Young Blood
A Witch Hunter Saga Novella
Nicole R. Taylor
Contents
Copyright
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part 2
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Other Books in The Witch Hunter Saga
The Unhallowed
VIP Newsletter
About the Author
Young Blood (A Witch Hunter Saga Novella)
Copyright © 2013-16 by Nicole R. Taylor
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design © Nicole R. Taylor
Part I
Two Years Ago...
Chapter 1
Liz Evans was a mess.
Well, that's what she felt like every day since she'd graduated high school. The world told her she was meant to go to a great college, get a degree and have a highflying career in… That was the problem. She had absolutely no idea and at twenty, she was still waiting tables at the local cafe where she'd worked her senior year. Yep, she was one of those people. The ones who got stuck and could never get out of whatever small town they grew up in.
That small town was Ashburton, Louisiana. Complete with its stifling humidity, dose of colorful eccentrics, rednecks and thankfully a large dose of sane people, it was her home. For the moment, anyway.
In high school she'd been a blonde haired, blue-eyed beauty. Popular enough, considering she had no ambitions to be on the cheerleading squad or student council. She'd gotten good grades, had all the extracurricular's on her flawless transcript…so why was she so clueless? It was a mystery she was still trying to work out, but in the mean time, she was working on getting into somewhere and waiting for the mailman to deliver her a letter. Preferably a big, fat, welcome package to a college far, far away.
She stood behind the counter at Mrs. Greene's Cafe and finished wiping down the coffee machine, so it would be ready to be fired up tomorrow. The bell over the door jingled as a familiar sight walked in.
“Hey, Alex,” she sighed, leaning on the counter.
Alex was one of her best friends, the other being Gabby Cohen, who wasn't interested in the big college life either. Alex worked over in the botanical gardens as its chief 'landscaper and floral engineer' which just meant he was the gardener. The only gardener, which saw him overworked and exhausted most days.
Pulling out a takeout container from the warmer, she handed it to her friend and smiled. “Scored you some left over lasagna from lunch.”
“Thanks, Liz,” he sighed, leaning his large frame against the counter. “You're a life saver.”
“As long as you're eating,” she scolded. “You work too hard.”
He was probably the most selfless person she'd ever met. In school he'd been this tall, lanky, ginger-haired bully target, but now he was built, handsome and just as sweet.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “The day I can get a partner to help me out is the day I ease off, you know that.”
“You're too much, Alex.”
Holding the takeout container to his chest he gave her a little wave. “Likewise.”
Waving back as he left to go home, she resumed her cleaning duties, wondering if today was the day she'd go back to her apartment and find the letter that would change her life. She didn't have much time to think about it because the bell over the door burst into life again as Gabby jabbed it open and ran in, looking all wild and flustered.
“Liz?” she called out.
“Gabby, what's wrong? Did something-”
“I've got something to show you,” she said, interrupting her friend. “Are you finished?”
“Yeah, but-”
“C'mon, before I lose my nerve.” She grabbed her hand and began tugging her toward the door.
“Whoa, Gabby. What's going on?”
“I'll explain when we get there.” She waived her other hand, dismissing her friend's questioning.
Gabby was always a little flustered. She was part hispanic, so to Liz she'd always felt a little plain beside her wild friend. But today, something was up and for such a small town where nothing much happened, it had to be something big.
Gabby Cohen was a witch. At least, that's what she figured when she started doing things that were impossible.
Her Grams had left a weird book for her in her parent’s attic and when she'd moved out a few months ago, she'd found it amongst all the dusty boxes of her childhood toys. It wasn't just any book. It was a spell book called a grimoire and beyond anything she understood, some of them actually worked.
The book was written in a strange language that looked like Latin, but there were a few pages written in English that she could understand. Spells for lighting fire - tiny sparks that could light candles and start a campfire. Spells for levitation. Spells to help her sense out the earth… She'd spent the last few months trying to figure it out on her own, because if she told someone? They'd all think she was bat-shit crazy.
Last night she'd gone out to the old cemetery by the abandoned Degaud manor and worked her biggest spell yet. At one end of the plot, was a large stone statue of an angel holding a child. It was worn and covered with yellow splotchy lichen and when she'd levitated the whole thing right off the ground, she knew that this secret was too big to keep on her own.
If she was going to tell anyone, it would be Liz. Liz was her best friend and the first person she'd met when she first moved to Ashburton in the seventh grade. She would understand. Well, she'd probably be the most accepting, considering the crazy shit they'd gotten up to when they were younger.
