PROLOGUE
Richard
My heart slows far toomuch but I need to keep the appearance of being human. Every drop she takes from me forces her body to take more. I knew my pure vampire blood was too strong for her to resist, yet I still ignored the open wound on my arm. The stupid cheerleader hasn’t stop screaming and it’s making it harder for me to concentrate on keeping my heart from beating. These fools need to believe I’m dead or they’ll never leave my girl alone.
The school hallway empties out, the silence that follows the emptying of the hallway is deafening. All I want to do is jump up and run after my girl, but I have to remain still. I need them to believe the worst of Areyna. I need them to believe I’m dead.
She’s my only hope of saving the rest of the pure bloods. The only chance we have of curing ourselves of the plague that has been killing us off slowly. With her full powers unlocked from my blood, she’s now the hope of the entire world.
I just hope these stupid fools will leave me here while they go running off after her. I’d rather not kill them all just yet.
The fools still have a use.
For now.
ONE
Areyna
Sometimes life throwsyou a curve ball so hard to catch that you find yourself dropping the ball. Well, I certainly dropped the ball. Hell, I dropped it and it fell off a cliff into the deepest depths of the ocean. Impossible to recover. At least that’s how it feels right now.
I’m not usually such a pessimist, but considering I just killed one of the men in my life, I’m pretty sure I should get a pass on the whole pessimist verses optimist thing.
My name is Areyna Rose, most people call me Areyna, but in my nightmares, a disembodied voice calls me Eliza. I’m not sure if that’s my birth name or just my mind playing tricks, but for now, I’ll stick with the name given to me by my two protectors: Jason Lance and Richard Talon.
I first met the two of them when they rescued me from Laverton Prison. A place where unknown creatures as dangerous as me are sent to keep everyone safe. I never knew what I was or where I came from because my memories prior to Laverton are nothing more than glimpses in dreams. I know I had a family at some point and I know that I lived in a foster home for a while but apart from that, there’s just a gaping hole of darkness that threatens to swallow me whole if I try to dig into it.
Richard is the man I killed. I felt his heart stop as I lost my fight with my bloodlust and drained every single drop from his body. Richard was a great man, protective, sweet, a little overbearing at times, but that’s nothing unusual for a police detective. He and Jason were my guardians, they’d vowed to keep me safe, protect me from the beast hiding within me.
How’s that for ironic, they swore to protect me and keep me from making the very mistake I made.
Two police detectives, an unknown female hybrid and three teenage male hybrids walk into a high school full of murderers… Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke huh?
Well the joke was on me. I killed my protector. My friend and possible lover while in the midst of investigating the murders.
The man I killed was so under the thrall of my stupid hybrid bond that he didn’t even cry out when I drained him.
I am a murderer.
If it hadn’t been for my new friends, Torren, Derrin, and Remmie, I’d have probably killed Jason and the bitch cling-on who was in the classroom with us. The bitch is a blonde girl, a cheerleader; the kind of girl you’d expect sexy guys like Torren, Derrin, and Remmie to fall for. She’s a typical beauty with her skinny, perfect body and bright bleached hair.
Not that she matters in the grand scheme of things. She was just a moment's distraction for my addled thoughts. A glitch in the system that is my mind right now.
I’m not sure why I’m fixated on her when the tears are still streaming down my face as I run headlong into the woods, but she keeps popping back in there as though her presence in that classroom was important somehow. She’s not important though, she’s just a bystander to the mess that my life has become in a short space of time.
The dim moonlight filtering in through the trees hurts my eyes, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Running is all I have now. I need to get as far away from the pain as I can. I need to make it stop, but I don’t know how.
Something hits my arm, slicing through my shirt and making me cry out. The metallic tang of blood hits my nose and I gag. Huge wracking sobs tear from my throat as I double over clutching my stomach to try to temper the pain radiating through my entire body.
I killed Richard!I killed Richard!
Those three words repeat themselves in my mind, over and over again. Burning my lungs and blurring my vision as I fall to my knees amongst the decaying leaves beneath a huge tree. My blue-black hair curtains around my face, obscuring the little bit of view I had left of the forest surrounding me. It’s okay, though, I don’t need to see. I don’t need to think or feel. This is what I want; To drown everything out. To hide from the pain and guilt eating away at my soul.
If only his face would leave my mind. If only I could run away from the painful memories that are haunting me.
I’d been feeling so down after being locked away in Laverton for so long that Richard and Jason had taken me out for a meal. The first full human meal I could remember having. It was such a lovely thing to have.
They’d given me brand new clothes just for the occasion; a dress in the softest black fabric I’ve ever felt against my flesh. Pretty boots with little skulls adorning the straps and underwear that made me feel like a woman for the first time in my entire life, but what made me feel the most special was their company.