by Tim O'Rourke
Werewolves of Shade
(Beautiful Immortals Series)
Part One
BY
Tim O’Rourke
First Edition Published by Ravenwoodgreys
Copyright 2015 by Tim O’Rourke
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold 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 purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Story Editor
Lynda O’Rourke
Book cover designed by:
Tom O’Rourke
Copyedited by:
Carolyn M. Pinard
www.cjpinard.com
For Patrick
More books by Tim O’Rourke
Kiera Hudson Series One
Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 1
Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 2
Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 3
Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 4
Wolf House (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 5
Vampire Hollows (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 6
Kiera Hudson Series Two
Dead Flesh (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1
Dead Night (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 2
Dead Angels (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 3
Dead Statues (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 4
Dead Seth (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 5
Dead Wolf (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 6
Dead Water (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 7
Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 8
Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 9
Dead End (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 10
Kiera Hudson Series Three
The Creeping Men (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 1
The Lethal Infected (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 2
The Adoring Artist (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 3
The Secret Identity (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 4
Werewolves of Shade
Werewolves of Shade (Part One)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Two)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Three)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Four)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Five)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Six)
Moon Trilogy
Moonlight (Moon Trilogy) Book 1
Moonbeam (Moon Trilogy) Book 2
Moonshine (Moon Trilogy) Book 3
The Jack Seth Novellas
Hollow Pit (Book One)
Seeking Cara (Book Two) Coming Soon!
Black Hill Farm (Books 1 & 2)
Black Hill Farm (Book 1)
Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary (Book 2)
Sydney Hart Novels
Witch (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 1
Yellow (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 2
The Doorways Saga
Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 1)
The League of Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 2)
The Queen of Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 3)
The Tessa Dark Trilogy
Stilts (Book 1)
Zip (Book 2)
The Mechanic
The Mechanic
The Dark Side of Nightfall
Book One
Unscathed
Written by Tim O’Rourke & C.J. Pinard
You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.kierahudson.com or by email at [email protected]
Authors note:
The book you hold in your hands or on your favourite e-reading device is the first part of a longer story about the ‘Werewolves of Shade’. I’ve chosen to serialise the story and publish each part in novella length bites. This I have done for a couple of reasons. Chapbooks like this have been around a very long time, in fact Charles Dickens used to publish his stories in this way, not that I am for one minute comparing myself to such a gifted writer. More recent authors have also published works in this way too.
As a kid I used to love watching the old Batman and Flash Gordon episodes on Saturday morning TV. Each episode would end on an agonising cliff-hanger and I would have to wait until the following week to discover how Batman and Robin freed themselves from the shark infested pool they had been dropped into or how Flash would escape the exploding spaceship he was trapped in. And although I found the wait between episodes agonising it was also a lot of fun too as I discussed with my friends on the school yard how our heroes might escape. It set my imagination on fire coming up with my own ideas and theories. Of course I was never right – I never came close - but that didn’t matter. It was the fact those stories really came alive in my head – they kept me on the edge of the sofa dying for more. That sense of adventure and excitement has never left me and is one of the reasons I love to write today. I still watch TV shows like Lost and Breaking Bad, all of them leaving me clawing my eyes out with a strange delight at the cliff-hanger endings!
So within this series, I hope in some small way I help to create that sense of adventure and fun those old TV shows used to create for me. I aim to publish new parts of the story each month until the story is complete (I have three, perhaps four, planned). Each part will end on a cliff-hanger and I hope that you, just like I used to, will come up with your own theories and ideas of how our heroine, Mila Watson, survives the nightmare that will be the ‘Werewolves of Shade’.
Best wishes and thanks for reading
Tim O’Rourke
Werewolves of Shade
(Part One)
This story is set in a where and when not too dissimilar to our own…
Chapter One
All the people of Shade had gone missing. Vanished, some said. Others believed they were all dead, murdered by werewolves. All I knew was that the village of Shade wasn’t like any other in England. The country in which I lived had once been very different, but that had been many years ago – a long time before I had been born. It was hard for anyone to know what really had happened to my country or the rest of the world. All any of us knew was that the werewolves and vampires had gone to war.
