Becoming Valkyrie (Pyralis Book 1)

by Brandy L. Cunningham

  Looking her up and down, I grinned. “The resurrected Queen Elizabeth. I should have known. Your costume rocks, Vanessa.”

  My friend preened as we were surrounded by friends from school. I laughed with them, unaware that my cousin had silently crept off with his friend. The saying “out of sight, out of mind” rang true at that moment. With my teenage mind spiraling back into the world of boys and frivolities, I didn’t think about the two unusual men dressed as Vampires again. That was a mistake I would come to deeply regret.

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  Darkness descended upon the gathering, and with it, the lighting of the jack-o-lanterns. Eerie red and green lights lit up the town square as everyone prepared for the dance they had been awaiting all year long. Teenagers gathered near the dance floor, hoping to get asked for a dance. My friends and I were amongst those closest to the dance floor.

  Vanessa grinned. “Val, I have seen several boys with their eyes on you tonight. I’m sure this is the night you’re finally going to get asked to dance.”

  I smiled at my friend’s encouragement, but I doubted it. Every year, I stood on the sidelines watching Emily and Vanessa dance over and over. It was always the same. The boys always hesitated around me, as though I put off some natural boy repellant. I had little hope that this year would be any different.

  An hour later, as I stood at the edge of the dance floor watching my friends dance, I glanced up at the sky, surprised to see the blood red moon that hung large and low in the sky. I hadn’t heard mention of an eclipse, but it was enchanting nonetheless. I caught sight of my strange cousin and his friend. They stood together on the opposite end of the dance stage, and they looked like they were arguing about something. Frowning, I had just decided to check it out when I heard a deep baritone voice very close to my ear.

  “Would you care to dance with me, beautiful Vampire?”

  Turning in surprise, I studied the man before me, for he was certainly no boy. He appeared to be in his early twenties, dark hair and eerie green eyes. He was tall, broad, and dressed like a gentry from the eighteenth century. I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. There was something familiar about this man. I had the uncanny feeling I knew him, that we were connected somehow. The thought was so outlandish, I immediately tossed it aside. Glancing one last time to where I had seen my peculiar cousin, I frowned. The space was empty.

  Looking back at the handsome stranger, my smile widened. Placing a gloved hand into his, I nodded as I followed him to the dance floor. The man was incredibly well built, and I could feel the hardness of his chest when he pressed too close to me.

  “I don’t think we have met before. I’m Val Walker.”

  Smiling in a roguish way, the man lifted a brow. “Ah, but we have met before, Valkyrie. A long time ago.”

  I frowned at the cryptic sentence. “No, I don’t think we have. I’m sure I would remember.”

  The man leaned close, too close for my comfort. Whispering into my ear, he said, “Perhaps you would remember my name. I am Valkyrian.”

  I froze, tripped over his foot in the process, and tried to walk away. That name whispered in this man’s voice had sent a chill up my spine. Something about this night was not sitting well with me. My stomach threatened to empty its contents.

  “Is this some kind of joke meant to scare me? First, I have a distant cousin named Dominique who looks creepy as hell, then you come along and whisper the name of my long dead ancestor?”

  The man’s face froze. “You said Dominique was here?”

  Shaking my head in bewilderment, I decided I’d had enough of this strangeness for one night. “Excuse me, Sir, but I’ve had enough. I’m not playing anymore games. Later.”

  The man’s hand stopped me. Looking down at his hand holding my arm, I glanced back at him. His eerie green eyes seemed to illuminate from the inside out. “Valkyrie, listen to me. You are in danger. Dominque is not a friend.”

  Feeling something cold press into my hand, I looked down to see what the man had placed there. The object was odd. A pendant of some sort, with a V woven into the middle and a red gem. The metal chain hung down from my hand, and I was unsure what kind of metal it was. I was overcome by the oddest feeling of déjà vu I had ever had.

