Bianca De Lumière : High Suspense Urban Fantasy Romance (The Re'em Prophecy Book 1)
Page 1
© Copyright Lisette Prendé 2020
Published by Full Time Unicorn Press
Wellington
6037
New Zealand
ISBN: 978-0-473-50642-1 (Kindle)
ISBN: 978-0-473-50641-4 (epub)
ISBN: 978-0-473-50639-1 (Paperback soft cover)
www.lisetteprende.com
Edited by Jessica Nelson of Rare Bird Editing
Cover Design by Nirkri
Author Photo credit: Tracey Leanne Photography
For Opa,
who always told a great story
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Trees. Darkness. Moonlight.
Branches crash around me. They drag against my skin. I feel the sting, a small trickle of blood. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. My chest heaves as I gulp for air, but still I run. Trees blur past me. I’m running, but not for my life. I’m running because I must. Because my body told me to.
“Bianca!”
I turn my head but see no one.
“Bianca, you should not be here! They could find you!”
On my left something dark catches my eye. A shape moving through the forest alongside me.
“Bianca! Go! Now!”
Chapter One
I peeled myself off the forest floor and sighed. I’d done it again.
It could be worse, I told myself. I could live in the middle of New York City. Sleepwalking in NYC could be fatal. Who knows what could happen to a sixteen-year-old girl roaming naked through the middle of a crowded city at night. Me? I just liked to go for a sprint through the forest in quiet old Pentacle, Oregon, pop. 1,134.
Leaning against the trunk of a pine, I looked down at my pale body. I was a mess. Small scrapes and smears of mud adorned my feet and legs, traveled up to my torso, and decorated my arms.
As the dawn chorus sang above me, I got my bearings. It wasn’t hard—I’d been playing in these woods since I could walk. Pine needles crunched beneath my feet as I began the slow trek home.
The blue morning light had turned warm yellow by the time I reached my backyard. The French doors to my bedroom hung wide open. I crossed my fingers that my mom hadn’t yet discovered I was missing.
Pulling the doors closed behind me with a quiet click, I released a slow breath of relief.
I picked up an old NIRVANA T-shirt, the fabric soft with time, and pulled it over my head.
Time to face another day. I pressed cool fingers against my eyelids. Another day in the life of a teenage outcast.
Reaching for my phone, I braced myself for what I might find this morning. I willed myself to be strong.
“It says more about them than it does about you,” I said out loud—a method my mom had suggested that actually worked. I keyed in my lock code, willing there to be nothing to report this morning.
But there they were: A plethora of alerts filled my screen. Despite the fact that I’d tried to keep my social media to a minimum, they still managed to find me. I declined a friend request from someone called Danny Sausage that read: Hey Casper the sexy ghost. Wanna hang out?
A guy from school had posted a picture of Daenerys Targaryen in which someone had tagged me.
Hey doesn’t this Khaleesi chick go to our school? Is she like famous?
No dick that’s a picture from Game of Thrones. You’re talking about Bianca the FREAK, Stephanie Jones, a senior cheerleader had written. I narrowed my eyes at her duck-faced profile pic.
OMG That girl is so weird! Stephanie’s cheerleading friend Jess White had added. Like, talk about antisocial! She hardly talks to anyone and her face always looks like she’s sucking a lemon. Jess was in a few of my classes.
IDK guys, wrote Jay Stevens, a junior starting quarterback. I would totally tap that. Her ass is LIT.
Ur sick man. From Jay’s buddy Pete. U seen her crazy green eyes? Totes freakin.
She’s not a freak you guys, Sally Smeets had replied. She’s just albino. Don’t be so mean.
As kind as it was for Sally Smeets to come to my rescue, it amused me that people assumed I was albino without ever having asked me. It was much easier to pretend I was, though.
Finally, I opened my daily wake-up text from my favorite stalker. This morning’s text was succinct and to the point.
HEY ALBINO BITCH DO YOU LIKE MY NEW INSTA?
I didn’t know what it meant but I resisted the urge to reply and instead hit save and added the text to the file I’d send to the sheriff at the end of the month.
Fae’s smiling face popped up on the screen. Morning Bee! Just so you know, I have already reported the Instagram account for you, so it will hopefully already be gone, okay? Don’t bother looking it up. See you at school.
I was lucky to have a friend like Fae. Even if technically she was my only friend. A heaviness filled my gut. It had to be bad for Fae to try and stop me from looking at it. I bit my lip. It would be easy to just put my phone down. To get up and start my day without seeking out the Instagram account she mentioned. But I had to see it.
