Legacy (Endlessly Book 2)

Legacy

C.
V. Hunt

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental unless specified in acknowledgements.

Copyright © 2011 C.
V. Hunt

All rights reserved.

http://www.authorcvhunt.com

This work was edited by Peter Heyrman. He can be contacted by email at

mailto:[email protected]
                  

or by calling (410)-433-0908

ISBN:
1456487108

ISBN-13:
978-1-4564-8710-2

(ebook) ISBN:
978-1-4507-8929-5

The text of this book is set in 11-point Palatino Linotype.

DEDICATION

This book is for everyone that had faith in my story when I did not.

Breathe deep and enjoy
.

C.
V. Hunt

http://www.authorcvhunt.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A thank you to Peter Heyrman, my ed
itor,

for inspiration and guidance.

To
Tony Och, my tattooist, photographer,

and friend,
thanks for the morbidly funny conversations and great photos.

A huge thank you to Angie and Larry Ealy, Cory Gilbert, Coylene Gill, Christina Girardot, Josh James, Aubrey Losen, Fabiola Nino, Jesse Nguyen and Sarah (Rhodes) Taylor, for sacrificing your good names and likeness for my story. Each and every one of you are unique and special characters before you entered my world.

To Richard, thank you for putting up with me and my alter egos.

Preface

Every fairy tale ending I’d ever heard was a lie. Life and death were filled with despair and disappointment. Why should it be any different for me? There are no happy endings.

My vision was clouded. T
he beach seemed darker through my tears. The sky was black with storm clouds and icy droplets stung my cheeks. Wind whipped my hair. I hoped rain would wash away my sorrow. I clenched my jaw to stifle the shivers building up inside me. My teeth clicked in an uncontrollable staccato, feeling as if they might shatter. As the first sobs escaped me, the ocean roared, muffling my cries.

Wasn’t there s
omeone who could stop this pain and pull the dagger from my heart? There was… and I would never see him again.

1
NEW HOME

The werewolf sped down the twisting two-lane highway. I could hear Jason Zurk’s thoughts. He was feeling like a racecar driver, enjoying himself. Jason couldn’t yet build a mental wall strong enough to keep me from seeing his thoughts, but he was learning. I caught small phrases:
V8… custom tinted windows… vampires…
These fragments leaked through cracks in his mind.

I sat in the back seat of the car, listening to tunes on the mp3 player Hania had given me. Music helped me block out thoughts from others. Some automatically constructed mental walls sealing their thoughts off from me, but those who didn’t caused endless mental noise. I could either try to read every thought in every mind, or put up my own wall against them. I had no desire to rummage through every memory in every nearby mind.

At that moment it wasn’t too bad; Jason was the only one in the car struggling to keep his thoughts private. As an AFI song started I turned up the volume and sang along in my head. The rain cascaded down my window distorting the rushing shadows from the trees lining the highway. Rain, speed, and tinted windows made the world a blur. I wondered how Jason could see the road.

Washington was as wet as everyone said. A site on my laptop told me the wettest months were from October to March. We were getting th
ere at the beginning of January. The weather was normal.

Ashley, have you read this?
Hania’s question entered my mind.

Hania held up
two sheets of paper. I could see Verloren’s handwriting covering the pages.

No,
I thought.
What is it?

It’s Verloren’s eyew
itness account of your changing and all that happened with the Quatre. This is his brief summary. Could you read it over and tell me if it’s accurate?

Sure.

Hania handed me the pages. The record keeper, Kale, had died. Hania had taken on those duties only after trying to talk Verloren into doing it. Verloren had declined. I turned down the volume of my mp3 player, and stared at Verloren’s beautiful handwriting:

This is my personal statement of the events surrounding the birth of Ashley Nicely, as a hybrid vampire, and the downfall of the Quatre:

Ashley arrived in my store seeking information on reincarnation. I foun
d myself strangely drawn to her and took it upon myself to help her find her incarnate soul.

I preformed the incantation at her residence with Jason Zurk (werewolf) as a witness. We found that she was a dragon, a type of being which I thought had gone extinct. She had a
strange reverse telepathy I had never seen before. I offered to stay and help her so Jason could proceed home.

The following morning I phoned Jessica Quinn (born knowing) to brief her on the events of the
previous day. She told me Jason was missing and I needed to bring Ashley to the store immediately.

Upon our arrival Jessica proceeded to inform us of the Quatre’s intention to capture and kill dragons. Terrified for Ashley’s safety, I decided to leave. I went to my friend’s, Chris Godfrey’s (human)
, gun store looking for protection. I found Chris mortally wounded. He passed on a calling card and a warning from the Quatre.

