Shannon A. Thompson
Book 3 in The Timely Death Trilogy
THIS book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Death Before Daylight
Copyright ©2015 Shannon A. Thompson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63422-089-7
Cover Design by: Marya Heiman
Typography by: Courtney Nuckels
Editing by: Kelly Risser
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To Alex – for dreaming up daylight in a dark place.
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 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Acknowledgements
About the Author
1
Jessica
“I’m leaving,” I shouted over my shoulder and opened the front door, but I stopped before stepping outside.
“No, you are not,” my mother responded while running out of the kitchen. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head, and the frizzy strands were as crazy as her bewildered expression. “It’s too dangerous right now.”
It had been two weeks since the battle, two weeks since we lost so many, and two weeks since the news called it a mass suicide. The rumor said it was a cult of some sort. I hated the gossip. I hated how people assumed Teresa Young—or Camille—was a part of it. But I couldn’t tell anyone the truth. No one would know she was a hero.
“It’s fine, Mom.” I was officially a professional at faking a believable smile. “No one is in trouble—”
“We don’t know that.” The frown lines around her eyes deepened. “I don’t believe the news any more than the next person.”
My smile was almost impossible to keep. Luthicer, the only half-breed elder capable of mass illusion, created the news. So far, Hayworth hadn’t questioned it. Not once. But my mother was.
I shut the door, and the lock clicked into place. “I won’t leave,” I said, but I wasn’t listening to myself. My mind was too busy racing. Luthicer’s illusion was failing. It never failed.
“Okay,” she breathed, leaning her back against the wall. “Don’t you have homework?”
Winter break didn’t end until tomorrow, but I still responded “Yeah” because something was definitely wrong. “I’ll be upstairs.”
“Okay, Jessie.”
I didn’t look at her again as I raced upstairs. I couldn’t. I had to focus on getting to the shelter. The elders had been in meetings nonstop, and I promised Eric I would be there. I was over two hours late.
When I pushed my bedroom door open, my heart slowed. I felt his presence before I saw him, but I didn’t recognize it. My hands sprang up, and my knees bent. I spun around, ready to kick, but he leapt back and hissed, “It’s me.”
I froze.
His electric green eyes were like his name. They pierced through me.
“Pierce.” I cursed and my muscles relaxed. My chest rose as I sucked in a breath. “Sorry,” I muttered. “You could’ve told me you were here.”
“I tried,” he admitted, tapping his temple to signal his telepathy. “It isn’t working.”
I searched my mind, dipping in and out of all the connections I had gained over the past year. They felt like light switches, flipped off and stuck. My connection with Pierce—my guard—had sizzled away overnight. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Like I said, it isn’t working,” he repeated, his eyes searching my expression. “Are any of your other powers changing?”
I stilled. I knew what was happening because the elders hadn’t stopped talking about it. The powers were shifting. While most of the Dark were weakening, one shade couldn’t even transform anymore. The Light hadn’t even been around, but if Luthicer’s illusion was dwindling, then we knew their powers were ceasing as well. Neither side won the battle, but the battle had beaten us all.
“What’s going on?” I asked without knowing if I was asking him or myself. “This isn’t right.”
Nothing was.
“We have to go,” Pierce said, reaching out. His palm faced me. “I have to admit,” he said. “I thought you might have gotten in trouble when you didn’t show.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him why I was late. My memories were still restoring, and they paralyzed me any time they did. One day, I remembered something, and the next, I forgot it, but when a memory came back, I relived it as if it were happening in real-time. This morning, I remembered how I had told Eric I hated him. The realization made me sick. I hadn’t put on my engagement ring since, but I was going to see Eric for the first time in days.
“Hold on,” I said, stepping over to my desk. I opened the drawer and pulled out the jewelry. When I slipped it on my finger, I sensed Pierce’s stare. “Don’t tell him,” I managed. “Please.”
“My duty is to you, Jess,” he said, but his words were quiet.
Even worse, the telepathic communications changed. A line in my mind shifted, but only one buzzed, quiet and unused. Eric. Anytime I wore the ring, I could feel him. I had yet to ask if it was the same for him.
