Stained

by Ella James

Stained

  Book One of the Stained Series

  * * * *

  Stained

  Copyright © 2012 by Ella James

  ISBN: 9781476247618

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.

  PLEASE DO NOT PIRATE THIS BOOK. PIRACY SUCKS.

  Chapter One

  The monster clawed the dark sky, hissing and spitting and belching ash. Its fat orange talons twisted the little house until it cracked, until the walls caved and the roof collapsed.

  Neighbors sprang from their quiet homes and stumbled to the yard, drunk from the light, shouting for help. And for nothing. No one inside was alive.

  Julia knew.

  She watched the fire as it swelled, as it swallowed glass and gulped brick. She watched while her clothes and books and, oh God, the bodies of her parents, burned away.

  The wet Memphis wind whipped smoke through her hair as the remains of the little house on Galloway Avenue rained over the street.

  Sirens wailed—God why were there sirens, hurrying drivers running red lights, when no one was alive?—and as Julia stood there, stone still, something in the smoke plume caught her eye. It looked like…wings. She squinted, and the cloud formed a torso, arms, and legs.

  She rubbed her eyes, and when she looked again, he was corporeal: a huge, dark-skinned, black-winged man with a sick grin and sharp red eyes.

  The Angel of Death, she thought dazedly. He turned a slow circle, looking for someone else to claim, but Julia was tucked into the shadows of the lawn. She held her breath; an instant later he was gone—up so fast, she knew she was hallucinating.

  The sirens grew louder and she staggered into the small pine grove behind her house. A straw path led to Dirk and Dwight’s, through two tidy yards and down three doors.

  She shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut. It hadn’t been late. Not that late. Dirk had Ms. Botch for pre-cal. Ms. Bitch. He couldn’t do math, and Dwight just plain couldn’t do school, so Julia had laced up her new pink All-Stars, slipped her notes into her pocket, and sneaked out the window. She hadn’t bothered peeking into her parents’ room. They were snorers, so she knew they were asleep.

  She had sat on the boys’ front porch and explained trigonometric functions, her cereal-box watch reading 12:40 a.m. when she arrived. Now it read 1:08. Twenty-eight minutes. Twenty-eight minutes and this.

  The neighbors stayed near the crumbling curb, bobbing heads together, palms pressed over eager mouths. Soon they would be talking. That foster girl and that poor, sweet couple. Such a shame.

  Julia searched for a cue in their script, but she didn’t have any lines. Because she would be dead.

  She couldn’t go back to the state, not after five years of paradise. Harry and Suzanne had been her parents since she was twelve, and she would follow them into the annals of the neighborhood’s folklore.

  As red and white and orange light jumped across cotton gowns and tragic faces, and the sirens out-whined the noise of the inferno, Julia walked away.

  *

  It was the water that startled her out of it—startled her awake. Somehow, she’d gone to sleep standing, and when Julia came to, she was a long way from home. The girl who could barely do two miles for PhysEd had walked—well…her brain didn’t seem capable of guesstimation, but it was a stretch. From Overton all the way to the muddy Mississippi.

  She was a gunshot from downtown, her pink All-Stars mired in the wet grass that fringed the river. She took a few wobbly steps back, almost into Riverside Drive, and an angry driver honked.

  Heart pounding, Julia weaved her way across the street. She followed the sidewalk past a steep hill bearing a row of river-view homes, until the neighborhood folded into itself and the pretty painted houses became old gas stations, abandoned buildings, and squalid apartment complexes.

  She sank her nails into her palms as she passed a patch of deserted warehouses. One, a white brick ruin with a faded pecan mural, caught her eye. She ripped three weathered boards off a busted-out window and shimmied inside.

  Suzanne had always bought a giant bag of roasted pecans for Christmas, and that’s what the place smelled like: Christmas. And mildew.

  It looked like a nightmare. Crates and boxes and overturned chairs littered the floor. Thick cobwebs covered the corners, and every surface was caked with a thick layer of grime.