Yes, there had been werewolves and vampires. They had lived in secret amongst the humans, forging out lives for themselves beneath the noses of the people who had occupied the world back then. According to the rumours and myths that now passed amongst the people of England like whispers, the werewolves and vampires had always been at war. This war had raged in secret, without the humans’ knowledge. But like all wars, they become contagious – stretching out across the world, touching all lands and countries. From what little I can gather from the few books and newspapers that remain from that time, the werewolves were trying to protect the humans from vampires. If the werewolves were to be believed, the real threat to humanity came from vampires who wanted to feed off the humans. But of course, the vampires said it was the werewolves the humans had to fear, for it was believed that they wanted to steal human children from their beds and occupy their infant souls.
So the war raged between the werewolves and the vampires as the human world was destroyed. What chance did we humans have of winning a war a
gainst two armies of supernatural creatures that could change shape at will, run and leap at incredible speeds, and had the strength of ferocious beasts but the beauty of gods and goddesses? And even if the humans had found a way of matching them, the werewolves and vampires had a strength that could never be matched. They didn’t die. Myth had it that even though the world was being destroyed by these creatures, the humans named them the Beautiful Immortals.
So why didn’t these beautiful immortals completely destroy the world, themselves, and the humans? Legend says that someone came who saved us – she saved the world. And so much like the rest of what happened to the world back then, there is very little recorded about this young woman. But I’ve listened to folk talk about her in hushed tones. Some say she was the most beautiful of the immortals. I’ve heard people say that her hair was raven black and her skin as pale as snow. But of course this is all just gossip – no one knows for sure. I should know. I came to want to be an investigative reporter because of the stories I grew up listening to about this woman who came and brought an end to the war between the werewolves and the vampires. Some say that she wasn’t like the other beautiful immortals – she was different in some way. But could there really have lived such a creature? And if so, where had she come from? Some said that she was a vampire and I’ve heard stories that she was seen to climb out of the ground – from a grave. Others said that she was a werewolf and wore the skin of others and could change her appearance at will. I kind of like that story, but my favourite was that this young woman had been neither werewolf nor vampire, but a witch. Rumour has it that this young woman bewitched both the werewolves and vampires, turning them to stone statues which over time became nothing but dust. The story had to be made up, just like all the others. And if she had been real, what had been her name? Are people too scared to say it? And why would that be? If the stories I’d grown up listening to were true and this young woman had saved us humans, why wouldn’t people speak her name? I had once asked my father this as I’d sat on his lap as a nine-year-old girl, wondering if this nameless woman who had saved the world had ever really existed.
“Of course she existed, Mila,” my father had said, pulling me close and wrapping his arms about my shoulders. “All the werewolves and vampires had gone. She turned them all to stone – to statues.”
“But how can you be sure?” I’d asked as we sat before the fire.
“Because there is a statue of her too. It is the only statue of the beautiful immortals that still remains. Unlike the other statues, the statue of this woman has never crumbled to dust,” he said.
“A statue?” I gasped. “Where is this statue?”
“I’m not sure,” my father had said, scratching his head.
“There is no statue,” I grumbled, sliding from his lap, the sudden sense of disappointment crushing my heart. “It’s all just a big lie.”
“What if I find this statue?” my father asked me. “What if I took you to see it? Would you believe then?”
“No young woman came and saved us,” I said, looking at him in the firelight.
“Then why did the war come to an end?” my mother suddenly asked from the doorway of the small house we lived in on the outskirts of the town of Maze. She shook rain from her coat, came inside, and warmed herself by the fire. “What happened to the wolves and the vampires?”
I looked at my mother. Her hair was dark brown like mine and hung in wet streaks to the sides of her pale face and onto her shoulders. “Some say that the werewolves and vampires aren’t dead at all, but have snuck back to those places they keep secret from the humans,” I said.
“Who told you this…?” my mother started.
“It’s just stories I’ve overheard. But it doesn’t matter - it’s all just a lie. No one really knows what happened to the werewolves and vampires,” I insisted, shaking my young head from side to side.
“Then our lives have all been just one big lie,” my father said.
“What do you mean?” I frowned.
“You know me and your mother have spent our lives trying to find out more about this young woman,” my father started. “That’s why we both became investigative journalists, to try and uncover the truth of what happened in the past.”
“You work for the town’s newspaper – the newspaper owned by your brother. No one outside the town of Maze reads it,” I reminded him.
He looked a little hurt by my words, but I hadn’t meant to belittle where my mother and father worked.
“Mila Watson,” my mother spoke up, placing one hand on her hip. “You show your father some respect.”
