Becoming Valkyrie (Pyralis Book 1)

by Brandy L. Cunningham

  It was my turn to laugh now. “I’m totally ordinary. Probably barely even pretty. You are like, model perfect.”

  She laughed back at me. “All right. We are even. I think I am hardly pretty, and you think you are passable. I suppose we should get along well then. I am supposed to teach you how to fight.”

  I let go of a long sigh. “Great. That’s not one of my many strengths. I’m kind of wishing now that I had taken jujitsu or some kind of self-defense classes in my normal life before.”

  Akio tilted her head to one side and appeared to study me. I found the act slightly discomforting and charming both at the same time. It seemed like a very Wolfish action.

  “Normal life? What do you mean by that? Aeron and Rafael said you had been a Vampire for more than four hundred years.”

  I felt myself deflate. I explained to her about having been born on Halloween in a small town in Oregon eighteen years ago, and I told her everything I knew about my past and the Valkyrie who had been crucified by her father, and who apparently was within me because I was her reincarnation. Several times she had questions. I couldn’t blame her. I had questions, too. Apparently far too many for anyone to answer. When I finished my detailed retelling, she sat quietly for several minutes. Finally, looking up at me, she smiled mischievously.

  “So, you were engaged to marry the incredibly sexy Aeron, and you were in love with the wildly attractive Desmond? Wow. I think I may be a little jealous.” Her grin was completely dreamy.

  Shaking my head, I said, “Don’t be. Seriously. I’m caught in some weird love triangle with two men who seem to still think they have some claim over me, when I hardly know either of them and am completely uninterested in both.”

  Her grin grew wider. “That is so romantic.” Flopping back dramatically onto the dirt floor beside my cot, she sighed. “Oh, man. Can you just imagine those poor men?”

  I gawked at her. Poor men? First of all, they were savage Vampires, secondly, why poor them? She didn’t leave me to think about her words long.

  “I mean, imagine Valkyrie, losing the woman you love in such a sad way, having to watch her burn and being powerless to stop it. So, the one, your lover, he Casts a desperate spell to bring you back, only you don’t immediately come back. The other, knowing that either way he has probably lost you to either death or this other man, well he sets out on a four-hundred-year rampage of destruction against your father.

  Desmond and Aeron both have waited four hundred years to find you again. I am sure they had lost hope by now. And then, bang, there you are, Valkyrie, the beautiful woman they loved, in the flesh. Seriously. This is so hopelessly romantic.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “There is nothing romantic about it. And what do you mean Aeron went on a four-hundred-year path of destruction?”

  Akio sat up. There was a light in her eyes. Opening her mouth in excitement for the tale. Her words were cut short. Across the dimly lit room, Rafael’s voice carried to us.

  “Akio, I think that is enough for one night. The poor girl already has much on her mind to digest. She needs to rest and to feed. Come back in the morning and we will start training. Goodnight, my dear.”

  Akio sent me a pouting look. Mouthing the words, next time, she winked exaggeratedly before morphing into the white Wolf and trotting from the room. I sighed. I had really wanted to hear that story.

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  Silence sat heavily around me as I stared into the dark emptiness of my home. Why it was that after only a couple days of her presence here, the house suddenly felt oppressive? Her scent lingered in the air, and I could almost hear her sultry voice coming down the halls. Long had I been alone in my large mansion full of secrets. It should not bother me so to be here without her, and yet, it did. Seated before the fireplace in my study, I stared into the flickering orange flames as though the image of the woman would suddenly manifest before me.

  I was losing my mind. Haunted by her memory, and now her reality. Always she was there in my thoughts. Taking a deep breath, I growled. Why was her scent even here , in a room she had never set foot within? The house was playing tricks on me again. Standing, I paced the perimeter of the room, but no matter what I did, removing the deliciously sweet taste of her blood from my mouth was impossible.

