Never Look Back (Paranormal Huntress Series Book 1)

by W. J. May

  She followed her uncle to the far side of the basement, where he pushed his hand against a loose stone in the wall. A loud click echoed, and the makeshift shelf of books slid open on its hinges and opened into a staircase that descended into the tunnels below. They made their way down, and as they entered a small vestibule fluorescent lights flickered on. Two Ducatis stood side by side in the center of the vestibule, waiting for their riders.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s gotten you so worked up?” Atlanta asked, looking over at her uncle as he slid his own staff across his back and tossed her helmet to her.

  “Nothing,” he muttered.

  Atlanta paused, raising an eyebrow at him as he tightened his cloak around his own suit, a black replica of her own. “I thought we were past keeping secrets from each other.”

  “Believe me,” her uncle replied with a weak smile, “there are some secrets you’ll wish you never knew.”

  “You aren’t helping.”

  “Just get on your bike,” James gestured. “The sooner we get to the Dome, the sooner I can put my worries at ease.”

  Atlanta pulled her helmet on and straddled her bike, turning the key and letting the engine roar. “What’s at the Dome anyway?” she asked, trying to remember anything out of the ordinary she might have overlooked on her previous visits.

  “A door,” James replied.

  “A door?”

  “Yeah,” came the short reply as her uncle pulled on his own helmet. “I just want to make sure it’s still locked.”

  She frowned in confusion as her uncle gunned his own engine, motioned to her, and sped down the passageway. From somewhere deep inside her a tingling formed, and began to slowly spread through her body. She shook it away, revved the engine, and followed her uncle into the darkness.

  Chapter 7

  The darkness slowly decomposed into flickers of neon lights that raced to brighten the way to their charging Ducatis. Confusion ran through her veins like a river that coursed through indefinite paths. She firmly grabbed the handles of her rumbling bike, tightening to try to compose her heart’s endless throbbing.

  Atlanta knew James was focused, his gaze fixed into the distance, the sound of his bike’s engine roaring and vibrating over the rain-stained streets of the city. The redness of the walls around the ancient door continued to flicker around every street lamp. The route to the Dome had never felt longer. Atlanta left the navigation to the automation of her mind while the rest of her thoughts rolled on like a thunderstorm, echoing the fear of an unexpected source of malice. She thought of the Insurgence over and over, trying to figure out what it meant and what had her uncle so uneasy. Riding felt as if they were in a scene from one of her nightmares from recent nights.

  Those red, glaring eyes. The image popped into her mind; she couldn’t erase it.

  All her years as a Druid couldn’t supply her with the proper imagination to fantasize of the oncoming dread she felt quivering through the exhaust of her uncle’s speeding bike. All she could do was hope that whatever door James was talking about would be just a fragment of the instability Louis’ murder had caused.

  The roar of the engines began to calm as the dry fountains around the Dome made their appearance. The forests behind the Dome disappeared as the mist soared high, like the smoke of a burning empire. The structure exhaled myriad legacies and stories that were carved into the smoky, grey stone walls. On top of the structure was a huge marble dome. The most mesmerizing aspect of the dome was that it was half red conglomerate, and the other half was adorned with bedazzling dark blue marble.

  The stone sculptures of the monsters and gargoyles seemed to glare at Atlanta as she staggered off her bike. She glared at the sculptures, trying to calm herself with the thought that evil being frozen and cemented in these forms was a way to contain it.

  “Atlanta, they won’t attack you!” James snapped as he bolted to the brown door of the Dome.

  She shook her head and buried the paralyzing fear beneath a false sense of security, and tried to compose herself. “Sorry, I just…” she mumbled. “Never mind.” She sighed the words and hurried behind James, looking back once more before the shadows of the entrance met the moonlight and the statues disappeared from view.

  Inside, there was vast emptiness that encompassed the place, dark grey walls that stood heavy with no ornaments, only frames of paintings that were single colored. Each seemed to be a shade of blue or red.

