by Margot Fox
Copyright: Margot Fox
Published: December 2019.
Publisher: Margot Fox
The right of Margot Fox to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Portions of this book were previously published as the “Bloodborn” novel series in 2015. This book has been edited and rewritten as a trilogy beginning December 2019.
Please note that this is a work of young adult fiction and contains graphic language and violence.
About the Author
Margot is a lifelong lover of stories with a magical twist, especially stories with a supernatural love affair. She lives outside of Chicago among the raccoons and foxes.
Check out all Margot’s books on Amazon . Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/MargotFox18
More from Margot:
Standalone Novel
Blood Mirror
Fateful Mates Series
Desire of the Wolf
Driven to the Wolf
Destiny of the Wolf
The Bloodborn Series
Borne in the Blood (Book 1)
A Drop of Red (Book 2, December 2019)
The Occult Sisters (Book 3, March 2020)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
She heard the car door swinging open, the crunch of the slowing tires on the gravel shoulder. The humid, cool air rushed in and she shook her head one more time. She felt she needed to respond, and quickly.
But the words were stubborn, concretized. Nothing would come out. She knew they had hit a wall, but she was startled to find out how literal that felt. She was closed off, penned in. There was no remaining path to travel.
But the car door was open. And there was cooler air outside.
She had to go; she knew it. Her haunches squeaked against the leather car seat as she turned toward the gravel-lined ditch and the dark field beyond. It seemed like the most absurd detour possible. Why here? Why was this supposed to be the end?
The door slammed heavily behind her as she stood on shaky legs in the dark. Too fast, the car rolled away, spraying tiny shards of rock against her naked calves. She turned to watch the red tail lights glowing like a pair of eyes in the dark, then receding. They brightened when the car braked at the stop sign, then dimmed immediately and went out when it turned west, speeding back into the night and out of sight.
Her breath was heavy in her lungs, thick and damp. She looked around in disbelief. An empty road behind her, black fields stretching from horizon to horizon in front of her. A hiss of wind across the tops of the mown weeds.
Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the half moon. The field had long furrows from tractor wheels. The air still had a late spring crispness to it as though it could easily drop to freezing. Far off, she could see dark lines of tall shapes, the trees that marked the edges of the field.
What else was there to do but start walking? She turned fully around, startled to see how black the fields got in that direction. There might be nothing for miles. Pivoting back, she scanned the trees. Somewhere in there was a flicker. A light through the branches.
She set off toward it.
With every step, she felt more dedicated to the journey. It made sense. It was a mission to reach the lights. She hummed a little as she breathed, huffing from exertion. The soil was damp and crumbly beneath her sneakers, sticking to her in clumps.
Trudging forward, she watched the lights. They would flicker and disappear, then reappear a few steps later. It helped her not to think of the night around her - what was in it? She didn’t even know where she was, exactly. Coyotes? Wolves? Snakes? Bears?
Birds, certainly. A brazen family of geese hissed at her and stood their ground as she stumbled awkwardly through the tire furrows. Rabbits. Groundhogs. Chipmunks. Probably nothing larger, she told herself as she squelched through a muddy trough, nearly losing a shoe.
When she finally reached the tree line her thighs ached with exertion. She wasn’t certain it was worth it to go. Lights? She had hiked a mile or more for a couple of lights through trees? She suddenly realized how arbitrary her mission was.
Those lights could be anything, she scolded herself. Don’t get your hopes up.
The narrow band of trees was a bit rougher going. She was sure she could feel the earth slipping beneath her as she stepped through rotted tree litter. Her muddy shoes skated over a smooth rock, practically dropping her on her butt in another gravelly ditch that banked steeply upward to train tracks.
Rocks the size of fists tumbled under her as she mounted the tracks, then stood at the top. On the other side she saw a parking lot with two semi truck containers and a stockade fence. The light she had been tracking was an orange sulfur bulb at the corner of a single story cinderblock building.
A windowless steel door swung slowly open and a woman came out, holding a lit cigarette between the fingers of one hand and the neck of a blue recycling bag in the other. Twisting her shoulder, she swung the recycling bag over the edge of the green bin and dropped it in. Bottles shattered against bottles.
Drawing the cigarette to her lips, she took a long, thoughtful drag and scanned the back lot. Her eyes locked on the woman standing on the train tracks. After a moment’s thought, she raised the cigarette and motioned the stranger over.
“Jesus, the sight of you,” the woman said, blowing smoke from the corners of her mouth.
She looked her over as the stranger shuffled warily toward the building: bare legs randomly slashed in red with little beads of blood, tennis shoes bricked with black mud, her hair in a riot of tangles and snarls.
“You okay?”
The stranger shrugged. “Yeah I think so.”
“You need a phone or a ride or something? The police?”
The stranger shrugged again.