When Jessica heard this she became
scared of her own fate and asked me to euthanize her. I did so by drinking her blood. In the process Jessica telepathically passed to me everything I needed to know about dragons, Ashley, our previous lives, Kale’s (vampire) treachery, and the Quatre’s intentions.

Ashley and I took refu
ge in a nearby hotel until our visit to the Quatre. During this time, without my consent, she manipulated me into biting her hand. As I allowed her to transform I knew I was breaking one of the most important laws of the Quatre. I felt justified in doing this because she is my soul mate and I could never harm her. In addition we already knew we were fated to die.

Her transformation was unique. Her dragon soul merged with the vampire virus and she took on a half-shifted, half-vampire appearance. We found that her diet mimicked mine and that her strength was much greater than my own. She kept some dragon traits and inherited vampire characteristics from the virus.

I followed the Quatre’s instructions for the rendezvous. Our destination was Siberia. Once we arrived we met with the Quatre and found that Sara (fairy) had her own agenda of immortality and elemental control. During this transaction Ashley and Hania (born knowing) used telepathy to form a plan.

Sara had not lost her fairy’s vulnerability to silver, so when Hania stabbed her with a silver dagger, the metal instantly poisoned her blood. As Sara died, Ashley attacked and killed Kale and Pedro (werewolf).

The Quatre’s only surviving member, Hania, deemed the group corrupted by greed and power. He agrees with the general consensus that there should not be another group like it.

Verloren Fagan

-

I handed the papers back to Hania.

“Looks accurate,” I told him.

“Thank you, Ashley,” he said. “I’d like to get your statement whenever you have a chance.”

“Ok,” I agreed, turning the music back up. I closed my eyes, let the music fill my head, and sang along in my thoughts. Verloren stirred beside me. I heard his chuckle in my mind. I had let my mental wall drop and everyone in the car heard the same song I did. When I opened my eyes Jason was glaring at me in the rearview mirror. He didn’t want that song. I quickly shut everyone out again.

My laptop was a souvenir of the horror we’d lived through. The memor
y of the Quatre was fading but, still, it had been barely ten days since they were destroyed. I might have finished them off single-handedly, but I’d been glad Hania was there, especially when he did in Sara. She and the other two — a werewolf and a vampire — had decided all power was theirs. They could do what they wanted. They could step on or kill anyone. The lure of absolute power had absolutely corrupted them and, once we turned the tables on them, I decided we must finish the job. They had to be gone.

I closed the laptop and gazed at the back of Hania’s gr
ay-peppered head. Though he’d been one of them, he’d refused to join in their conquest. As a shaman, or born knowing (one who remembers all past lives), he’d had vital information they needed. That’s why they’d let him live.

The Quatre had been formed to combine the supernatural abilities of its members in an effort to govern those of us who weren’t quite human.

I knew the phases I’d experienced: human, dragon, vampire. When I made my transition I learned I was a dragon. In my first days of self-awareness I transitioned again, becoming a vampire hybrid. Verloren didn’t purposely bite me; I forced it to happen. My transition to vampire hybrid was entirely my choice. I wanted to be part-vampire so I could remain with Verloren.

I felt a hot hand close over my ice-cold skin. I wondered if I had let my mental wall slip. Had Verloren heard my thoughts? I looked at his hand over mine, his white vampire skin, almost the same shade as my own. I had inherited the albino-like trait and the thirst for blood from him. I looked up into Verloren’s pale blue eyes and my insides melted. Kale had custom-ti
nted this car’s windows so he wouldn’t have to wear sunglasses during the day. Verloren was taking full advantage of that, giving me the treat of seeing a vampire outside without sunglasses. Luckily, I had not inherited the light sensitive eyes. It’s the only thing I didn’t gain from the virus.

I fidgeted, moving my wings to a more comfortable position. As a hybrid, I had grown horns, a tail, and wings, and kept my ability to manipulate my element. The appendages were as surprising as the virus. A vampire wasn’t supposed to
pass the virus to an incarnate and Verloren hadn’t intended to do it.

As a born knowing Verloren was able to see people’s auras. From an aura’s color he could identify what someone was.
No other vampire could do that and I hadn’t inherited the trait, probably because it was not part of the original virus. Verloren and I had been together in a life before this, him, a born knowing, and I, a dragon. Kale had been his maker—Kale, who knew the laws and knew what he was doing. Kale had produced this combination out of spite and morbid curiosity. Kale had killed me when I was pregnant in that earlier incarnation, then he had turned Verloren. He assumed the death of the last dragon and her child would ensure his rise to power. He did gain entrance to the Quatre, but nothing could keep Verloren and me apart forever.

