The Noctalis Chronicles Complete Set

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  “I wish it were that easy.” It was time to bring out the big guns.

  “Bet you I can climb that tree in thirty seconds.”

  “What?”

  “Bet you I can climb that tree in thirty seconds. Time me,” I said, hopping back off the stump. He took a second, but got out his phone.

  “Go.”

  I made it in fifteen.

  “Holy shit,” Jamie said as I stared down at him from the swaying top of the oak tree. Now I was really going to blow his mind. I leaned out and let go of the tree.

  “Brooke!” Jamie called as I was already falling. He rushed to catch me and I adjusted myself so I landed right next to his outstretched hands, making a cloud of dust as my feet slammed into the earth.

  “Hey,” I said, giving him another smile. The shocked look on his face was so funny that I laughed. He stood, stunned, unable to comprehend.

  “Boo,” I said, touching his shoulder.

  “How did you do that?” His voice quavered. I didn't like scaring him, but I needed him to know. I was going to follow through with this. He was going to understand. Because then he would leave and he would be saved.

  “I told you. I'm not human. You believe me now?”

  He swallowed a few times and shook his head back and forth, like he was trying to shake everything I had told him out of it.

  “I guess I have to.”

  “See? Now you know why I came to see you this morning. Because I can never see you again.” The words pierced me as they came out of my mouth. I wanted to break them, shatter them and take them back.

  “What are you?”

  “A fairy. Or faerie. However you want to spell it. I'm also a vampire.”

  “No, really.”

  “Really. I have a genuine set of wings hidden back here,” I said, pointing to my back. Maybe I was going to have to bust them out.

  Jamie scoffed. He was a tough nut to crack. “I have a really hard time believing that.”

  “I can show you, if you want.” He crossed his arms and jerked his chin up.

  “Go ahead.” Even though I'd raced up a tree and leapt to the ground without any effort, he still didn't believe me. I guessed a pair of white wings was in order. Luckily, I had some.

  “I'm going to have to take my shirt off. I don't want to ruin it. Unless you don't mind giving me yours.” He hesitated, and then stripped it off, tossing it to me. I had to fight the urge to inhale his smell. “So here I go.”

  I pulled the shirt over my head, watching his face the entire time. His pupils pulsed and he swallowed. I smiled inwardly with satisfaction. I wasn't anything special, but that didn't matter to Jamie. He looked at me as if I was the first girl he'd ever seen. Or like I would be the last. The sun hit his hair, and for a moment, he looked like an angel. I forgot for a moment about my wings.

  “You ready for this?” I said one last time, just to make sure.

  He shook his head back and forth, and his face went red. “Not really. I think I'm still hallucinating.”

  I wasn't sure if he was talking about the other stuff I'd done or taking my shirt off. Maybe both. I grinned at him and let my wings come out. They made a strange sort of tearing that freaked me out the first few times it happened. I turned my head and watched them come, like little flags popping out from my skin. I seriously didn't know where they went when I wasn't using them, but then I had no idea why my heart didn't beat, either. I turned to the side so he could see them. They reached about three feet from my back, curved, and reminded me of moth or butterfly wings. Or fairy wings.

  I finally looked at Jamie. “Has your mind been blown?” I said, fluttering them.

  His mouth was wide open, and he blinked a bunch of times as if he had something in them.

  “It's real,” I said, turning my back so he could see them full-on. “You can touch them.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and he swallowed again. His heart was racing as if his life was in danger. His blood pumped so loud and quickly, it was all I could do not to lunge at him and sink my teeth into his jugular. Why did humans have to be so irresistible?

  “I can't believe you're real. How is this possible?”

  He put his hand out and lurched forward, stopping just short of touching them. I flapped them once and he gasped. The sound made me giggle.

  “Go ahead, don't be shy.” I moved backward until one of my wings bumped into his hand. He flinched back. I smiled at him and moved my wing slowly so it brushed his hand again. His skin was so warm. He stroked my wing and looked at his fingers, as if something had rubbed off on him.