  The man’s eerie green eyes held mine. “Put it on, Valkyrie. Whatever you do, do not take it off. To others, there will be nothing on your neck, but you will know it is there. It will protect you until I can find you again. I have come too late, and I must try to stop what has begun.”

  Glancing down at the odd necklace, I looked back up at the man only to find that he was gone. Looking around, I didn’t see any signs of him anywhere. Lifting the necklace up, I was strangely compelled to put it on. Slowly, I placed the pendant around my neck. The second it connected with my flesh, an odd light flashed across the red gem and was gone again.

  Around me, the wind suddenly picked up, bellowing through the trees and decorations with an eerie howl. The pendant felt unnervingly warm against the skin of my chest. I noticed my friends walking toward me, so I picked up my dress, and stepped toward them.

  That’s when it happened. Like an atomic bomb being dropped from above, the lights overhead flickered before surging and popping. The streets went dark. The sky lit up around me, causing me to falter. Glued in place by fear, I was forced to watch in horror as a blast of powerful inferno ripped through my town, desecrating everything in its path. Fear surged through me, immobilizing me. Tears stung my eyes, and my heart felt as though it would explode.

  I heard people screaming, saw them burst into flames, and yet I was powerless to do anything to help them. I watched as the fire swallowed the town and everyone I cared about around me. The fire ate at my skin, crawling through my veins like liquid death. Screaming in agony, I fell to my knees, clutching my face. Across the darkness, I could see Dominique grinning wickedly as he watched me burning alive. Debilitating pain overtook me until finally, there was nothing but bleak empty blackness.

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  2

  Rebirth

  Walking through the ash-encrusted earth, Valkyrian sighed. So much waste and destruction. If only he had been a little faster, gotten here a little sooner. He saw nothing but ash, some embers still alight and burning. No buildings had survived. Middletown had been desecrated and erased from existence. It was, after all, what they were good at. Once, he had thought himself like them, but he knew different now.

  There wasn’t a doubt in his mind they had been drawn to this place for the same reason he had. They had all felt the power stir here in this small town on the morning of All Hallows Eve. Shaking his head, he thought perhaps they had been wrong, and all these human lives had been forfeit for nothing. Looking out over the wasteland of ash that remained of the town, he watched the plumes of smoke drifting upwards into the sky. The smell of charred flesh and wood wafted heavily on the slight breeze.

  Seeing the ivory flesh peeking from amongst the ash, he paused. Could it be? Was it possible he was wrong? Did he dare to hope? Stepping carefully forward, he gently brushed the ash and soot from the ivory flesh of a woman’s thigh. Seeing the fire that still moved within the veins, Valkyrian smiled. It had been her. After all of these long years, she had come back to him.

  He knew he needed to leave. She would never survive if he stuck around. He knew the vultures watched him. They, too, sought that which could not be found. Until now. Now, she had been found. And now, he knew she must be left alone, to find her own way in the world, but he hated to turn his back on her. She had already faced the heartlessness of their kind once. Leaving her tore at the little humanity he had left in his blackened soul. Reminding himself that she had the ruby, he took a deep breath, and vanished.

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  I stood upon shaky legs. My body felt hot, as though I had just stood within the flames of hell. Looking down at myself, I realized I was different. I was also naked. I blinked, but it was now an odd sensation, as though it was unnecessary. I breathed in the
ash-filled air, but that also felt somehow unusual. Looking around me, there was dark ash and soot everywhere. I was confused. Momentarily unsure of who, or what I was.

  Memories flooded back to me, and I fell to my knees in the still warm embers. Looking down at myself, I didn’t understand, couldn’t wrap my mind around what my eyes were telling me. My flesh was whole, uncharred. Looking at the soft ivory skin of my forearm, I noticed something else. An orange glow coursed up my veins, heading toward my heart. Looking down at the rest of my uncovered body, I saw it again, everywhere that I had veins. Then, as one, they were all gone. Not even the bluish tint showed through as it once had.

