Steal the Sun: (Book 1)

by Stephanie Kelley

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Thank you

  Sneak Peek - Touch the Moon

  Steal the Sun

  Stephanie Kelley

  Copyright © 2017 Stephanie Kelley

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by C. Davis

  Cover Design by Wycked Ink www.wyckedink.net

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For all those standing behind me,

  even when I am completely crazy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kodiak

  “That’s a lot of blood, Bear. I should have brought the rain gear.”

  I was just happy that for once it wasn’t my blood.

  “All that glitters is not gold, right?” I teased as I fruitlessly tried to wipe the blood from my knife on my already soaked jeans. I was covered head to toe in blood and gore from the night’s escapades. Every single piece of my soaked clothing clung to my body, the metallic coppery scent drifting up to my nose. The cold had begun to seep into my bones through the wet my material as my adrenaline started to wear off.

  “Good one, Bear.” My Shakespeare reference had earned me a smile from my brother as he drug the last of the vampire corpse to the edge of the dock.

  “Definitely in need of a shower and these clothes need burned. Preferably before we start to hallucinate from the vampire blood.”

  I saw my dog and groaned. Even my husky was covered in gore. Gods, that fluff monster was going to need a bath too. My dog Czar had killed a vampire himself, and now his thick fur was soaked in blood.

  “We really should have brought the rain gear.” He murmured to himself. I barely heard the soft splash as he slipped the body into the dark water of the harbor.

  I hopped up on the tailgate of my brother’s truck. I could finally catch my breath. The cold Alaskan night already hinted at the end of summer. Things would be frozen and snowed over before we knew it.

  Kenai and I had taken a job to remove some Others from a salmon boat. How my brother found these jobs, or they found him, I didn't know, but it made me curious about the time he'd spent out on the Bering Sea and what he actually did.

  For us, Others were anything other than human, and tonight it had been a half dozen vampires and their two partially turned fledglings. The fledgings had been high as kites on vampire blood and had come after us first.

  It was early in the season for us to have to worry about the vampires, but we went where we needed to in order to keep the locals safe, the same as our family had done since before the Gold Rush. My family had hunted Others for nearly two centuries now. We had a long tradition of putting ourselves in harm's way. Sometimes it worked out. Sometimes it didn’t.

  “You sure you didn't get bit?” Kenai asked as he joined me at the tailgate. Czar sat at my feet like nothing had happened, paw raised to give one of us a ‘high-five’ in exchange for a snack.

  “Yes, Ken, I’m sure.” I was a little taken aback that my brother thought I would have gotten myself bitten. I killed my first vampire when I was ten. Poppa had taken me along on a hunt and told me to stay hidden in the truck. The vampire had tried to get away in the truck. I’d slit its throat from where I had hidden behind the driver's seat with the silver knife my father had given me as protection. I didn't like killing then, I still didn't like it now. But when it came time to choose, I’d chose me and my family every time.

  Kenai lightly grabbed my chin with his tattoo covered hand and made me face him. His mismatched blue and brown eyes met mine. The dark circles under his eyes could have been mistaken for war paint. It was a tell tale sign he wasn’t sleeping again, a bad habit he had picked up from his time working on commercial fishing boats. A closer look at him showed the shadow of a beard and his wild, tangled hair made me think I was right in my assumption.

  “Quit hiding your eyes, you’re slow when you wear those.”

  “Chill, Ken,” I said as I swatted away his hand. “I'm fine. I like the contacts.”

  We shared a genetic trait abnormality, one eye blue, one eye brown. I didn't care for our uniqueness as much as he did. He liked to use it as a mask to keep people at bay. I didn’t like matching the huskies we bred.

  I dug through Kenai’s cooler for something to drink that wasn't bottled water or a cheap nasty tasting energy drink. I wanted something to ground me, calm my nerves. I was getting too old for this. I didn’t know how our older brother Dez still did this at 36.

  He sighed and I heard the grinding pop of the flint on his lighter, the spicy smell of clove hit me immediately. My brother and those damn clove cigarettes. Kenai didn’t have many vices or habits, but I knew his important ones. “You wouldn't light that if you didn't have whiskey. Where did you stash it?”

  “Behind the bench seat,” he said as the smoke drifted my direction.

  I couldn’t be bothered to do things the easy way, I shimmied the cab window open while he laughed at me. I fished the half empty bottle from behind the seat. “Ah ha!”

  “Before you get too excited, you sure fishboy has someone lined up to take care of those bodies?”

  “Yeah.” The cork made a satisfying pop as I pulled it from the neck of the bottle so I could take a swig. “He won't leave me hanging.”

  An unconvinced huff came from my brother and my dog.

  “I hate relying on Others to do what we should be, Bear. If Dez asks, we burned them,” he said after a long drag on his cigarette.

  He was relatively clean as I gave him a quick once over to make sure he didn’t have any wounds. How had I ended up the bloodier of the two of us? I sat back down on the edge of the tailgate and handed him the bottle.