Soul
mates
,
I thought.

As Verloren looked at me his face lit up. He brushed my black-dyed hair from my face. I would have loved to keep it the natural white of a vampire, but I would’ve stood out even more. Hard as it was, if others saw me, I wanted to blend in. He sli
d closer to me and turned to kiss my neck. I could feel his hot breath as his long hair brushed my skin. My whole body tingled. I shuddered, then kissed him. His breathing was loud and his hands trembled as he cradled my face in his hands. I kissed him carefully, mindful of my fangs. He lacked those. My hands roamed under his shirt and across his chest.

“All right, you fuckers! Knock it off!” Jason snapped.

The tingling rose to my cheeks. If I’d still been human, I would have blushed. It seemed ironic that the only werewolf I knew had such a short temper. Unlike movie werewolves Jason didn’t shift with the moon or his temper. Instead he did it on cue. He could control the change. His diet of human flesh complemented our own nutrition needs. Verloren and I lived on human blood. We killed our victims so they wouldn’t turn into vampires themselves. We always had to cover our tracks. Jason’s diet helped. He ate the fleshy remains from our feedings.

Though it could be confusing, it was also helpful for me to read the minds of people around me. To stop this it was necessary to construct a mental wall. This went both ways. Anyone who was around
me a lot could build their own and I had to keep a wall intact because otherwise my thoughts would easily slip into their minds. If I didn’t watch this it could get embarrassing. Right at that moment Jason was glaring at me in the rearview mirror as he struggled to keep me out.

I hadn’t eat
en since our arrival in Siberia and my hunger was growing acute. Even Hania and Jason smelled good. It was a horrible thought but I was starving. Verloren was hungry too. I could see it in his too-lean body.

Shortly after landing in America, Hania turned around and flew back to Siberia
. There he had our trip planned and informed me that I was not to feed until we arrived at our destination. He sealed his mind from me and told me nothing more. I had an inkling about why Hania didn’t want me to eat. I kept the thought sealed, not even sharing it with Verloren.

Pedro’s pal, the blond werewolf, had eaten my leftovers. Once he consumed my virus I’d accessed his mind, but I couldn’t be sure what the effect had been. The guy di
sappeared after the Quatre fell so I tried not to worry about it. The easiest way to keep Verloren from useless worry was to lock the thought away in the back of my mind. It was in a place where no one, not even Verloren, could find it. Still, the memory was there like an urgent echo in Hania’s voice.

The trip was exhausting. I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the seat, and drifted in and out of sleep. I stirred now and then, always to a different song in my ear buds.

I dreamt I stood on a stage with a large crowd staring at me. The bright lights sent me into a panic and I ran away. Someone pulled me into the darkness behind the stage, hissing that I must hide in the shadows so God could not see me. There in the dark I felt exposed and scared. My fear was unreasoning. I had never believed in God.

I felt
something warm on my face and opened my eyes. Chiodos was playing on the mp3. Verloren was holding me. He’d set his cheek against mine.

Don’t worry so much, love. It’s going to be okay,
he told me wordlessly.

You were watching my dreams again?
I asked.

He smiled at me and softly kissed me, then he touched the tips of the horns and smiled at me.
I don’t like it when you’re not happy.

I am happy,
I thought.
I have you. You know how it is. I just don’t like to meet new people.
I bit my lip.
Especially when it’s a lot of people.

The underground dwelling in the Olympic National Forest had been my choice. I knew Verloren hated the Midwest. It had bee
n the scene of too much death. He could never safely return there. With Chris and Jessica gone Verloren felt he had little to go back to. He still beat himself up about taking Jessica’s life, even though he realized the consequences of leaving her alive would’ve meant torture and worse for her. Though she’d instructed him to kill her, he’d loved her as a friend. It was a situation with no good choices, so they’d done the best they could. Now Verloren never wanted to think about it again. With riots breaking out in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan there was less reason than ever to visit the heartland.

I’d seen the northwest through a screen hooked up to the Internet. Th
e rain forests looked beautiful and there was the ocean I’d never seen. Hania assured me that our location was near a beach. The only way to reach this strip of sand was a single hiking trail running from our new home to the shoreline. We would only have to share it with visiting incarnates. Otherwise it was private.