“All rightie,” the woman said, taking another drag and then flicking the butt across the back lot, watching it land impressively far away and roll toward the semi trailers. “I’ll get you a bar towel. You can clean yourself up in the ladies room. You’re a sight.”
The stranger stepped into the circle of orange light and looked down as if to confirm that she needed cleaning up.
“It’s all right. We will get you sorted,” the woman said, opening the steel door. The sounds of country music drifted out. “What’s your name?”
The stranger paused. She squinted as though it wasn’t a question she could immediately answer.
“Tesa,” she finally said, edging for the door.
“I’m Bernie,” the woman smiled. “Ladies room is just here. I’ll get you that towel.”
“Thank you,” Tesa smiled awkwardly. “Where am I?”
Bernie held out her arm grandly. “You’re at Bernie’s Place,” she answered. “I hope you like shitty country music and white trash.”
Bernie swished off, her tight jeans taut around the rectangular cigarette package in her back pocket. She returned with a stack of nubby bar towels and handed them out. Thr
ough the fake eyelashes and glittery cheek makeup, Tesa could see her gentle, motherly expression of disapproval.
“Just leave them in the mop sink when you’re through,” Bernie sighed through her nose. “I hope this is enough.”
Tesa pushed the button lock behind her and stared at herself in the mirror, barely recognizing what she saw. Her red cheeks were streaked with dirt and probably tears. A branch had left a mean welt over one eye.
In the buzzing fluorescent light she pulled off her muddy shoes and stood barefoot on the cold, navy blue linoleum tiles. She looked around. The room doubled as a janitor’s closet and had two sinks: one for customers next to the toilet and a larger one in the corner for cleaning.
Her shoes thunked against the bottom of the resin utility tub and she twisted the handle to start the water. Washing in the white porcelain hand sink, under the buzzing light and the mirror’s glare, just seemed too aggressive at that moment. Too real. She leaned over the mop sink and plunged a bar towel into the brash stream of water, then just started scrubbing.
When she finally opened the bathroom door again, a short, pudgy woman was waiting, leaning against the wood panelled wall.
“Finally!” The woman huffed. “The hell are you doing in there?”
Tesa stepped aside as the woman shoved past her, raising a hand in apology. She walked toward the sound of music, her eyes darting around the room as she took it in.
It was a small, humble bar. High tables lined one wall. There was a pool table in the opposite corner. Small windows. People hunched over their drinks. One couple danced suggestively near the glowing jukebox.
Digging through her pockets, Tesa pulled out a few folded receipts. A bank card. An expired ID card from the Foray Casino and Resort in Las Vegas. A clear plastic ID card, one of the newer ones that had no text or graphics, just a set of supposedly unhackable and unfakeable filaments suspended in the matrix.
“Reader’s down,” Bernie announced, looking Tesa over. “You look better. Feel okay?”
Tesa maneuvered onto an empty barstool a few feet from a man leaning so far forward he looked like he was telling his own future in the surface of his whiskey. She sighed as the tension seeped from her haunches. How long had she been walking?
“Much better. Thanks so much.”
Bernie pursed her lips at the few cards in Tesa’s hand.
“Glad to hear it. But the card reader is on the fritz again, like I said. You got cash?”
Tesa plunged her fingers back into her pockets, coming up with nothing. “That’s all right, I don’t need anything,” she murmured.
The man shifted, glancing at Bernie first, then Tesa.
“You want a shot? I’ll buy you a shot,” he shrugged, his eyes bleary.
Tesa looked up at Bernie, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval.
“I’ll take a Coke,” Tesa answered.
“Nice of you, Grant,” Bernie sniffed, filling a pint glass with ice and then Coke from a gun.
Tesa leaned forward, sipping gratefully. Grant looked around, reorienting himself. He seemed unused to company at his end of the bar.
As he watched her, his eyes cleared a bit. She was undernourished, tousled. Scrubbed but not quite clean. When she looked at him she didn’t seem shrewd or angry.
“Where are you from?” He asked.
Tesa swallowed, sliding her IDs back into her pocket. “Um, Vegas.”
“What did you do out there?”
“Um, not much,” she shrugged.
“What, you don’t remember?” he smirked.
Tesa shook her head. It suddenly seemed very far off, like a million miles and a hundred years. When she tried to picture it, it remained stubbornly out of focus. The harder she tried, the faster it slipped away, submerging itself in a kind of fog that seemed to be permeating her mind.
“Nothing to tell,” she finally replied, irritable and distracted.
“You just visiting?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Where you staying?”
She squinted in response, and he turned back to his drink, embarrassed. “Sorry, just asking. Just trying to figure it out.”
She slid a little closer, watching him. He didn’t seem to be crowding her, just curious.
“Trying to figure what out?”
He swiveled his head toward her. Fluffy locks of sparse hair fringed his tall forehead. His face looked older than it was. She took him as someone simple. Content. Unambitious. Just a regular joe in the middle of regular nowhere. She was sure he wasn’t interrogating her, but his version of small talk was a bit on the intrusive side.