  Certain Others were on our side. As long as they didn’t put me or my family in danger, I was happy to let them be. Kenai was still uneasy about it. He did his best to pretend even the good ones didn’t exist. Our eldest brother, Dez, was a traditionalist. To Dez, all Others were abominations and shouldn’t exist.

  I caught a glimpse of Kenai’s forearm as he pushed up the sleeves of his hoodie, not liking the feel of the cold blood-soaked material against his skin. There, on the inside of his left arm, were small tattooed lines, a slash for every Other he killed that we had known personally. Some were those that had lied to us and tried to cause us harm, some were friends that were turned that we had to hunt. This the first hunt I’d been on with him in nearly two months. He’d added a two tally marks since I’d last seen his arm, one of the tiny marks was so new it was still scabbed over.

  “Who was it?” The high of the hunt immediately overtaken by the sobering thought of another friend gone. He took another long pull of whiskey before he handed the bottle
back. Betrayal never went down easy.

  “No one you need remember,” he said quickly, his shoulders setting stiffly as he lit up another cigarette.

  I didn’t like when he clammed. I expected that type of reaction from Dez, but from Kenai it always meant he was lying. I needed to push it out of my mind. If he wanted to hide it from me, so be it. I wouldn't question his instinct to protect me. He’d never steered me wrong despite how unpredictable he could be.

  “How did the vamps just ignore you?” I tried to change the subject. I had other ways to find out who he had hunted if it became an issue.

  He shrugged. “Guess they didn't see me.”

  “Vamps, not see you? What charm did you find?” I teased as I put the cap back on the whiskey bottle before I hopped off the tailgate.

  Kenai shook his head, his laughter barely contained.

  “Nothing, I swear, Bear. This entire summer has been like Poppa is watching over me, more than before.”

  “You just have the craziest luck.”

  He shook his head. “Don't know about that, Bear. Saw the Gypsy Star in the harbor today and nearly canceled the hunt.”

  “What?” I froze. That boat had not harbored in our hometown of Cordova, Alaska in nearly ten years. The thought of it being back made my stomach turn. The Gypsy Star was the last place our father had been seen before he was declared lost at sea. I had never seen the boat in person. It was as much of a ghost to me as my father had been. By the time I was calm enough to want to go see where my father had taken his last steps, it had left the harbor and never returned. “I wanted on that boat so bad, but I just couldn't. Something kept me off it,” his voice trailed off, not finishing his statement. I just let him be with his thoughts.

  We’d both gone quiet at the mention of our father. Poppa had been gone ten years this year. It was a milestone we never really wanted to think about, because if Poppa was gone for ten years, that meant Momma had been gone for almost twenty. She’d died in a car accident in a snowstorm, to this day I don’t know how I survived that. I was with her that day and I was six. I remembered very little of her that Kenai hadn’t told me as stories.

  My phone buzzed in my pants pocket. Some how it had managed to avoid being coated in blood. I reluctantly opened the text notification.

  Secrets. CMR. Your time is coming. -Snow W.

  I was thankful for the shadows, there was no way I had any color left on my face, it had all drained into the pit that was my stomach. These messages had been coming all summer, but this was the first one that had a direct correlation to my life. I tried to push it out of my head for now, if I was going to ask for help, I’d have some explaining to do. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that without a concrete threat.

  The familiar cawing of ravens made me shiver as the sun set in ribbons of reds and pinks over the water. Czar’s ears perked up as I hopped down off the tailgate.

  “Ravens and wolves,” he muttered as he looked toward the tree line, “one always follows the other.”

  I caught his gaze go sharp as his gaze shifted from the water to the encroaching tree line. He was nothing if not vigilant. I had never been able to sneak up on him growing up.

  “Damn ravens.” I said as I tossed some pebbles at them. “They all need gone.”

  “You didn't used to feel that way about-”

  “Watch your tongue, Kenai.” I cut him off. I’d dealt with enough tonight. I didn’t want to take another walk down memory lane if I didn’t have to. I wanted a shower and my bed. “You know what happened.”

  He nodded and kicked at the gravel.

  “I still say what happened that day with him isn’t what you think.”

  I punched my brother hard on the shoulder. “Don't do this to me. Not when we’ve already mentioned Poppa tonight. I’m covered in blood, and nothing more to kill tonight. Don’t make me cry.”

  He reached out and pulled me close to his chest before kissing my forehead. We'd been through a lot together, thick or thin we were still blood, still family.

  Kenai sputtered from the taste of vampire blood lips. ”Nope, can't enjoy that, that tastes like ash. Yeah, give me that whiskey.”

  “Ass or ash?”

  “Does it matter?” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve before downing more whiskey.

  Czar began growling behind us before I could truly enjoy my brother’s mishap. My hand went to my knife, Kenai’s hand went to his revolver as he set the bottle down.

  At the edge of the dock stood a man in the shadows. He stood unmoving, watching us in silence.

