentials. Kol leaned against the hood of the blue sports car, just browsing his phone. Shoulders loose and his legs crossed at the ankles, he was the picture of carefree and the complete opposite of how I felt inside. His hair, so blonde that it looked white, reflected against the sun. He angled his head when he noticed me, his grey eyes lightening when he looked up from his phone. Every movement seemed effortless for him. I hated it.

  I should have known the sports car was his. Uncertainty radiated from the car since I first got home.

  “We’re taking Nana’s car.” I pointed to the little yellow Mini Cooper in our driveway. It was a little older, but I thought it was pretty reliable. Sure, it had broken down a few times, but it had driven me and Nana to many places over my lifetime, and it held a lot of sentimental value for me. My life already spiraled out of control, and it wasn’t even dinnertime yet. Driving the yellow Mini would bring a semblance of control into my life, like I could at least decide what car to drive on the path that life forced me to take.

  “That thing looks like it’s about to fall apart,” Kol arched his eyebrows. “Mine is brand new.”

  “We’re taking mine.” I crossed my arms and hoped that I didn’t look too much like a child having a tantrum.

  “Look, I conceded on what we’re going to do. Give me this one.”

  We stared each other down; he leaned against his car, and I stood in the driveway, silent for moments as we waited for the other to give up. Finally, I acquiesced.

  “Only because I’m afraid the car will get mauled by some werewolf or something, and it’s too precious for that.” I muttered as I put my bag into the small trunk of his car.

  “Don’t you travel with anything?” His trunk was entirely empty; not a bag or an extra shirt in sight.

  “I travel light. What is extra clothing but cumbersome when I can get whatever I want whenever I want?”

  “Right.” Freakish vampiric abilities. There were moments when he seemed so normal that I forgot he wasn’t human, impossible as it might sound.

  “I’m driving.” I walked toward the driver's door, ready to put up a fight. Instead, he just held his hands up in defeat and threw the keys from over the car’s roof.

  “Whatever you want, darling.”

  I bristled slightly at his choice of endearing terms, but let it go. He let me drive. If I wouldn’t have Nana’s car, at least I’d be in the driver's seat. To survive the uncertainty of whatever was to come, I had to take each win as they came, small as they may be.

  “Where are we headed to, then?” He reached into his glove compartment and pulled out a lollipop. Making quick work of the wrapper, he popped the sucker into his mouth. Was it strange for a vampire to have a sweet tooth? Maybe no stranger than the fact he was a vampire.

  “We’re going to find one of Nana’s friends—the only friend I know about, actually. She lives ten hours away from here.” I wasn’t about to admit that I’d never heard of this woman in my life.

  Kol choked on the lollipop, and I resisted a grin. I was noticing a trend in taking pleasure at his mild inconvenience. As unpleasant as a long drive was, the thought of being in a crowded public space with this man—this vampire—made my skin squirm.

  “Ten hours? Why didn’t we just fly there?” He looked at me like I'd just grown two heads.

  “Because I’m unemployed and have little money,” I explained. “It’s cheaper to drive.”

  “Hello? I’m a vampire, remember?” He pointed the sucker at himself. “Remember those powers of persuasion we were just talking about? I can obviously get us onto a plane. There’s no need for this nonsense.” He waved the lollipop at the freeway we were approaching.

  “There’s no need to persuade anyone,” I said through gritted teeth. “It seems like a serious violation of their rights.”

  He was about to respond, so I hastily continued. “Besides, what would you do with this car, anyway?”

  Kol lost interest in his original retort. “I’d have just left it. Someone would have found a delightful surprise. Isn’t that a kind gesture?”

  To cast aside something as expensive as a car as though it were nothing and expect others to deem you benevolent for it—was this the vanity of immortality?

  “I’m finding it hard to believe you’re actually a vampire,” I changed the topic, drumming the steering wheel with my fingers nervously as we merged onto the freeway. “Are you sure you’re not human?”

  The reality of what I was about to do—of what I had done already—was setting in as the length of asphalt stretched before us. I left my home and everything I knew to spend an undetermined amount of time with a very dangerous man in hopes my grandmother was somewhere out here... and alive.

