by Carol Robi
Nuit Noire
Written by Carol Robi
All right reserved
Copyright © 2014 by Carol Robi
First Edition
A YA Fantasy Romance novel..
Summary
She dreads the nights, for she dreads the dreadful dreams that come with it- nightmares that began with the devastating loss of her father.
But now she realises something worse, that her dreams are not just dreams, and that there’s something darker out there, and it’s determined to claim her.
It’s upon one such dark night that they finally meet.
Everything she thought she knew is now toppled over as she learns of a world she never knew existed before, of a race she's never heard of, and of a boy whose touch could kill her.
Cover Image: "Love will tear us apart (82519095)" by MaraB. is a brainless starfucker from Bs, Italy - Love will tear us apart. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Love_will_tear_us_apart_(82519095).jpg#mediaviewer/File:Love_will_tear_us_apart_(82519095).jpg
Changes by Carol Robi
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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 1
It feels weird, because my brother, mom and I are seated quietly in the car, even though music has been blaring from the radio for hours as we drive along the highway. We always sung in the car- dad and I, while mom would hum along and Tony would beg us to shut up, though often enough he’d eventually join us in singing.
Recently, however, we’ve all been silent. The garage where dad had practiced his music in has been silent for a while. The random sounds of guitar strings being plucked in our house are no more. So are the sounds of a basketball dribbling at the halfcourt my parents built for Tony, the sound of laughter as mom and Tony play 1on1, the ball hitting the metal ring- the laughter in the Torres home is gone.
Everyone is mad at everyone. That’s what you’d think at first, for that is the near tangible emotion. We would rather be angry at each other, snap at each other, than accept what is really wrong with us, what is really hurting us.
Currently, Tony and I are mad at mom for shipping us off to another city, leaving our family home behind. We are leaving the streets that we grew up in, our friends from childhood, everything we ever knew or felt safe in. As you can imagine, a few angry words have been said between us. So now mom is mad too.
The day spent on the highway slowly gives way to night, and it is about 9pm that mom slows down into the parking lot of a diner just by the highway, where we stop to eat.
“Stick to plain fries and soda..”
“Mom!” I fret.
“You know how squishy your stomach gets on the road,” she says, her voice tired, but the irritation is still clear in her eyes. I want to disobey her, and order a cheeseburger, the seafood sandwich or something like that just to see what she’ll do. Part of me pities her though, so I settle for the plain fries, as does Tony.
We eat in uncomfortable silence. Even the waitress seems unsure when she approaches us to ask if we need anything else. She clears her throat uncomfortably before speaking.
“Coffee?” She asks. Mom shakes her head.
“We don’t drink coffee,” she says quietly, her voice attempting to mask just how tired she really is.
“You folks been driving long?” The waitress goes on to ask, her curiosity clear in her voice. Mom nods.
“You’ll be needing a motel then for the night,” the waitress says. “You could check into..”
“We are really not in a chit-chatting mood,” mom says. Her voice is calm, but the words sound just as harsh as she means them to. The waitress’ smiling face now falls, and is replaced by a haughty expression.
“Just trying to be nice is all,” she says curtly, before walking away.
“You didn’t have to be rude,” Tony says.
“I was not rude,” mom says. “I was honest. Now finish up your food. It’ll take us another half hours’ drive to get to our motel.”
I could argue with her, say something snippy, but I really am not in the mood. We’ve been fighting for so long, that I can’t remember when we last had a normal conversation. I choose to remain silent.
After finishing my plate of fries and a large coke, I take a quick bathroom break before joining mom and Tony back at our table.
The waitress is still frowning despite the generous tip she gets from mom as we walk out the diner.
It is an eerie darkness that engulfs us as we walk across the parking area towards the SUV with an enclosed trailer fixed to it, that contains any of our belongings that mom hadn’t made us sell at the garage sale we held last weekend and the weekend before that. Beside the few pieces of furniture we took with us, all we have in there are clothes, shoes, family pictures and a few trinkets of personal value. She let me bring dad’s old records, his guitar collection, and the keyboard he often played on when writing a new song.
I shiver from the chilly breeze, and maybe a little from apprehension brought upon by the pitch black night and the disconcerting feel in the air. It’s a pulling that seems to be growing stronger, an urgency to get somewhere that has me tethered on the edge of impatience.
“Are you alright?” Mom asks, moving closer to me. Part of me wants to lean in closer to her, feel her arms around me and relax in the knowledge that I am safe, as she’s always been the protector of our family. I shrug her off though.
Mom is a policewoman. She’d been a detective, but her decision to move us to Greenfield, a town somewhere North East of Ontario, was because she’d gotten a job offer as assistant chief at the Greenfield Police Department.
