Excerpt: Shadow Blood

Prologue
Nosferatu

The night air thrummed with power. Darkness wavered, solidified, and a girl stepped through the fabric of reality. The frosted forest around her lay silent, wrapping its heavy evergreen arms close around the dilapidated manor before her.
Kylie Chambers wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Her breath fogged in sparkling crystals. She hadn’t expected it to be this much colder outside the city. Januaries in Seattle were mild enough that you could forget it was winter, but the mountains always reminded you the true season. Zipping her furred coat to her throat against the cold, she walked up the torn cobbled path to the manor’s front doors.
Icy mist curled across the ground. Kylie could see gravestones poking from the mist in the manor’s courtyard, leaning and crumbled fingers jutting out of the frost. The place didn’t just feel cold, she realized; it felt decrepit. Dead.
She had never met this alpha before. She just knew of him, knew what she had been told by the Shadow. Gerald had been taken by his shadow soul a month ago, and chose this place as his lair. He grew his coven here. She could feel the snags in the barrier around her from the Shadow’s encroachment.
The wooden steps groaned as she climbed to the door. The rotting wood of the door hung from hinges more rust than metal. She heard no sound from within, and only the faintest glow of pale light seeped through the cracks in the wood.
She reached a hesitant hand toward the door to knock, then thought better of it. No. She was the chosen of the Shadow. She did not ask anyone’s leave to enter. She went where she pleased. Squaring her shoulders, she put her hand, fingers splayed, on the damp wood and shoved the door open.
The door squealed as it lurched aside. Before her, in the mildew-encrusted entryway of the manor, stood a small half-circle of high schoolers, all wearing drab colors and with their hands folded in front of them. Their heads hung in supplication, staring at the sagging timbers below their feet. A ring of candles glimmered in front of them.
Kylie stormed inside.
“What are you people doing?” She barked in her best imperial tone. None of them were possessed, she could feel that. Their shadow souls draped heavily over them, but Gerald had not brought them possession. He merely dominated them. Odd.
None of them reacted to her presence. She squinted through the dimness and shivered again, trying to see through the wobbling light of the candles. The air was no warmer here than it had been outside. “Where is Gerald…?”
“The Dark Lord of the Night is here,” a breathy voice said, from somewhere beyond the candlelight.
The voice prodded right into Kylie’s brain. She felt her knees weaken for a moment, then steady. She growled and forced the presence out of her head.
Then she saw two girls standing beyond the half-circle of thralls, their pale faces all that was visible in the candlelight. Black hair framed the faces, seeming to float disembodied in the darkness. Even with what little she could see of them, Kylie knew they were possessed. Their shadow souls roiled with hunger. Gerald had converted them. Why not the others?
Kylie rolled her eyes. She recognized the two. They were members of the sophomore drill team, popular enough that their disappearance would cause problems. The adults would have already forgotten, but other students – boyfriends, study partners, acquaintances – were likely to ask questions.
She stepped closer to the dominated ones, bending to look at their downturned faces. None reacted to her presence, but she recognized most of them. Ranging through every grade at Arthur High, all of them held social status. Well, at least Gerald hadn’t converted them all. That would have caused no end of problems. What was he playing at?
“Where is Gerald?” Kylie demanded again. She had no use for these minions. All she cared about was the Alpha. She had to know who was moving on Arthur High this time, and what was driving him to such lengths of stupidity….
The two girls stepped to the side. Kylie shoved past the ring of thralls and stepped through the candles.
There, on an alter made from the skeleton of a decaying table, lay a blonde girl, again a member of the sophomore drill team. The sigh that escaped her pale lips, stained with the ruby remnants of blood, sounded like dry leaves on the wind. A thin trickle of more blood dripped down her neck from two fang marks on her smooth flesh. The blood pattered in crimson blotches on the white linen under her.
Above the blonde girl stood a boy, both the most repulsive boy Kylie had ever seen, and a boy that held a strange animal charm she could feel even ten feet from him. He looked barely high school age, but deep furrows creased his dry white skin. His nose and chin sloped in long aquiline arches. Dark eyes skirted over Kylie from under a heavy pale brow, lined with bushy eyebrows that nearly met over his nose. His hair was so light and fine he looked bald, but she could see its natural wave. Wiry sprouts of it rose from ears, which were noticeably sharpened at the tips. He wore a long black jacket over a black T-shirt and black jeans, with a single red rose pinned to his pocket; the dark clothing gave his skin even more pallor.
