Within the Cards

by Donna Altman

  WITHIN THE CARDS

  By

  Donna M. Altman

  Copyright Acknowledgement

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author. All characters, mythology, organizations and events, present day, historical, portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously

  Within The Cards. Copyright © 2010 by Donna M. Altman. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to any other person. If you would like to share this book with any other person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to donnamaltman.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Primary Category: Fiction / Fantasy / Epic Paranormal; Romance;Vampires;Witches;Immortals;Magic,Mysitical

  Country of Publication: United States

  Language: English

  Authored by Donna M. Altman Kindle Edition

  Print copies of this book are available in most online retailers.

  .

  http://www.donnamaltman.com

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my Grandparents

  John B. Hayes

  January 26, 1925 - September 18, 2004

  Wanda Elizabeth Sisk Hayes

  April 17, 1930 - January 3, 2003

  RIP Granny and Granddaddy

  Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself,

  and thank you for the signs you still give me

  I miss you both more than you will ever know.

  PROLOGUE

  The cards

  A candle flickered from the wind that seeped through tiny cracks in the walls of the decrepit wooden building. An aged woman named Anesidora picked up the small deck of cards that lay on the table in front of her. Her mind drifted to a time many years in the past.

  Her frail body wanted to sleep, but she knew the task ahead had to be completed. She shuffled the cards as she thought of the name Daughtry McRyne. She laid the cards out on the table.

  This small deck of cards was nothing more than pictures and paper begging to be shuffled and cut. Meditating on the thoughts of one's existence, they moved through the deck. They lay on the table wanting only to show a story for Anesidora to decipher. Past, present and future, they knew it all. They tossed and turned, flipped and overlapped. Royalty laid with peasant as did The Tower, Death, The Wheel of fortune, Judgment, The sun, moon and stars, The World. They lay in front of her, the beginning and the ending. They told her a story. They told her my story.

  The cards read:

  Card; The High Priestess in the position of the immediate - Sorrow, a part of you that feels estranged from the world, melancholy, and unfrequented. However, just as the spring reemerges at the end of the coldest season. This introspective, sorrowful state may be setting the stage for a new engagement with one's universe.

  Card; The Queen of Wands in the position of overlapping the present - still looking for something - perhaps the return of a long-lost soul mate.

  Card; The Wheel of Fortune in the future position - uncertainty and change; one must be prepared, for the ultimate effect of this card often depends upon the individual’s adaptability, resilience, and alertness.

  Final Card; Death in the position that overlaps the future - The end of a phase in life, which has served its purpose. An abrupt and complete change of circumstances, the way of one's life and patterns of behaviors due to past events and actions. Alterations.

  She looked away from the spread that lay in front of her. The flame from the candle that illuminated the cards flickered. She picked up the deck again and laid one last card. While staring at the card, she spoke the name, “Daughtry” then as she closed her eyes she begged the Gods.

  “I’m getting older, and my time is near. Please bring him to me. Come Daughtry or risk an eternity of loneliness and a future of the one you love never being able to remember you.” She whispered as she laid the final card down and placed the remaining cards from the deck to the side.

  “He will come in time; he has to come in time. His life depends on what is Within the Cards.”

  Chapter One

  FIRST THOUGHTS

  It's strange to start a new semester when the first thought you have is ‘Holy Shit’. Some people say prior to an extreme event in your life, you smell an aura. For me, not only could I smell it, but I felt shock waves race through me that would have leveled a city block. All I could do was sit in my seat and brace myself for the ride. After the initial shock, the next thought that went through my head was ‘what the hell’. As I sat still unable to move, the last several years began to flash through my thoughts like a bad B rated movie.

  It felt as if I were frozen and watching the scene from somewhere outside my body. My heart didn’t skip a beat. It didn’t beat at all. I felt like a corpse. I waited to hear a paramedic yell ‘clear’ from somewhere in the distance as the shock waves ran through me. This electrical jolt should have restarted the non-beating rhythm. However, that wasn’t going to happen. Nothing was going to jump-start my frozen state as I watched her enter the room.

  Her beauty, her thoughts, her scent blinded me and held me in place. I had waited for so long to see her again and now that she was here, I sat frozen like an idiot. All I could think was ‘ELLIE IS BACK’.

  As she sashayed into the room, my body betrayed me. I felt the arms of the chair collapsing under my grip. Her scent encapsulated me. I felt the involuntary action of my chest as I inhaled with a deep, slow motion and filled my lungs with the essences of the familiar scent. I held it in, pulling every memory of her back into my mind.

