by S. J. West
About thirty minutes out of Destin, I make a unilateral decision that a detour is in order. I turn off Hwy 98 and merge onto 399 South towards Navarre Beach. It’s well after ten at night, and there are no cars in the eastern-most parking lot along the beach.
“Come on,” I tell Julian, opening the car door. “Let’s go talk.”
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t say anything. He just opens his door and gets out of the car. I reach back inside to pick Viktor up. He automatically squirms to be let down. I let him jump from my arms, and he runs off over the sand dunes. I don’t worry about him too much. I’m sure he’ll find me before we’re ready to leave.
I meet Julian in front of the car and take his hand with mine. I lead him down the wooden pier towards the shoreline. The sound of the ocean waves helps calm my frayed nerves, and I hope they are having the same effect on Julian.
When we reach the end of the pier, I take a seat on one of the steps that leads down to the beach area. Wordlessly, Julian sits down beside me.
“I need to tell you some things,” I begin hesitantly. “But you have to promise me you won’t freak out.”
Julian looks at me questioningly. “Go on.”
I take a deep breath and tell him about the ghost that spoke to me through him, and the fact that my mother is now a shade.
“Considering the fact that this woman was able to call shades in to fight for her, even my mother,” I say, “I suspect it was the ghost inside you that she was able to take control of. It would explain why you can’t remember anything during your lost time.”
Julian stands and walks down the last two steps to the sand. He begins to pace back and forth as he thinks about the bombshells I just threw at him. I don’t know what else I can do except sit there and wait until he has time to come to terms with this new information.
“It explains a lot,” he finally says, coming to a standstill in front of me. “It explains why we all sought out the person we loved most to become our first companion.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“If these spirits we contain are seeking retribution, what better way to make us suffer than to turn our loved ones into our food?”
“Is there some sort of magic that we can use to get them out of you?” I ask. “Do we need to call an exorcist?”
“Exorcisms only work for demons. These are lost souls seeking vengeance. I’m not sure what to do about them actually.”
“Maybe they want something else,” I suggest. “The soul inside you said she wanted retribution for what was done to her. What if there’s something you can do to finally bring her soul the peace she never got? If we can find a way to do that, maybe she’ll move on. It might be enough to break the curse and let you live a normal life again.”
“But what would she want?” Julian asks. “She’s dead. There’s nothing else I can do for her.”
“Maybe if you did something for her descendants?” I say as a suggestion and a question.
“But I don’t even know which one of the countess’ victims she is,” Julian points out.
“Right…” I say, pondering this obstacle. “The woman at the house told us that neither of the ghosts you and Petru have are the one she’s looking for, so obviously she was able to get more information out of them than what your ghost said to me. What kind of magic gives someone the power to control ghosts?”
“Dark magic,” Julian says, not sounding happy about it at all. “I’ve always tried to stay away from those who practice it. It’s volatile and can cause havoc in unexperienced hands.”
“So you don’t know anyone who practices it?”
“I know people,” Julian replies reluctantly. “I just don’t trust them.”
“Well, you’re going to have to figure out which one you trust the most,” I state. “I don’t see any other way to get the information we need from your ghost. Maybe Gage can help us find a fairly dependable one.”
“So the warlock knows all of this?”
“Yes. He was there when the ghost spoke to me and when my mother began to materialize.”
“And why was he there?”
I stare at Julian for a moment, but there’s no question that I need to tell him the truth.
“We were spending the day together,” I say. “Your note did tell me that I should spend more time with either him or Daniel.”
“I suppose it did,” he replies reservedly.
Julian continues to look at me for a while, and I can tell by the pained expression on his face that he knows how much his indifference in the letter hurt me.
“All I want,” he says slowly, “is what’s best for you, Sarah.”
I stand from my seat on the step and walk down until I’m standing directly in front of him.
“And all I want,” I reply, “is for you to finally understand that you’re who’s best for me. Not Daniel. Not Gage. No one else. Stop trying to push me away, Julian. It’s not going to work.”
Julian’s expression doesn’t change, but I know it’s not my feelings that his face is mirroring now but his own.
“It’s been a long time since I allowed myself to hope for a better life,” he tells me. “But every time you look at me like you’re looking at me right now, I feel a fire ignite deep down inside my soul, yearning to be given more oxygen so it can flare brighter.”
“Then let it burn,” I plead, placing a hand over his heart. “Let yourself have hope, because sometimes that’s all you need to make your dreams come true.”
Julian places his right hand on top of mine.
“Did you mean what you said?” he asks me.
“I’ve said a lot of things lately,” I tell him with a smile. “You’re going to have to be a little bit more specific than that.”
“You said that we can be the authors of our own fate,” he gently reminds me. “And that we can make our own kind of family. Did you mean that?”
“I don’t say anything that I don’t mean,” I reply. “I also meant it when I said I love you. I know it’s something that’s hard for you to accept, but I hope in time you will.”