  Kol looked over at me as if I were dumb. Th
en, before my eyes, the grey in his eyes darkened to blood red. He pulled his lips back to expose his teeth, and I watched as his canines elongated into something I’d never have thought as dangerous weapons until today.

  Fear rose like a torrent, and I swallowed the scream before it reached my throat. He reached over to grab the steering wheel from my hands as I flattened myself against the door panel, as far away from him as possible within the confines of the car.

  “You didn’t have to panic,” he chastised, his red eyes fading to grey and fangs shortening. I blinked, and he looked utterly human again.

  Forcing my body to relax, I swatted his hands away from the wheel and adjusted myself in my seat. I’d seen his vampire face a few times already, but seeing it at close range while trapped in the tiny space of this little car made it worse—especially without the overwhelming emotions blinding my common sense from earlier. “You shock me with that and expect someone not to panic?”

  “Just double checking that you had the Sight,” he grinned. His canines still seemed a little pointier than a human’s. “And confirming for you we do, in fact, exist.”

  “The Sight?” I asked, still forcing my breathing to calm down.

  “Yeah. It means you can see the Shadow world and all that’s related to it.”

  “And not everyone has the Sight?”

  “You’re not very clever, are you?”

  I huffed, but ignored the insult because I wanted to know more. “So I can see you and this... Shadow world... because Nana is a witch, and we’re related by blood.” As I tested the way these words sounded, I realized two things. The first was that I sounded like a lunatic. The second was that if Nana was a witch, wouldn’t that have made me at least part-witch? I wracked my brain for anything mysterious that might have happened to me throughout my life, and nothing came to mind.

  He nodded slowly, as if he still couldn’t believe I made it this far without knowledge of his world. “And just because someone is related to a Shadow doesn’t always mean that they’re supernatural themselves.”

  I flushed as if he had just read my mind. “Nothing out of the ordinary has ever happened to me,” I shrugged as casually as I could, as though he hadn’t just answered my silent question. “Except for you and this whole thing, which I guess makes up for the lack of oddities in my life until now.”

  “When people are born into the Shadow world with no signs of the Darkness marking them as a Shadow, and they are human in every sense except for the Sight, they live as inferiors, ignored by their own people. It’s rare, but it happens.”

  He was telling me that even if Nana had raised me with Shadows, the world wouldn’t have accepted me as one of them, anyway. No matter. I ignored the quiet stinging in my chest—I just wanted to learn about this world so I could find Nana. Nothing more. And then, perhaps I’d return to my old life. Somehow.

  Despair about the task before us began creeping on the edge of my mind like rising smoke trails, so I started conversation again before they could take their hold.

  “How accurate is the media’s portrayal of vampires?” My eyes stayed trained on the road before us, but he smirked in my peripheral vision.

  “I mean, we drink blood, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I wasn’t asking specifically about that, but of course he did. What else were those lovely fangs for?

  I asked how he was out in the daytime without burning.

  “I’m sorry to inform you we are so-called creatures of the night not because we roam only at night, but because we are part of the darkness—the mysteriousness—that humans fear. A dark world—a world shrouded in shadows—that humans don’t see or understand, but have felt alongside their existence since the beginning of time. With the exception of those with the Sight, of course.”

  I racked my brain for everything I remembered from what social media taught me about vampires.

  “How about strength and speed? Are you stronger and faster than humans?”

  “Did I not throw you out of a window?”

  “Right. Do you heal faster too?” I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel, feeling a little more relaxed already.

  “Yes.”

  “What about the garlic thing?”

  “Goes great with everything.”

  “Do you have an aversion to wood?”

  He cocked his head and grinned. Warmth flooded my face. “You know what I mean.”

  “It isn’t pleasant.”

  I spent a good portion of the drive questioning him about vampiric abilities and weaknesses, whereas he spent that time laughing at my lack of knowledge. To his credit, he answered everything I asked, whether directly or indirectly.

  I had imagined that the media would have glamorized vampires, but real life vampires had very few weaknesses. Holy water and crucifixes had no effect on him. Wood hurt, but wasn’t lethal. Ash from oak trees was poisonous. He required an invitation before entering a home, but running water would not stop him. When asked whether he had a reflection or would show up in a photo, he laughed and asked how anyone could be deprived of his gorgeous face.