  When I got ready for class this morning, I thought this day would be like any other day. Now, the one person I loved more than anything walked back into my life and all I could do was sit here like a moronic fool. Her name was Eleanor Valeness. She turned my life upside down the first time I met her, and after seeing her today, I knew she was going to turn it upside down again.

  Being in the same room with Ellie woke up things inside of me that died a long time ago. It’s funny I used the word ‘died’ because well believe it or not, I died many years ago. I was turned into what most would think was a mystical imaginary creature. I am a vampire. Now, the one that did this to me was back. It was hard to believe she was here. I never imagined this morning when I woke up my boredom would become unsettled, and I would become a stupors frozen hull of a man.

  Ellie was my maker. It had been a century since I saw her. Her family took her away from me after they learned of my existence. I was illegal and was not suppose to exist. To this day, I don’t know why they left me behind. Maybe it was some form of punishment for being Ellie’s betrayal to her race or maybe it was just some sick joke where I was their punch line. The Witchyres have a warped since of loyalty and hated everyone.

  After Ellie’s sisters took her away, I drifted around not caring if they did come back for me. However, they didn’t so for the last one hundred years I waited for Ellie to return to me as she promised on the last day that I saw her. The last words she spoke to me rang in my head. "I will return for you", now she was back. However sitting here, I realized something was very different about Ellie. She was back, but she was not the same Ellie that left me. For lack of a better word,
she was a total bitch, and this bitch hated me. She hated me for being what she turned me in to, a vampire.

  Immortals hold bonds with their maker. When your maker was gone, the bond leaves a dark hole that nothing can fill. It was a deep aching hole that time could not heal. The only way I can describe it would be to say it was like having your heart ripped out, knowing it is near, but unreachable. The hole that was in me was worse than normal because Ellie and I were more than maker and vampire. We were in love. I knew I had to do something to make her hatred go away. Her feelings of hating me made the hole plunge deeper into the darkness.

  Getting ready for class this morning, I expected this semester would be dull and uneventful just as my many other years in college had been. My life for many decades was a constant cycle of enrollments in college. My youth never changed as the years passed. I continued to remain in a limbo between my mortal youth of nineteen, and my immortal birth at the same age. New styles and trends came and went as the years passed. I watched people of valor lose their youthfulness and settle into the one thing I would never enjoy.

  This morning before my entire existence changed; I walked to my second block class alone as usual. The other students considered me strange, so I didn’t have many friends and the ones that like me were just plain weird. As I walked to class, I viewed the world around me. I saw the coldness in the air and knew the season was changing. The leaves were already turning a brilliant yellow and orange. The air smelled crisp and clean. The wind whipped and caused the leaves to pull away from the home they knew and fluttered lightly to the earth. As I walked, the discarded debris from the massive wooden giants began to stick to my shoes. It seemed funny these leaves had a life cycle I would never know.

  I looked around and saw the humans with the same destination as I. For them the change in the weather caused pain and discomfort. They huddled in their coats as they ran to the building that housed their next class. I didn’t feel the changes of the weather, I only saw and smelled them. I was the walking dead. My body was already cold, so physical changes didn’t affect me. I don’t remember how the cold felt. The only things from my human existence that I did remember were small glimpses that on occasion bled through my thoughts. My clear memories were of my changing and everything that followed it.

  When I was first changed into an immortal, humans thought we were creatures that only existed in the imagination of those that were of the devil. As the years and decades continued more and more people begin to believe that we were real. I found the humans that believed in us were either deadly afraid or terribly intrigued by my kind. The longer I existed I found people were becoming more the latter than fearful.

  A vampire’s life cycle was eternal. These humans that believed in us wished to live forever, but they had no idea that eternity came with a price of many years of boredom and blood lust. Our existence thrived on the death of these humans. Most of the misconceptions humans had about vampires were funny. It was true we are dark creatures that hide from recognition. However, this was only because humans made up myths about us that were ridiculously misconceiving.

  Contrary to the myths about my kind, we do not sleep in caskets nor would we burn at the sight of the sun’s rays. We cannot be killed with a wooden stake through the heart. I mean really, we don't have a heart that beats; it's ridiculous to think this could kill us. These myths were fairytales humans made up in their minds to give them some heroic ability to eliminate my kind. These ridicules devices would not work on a real vampire. The only way a vampire could be weakened or eliminated was by his or her maker. A human had no chance against us. This was true for me, as well. The truth is I'm not a purebred vampire. I maintained the same strengths as a purebred, but I had an added advantage. I was different from other vampires. I had magical abilities. These were abilities transferred to me by Ellie. Yes, my maker the one that presently hates me.

