Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy

Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy
© 2016 by P. Anastasia

Paperback available

Internal character illustrations by Fernanda Suarez

Previously published as separate volumes.
This omnibus includes:

Fluorescence: Fire Starter 2015
Fluorescence: Contagious 2015
Fluorescence: Fallout 2016
Fluorescence: Lost Souls 2016

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording or otherwise, without written permission of the author.
 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Coming soon from P. Anastasia:

Dark Diary - A paranormal-historical romance.

Worlds collide when a young woman with a dark past encounters a young man with an even darker one.

More human than vampire,
Dark Diary
is a quaint, sophisticated romance detailing the accounts of two lovers who have paid
the ultimate price…

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• Book I: Fire Starter
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Book II: Contagious
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Book III: Fallout
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Book IV: Lost Souls
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  

. . .

My name’s Alice Green. It’s not my real name, but if you knew what was going on, you’d understand why I need to be careful.

Adults warn you your body will start going through “changes” when you get older. Mine did, but they weren’t normal “raging hormones, mood swings, ew—periods” kind of things. Weird stuff happens, your body does gross things and then you start looking at boys differently.

Yeah. That happened—a while ago.

This is different.

I’ve been infected with something I can’t fully explain—bioluminescence—fluorescent energy. I can’t control when it appears. It’s volatile, and that’s what scares me the most.

I hope, for your sake, this never happens to you or to anyone you care about.

I hope you will never wake to discover this fire burning beneath your skin—this spark of living, breathing color crackling through your veins.

. . .

Chapter 1

W
hy me?

“Eric and his dog?” Sam asked, her brow furrowing.

Stanley—the bully’s accomplice.

“Yeah. Creeps staked out the main hall this afternoon, and I was late for class because I had to take the long way around. Again.” I rubbed my shoulder, recalling the brief spell of pain I’d felt following my mad dash down the hall after the bell had rung. I had never been much of an athlete.

“I’m so sorry, Alice. I wish they’d stop. I mean, really, don’t they have anything better to do with their time besides make fun of
you
?” She rolled her eyes. “If they actually
studied as much as they annoyed people, they’d be geniuses.”

After school, I sat cross-legged, bundled up in a blanket on my best friend Sam’s couch, balancing a bowl of buttery popcorn in my lap.

“
I know, right?” I scooped out a greasy handful
and shoveled some into my mouth. “I wish
they’d
get picked on by someone for a change.”

“Enter chainsaw psycho! VROOM!” Sam lifted her arms up over her head and lumbered toward me, grinning maniacally and making sputtering sounds that drowned out the movie playing behind her.

I laughed so hard, she broke character and started
giggling. No wonder she snagged the best parts in our school
plays right out from under me. She
was
an amazing actress.

Really, though, I’d never wish for anyone to get hurt the way people did in horror movies—like the ones we loved to watch—but Eric and Stanley had been nipping at my heels since middle school. Using every excuse they could to make fun of me. Just because my name is Alice, doesn’t mean I have anything to do with white rabbits and Cheshire cats.

Sam had been with me through it all. She was the only person I really hung out with in and out of school. We had sleepovers about once a month where we watched cheesy B horror flicks all evening and stuffed our faces with as much junk food as we could in a few hours.

Zombies. Ax murderers. This movie had both. An exaggerated death scene in the movie we were watching had me laughing so much I snorted like a pig. Gallons of bright red fake blood spewed at the camera and my bowl bounced right out of my lap.

I scrambled to catch it, but a few pieces of popcorn tumbled out onto the floor. Sam craned her neck back to look at me and chuckled, her wild curly red hair bouncing around her face.

“Popcorn overboard?” she asked with a smirk. “Uh, yeah.
Sorry.” I faked a dumb toothy grin and batted my lashes. We both chuckled and then I wrapped myself back up in my blanket and secured the popcorn bowl between my pretzled legs.

As we sat watching the movie, I felt a warm sensation creep up my spine, starting off mild and then blazing into day-old sunburn pain within seconds. I rolled my shoulder back and forth and rubbed it with my other hand, hiding my discomfort from Sam. It was probably leftover from my impromptu sprint this afternoon. A muscle pull or…

I doubled over. A sharp ache stabbed through me, shooting up my spine like an electrical shock.

“Oh my God. Are you okay? What is it?” Sam turned around and tilted her head to the side.

I almost cried out, but I gritted my teeth instead, trying to suck it up. “Ugh. It’s… nothing.” I shrugged, pulling the blanket up over my shoulders to fight the chill going through me. “I’ll be back in a minute.” After setting the popcorn down, I slid off the couch and trudged to the bathroom, clasping the blanket closed at my neck.

I shut the door, flipped on the bathroom light and tossed the blanket over the shower curtain rod. My arm pulsed with deep, throbbing pain and the first thing I thought was that something had stung or bitten me. A spider?

It felt like there was boiling liquid pumping beneath my skin. I gritted my teeth. A sickness swirled in my stomach. I leaned closer to the mirror and turned so I could see my back, sliding the spaghetti-strap of my sleep shirt over while twisting myself further around to look over my shoulder at my reflection. A large blotchy patch of skin blazed red. Hot to touch.