by Sophia Sharp
And she has questions that need to be answered. Just who are the elders, and why have they taken such a keen interest in her? As she starts the unravel the cloak that shrouds their existence, she begins to suspect that she may have stumbled into something much larger than herself... and starts to understand her destiny for the first time.
Revelations
(Book Two of the FORSAKEN SAGA)
Copyright © 2013, Sophia Sharp
Awesome editing provided by: Denise Nicholls
eBook Version 1.0
Publication Date: January 15, 2014
Cover Art by: Laura Sava
http://sophiasharp.blogspot.com
Book Description:
Nora has survived the dark caves, and emerged with Hunter by her side. But her escape is quickly tainted as she realizes the biggest danger still lies ahead...
She has been transformed, and powers she has never known begin to manifest themselves within her body. As she struggles to gain control, how long will she be able to restrain herself - and her new bloodlust - from taking over?
As she journeys onward, doubts begin to creep into her mind. Doubts about leaving home, about the decisions she's made. But with the Vassiz still behind her, there is no turning back, now.
And she has questions that need to be answered. Just who are the elders, and why have they taken such a keen interest in her? As she starts the unravel the cloak that shrouds their existence, she begins to suspect that she may have stumbled into something much larger than herself... and starts to understand her destiny for the first time.
Chapter One
~A New Beginning~
Nora ran through the open grass field. She was fast, impossibly fast. She reveled in the new sensations.
Wind rushed past her body, streamed through her hair, and made her dress whip behind her. The feeling was ecstatic. Exciting. Thrilling.
Strength and power surged through her. Fast. She had so much speed, that if she spread her arms she might leap in the air and fly. She was agile, too. She could see much farther than before, and objects came into focus much more quickly than she ever could have imagined.
She laughed in delight. Her reflexes were so sharp she could zip through a maze of trees in the forest without ever slowing. She felt alive. A wide range of good emotions poured through her. She felt like she could keep going forever, keep running through the pristine, never-ending field until the end of time. She had energy that would last a lifetime. Ten lifetimes.
She picked up speed, running even faster. The landscape blurred at her sides, she blinked for a second, and…she stumbled. She caught her footing, but not before a rich, full laugh warmed her heart. Hunter’s laugh. She looked over at him, running beside her through the field.
“Not so easy getting used to, is it?” He smirked playfully.
Nora grinned devilishly in reply. She leapt up, high in the air, her speed taking her over a great distance. She landed and kept going, running as fast as she could, outpacing Hunter.
Or so she thought. In a second he was beside her, laughing. She laughed with him. He reached out to take her hand, and they ran, together as one. They leapt high into the air, soaring to the treetops, their speed elevating them ever higher, and for a blissful second she felt absolutely weightless. She had no worries or cares in the world except the man beside her.
Then her grip on Hunter’s hand started to wane. Confused, she looked over – and realized she could see right through him. Her heart stuttered. He was fading away, becoming a mist of the man he once was. His shape was still there, running alongside her, but it was becoming less and less distinctive.
Suddenly, he was gone.
Nora stopped, looking around. She marked the place where she was in her mind and closed her eyes. Then she fell back.
She fell, but never hit the ground. Instead, she fell through great churning rivers of molten fire and massive waterfalls of ice. Past darkness eternal and through the burning nucleus of newborn stars. She fell, feeling heat and cold, life and death. Down she fell, away from the light she once knew, into an abyss sheltered at the edge of time. Through memories remembered and lifetimes long forgotten, she fell and felt her skin being burned away by the furnace of a ceaseless inferno, felt her bones crumble to ash and freeze in the cold remains of another world. A thousand burning needles pierced her skin, leaving no point untouched, and the weight of a great avalanche slammed into her.
She fell…and was ripped unceremoniously back to reality.
Her eyes came open slowly. Lately, the transition into the real world seemed to take longer. And that brief transitory moment felt more real. The memory of it was more lasting.
She looked around. Dark woods surrounded her, untouched by the presence of humanity for hundreds of years. A tiny sliver of moon hung in the sky and provided precious little light. But Nora didn’t need light to see, anymore. That had been the most surprising part of her transformation. To her eyes, everything was dark, as it had been when she was just a human, but…she could tell where things were. Not only that, but she knew their textures, and knew their dimensions down to the hundredth of an inch. It was a different kind of vision, one that Nora had been both amazed and humbled by.
Hunter sat across from her, reclining against an old fallen tree with his shirt off, since he hadn’t found a new one after leaving the tunnels. Nora looked down at her dress. It had grown dirty and worn in the past few days. A pity, that, but she had more important things to attend to.
Getting up, she walked over to Hunter and crouched beside him. He looked to her and lifted his arm, and she settled comfortably against his body. His arm draped over her shoulder, and he looked at her in silence. She smiled shyly, and he reached over to trace the outline of her jaw with his thumb.
“What do you think happened to Rafael?” Nora asked softly.
Hunter watched her silently. He looked for a long time, staring deep into her eyes. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted.