  For just a second, she glanced back at the window, where sickly bluish light from a battered street lamp filtered in. Her stomach flip-flopped. Did she really want to do this?

  She took another deep breath and the roasted pecan smell turned into the smell of pecans burning. Not pecans sitting on a pan in the oven, but the oven melting in an inferno.

  Her breaths came loud and hard, and before she knew it, her body was shaking like a seizure. She turned a wobbly circle, trying to get away from herself. Failing. She saw a snapshot image of Suzanne padding to bed in her favorite blue fleece nightgown. And randomly, their toothbrushes: Harry’s green, Suzanne’s purple; always Oral-B. Julia had a hot pink one in her own little cup. She pictured it crumpling in the heat. There had been water in the sink and the bathroom rug had still been damp.

  What happens to the water in the pipes?

  She imagined the pipes bursting, the water evaporating in an instant, and put a hand to her stomach.

  “Omigod. OMIGOD.” She stumbled toward the bluish light, tripping on a crate, dry-heaving on the floor.

  She crawled the rest of the way to the window, shoved her boneless body between the nail-riddled boards; one gashed her upper arm and she wiped numbly at the blood.

  The ground was damp. As her eyes slid shut, she thought: What about the Angel of Death? He had claimed Suzanne and Harry but not her. Luck or fate, she wondered as she hugged herself.

  *

  Sometime much later, Julia opened her eyes and found herself face-to-face with the skinny trunk of a young maple tree. To her shock, she was curled in the fetal position, mere inches from a graffiti’d sidewalk in the old warehouse district. She looked up at the tree then glanced down the narrow, foggy street. Empty.

  For a full minute she marveled at where she was.

  And then it hit her.

  “Oh God. Oh God,” she exhaled, remembering. She looked down at herself, at her spaghetti-strapped beige night shirt. It smelled like smoke. She stuck out her legs, clad in jeans she’d pulled on when she’d walked to the twins’ house—skinny jeans Suzanne had bought for her from Abercrombie.

  They hadn’t helped her win any new friends at school, but they did make her butt look pretty decent. That didn’t matter, now, because no one at school was going to look at her butt. Now her butt was nonexistent.

  She was nonexistent.

  Julia thought about the twins and had to make herself breathe. If it went right, the cops would think she was dead, so she couldn’t see Dirk and Dwight again. Not even at school, which she would never again have to attend. Suzanne and Harry would have knocked her a good one for dropping out, but she didn’t care. School was a non-issue. She’d always been smart.

  She was smart enough not to get jumped on the way to a gas station, and to get a good five-finger discount on two Kit-Kat bars, a can of Grapico, and some scissors. Back in the warehouse, she chopped her silky, hip-length tresses to her shoulder blades and frowned at the cloudy mirror.

&nb
sp; The girl frowning back was a stranger. Without the flowing ebony curtain distracting from her face, her smallish mouth and unremarkable nose stood out. Her big brown eyes looked even bigger. She could see too much of her high cheekbones and pale skin.

  All she could think was that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how she looked. She could let her teeth rot out. Who would know?

  The thought made her feel oh so very, very tired.

  She found a ratty old tarp draped over a pile of crates and dragged it into the cleanest corner of the warehouse, where she curled into a little ball and tried to pretend the floor wasn’t digging into her shoulder until she counted her way to sleep.

  The sleep was beautiful and dreamless.

  The next morning she stole a bottle of NyQuil, and she spent an entire day sleeping.

  She might have slept forever, but a loud thud woke her sometime late that third night. Julia jerked up, heart pounding, senses strangely alight.

  There it was again: a series of thuds on the warehouse roof. She pulled the tarp to her chin as clouds of dust rained over her. The banging continued for probably half a minute before it stopped. Half a minute in which she hoped her death would be a fast one. Julia counted to ten before she opened her eyes, and several more seconds passed before she dared to breathe.