“You know,” he answered. “Like, why here? Why would you — wait, you don’t have a badge?”
He startled, leaning back. His eyes skated over her neck and inner arms, seeking the telltale bite and track marks. Tesa looked down, trying to figure out what he was looking for.
“I don’t have any —“
“A badge!” He muttered urgently, pulling up the plaid sleeve of his work shirt.
A dull blue rectangle glowed from the skin on the interior of his wrist. It looked like a window in a polar outpost or submarine. With no texture or wires apparent, Tesa wondered what she was supposed to be seeing in there.
Tesa stared at her naked wrists.
“It’s required!” He continued.
“Well, I don’t know,” she shrugged. “It must not be required everywhere, right?”
“You have to,” he insisted. “You can’t get a job, you can’t get an apartment… where are you gonna live?”
Tesa scoffed uncertainly, shifting against the vinyl barstool. She tried to remember something about these badges, something she was sure she knew at some point, but it was like a dream that was dissolving as quickly as she was waking up.
“Where were you that doesn’t have badges?”
“Well, I —” she started then cut herself off.
Las Vegas. Where she had a job and a girlfriend. A life doing… Something. But that was gone. Thinking about it made a swirling, angry fog wash through her mind. Everything was confusing. The harder she tried to remember, the more it all seemed to slip away. It felt like a dream that was being revealed as absurd, and not worth the effort to hold onto it. She didn’t want to think about it or the road trip that had just left her abandoned on the side of the road in…
“Where am I?”
CHAPTER 1
The sky still looked blue through the small, high window in the wood paneled walls. Tesa left the lights off for as long as possible as she prepared the bar for opening. She kicked the yellow mop bucket so that it rolled to the far corner by the pool table and swabbed the floor with the bleach and Pine-Sol scented water.
Bernie was late, but Tesa didn't mind. It was nice to have the time to herself and a series of simple, manual chores to work on. Mop the floor, wash the glasses, dust the liquor bottles that stood lined up in neat rows in front of the dingy, spotted mirror. Pretty much the same list of chores in every bar she had ever worked in, in every place she had ever been. Different day, same crap.
As the sun set, the light through the meager window turned orange, then faded quickly. With all the wood paneling, the bar got gloomy very fast and the normal outlines of barstools and spindly stacking chairs started to take on more menacing shapes.
Tesa just ignored all of it, focusing on her chores: wiping off all the table tops, replacing chairs underneath. She scowled at the sound of her boots clicking against the tile floor that was still a little wet in places. The sound seemed a little too sharp, the echoes too harsh.
This was the part of the day where she always got a touch edgy: the time between one thing and another thing. Not quite day, but not quite night. Not quite anything, but with a little sense of wrongness about everything.
Rolling the mop bucket back to the closet in the tiny kitchen, Tesa palmed the entire row of switches that turned everything on all at once. The jukebox wound up immediately, starting fro
m a slow point and then accelerating as though it had been turned off in the middle of a song. Some country tune about trucks or prison or farms or girls in blue jeans or something.
She didn't know. It didn't matter. It was still the old kind of jukebox with the 45s listed on small paper labels. The songs were always the same: Conway Twitty, Elvis, Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubbs. Same old songs; same old heartbreak. Nobody even worried about updating it. Why bother? It would only be the same song wrapped in new melodies. Nothing about love ever changes.
The bell from the front entrance broke her out of her daydream, and she pushed through the swinging kitchen door and back to the bar area.
“Bernie?” she called out into the newly bright bar. “Is that you?”
“Nope… I was just looking for her,” called a younger voice, hopeful but bored.
Jolie picked her way across the tile floor, politely avoiding the wet spots so she wouldn’t leave tracks. Tesa automatically reached for a glass from the rack and turned it right side up on the bar, dropping in a scoop full of ice and grabbing the gun for soda. Jolie slid herself onto a barstool and perched her elbows on the bar. Her hair was a fluffy, dark cloud around her finely etched features.
“Coke?” Tesa asked as she held the gun over the glass. Jolie nodded prettily and flashed a wide, startlingly white smile.
“You bet, thanks,” she sighed, her eyes tracing the perimeter of the empty room.
Sliding the Coke toward her, Tesa checked over Jolie's outfit. A little more shoulder was exposed than Bernie was going to like, she knew. Bernie had some very conservative ideas about how her daughter was supposed to dress. She was always tugging her daughter’s neckline closed and checking the length of her skirts. She didn’t care for too much makeup either, though she wore quite a bit of it herself.
Though Jolie was eighteen, maybe a little older, Bernie still held sway over her daughter’s life as long as she lived in her house. She was more than willing to remind anyone who brought it up — she was a single mother who had suffered a lot to give Jolie the life she deserved. That suffering was not going to go unrewarded. Jolie’s success in life was the reward.