  My senses swam with the smell and taste of her blood, it stained my soul and my shirt. Looking down at myself, I took in the details of my tattered suit, annoyed with myself for not changing yet. Her blood mingled with mine across the collar of my shirt, and assailed my nostrils. Closing my eyes, I took myself back to the woods, back to the feeling of her wrist in my mouth and her chest pressed against me as she tried to save a life that didn’t need saving. If she knew the truth of me, if she knew how deep evil could burrow itself, she wouldn’t even give me a second thought. There was not a doubt in my mind. I needed to let my obsession with her go.

  Turning toward my desk, I lost my control. In one fling of my arm, the objects resting on top of my mahogany desk flew across the room. Some shattered against the wall, and others whizzed past me, landing with thuds against the furniture. Paper flew in the air, floating slowly downward to the ground. I watched the destruction with the grim knowledge that I was losing control.

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  I groaned as spit flew from my mouth, and the man’s fist sank into my gut. It wasn’t so much that it hurt, but the force of will I had to apply in order to keep from bursting into flames was quickly draining all my strength. Hunched over, I sent the huge half-naked man an angry scowl.

  Behind me, I heard Akio’s voice. “Concentrate. Your hair is sparking. Remember, your goal here is to control your inner fire, not engage in a fight. If you want to keep the truth of what you are and what you can do a secret, then control is an absolute must. We all learn it. You think it’s easy to keep from morphing to Wolf when I get into a brawl with a human?”

  Straightening, I breathed in and out slowly, feeling my hair fall back around me in a normal way. The man before me shrugged.

  “I can’t say I don’t enjoy beating the crud out of some little Vampy girl. Too bad you can’t hit back, huh?”

  Grinding my teeth, I tried to fight the surge of bloodlust rising up inside of me. I knew what it was. It was the other half of me, the one who had been waiting four hundred years to exact revenge upon anyone who had ever wronged her. I fought her. She was growing stronger. I feared her. She was…wild. Like an animal set free from torture, she wanted to hunt, to kill, to feel again.

  Looking up, I became aware of the Wolf man and Akio studying me with looks of curiousness, as well as apprehension. Did they fear me? I blinked.

  “What’s wrong Akio? Did I do something?”

  She swallowed. “You all right, Vamp girl? You went a little…dark on us for a second there.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean I went dark?”

  The man lifted a brow. “Oh, you know, just that your eyes turned completely red, and your fangs grew long and sharp.”

  I gasped. Reaching up, I fingered my teeth, afraid of what I might find there. I felt nothing unusual. Looking up at Akio, I asked, “Did I really?”

  She nodded. “Yes. It was… frightening. I’ve seen Vampires in their true form before, but what you just did, it was…different.”

  Behind us, the wizened voice of Rafael reached me. “That’s enough training for one day. Akio, Heath, meet with me at dusk to discuss your notes. Remember, tonight is a full moon. I will see you all later.” To me, he said, “Valkyrie, take a walk with me.”

  I nodded. I had the feeling I had little choice in the requests from the Ancient Witch. I followed humbly after his aged form. I wasn’t sure if he was upset with me. What Akio and Heath had said, it terrified me. I had felt the real Valkyrie growing stronger in the week I had been here amongst the Acadian Wolves, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could control the wild urges of that part of myself.

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  Rafael, the Fiddler, walked slowly deeper into the
woods. Around us, the creepy silence was almost too much to bear. I kept expecting something to leap out at me. Several times, I could have sworn I saw shadows moving about. Twigs snapped, and strange rustlings sounded nearby. I tried to remind myself that this was a forest. There were likely to be wild animals here.

  When Rafael deviated off the well-worn path, I hesitated. “Rafael, where exactly are we going?”

  He stopped. Glancing back at me, he gave me a small smile. “Sometimes, when my old mind cannot process things clearly, I go to this sacred spot within these mountains. There I am able to think clearly, to filter through the mud, so to speak.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Is it much farther?”

  Shaking his head, he pointed ahead of us. “It is just up ahead. Not much farther. Are you tiring already? You know you would be much stronger if you wouldn’t refuse to feed.”