  Condensation puffed from Kenai’s mouth in the quickly cooling night air as my husky gave a low warning growl. I gave Czar the signal to be silent and took a step toward the figure, trying to get a better look. I expected him to be shocked by a tiny girl covered in blood taking a few steps toward him, but instead a sly smile crawled across his lips.

  Had he been there the entire time?

  In the faded light I could make out the man’s chiseled features, the slight amount of scruff on his chin, a series of thick white roping scars criss crossing his face and neck. I’d have bet my bar I saw the slightest pale olive shimmer to his skin as he stood up straight. But I blinked as he took a slow step towards us and the light hit him again, the shimmer was gone. My eyes were playing tricks on me from being coated in the hallucinogenic vampire blood.

  “You burn like stars, but are still cold like the snow. Shame there are only three of you left. Your family was once great.” The man paused and I watched the light play across his skin. “It’s taken me quite a while to find you, the great Sesi hunters.”

  His voice hung heavy and oppressive in the air. He didn’t know as much as he thought he did, there were more than three of us left. By my count there were five of us, but we certainly were not the great clan we once were. I felt Czar brush against my leg as he crept up beside me, ready to attack given the command. I heard the barely audible pop as Ken flicked open the snap on his holster of his revolver that he always wore on his hip. I felt the tiniest tongues of fear lick up my spine. He hadn’t even felt the need to reach for his gun with the vampires we had just taken out. Who or whatever this was, had him spooked too.

  “Depends on who's asking.” Ken’s voice had a growling undertone, his anger sent my alertness to a new level. He was spooked. My brother was never spooked.

  “Some of you are missing,” the stranger stated, cocking his head to the side much like my dog. “Such a shame.”

  “Who are you? Police? Other?”

  I let Ken do the talking, I couldn’t guarantee my words wouldnt be tainted from the side effects of the the vampire blood. I was already having a hard enough time not seeing two of the green man.

  “Lackey, scapegoat, God, I’ve been it all, so take your pick.”

  You had to be a bit crazy to live in Alaska, but this, well even for us, this was a new one.

  The hammer on the gun clicked as my brother readied to shoot. Adrenaline coursed through my body for the second time tonight. I knew Kenai trusted his instincts implicitly, and I trusted my brother. He never readied to fire unless he meant it, especially with that gun. My fingers clenched around the caribou antler hilt of my knife, this was already a long night.

  “That's definitely a new one, buddy.” I heard his breathing slow beside me in anticipation of having to react to whatever this crazy individual was about to do. “Let's try this again. You seem to know who we are, last chance before I find out how you do against silver. Who are you?”

  “I already told you.”

  “I'm too tired to play. I want a name.” Kenai’s words were clipped and my fingers twitched as I gripped my knife harder, the handle still sticky with the vampire blood.

  “King of the Living,” he smirked. “But those topside often call me Cy.”

  Crazies. We may have missed a vampire lackey that wasn't in the nest. It would explain his sickly color.

  “What do you want?”

  The man moved towards
us, the green shimmer back on his skin as he passed under the street lamp. I heard a soft growl and I wasn’t sure if it came from my dog or my sibling.

  “Stop right there, Cy. I will shoot.”

  Czar crept forward one slow step at a time.

  “A name won't protect you forever. Time is up. You just don't know it yet.” Cy’s voice held darkness and a rumble that I felt in my soul. No human voice had ever struck me like that. What the hell were we dealing with?

  The blackened barrel of my brother’s gun level with the man's chest crept into the edge of my vision. Cy was undeterred with the warnings and kept walking towards us. He stopped only a few feet from my grasp. My knife flashing as I turned it over in my hand. Czar’s hair stood on end, his pointed ears laid back. I finally smelled what my husky had smelled. The musty odor of damp earth and the unmistakable stomach turning odor of death.

  Kenai hissed as he registered the smell, his instinctive reaction was to pull the trigger of his revolver before he took another breath. I flinched at the close proximity of the sound from the shot. The bullet tore through where Cy’s heart was. He should have been dead. But he stood there laughing, the spray of fresh blood.

  “So you do bleed,” Kenai nearly spit the words as he wiped the blood from his eyes. He shouted the command for my dog to attack. Before I could react myself, I watched as Czar passed right through Cy.

  The laughter changed to cackles as blood poured from the wound in Cy’s chest wall. What the hell was he? What did he know? My brain went into overdrive. Was Cy the one behind the string of text messages I had been getting for the last few months? Someone had been sending me messages anonymously, and lately they had been getting more threatening. I had no leads on them, and I had yet to tell my brothers. I didn’t want to feel like I always needed them to take care of me.

  “Are you behind the disappearances? And the threatening texts?” I yelled. Ken grabbed my arm to try to keep me back. I would have barreled towards this crazy without thinking. I hated that I was still able to be man handled by my brothers. Numerous times they have had to jerk me to safety. It was a stark reminder that an Other could just as easily toss me around if I got grabbing distance.