Tony and I do not want to move. Mom had quoted some bull about it being a fresh start for us, but she really means a fresh start for herself. Tony and I do not need a fresh start. She’s the one that can’t handle dad’s death. She’s the one that’s to blame for it. The serial killer that had come after us, did it because of his vendetta against mom. He came home one night when mom had still been at work, and dad, just a happy-go-lucky musician playing nights at some local pubs, had to play the protector and fight the family butcher. That’s what they called the serial killer, the family butcher, because he went around murdering whole families, hacking them up and leaving pieces of them lying on clean kitchen counters, piled up per ten kilos.
Mom had identified him as a thirty eight year old computer analyst that had been the son of a butcher in inner town Hamilton. Jason Dunham was his name. A normal name, if you ask me. A name I never thought a serial killer would have. A name that does not suit a person that would hack up fathers, mothers and children, and arrange their body pieces in precise ten kilo piles.
I was there- I’ll never forget it. I stood frozen and watched as dad fought the tall slender stranger with his guitar. I watched the knife in the stranger’s hand sink into dad’s chest, and I would have been next if Tony hadn’t snuck in right that moment from behind our father’s murderer and sank a bread knife through his back. It is only when I saw that Tony’s blow wasn’t fatal, and that Jason had begun turning around to thrust the knife still covered in dad’s blood into my brother, that something kicked inside me, causing me to gra
b the small coffee table I had been attempting to hide behind and rush towards the intruder.
I hit his head with the table, and it shattered over his head, raining shards of glass over us as Tony sank the bread knife through the side of his stomach this time. We didn’t stop then, not even when the man fell to his knees before our father. It must have been exhaustion that finally brought us to our knees. It was there that mother found us hours later when she came home, sitting on our heels besides the dead bodies of our father and his killer.
That had been slightly over a year ago, and after many trips to different psychiatrists and support groups, mom had decided that a change of scenery would suit us best. She agreed to a job transfer to Greenfield, which is in part a raise, as the assistant chief of the police department there.
Mom believes that the change of scenery will help us get over the trauma. I doubt that Tony and I will ever forget that night though. Some memories are impossible to erase.
The car draws to a stop before a lone motel, and Tony and I slip quietly out of the car and follow after mom.
……………………………..
She’s coming. I know she is. I can feel it in the air- the incessant tug in my heart. A tug that until now I’d only read about in the Grondoraut, our bible of sorts, or heard of from my family members. A feeling I have waited for all my very life. A feeling I have waited for so anxiously and impatiently that in more than one occasion I actually thought I felt it, only to be dashed with disappointment upon realizing that I had imagined it all.
It started two years ago. I never let anyone know about it those first few instances. I was too scared, thought I was imagining it all again. It grew slowly, and that is when I knew it was real. She was just awakening, I could feel it. She must have just then turned fourteen or fifteen years old. I fought every instinct against going after her, not wanting to rush her, to scare her, to loose control- for I couldn’t trust myself not to lose control with her. I then told father about her, and what she could be, and that night my family held me a party worthy of kings.
I located her a while later, found her in a Northern America city one day at a tightly packed gym. My eyes zeroed in on her. She’d been chanting something, her lips smiling through the wordings being shouted, her lean limbs moving in co-ordinated synchrony to those of the similarly uniformed girls around her. Her dark brown eyes were glinting happily in the brightly lit gym, her thick curly hair bouncing as she moved to just below her ears. Her limbs were a warm red-brown, glowing from the thin layer of sweat glistening on her skin from the exercise. I’d have accepted her whatever state I found her, beautiful or not. However her beauty had knocked me back, taking my breath away.
I remember growling angrily when another girl threw her into the air, where she catapulted before falling back into the netted hands of the young girls dressed in brightly coloured uniforms before a basketball game taking place. Cheerleaders.
That is the first time in my life I ever experienced real fear. I feared that she’d die, even before I met her. Before I knew her, and branded her with our bond as eternal mates. She’d die even before I had the chance, and I’d be left scouring the earth for her again for yet another half a millenium or so. Right then I knew that I could not wait. I would not wait for fate to bring us together as it eventually would. I wanted us to be together as soon as possible.
I told father I was moving back to our main home in Northern America- Greenfield City, Ontario.
“You’re not going alone,” father said. “Of course we are coming with you.”
“You don’t have to..”
“Nonsense! We are family. And family sticks together.”
My sister Hilda and my brother Hemming hadn’t complained about the impromptu re-emigration. I guess I wouldn’t have either if it had been Hemming that had found his xana. I’d have only been too happy to support him, see to it that he got united with his eternal mate. So we packed up shop, left our current home in England and moved to our other home in Greenfield.
I tried to be patient, I really did, but I had been waiting for her for far too long, and my patience had run out. I started calling her about a year ago. In her dreams mainly, for I did not want to scare her. I’d tug on our connection and urge her to come to me. I’d plant the seed that she ought to find me, and with that I left it to fate and her intuition to subconsciously lead her to me.
She’s on her way. I can feel it. She subconsciously tells me- her mind does, our hearts do, our predestined connection does. My xana is on her way. She is sad, I know she is. It’s a tragic chain of circumstances that is bringing her to me. I am not sure what. I ought to look into it. I’ll ask our acquaintances to look into it, and inform me on what had happened in Hamilton, that has my leman’s heart so sad. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed her. I should never have called her. I should have let fate bring her to me when the time was right.
