Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel)

  CHASING SHADOWS

  A Shadow Chronicles Novel

  Christina Moore

  Published by Black Room Press

  KINDLE EDITION

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  Chasing Shadows: A Shadow Chronicles Novel

  Text Copyright 2010, 2012 by Christina Moore

  Cover Art 2012 by Christina Moore

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any person or place appearing herein is fictitious or is used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. Please do not reproduce or transmit this book, in whole or in part, by any means without permission in writing from the author.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Epilogue

  Other works by Christina Moore

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Connect with Christina

  Dedication

  This book is for everyone who ever told me “Go for it.” Without their encouragement, this book would not exist.

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  Acknowledgements

  My deepest and most heartfelt thanks go to my Beta readers Michelle and Tonja, as well as Terri, who asked upon finishing, "When's the next one coming out?"

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  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  He pulled back and I let him—reluctantly, of course, because all I wanted was to continue the kiss, to let the passion that was obviously very mutual continue on its natural course.

  But I could see that Mark was very serious, that he absolutely had to say what was on his mind before he could continue. So I nodded and waited for him to speak.

  He looked at me, his eyes searching my face, before he swallowed and said, “Saphrona I… I’m not entirely human.”

  I felt my eyes widen. So he did know after all, or at least had some clue that he wasn’t your average human male. This was a good thing, I realized, and it was the sign I had been looking for—the one that told me he was ready to hear the truth about me.

  I smiled tentatively and looked into his eyes. “It’s okay, Mark. I’m not entirely human, either.”

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  One

  “Vampires are not dead.”

  I smiled as I read the first line of Vivian Drake’s most recent article in Vampire, the #1 best-selling magazine that catered to vampire enthusiasts (hence the name). I couldn’t help it—because I am Vivian Drake.

  Oh, that’s not my real name. Nor is it even the name I was given at birth. But “Vivian Drake” seemed just the right kind of name for a fantasy novelist who wrote about vampires, and I had needed an alias. It wouldn’t do at all for certain people to find out that the woman who was spilling the secrets of vampire kind through supposedly fictional stories was one of their own.

  Yeah, not only are vampires not dead, but they’re very much real. See, I’m one of them—sort of. I’m actually what vampires (and numerous human mythologies) refer to as a dhampyr, or vampire-human hybrid. I had a vampire father and a human mother.

  “They are very much alive,” my article went on. “Sure, the process by which a person becomes a vampire can make them look like they are dead, which is why many people are buried and later rise from their graves. But the truth is they’re just being transformed. You see, no human being has ever been made a vampire after death—the transformation requires a living victim. Like certain species of bats, vampires produce a substance called draculin (named for Count Dracula, of course) in their saliva, which is injected into a victim through being bitten. However, unlike the draculin in bat saliva, which is an anti-coagulant, the draculin produced by vampires is a mutagen. When passed directly into the bloodstream, draculin first paralyzes the person and then begins to alter the human genome at the molecular level…and then voila! A vampire.

  “So ladies, no worries about kissing your vampire boyfriends!”

  The article I’d written went on to say that the mutation from human being to “undead” vampire was really quite painful, and it was highly recommended that one not choose to become a vampire. After all, the only thing a vampire can digest is blood, and the thirst for it is constant. Even hybrids like myself require blood in order to survive, though certainly not as much as a bitten vampire. We’re also capable of eating normal human food, but there’s no escaping the vampire side of our nature…so it’s not a lifestyle change one should want to undertake, no matter what benefits went along with it.

  I detailed exactly what one could expect when becoming a vampire, and also tore apart the myth that dhampyr were hideously ugly monsters with no skeletons, no shadows, and no souls. That was a common belief in the Balkans and Serbia, or had been at one time, because how could a thing that was not living, whose soul had been damned, conceive a child with a living, breathing, not-damned human? Logic said that the dead could not conceive with the living; it was a truth that had eventually led vampire scientists to determine (with the help of advanced medical technology) that they were, in fact, not dead at all. Eighteenth century peasants simply could not comprehend the science behind what made a hybrid, so they allowed themselves to believe such children were beastly creatures that only roamed at night. So not true—the beastly part, anyway—because I’ve been pursued relentlessly by dozens of men in my 230-plus years, both mortal and immortal alike. Guess that means I’m pretty.

  Of course, this miraculous discovery didn’t mean that my sire’s people were ready to embrace their human brethren as equals. Just because you’re as alive as your food doesn’t mean you stop thinking of it as food—most humans knew that a cow was alive, but it didn’t stop them from eating steak. Plus, it was believed that humanity just wasn’t ready to accept the truth that not only were vampires real, but they were also living beings who had simply been changed from human to superhuman like the mutants in their comic books.

