Original Witch (Dreamshifters Book 1)

by Cameron Drake

  Finally, he stopped.

  It felt like we’d been running forever even though I knew it had been less than an hour. We were deep in the woods with no lights nearby. Nobody could hear what we had to say all the way out here.

  The thought was both reassuring and frightening.

  He slid me down his body until my feet touched the ground. Dean’s breath was ragged. He ducked his head, kissing my neck roughly.

  I felt his teeth against my skin. They felt…big.

  Really big.

  The next thing I knew the ground had risen up to meet my back. Dean had carefully lowered me down. I looked up at him as he bent his head to kiss me again, staring at me with that same hungry, animalistic gaze.

  But that wasn’t what had my attention.

  There was something else happening to him as well… his muscles seemed to ripple in the moonlight. To grow. The hair on his arms was darkening.

  I blinked, having trouble believing my eyes.

  Was this really happening?

  And then his lips crashed down on mine. I gasped at the raw power of the kiss. I knew he wanted more, even though I didn’t know exactly what he expected from me.

  Of course, he didn't know I was a virgin, did he? He probably had dated lots of girls. But I was… well this was my third kiss, if you wanted to get technical about it.

  “Dean, I’m a virgin."

  My soft words cut through the night like a blade.

  His head snapped up and he stared at me, his eyes seeming to glow in the darkness.

  "What?"

  "I—I've never done this before. Any of it.”

  He cursed and let out a howl. My blood turned to ice as I got a good look at him in the moonlight. His head was lifted to the sky. As I watched, his muzzle thickened and elongated.

  His teeth glinted white in the darkness. I screamed as he looked at me again, and lowered his head to my throat.

  Dean was gone. A monster had taken his place.

  Sneak Peek Of Vampire Princess

  By Cameron Drake

  Vampire Princess

  “Behave yourself, Princess.”

  I rolled my eyes, pulling my backpack over my shoulder. It was new black canvas. I’d had a similar one almost every single school year.

  Unfortunately, the last time we’d moved we had been in a hurry, and it had been left behind, along with most of my clothes. I sighed, remembering the sight of our house burning to the ground.

  It was to cover our tracks, I knew. Clothes and possessions didn’t matter. Only our lives did.

  Still, it sucked. I was a girl and I got attached to my stuff. I sighed, shaking it off. At least we had each other. My guardian sat in the car, giving me a look of fond exasperation.

  Caleb was strict about my wardrobe. And how I wore my hair. And interacted with other students.

  Or rather, how I didn’t.

  It was the same at every new school. Dark colors, plain clothes, no direct eye contact. It was far too dangerous. Not just for me, either.

  Caleb, like my father, preached the sanctity of human life. Drink, but don’t kill. Glamour, don’t destroy. Take but don’t harm.

  My guardian stared at me, still expecting an answer. He was a worrier. The vamp loved to worry.

  I pushed my dark sunglasses up the bridge of my nose and smirked.

  “Don’t I always?”

  He shook his head, remaining in the dark safety of the car. The windows were tinted and he wore gloves and a brimmed hat. It still didn’t completely protect him from daylight.

  Caleb wasn’t like me.

  The sun would burn him. Not ‘burst into flames and turn to dust’ like in the movies, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. He’d get singed, like a really bad sunburn. His body would grow weaker, taking days and copious amounts of blood to recover. If he was exposed for long enough, it would kill him.

  Or, rather, undo the curse that kept him above ground.

  You couldn’t technically kill the undead.

  Yeah, Caleb was a Vampire. Old school. Like, really old. He’d been one of my father’s most trusted advisors. A warrior and a friend.

  He was the one who had gotten me out the night they attacked, threw my father in a dungeon, and supposedly killed the young Princess in the process.

  Me.

  Yep. Yours truly was toast as far as the supernatural world was concerned.

  At least that was the rumor.