She drove along a back road through the darkening forest in the beat up hunk of metal she liked to call a car. Liz sat in the passenger seat, a look of total confusion on her face. Turning off into the long driveway that led to the cemetery, Gabby pulled the car onto the side near a pair of large wrought iron gates. Nobody came here, not even a caretaker, so the whole place was spooky and overgrown, especially with the long shadows cast by the dipping sun.
“Um, Gabby?” Liz asked, looking through the windshield. “Why are we at the old cemetery?”
“For some reason it works better out here,” she muttered, killing the engine.
“What works better? Gab, you're kinda freaking me out. If you're going to go all axe murderer on me, this is the perfect place.”
Laughing, she gave her friend a wink. “As if.”
Getting out of the car, they walked into the cemetery and weaved their way through the tombs and graves that dated back to before the days of the Civil War. This whole area had been settled in the early 1700s by the French who came to build New Orleans, so there were family names like Perot, Rousseau, Degaud and LaRoux, etched in stone. All of them were families that had been amongst the first to settle here. It was a shame really, that no one came to care for them.
In the middle of the plot, Gabby had cleared a space to work, so the ground around the bare patch of earth was covered in a layer of leaves and litter from the surrounding forest. Point
ing to the clear patch in the center, she said, ”Stand right there.”
Liz grimaced, but stood in the middle of the clearing, the pile of leaves around her. “Um, this isn't weird.”
It would be better if she just showed her, rather than try and explain what she could do. Raising her hands, Gabby concentrated on the leaves surrounding her friend. She was aiming for something a little less scary than starting a wildfire - something beautiful.
Gabby felt the familiar tingle as her power hummed through her fingertips and the leaves began to twitch, before rising slowly into the air. Liz's expression began to fall into shock as they rose higher, floating all around.
“Gabby,” she breathed, turning around and poking a leaf. She watched it spin in the air with wide eyes, a smile spreading across her face. “This is incredible. How?”
She shrugged, dropping her hands and the leaves fell back to the ground with a flutter. “I guess I'm a witch.”
“You guess?”
“I suppose so.”
“What else can you do?”
“Small things. I can light tiny fires, like a candle. I can sense things like animals and people…”
Liz was staring at her with a look of wonder. “How is this possible?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Gabby had no idea, but all she was certain of was that she could do it and it was getting stronger every single day.
“How does it even work?”
“There's spells and that kind of thing, but mostly I just feel it. If I concentrate hard enough, it just happens.”
“Shit, this is…I don't even know.”
“I have no idea what I'm doing…”
Liz glanced at the ground, her forehead creased like she was trying to think something through. Probably trying to decide the best route to the loony bin... “I don't know how much help I can be,” she said after an agonizing minute. “But we can figure it out together.”
Gabby's heart warmed with the thought of having such an amazing friend who wasn't freaking out and was the picture of calm right now. “We need to keep this a secret, Liz. You can't tell anyone. Not even Alex.”
“Who else knows?” she asked, stepping forward.
“No one. Just you.”
Liz frowned before circling her arms around her friend and squeezing her in a hug. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Of course,” Gabby exclaimed. “I trust you with my life, you know that.”
Pulling back, Liz let out a laugh. “And I trust you, which is probably why I'm not running screaming in the opposite direction.”
“Aww, thanks.” She nudged her shoulder against her friend's arm.
“Okay,” Liz said, clapping her hands. “Show me this fire thing.”
Sam Degaud stood in the middle of the gravel driveway, in between the long line of willow trees, and grimaced at the old plantation manor. Sunlight streamed through the branches overhead, the air thick and heavy with moisture. After decades on the road, he'd forgotten how humid these parts could get.
The manor grounds were more unkempt than he hoped. The garden was overgrown, the trees needed a serious pruning and the grass was waist high...but it had been a hundred and fifty-ish years. Life went on no matter what and after everything that had transpired here, it wasn't any surprise that no one came close to the old house. The last time he'd seen it was the night he'd died, the night he changed into something else. Vampire.
“Blast from the past, eh?”
He looked up at his older brother, Zac, who was just as dead as he was, and grimaced. “You could say that.”
“You think someone could've at least mowed the grass.”
“After all this time, that's all you have to say about coming home?”
Zac cast his gaze away and scowled at the house. It was as much answer as he was getting, but there was a whole novel in his brother's expression. He still blamed himself - that much was clear.
Two vampires in the daylight was an anomaly, but they didn't tend to follow the rules. Sam was the most human, preferring to feed from animals, while Zac…well, the only way to describe it was that he had issues with excess.
Coming home was the last straw as far as Sam was concerned. Zac wanted to change, become more human and less uncontrollable vampire, and here was the only pace they had left. They'd grown up together in this house and had suffered in it, too. Monsters and men had run rampant here and it was time to start fresh. What use was immortality if it was spent in agony?