  I sighed. “I already told you, Rafael. I am not willing to drink blood. Human or animal, it matters not. It is still disgusting.”

  He chuckled as he continued on into the thickening trees. Here, the trees were larger, the forest darker. There was a foreboding feeling that was much more prominent than it had been in other parts of the forest. Rafael ambled along until we came to a giant fallen tree. The tree looked to have been massive in its original lifetime, when half of it hadn’t been splintered and rotted.

  Its reddish bark was now decaying, and covered with green moss. Due to the low light here in this part of the forest, the ground, as well as the tree itself, was moist. Shadows played games with my vision, and my heightened senses seemed to come to life. It was deathly quiet here. My eyes darted every which way. Stopping, I watched as Rafael climbed up onto the trunk of the fallen giant.

  “Rafael, are you sure it is safe here? I feel…something unusual. I don’t like it here.”

  Rafael’s ageless eyes studied me within his wrinkled face. “Yes. It can be a bit ominous here. This place is called the Soul Tree. It is believed that the dead gather here, seeking entrance into the afterlife. It is here that souls are trapped. They despair, they weep, and they seek to be free. Quite like the Vampire within you.”

  I regarded him. How did I know he was going to bring that up? I sighed. This place made me edgy. Something cold brushed my skin, and I leaped aside. Turning in slow circles, I studied the shifting air around me. It was, wrong somehow. In the air around me, I could see waves. They would appear for a second, shimmer, and the next, it was as though it had never happened.

  My ire was rising. “Rafael, can we please leave? I don’t like it here. What is this weird shifting in the air I keep seeing?”

  He made no move to go. He watched me. I felt like an experiment he was studying. Finally, he spoke. “The change in the air around you is caused by the Spirits. Long have they roamed these woods, trapped. They are curious about you. As am, I. Do you know why I would find solace here in a place where lost souls gather?”

  I glared at him. “Beats the hell out of me, Rafael. I know hardly anything about you.”

  He smiled at my flare of temper. “I find solace here because I can see them. Long have I been able to walk the fine line between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It is a fickle thing. For immortals, we are lost somewhere in the threads of time. Neither living nor dead. For these Spirits, it is quite similar.”

  I stopped moving. Glancing at him, I frowned. “You can see them? How is that possible?”

  He smiled again. “How is it possible you burst into flames, yet are unharmed by the very thing you become? An anomaly, my dear. There are many types of unique circumstances out there. For example, long ago, there lived a woman. She was the daughter of a simple poor servant. There was nothing special about her, except her beauty. She was sought after by all four of her Lairds sons.

  Every day of her young life, it was a struggle to keep herself out of their hands. One of the sons, the youngest, he was different. He was kind and charming and handsome. He wooed her, and she came to love him. But his brothers were jealous. One day, one of the brothers prayed to his goddess that the woman would come to him. She would choose him. Or she would die. He felt that as the eldest brother if he could not have her, no one should.

  His goddess heard his pleas. She beseeched the woman to heed her warnings and go to the eldest brother. The woman refused. She said it was too late. She carried the child of the youngest brother. The goddess became angry. She cursed the woman. She told the woman her child would die before it was ever born.

  The woman, in her desperation to save the child of her heart, traveled far from the castle she had called home. Far away, in the mountains of the brutal north, she had heard tales of a woman who never aged and never died. She sought the woman, hoping she would take pity on her and save the child within her womb. It was a long and difficult journey, but the woman was determined.

  Finally, she found the mountain where the ageless woman resided. Seeing the woman for herself, she was stunned. She fell to her knees before her, worshipping the woman for her beauty. She cried, pouring out the story of the four brothers and the goddess to the ageless one. Her name was Airi. She took pity on the pregnant woman and offered a solution. She would help her save her child, but in debt for this extreme service, the woman’s life would be forfeit.

