Inamorato

by Keira Michelle Telford

  SILVER:

  Inamorato

  Written By

  Keira Michelle Telford

  Copyright © Keira Michelle Telford 2012

  Venatic Press

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination, or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chimera & Cover Artwork by

  Kitt Lapeña

  www.facebook.com/scarypet

  scarypet.deviantart.com

  Other Books in the Series…

  SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain)

  SILVER: The Lost & Damned

  SILVER: Entropy

  SILVER: A New Age Dawns

  SILVER: Quietus

  WWW.ELLACROSS.COM

  JOIN THE FIGHT

  “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

  -- William Congreve

  (The Mourning Bride)

  Amaranthe & Surrounding Area

  (Circa 2330 CE)

  Chimera

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ZERO

  A Hunter’s Genesis

  City Morgue

  The Sentinel District

  Amaranthe, 2319 CE

  – Eleven Years Ago

  Putrefaction.

  Although the two-week-old corpse of an elderly man found rotting in his home by a unit of Police Division Agents is now safely stored away in a cryopreservation tank, the smell of death still lingers in the morgue like a vile perfume.

  On the morgue table, a fresh corpse awaits formal identification by his next of kin. He’s a young man, washed and cleaned, the dirt and muck of war scrubbed from his pale, lifeless exterior. Several deep gashes on his chest expose the meat beneath. Slit from his navel to his throat, his retracting skin reveals a thin layer of yellow subcutaneous fat, and a pink valley of flesh running beneath it.

  Beads of water from his recent bath cling to his skin, slowly evaporating. On his face, the droplets fall like posthumous tears from his eyes and down his cheeks, settling on the steel table below.

  Thunk.

  The pathologist drops an upturned milk crate down onto the tiled floor and slides it up to the table. A pair of tiny feet appears, wearing little red shoes and white socks pulled up to the knees. A firm hand helps the five-year-old girl up onto the crate, and Ella Cross turns to face the man she knew as her father.

  Innocent silver eyes begin to drown in their own fluid as she casts them upon the already discolored remains of the only official family she’s ever known.

  No brothers or sisters to share her grief.

  No mother to comfort her.

  Not even a teddy bear to hold.

  Naked from the waist up, Jonathan Cross’s body displays his cause of death with absolute clarity: a battle lost. Many healed wounds—deep, lasting scars—are a tribute to innumerous other battles fought and won with honor.

  A hand appears upon young Ella’s shoulder, squeezing it gently. Gabriel Maydevine—J.C.’s boss, and now her guardian—is a man of few words but great expression. At his touch, Ella turns away from the ghastly, gruesome reality of her only remaining parental unit’s extinction, and falls into the warmth of Gabriel’s chest. He wraps his arms around her, lifting her off the milk crate as she buries her face against him, sobbing gently.

  With a quick nod from Gabriel to the pathologist, an attendant swiftly covers the body. Ella’s sobs are muffled against Gabriel’s jacket, and the comfortingly familiar scent of his cigarettes invades her lungs and finally smothers out the persistent smell of decay.

  An hour or so later, a puffy-eyed Ella is staring bleakly into a chocolate milkshake. Across the table from her, Gabriel nurses a cigarette between his fingers, the ash forming a tiny mountain on the tabletop.

  Silence.

  Ella’s feet dangle from the chair, not able to reach the floor. In her lap, her fingers fidget with one last remnant of J.C.’s life: his military dog tags.

  Name: Jonathan Cross

  Division: Hunter

  Rank: Commander

  D.O.B.: 19.05.2284

  Badge Number: 197858

  Little Ella Cross sighs, her brain trying to wrap itself around the facts of her quickly changing life.

  Finally, “The monsters killed him?”

  The sudden question catches Gabriel by surprise and he hesitates to answer. First, he takes another deep puff of the cigarette, mentally calculating how much information such a young girl needs to hear.

  Eventually, just simply, “Yes.”

  “The Chimera?”

  Another “Yes.”

  More time passes, but before the sun sets, Ella Cross must take her first steps into adulthood. With Gabriel by her side, she waits nervously in a small courtyard, scratching at her heel with the toe of her shoe.

  Suddenly, a cry.

  An unearthly squeal of pain or fright fills the air: a call for help that will never be answered. Ella jumps, startled by the echoing scream.

  A Chimera.

  Pulled into the courtyard against its will, the Chimera wails and lashes out at anything within its reach, and two uniformed Hunters struggle to restrain it with chains and stun guns.

  A quadruped with a vague and distant human semblance, the Chimera is an ugly representation of post-apocalyptic evolution. Thick, gray skin covers its muscular skeletal frame. Long talons—at which J.C. met his untimely end—are still caked in dried blood, and pieces of torn human flesh are clinging to its teeth.

  Such an appearance should strike fear, but the sight of it only fuels an already flourishing hatred inside Ella’s pounding chest.

  Gabriel takes the dog tags out of a frozen Ella’s hands and kneels down before her. Slipping the chain around her neck, he holds her focus on him while the Chimera is dragged ever closer, squealing and shrieking all the way.