Too late now. She’s coming. That’s all that matters. Any other wounds she might have, I intend on healing them for her. I intend on making her happy. My leman is finally coming to me.
Chapter 2
We’ve been here for two weeks already, and I hate it just as much as I hated it the first time I saw it. It’s not that small a city, but it’s smaller than Hamilton, quieter, and surrounded by endless forests and moors. It feels.. isolated. I doubt that is what any of us needs at the moment. It’s size isn’t what makes me hate it. It’s the silence- its continuous silence, uneventfulness, that allows my thoughts to delve in memories I’d rather it won’t. That denies my mind its much needed respite. I don’t know what mom could have been thinking by bringing us here.
“I was thinking we could build a half-court by the garage outside,” mom says to Tony. “Like the one we had back in Hamilton.”
Tony just shrugs and continues playing on dad’s guitar idly, plucking a single string continuously, making a repetitive hollow melancholic tone.
“What do you think, honey?” She asks again. Tony says nothing. “I just thought..”
“He doesn’t want it!” I retort at her. “Let him be..”
“Sophia, stay out of this,” mom says, before turning back to Tony.
I sulk, rising from my place on the new couch we’d bought last week and walk out through the patio door and out onto the wooden patio. I climb into the hammock to my right, and increase the volume so that the music blaring through my earphones silences all around me, even the voices in my head.
I must have fallen asleep, for I know I’m dreaming, or caught somewhere between the state of my dream world and reality. I know it’s not real, but I feel it, the tug, a pull really, as though something is beckoning me. The calling gets so strong, that I think I’ll tear apart if I do not head for it. It isn’t my name, nor is it a gesture. It’s just a pull, almost like a magnetic pull, that makes my whole being, my body, mind and spirit want to head to it, run to it, lunge into it and lose myself in it.
My eyes fly open to brilliant orange-red streaked eyes staring back at me. I start back, a blood-curdling scream escaping me. A scream so loud that it jolts me out of my dreaming state. And when next I blink my eyes open, it’s mom’s and Tony’s soft brown eyes that are looking into mine with deep concern.
“You’re alright,” mom’s soft cries are heart wrenching as she encloses me into her arms, and Tony’s hands run comfortingly down my arms. “You’re alright, my darling,” mom says again.
But am I really? I think to myself unconvinced, my heart still hammering out of rhythm.
“It was just a dream,” she puts in again. “Just a terrible dream. It’s over now.” I give in to the comfort of her strong arms, and my mind calms down at the sound of her soothing voice.
I do not fight her when she urges me to follow them into the house, but I refuse all her attempts to tell me to try nap again, saying that she’ll watch over me. The one thing I fear most is sleeping. That’s why I listen to my music so loud. I never want to sleep. My sleep is haunted- my subconscious
is my greatest enemy at the moment.
“I don’t want to sleep mom,” I argue.
“But.. you look so tired. I’ll sit right here the whole time. I’ll watch over you.” I pity her, but not enough to give in to her request and trust my nightmares not to attack me while I slumber.
“I do not want to sleep right now mom,” I insist. “I want to do something. Anything.” I look pleadingly at Tony. His eyes are haunted as they look back at me. But he understands me. He understands what I need, how I feel.
“Let’s build the basketball court together,” he says, and both mom and I look at him surprised.
We work muted, music from dad’s complicated stereo that Tony had set up blaring, masking the deathly silence we are in. Mom had bought all the items needed, which she’d packed into the garage. We use the garage’s wall to prop the board and hoop against, Tony and I holding the ladder steady as mom does the drilling, securing them into place after we’ve measured the correct height and marked it.
This isn’t new to us, mom being a handyman. Even when dad was alive, it was mom that wore the pants, so to speak. She built us a treehouse when we’d been five on the Mulberry tree growing at the backyard of the house we grew up in, the house where we were later to watch our father die. Mom is the one that changed the bulbs in our house, unclogged the plumbing, fixed windows or creaking doors, or repaired broken furniture before resorting to buy new ones. She changed the locks after the contractor that was meant to divide the nursery into two rooms when Tony and I were of age to sleep in separate bedrooms used his copy of keys to break in and steal some of the valuables in our house.
Dad was always the homey one of the two. He drove us to school, attended our games, cooked. He’d been a great cook. Some of my best memories with him where when we’d cooked together. Dad was a musician, a singer-songwriter. He practiced his music in the garage, where I would often sit and sing or play along with him. Tony would at times join us too, when he wasn’t playing basketball with his friends or against mom just outside the garage. I have memories with me and dad harmonizing his songs while a ball dribbled just outside, or the hollow sound it made when it bounced against the board fixed to the garage wall, the clink when it hit the ring, and the laughter or jeer from rivalling son and mother outside while daughter and father made music. That is what home is to me. The image I have of home. An image I will never have again.