“And if I accept your love,” he says, twining our fingers together over his heart, “does that mean you can accept love from a creature like me?”
“You’re not a creature,” I protest, hating the fact that Julian sees himself that way. “You’re a man who got caught up in something that you had no control over.”
“But I could have left the countess’ household after I discovered what she was doing. I could have saved myself centuries of guilt and pain if I had just done that one simple thing.”
“And I’m selfishly glad that you didn’t,” I confess. “If you weren’t who you are today, we never would have met and I never would have found someone to love.”
“Yes, you would have.” Julian brings up his other hand and gently slides the back of his fingers down the side of my face. “You would have found a man who could give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
“I have found that man,” I tell him without an ounce of doubt. “He’s standing right in front of me. You just need to stop projecting what you think I want onto me. I know what I want. I want you. The only question is, do you want me, too?”
“With everything that I am,” he answers without hesitation or doubt.
“Then show me,” I challenge, hoping he accepts.
Julian glides his hand around my neck, burying his fingers in my hair and tugging on the strands until my head is tilted back slightly. As his face lowers to mine I expect a kiss, but Julian tilts his head to the side until his mouth is so close to my ear I can feel the warm caress of his breath as he speaks.
“I love you, Sarah Marcel,” he whispers. “My heart is yours to nourish or to break. For as long as I live I will love no one else, because no matter what happens my life is now forever connected to yours. You are my last companion because death is preferable to life without you in it.”
Before I can ask him what his last statement mea
ns, Julian lifts his head and promptly covers my mouth with his lips. The kiss is by no means gentle, and to be honest I don’t want gentle right now. I need to feel how much the man I love wants me. I need to know that I’m the only person in the world he feels this passionately about, and that I’m the only woman who can satisfy his desires.
Just as I’m about to suggest we find a more private place to continue what Julian has started, I hear the hissing of an angry cat.
Julian obviously hears it, too, because he automatically breaks our kiss to look up towards the pier. He drops his hands away from my neck when I turn to look behind me.
Standing on the wooden rail is Viktor. His back is arched and he hisses at us once more.
I get the message.
“I love him,” I tell Viktor. “And I don’t care about your stupid alfar bloodlines. My life won’t be dictated by your need for an alfar heir, so either support us or leave me.”
Viktor closes his mouth and lowers his back. He stares at me in disbelief, and I know I’ll end up hearing a lecture about my duty to the alfar sometime later. Right now, I don’t care. Right now, all I want to do is continue kissing Julian and worry about the consequences later.
Unexpectedly, a loud roar fills the air around us.
Julian looks down at me and asks, “When was the last time you ate, Sarah?”
The mention of food makes my stomach roar again from being neglected for so long.
“Lunch,” I confess, suddenly feeling a sharp pang in my midgut as if my stomach pinched me as a rude reminder that it needs to be fed.
“We should get you some food,” Julian declares, taking hold of my shoulders and pointing me in the direction of the steps of the pier. “Move it,” he orders, playfully slapping me on the bottom to get me going.
“Hmm,” I say, standing my ground as I turn my head to look at Julian over my shoulder, “that wasn’t much of a spank. If you want to make me do what you say, I’m afraid it needs to be a lot harder than that.”
Julian smiles and quickly complies with my request.
“That’s better,” I say, taking a few satisfied steps forward.
I hear him chuckle softly behind me as I reach for Viktor and pick him up in my arms.
“I see you’re going to be a handful,” Julian remarks as he walks up behind me and places an arm across my shoulders.
“A couple at least,” I tell him truthfully. “Do you think you can handle that?”
“I think with you in my life, I can do almost anything.”
I smile up at Julian and receive a kiss in return.
As we walk down the pier back towards the car, I feel tiny tendrils of pure joy wrap around my heart, encasing it in a protective shell to keep it safe from outside forces.
I know my life won’t be easy. It will never be normal, but it will also never be boring. I have a chance to forge my destiny into whatever I want it to become and help the man I love finally find peace and possibly salvation. My life will never be as perfect as my mother wanted it to be, and perhaps that is part of the reason she’s still earthbound. I simply don’t know, but I intend to find out. I hope she’s at least proud of me for following my heart and trusting myself to know what’s best.
In the end that’s all anyone can do, because none of us knows what the future will bring. All we can do is live strong and love fiercely in the little time we’re given on Earth, and I intend to live my life with as little fear as possible and love the man beside me with everything that I am or will ever become.
I may not live a perfect life, but I will live a life filled with love, honor, and absolutely no regrets.
Thank you so much for reading the first book in the Vampire Conclave series. The second book, entitled Sentinel, will be available in 2017. Please feel free to follow me at these social media sites. Thank you in advance for any review you may leave for the book.