  “What the—”

  Julia covered her head as wood beams and chunks of concrete crashed down around her. She crouched with her back against the wall, paralyzed with fear until suddenly everything was quiet. When the dust cleared, she peeked over a pile of rubble and gasped.

  Dozens of glossy charcoal feathers settled around a hole in the floor at least half a foot deep. A guy was inside. She swiftly registered broad shoulders, hard muscle, and dark hair.

  A hot guy. Very hot. He had, too literally, fallen at her feet.

  Chapter Two

  He lay awkwardly on his back, one arm across his wide, thick chest. His knuckles were raw, like he’d been fighting. She stared at his face over the shallow rise and fall of his chest, struck by how stunning he was. Almost statuesque.

  Even flat on his ass, he had huge presence; she half expected him to stand up, dust his rugged blue jeans off, and saunter outside to a waiting band bus.

  Sorry mates. Just a tour prank.

  A mop of shaggy chestnut hair splayed around his pale, scraped face—a face that seemed jaded and wise, even without the light of consciousness.

  Long lashes fluttered below dark brows, above generous lips and a straight-line nose. His eyes were deep green, and when his emerald gaze found Julia, she lost her breath. Then his eyes slipped shut, and he deflated with a soft whoosh.

  Oh no!

  Julia opened her Sight as she scrambled to his side, wincing when she reached him. Injuries were usually glowing white chains that knotted wherever someone was hurt. His chain—like the aura “behind” it—was a strange, shimmery silver, and bursting with gnarls.

  “Holey moley,” she breathed.

  She stroked his damp forehead as she catalogued each knot. One, over his heart, was tightening fast. She snatched it and her own chest ached. She crisscrossed and unlooped until it hurt to breathe.

  As quickly as she could, she moved to the knot over his skull. It was a scary mess of tangles—tangles made of tangles, and throbbing brighter every second. She tried to be careful, to be gentle, but she was moving fast, and his handsome face contorted as she worked.

  It was intense; more than anything Julia had tried to do before. Just half a minute in, and her nose started to bleed.

  She should have stopped then, but there were so many knots, each one urgent. She dove deeper, mixing her aura with his, and caught impressions of him in color: the red flare of anger, the riptide orange of vengeance, a shameful green regret. Confusion was prevalent, a blinding pink. But the black was strongest: rage and sorrow, an almost even blend that stained him.

  And over that, translucent scenes. A worn adobe home in a dry Midwestern neighborhood, slanted roof steaming under the summer sun. Splotches of gray sky, and below it a wide log cabin heaped with snow. Fistfulls of stone, and a flower for her. And suddenly, agony. Purple pain that made her weak—so weak.

  For too long, the ripping ache was all she knew.

  Then she saw skin like darkest ebony. Frightened amber eyes. She felt the sting of muscle straining, heard screams so real they stung.

  Oh. They were coming from her throat.

  She closed her Sight, panting, spinning; too much energy in a battered body. Healing had never been that intense before. That intimate.

  When she could, she lifted her head from the cradle of her hands, and the ramshackle warehouse blinked to life. Those heavy-lashed green eyes were open, frantic jade searching her own.

  He was still pale, but not sickly sallow like before. She noticed a jagged white scar across his throat and felt a wriggling warmth deep in her belly. She wanted to fix that, too. She wanted to fix all of him.

  “Are you okay?” she panted.

  “Get outta here,” he groaned. He rolled onto his side, and Julia shied back, as startled by him as she was interested.

  “Huh?”

  “You gotta—” The guy stopped, eyes jerking toward the ceiling. “He’s here. Go!”

  Julia followed his gaze and froze. Clearly, she had lost her mind, because the Angel of Death was above her: the nutty hallucination she’d seen above her burning house—only this time, he wasn’t a hallucination.

  Shock made her cold and still as he sailed through the hole in the roof and extended two massive raven wings. They slunk in and out of the shadows, stretching until they seemed to fill the room.

  Her first thought was that the lovely darkness of his skin was familiar from somewhere else. She realized it was a detail from the injured guy’s memory. He had encountered Death before.