  I closed the article with another truth, that there was a third kind of immortal: the dhunphyr. They were created when a human woman was bitten while pregnant. If the woman wasn’t killed during the attack and the vampire’s draculin didn’t cause her to miscarry, the child was born gifted with immunity from illness, accelerated healing from injury, and an extended lifespan. They were also blessedly free of the unending thirst for blood. No one knew exactly how long dhunphyr lived, however, as they were so very rare—most pregnant women who were bitten were killed, and if they weren’t, they miscarried during the change. Only those bitten after the seventh month, when the human fetus was considered viable, had a chance of giving birth to their children…a remote chance, but a chance nonetheless. Many vampire females desperate for children had tried to gain a child to raise through this method, but due to the high mo
rtality rate of the mothers and infants, the practice was eventually outlawed.

  Couldn’t have the mortal population getting suspicious when their young, pregnant mothers were dropping like flies under a swatter, after all.

  I sighed, closing my copy of the October issue of Vampire and laying it on the coffee table. I checked my doors and windows to make sure they were locked, turned off the downstairs lights, and called to my two Chihuahuas, Moe and Cissy, who followed me up the stairs to my bedroom. After changing into a nightgown and brushing my teeth, I shooed them onto their bed, bent and scratched each one behind the ears, then turned the light off and climbed into my own bed.

  As a hybrid I can sleep at night if I want to, and I most certainly dream. So I wasn’t really surprised to find myself soon dreaming of the same man I had been dreaming of since I was a child. Certainly I didn’t mind dreaming of the wickedly handsome man with short brown hair, warm brown eyes and a tall, muscular body—a body that in my dreams he certainly knew how to please me with. But the dreams always left me feeling a little bittersweet when I awoke, for I had been dreaming of him for more than two hundred years and still had not found him.

  When I was about ten, I got the courage up to confide in a female companion of Diarmid’s about my dreams, and it was through her that I learned all vampires pair-bonded; that the man of whom I dreamed was my destined bondmate. A psychic I had once consulted after disowning Diarmid had said that the man held the missing piece of my soul—he would complete me. It was frustrating, though, to ache for the real thing and not know where the hell he was, or when I would finally meet him. Until then, all I had were dreams that scintillated and enticed and always left me wanting more.

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  The following day was a busy one. I run a small farm where I breed Thoroughbred horses, as well as raise cows, pigs, and chickens. Most of the vampires I knew found this as unbelievable as my abhorrence of killing humans, because more often than not, such animals shied away from our kind—they can sense the predatory nature of vampires, and as such instinctively want to run away from the danger. But being half human helped me a great deal in that respect, in that while they knew I was dangerous, I still smelled human. It seemed to confuse them as to whether they should trust me or not, though I’m fairly certain my calm, gentle nature had won them over.

  The farm was also how I obtained most of my own blood supply. I’d taken some veterinary training when I first set up this farm back in 1846, and I kept up with the advances in the field so that I could take care of my own animals. Being trained in veterinary medicine meant I could tap an animal’s vein (only the cows and pigs, as the chickens I used for their eggs and my horses had never been a food source) without having to bite it when I needed blood, and I had a supply stocked in the deep freezer in my house. Of course, there were also times when I needed to feel the thrill of the hunt, so I occasionally went into the woods that bordered my land and hunted game there. Usually it was just deer or rabbits, sometimes the occasional fox or wolf, or any variety of forest creatures with a decent blood supply. If I wanted a real challenge, I went to the places where predatory animals such as bears and mountain lions dwelled.

  Running a farm single-handedly, even if one is preternaturally fast and strong, can get tiresome. So when a car pulled up in my driveway and I sensed the presence of an immortal (one of the few benefits of being a dhampyr is that I can “feel” the presence of other supernatural beings, such as vampires and shapeshifters), I was rather annoyed, as I was not exactly in the mood to receive company. I had horse hooves to trim and stalls to muck out still.

  My annoyance ratcheted up a level when the uninvited guest got out of the car and my dogs started barking in their pen—it was Evangeline, my “sister.” She’d been turned into a vampire by my sire the same year I’d bought my farmland, and though I associated with Diarmid as little as I could get away with, he still favored me because I was his child by blood. Vangie didn’t like that. She’d always wanted to be his favorite, and could not understand why he didn’t simply disown me as I had disowned him.

