Young Blood: The Nightbreed Saga: Book 1

  YOUNG BLOOD

  The Nightbreed Saga: Book 1

  Phillip Tomasso²

  Copyright 2014 by Phillip Tomasso²

  www.severedpress.com

  Part I

  The Becoming

  Prologue

  Jerusalem –33 A.D.

  He stumbled barefoot out of the church. The sand felt cold on the bottom of his feet since it did not retain the day’s heat. He couldn’t remember where he left his sandals they might still be in the Upper Room on Mount Zion outside of the city. It didn’t matter. Not at this point.

  The priests had made it clear. He’d not be forgiven and they did not want the pieces of silver back. It was all there, and although he’d not spent a single coin, he did not want the money. It had been a mistake, a lapse in judgment, and now he was damned for the trade.

  His head throbbed, and it felt as if his brain had been jarred loose and was sloshing around inside his skull. The pain caused his vision to blur. He stumbled forward. With his eyes closed he pressed the heel of one hand against his temple, a futile attempt to make the ache subside. His other hand shot out blindly searching for a handhold of any kind.

  Finding nothing to hold onto, he fell. Pebbles and small rocks scraped his knees and the palms of his hands. On all fours, he tried to stand. It took every ounce of strength he could muster to push himself up.

  Something inside him burned. He felt it. It coursed through his body, inside his blood, making his limbs tingle and itch. His fingers curled into fists, and then unrolled so that he could use his nails to scratch at his skin. Keeping his eyes open, even at night, even with the only light coming from beams off the moon, seemed impossible. Any light was painful and only added to the thumping inside his head.

  Between the constant throbbing in his brain and the sensation that maggots squirmed under his flesh, he did not know how much longer he could bear it all. He was truly cursed.

  He deserved it.

  Damnation.

  He stopped under a tree in Aceldama. His back was pressed against rough bark. The branches stretched out over his head like the arms of a skeleton; they were thick and strong, and seemed like arms reaching out for him.

  He buried his face in his hands. There was no stopping the tears. Violent sobs made his shoulders shake. His throat was dry, without even a trace of the wine he’d sipped earlier during supper.

  He coughed and, choking on phlegm, spat onto the dirt surrounding the base of the tree. He ran the sleeve of his dark cloak across his mouth. The desperation of the situation filled him. His ribs seemed to contract as if closing in tight around his lungs, as if threatening to pierce an already bleeding heart.

  Images flashed behind his closed eyelids. Moving shadows with brilliant white fangs gave way to distant growling and howling that kept getting closer and closer.

  Opening his eyes, the horrors remained but were projected from his mind to the space before him. He screamed and, tightly closing his eyes, shook his head from side to side. Yelling No! did nothing to dissolve cryptic images.

  His soul was damned. He would be forever lost.

  He needed to leave Jerusalem. The next several days would be filled with riots and countless vicious deaths. There was no one but him to blame.

  Where else could he go? He was surely marked and anyone that looked on him would see the evil as clearly as they saw the sun in the sky.

  There had to be somewhere to flee, where no one knew him, where he would not be recognized. Perhaps Sodom or Gomorrah? Those were the obvious choices, but there was not an easy solution. No easy way to get there. In the last several years, he had traveled almost everywhere and had been seen in most of the towns and cities. Because of Him, his face was recognizable.

  When he opened his eyes, he thought they still played tricks on him.

  The rope had not been there before.

  It swayed, dangling from the branch that stretched out in front of him, just over his head.

  The noose held seven knots.

  “No,” he said. There had to be a better way, an easier solution. “No.”

  Death was not what he wanted. Despite haunting images behind his eyes of what was to come he was not ready to die.

  The fire flared inside him as if it were a response to thoughts of continuing to live.

  It burned as it raced inside his veins; pulsed through his body with each beat of his heart.

  He turned to face the tree and clung to it with arms and legs as if it were a mast and he was caught in a storm on a sinking ship in the Sea of Galilee.

  When he opened his eyes, he was no longer on the ground. He was in the tree, crawling on the branch toward the rope. He continued to cry, and tears fell from his face as he found himself shimmying out toward the noose. Each teardrop splashed like a clap of thunder on the dry and cracked earth below.

  There was no fighting it. The rope called to him. He was drawn to it; it had a voice that came in a whisper. The sound filled his ears; it echoed loosely within his mind.

  Straddling the branch, he–hand over hand–pulled the noose up to him. He pulled on the loop to widen the mouth before slipping it over his head.

  He wanted to ask or beg for forgiveness.

  He did not. His whole life he wanted things easy, looked for shortcuts. Life had been about him. Only him. His selfish ways had finally caught up to him. He knew the price that needed payment. It wasn’t sacrifice. That would have been noble, commendable.

  Instead, with the noose around his neck, he rolled to his left and fell off the branch, all the while thinking how foolish he’d been to betray love with a kiss.

  His blood reached boiling inside his body. It felt as if the fire consumed him from the inside and grilled his soul over an open flame.

  He wished things could have been different, that he’d never let greed steal his salvation. Wishing was worthless. Had he not been taught right from wrong since he’d been a boy? Had all of His teachings been for naught, wasted on a worthless man who always dreamed of bigger and better without the hard work required?

  His neck snapped at once.

  His body swayed in the breezeless night under a black and starless sky. No one in the Heavens cared to watch his final sin committed.

  His eyes bulged from the sockets.

  His feet kicked out, but it was as reflexive as a spasm; his bowels released, and urine ran down his legs.

  At that moment, when death was apparent, the sky opened up. Rain fell, but only over Aceldama.