  “Nothing will bring him back,” he says at last. “But vengeance sure as fuck dulls the pain.”

  Gabriel signals another Hunter to approach them and takes something from him.

  A gun case.

  Ella recognizes the initials, J.C., engraved into the wood, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies suddenly take flight in her stomach. She does her best to control her breathing as Gabriel opens up the case to reveal J.C.’s gun—an HK USP—and removes it. Setting the case aside, he loads a new clip into the gun and passes it to Ella, helping her small hands to take good grip of it.

  Carefully showing her the correct way to hold it, he helps her to lock a bullet into the breech and to raise the weapon upon the monster. Unhappily subdued by its human captors, the Chimera looks back at Ella, its sharp violet eyes shining bright against the soft glow of a quietly setting sun.

  “He killed Chimera?” Ella asks.

  Gabriel nods. “He was the best.”

  Ella takes aim.

  “Not anymore.”

  PART ONE

  Virtue

  CHAPTER ONE

  Extraction

  The Belt

  Amaranthe, 2330 CE

  – Present Day

  Ella Cross, fifteen years old and rebellious, plans on spending the night smoking and drinking with her peers in an unreclaimed, abandoned island known as the Belt.

  Although the island—connected to the mainland by a bridge—is free from Chimera, it’s strictly off-limits to citizens. Pending a review of any plans to rebuild, or to reassign the Belt’s purpose, it’s a decaying Old World remnant that’s scheduled for demolition.

  For years, kids have been using it as an illicit playground. Whether you want to smoke, drink, get high, or fuck,
the Belt is the place to do it. The Police Division doesn’t routinely patrol here, and Agents usually won’t bother to set foot inside the Belt unless they’re responding to an emergency call, or a civilian complaint.

  Not that their presence means much anyway. These kids know this place inside out, and could easily outfox a team of Agents who’ve been sent to break up their party—especially Ella. As a Hunter Division Cadet—and one of the best in the academy—she’s fast and agile, and she’s been coming here regularly since she was twelve. She has stamina in the bucket loads, and her body’s finely tuned for action.

  Refusing to wear makeup, dresses, or even to manicure her nails, she’s often the odd girl out in a group of her female peers. She’s a tomboy with an attitude. Her hair, which seldom sees a hairbrush, is swept back into a scruffy ponytail. She cuts it herself, and the jagged edges are a testament to teenage whimsy and not giving a fuck. She’s never seen without her Cadet boots, or her Hunter Division Academy jacket. In ripped jeans and a plain white t-shirt—with ‘Fuck Everything’ written by her own hand across the front in black marker pen—she rocks teen angst.

  The dried blood underneath her fingernails is a reminder of today’s combat classes, and three more Chimera kills added to her blossoming professional record. Her aptitude and proficiency for the work massage her already inflated ego, and buttress an often belligerent sense of her own superiority. She’s the lynch pin of her Academy social group. The boys want to fuck her and the girls want to emulate her—sometimes vice versa.

  Tonight, she’s putting the vice in the versa.

  Proving that you don’t need to have a dick in order to make girls quiver at the sight of the Hunter Division emblems, Ella’s got her tongue so far down the throat of a girl from the Academy of Medicine she could tickle her tonsils.

  A cigarette pinched between the fingers of one hand, Ella reaches her other hand under the girl’s skirt and begins to grope her.

  It’s more of a power trip than anything.

  Ella likes being able to make girls feel this way. She likes feeling their bodies respond to her touch, knowing that she’s in complete command of their pleasure.

  The girl whimpers as Ella forces another finger inside her, stretching her tight, virgin cunt and slightly tearing her hymen. Still, despite the discomfort, the girl is begging Ella for more.

  She wants Ella to take her.

  She wants the best Cadet in the Academy to take her.

  She wants the Hunter General’s daughter to take her.

  If nothing else, it’ll give her something to brag about in the morning.

  She clutches at Ella’s jacket, more than ready to have the first orgasm she didn’t have to give herself. Responding to that, Ella pushes her up against a nearby ramshackle wall. It’s decorated with years of vulgar graffiti and looks as though it could collapse at any moment, but neither one of them cares. Ella lifts one of the girl’s legs up over her hip to get a better angle, and manages to find just the right spot inside her. A few seconds more, and the girl begins to reach her sexual peak.

  For Ella, this is victory.

  At the first shiver of the girl’s impending climax, she feels a small burst of adrenalin, not unlike the sensation she gets when she puts a bullet in a Chimera’s skull.

  Orgasm or death, it’s all the same: it’s all about the finale.

  The rush.

  The release.

  The satisfaction.

  The girl is begging for Ella to finish her, and Ella is more than happy to oblige. She pays close attention to every soft whimper and whine, letting the girl’s moans guide her movements unerringly.

  Bingo!

  The girl’s final cry of delight is barely audible above the ruckus of a nearby group of other Cadets and their groupies, but Ella can feel success pulsing around her fingers, and her lips curl upward into a self-satisfied smile.

  Behind her, the other Cadets are passing a bottle of New World rum back and forth between them, laughing and joking about their last kill or their last kiss; their first fight or their first fuck. Loud and obnoxious, and utterly self-absorbed, they don’t hear the unit of Hunters approach.