  A stairway leading up to the table where the families met seemed to be the only structure that was built-in. The side of the stairway was plated with gold, which shone through the blackened corners of the Dome.

  “We’ve got to move quickly,” James snapped out in a quiet, worried voice.

  Atlanta nodded, not sure if he was talking to himself or her.

  Their footsteps echoed as James led the way towards the stairway. Atlanta looked up and could see the area where the stone table was set. She could feel Louis’ presence in every corner of the place, could hear his arrogant laughter. Most terrifying, though: she swore she could almost hear his panting as he ran, trying to escape his inevitable death.

  “Not up,” James said as he slowly moved his hand on the surface of the wall at the bottom of the staircase.

  “Since when has there been any other way to the table?” she asked in confusion.

  “Wait for it…” He continued moving along the wall. “See the painting with the darkest shade of blue?”

  “I could barely tell the color of your suit in here.” She shook her head, trying to focus better in the darkness.

  “First painting on the corner, right there,” he said, pointing at an almost-crooked painting right across from where the staircase was. “At its top right edge there’s a small sphere. Pull the sphere, and a long needle will stretch out. Get it,” he whispered to her as he smeared the dust on parts of the wall with his fingers, drawing small circles into the surface.

  Atlanta sprinted to the painting. The grey frame was camouflaged with the wall. She slid her hand behind the top edge and cautiously moved her fingers around until something pricked the tip of her finger. Using her finger and thumb, she lifted the thin pin out. The silver needle glittered in the dark as she ran back to James and gave it to him.

  He’d been drawing, or something, in the years of collected dust the entire time. The complete swirl intertwined with similar curves of the wall’s clean grey. One of his fingers pressed beside a small, almost unnoticeable, hole in the wall.

  She glanced around in confusion, trying to read through the emptiness that engulfed every corner of the Dome. Her eyes darted from corner to corner and back to where James seemed to still be frantically drawing. “Are you going to tell me what all this is about now?” she asked, almost hesitatingly.

  “There’ll be time for stories later,” James replied in a monotone. “Just slowly slide it in there,” he muttered, apparently to himself. “Rotate this here, and…there we go.”

  Just as his words subsided, a strident vibration of the friction of the wall resounded through every corner of the Dome. The dust on the walls sprang up in clouds of smoky grey. The wall began to slide behind itself, revealing a passage to a room right under the stone table above.

  The Dome, as its outside blue and red colors showed, was a symbol of peace and unity between two families that, for centuries, were embroiled in conflict. Its center was the meeting room where conflicts were resolved and discussions dissolved into solutions.

  Atlanta sucked in a sharp breath. The peace that held everything together was a joke. She realized it now. Just a cloth to the eyes. Underneath was a deep, dark, untold secret. Hidden so the peace would remain undisturbed.

  “Stay at the door,” James ordered as he walked slowly into the passage. “No one comes in until I get out. Got it?”

  “Yeah.” She stared into the darkness, terror rushing through her veins. “Is the door in there? What if it’s open?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find
out. No one follows me down there, and if I don’t come back pull the needle from the wall and find Marcus.” He didn’t wait for her to reply, his voice sinking into the shadows that engulfed room behind the hidden door.

  A protest on her lips, she pressed them tight to stop the words from escaping. She hated not knowing what to expect, plus she was furious with her uncle for thinking he was protecting her by keeping secrets. But most of all, she felt her chest sending shivers down to her feet. Her mind shouted at her to run, not to fight, not to stand and protect the door. She hugged herself. The fear of facing what took away Louis, the fear of it reaching James before it found her, raced through her mind.

  Why are you so afraid? she asked herself.

  Was it the fear of the unknown, the fear of the unfamiliar? Or an evil so unexplainable she didn’t have the tools to defeat it?

  Just as that thought echoed in her head a deep growl resounded through the Dome, shaking the very core of her being. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sound. It was something she had heard that morning. Not the howling of the winds outside, it was closer. And terrifying.

  She spun around when she remembered what the sound signaled.