If you’re new to my books, I have attached a sample of the first book in my Watchers Trilogy entitled Cursed. The Watcher series has a total of twenty books to date. A full list of books can be found at the beginning of this book.
Again, thank you for reading Moonshade!
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CHAPTER ONE
My life is cursed. I’m not sure why I thought my fortunes would magically change when I entered the hallowed realm of college. Perhaps I believed the hype spouted by the recruiter on how I would be able to start a whole new chapter in my life just by going to college. According to her, I would be granted my heart’s desires and become a new person, with a sea of endless possibilities laid at my feet. If I had truly wanted that to happen, I suppose I should have moved to another continent instead of only sixty miles away from home. It simply didn’t put enough distance between my old life and the new one I craved, especially since I shortened the physical distance between myself and the one person in the world I never wanted to see again, Will Kilpatrick.
As I was walking to my very first college lecture, I saw Will handing out flyers to welcome the freshman class of 2012. I hadn’t seen Will in two years, but my one-time best friend still looked the same, heartbreakingly handsome. He was dressed in a light blue button-down shirt tucked into a pair of grey slacks. His short blond hair was cut in the latest shaggy style, accentuating his lean, angular face and bright blue eyes. The friendly, welcoming smile he bestowed on the group of moon-eyed girls surrounding him involuntarily made my heart beat double time.
Not wanting him to see me, I quickly made an about-face to head in the opposite direction of the boy I had shared my very first kiss with, someone with whom I had once upon a time hoped to share the rest of my life.
Seeing Will again played havoc with my psyche and had my heart racing into my throat. I silently berated myself for allowing Will to have such an effect on my physical well-being. Intellectually, I knew by choosing to attend Southeastern College I would eventually run into Will. It was basic statistics. It was only after seeing him that I realized what a delusional fool I had been, thinking my heart had purged itself of the love I once harbored for Will. I began to wonder if I would ever find a way to leave my adolescent fantasies, featuring Will in the role of Prince Charming, behind and go on with my life.
My first day of college had started off badly with the addition of Will back into my world, and it seemed determined to get worse from there.
I ended up missing my first college lecture because I couldn’t find the classroom. The science building was like a real life version of M.C. Escher’s Relativity, with its meandering staircases in odd places. I finally asked someone for directions and found out the classroom I was looking for was one of the few rooms which could only be accessed from an outside stairwell since it was housed in the basement of the building. When I finally found the room, my class had already been dismissed. The professor, a kindly old man with thinning grey hair, told me not to worry about it.
“There’s always one person each semester who can’t find the room, Ms. Nightingale,” Dr. Floyd said. “Don’t fret over this one failure.”
Great; not only did I miss my very first college lecture, but I felt sure from Dr. Floyd’s tone he expected me to round out the bottom of the class’s bell curve.
My second class, English Composition, went a lot better. My lifelong best friend and roommate, Tara, shared the class with me and saved me a seat right beside her. Tara and I had grown up living right next to one another in the trailer park her grandmother, Utha Mae, and my mother lived in. I always envied the close connection Tara had with Utha Mae, one I was never able to achieve with my own mother, Cora. Whenever I wanted to feel like a part of a real family, I would
sneak over to Tara’s trailer and pretend we were sisters. There was no way anyone would ever believe we were actually sisters, considering how the dark ebony color of Tara’s skin contrasted so starkly against the pale ivory of my own, but if someone were to look beyond the superficial, I was sure they would find us more alike than not.
Tara giggled when I told her about missing my first class.
“Sounds like something you’d do.” She just shook her head at me like I was completely hopeless, which wasn’t that far off the mark, if I were being honest with myself.
After English Composition, I had General Chemistry I. Tara had tried to get the same class as me but wasn’t able to, due to her job.
In order to afford to live off campus in an apartment of our own, we each had to take a job working on campus. Tara found work in the library, and I found a position as a teacher’s aide for a professor in the chemistry department. Neither of us made that much money, but, pooled together, we were going to be all right. Plus, Utha Mae had secretly been placing money into a college fund for each of us over the years.
My mother wasn’t as prepared.
Cora gave me what little she had in her savings account and told me to ask for help if I needed it. I wasn’t completely sure, but I got the distinct feeling my mother was jealous of my attending college, of trying to make a better life for myself. I suppose there had to be a time in my mother’s life when she envisioned herself living the perfect life of a white-picket-fence-type family. Who dreams of becoming a single mother at the age of eighteen, living in a trailer park, and barely scratching by month to month?
After my chemistry class, I met Tara in the Commons for lunch. I was never a big eater of lunch, so I just grabbed a pack of nabs and a soda from the vending machine. I scanned the crowded tables, trying to find Tara, but couldn’t locate her at first. She must have seen my confused face in the crowd, because she stood up waving her arms in the air like I was a plane that needed landing instructions.
When I finally made my way through the maze of tables and students, I saw that Tara was sitting with a couple of girls I recognized from our English class.