I typed my name into Instagram and scrolled through the search. It didn’t take me long to find it. Whoever had set up the account had already managed to get pretty much all of Pentacle High to follow it. Who was I kidding? I knew damn well who had set it up.
Pentacle’s Freak Show Tourist Attraction of 2018! Forget the Oregon Vortex! We’ve Got Real Life White Walker Bianca Taylor!
I sighed. What was with the Game of Thrones references?
As I clicked into the page, all the air drained out of my lungs. There were photos. Photos of me.
There was a photo of me getting out of my car, books in hand and my backpack slung over my shoulder. There was one of me with Fae, sitting on the steps by the quad. Sitting in class, at a desk, looking off-center. Another close-up, taken at the same time. Another of me running in a group at track training, my white legs standing out starkly amongst the legs of the ot
her runners. Then a final picture of me getting out of my car again. But it wasn’t taken at school. It was taken in my driveway. Right outside my house. This time she’d gone too far.
I copied the page URL and started a new email.
To: SheriffJShaw@PentaclePD.com
Hi Sheriff Jim,
I know you only wanted files at the end of the month but this new one is pretty bad. They’ve been taking photos of me—at home. I also got a follow-up text about it from the same number as usual.
Could you please not mention this to my mom? I don’t want her to worry.
I pasted in the page link and hit send. If Sheena wanted to play rough, she’d better be ready.
My mother’s energy drew closer; her pale lilac aura nearing mine. I scooted back into bed and flipped the blankets over my battered body. No need to worry her. She already has enough on her mind at the moment.
My mom pushed the door open quietly. As she entered, a wave of exhaustion swept over me. I felt her long night spent worrying, tossing, and turning.
“Morning, Bee. Time to get up honey.” Her voice was soft with lethargy. Dark circles hung below her eyes and her lips looked pale and dry. Had she even slept at all?
She stood in my doorway. Her clean, pressed work clothes seemed to be holding her up by their crisp starched threads. The lilac aura I knew as well as my own wrapped itself tightly around her for support.
My mom slept well unless she was stressed or worried about something. What was she worried about? I swallowed hard. Did she know about the sleepwalking?
I took a breath and then I felt it: Work.
“Morning, Mom.” I sat up. “Sleep well?”
She let out a long breath. “Not really, no. But you already knew that didn’t you?” She smiled.
“What’s going on at work, Mom?”
“You know I shouldn’t tell you about work stuff, Bee. It’s confidential police business.”
“If it’s police business then why do you know all about it?”
“I may just be a receptionist Bee, but I hear things. I hear things I am not meant to repeat.” She smiled. “Even to you.”
She eyed me for a moment, then sighed and sat down on the bed. “There have been some cattle killings up on the Coutts ranch, just out of the forest.” Her face hardened as she continued. “Coutts was losing a few cows a month to…some kind of animal.
I shook my head. “What kind of animal could kill cattle?”
“That’s why he was concerned,” she went on. “Especially after it kept happening. More and more cows being killed.” She dipped her head and began to massage her temples with gentle fingers. “He started to wonder whether it was someone instead of something. He stayed out one night to stand sentry. Try and catch whatever or whoever it was in the act.” She licked her lips and narrowed her eyes in memory. “He said he heard something strange. Something almost musical. Like whistling. Then the cows started making all kinds of racket. He shone a flashlight and saw something. He didn’t know what. He only said it was big and dark and fast. It moved more like a horse than a bear, he said. It saw the light and ran. He tried to track it through the trees but it was too fast. That’s when he found them. The cows. Three this time. Completely ripped apart.”
The blood drained from my face. “Ripped apart?”
She nodded.
“Wow. What was it?”
“No idea. Jim thinks it’s a pack of large wolves, maybe a bear because you know, Coutts’s eyesight isn’t what it used to be.” She shook her head. “All we know is that it’s killing cows, and if it can kill cows...” She stopped mid-sentence but I knew what she was going to say. If it could kill cows it could easily kill a human.
A chill started at the nape of my neck and crept down my spine.
My mother’s mention of a large dark creature reminded me of something: A dark shape in the trees, running alongside me. A voice in my ears.
“Bianca! They could find you here!”
She stifled a yawn and continued. “He was pretty shaken, old Coutts, when he came into the station. And he’s not one to get rattled, you know?”
I could see old Coutts: A wily man in his seventies, hardened by years of work on the ranch. A man who wouldn’t flinch at skinning a rabbit or shooting a lame horse. Terrified. A look in his eyes of pure fear.
I rubbed my palms together. They were wet with sweat.
We sat in silence for a moment, the room filling with our thoughts.
“Then Mrs. Litster called us from the Vortex Mystery Shack,” my mom went on. “She’s been seeing some odd things too.”