They had emerged from those tunnels unscathed, thanks to Rafael’s help. Thanks to his sacrifice. Nora didn’t know where they’d have ended up without him. Likely serving as sacrificial lambs to the elders and other Vassiz.
She shuddered, and Hunter pulled her closer.
“I think he got away,” she said quietly.
Hunter grunted in reply. Taking his hand in hers, she settled against him. When they touched…she felt a sensation unlike any she’d experienced before. The most gentle of electric shocks, just a small jolt of static, ran through her entire body whenever their skin made contact. She had asked him about it, the first time she felt it, but he’d just smiled knowingly at her without saying anything.
They sat together in silence for a while, but then Hunter coughed. Her head shot up. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“You just coughed. I’ve never seen you do that before.”
He smiled. “Just because you haven’t seen me do things before doesn’t mean I’m incapable of doing them.”
“You’re not sick, are you? Can you even get sick?”
He shrugged and smiled in reply. “I’m fine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you?”
“No, not at all.” He rubbed her back reassuringly.
“Well…okay then.” She pressed her ear against his chest. He cradled her head gently and looked away, up at the stars above them. She looked down, however. Down at the three scars that ran across his torso.
Cautiously, she traced her finger over them. They were perfectly aligned with one another.
“How did you get these?” she prodded gently.
“Hmm?” Hunter looked down at her and saw her fingers lying against his body for the first time. “Oh.” He paused. “I’ll tell you…” He kissed her forehead. “Another time.”
She sighed and let it go…again. She shifted her weight to get more comfortable.
The three days since they’d emerged from the caves had been absolutely mag
nificent. Because she no longer had the taint of human blood within her, she and Hunter could enter the world of dreams unafraid of being discovered by the elders. Well, not exactly – there were still precautions they needed to take, for if they inadvertently stumbled across one of the elders there, they would never be able to get out. But they could enter the world of dreams without fear of their entrance being noticed by the dream walkers, and they had done it every night since leaving the caves. In the dream world, Nora didn’t have to wait for her abilities to fully emerge. There, she had full access to all of them. Which is why Hunter had taken to teaching her how to best make use of her body in the dream realm – in preparation for the time when all of those abilities would become accessible in real life.
Nora looked around her at the thick forest canopy. She didn’t know where they were, but, their travel in the real world was still limited by Nora’s inability to yet move as fast as Hunter. In the dream world, her body took full form, and she could do nearly everything Hunter could, but in the real world…well, here she was only slightly faster than she had been. Agility and speed turned out to be the slower gifts to come following the transformation.
She did know, however, that they were miles away from civilization. Miles away from any people.
At the thought of people, something stirred deep inside of her. A desire unlike any other. A madness that came from the pit of her stomach and threatened to overtake her whole body. People. Where there were people, there was blood. She tensed, and her eyes widened. Where there was blood, she could feed. She started breathing more quickly, and her heartbeat jumped to double its previous pace. Her breaths became short, ragged, and her entire body stiffened.
“Whoa, whoa there.” Hunter had her by the shoulders. She ignored him. She needed blood, needed to feed. He held her tighter. She fought his grip, struggled to get out. It seemed…easy to throw him off. If she just twisted this way…
“Nora, it’s me.” She ignored the urgency in his tone. “It’s me, you’re with me. Here. Look at me.”
Nora’s awareness slowly returned. Hunter was sitting on top of her, holding her down by the shoulders. They were a good hundred paces away from the fallen tree. And strain lined his face as he fought to hold her down.
Her eyes shot from him back to the spot where they’d been. Slowly, her body began to relax. Hunter nodded, and got up off her. He offered his hand to help her up.
“It happened again,” she said abashedly.
Hunter nodded. “It’s getting more frequent. I know you need to feed, Nora, but you have to hold on for just a little longer. You need to control your thoughts.”
“I’ll try.” But controlling her thoughts was…difficult. At that unbidden thought of human blood, her new feeding instinct took over. And she blindly raced away, searching impulsively for the presence of any humans. Had Hunter not stopped her, she would have kept going, stopping at nothing until her thirst for blood had been satiated.
At least her control was improving. The bloodlust that overtook her right after the transformation had been nearly impossible to control. But with Hunter’s help, she’d managed it. Somewhat. She had feasted on animal blood once that first day, but it was thin, vacuous. It was empty. It was like giving a starving man a single grape and telling him it would hold off his pain.
Since then, Nora had fought desperately to control the cravings. Sometimes she managed to control them. Sometimes not. Thankfully, the times she hadn’t, Hunter was there to stop her.
“We’ll get you what you need, Nora.” Hunter brushed her hair back from her face. “You just have to trust me.”
“I do trust you.” Nora lowered her head, repulsed by her cravings, but knowing the deprivation was keeping her weaker than she’d be otherwise.