  The four Hunters, having parked their Division truck on the main street a few hundred yards away, make their entrance to this scummy courtyard on foot, glass and debris crunching beneath their heavy boots.

  Used condoms and cigarette butts litter the ground, amongst shards of broken liquor bottles and the dried, crusty remains of various bodily fluids—mostly urine and vomit. One of the Hunters kicks aside a dirty syringe that was probably used to push kicks: an amphetamine product that’s commonly abused in the Hunter Division.

  He looks up and scans the faces of the kids. “Ella Cross?” he asks.

  The drunken Cadets and their groupies glance upward, shocked to see the Hunters. Cigarettes are hurriedly extinguished and liquor is swiftly abandoned, but Ella doesn’t even acknowledge their presence. Her lips are still locked with the girl from the Academy of Medicine, and she’s relishing the girl’s post-orgasm gratitude.

  “Hey! Dyke!” one of the other Hunters yells.

  The courtyard falls into silence.

  Ella breaks the kiss and finally withdraws her fingers, turning to face the homophobic Hunter with a scowl. “What did you just call me?”

  The offending Hunter steps forward, tempting fate. “Put the girl down and come with us.” He pauses for emphasis. “Dyke.”

  Controlling her anger, Ella moves in front of him and looks him up and down. She’s not impressed. All four Hunters are fresh from the field and still wearing their Division combat uniforms, but only three of them are covered in blood.

  The homophobe looks pristine, and that speaks volumes to Ella. Only two types of Hunters ever end a shift looking the same as they did when they began it: the weak and the cowardly. Either this man is such a poor shot he wasn’t able to make a kill today, or he was deliberately avoiding direct combat.

  Whichever the case, Ella thinks little of him.

  “So we’ve resorted to some long outdated, outright antiquated name-calling now, have we? How twenty-first century of you.”

  She flicks her cigarette butt at him. The butt hits his chest, sending sparks and ash flying left and right as it strikes his Kevlar vest over his embroidered name.

  Grinstead.

  He’s in his early twenties, and he looks far too buff to be healthy. Ella assumes he’s been taking steroids. Perhaps he needs the muscles to overcompensate for lack of brains and skill, she thinks.

  As they lock eyes with one another, Ella silently dares him to retaliate.

  And he does.

  He reaches for his weapon, and that makes Ella feel smug. He’s too cowardly to face a Chimera, but he’ll readily draw his weapon on an unarmed girl.

  He’s pathetic.

  She doesn’t even flinch at the sight of his gun. The second his hand starts to reach for his holster, the Hunter to his left leaps into action. He steps in between them, holds Grinstead off, and promptly chastises him for attempting to draw his weapon on a minor.

  This Hunter—Ella’s proverbial knight in bloodstained Kevlar—then turns to face her.

  “Ella Cross?”

  He sounds as though he’s asking a question, but Ella can tell by the look on his face that he already knows precisely who she is. Most Hunters do.

  She shrugs. “Who’s asking?”

  “You know very well who’s asking, and you need to come with us right away.”

  Ella glares intently at this Hunter who dares to issue her an order. He’s a young, fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old with six years of military service already under his belt. Heavily armed, and standing at least three inches above six feet, he’s a flawless poster boy for the Hunter Division. With dark hair and chocolate-colored eyes, he looks practically edible.

  Planting his hands on his hips, he returns Ella’s glare and holds her there, steadfast. Drawn in by the temptation to know more about him, she breaks the d
eadlock first and drops her eyes to the chest pocket of his Kevlar vest to read the name embroidered above.

  Alexander King.

  She raises an eyebrow. “I’ve never met you before, Mr. King.”

  “Not true.” Alex shakes his head. “It’s been a while, though. The last time we had occasion to meet, you were in tears because you thought there was a giant earwig hiding underneath your bed.”

  Behind Ella, her drunken peers burst into fits of laughter.

  “You just made that up.” She glowers at him.

  “I didn’t, but that’s okay. I can see why you’d find something like that embarrassing, and I promise I won’t tell all your friends how I had to sing you lullabies to get you to fall back asleep afterward. It’ll be our little secret.”

  More laughter.

  Ella feels her cheeks flush.

  She tries to ignore the fact that he might just be the prettiest thing she’s ever seen, and tries to focus on the fact that he’s just another one of her papa’s errand boys.

  Pretty, but an errand boy nonetheless.

  “Is my papa running out of gophers?” she taunts him. “He must be scraping the barrel if he’s started sending my old babysitters after me.”

  She’s trying to shake him, but it doesn’t work.

  “Your blatant disregard for the rules isn’t clever, Miss Cross. In fact, it does the Hunter General a great disservice.”

  Seemingly giving little regard to his authority over her, Ella approaches him. Refusing to be intimidated by the sternness in his face, or the intense command of his presence, she reaches out a hand toward him. She curls her slender fingers around his Hunter Division dog tags and gleans all that she can about him from his experience and rank.

  Lured into a false sense of security by the way Alex is calmly allowing her to explore him, she decides to push her luck.