  The new leaders had slaughtered an innocent girl, just to seize power. I wasn’t supposed to think their names, let alone say them. As if that could conjure them up. Not that that stopped me. I smirked.

  I wasn’t afraid of them.

  I was going to win. As soon as I mastered my powers. As soon as we had enough rebels on our side.

  I turned towards the school, staring up at the red brick and limestone building. It was old, at least a hundred years. It looked like a lot of other schools I’d attended. But this one was somehow prettier than the rest, in that classically institutional way.

  I recited the names in my head as I walked towards the big glass doors. It was excellent motivation to keep my eyes on the prize. Maintain my cover. Train as hard as I could.

  Survive.

  Besides, I was never all that good at following rules. But I liked saying their names while imagining how I would kill them for what they had done. For all the suffering they had caused to so many immortal and human alike.

  I’d start with their fingernails. Pull them out one by one. Or their fangs. Or both.

  Then I’d move onto the main event, slaughtering them each in turn. Beheading maybe. Or starve them out, then behead them.

  I smiled grimly. Yes, slow was definitely better. After all, those bastards were the reason I was in yet another small town registering as a Junior in yet another high school.

  Allernon. Jezebel. Dartanian. Bezender.

  Yeah, I know. Vampires had really weird names. Especially the old ones. Biblical, Shakespearean names. They sounded silly until you got used to them.

  For all I knew, there were vamps somewhere called Danny and Sally, living in the suburbs and buying toilet paper late night at Costco.

  But if there were a bunch of true blue American Vampires running around and watching Netflix while drinking the pizza delivery boy, I hadn’t met them.

  The crazy thing was, I was their leader. Their sovereign by birth. And they might not even know I ever existed.

  The four Vampires who had overthrown my father’s kingdom had made sure of that. It was forbidden to seven speak my name. My real name, which we never used in public.

  Sasha Katherine Uzeliac.

  Yeah, I know. It’s a mouthful.

  I reached for the door just as someone else did. I yanked my hand away, fingers tingling. I didn’t like to be touched. Or at least, I wasn’t used to it.

  Caleb might have saved me, but he wasn’t exactly the cuddly type.

  Massive blue eyes peered down at me. I blinked, staring up at the cutest boy I’d seen in my life. He smiled and I felt myself melt.

  Scratch that. He wasn’t cute. Yeah, ‘cute’ didn’t begin to cut it. The guy was freaking gorgeous. GQ, Abercrombie, grown-up Disney star gorgeous.

  He gave me a funny look. Probably because I was staring at him, utterly dumbfounded.

  “Hey. Are you alright?”

  “Uh… yeah. Just trying to, you know, go inside.”

  He laughed and held the door open for me.

  “After you.”

  For a split second, I was terrified that I had accidentally glamoured him. It happened all the time. I had only to make a wish, or project a thought while maintaining eye contact and any human would pretty much bend over backwards to do what I wanted.

  And follow me around like a puppy dog for the rest of their lives.

  I’d had to skip town because of it at least a dozen times. It was the most conspicuous thing about me. Other than the whole, unbelievably strong, fast and magically immortal drinking
blood once in a while thing.

  Other than that, the Vampire rules didn’t apply to me. I could go to church. I could go in the sun. I could probably drink a gallon of holy water, though I hadn’t tried it.

  Ew, gross.

  I made a face, imagining drinking tap water that a Priest had dipped his fingers in repeatedly while incanting Latin. Nothing against Priests. But really, you never knew if someone was diligent about washing their hands.

  I reached up and touched the hard plastic frame of my dark sunglasses. I exhaled in relief as I walked through the door. There was no way he’d been influenced through these.

  The kid was just being polite.

  I smiled to myself. Maybe he just liked redheads. I tucked my hair behind my ears, trying to flatten it. It was the one thing I couldn’t hide. If the traitors knew anything about me, my hair would be the thing that gave me away.

