Havermouth, Present TimeThe f-ker!Aislen woke angry and sore. Her whole body ached, but her head and throat most of all. She was f-king going to kill that arsehole of a torturer, she thought.She was lying on her back on a bed, but not somewhere private. Around her she could hear the murmur of voices, groans and moans, the rattle of metal against metal, and crying. It stank. Layers of sweat, urine, faeces and… rotten meat.She opened her eyes and looked through a mesh of metal bars at the pressed tin tile design within the coffered ceiling high above her and the elaborate chandelier that dangled from it. Not what she’d expected having smelled the room, she thought, sitting up.It was a large long room, with a heavy velvet curtained stage set on one end and a wall of double doors at the other. In between the two ends, rows of cages had been set, each one only long enough to fit a trundle bed and twice as wide. Many of the cages were empty, like the one directly next to Aislen’s bed,
Havermouth, Present TimeCameron and Rhett stood by the front window of Mr Claymont’s house with the lace curtains pushed back, looking out at the street as the crowd began to clear. A riot had broken out in response to the explosion of the school and had blocked the Van Helsings’ efforts to reach their destroyed base. The Havermouth rioters had destroyed several of the Van Helsings’ vehicles until guns had been drawn and bullets had been fired.Just as things had been on the verge of turning into a massacre, the fire had begun to spread out from the school, and Havermouth’s residents had rushed to help the homeowners save their property whilst others had dragged those injured by the Van Helsings retaliation into nearby houses.Into the chaos and mania of it all, the fleeing werewolves had just been another strangeness of the day, with people shrieking and screaming as their fur brushed against them, but otherwise taking no action against them, too occupied with the fire and gunmen, a
Havermouth, Present Time Heath woke into darkness. His werewolf sight could not even determine a pinprick of light. The darkness was heavy, smothering. “Talen?” He asked. His voice sounded muted, as if he were in a closed, tight space. He reached out and felt nothing however… And that was terrifying. There was no floor, no walls. He did not understand how it was that he was not falling… or perhaps he was. His breathing was rasped through lungs constricted by panic. “Shh,” a woman murmured. “Hush now, do not fear. Nothing will harm you here. Indeed,” there was amusement to her voice. “There is nothing here to harm you.” “Who are you?” He demanded, fear turning into anger. “Some Van Helsing trick?” “Hmhmhm,” she chuckled softly. “No, white wolf.” “Where is Talen?” He sat up slowly, relying on his stomach muscles as there wasn’t a floor to brace his hands against. “Where are we? Why… isn’t there a floor?” “So many questions. We are in the beginning, the aether, the place where we
Oakenden, Ten Years BeforeElizabeth Day was walking five meters in front of him, and yet Logan couldn’t bring himself to lengthen his stride in order to catch up, his nerves causing him to dawdle along behind in a way that he hoped wasn’t creepy. They walked the same route every school day, but he’d only really noticed that, and her, the year before when Jack Wilson started paying her attention. The guy was a dick, but because Jack’s family was rich and he was good at football, he thought that he was top shit. Yet people didn’t seem to see that Jack Wilson really wasn’t everything that he claimed to be.Elizabeth had been fooled by Jack’s self-proclaimed perfection and they’d started dating.Logan knew that he would be the better boyfriend for Elizabeth. Jack Wilson didn’t deserve to have someone as nice and as pretty as her. However, Logan could count the times he had spoken to Elizabeth on one hand, and most of those times had been just been stupid polite stuff like hi, and thanks
Oakenden, Ten Years BeforeThe pain was persistent. The sort of pain that Logan knew that was only a hair from agony. He knew that he was in hospital and drugged to take the edge off of his suffering as he had fleeting, foggy memories of whirling lights in an ambulance, and people talking to him, reassuring him that he was being looked after, the off-white halls and flash of neon lights as he was wheeled through the hospital, people staring at him in horror, and moments of waking surrounded by blue curtains as nurses checked in on him their voices blurring and the meaning lost.He had run from the monster, from the scene of gore and horror in the kitchen, fleeing down towards Gillian’s room in the hope that she would be home, seeking help whilst knowing there was nothing that she could do against the monster. In the bedroom, the monster hand brought him down and pinned him facedown on the ground.He’d felt the warm stickiness of blood running down his cheek, into his eye and mouth as
Montlimer, Ten Years BeforeThe Abraham Boarding School was a two hour drive away from Oakenden, out in the country. They passed through a tiny town without even seeing a single person or another car on the road, before heading out into fields. The school was impossible to miss as it was the only thing in the fields for miles around.“Wow,” Logan was taken aback by the size and grandeur of the building.“Yes, it is impressive isn’t it,” Father Isaiah was amused. “This property was established two centuries ago when this country was colonized, and owned by a very, very wealthy family who came to the New World seeking to spread the old religion to new followers. The natives were resistant and hostile, as you know, and there was much conflict in the region. The house served during the times of unrest as a hospital for wounded soldiers and then as an orphanage, due to the charity of the establishing family. Now, it is a boarding school for young people who need a place to recover and grow
Montlimer, Ten Years BeforeLogan spent his time moving between the common room and the junior library, trying to escape his grief in books and TV shows. He gradually got to know the other students by name and face as they made their appearances in the common room. They were curious about him, but there was an unspoken rule that he quickly worked out – they didn’t ask about his past, and he wasn’t to ask about theirs. And that was fine with him – he couldn’t talk about what had happened to him and could understand why they didn’t want to share what they had been through.Conversation mainly revolved around the school, teams that he should join, the teachers that were more or less fun to study with, and which students were hooking up with each other after lights out.Logan’s roommate Wade was seeing Katrina from across the hall, and they alternated nights in each other’s room, requiring Logan to either spend an uncomfortable night listening to the opposite bunk bed creak, or to take hi
Ertonport, One Year BeforeMeguitte had always loved the ocean. Standing on the balcony of her beachside apartment home overlooking the water as the sun set on the horizon, listening to the hush of the waves as they lapped at the sand always soothed her spirit, ever since those days on the water with Thaelen, Sigrid, Isolte and Caerin, so very, very long before.It had been the first time since the death of her mother that anyone had treated her, had touched her, with care and respect, and she had thought that if she had to die, and despite the humiliating method of her death, there would be some dignity to it because she would die as clean as she could be, with her hair brushed and braided, warm, rocked by the ocean, and with someone holding her hand who would mourn her passing.She had not died, however, but had been offered a new way of life, and she was still grateful for it, although she knew that amongst vampires, she was considered to be as frail, fragile and disadvantaged as a