There was a shift in the humid air around them and Sam frowned at the promise of a new complication. Perhaps they weren't as alone here as they first thought.
“Did you feel that?” Zac asked, turning to look out across the lake at their backs.
“Yeah.” He'd recognized it instantly. Witches.
“I'm going to check it out.”
“Zac,” he said. “Leave it. It's more trouble than it's worth.”
“If we're gunna move back in, little brother, then I want to know who's sacrificing cute fluffy baby animals in our backyard, don't you?” He rose an eyebrow at him and before Sam could retort, he'd disappeared.
It was always the same with his big brother. Dive in head first, cause a scene, then ask questions. It was like he was punishing the entire world because he didn't have a choice when it came to his fate. He had one massive chip on his shoulder and tempted fate, death and everything else at every turn. Trying to keep up with that was doing his head in.
With a groan, he followed Zac through the forest and realized that the ripple of power he'd felt was coming from the cemetery. It was quiet, isolated, and was the perfect place to work undetected…unless there was someone like them listening.
He stopped just inside the tree line and watched Zac standing in the middle of the clearing. He towered over the witch, who was sitting cross-legged in the middle of their family plot. She was young, early twenties perhaps, all wild hair and olive complexion. Her eyes snapped open and when she realized she wasn't alone, she scrambled to her feet with a cry. It was then that he realized that she must be new at this. Extremely new.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Zac said, coming to life.
“Leave her alone, Zac.” He stepped out of the tree line a little too quickly and the witch jumped again. He looked her over and frowned. The girl's heart was beating a million miles a minute.
Zac rolled his eyes. “I wasn't going to eat her, brother, if that's what you're thinking. She's a witch and I don't want her to cast any witchy juju spells on me.”
“You're both dead,” the witch stammered, stumbling back another step.
“As a door nail,” Zac said with a grin.
“Forgive my brother,” Sam said, stepping forward. Best to put himself in between his troublemaker of a brother before he got any ideas. “I think you know what we are. We can't hide from you, but we mean you no harm.”
“Vampires,” she said, finally realizing.
“Ten points to Glinda.” Zac clapped theatrically.
“Ignore him,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I'm Sam, the moron is my brother Zac.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Tabitha.”
“Zac.”
“What?”
“We own the manor across the lake,” Sam began, turning back to the witch.
“The Degaud manor?” she asked, her body still tense like she was waiting for them to pounce on her.
“It's our family home, so yeah, it's ours,” Zac said with a scowl.
“You're…But there's no Degaud's left.”
“We've got a smart one here.”
“Zac.” Sam pushed his brother back a step. ”We want to live amongst you,” he explained. “This was where we lived our human lives and we want to reconnect with our humanity.”
She glanced over her shoulder nervously, before asking, “Why?”
“Let's just say it helps with…you know.” He absently waved his hand, hoping she would get it. ”What's your name?”
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She eyed them suspiciously, obviously still undecided about their intentions. Zac hadn't helped what with his typical attitude problems and that was something they'd probably argue about later.
“Gabrielle,” she replied slowly. “Gabby.”
“We don't want to cause any trouble, Gabby,” Sam said. “We hope that we can be friends-”
“If you do anything to hurt anyone in the town, especially my family and friends…I'll find a way to make you pay.” She cast her gaze onto Zac and scowled. “Especially you.”
“I'm in love,” Zac retorted, making a kissy face at her.
Gabby narrowed her eyes at him and Sam felt the air begin to thicken. It was the mark of an unskilled witch, usually they could never sense it coming, and he didn't know which one was worse. As her spell hit him, Zac fell to his knees with a gasp that would no doubt hurt his pride in more ways than one. Grasping his head in his hands, he let out a groan.
“I always wanted to try that one.” She smirked down at his brother.
Looking down at his brother, who still had his head in his hands, Sam tried his best not to laugh, wondering how many brain cells the newbie witch had just exploded.
“I know, I know,” his brother said with a grimace. “I told you so.”
Chapter 2
Liz's feet hit the pavement hard as she ran, earphones stuck in her ears, trying to block out the world around her. Running was her thing. It cleared her mind and allowed her to think. Running was her alone time.
It had been a week since Gabby had dragged her out into the middle of the old cemetery and shown her something that should've been impossible. Her best friend was a witch. A real live witch! She would've said stranger things had happened, but that was as strange as it got. Not even a ten miler could help her work out that one.
She was a block from her apartment when she slowed to a jog, rounding the corner and smacked right into a brick wall. At least that's what it felt like as she stumbled back a step, her earphones falling out. A pair of strong hands grasped her shoulders and she realized she'd been so distracted, she'd smacked right into a man walking the other direction.