  It was bright pinkish red and couldn’t be dyed. One of those weird vamp things. Once you were vamp, you were stuck with your ‘do. Even though in my case, it was still growing, getting longer each year. I could trim it but it grew super-fast.

  Talk about conspicuous. My head was like a beacon. It was impossible to miss me in a crowd unless I kept it covered up. Basically, I wore a lot of hats.

  “You new here?”

  I nodded, looking around. There were kids milling around and grabbing books from lockers. It was like every other high school I’d set foot in.

  And I’d set foot in a lot. It was always the same. Everyone just going about their business, in a hurry to grow up.

  Other than Mr. Wonderful here of course. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything but stare at me.

  He grinned. It wasn’t the slavish, dazed smile of someone who was under my spell. It was just a guy, being friendly.

  Relax Sash.

  I reminded myself how to be a normal teenager. Slouch a little. Be nice, but not too nice. Blend.

  Just a few more years of this and I would be free. And it wasn’t that bad. Not really. I actually liked learning, unlike most of the teenage humans I’d come into contact with.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I would have noticed you.”

  Swoon. Okay, so the guy was definitely a flirt. That was fine. It’s not like I was going to start hanging out with mortals, no matter how dreamy they were.

  Just blow it off, Sash.

  Stay hidden. Stay alive.

  I adjusted my bag and pulled my hair over my face. I was going to have to yank the sunnies to go to the admin office, and that meant using my hair as a shield.

  “I need to register. Nice meeting you.”

  He fell in step beside me.

  “Dean. Nice to meet you…”

  He was dangling for my name. Unfortunately, I couldn’t freaking remember what it was this time. Whoops. I ran through the list of names I rotated through, switching it up slightly with each new town and each new school.

  Julie… Justine… Celeste… Sophie…

  “Sophie.”

  I hoped that was the freaking name on my documents this time anyway. ‘S’ names were the easiest to use since they were the closet to my real name. I was getting sloppy. I hadn’t bothered to check the paperwork Caleb had stuffed in my bag this morning.

  “That’s pretty.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Jeez, could the guy not take a hint? I turned away, not caring if I seemed rude. Maybe I had glamoured him. I knew it could happen from our scent alone sometimes. It was meant to calm those around us.

  It helped to make sure they didn’t freak out when we started drinking them like a glass of OJ.

  This guy was not calm either though. Not exactly. He was sticking to me like glue. I jumped as he grabbed my shoulder. His smile only got wider when I glared at him. He jerked his head in the opposite direction.

  “The admin office is that way.”

  Then he strolled off, whistling.

  Whistling! Almost like he’d known what I was thinking. I scowled at his broad back for a split second. He turned and caught me staring. And then he winked.

  Ugh, don’t encourage him Sash.

  I hastened down the rapidly emptying hallway towards the admin office. It went relatively quickly. My documents were fake, but they were forged by an eleven-hundred -year-old Vampire.

  In other words, they were flawless.

  Caleb was pretty much like Tesla and Einstein rolled into one. He’d been born with a big brain. Plus, he’d had a heck of a lot longer to learn and study.

  The man read books so fast and so often it was astounding. And he never got bored. He just loved learning. It was a love he’d passed on to me, though I was nowhere near as fast.

  Caleb was brilliant and could do just about anything.

  Anything except make a joke. The man was utterly humorless. Thank goodness for Bernard. He was a lot younger, as far as my father’s inner circle went. About four hundred years old.

  Bernard was… not the sharpest tool in the shed in comparison. Not a dummy by any means, but not a scholar either. Not that it made me love him any less.

  He was the affectionate one in our trio. He was sweet and loved to laugh. And he was incredibly big and strong, even for a Vampire. I adored them both equally.

  Of course, he wasn’t big on hugging his future queen either. Future queen IF I even survived to my eighteenth birthday and reached my full powers. And that was a pretty big ‘if.’ I had over a year to go.

  And I still had a lot to learn in my training.