&nb
sp; “Let’s go,” I said, taking Pierce’s cold palm as our molecules disintegrated into the darkness I called home.
***
Camille’s grave was the first thing I saw when we transported into the underground shelter. I barely noticed how cold the hallway was. I could only stare at the black room I had yet to visit. Her funeral was the day after Eric gave me his mother’s ring. My guilt had kept me away. Eric encouraged me to grieve how I needed to, but he didn’t tell me how he was grieving. He hadn’t even mentioned her to me.
“He hasn’t gone yet either,” Pierce spoke as his hand slipped from mine.
I stared at my guard, trying to piece his shade features into his human identity. It was impossible. Pierce’s heightened cheekbones and slanted eyes were anything but close to the artful and half-blind Jonathon Stone. But his grand smile was the same.
“Has he said anything to you?” I asked.
Pierce didn’t have to shake his head. We both knew Eric was in denial. Since the Marking of Change, he hardly left the shelter. He practically lived there. But he hadn’t visited the one room I thought he would spend his time in—especially since the elders’ meeting room was across the hallway.
Before Pierce and I continued speaking, the meeting room’s door cracked open. A boy slipped out, and his black hair flickered in and out of the shadows, even though his blue eyes burned through them. “Jessica.” His voice was unforgettable.
I sprang forward, and Eric wrapped his arms around my torso. His usual earthy scent was gone. He smelled like the shelter’s cold, hard stone. As his fingers drew circles on my lower back, he spoke to Pierce, “How is everything?”
“Not good.”
I moved closer to Eric’s side. “My mom started questioning the news.”
Eric’s back tensed. “Not her, too.” There had been others.
“What did Luthicer say?”
“Not much.” The circles beneath Eric’s eyes showed how little he had slept. “He’s weaker than usual, so that is making it difficult for him to run experiments, but he can still run individual illusions.”
He could make my parents forget.
“He can’t do that to the whole town,” Pierce said.
“That’s the problem.”
“So, we haven’t gotten anywhere,” Pierce always said what everyone was thinking. The Dark was weak. The Light was weak. The prophecy hadn’t done anything. We were losing our powers again—at least, most of us were.
“Are you weak?” Eric asked through our telepathic line.
I glanced at him. “No.”
“Me neither.”
Unlike the others, our powers were intact. The descendants were fine.
“What’s going on?” Pierce spoke up.
Eric stepped away from me as if our touch changed our conversation. “Nothing.”
Pierce’s jaw locked.
“We can’t talk right now—” Eric began, but Pierce interrupted him.
“Camille isn’t here anymore,” he said her name like a curse. “If we don’t stick together, she won’t be the only guard to disappear.” His sharpened tone dropped to a harsh hiss, but his eyes softened. “You two are all I have.”
I couldn’t breathe, but I could move. I stepped toward my guard. “He’s right, Eric,” I said, squeezing Pierce’s arm.
I waited for Eric to say something, to explain how our powers were intact, but his gaze focused on my hand. “We’ll talk later.” He opened the meeting room’s door. “For now, we have to talk to them.”
Behind him was a large table, an elongated desk meant to hold ten elders, but only three chairs were regularly used. Luthicer sat on the end, and Bracke sat next to him. Urte stood by the far wall as if there was a window to look out. None of the men glanced up at us. We might as well have not been there. We couldn’t do anything either.
2
Jessica
“I can’t do this.” Eric’s chest sank as he gripped the brick wall. “I just can’t.”
“You can.” I held myself back from yelling at him. Ever since the meeting in the shelter, Eric hadn’t spoken to anyone. Even when the elders asked for his opinion, he kept his lips pressed together. He acted like he had nothing to say. I knew him well enough to know that meant he had everything to say. Still, he remained silent.
“Come on.” I tried to pull him toward our high school, but he dug his heels into the ground like a toddler would.
“It’s not a good idea—”
“We can’t keep hiding,” I interrupted him. “That’s not an option.”
But it was. Eric’s green eyes said it before he did. “They know who we are, Jessica.”
I knew it. We all did. The Light was aware of our identities, and we didn’t have one inkling about who their soldiers were—not even Darthon. Unlike Eric, I was safe. According to the Light, my death would bring Darthon’s. Hurting me was the last thing on their list of priorities, but hurting Eric was at the top.