“I didn’t mean to be disrespectful,” I said, looking at the both of them. And I truly hadn’t meant to be hurtful. I loved both my parents very much but I felt frustrated that they were wasting their time. Even as a nine-year-old girl, the only thing I really did believe in was that my parents were chasing nothing more than shadows and gossip. But it’s not easy to be honest with yourself when you’re only nine, and now at the age of nineteen, I knew it had been me who had been lying to myself. I was more like my parents than perhaps I’d ever wanted to admit. My hunger for the truth about what had really happened to the werewolves and the vampires was as much as my parents’ had been. And like them, I too wanted to know if humans had been saved by a mysterious young woman with flowing black hair and flesh has cold as stone.
But I never did get the chance to tell my parents how very sorry I was for saying what I had to them that night. The following day, the people from the village of Shade went missing – and so did both my parents.
Chapter Two
From the age of nine I was raised by my uncle Sidney. I left the small house that I had once shared with my parents, what few belongings I had folded neatly into a battered leather case and thrown onto the backseat of the beat up old truck he drove. It was so covered with rust that I feared it would disintegrate all around me as we made our way through the town of Maze. The truck wasn’t new; it was a relic from the past – from the time of the war between the werewolves and the vampires. The humans who had survived had taken what the war had burnt or destroyed and tried to breathe new life into it. Who Uncle Sidney’s truck had once belonged to, I had no idea, I guessed neither did he. He had driven the truck ever since I could remember and I suspected it was something he had once come across on some remote and desolate road that was cracked with age and the scars of war.
I can remember sitting silently upfront next to my uncle as he steered the ancient vehicle over the cobbled streets that snaked their way through town. Looking past my reflection in the dirty window, I peered out at the streets. The town of Maze in which I had been raised had been named as such because of the maze of empty streets that crisscrossed it. Many of the streets were nothing more than broken piles of rubble where haunted-looking children played war games and made camps. There weren’t many schools in England, and most children were taught how to read and write by their parents. There were very few books in this new world and very few had survived the war. I’d heard that in the past, words had stopped being written down on paper and had been written on devices called laptops and android phones. Books had been read on these. People in the past had stopped writing letters on paper and instead sent messages by something some say was called Wi-Fi. But whatever Wi-Fi had truly been, it no longer existed. Some parts of England had no power or electricity at all. The town of Maze went through spells of having power, then was suddenly thrown into weeks and sometimes months of darkness. When this happened, and the nights were long, black and cold, the night-watchmen would patrol the cobbled streets carrying lanterns to cast some light into the utter darkness. The night-watchmen, I guessed, were like what the old world would have once called police officers.
“Where are my parents?” I’d asked my uncle as he had lifted me from his rust-infested truck. He planted me down on the ground outside his home.
“I don’t know,” he’d said, breaking my stare and taking my case from the back
seat of his truck. Taking my hand in his, he led me inside his home where he lived alone. As far as I knew, my Uncle Sidney had never married and didn’t have any children of his own. My father had said that his brother was somewhat of a recluse and spent most of his time either fixing up the abandoned house he occupied on the other side of town, or worked late into the night on the newspaper he had started to produce in the old shack at the back of the grounds he had claimed as his.
I was soon to learn that my uncle was a man of few words. He wasn’t mean to me or anything like that. In fact, he was very kind and looked after me well. It was as if he was troubled in some way. Those first few days living at my uncle’s house were confusing ones. I couldn’t understand what had happened to my parents. Had they vanished? Been taken? Or worse still, left me because of what I had said to them that night. Had my words hurt them so much that they no longer wanted to be near me? Is that why, every time I asked my Uncle Sidney where my parents were and when they would come back, he would shrug his broad shoulders and look away. Could he not find the courage in his heart to tell me that my parents had abandoned me?
So in the dim glow of candlelight, I would sit in the corner of the shack and watch my uncle crank the handle of the ancient-looking printer that he used to produce the newspaper for the townsfolk of Maze. Even in the gloom I could see dark patches of sweat forming in a giant V down the back of his shirt as he mopped his brow with one strong forearm.
“Don’t you wish my mother and father were here to help you?” I asked, sitting on a pile of old newspapers stacked in one corner. Wind howled over the corrugated roof and made the wooded walls of the shack rattle in their frames. The flame on my candle flickered and I cupped one hand around it to stop it from snuffing out in the draft coming up from beneath the door.