  Once I arrived at my destination, I sat in this class in the institution I now attended called Delmont College. The name came from the town of Delmont, Maryland where the college was located. It was a small town with a population of around thirty thousand people. I sat this morning waiting for my class to begin, and I thought of the town and its people.

  Delmont was a town that strived to maintain the small-minded views of old money. These people never knew my kind lurked among the innocents of their metropolis. It would scare the living hell out of them if they realized my kind existed among them, not to mention attended school with their children.

  The largest things about this town was its claims to this place of higher learning, the raging river that ran through the middle of the town, and the old money that controlled every aspect of its heart. As I thought about the narrow-minded people of this town, I began to snicker at the thought of these mortals finding out my kind existed. I was sure in their stuffy way they would take the same stand as those in the past attempted against my kind.

  These humans of the past came with torches in the air, wooden stakes, crucifixes, and garlic as well as other things they thought worked to kill an immortal. With the people of Delmont, the only stand they would take would be peeing in the old-stuffy pants they wore. The thought of these people running away knowing their old money meant absolutely zero as they cried for mercy and begged God to spare their lives. This was the God they prayed to when they attended church services, and the same one they cursed at times they didn’t need him to save them.

  What I became was not my fault. Once bitten there was no turning back the clock. I couldn’t hit the previous scene button on a DVD player and change the course of my future. The director wasn't going to yell ‘cut’. My changing was something far in my past. Before that, I don’t remember. I was different from others, but yet similar. The thing that made me normal to these humans was I looked like any other student except I’m sure they thought I needed a little time in the sun.

  My life as a human faded like written words over time. My years were short. I was just a kid when I died. I didn’t die in a car crash, nor did I fall asleep from an overdose. That would have been an invited death if I were so tragically finished with life. My death was one no human should ever endure. Had it not been for Ellie, it would have been unbearably painful, and I doubt I would have survived. I would be like the other victims of many immortals, drained of my blood while my corpse was left to rot and return to dust.

  When a person died, they had no idea there were things past death that were not of the norm. There are several levels of death. The first level of death housed my kind and other immortals such as witches, werewolves, and spirits with unfinished business. We remain in the human world but dance on the edge of a thin string that can cause our existence to crash over to the world of demonic darkness. This is the place where things that human never imagined live. These mystical dangers lurked just past the other side of life. This was a space in the Universe called the final phase of purgatory. It is where no immortal, much less a human wants to reside. For a human you were lucky if you made it to heaven. Most of my kind thought you were even lucky if you made it to hell. The first ten years of my new existence danced between heaven and hell in a place that was beautiful and full of peace, but this Garden of Eden turned dark and the string holding me in the human world stretched and frayed.

  My life with Ellie ended abruptly the day her sister Dee arrived and my solo trapeze act followed. Ellie sensed she was coming, but hoped she was coming to check on her as her sisters did from time to time. At the last minute, she realized she was coming to take her back.

  Ellie's race was different from any other immortal race. Ellie would never allow herself to be considered a normal vampire. She was a Witchyre and her race hated all other immortals. The Witchyres were considered a mixed-breed. She came from a family of two immortals from different races.

  In the immortal world, she was not supposed to exist, but she did. She was taken away from me because the rulers of her race demanded Ellie return to the Witchyre coven. They would no longer
stand for her to exist as she had for the last several decades. She had lived as a nomad away from the rules of the Witchyres. She didn't believe in the ways they believed.

  The history of the Witchyres changed over the time Ellie was born. Her grandparents were the original rulers, but were over-thrown by her uncles. Now, they demanded her to live as they thought a true Witchyre should, which in its self was a tragedy for an immortal.

  When Dee came for her, she hid me to keep her from knowing of my existences and from knowing of her betrayal to her race. My making was illegal. Ellie knew the rulers would make her extinguish me. She broke the laws of her race when she changed me. It was taboo for a witchyre to change a human. They saw humans as only a food sources.

  Ellie knew neither she, nor I would be able stand against them. We loved each other more than immortals were supposed to love another. However, our love could not withstand the hatred that festered in this race. The Witchyres were immortals that didn’t love. This wasn’t an emotion they knew about, nor was it an emotion they care to know. They saw love as a mortal flaw that made a being weak. The only emotion they knew was the emotion of hate. Hate was taught to them from the beginning of their birth, and this emotion increased with time.

  When Ellie’s family took her, neither of us realized she would leave me never to return the same being, and never to remember our lives together. We didn't realize the power of this hate. Her last words to me were, "never forget me, I will come back for you, I love you too much to forget you". I didn’t understand her words at the time, but she knew her sisters true intentions. The word ‘forget’ rang in my mind. She knew their powers. The memory of this event ran chills through my already frigid spine.