  “How are they attached?”

  “Right here,” I said, pointing to the spot where they met my back. He couldn't completely see them because my bra was sort of in the way. Sighing, I reached behind and snapped it off. I tossed it to the ground and wrapped one arm around my front. His heart picked up. Boys.

  I bent forward so he could see better.

  “See? They go right into my skin.” Moments later his hands prodded the spot where my wings met my back, looking and searching. Still unconvinced. “Go ahead and yank on them. They won't come up.”

  “I don't want to hurt you.” That really made me laugh.

  “Jamie, there's no way you can hurt me. I dare you. Come on. You know you want to.” Either the teasing or the curiosity got the better of him, and he took hold of my left wing and gave it a tug. I barely felt it.

  “Harder,” I said. Really, he hadn't tried. He yanked again. Nope. He couldn't even throw me off balance.

  “How do you do that?”

  “I told you. I'm immortal. I'm a predator, so I'm stronger than my prey. That would be you.” I winked at him and his eyes bulge again. Somehow, he made even that movement attractive. He was one beautiful boy. His fingers went back to work on my back, and he peered at my wings from every angle.

  His hands skated across the bare skin of my back. If I had been human, I wouldn't have been able to stay still. As it was, all I could think of was turning around and letting him touch me everywhere.

  “It's not possible. It can't be,” he said when his inspection was over and I was able to compose myself.

  “How is anything possible? I don't know. I just know that it's real. I'm real.”

  I leaned down and got my bra, snapping it on before he could react. I sucked my wings back in, threw his shirt over my head and turned around. He stepped back and I could sense that his legs weren't going to support him. His knees buckled and I caught him, lowering him until he was sitting on the ground.

  “Easy, tiger.” I sat next to him and waited a second before I said anything. “It happened three days after I swapped blood with this guy. Well, he wasn't a guy. He was this thing called a noctalis.” I went on to explain meeting Ivan, being changed and waking up as an immortal. He listened, his eyes fixed on my face.

  “I just can't believe this is real. So you're a vampire fairy?”

  “Pretty much. It's a weird mishmash of mythology, isn't it? If it wasn't my life, I'd say it sounded ridiculous.” I lay back and closed my eyes, listening to him think. Funny how many sounds humans make that they aren't even aware of.

  It was like I could hear the clicking of his mind. His scent was all around me, and I fingered the material of his shirt. It was ginormous on me, but I didn't mind. I liked having something that had touched his skin, touching mine.

  “Vampire?” he said. I knew what he was asking. I wasn't sure if he wanted the answer, though. “Was that what you were doing on the side of the road?”

  “Yeah, I was going to use you for your blood. Everything I told you is true. I was trying to lure my prey.”

  “You want my blood?” His fear spiked again, and I opened my eyes and turned my head so I could look at him. He tried to pretend that he wasn't scared of me, but he was. Everything else about him betrayed the lie.

  “Yeah, I do. I want everyone's blood. It's part of the immortality deal. Can't get anything for free.”

  He shi
fted, propping his elbows on his knees. “Why haven't you taken it? Not that I'm complaining, but it doesn't make sense.”

  “I know.” I'd forgotten how to sigh, or else I would have. “It's complicated, Jamie, and I don't know if I have enough time to explain it right now. I don't know if I can explain it.”

  I moved over to my stomach, propping my chin on my hands. Jamie watched me, as if I was going to dive at him.

  “So, you're not afraid I'm going to rip your throat out?” I asked.

  He shook his head, as if he was coming out of a trance. I hadn't meant to pull him in, but I couldn't really control it.

  “I'm sorry. It sounds so unbelievable. You just don't look like you could hurt anyone.”

  “Oh, Jamie. I have wings. Anything is possible.”