  She cowered underneath the creature’s soul-shriveling glare; his eyes were blood red, his voice a chilling baritone. “You’re supposed to be dead.” With one brow arched, like he was surprised to find Julia alive, he looked at the wounded guy, and his lip curled like he was enjoying a dirty inside joke. “So are you.”

  Then Death dove.

  He was a breath away before she could blink, and then he was gone, rammed by the guy she’d saved. He flung Death into the wall, shaking the building like an earthquake, and landed a quick punch before Death kneed him in the chest.

  Julia winced.

  She wanted to watch, to watch out for him, but the floor lurched up to meet her. When the room stopped spinning, her savior was kneeling in front of her, his muscled arms stretched out as if to shield her.

  Death hung in the dusty air; his ear was bleeding, one of his wings looked rumpled, and his horrible brown and black aura showed glowing amber chains around his head and arm. His crimson eyes narrowed, and as Julia pushed herself up on her elbows, his mouth pinched.

  “Again?” He sneered, looking to Julia before returning his gaze to her protector, who stood in front of her with his arms crossed. “You are a fool. Go down this path, and you will be the enemy of all.”

  With one flap of his wings he was gone, up through the roof so fast he blurred.

  Tall, Dark, and Seriously Lacking in Judgment Re: Friends took two steps after him, green eyes to the busted roof, scraped fists clenched at his sides. He looked so beautiful, so powerful and so defiant, that Julia almost felt afraid.

  Then his breath hitched, and his breathtaking body seemed to deflate. Something that looked like disappointment dragged on his features, and he waited a long moment before he turned to her, his gaze rolling from her dirty hair to her smudged pink All Stars. “Are you okay?”

  “Am I okay?” Her voice cracked on the word. She looked at the ceiling, then back at him. “Of course not.”

  His lips quirked before his face set with an intensity that sliced her nerves.

  Julia forced herself to return his stare. In her most chill tone—in a tone that said
nothing of the wild disbelief she felt—she asked, “What was that thing?”

  His eyes narrowed and, with a strange poise, he drew himself up; standing tall, he was even more statuesque, all shoulders and hard, round muscle. “Probably what you think.”

  “I think it was—” the Angel of Death, but how exactly could she admit that and not sound crazy? She didn’t get a chance to figure it out before the guy’s brows pinched skeptically.

  “What exactly are you?”

  Julia giggled. She sounded unhinged, but she couldn’t help it. “I’m a person,” she gasped.

  He stepped closer, eyes damning. “You touched me.”

  She hedged back.

  “You healed me.” It was an accusation.

  “Maybe.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  “I—” She had never tried to explain it before. Because it was a secret. She looked him over, trying to decide if she should share. “I don’t know how. I just did.”

  His eyes were emerald drills, digging into her. Her eyes dug right back. She had the sense that he was going to say something—something that would help her make sense of the freak fest that was her life. Instead he just said, “Thank you.”

  And turned away.

  “Wait!” Julia cried, lunging for the sleeve of his tattered gray t-shirt. “You can’t go!”

  “I can’t?” He arched a brow.

  “What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “You can’t just leave me here!”

  He rolled his eyes. “Isn’t this where I found you?”

  Julia wanted to scream, but she forced herself to take a deep breath. “You have to at least explain what’s going on. Who that guy was?”

  “No I don’t,” he said flatly. Through the strands of his hair, she saw his jaw flex. “You need to forget about it.”

  “You owe me!”

  “No I don’t.”

  “But I have to know!”

  “No you don’t.”

  Desperate, she leapt after him. “That thing killed my family!”

  The words were like razors dragged through her throat, and they stopped him. Julia bumped into his back. “Ow.” She jumped away, flushing with anger, and something else that made it hard to say: “I need to know. Who— no, what is that thing?”

  The guy’s eyes narrowed, and Julia didn’t need her Sight to see the fury written on his face. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse.