Out for Blood: Phil's Story (Talisman Series)

by Brenda Pandos

  Then some unseen person with a white lab coat pulled the curtain shut.

  “No.”

  I felt Rachel’s grip tighten on my wrist. “Don’t move, honey. It’ll all-l-l be over soon.”

  “No!” I said a little louder.

  The needle hit the light, sparkling slightly. This wasn’t a coincidence. She and Cain/Horace remembered too.

  I yanked my arm from her, upsetting her workstation. Gauze, tape, packages of needles and tubes flew up and clattered to the ground.

  “Phil!” Rachel barked. “What are you doing?”

  I stood and caught Julia’s panicked look.

  My heart thundered as I grabbed both their hands and bolted from the RV’s door. “I’m not doing it and neither are you.”

  Julia pulled hers away first. “What’s gotten into you?”

  She had that familiar whitish sheen again, like she’d seen a ghost.

  “I don’t care what Lyle has threatened to do to me, you have to believe me. They aren’t collecting our blood to donate it,” I said, pleading that she’d believe me. “It’s some kind of trap.”

  “I’m not comfortable with it either, but we don’t have a choice,” she said, walking backward toward the RV. “We have to do this or we’ll get suspended. I can’t have that on my record.”

  I wanted to yell at her. Why can’t you remember? Damn it!

  “Fine, you can do what you want. I’m out of here.”

  Storming toward the parking lot, I passed the first row of cars. I was done with this. School, Julia, Horace and his lackeys. This duplicate asinine life sucked ass, whatever it was. Something had to give and I had to find the answers before I went mad.

  “Phil!”

  Sam’s footfalls ran to catch up with mine. I didn’t slow down. I wanted to get as far away from school as I could.

  “Phil, wait up!”

  I turned. “What Sam?”

  She looked up at me with those trusting blue eyes. “You recognized the woman, didn’t you?”

  My lips thinned. “Yeah, so?”

  “And you said something about Cain.”

  “I did.”

  She gulped and moved closer to me. “Somehow I remember them too.”

  Hope flickered in my chest, a bright light that felt warm like the sun. I pulled her close to me. “You do?” Please don’t be messing with me.

  “Yeah,” she said, breathless. She trembled in my hands. “And I remember other things too. I remember you…us.”

  And before I could stop her, she grabbed my cheeks and pressed her lips to mine. Her soft tongue entered my mouth, running over my teeth. She pressed harder into me, pulling herself closer.

  I fell into her and let it all happen, lost in the moment. I’d wanted so badly to connect with someone, to know I wasn’t crazy. I wrapped my arms around her waist and crushed her to me.

  Finally.

  “I don’t trust him,” she said between kisses, her voice thick. “And I don’t want him to hurt anyone again.”

  “Me neither.” I wiped away a stray tear from her cheek, grasping her sweet chin in my fingertips. “Thank you. I’ve been dying for someone to remember.”

  “I do,” she said with a small smile. “I have for a while.”

  A while?

  I took her hand, my anger melting. Temptation to take her with me rocked my being. We’d drive somewhere. We’d come up with a plan to reunite the rest of the group. If she remembered, then more people would too. We had to figure out why they’d cataloged everyone on that wall and wanted their blood.

  Just beyond Sam, Julia stood. Her mouth gaped open.

  Sam followed my gaze and turned around. “Julia?”

  Julia covered her hand over her mouth and I couldn’t read her. What was wrong?

  “Crap,” Sam said as she composed herself. “Julia. Come here. It’ll be okay.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. Julia couldn’t be jealous, could she?

  “I…” Julia gulped hard, then turned to walk toward campus. “Never mind.”

  Sam tried to follow, but I took her hand.

  She turned to me. “Nicholas left today, okay.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah…” Sam took a deep breath. “He didn’t want to do this blood drive thing either, and he’s worried about his mom.”

  I blinked at her in shock. “Why, what’s wrong with his mom?”

  Sam rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t you be worried too if Alora was your mom?”

  Her words hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d completely forgotten my sire was Nick’s mother.

  “Yeah,” she said, dropping my hand. “Julia’s worried, since you’ve remembered, that everything is going to go to shit. So…”

  She didn’t finish. Instead she ran after Julia.

  I staggered backward, leaning against a nearby car. I’d finally gotten what I wanted. And now…I didn’t know what to think of it. Had I started a chain of events I couldn’t stop?

  I looked up just in time to see Rachel staring out at me from the RV. Then the engine rumbled to life, tearing the RV out of the parking lot, leaving the tables and stanchions behind. The driver was none other than the evil doctor: Dr. V.

  We weren’t safe anymore.

  Stay tuned for the next installment of the Talisman Series, Book 4, Blood Wars coming spring of 2014.

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  DID YOU ENJOY GLITCH?

  If you enjoyed reading GLITCH, I’d appreciate if you’d help others enjoy this book, too, by reviewing it at Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you purchased it. If you do write a review, please send me an email at brendapandos@gmail.com so I can thank you personally. Or visit me at:

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  OTHER BOOKS BY BRENDA PANDOS

  * coming soon

  : : :

  (YA Paranormal Romance)

  The Emerald Talisman (Book 1)

  The Sapphire Talisman (Book 2)

  The Onyx Talisman (Book 3)

  Out for Blood

  Blood Wars*

  (YA Urban Fantasy)

  Everblue

  Evergreen

  Everlost

  (YA/NA Post-Apocalypse Dystopian)

  Glitch

  Switch*

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is dedicated to my street team. Thanks for keeping my books out there and loving my characters as if they were real. To Julie Bromley, Debbie Poole, Jessie de Schepper, Rhonda Helton, Nicole Hanson, Kate Wilson, Claire Taylor, Julie Burns, Sarah Erhart, Terry Mitchell, Stacey Nixon and Ashley Shaw, you’re the best!

  EXCERPT OF GLITCH

  DYSTOPIAN ROMANCE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The soft cheers of fans in the bleachers floated around me, as I stood planted in right field, waiting for the next batter. My brain was elsewhere. Actually, my eyes were fixed on my watch latched onto my wrist, resting just above my softball glove. Green glowing letters read: sixty-five years, three months, five days, eight hours, ten minutes and 13, 12, 11 seconds; the time I had until I died. With a slow breath, I tried not to think too deeply about how long or short that truly was, otherwise the stress might subtract a few days.

  Instead, I gained comfort in its steady ticking, second by second. There was the promise I’d live a long life and hopefully see wonderful new advances in Brighton, marry for love, and have a few kids. The thought made me smile. Then suddenly, the time flashed red numerals zipping down to ten minutes.

  “Abby, heads up!”

  With a squeal, I glanced up and raised my glove to catch a pop fly mid-air, sto
pping the ball from pummeling into my skull.

  Holy baseballs!

  Above my head, like magic, my wrist glowed sixty-five years again, minus a few months. With a deep exhale and a pounding pulse, I chucked the ball toward Yara, who jumped up and down like she had to pee.

  She tagged the runner out at second and the team cheered, praising our double play. But all I could do was blink. I’d almost died. Right there. In right field. Died.

  Out of the corner of my eye, Elle, my best friend, gave me the look—the one that said, “What the heck?”

  I shrugged and smiled, then returned to my dented footprints in the grass and tried to shake off the dread pulsing in my veins.

  It had been a while since I’d had a near death experience—a year to the day actually—and if I didn’t pull my head out of the clouds and back into the game, I might not experience what was really bothering me.

  Being the youngest, I was the last on the team to attend the acclaimed Brighton ritual for all eighteen-year-olds. Through the brilliant invention of a wrinkle in time, everyone had one opportunity to glean wisdom from the future and sit before their 38-year-old self and partake in ten minutes of their knowledge.

  My older teammates had said the meeting was no big deal, really. But whatever their future self, or Compliment, had said to them, which they couldn’t share, had subtly changed them. Like Trinity, for example, who’d become so thin I worried she’d blow over on a windy day and Addison had become totally OCD about sunscreen. I don’t even want to mention Reagan, who cried for a month. And Elle, who I thought would tell me everything, turned broody and sarcastic—well, more so than she already was. All she’d leaked was that her future self was just like she was now—just old and boring. I knew different. Something horrible had transpired, and no matter how much I’d prodded, she wouldn’t budge. So, the thought of the meeting terrified me.

  Of course, all conversation between Compliment and youth was typed and monitored via computer before the knowledge was shared for fear the time continuum would warp like it had when Jimmy Valentine told himself the winner of the Brighton World Series. The Elected Agency (or the EA as we all called them) now had safe guards. Computer programs compared statements and guessed how history would alter from the knowledge, and approved or declined the information. If they found something improper slipped through anyway, the recipient was given mind-erasing drugs so they wouldn’t know anything different.

  But what could my Compliment possibly say so I’d be a better civilian? Ever since I could read, I’d memorized Brighton’s Civilian Handbook and followed every rule faithfully. I’d also watched my DOD (date of death) watch like a hawk, careful to learn from what altered my time and vowed not to repeat stuff that gave bad consequences. Eat healthy. Go to bed at a decent hour. Avoid stress. Obey my parents. If the EA needed someone to depict as Brighton’s finest, I could be their poster child. So why was I even going?

  Yara hadn’t. Her parents were part of the Emancipated Society, rebels of sorts who lived life absent of knowing their date of death and championed people to no-show their Advice Meeting. They’d also blacked out the faces of their EA required watches with special paint. The notion sent my nerves on edge. How could they trust fate like that? What if a bad decision killed them? Like just now… in right field.

  Maybe all my fear stemmed from finding out who I’d marry. Sure, everyone married a recommended approved DNA mate and had their limit of two kids, but then what? I didn’t particularly like any of my approved mates and if Toby Fisher was the one I was supposed to live happily ever after with, I’d die.

  I decided not to bother Elle with my suspicions. Since her meeting, she’d completely stopped talking about the guys in our approved circle all together. Did she not marry? Or had she married someone icky like Toby? Whatever it was, a part of her had died inside and what killed me was she wouldn’t tell me.

  On the third out, Elle ran over from center field, meeting up with me so we could head to the dugout together

  “What gives?” she said with the fake, I’m totally fine so don’t ask, look on her face.

  “Nothing,” I sighed, checking my watch again. The two months deducted from my adrenaline rush of the near death experience hadn’t returned. “Dang it.”

  Elle smirked, following my gaze. “I swear if you check that one more time, I’ll sneak over tonight while you’re sleeping and paint over the face, then I’ll drug you and keep you home. Tomorrow will be no big deal.”

  She looked away from my prying gaze, took off her hat, and ran her hand through her dark, short hair.

  “Then why won’t you tell me about your meeting, then?”

  Elle let out a gust of air, feigning jocularity, but the pain radiated deep from within her brown eyes once more. “My future self is a big downer, okay? I get old and wrinkled, and reform into Brighton’s finest citizen. Blah, blah, blah.”

  I grabbed her arm. “We’ve been friends since we were in Kindergarten, Eleanor, and I know when you’re lying.”

  Her glare hit me hard. “Don’t call me that, Abigail.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Well?”

  “Fine, I’ll tell you, okay? After your meeting, just don’t call me that.”

  Guilt for using my best ammo—her formal name—twisted slightly in my gut, but I was overcome with relief. I almost pulled her into a bear hug when Coach yelled at us to hustle.

  Arriving last to the dugout, we squeezed by Coach as she tapped her toe against the dirt. Had she completely forgotten my assist in the double play? Or should I have allowed the ball to drill into my skull and leave her with one less player? Fellow teammates gave me high-fives anyway and Coach congratulated me so she could get on with her pep talk. I half listened, but already knew we needed at least three runs to win and this win meant the championships.