  “I guess so,” he said, squinting at the sun, which was behind a veil of clouds, at least for a moment.

  “I'm still not sure if I believe you, even though I don't have any more reasons not to.”

  I sat up, moving a little bit closer to him, testing to see how close he would let me get. Like a frightened horse, you had to move closer slowly so as not to scare it. Something about horses triggered a memory.

  There had been a farm down the road from my house in New Hampshire and sometimes the owner let me ride if I mucked out stalls and stuff. The memory sparkled like a shiny stone and flooded my brain. I grabbed onto it, making sure it would stay.

  Jamie watched me, puzzled. I moved closer again until our shoulders were touching.

  “That's okay. You don't have to. I just wanted you to know.” I bumped my shoulder against his, and it sent him off balance. I grabbed onto him again, but I didn't let go. We stayed like that, with me holding him for several heartbeats.

  “Will I ever see you again?” He asked the question I didn’t know how to answer.

  I let go of him. “I don't think so. It's too hard to be around you.”

  “The... blood?” He had a hard time saying the word, as if it choked him.

  “Mostly. There are other things I need to do, and I can't get involved with anyone.” I moved away from him.

  He raised one eyebrow. So sexy. “More secrets?”

  “Just a few. A girl never shares them all,” I said with a smile. “Not even an immortal one.”

  “You just look like a girl to me. A beautiful girl, but still, a girl.” This time, he was the one who moved closer to me. He reached out one of his hands and dragged a finger down my cheek. As if he was checking to see if I was still real.

  “I was a girl. Just two weeks ago. If only I could have met you then.” He took his hand away as if he was embarrassed. I touched his shoulder.

  “It's okay. At least we met at all.” He looked down at his hands, turning them over. They're rough and calloused, probably from playing sports. Tough hands, soft heart.

  “Yeah,” I said. It was an inadequate word for what was going on, but it was the best I could come up with when his scent was surrounding me.

  “How long are you going to stay?” he said.

  “I don't know. There are things I need to do.” I couldn't believe I was sharing that with him. I had a hard time controlling my mouth when he was around. It hadn't been a problem until I met him. What had he done to me?

  “What kind of things?”

  “Someone I need to find,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “I don't know. I just have a name, and what they look like.”

  “Will you tell me? Maybe I could help you.”

  “I'm not in danger, Jamie. You are.”

  “How can I know that if you won't tell me? For all I know you're involved with the mob.” That made me giggle. The things he came up with.

  “I'm immortal, Jamie. Anything the mob has can't hurt me. Not even bullets.”

  “What if they have garlic?”

  “I have no idea who came up with that one, but it's not true. I could roll naked in a field of garlic and be perfectly fine.”

  He blushed. “Is it weird I kind of like that image?”

  I was not intimately acquainted with blood and how it moved in the human body, especially when it went to certain places. If I was, I would have blushed, too.

  He changed the subject.

  “Okay. I want to help you, Brooke. If you'll let me.”

  “Even if I want your blood right now?”

  He nodded. “I want to show you something else.” He got up and started walking in the opposite direction of his truck. Without him saying anything, I knew we were going toward the little pond located on the other side of the trees. It was an inlet that flowed to the ocean, so the water was only half fresh. He still held branches out of my way, which I thought was sweet.

  “You still don't believe me about the blood thing, do you?” I said as we walked down to the edge of the pond.

  Jamie leaned down, squatting to pick up a rock. “I just... It sounds so insane.” He selected a flat rock and tossed it at the still water where it skipped three times before sinking to the bottom of the pond. Judging by the sound, the pond was only about fifteen feet deep in the middle.

  “I used to skip rocks on the lake when I was little,” I said, picking up my own rock.

  “We have a pond in back of our house and when my dad would get drunk I used to go out there and do that. If I could skip a rock more than twice, I would stay out and do another. If I skipped it less, I had to go back inside. I got really good at skipping rocks,” he said, looking at me.