“I know you do.” He slipped his hand around the small of her back and led her back to their camp. “For now, though, you need to get some rest. You’ll be better tomorrow morning after you sleep, and we’ll travel hard again.” Hunter still hadn’t felt the urge to sleep since taking Vassiz blood, but Nora slept heavily and deeply every night. And her dreams – her real dreams, not the ones in the dream realm – had been dark and foreboding. She woke up every morning knowing she’d had nightmares, but was utterly unable to remember them.
Hunter sat down at his spot by the tree, and Nora lay down beside him. She put her head on his lap, and closed her eyes.
The gentle strokes of his hand through her hair lulled her to sleep.
Chapter Two
~ To Feed ~
After waking the next morning, Nora and Hunter continued through the woods. They journeyed north and east, moving toward the Canadian border. It was in the evening, when the sun had started to fall, that Hunter stopped mid-pace and became very still.
“What is it?” Nora stopped and turned to him.
“Wait,” he whispered. “Can you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Nora strained her ears, again becoming all the more aware of her improved hearing. Aware of the breeze rustling the leaves, of the birds singing in the distance, of the faint, crunching footsteps of movement through the undergrowth. Wait. Footsteps?
Nora closed her eyes to focus completely on her sense of hearing. It was nothing she’d done before, but it just…came naturally. Somehow, using only the sound waves moving through the air, Nora was able to distinguish the source of the movement. She could tell how far away it was, down to the nearest few meters, and – more shockingly – could even estimate the size of whatever was making the noise. And…the shape.
“A man,” she breathed. “Close by.”
Hunter nodded and gripped her hand. “Try not to breathe through your nose.”
Nora wanted to listen, but she couldn’t resist. She took a breath in and sensed the faintest hint of something tangy, something sweet and unknown. Immediately her heart started beating faster, and her adrenaline kicked in.
“Don’t let go of my hand.” The tension in Hunter’s voice made her heart hammer against her ribs. “You can’t feed here. It would give us away.”
Nora gripped his hand tightly, but there was no mistaking the unmistakable scent of humans. Close by.
Her breathing became hard enough to cause an ache in her chest. “Focus on my grip,” Hunter reminded her urgently. Nora nodded and gritted her teeth as she stared at his hand entwined with hers. She focused entirely on feeling the strength of his grip, the size of his hand enveloping hers. But the feeding instinct pulsed deep within her.
She fought down a wave that threatened to overcome her, breathing harder, straining with the effort to suppress her natural instincts. It was too much. The desire to feed completely overwhelmed her. The need for blood. Another wave shook her body, and she very nearly succumbed to it. But she once again fought it down. Barely.
An intensity unlike any other gripped her, and she started to lose control, to surrender to the feeding instinct that now pulsed through her veins. Just as she was about to collapse under the pressure…the feel of Hunter’s hand gripping hers tightly penetrated the haze.
She looked down at their hands, fingers interlocked. Hunter was right there, right beside her. And he was containing himself.
She studied his face. It was the image of pure composure. Nora gritted her teeth and willed the instinct to subside, determined not to let the hunger take over. If Hunter could do it, so could she.
She forced herself to inhale deeply, careful to breathe through her mouth, and held the breath before releasing it very slowly. Consciously, she began to slow her breathing, keeping it shallow enough to dull her sense of smell.
Anxious seconds passed, and she teetered on the edge of losing control.
But then her heartbeat lessened, and her body relaxed. She focused on Hunter’s hand gripping hers. He was there beside her, and she could finally relax.
“Well done.” A sense of pride shone in his eyes. “The first containment is always the hardest. Especially once you’ve caught the scent. You’re learning c
ontrol.”
Despite herself, Nora smiled. Hunter had over four hundred years of experience with this, while she was just starting out, and she had matched him completely. Despite not having fed once, yet.
“Wait.” Hunter tensed. “There are more.”
Nora strained her ears again, listening for the movement. He was right. Three more humans trampled through the brush. “Who are they?”
“A hunting party, I’d bet.”
“But what are they doing so far out in the woods?”
Hunter looked around and scowled. “We must be closer to civilization than I thought.” Then his tone changed to one of greater urgency. “They’re coming toward us. Quick!”
He took off, and Nora ran after him. He ran gracefully and silently through the vegetation, while Nora had a bit more trouble. Still, she didn’t think she made enough noise for the humans to notice.
“Here.” Hunter pointed to a massive growth of a tree. He thrust Nora into a cranny in the protruding roots, then crawled in after her.
“Why can’t we just run? It’s not like they could catch us.”
He was shaking his head before she’d even finished voicing the question. “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve been able to control yourself so far, which is good, but running will make your hunting instinct kick in.” He looked her dead in the eye. “That would be disastrous.”
Nora gulped. She hated being scared of herself, of what she might do, and she equally hated feeling helpless about it. She still remembered what it was like being human – in fact, even now, she still felt human – and couldn’t imagine taking someone’s life. But her morals and ethics would mean nothing if the feeding instinct took over.
“We can stay here until they leave,” Nora said, and Hunter nodded. He took her hand again and held it tightly while they waited.