  “Tell me about these powers of persuasion,” I said once he’d stopped laughing when I asked if he could eat human food.

  “It’s called encanto. We can compel humans to do what we ask.” He was still smiling, but I fought the shiver that threatened to crawl up my spine.

  “You mean you can just...”

  “Well, not you,” he shrugged, like he knew what I was thinking.

  “Not me?”

  “You repeat things a lot,” he tilted his head. “It works on humans, even those with the Sight, but for some reason, it doesn’t work on you. That’s what makes you intriguing.”

  He’d said it twice now, but it didn’t have any less effect than the first time. Being intrigued by a man—by a vampire—like him couldn’t be good.

  To divert his interest from me, I asked about the Sight instead.

  “Normal mortals can have varying degrees of Sight. In the past, those who could see enough of the Shadow world and dared to talk about it were burned as witches or accused of demon possession,” he grinned. “As if actual witches were so easily caught. These days, those with enough of the Sight are usually committed or heavily medicated if what they see are deemed as hallucinations or delusions. Mortals with just a hint of the Sight usually become creative story tellers of some sort. Writers, directors, that kind of stuff. It’s actually quite interesting how things have changed.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip. That was enough supernatural talk for now.

  We drove in silence for a few hours, but he didn’t seem to mind. The sun had begun setting before my stomach started complaining.

  “I’m hungry. Are you—” I stopped myself as horror spread through my body and bemusement grew across his face.

  “You were saying?”

  “I—do you—?”

  “Hm?” He was really going to force it out of me. I wanted to knock that smirk and quirked eyebrow right off his face.

  “I’m not giving you my blood,” I finally ground out. Though if I were being honest with myself, my resolution sounded silly even to me. What would I even do if he decided he wanted my blood?

  His laugh was quiet and dark. “I often indulge in human food. It’s like a snack that never fills you up. We’ll stop if you need food.”

  A LITTLE WHILE LATER, we pulled into the parking lot of a roadside diner in a small town that barely registered as a blip on the map. Between Colewood and this little town—whose name I’d already forgotten—it seemed much more likely that vampires would be found here rather than sleepy Colewood.

  The sun was low on the horizon and the diner’s neon lights were flashing when the little bell announced our arrival as I pushed open the glass door.

  “Folks just drivin’ through?” A server with big blond curls tied in a high ponytail greeted us from the other side of the diner, plates loaded up in her arms.

  Kol nodded from
beside me and crossed the worn checkered floors to slide onto the red and white vinyl seats effortlessly. I followed, my own muscles stiff and aching from the long hours on the road. I hadn’t shared the driving responsibility because it felt a touch too much like relinquishing control—small or illogical as it may have seemed, I wanted to hold on to any semblance of normalcy as my own life spiraled out of my hands.

  Our waitress sauntered over, curls bouncing with each step. She seemed too young to be working at a roadside diner, but she was one gum-snap away from looking ready to star in a small-town waitress movie special.

  “There’s a great little festival happening this weekend. Everyone in town is gathering together to celebrate pies. You guys might want to check it out,” she fluttered her lashes at Kol, her entire body shifting his way though she directed her words at both of us. The faint smudge of last night’s mascara had me wondering what type of parties this little town hosted.

  Kol dragged his eyes from her legs up to her face, and I rolled mine. When his grey eyes met her own blue ones, she stiffened. A lazy smile curled on his lips while her breathing heightened, and her eyes widened, unblinking.

  “And what’s your name, doll?” He asked.

  All colour drained from her face and she opened her mouth slightly, but nothing came out.

  “Her name’s Betsy,” I read her name tag and glared at him. Fear chilled my veins, but anger overrode it. I’d thought he was just being a dirty flirt, but I now saw it was much more predatory.

  The look he gave her was not one that said he wanted to wine and dine her. It was the look a predator gave to their prey right before he dined on her and paired her with some wine.

  “We’ll just be needing a minute,” I took the menus from her and smiled, hoping she would understand the urgency in my eyes and leave.

  Maybe I should have just picked up food at a drive-thru instead.

  As soon as she was out of earshot, I glared at Kol.

  “What was that?” I hissed, wondering how I could have forgotten he was a dangerous maniac after a few quiet hours on the road.