  “I never met my dad. My mom kind of slept around, so he could have been anybody.” My rock skipped five times. Not bad.

  “That sucks,” he said, tossing another. His skipped five. Point for the human.

  “Yeah.”

  “You're the only person I've ever told that to,” he said, tugging on his ear.

  I almost smiled. How was it this boy I'd just met was sharing things like this with me? “Really?”

  He grabbed another rock. “Yeah. The guys on the basketball team don't really get it. They've all got normal parents. My friend, Tex, has both of her parents. They're jerks, but at least they're normal, too. My friend Ava's mom is dying of cancer, so she gets it.”

  I'd never heard him talk about his friends before.

  “Ava?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we've been friends forever. I'm not interested in her that way. In case you were wondering.” I was wondering about that, but what I was most concerned with was how many girls there could be in Sussex with the name Ava.

  My bet was not that many.

  “What's she like? Ava.” I had to play it cool. He couldn't know I was fishing. I just kept skipping rocks as if I didn't care.

  “She's been my best friend since sixth grade. She was the only person who was nice to me, so we just started hanging out. People used to call us beauty and the beast.”

  “Which one were you?”

  “Seeing as how I was a shrimp with acne and bad teeth, I'm sure you can figure it out.” It was impossible to think of the boy standing next to me as anything less than wildly attractive.

  “Look at you now.”

  “Not so beastly anymore.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Yeah, she's one of those girls who's pretty but doesn't know it. Dark hair, green eyes. Not my type, though.”

  I found it funny that he kept trying to reassure me that he wasn't interested in her. Dark hair, green eyes. It was her. I didn't really believe in fate or luck or anything like that, but I wasn't sure what the chances were that I would end up meeting the best friend of the girl I came to find. I should just stop being shocked.

  “What is your type?”

  He grinned at me, and if I had a beating heart, it would have skipped a beat. “Brunettes with car trouble.”

  “I just happen to know a girl like that. But she has wings and she likes blood.”

  He shook his head. “It's gonna take me a really long time to accept that. I think I'm going to need to sleep on it.”


  “That's okay. I've got time. Immortal, remember?”

  He thought about that for a second, tossing another rock. “So if I stabbed you right now, you wouldn't die?”

  “You couldn't stab me. My skin is too tough. I know; I've tested it.” I held my hand out and he took it in both of his, brushing his finger across my skin. I wanted him so much.

  “It doesn't feel like regular skin.”

  “I know. Not the same temperature, either.”

  His fingers traced circles on my hand. It felt so small in both of his. He pressed it between his two large hands and it disappeared. Funny how I could crush his hands with one of mine, but his were so much bigger.

  He didn't want to let go of my hand. “You don't look dangerous. Well, not in that way.”

  I took my hand back. “Just because I don't have fangs, doesn't mean I'm not a bloodsucker.”

  Twelve

  Ava

  What the hell? First Kamir and Rasha drop the bomb on us that Kamir is Di's father's brother (say that five times fast) and then they throw a sister at us that we never knew existed, and she has a bind with Di, but not one that we can break or use as leverage. Hello, Thing Five. Or was she Thing Four? Who the hell can keep track anymore?

  Despite the fact that Helena can't give us an easy way out, she. Is. Awesome.

  When she first came out from behind a giant stone I thought I was going to throw up. She didn't look scary. In fact, she looked like a goddess, with her crazy long white-gold hair. I expected another Cal experience and already started thinking about how we were going to escape, but then she opened her mouth and told us about Di. Without us even having to ask.

  When she finishes her story, we're all silent, mulling it over. So. Much. Information.

  “Soo, yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.” I hope I am not the only one who thought there had to be a catch.

  “Why are you telling us this?” I say.

  She blinks. “Why wouldn't I?”

  “Because we're complete strangers who may or may not want to use said information to destroy your sister?”

  “Ava,” Peter says, as if I said something scandalous.