  “Homeroom is down this way. And here is the combination for your locker.”

  I glanced at the paper for a split second before crumpling it up. Yeah, a photographic memory was one of the many unfair advantages I had over my human classmates. Never growing old being the main one, of course.

  At least, I thought I wouldn’t grow old. I was aging somewhat normally for a human, but that had begun to slow down. Caleb had a theory that once I finished puberty, I’d stop changing and become like them.

  Frozen in time.

  The administrator opened the door and waved the teacher over. Mr. Jones was a quiet, thoughtful seeming man. He looked a bit overwhelmed and waved me to a seat without any fuss.

  I tried to ignore the stares from my classmates, tugging my hair over my eyes. It was my first day and I was determined to make it here for a couple of months at least. We’d moved in over the weekend and I liked the new house.

  It was… homey.

  My guardians had provided for me over the years. They gave me everything I could possibly need to grow and survive. But the one thing we’d never had in all these years was a real home.

  We were running too much for that.

  “Class this is Sophie Wallace. Make her welcome.”

  I felt every single person in the room look at me and then away. Good. I was doing my best to repel them, which worked most of the time. Sort of an anti —glamour. I could push people away as well as attract them.

  Most of the time anyway.

  It helped me attract as little attention as possible. The fact that I was wearing the blandest clothes ever and no makeup didn’t hurt either. Most teenage girls made at least a token attempt at being stylish. I did… not. I sighed.

  I would have loved to go shopping, believe me.

  Half the kids were yawning, clearly wishing they were still in bed. I sat and did my best to look bored. It wasn’t much of a stretch.

  There were several announcements over the loudspeaker and then a bell rang. Everyone jumped up and left except the girl sitting next to me. She had light brown hair and glasses over her intelligent blue eyes.

  “Hi.”

  She smiled shyly and waited for me to grab my bag. I hid my surprise. Kids here were… friendlier than many of the ones I’d encountered.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m Karen. Do you need help finding your way to first period?”

  I nodded. I had no clue which way next period was. Being rude was pointl
ess and anyway, the girl seemed nice. It was too bad Caleb had forbidden me from making friends.

  I wasn’t allowed human friends anyway.

  He might be okay if I found a damn wood sprite to chill with. Or a vamp or two. I’d only met a handful of other supernaturals, and those were the ones Caleb had known for centuries.

  “Can I see your schedule?”

  I made a show of pulling it out to show to her. I’d memorized it instantly of course, but there was no way she could know that.

  “Yeah, here.”

  “Oh, we have two classes together! English lit and bio!”

  I nodded, slipping my sunglasses back into place for the stroll through the hallways. I knew it made me conspicuous but it was worth it to keep people from falling at my feet.

  Caleb said it gave me a big head.

  Personally, I did not enjoy the whole mindless worship routine, but it did come in handy when we were on the run or needed to disappear from a human’s memory. I definitely didn’t need to use it on an unsuspecting high school kid.

  “You have advanced Calc 2 first. Wow, that’s a senior AP class.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to brag. Besides even the AP classes were going to be dull for me. Caleb had been feeding me all kinds of academic books for years. And since I didn’t need to sleep much, well, I read all night. Pretty much every night.

  It’s not like I had anything else to do. Train. Read. Blend. Read some more.

  I even lugged around piles of books when we were on the run. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen again for a while. I craved stability at this point. And I was tired. Not physically of course. But mentally, I was tapped out.

  We all were.

  “Come on, slowpoke.”

  Karen hurried down the hall, not waiting for me to catch up. Good. I didn’t need to be coddled. I allowed myself a small smile.

  I liked this chick already.

  I glanced over my shoulder and frowned. I turned back to the front of the classroom, biting my lip in worry.

  Yep. He was still staring. Mr. Blue Eyes was in my first class.

  Fantastic.

  I sighed heavily, feeling his eyes on my back. The next time I looked back though, he was talking to the guy sitting next to him under his breath.