by Neha Yazmin
POISON BLOOD
Book 2: Absolution
NEHA YAZMIN
Copyright 2012 Neha Yazmin
Smashwords Edition
British English (BrE)
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All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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All rights reserved by the author.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forms, or by any means, without the prior permission of the author.
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~ Also by Neha Yazmin ~
Paranormal Romance:
Poison Blood, Book 1: Revelation
~
Contemporary Romance:
Chasing Pavements
Make You Feel My Love
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~ Dedication ~
I would like to dedicate the entire Poison Blood series to my niece and nephew, aged 9 and 8 at the time I started writing these books. My nephew helped think of names for some of the characters and my niece always listened to my ideas. Even though you have to wait a few years before you can read these books, I hope you enjoy them when you do.
Yellow Roses with Red Tips
Yellow roses that have red tips symbolise falling in love.
Chapter 1: Chase
I don’t know what being in love is like for humans. It never happened to me, not really. I only thought it did. Thought it for a long time. Almost half a century. But it feels as though I’ve known for longer that I’d been wrong.
What is it like for us vampires when we’re in love? Before I can address this question, that unsettling feeling washes over me again. Truthfully, the sensation itself isn’t unsettling in any way - it’s actually quite nice - but it’s unnerving because I don’t understand it. This strange rush of warmth rolling through my ice-cold, diamond-hard body isn’t something I should be experiencing at this moment in time.
At this moment in time, I should be working. Doing my job. Hunting. Continuing my chase. Running at the fastest speed I am capable of, through this deep green forest in Norfolk, England, chasing my prey, I fell to the ground when this bizarre emotion first passed through me. My muscles had locked from the shock and strength of it. I collapsed like a cleanly chopped tree. Residual kinetic energy meant I rolled and rolled across the forest floor, until finally, I came to a halt at a tall pine tree.
Took the tree down in the process, but at least I stopped spinning.
There it goes again, that unexpected and unexplainable emotion that has been distracting me from getting up and carrying on with my mission. A wave of calming yet exciting energy breaks through me as I lie on the undergrowth, confused.
Love is like that isn’t it? Confusing, exciting, overwhelming, and at the same time it stills your mind, heart and soul.
Falling for someone does strange, incomprehensible things to you.
Why does it feel like I’m falling in love?
I’m not falling in love!
I’ve not seen anything or anyone that I could develop any connection to. All I’ve seen are patchworks of trees stretching before me. Branches, jutting roots, hedges, shrubbery, twigs, the silver spots of sky through the spaces between the leaves rustling in the winter morning breeze.
All I’ve heard are ghostly winds swirling through the woods. Hushed chirping of the birds. Crunching noises of the animals, squirrels, pheasants, deer, retreating from the path I’ve been following, the scent I’ve been tracking.
All I felt during my lightening quick sprint was one of triumph. I was close to my goal. Hot on the heels of my target.
And then I dropped to the ground.
What is happening this morning? This week?
Monday, I inadvertently stumbled onto a file pertaining to a top secret mission at work. A mission to track down a vampire rated A in our company’s database. An A-rated vampire has Amazing powers. If our superior strength and speed, our advanced senses weren’t enough, some of our kind are blessed with additional supernatural powers. Rare though they are, these extraordinary ones of the species are out there. It’s not unlike us to keep these cases between only a select few in our organisation.
Only, I usually know all the top secret information and so understandably, I was surprised that this was hidden from me.
“Sorry Christian,” Darryl said to me in the boardroom on Monday when I enquired as to where he’d been in the last fortnight, why I hadn’t been able to get through to him all that time.
His profile on our database was set to Engaged. Meaning he was on a job. But I couldn’t access the mission details. When he eventually showed up at headquarters, he made various excuses not to talk to me.
Eventually, I had to sneak up on him and drag him to the privacy of the boardroom.
“I can’t tell you,” he continued.
This bothered me a great deal. His tone implied that he had been instructed not to tell me about his whereabouts, and surely that couldn’t have been the case. I was supposed to know where my top agents, like Darryl, were sent, and for what purpose.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” I asked indignantly. “I keep getting thrown out of a mission file linked to your ID. And from what you’re saying, it seems as though this is not some computer malfunction. I am really not supposed to know about this?” My words became a question because they sounded ridiculous without the enquiry in them.
Why would there be any project that Darryl knew about that I couldn’t?
“I really don’t have the authority to tell you-”
“You really don’t have the authority to refrain from answering a direct question from me Darryl,” I threatened. Tensing up, almost in a battle crouch, I said, “Whatever authority you do have, I can strip it off you right now if you don’t disclose what you know.”
His eyebrows bunched up, clearly feeling the heat. At the same time, there was a quiet confidence about him. As though he had some sort of insurance. More that, he thought I couldn’t do anything to him if he disobeyed me.