Gerald rested his hand, fingers thin and ending in sharp, twisted nails, on the girl’s chest. The same white hair covered his hands, back and palms both.
“I’m glad you’ve come to see me complete my coven,” Gerald hissed. His teeth were pointed and yellow. His breath carried the reek of death.
Kylie felt the same force of will try to penetrate her mind, stronger than Gerald’s minions. This time she was ready for it and held it at bay. He was strong, but not as strong as her.
“Well, your coven is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, Gerald,” Kylie spat.
Kylie saw his dark eyes flash with anger. “My name is Mundias, Dark Lord of the Night.”
Kylie didn’t even try to stop her peal of laughter. Dark Lord? Who bought that crap? “Sure it is, Gerald. At least you haven’t converted your whole little coven of thralls here. But the three you did convert are popular enough that their disappearance will be noticed in a second. Arthur High will be in an uproar in days.”
The anger in his eyes blazed. “Maybe my coven is not complete after all.”
Kylie felt soiled by Gerald’s gaze. She masked it as best she could in bravado. “Please. You wouldn’t last a minute if you tried to convert me.”
Gerald smiled a crooked, yellow smile. “You’re unimportant anyway.”
“I am the Shadow’s right hand. You better get that through your decrepit skull, you little twerp. You work for me.”
Gerald batted his elongated hand dismissively. “What I have gotten through my… decrepit skull… is that you failed to destroy the ajna seer when you had the chance. Why should I work for you?”
Kylie felt a blush color her cheeks. She took a step back. “We didn’t know he was so powerful.”
“We do now. And you know he can’t touch me. So go back to the Shadow and tell them that I will conduct the fight against the ajna in my own way.”
“I am not your messenger!” Kylie barked. She felt her nails dig into her chenched palms. “You need to start possessing people that won’t be noticed. You need to weaken the barrier between the Shadow and the world between. That is what you’re here for!”
Gerald looked down at the girl on the altar before him. Kylie watched as her shadow soul tore through the barrier and weaved itself into her being, felt reality itself weaken a little more around her. The girl arched her back and moaned. Her canine teeth shivered in their sockets and drew into fangs.
“No,” Gerald said simply.
Kylie ground her teeth together. “What did you say?”
“Mundias, Dark Lord of the Night does not follow the Shadow’s bidding,” he said. “Or the bidding of its whelp.”
“You listen here, you little-”
“YOU LISTEN,” Gerald roared.
Kylie’s mouth clamped shut impulsively. Gerald’s voice shot to her core.
“I am not beholden to the Shadow. Least of all a Shadow that cannot defeat one lone ajna. Least of all a Shadow that uses a girl that never spoke to me before as its voice.”
Kylie felt more rage build in her at Gerald’s insult. Se could feel his will burrowing into her brain, and had to concentrate to keep it out. “So that’s why you make all these popular kids your minions. Now you’re a real charmer. I don’t even remember you from school, but now you’re going to surround yourself with the people that never gave you a second thought.”
Gerald bared his uneven teeth at her and hissed. “You will go to school, and you will insure that no one raises questions about why my… brides… are not there this semester. I trust you can handle that.”
“I will not be your errand girl,” Kylie said with finality.
It was Gerald’s turn to laugh. “Yes you will. You know their disappearance will raise questions. You can’t afford the… Vagabonds, was it?... to be alerted. So you will do exactly as I ask, won’t you?”
Kylie shivered in anger. Even if she weren’t fighting Gerald’s mental domination, she knew he was right. She would cover the girls’ disappearances. She had to.
As Gerald’s new minion sat up, her blue eyes gazing at Gerald in complete rapture, Gerald ran his fingers through her hair. “ When I defeat the ajna seer, then the Shadow can tear through the barrier uncontested. You failed when you tried, so I will fight this battle as I see fit.” He smiled again. “And I will make it my one and only mission to crush Sean Brighton.”