The Oregon Vortex is our town’s one claim to fame. Supposedly the area is a huge, spherical field of force. Tourists come from all around to get their picture taken outside the wonky Mystery Shack, showing the evidence of the magnetic pull beneath the earth. Two people of equal height standing across from each other suddenly appear shorter or taller in comparison, depending on who is standing closer to the vortex site. Apparently, it’s the magnetic undercurrent creating a change in density, stretching or compressing the subjects at a “molecular level” or whatever.
I chewed my lip. The Vortex Mystery Shack was on the forest border, halfway between our house and the Coutts ranch. Could Mrs. Litster have seen the same creature?
“Mrs. Litster claims something was stalking her a few nights back. She heard the same whistling sound Coutts described. But she did the smart thing and hightailed it to her truck. She didn’t get a good look, but she said it was big. It gave her the creeps.”
Goosebumps prickled down my arms. All this talk was giving me the creeps too.
“Jim wants to put out a warning ASAP,” she went on. “But he’d like to get a better picture of what we’re dealing with first.” She sighed. “Only thing is we can’t seem to get hold of Coutts now.”
“What?”
“Jim went round to see him last night. But the old man wasn’t there. T.V was blaring, back door wide open, but no one home.”
“Geez.”
“Jim found his rifle outside. Fired cartridge in the chamber. He called me late last night to tell me all’a this.” She rolled her eyes.
“So that’s why you couldn’t sleep.”
“Bee,” she said, turning to look at me. “Promise me you’ll stay out of the forest, okay?”
I swallowed. How could I make a promise that my unconscious self wouldn’t keep? “Sure.” I avoided her eyes. “Promise.”
She leaned in and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I’d better be off, honey. Gotta get down to the station. How’d you feel about a taco tower for dinner tonight?”
“Sounds great to me.” I smiled. “Gilmore Girls on Netflix?”
“Can’t wait.”
I would try to stay out of the forest. I really would. But sleepwalking Bianca? She had other plans. Should I have told my poor mother that her daughter was even more of a freak than she knew? Not only is her skin the color of milk and her hair the color of snow. Not only does she see auras and sense people’s emotions, but now she also sleepwalks naked through the woods.
Nope. I’m enough of a handful as it is.
Chapter Two
I swung open the door of my old Buick Century, known as Terence the Tank. The door groaned its morning “Hello.”
“Morning Terence!” I replied, sliding in behind the wheel. The White Stripes blared from my tinny car stereo as I backed out of the drive, passing our letterbox and narrowly missing Mrs. Van Housen’s tulips.
I bumped on down the road and waved back at old Mr. Jones at number 64 as Terence took the corners like an ox on springs. He’s an old, clumsy car but he’s reliable. Nothing ever stops Terence. There are two things that will survive a nuclear holocaust: Cockroaches and Terence.
He used to belong to my dad, but Terence definitely stuck around longe
r. I’m surprised my mom even let Terence stay; everything else to do with my father—including the subject itself—was completely off-limits.
I lowered my foot onto the brake as I approached the infamous Pentacle traffic line. Today the line of cars at the town’s single set of lights was half a mile long. I sighed. I was going to be late.
I took in my reflection in the rearview mirror. Luckily my face had been spared the nighttime assault from the trees, but it looked drawn and dull. Sleepwalking sure was taking its toll. Bright green eyes peered back at me from beneath stark white lashes. Fae had tried to persuade me to let her tint them but I’d refused. Just like I’d never dyed my hair. It felt like I’d be giving in if I tried to change myself. Like I’d be letting them win.
I fished a tube of cherry lip gloss out of the car’s unused ashtray and started applying it to my lips.
A chilling hum tickled the base of my spine and filled my ears. The hum grew stronger as the chill moved up my back and prickled the hair at the nape of my neck.
But it wasn’t a hum anymore, it was a voice.
“Bianca!”
That voice. A cold chill settled in the pit of my stomach. I’d heard that voice before. But where?
My skin prickled with the sense that someone was watching me. Instinctively, I turned my head to the right. There was no one there. Just the tree-filled berm of the roadside. But I felt someone there; a gentle, icy blue light shone through the shrubbery.
Then I saw him. From the darkness beneath a dense conifer, bright blue eyes stared right into mine.
“Bianca!” The voice said again. “You see me!”
I let out a gasp. My hands locked tight on the steering wheel, beads of sweat forming beneath my palms. I was frozen.
“Bianca. You are in danger. You need to be careful.”
He moved forward, out of the conifer canopy, towards me. His aura, the same icy blue as his eyes, wafted around him like fog. He was older than me; in his early 20s at a guess, but there was something about him that made him seem older.