“If you hide, they will think you’re scared,” I spoke to him without touching him. “And they know where the shelter is.”
“I know I told you I would, but—” he started.
“You promised me you would,” I corrected.
We spent our entire winter break discussing whether we would return to Hayworth High. At first, the elders were against it, but they changed their minds. Everyone knew our names. The Light knew where we lived. They knew the shelter’s location. They even knew where we slept. But Eric stared at Hayworth High like it would be the place of the attack.
His eyelid twitched, but he never looked at me. He focused on our school, the one place where he never had to be a shade, but that time was gone. He couldn’t hide. Not even at home.
“If anything happens—” I started, but his voice entered my mind.
“Nothing will happen.” It wasn’t until he rested his right hand on his ringed finger that he smiled at me. My ring heated up on my hand. “Let’s go.” He started walking before I realized he had come to a decision.
I had to jog to catch up with him. “Try not to look like you’re going into battle.”
He shook his arms to loosen up. “It’s a constant state with me.” He paused as we neared the doorway, but his gaze flickered around the students flooding in for their first day. No one gave us any more attention than usual. It was…normal.
As Eric opened the door, he glanced back at me. “It’s January, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, why?”
Before answering, he leaned in and placed a kiss on my lips. When he pulled back, a flush spread over his cheeks. “It’s been one year since we met.”
It had been. We had met at the river, and then, we met in school—two people, disguised as other identities, yet we found one another in both lives. Fate was tricky like that. It consumed us when we thought we were free, and it freed us when we thought we were captured. Our love was a river, always changing under the mercy of nature’s elements, but we continued to flow, even when we trickled.
“Happy anniversary,” I said as he took my hand in his, and we walked into Hayworth High together.
***
I dropped Eric’s hand as we entered our homeroom. “I was not expecting this.”
Zac and Linda were standing by the far wall, talking to Robb, while Crystal was sitting by herself at her usual table. In all the chaos, I had forgotten how the siblings had transferred in. I hadn’t even told Eric, and Crystal didn’t know Eric and I were dating—or engaged.
When she looked up, her eyes lit up only to dim when she saw Eric standing by my side. She pursed her lips, and I forced a smile. Over the break, we had spoken over the phone, but not enough.
“Come on,” I said to Eric, and he didn’t argue. He followed me over to Crystal.
“Hey, Jess,” Crystal’s voice strained against her throat before she coughed. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Recovering from a cold.”
My leg leaned against her desk. “Well, at least you’re better.”
S
he rolled her eyes. Her signature move. “Please,” she started. “I wasn’t going to miss the first day. The school newspaper would be at a loss without me.” Pen marks already littered her hands, but her usual notebook was nowhere in sight.
“Where have you been?” she asked, glancing over at Eric. “Uh—”
Eric tensed. “Hey, Crystal.”
I fanned a hand at him. “You guys have met,” I stumbled over my words, unsure of where to go from here. The way Crystal’s mouth hung open wasn’t helping. “Eric—he’s—um—Eric is—” When I looked at Eric, his grin looked like it would break into a laugh. He was enjoying my nerves.
“I’m her boyfriend,” he finished my sentence. If I hadn’t known he was freaking out only a few minutes before, I wouldn’t have believed it. He was calm now.
“Boyfriend,” Crystal repeated, glancing between us. I recognized the look. She expected us to say we were kidding, but we weren’t. “Boyfriend?” Her palms slapped the desk as she stood up. “Since when?”
The entire classroom stared. Heat crawled up my neck, but Eric laid a hand on my shoulder like drama was his element. “December,” he answered as I said, “July.”
Our widened eyes met. Our lies didn’t match.
“January,” we both sighed the truth.
Crystal gaped. “Like this January?” I couldn’t hide my face from her. She read it with the precision only a best friend could have. “Last January?” she squeaked as her expression crumbled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because I had my memory wiped wasn’t exactly an answer I could explain.
Instead, I settled on, “It was complicated.”
Crystal bit her pierced lip. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought she was mad, but she wasn’t. She was falling apart.
Eric tiptoed backward. “I’m guessing this is one of those girl talk moments?”
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