  She stared blindly and, for a moment, forgot where she was. She forgot about her uncle in the room below. She forgot about the sculptures outside the Dome, about the shuddering growl that shook the Dome a second ago. Instead, she wished she could forget the existence of the moment she was in now.

  The silence lasted only a second. And it wasn’t because of the absence of sound, but because her thoughts fell to a comatose state at the person in front of her.

  When her eyes met with Ryan Toller’s.

  His were blazing red.

  Chapter 8

  A CENTURY AGO…

  The sea was bloody red and the skies a dirty grey. The winds howled as the thunder roared out its warning. The city of Calen stood desolate against the wars going on inside it. Red was the color that could be seen radiating through its morning sky. The Vamps were at the height of their cannibalistic nature, their diet of human blood served warm in the morning heat or cold in the dead of the night.

  In the forests surrounding the city, magic spiraled around every bush and tree. At night, the witches spread through the forests surrounding the city, their words echoing among the evergreens. A velvet ring radiated and encircled the city, preventing anyone from leaving; not because the witches were ruling, but rather in fear of the wrath of the Vamps.

  With every passing night, when the moon hung proud and white, the number of witches grew smaller and smaller. More fell to the pinch of teeth, their green blood coursing through vampire’s veins. The stronger the Vamps grew, the more their reign over Calen persisted.

  “Perceive us, for when all be gone we remain,” rang a voice so mellow, the trees sighed and breathed in reply. “All that is now is for all that’s to come, a light for you and me,” she sang, humming tunes that pulled the ravens down from the skies, to the curves of her shoulders.

  He watched her in the shadows, anger pouring from him and running off his skin in cold waves.

  She had deep green eyes; her hair hung down to her knees in shades of black and grey. Her lips were two crescent moons embracing at the bottom of her face. “Marcus, Marcus, Marcus,” she said, breaking into another round of ironic yet assured laughter. “I see the girls’ spells couldn’t stop you from coming here.”

  “You overestimate your children, Adelaide,” Marcus replied, his voice deep.

  “I see your centuries of loneliness are finally taking a toll on you. You cannot spend a day without seeing your dear Adelaide,” she said, then broke again into a laughter so loud birds flew to hide behind the moon. All but the ravens; they stayed on her shoulders and glared with flaming red eyes into Marcus’ self-assured, proud stance.

  “Have you gone madder than you already are?” hissed Marcus, his rage circling the heaviness of his fangs.

  “Mad!” she exclaimed sarcastically. “Madness is my sanity as long as your kind is setting the rules. You’re misguided, my dear. Keeping the pack underground is no pledge to the dominance of your kind, and neither will all the witches’ blood feed you with the power to do anything but sigh to the moon when the force arrives.”

  Adelaide strode through the brush as she lay words just like she cast spells. She waved her hands, grazing every tree which broke into laughter at her soft touch. Her back was turned to Marcus as she began to join in with the laughter of the trees.

  Her laughter was brought to an abrupt halt as Marcus’s breath howled around the veins on her neck, his hands grasping her wrists, clotting the green in her blood.

  But Adelaide didn’t even sigh. Her cheeks stretched and her teeth shone in the dead of the forest night. The ravens were holding their wings just above Marcus’ broad back.

  “How dare you mock my kind with your witchery,” he hissed, his voice echoing past the stiffness of his fangs. “Cementing Philip is the last of your countless atrocities. Your sorcery has passed the line of my leniency.”

  Adelaide’s laughter grew darker and louder, her arms slowly sliding out of Marcus’s firm grip. With the lightest of movement, she broke free from the pressure of his clenching body. Marcus was frozen still, and she moved away from him as if he were a chair.

  He glared at her, his movements now solidified. Only his eyes gave way, rolling around and radiating his immense rage.

  “You couldn’t wait until I offered my help. Patience, my dear, patience,” scoffed Adelaide. “You enlighten me with your fierceness, beast. And a beautiful animal you are.” She roared out more of her mocking laughter.