  She was covered head to toe and wore a scarf and a pair of large, dark sunglasses. This made no sense to me as it wasn’t cold outside, and it’s not as if vampires actually burst into flames and turned into piles of ash when exposed to sunlight. That was all a bunch of hooey perpetuated by religious orders centuries ago when humans began to notice that certain people only went outside at night—because only the damned would avoid the sun, which was metaphorically “the light of God.” Nowadays it was the basis of the reason “pretenders” could only work after nightfall. Most vampires who made their living among humans claimed to suffer from solar urticaria, a genuine illness in which exposure to UV radiation and even visible light (notably sunlight) caused severe, painful hives on exposed and sometimes even unexposed skin. Though I’d read that persons suffering from SU lead difficult, isolated lives due to their inability to go outside during the day, it was a convenient excuse to have handy when your neighbors took note of your unusual habits.

  Vangie sprinted into the shade of the open barn and the horses reacted immediately, shying away and whinnying in fear, their eyes going wide. I grabbed Hasufeld’s halter and held onto it, murmuring soothingly—he was the only one of the four I’d gotten done.

  “Can’t you quiet these beasts down?” Vangie complained as she whipped off the scarf and sunglasses.

  I narrowed my eyes as I looked at her over my shoulder. “They’re afraid of you, Vangie.”

  She snickered. “They should be. I could snap their sweaty necks with one hand.”

  Hasufeld and his brother, Brego, as well as their parents Herugrim and Hadhafang, all continued to whinny, stamping their feet restlessly. I could hear Moe and Cissy still barking incessantly from the kennel, and I was suddenly glad the cows were already out to pasture and that the pig pen and chicken coop were separate constructs on the outside of the barn at the far end—the birds and pigs wouldn’t react unless she came near them. I was never going to get the horses calmed while she was standing there, and certainly wouldn’t be able to get them out of their stalls. “Could you please go back out to your car so I can get them to settle down?”

  She looked at me with no small amount of incredulity. “Are you kidding me? You know what will happen to me out there,” she whined.

  I rolled my eyes at her melodramatic performance. “Vangie, I’m just going to put them outside, but I can’t do that with you standing there.”

  It occurred to me that I could just leave them in their stalls and take her into the house, then come back out to them when she had left, but I was already annoyed just by the fact that she was here. Making her wait for me was a little bit of revenge for her interruption of my routine, even if it was a bit juvenile.

  Vangie growled, shoving the sunglasses on and jerking the scarf back into place on her head. “Fine, but don’t be too long. I’d like to go home sometime today.”

  I shook my head as she sprinted back out to her car and got in—like I was going to be taking orders from her. Still, I did make quick work of getting my four beauties out of their stalls and out the other end of the barn into the pasture. Not because I was doing it for her, but because I was doing it for them…and because I wanted to get rid of her as quickly as possible. I hurried back through the barn after closing the gate behind the last of the horses and knocked on the driver’s side window of her Lexus. Vangie didn’t respond so I knocked again, this time with more force just in case she was ignoring me on purpose. When she didn’t respond to that, I reached for the handle and jerked the door open.

  “Shit,” I muttered, then reached in to grab her. Vangie had fallen asleep—and I was surprised by how quickly she had done so, as I couldn’t have been more than ten minutes at my task. This was the real reason vampires didn’t venture out during the day much: RMPC, or Reversed Melatonin Production Cycle. In normal humans, melatonin was a major component of regulating the biological clock; light inh
ibited production and darkness permitted it, and because increased amounts of melatonin in the system promoted sleepiness, it was known in the human scientific community as the “hormone of darkness.”

  In vampires however, the pineal gland—where the hormone was produced—worked backwards, producing more melatonin in the light and less of it in the dark. Medical science eventually revealed the cause of vampires’ nocturnal nature early in the 20 century; our doctors had discovered that not only was melatonin production reversed, but also that a vampire’s pineal gland produced so much of the hormone during daylight hours he could become all but comatose. As many of my father’s kind had found to his or her detriment over the millennia, this deep sleep was a risk to their continued health and safety because it made one vulnerable to all methods of attack. A vampire could be burned alive if caught unawares in the middle of the day, and history showed that humans had pulled that trick more than once on suspected vampires, until they began convincing themselves they weren’t real after all…

  …or were beguiled into forgetting.

  Grabbing my sister under the arms, I hauled her out of the driver’s seat and threw her over my shoulder. I kicked the door shut, leaving a dusty footprint she was likely to bitch about later, and hurried into the house. Laying Vangie down on the couch, I quickly removed the scarf, gloves and jacket she was wearing and then went into the kitchen. I pulled a bottle of pig’s blood out of the fridge and poured some into a mug, then put that in the microwave and heated it for about a minute. When the microwave dinged, I grabbed a plastic spoon from the silverware drawer and stirred it, then carried it out to the living room. Perching on the edge of the couch, I took Vangie’s head in my free hand and, holding the cup to her slightly parted lips, tipped it and slowly poured some of the hot liquid into her mouth.