Death's Primordial Kiss (The Silvered Moon Diaries Book 1)
Page 1
Contents
Death's Primordial Kiss
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE In The End
CHAPTER TWO Oppourtunity
CHAPTER THREE Independence
CHAPTER FOUR A Family Secret
CHAPTER FIVE Karma
CHAPTER SIX The Second Degree
CHAPTER SEVEN Calling Card
CHAPTER EIGHT Poison Apple
CHAPTER NINE The Best Present
CHAPTER TEN Auditions
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Water Web
CHAPTER TWELVE Frustration
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Next Task
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Mew’s House
CHAPTER FIFTEEN One of the Gang
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Mentor
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The First Trial
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Piano
CHAPTER NINETEEN Earth
CHAPTER TWENTY Spirit
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Bad News
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Blood and Fire
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Sourcing True Power
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Autumn Blooms
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Samhain
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Dia de Los Muertos
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN All Butterflies
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Renegades
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Hottest Person
CHAPTER THIRTY Winter Solstice
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Confrontation
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Hangover
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE A Bite
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Christmas
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE The Countdown
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Mystery Man
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN The Second Stranger
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Takeaway
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE National Treasure
CHAPTER FORTY Kenny
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE Privilege
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Imbolc Seduction
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Blessed Brigid
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Lesson Learned
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE The Attic Room
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX The Red Book
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Sophie
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT All For Nothing
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Prize Elixir
CHAPTER FIFTY The Middle of the Night
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE The Truth is Out There
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO Spring Equinox
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE Dark Witch
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR Social Rules
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE Summer Solstice
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX The Shortest Night
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN Casting the Stones
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT The Best Challenge
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE The Mausoleum
CHAPTER SIXTY Intuition
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE Coming Back
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO A Kiss of Death
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE Darkly Ever After
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Also by Romarin Demetri
Death’s Primordial Kiss
Book one of
The Silvered Moon Diaries
By Romarin Demetri
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:
Romarindemetri@gmail.com
Edited by Invisible Ink Editing
Cover by Create Imaginations
Published by Block 13 Publishing
Copyright © 2018 Romarin Demetri
All rights reserved.
ASIN:
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to
My best friends and partners in crime.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my beta and advance readers for continuing to help me on this journey, as well as my fellow authors who are actively helping and encouraging others to grow. I would like to acknowledge author Josette Reuel, and Joe Palmer for their constructive book cover critiques.
Thank you to every single reviewer of everything I have written to date. The time and energy you take is appreciated, and your voices are bigger than you can imagine. Your reviews can make it to the moon and back.
I'd also like to thank my education for giving me the confidence to enter a new genre, and the 103% I received on my sex education project in adolescent psychology. New Adult literature explores some themes people might be afraid to talk about (but you do love to read about them!), and I'm excited and ready to be in this genre for ten books as my characters grow up! Remember, these characters have no idea you're watching.
A Note Before You Read
Content warning: This novel is suitable for ages 18+ or at parental discretion because of adult content and vocabulary.
Though sexual situations in this work of fiction are consensual, empowering, and positive, it is recognized that the content is not suitable for some readers.
New Adult literature explores the concepts of identity, sexuality, and issues of growing up. This trend in literature is widely intended for adults, and might not always contain explicit subject matter or romance, and is in a subjective and grey area concerning crossing genres. This NA book is in the adult category.
CHAPTER ONE
In The End
Helanie and Rose
No matter who you are, it’s coming for you. During the length of this journey, we were led to believe that when we reach our deaths, that one either succumbs to the darkness or is lifted by the light.
We accepted its claws on the heels of each step we took toward our destinies, though it would never receive a warm welcome from either of us, despite our best-kept oaths. After a year of knowing our final breath was a possibility, we were met with the chilling, irreversible truth that we weren’t invincible.
Should we have seen it coming to leave our lives in shambles or rip our souls from their fleshly homes? Yes, and perhaps we should have recognized the signs.
There were plenty of omens in the instinctive urges that made us turn to search the shadows. Though when we did turn, the projections of evil sat placidly and distracted us with reflections of ourselves.
Signs were outlined in the unexplainable moments that left gossamer hairs standing up on the napes of our necks, and in the unyielding winter ice that silenced the busiest of streets with its cool frost. Signs hung on superstition and swallowed the kindest of karma. And in all of these, one truth was waiting to be discovered: the moment of death doesn’t lead to a polarity.
There is no light. There is no dark.
There is only the sound of music.
CHAPTER TWO
Oppourtunity
Rose
One year earlier
Every point in my life led up to this moment, said every eighteen-year-old ever. Ever since I was six years old, I knew that I wanted to be one of them. I desired the most dangerous job there was—protect the innocent, keep two watchful eyes over the city, and commit a decade of my young adulthood to being one of the five most influential people in London. I was lucky enough to understand what I wanted from a young age, and the voice in my head repeated my mantra consistently over the years: I had to make it into The London Coven no matter the cost.
With su
ch a short window of time, this could very well be the only opportunity I ever got, and I’d do anything I could to grasp it firmly in my hand and call it mine. It didn’t matter what or who got in the way. As long as you were eighteen to twenty years old and there was a vacancy, you could compete for a place on the London Coven: Your place. Not only was it a way of life, being in the Coven was a rite of passage in my family, and nothing would make them prouder than me being inducted as a Coven witch.
Our ballet flats carried us quietly across the glistening, rain-ridden cobblestone. We kept to the edge of slumbering houses tucked into rows, reveling in every second of our sneaking. Despite our best efforts to travel during two-a.m. quietly, Helaine and I both knew that we weren’t going to get away with this. The best we could do was postpone getting caught until morning, and the few extra hours we’d gain from this impromptu plan would give us a short-lived advantage, but a great one at that. With such fierce competition, we could use any lead we could find. And being too curious for our own good? Yes, that had just about everything to do with it.
It was and had always been eerie to me how solemn the streets were early in the morning. It was the closest we could get to feeling like we owned the city—for now, anyway. Helaine had a harder time sneaking out and had to trudge through backyards and gardens. She lived in an area of the city that had more night owls and nocturnals. My street was positioned closer to our target destination, a place in the city that was a mix of humans and paranormals. Neither of us uttered a word during the whole walk. The misty rain had let up, and the clouds gave way to the stars, celestial bodies waking from their rainy dreams. As I glanced upward to the twinkling sky I felt myself getting caught up in stars, which I had done ever since I had noticed they were up there watching me. Even though I valued rationality, there was nothing like the serene but endless wonder the sky instilled in me. I saw Alpha Librae, Beta Librae, Gamma Librae, and Sigma Librae, all forming into their constellation, and above them, there was my personal favorite, Methuselah, the oldest star in our entire galaxy. The Libra constellation was Helaine’s zodiac sign, but not even the stars were comforting tonight.
I mulled over the weight and force of our mission. Was a four-hour head start on the other hopefuls really worth the risk of getting caught? Were there two initiate spaces open like the rumors said? The purpose of my existence felt like it had made its own gravitational field, pressing on the front of my thoughts.
Calm down, I soothed my mind. Does anyone really know what they’re supposed to do at eighteen? No. Chill the hell out. Conversations with yourself always turned out better when there was an answer back, but if I felt any better, it was only by a hair.
We ducked down an alley and approached the employee’s entrance of the red brick building. It didn’t have any ground floor windows (a clear indication that it was the fortress it was) and was signed as Block Thirteen Press, an unassuming title for the headquarters of a supernatural newspaper. Ours was known as The Thirteenth. Helaine’s face dropped to a frown, and she fixed a stare on me, lips puckering in discontent.
“Go ahead and ask it,” she said, her English accent making the demand in her voice somehow sound more polite than mine would have. The gleaming mischief in her dark eyes, however, was unmistakable for anything else.
“Are you sure about risking your internship for this?” I loved the feeling of sneaking through the night, and the ever-present dread of knowing we could be caught any moment, but once that key turned, there was truly no going back.
“It’s not breaking in if you have a key,” she answered. “At least for the first door we’re passing through. Also, if this is the news I think it is, I won’t be in need of such a wonderful internship anymore.” She smiled resolutely, fumbling with the key to her workplace. “My last name is the only reason they kept me on after I graduated.”
“And after you worked so hard to win that internship out from under me,” I said with a sarcastic smile. That was the biggest battle we ever waged against each other if sparring in martial arts didn’t count.
“You’re busy enough as an instructor,” she said, motioning me to follow her into the paper’s headquarters as she pushed in the door. That was true.
Helaine had the small flashlight on her watch lit, a beam jetting from her wrist, but the exit signs and security lighting were bright enough to allow us to navigate through the paper. She led the way, faint security lights bouncing off of the top of her head, leaving a ghostly glow around the wayward strands of her wavy red hair.