  She walked around his half-bent, fixed, and frozen body, her swirling arms grabbing the back of his head. She pulled out a strand of his dark hair. She came closer to the contracted, stiff muscles of his face, her green eyes an infinite tunnel meeting with his bloodshot ones. “The blood of a Vamp is all I needed,” she whispered, “but Philip was a weak bloodsucker. However, you, my dear, have centuries of life coursing through your black veins. You are one of them, the Firsts.” She smiled at him, and the way her lips curled made her look even more menacing. “Haven’t you heard, my dear Marcus, that the Druids are coming to Calen? They’ll be there and you’ll be here for a night and, even better, a day. You’ll gaze upon your loving sun.”

  Adelaide’s hands suddenly glowed green, creeping down Marcus’ skin. Her fingers slid down on his throbbing chest and the green glow rested on his heart. She pushed her hands, penetrating the chambers of his heart, and her fingers caressed the arteries inside his chest. She pulled out her hands, softly, as the blood gushed up towards his head. Marcus’ head turned a darker shade of red, his fangs dripping violet blood.

  His eyes jerked side to side as he tried to break free.

  A wine glass appeared in Adelaide’s hands. She filled it with his blood. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts now, my dear. I have hybrids I need to bear. It was enchanting to see you.” She rolled out her last strain of laughter. Her crescent lips laid a soft kiss on Marcus’ upper lip, which silently quivered with his suppressed rage.

  “Oh dear, have I forgotten to return your beloved voice? There you go,” she whispered as her feet soared and her body glowed with the witches’ evergreen.

  Marcus roared out a growl that echoed through the forest and resounded in the ear of every Vamp in Calen. But it wasn’t the time for the Vamps to come save their master, for at that time the Druids were at the gates of Calen.

  * * *

  She eyed the skies as their velvety purple smoothness was witness to the birth of a power that would soon shake Calen. An empire of embers descended, and fell around her as the ravens flew against the sighing winds. On the hilltop where the grass whispered words, and stars could be seen frowning, her deep green eyes stood watch over Calen as it burned. The vampires were wailing, the wolves running free, and the Druids were sweeping every corner of the city, their air vaporizing every shackle and setting free the once-damned
beasts of Calen.

  But the power that was being born wasn’t the power of the Druids, for that had existed decades before this time. In that moment, something far more expressionless was being brought to life.

  For years, Adelaide had been the mother of all witches, the atom of sorcery, the enchantress. Her history in Calen was not recognized by many, and not because her power was benign in the city but rather because she made sure her presence was to be concealed, and her power undermined. Adelaide didn’t want to be acknowledged, because acknowledgement meant the possibility of defiance. Her lust for power was deeper than a vampire’s lust for blood, much more intense than a wolf’s hunger and longing for a full moon. She never needed to wear a cloak of sanity and wander the streets, casting spells and enchanting the inhabitants of the city, for from the hilltop where her oak tree stood watch over Calen, her thoughts and desires prowled the night and ensured her rule over the city.

  Marcus was the first to notice the peculiarity in the nights when green mist would encompass the city sky. In his many centuries of life, he had crossed paths with witches in many of the cities he had wandered. But none of them ever dared to move an inch. They all lurked in the shadows of the forests, petting snakes and turning doves and eagles into ravens. To the Vamps they were never an enemy: they were prey. Their green blood when drank by a vampire would enhance his or her powers for days, maybe months, giving them a surge of unparalleled speed and strength.

  Once, some witches were found in the basements of the city. Marcus butchered them with no hesitation, their blood seeping into his veins, giving him and his kind the power they needed to capture all the werewolves and shackle them.

  Now the Druids had come to Calen, freeing the werewolves, and the reign of the Vamps was coming to an end. They were no longer an unprecedented power. The Druids preached coexistence, where every race was equal. The unwise vampires were slayed, and the ones high on witches’ blood were brought to their knees, flailing. They were facing both the slayers and the werewolves, and the city was in flames.