No one disobeyed me!
“I’m waiting,” I pressed, my temper beginning to flare. A growl was building in my chest and I didn’t want to let it out. I tried to be as professional as possible at the office.
“Christian,” he sighed, “if you gave me a direct order to not divulge this information to someone in particular, you know I’d have to follow.”
At once, I knew who had given him this direct order. There was only one person who would and could do that.
But it just didn’t make sense! Why would they do this?
The confusion cut through my anger, urging me to think about how to get the answers. Relaxing at once, I asked, “And you’re not supposed to say who gave you those orders?”
He gave a tired shake of his head.
“That’s fine,” I assured him. “You may go.”
After giving me a startled, quizzical look, he headed for the boardroom door and waited for me to use my ID card to let him out.
I was beside him before the second was out. “Just before you leave, Darryl,” I said smoothly, holding my card above the reader that was mounted to the side of the metal door, not swiping it open yet. “I’d like your ID card please.” He regarded me warily. “You know I have ways of taking it off you, but I don’t want to sneak up on you again. It’s not my style.” I held up my hand.
Because there hadn’t bee
n a command to not give me his card, he had to succumb. “You’re going to use my ID to tap into my mission documents,” he murmured, handing over the card.
“Yes,” I answered, smug. “And a new direct order for you Darryl,” I added, almost cheekily. “You do not tell anyone about this, or what you think will happen when you leave this room. I’ll get in touch soon.”
Nodding, he faced the metal door as I opened it for him with my ID card, tightly holding onto his in my other hand.
Back in my office, I tried to open the file that kept telling me I lacked the necessary security clearance to view it. Though I wasn’t able to gain full access to this project, logging in as Darryl, I saw that he had been tracking an A-rated vampire around the English countryside. He had reported little success in getting anywhere near her - Kristy, was her name - but he suspected she was now in Norfolk. He returned to HQ to discuss tactics and give a detailed report to the person who had assigned him this task.
Interestingly, Kristy’s exact power, her supernatural gift, was listed as ‘Unknown’. This I knew was a lie - if you don’t know the special gift the vampire possesses, how can you rate it A for Amazing?
The power was known, just not listed in the mission documents.
That alone would have heightened my curiosity enough to chase after Kristy myself, but seen as I was specifically not supposed to know about her, I didn’t think twice about investigating.
Tuesday, I arrived in this Norfolk forest, to hunt this Amazing immortal through acres and acres of woodland, and I’ve been chasing her ever since. Going around in circles, most of the time. Clever and quick, she’s always one step ahead of me. Bit of a daredevil too, sticking to the greenery here rather than escaping the jungle altogether. Playing with me. She waits for me to catch up before making a quick turn and taking off again.
Not wanting to leave me too far behind. Not harbouring any desire to be caught.
Now it’s Thursday morning, and just as I thought I was finally within touching distance of my target, I took an unexpectedly odd turn of my own.
I fell as something like love exploded through me.
As soon as I figure out what on earth is going on inside my body, I will get back to work. I will catch Kristy if it’s the last thing I do in this forest. She’s made this into a game, which two can play at, and I want to win.
I’m the only one who can.
This job clearly needs someone who can be invisible.
Chapter 2: Her
Being invisible comes easily to me. I forget when I’m doing it, when I’m preventing you from perceiving me. Making you think you don’t see me when you stare in my direction. Don’t hear me when I speak near you. Don’t feel it if I touch you. So often and for so long do I use my shield that I don’t always remember to take it down when I’m supposed to.
That’s what happened the first time I talked to her.
I walked up to the girl that bright May afternoon, 6 months ago, smiling at her in a way that should make any normal 17-year-old girl’s knees weak. Her knees were anything but. In fact, she didn’t notice my approach.
And of course, she wasn’t a normal 17-year-old girl.
Belatedly, I realised I was still in hiding, maintaining a Christian-shaped blind-spot on the minds of everyone living in her hometown of Reading, Berkshire. I can stretch my shield and hide from everyone in the world.
I can be undetectable to every living thing with a mind.
How does it work? I don’t know, but I think of it as squirting ink on a lens. The lens is everything your mind perceives. The ink is the obstruction that blocks me out of your consciousness. So, I splash as much ink as necessary on each lens I need to block.
If I concentrate, I can make you forget that you even know me.
One day, digging a Christian-shaped hole in your memory will be as easy as being unseen. I know this because visual invisibility wasn’t a skill I was proficient in when I awoke as a newborn vampire a hundred years ago. I worked on it. Perfected it. Soon, I found myself capable of screening inanimate objects and other living beings from detection. I just need to throw a Christian-and-my-bike or a Christian-and-person-X shaped layer of ink on your lens.