  Moving my gaze around myself, I felt pain. I heard the screams of the people I had loved. My parents. My friends. I felt the urge to cry, to scream, and to rage. Nothing happened. My eyes didn’t cry, and my voice didn’t scream. Standing slowly, I didn’t know what to think anymore. Where once there had been a town, there was nothing but the charred blackness of death. Emotions threatened to overwhelm me, but without any obvious way to release them, it was like a giant ball of anger building within the pit of my stomach. Everyone I loved was gone, just like that, in the blink of an eye.

  Beautiful, talented Vanessa would never make it to Hollywood. She would never design costumes for the beautiful actors and actresses. Like a flame snuffed, her life was gone. Delicate, sweet Emily would never go to college. She would never fall in love. We would never have the chance to sit beside one another as adults, watching our children play while our husbands barbequed. Her life had been ripped from her hands, and along with it, all her chances for success and love. Her smiling eyes flashed in the back of my mind, and I wanted to vomit from the pain it caused.

  Mom and Dad, my sweet, silly, unassuming parents who thought everyone was good and kind, who never worried they didn’t fit in. Gone. Murdered in the flames of hell. My eyes burned with the need to cry, to release these feelings. Still, nothing came. Sobs wracked my body, but they were silent, and dry. I bent in two, feeling the shame and anger wash over me that I alone had survived to live another day. I should have died with them, and in many ways, I wished I had.

  Like a hole in the earth, the town was gone, wasted, wiped clean. Like the fiery Phoenix of myth, I too rose from the ashes to survey the death and devastation around me. Everything lay desecrated, charred and smoldering except me. I alone stood before the waste, alive. What was I? What had I become that I could stand here amidst the hot ashes and not burn? I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out.

  Walking slowly on legs that were my own, and yet not; I felt like a changeling. I was aware of my body, but there was a newness to it, an unfamiliarity. My eyes saw the world differently than they once had. Shades of ash which should all look the same didn’t. I felt like there were hundreds of colors within that one shade of black.

  Outside the border of my once beautiful and beloved town, the forest remained as it had always been. Yet another anomaly. The blast I remembered would surely have desecrated everything for miles; yet, there it stood, its large redwoods standing sentry around the gaping emptiness where once my town had stood. The colors there were blinding. Greens and browns, shades I wasn’t even sure I recognized, nor could I put names to. Not knowing where to go, what to do, I wandered alone, lost, and confused. My mind showed me images of the fire, the explosion, but I realized I was not seeing only the one incident, but several. I saw people I knew and loved, but in others, there were faces unfamiliar to me.

  Not completely unfamiliar, I realized. No, some of the faces in the memories that seemed to fade together were faces I had seen before. Foggy images floated across my muddled mind, conjuring the events and people from the dreams of my adolescent mind. The dark-haired man with the blue eyes who held a torch, the beautiful red-haired woman who wept openly, making me want to cry when I would wake to residual memories of her tears. Then, I remembered the fire. Hot, blazing, as it ate its way up my body. It was not just the one time that I recalled the fire devouring me. In fact, there were two times stamped distinctly in my mind; unfortunately, the older one was unfocused and difficult to see the full details.

  Trying to clear my head, I glanced down at myself once again, trying to ground myself in the present. My hair hung in dark waves around me—like a cloak, it comforted me. I felt strange, different, yet the same. My body felt painful, but it was receding to a dull ache. Roaming around the ashes for hours, I sought answers to all of my questions but could find none. I knew better than to hold onto hope. There was no way anyone could have survived that blast. I didn’t even know why I had. I realized I was probably a Ghost. Damned for eternity to wander the place of my death.

  Hearing voices, I panicked. Had I been wrong, and others had survived that massive explosion? I guess it was possible, since I was still here, alive. I think. Fleeing to the edge of the woods, I realized that my sense of self-preservation was much stronger now. My legs trembled like that of a newborn foal as I fled to the shelter the giant redwoods provided. My breathing was ragged, as though my lungs struggled to catch the air within them, and my muscles quavered, as though I were a newborn, still learning how to use my body.