  The woman was sad, but she wanted her child to live. She agreed. She told Airi she would do whatever it took to save her child. When Airi presented her with a cup of red liquid and instructed her to drink it, the woman did so. It was blood. The blood of the first immortal Witch, Airi. Known to her people as the goddess of light.

  After the woman had drunk every drop in the cup, Airi told her the child would be safe. She said he would be born healthy and he would live through time. She instructed the woman to return home and tell no one of this secret. So, the woman did as instructed. When she returned, the brothers fought over her. The youngest brother, her love, and father to her child was killed. The woman bore her son only two days later.

  The goddess who had told her the child would die was overcome with rage. In her anger, she lit the child and his mother on fire. She cursed them to wander the world for eternity. The woman died. Her Spirit roaming the earth in despair for the child she had lost. Her son, however, did not die. The goddess’s mistake was to walk away as they burned. The child survived.

  He was found by a woman who took pity on him. Taking him as her own, she raised him, hiding him away from the world. For decades he lived hidden as he watched the world change. Gods and Goddesses rose and fell, for they were no gods at all. When the woman who had taken the boy in passed, he was left alone. He wandered the world, always keeping himself hidden.

  He traveled to many places and learned many things over the hundreds of years he lived. One day, he met a woman. She was beautiful and mysterious. She befriended him. She told him of a secret she had learned. A secret she called Witchcraft. She taught him how to use the elements, the gifts from nature to cause unusual things to happen.”

  Raphael grew quiet. I allowed myself to let the story he had spun settle inside of me. I felt like I knew this story, like there was something missing from it. I expected him to finish, but he had become quiet, meditative. He made no move to get up and spoke no more.

  Curious to know more, I cleared my throat, hoping to pull him from whatever reverie he had slipped into this time. “So? What happened after that? What happened to the man? What does this have to do with you being able to see Ghosts?”

  He looked at me then. His eyes seemed bluer, brighter. “If you live long enough, you learn to listen, to be silent and notice the things around you. That is how I learned to see Spirits. I learned to listen. The story I have told you, there is much more to it, but it is for another day.”

  I sagged in annoyance. “Are you serious? You make me walk out here to tell me half of a story, to leave me in curiosity, and that’s the only reason I am standing here with the creepiness of Ghosts around me?”

  Laughing, the old man waved his
hands. “If you listen, the Spirits will whisper secrets to you as well. The woman in the story, she was not a woman that the man met at all, but a Spirit. She whispered many things to him, and in the end, their friendship changed the course of history. Listen to the Spirits, Valkyrie. Listen to the voice within you. Soon, the eclipse comes, and you will no longer hear her as a separate voice, but as your own.

  She is you, and you are her. She resides in the back of your mind because she is the animalistic part of yourself you seek to keep locked away. The harder you fight her, the worse it will be when she is finally released. You are a Vampire, whether you like it or not, and you must embrace it. You have Witch in your blood as well. There are many things you do not know, but you must embrace this side of yourself. Your enemy has stirred. He is aware of your rebirth, and whether or not you like to admit it, he will be coming for you.”

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  I looked down at my feet. Everyone around me expected me to become this other person, while I still wanted to be the eighteen-year-old who had been looking forward to attending college in the near future, and being with my friends and family. Now, the only friends and family I had were these supernatural beings who had taken me in and sought to help me.

  When I looked up, Rafael was gone. No big surprise. I sighed. Sitting on the ground where I sat, I glanced up at the slowly darkening sky. Taking several deep breaths, I attempted to center myself. He had brought me here because clearly, he wanted me to learn something. I could feel the eerie coldness closing in around me, and I closed my eyes, afraid of the apparitions I might see if I opened them. I may be part Vampire fire creature, but I was deathly afraid of Ghosts.

  A soft brush of coldness touched my arm. I shivered, closing my eyes tighter. I began to hear their whispers around me. The Vampire within me laughed at the frightened human child I portrayed. I didn’t care. I was scared. Darkness descended upon the forest quickly. My eyes may have been closed, but I could feel the lack of light around me.