Another century and I will master the art of mental invisibility too.
That day in May though, I needed to be visible to her, both physically and mentally, but not to her small group of friends as they conversed outside their college gates. Since I’d been watching her from afar for a few days, there was a thick coating of black ink on her lens and the lenses of everyone in town. Carefully, I peeled away the dark glossy film from her perception so she could see me standing right next to her. Simultaneously, I applied a new covering of ink on the lenses of her friends so they would no longer see her.
I made a mental note to scrape those smudges off later.
Most people would have jumped, but she just gasped quietly as she noticed my sudden presence. Surprise at the magical appearance of a stranger ebbed quickly, though her heart continued to race. Fast. My smile widened in triumph.
She was responding to me the way I hoped she would.
“You are no doubt the lovely Elisia?” I enquired just as she opened her mouth to speak. Her warm brown eyes sparkled in shock as I said her name. I kept my tone light as I continued, taking advantage of her bewilderment. “I can tell you’re Ellie because you’re the only one amongst your friends in possession of a Classic.” I nodded at the copy of Wuthering Heights she was holding to her chest.
“I’m sorry who did-”
“Selma told me all about you guys,” I shrugged. Ellie was going to ask who I was. I had no intentions of telling her that. “She talks about you all a lot. Where is she by the way?” I scanned the faces of her friends, supposedly trying to determine whether Selma was among them. None of them batted an eyelid at my inspection, carrying on with their conversation as though I wasn’t there. To them, I wasn’t there. Nor was Ellie. “She hasn’t gone home already, I hope?”
“She isn’t home,” Ellie murmured suspiciously. “If you’re such a good friend, you’d know she left for the States yesterday. She won’t be back until the exams.”
I squeezed my eyebrows together, confused and disappointed. Inside, I was gloating at how brilliantly my plan was working out. The way Ellie spoke of her friend’s trip to America, it was more than apparent that she believed the alibi I’d created: Selma had won a scholarship to study in the States and flew over there to make living arrangements.
Selma wasn’t in the US though.
She hadn’t even left the country.
I had her.
“That’s odd,” I finally mumbled, shaking my head. “I heard that her parents thought it would be too disruptive to her education to go before the exams, seen as they are just weeks away.”
Surprised that I knew about this scholarship when no one at school did, Ellie scrunched her eyebrows together. Concluding that I must know Selma better than she initially believed, she shrugged and said, “Her folks must have come around because they’ve gone with her. Just for the first few days,” she assured me when my features grew more perplexed. “Selma’s going to try and study from there. Besides, most of the teaching has been done. We just need to finish our course-works and prepare for the exams now.”
“I suppose,” I agreed, sighing. “It would have been nice if she told me.” I rolled my eyes.
“It was very sudden actually. And she kept it quiet,” she explained informatively. “We didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
“At least I’m not the only one.”
Throughout our conversation, Ellie kept throwing nervous glances at her friends, trying to meet their gazes. Heart still beating rapidly, she seemed to be getting more and more confused. Why were her friends ignoring her, avoiding eye contact? Why was a stranger like me talking to her?
I had to keep talking to her. This was a chance I couldn’t afford to waste. She was never alone, always under surveillance, and since this was the fir
st time I’d seen her hang around outside college instead of going straight home, I had to make the most of it.
Would she succumb to my charms? Would I succeed in luring her away from all the watchful eyes on her in my first attempt at gaining her trust? I didn’t know for sure but I knew the odds were in my favour.
“So, are you nervous about your exams?” I asked to drag her gaze back to me. She was still trying to claim her friends’ attention, scanning the immediate area as though she could feel the many eyes on her.
The watchful eyes of her protectors.
“A little bit,” she answered, finally turning to face me head-on. Now that she had given up on her friends, she was appraising me curiously. My eyes in particular. Should have worn the sunglasses, I thought.
“Would you rather be in America like Selma?” Hopefully the topic of America would distract her from scrutinising my red eyes masked by blue-coloured contact lenses, making them a dark purplish brown.
It didn’t work. “Are you wearing purple contacts?” she enquired, staring intently at my eyes.
“I am wearing contacts, yes.”
“You know, coloured contacts went out of fashion in the nineties,” she joked.
“Maybe I’ll bring them back in fashion. Do you think I have what it takes to set trends?”
Blushing, she suddenly remembered something. “Aren’t you a little old to be friends with Selma? We’re all 17 and 18. You must be at least five years older.”
“I’m 20,” I lied. Well, it wasn’t a lie if we were talking about how many human years I’d lived before I became a vampire.
“So why are you hanging outside a sixth form?” she queried, shaking her head, a crease between her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be chasing Uni girls?” When she said that, her heart skipped a beat, blood rushed to her cheeks.