“I can promise you it’s not a job I’d mind losing. There’s no detective work in landing advertising for the newspaper, and it’s certainly not sitting on the surface of a filled teacup.” Helaine pointed to a paper-piled desk as we passed it. “Splash of cream, teaspoon of organic sugar.”
I snorted out in a laugh.
Maybe I was still a little envious that Helaine had landed the internship last spring at Block Thirteen’s newspaper. Reporting the news was the closest we could get to making history, which we intended to do, one way or another. Her parents made her stick out the job for the summer, and her boss told her she could work there through university too. If it weren’t for our promise to go to college together, she might have applied for university in Scotland instead.
Even though classes would start in a few weeks, it could become a contingency plan. Our real intentions could very well be behind the next door we were about to break into. Our biggest hope and dream since we were six years old, raised practically as sisters, could become reality. We would make history together.
We stood at the editor’s door in our rain-soaked shoes, looking up at it as if it were an imposing effigy we intended to set fire to. The door, with a green shade pulled down over its clear window, was our point of no return, and no one had ever formed a plan like ours and carried it through before. No one possessed the combination of controlled recklessness we were capable of at two a.m. Once our unbreakable friendship made it into the Coven, we’d be unstoppable.
“I’m not going to lie,” I said famously, “I’m so excited that I might pass out if this headline is what we think it is. Our future could be revealed in a matter of minutes.”
“Less than that,” Helaine said. “I’ve been practicing.”
She slipped two pins from her jacket pocket, jammed them into the keyhole, and we heard the pop on the lock of the owner’s door. He was the only person who had access to tomorrow’s headlines—until Helaine found out the witches dropped off a story, and she and I spent the whole day coming up with wild conspiracies of what it could be. Around midnight, we started talking each other into breaking into the paper and finding out before everyone else. An hour and a half later, we snuck out of our houses.
The eerie creak of the door made my hair stand on end, and a chill shot across the base of my neck as it opened into a pitch-dark room.
“Did you see them when they dropped it off?” I asked Helaine, my words almost becoming lost to a whisper. I could feel how nervous she was, and that she was trying to extra hard to keep her emotions even so I didn’t faint like I had promised I might. I hadn’t planned on the figure of speech actually happening.
“No, they’re like ghosts. The five Coven members won’t be seen unless they want to be—well three now, hopefully. If that makes me sound horrible, I really don’t care. After you, Rose,” Helaine instructed, shutting the door behind us and flicking on the light.
The office had no windows and looked like a storage closet with filing cabinets lining the walls. We stood next to each other near the desk chair, exchanging a glance that confirmed neither of us was backing down. We were going to suffer the consequences. Stacks of paper were piled over a flat surface calendar, and sticky notes with bent edges marked the miscellaneous spaces in between the sheets. The most curious item on the desk was a dark brown file folder, hot-stamped with an insignia Helaine and I recognized right away.
“The lotus pentacle,” we said, gasping at the same t
ime. It wasn’t a symbol the Coven liked to flash around, but all of their official documents were marked by it. My hand instinctively reached down to run my fingertips over the bumpy flesh of the thick folder. It was a five-pointed star, but its smooth edges morphed into the symbol into a flower; a reminder of where the protectors of the city drew their power from. When The Coven sent news to Block Thirteen Press’s owner, it usually meant that there was an early vacancy on its five-person team. The rumor was that this time, there were two, and though it was against the odds, sometimes rumors were born in truth.
Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Spirit.
The right elements, our ancestral ones, would have to be vacant for us to become initiates, and in the event that two places were open, we desperately needed them to be Water and Spirit. We both came from water lines, and spirit was like the wheel of fortune in Tarot, influenced by the cards around it, an element anyone could initiate under—very Helaine if you ask me. She was here tonight because she truly couldn’t believe the rumors until she saw them with her own eyes. I was all water, from my ability to feel other’s emotions, to occasional indecisiveness and being swept up in constellations, dreams and intuition. Tonight my intuition gnawed at my rationality, winning out, and convincing me that water and spirit were both up for grabs. There was no other way.
“We were right…” I trailed. “Together?” I asked, as Helaine’s hand joined mine at the cover. Our anticipation was about to crush me, and luckily, Helaine didn’t want to prolong our excitement any longer.
“One, two, three—”
We flipped over the cover to reveal a headline that the owner set and printed without showing another soul.
The sting of our surprise and numbing amazement fed into each other, swirling up toward the ceiling of the dim room, and I could feel both emotions settle above us as reality kicked in.