  Hiding amongst the thick brush, I watched cautiously, curious to see who could have survived. The face I saw sent chills down my spine and fire into my heart. Dominique. My alleged cousin, if he were even that, stood amongst the ashes of my loved ones. He looked exactly the same as I remembered. Still the pale, pasty skin, and dark circles around his eyes. Apparently, even now, in the light of day he still wore his costume. Noticing as much, I felt myself sink with anxiety. Had I been wrong? Had there been something real to his underlying creepiness that I should have paid more attention to? There was little doubt in my mind that he was responsible for the explosion.

  His friend was with him-like a trusted dog he followed in my cousin’s shadows. The two appeared to be looking for something. With long sticks, they searched the charred remains, tossing large chunks of debris aside. I shuddered to think what could lay beneath the ashes. It made me angry. How dare they touch the sacred grounds where so many I loved lay fallen? I saw again the way Dominique had stood amid the fury of the blast, unaffected as he smiled at those screaming around him. My hands trembled with the accumulation of my anger and hurt.

  “I do not think she is here, Dom. Perhaps we were wrong, and it wasn’t her after all.” The friend, I think he had been introduced as Anthony, looked ready to leave.

  “Fool, do you give up so easily? You saw her the same as I. There is little doubt it was her. The same hair, the same eyes. It’s one thing that will always help us in the hunt. Each time she has come back, she looks the same. I felt her power awaken on the morning of Samhain. She has got to be here.”

  Anthony glanced around halfheartedly. “If we cannot find her, then what, Dom? Will you return to him with empty hands, again?”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me as if I am a failure? If it were not for that meddlesome Witch we would not be here in the first place. This…. This curse is all his doing! I will find her, and when I do, this will all be undone.”

  Watching as Domonique seemed close to attacking his friend, it dawned on me that they were probably looking for me. I was the one who had risen from the ashes, and no one else. They wanted to find me. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew this man before me was evil. He reeked of it. I had sensed it last night, but now, it seemed as though my senses were somehow stronger. Evil washed off this man in waves, polluting the air around them with a bitter darkness. I had no idea what I was seeing, or sensing, but I knew it was there. The cloak of death that clung to him.

  I dared not move even a muscle while these men stomped through the remains of my town. I had the feeling that to turn my back on them would be a very unwise choice. I needed clothes, food, and a plan. I wanted to find this Valkyrian. Whether I trusted him or not, he had been the one to warn me, and I felt sure the answers I sought lay with him. The problem was, I had no idea whatsoever
where to find him. He wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. He had been my ancestor from the eighteen hundreds. How in the world did you track a man who didn’t exist any longer? I didn’t know, but I was going to find him, no matter what it took.

  The pair of malevolent men searched the charred rubble for hours. I sat in place, ready to flee at any second should the need arise. I found that my muscles didn’t ache, and I could sit there, crouched in the same position without the usual discomfort this would have brought me. This realization worried me. I was beginning to believe more and more that I was nothing but an apparition, a Ghost or Spirit. It was the only plausible answer for all the weird occurrences and feelings in my body. I was dead, but I apparently refused to accept it.

  When finally the two of them left, I didn’t know how to handle what I saw. They shot upwards toward the heavens in a blur before disappearing altogether. I stayed where I was, unsure whether they were still around or truly gone. I was starting to wonder if they were indeed men. At long last, I crept deeper into the shadowy canopy of the forest, determined to find food and clothing. I knew of a house out here in the woods. It was deep in the forest, nestled away from the sights and sounds of my town. It stood alone.

  There was an old woman who lived in her cabin full of cats. She was a hermit, the town Witch we often called her as children. She lived there alone, with her dozens of cats as company. I doubted they would have survived the blast, but I thought it was worth checking. After all, the forest itself appeared unaffected. You can imagine my surprise when I neared the cabin to see it still standing. The simple wooden structure looked much the same as it had when I had last wandered out into the woods to spy on the unusual old woman. Bright green vines crawled up the walls and across the roof, lending it a mysterious façade.