  Yara, Trinity, and Addison were up first to bat, all hitting singles and loading the bases. Then Reagan struck out, putting extra pressure on Elle.

  “Get ‘em, tiger,” I said playfully as I grabbed my batting glove and headed to the warm-up area.

  I kept my eye on the pitcher, swinging in time with her pitch. She’d struck me out last inning and I wasn’t about to let that happen again. After three pitches, Elle returned to the dugout. She didn’t look up as she walked past and I wanted to say something, but I was up next.

  “It’s all yours,” Coach said. “Send ‘em home.”

  My heart pounded. Two outs and bases loaded—all on the eve of my Advice Meeting—talk about the pressure. No matter how much I ached to see how the stress affected my time watch, I wouldn’t look.

  Rule 23.1: Good civilians exercise and play team sports.

  I tugged the batting glove tight to my wrist and gave myself a pep talk. Stepping into the batter’s box, I tapped home plate with my bat. The pitcher studied me before she wound her arm and hurled the ball. Practically invisible, the thing zipped across the plate. The thump in the catcher’s mitt rocked my chest.

  “Strike!” the ump called.

  My ears stung with his words, bursting goose bumps over my skin.

  “Now you know what they look like,” Coach yelled from the dugout.

  Of course I knew what a strike looked like. I wasn’t a moron. I acknowledged Coach with a nod and glared at the pitcher, as if that could falter her confidence. I wouldn’t allow her to beat me this time. I would hit the ball.

  Behind her, something flickered from the trees lining the field—bright and shiny.

  “Strike two!”

  I jumped out of the batter’s box, unaware I’d zoned out and caught the smug look on the catcher’s face.

  “You’ve got her like last time,” the first baseman yelled. “Three up, three down!”

  I grit my teeth. Oh, no she didn’t. Glaring at the pitcher again and clearing the noise of the hecklers, onlookers in the stands, the players, and the coaches from my mind, I stepped into the batter’s box. The light flickered again, but this time, I didn’t look. Th
e ball was all I cared about and how I was going to send it out of the park. On instinct, I became one with the game and swung the bat.

  Crack.

  In the silent pause after my hit, time slowed. The exhilarating vibration tingled down my arms as I dropped the bat. High into the cloudless sky, the ball soared over the trees, and disappeared. A crash of glass and metal followed. Then a spray of sparks flew up from the nearby wall.

  The crowd gasped, then roared, as my legs took off. I rounded first base, second, then third, expecting a fanfare as I crossed home, but no one watched me. Everyone just stood, mouths agape, staring off in the distance.

  Smoke rose from the tree line, and I blinked at the odd sight, out of breath, then heard Elle. She ran up to me, congratulatory and smiling.

  “You must have hit a camera, or a gun,” Elle said with a triumphant smile, the first I’d seen in weeks.

  With the amount of smoke wafting in the air, I expected sirens at any minute. When no one came to investigate, I wondered if the EA even cared.

  “You think so?”

  She clapped my back. “Nice work.”

  The only thing I could think of was, Rule 28.3: Good citizens don’t vandalize EA property. They couldn’t hold me accountable, considering it was an accident. To think of it, I’d never heard the guns fire and assumed them to be inactive and rusting on their perches. The idea that I’d destroyed one felt unsettling. They needed to be there. If the undead wandered to the wall, the guns were our first defense.

  “I saw something,” I said under my breath to Elle, once the hoopla settled down and the game resumed. “Before I hit my grand slam. Did you see it?”

  “No. What?”

  “A mirror or something. It was shiny and reflecting the sunlight, like someone was trying to distract me.”

  “A zombie?” Elle raised her hands and moaned, then laughed, knowing my irrational phobia of them.

  I nudged her in the side as the game continued. I’d planned to go check out the damage later, but in pure daylight, of course. After the third out, Elle and I ran to the outfield for the last inning.