  # # #

  Rochester, NY –Present Day

  From outside the dark confines came a mix of muffled music, laughter, and screams. The sounds filtered into the lightless room. The cacophony came about in spinning waves, as if moving away from, getting closer to, passing in front of, and then moving away from again; around and around and around.

  There was a small crease of light shaped like an upside down T at one end, and nothing else. The split fraction of light did not offer hope or illumination. Instead, it was useless to penetrate the foreboding darkness. The overall black felt like a crushing weight and seemed to close in on them like a threatening life force, as if it were some malevolent entity.

  Someone sniffled. Someone cried from afar as if curled up in a ball on the floor, tucked away in a corner.

  Thick ropes and chains tied off wrists and ankles and tethered them in place. Skin did more than chafe from duress, it bled. Acidic odors of urine and feces overpowered and tainted already stale air. The aroma didn’t just assault nostrils it seemed solid, irritating taste buds on the tongue, and impossible to breathe.

  Time became meaningless. It either stopped or sped up or went
backwards. Hours could be days, and minutes, weeks. It was impossible to track. The mind would attempt to hold on. The brain did its best to trick the senses, wanting the body to assume that everything was normal and alright. Such trickery lasted only a short while. Eventually, and once accepted, only despair remained, and the soul was forced to accept that the nightmare was real.

  The door in back opened, creaking as if in a whine of protest. The T of light expanded into a pie slice that demanded victory as it severed the darkness.

  Someone stepped up and into the room. He was large and his shadow filled the doorway. The room rocked and shook under his weight. Screams from the bound blared like sirens until the man closed the door behind him, and the darkness reclaimed its crown not just from defeating the light, but from crushing it out once again.

  The bound knew something worse than the boogeyman existed, had caught them and was hungry.

  Chapter 1

  Madison Young shuffled through clothing inside her closet. The metal hangers scraped across the bar as she slid items from right to the left. She stopped momentarily between slides, and only long enough to give each piece a quick once-over before deciding it wouldn’t cut it, and pushed it along.

  “You’re going, Neal,” she said. Her phone sat on top of her dresser. She had the speaker on. “And I might need you to stop here first.”

  “I’m not going,” he said. “Why do I have to stop over first?”

  “Because I have no idea what to wear.”

  Silence.

  “Neal?”

  “Look, Maddy. I can’t go.”

  “I don’t understand why not.” She lifted a purple top off the rack and held it up to her chest, then turned to consult the full length mirror on the inside of her closet door. She looked a lot like her mother. She had long dark hair, with dark eyebrows over blue eyes. She thought her ears were too big, but loved how straight and white her teeth were. She was tall, thin, and as her father said, all legs.

  The shirt looked horrendous. She flung it onto her bed, and it landed on top of other discarded tops. “I can’t do purple.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “You haven’t said anything. Why can’t you go tonight?”

  “I have a fever.”

  “How high?” She tried not to sigh. For years she has wanted to call him out on his actual illness, hypochondria. If someone said they had a cold, a day later Neal had a cold. If someone thought they had bronchitis, a day later Neal had bronchitis. A few times Madison had rattled off PMS symptoms just to see what Neal would say. Sure enough, he felt bloated with cramping, too. She never told him what she’d done, that would have been too cruel.

  “I’m sick, Maddy.”

  “It’s the last night. Dress warm.”

  “It’s supposed to rain. I can’t be getting wet out in the cold when I already have a fever. You want me to get pneumonia? Are you going to come visit me when I’m close to death in the hospital?”

  She could see him home under the covers in his bed, a laptop open beside him, and an array of cold and flu medicines on his nightstand. While they talked, he was probably reading dosage amounts and warnings printed on the medication labels. “You know if you were in the hospital, I wouldn’t leave your side.”

  “No. I guess you wouldn’t.” He coughed. It was dry and forced sounding, dramatically released for effect and punctuation.

  “You guess?” Madison said. She parted outfits hanging close together with both hands. It was useless. She’d already searched through the closet for the right top to wear. Looking again wasn’t going to change anything. It was like when she was hungry and checked the fridge for something to eat, found nothing, but looked again a half hour later, knowing full well nothing new had been added the shelves.

  She knew rechecking wasn’t about finding something new, it was more about admitting desperation. Three-day-old sandwich meat wasn’t appealing the first time you looked in the fridge, but the more hungry you became, the more likely you were to eat it, regardless. Eventually, you become forced to choose the food that disgusts you least. The purple shirt was bad, but it wasn’t the ugliest top in her closet...

  “So, what time will you be here?” she said. She would never take his first no as no, or his second, or third. She knew him better than he knew himself. He said no and might even have thought he meant no, but he was wrong. He didn’t mean no. What he meant was Maddy, convince me it’s worth getting out of bed today.

  “Is Katie going?”

  “She’s meeting us there at about eight.” She finger flipped over the shoulder of shirts, sliding them now left to right, one by one.

  “She’s meeting you there?”

  “Us, I said. She’s meeting us there.”

  He sighed. “Good. I feel better knowing you won’t be going alone.”

  “Neal.” She thought Neal might have a thing for Katie. He’d never so much as said he did, but she sensed it. Madison didn’t think Katie liked Neal that way, though, so the best thing to do was just stay out of it.

  “Maddy.”

  She said, “Stop this.”

  “Stop, what?”

  She picked the phone up and thumbed off the speaker. “I’ll buy you kettle corn.”

  “Kettle corn?” he said.

  “Kettle corn.”

  “I do love kettle corn.”

  “Who doesn’t? It is so crunchy and popped full of flavor. Salty, and sweet,” she said. The Katie is going thing didn’t work, but the kettle corn bait line was out. He nibbled around the hook. She just needed to give him a tiny bit more to land catch. “And a Coke.”

  “Large?”

  She had him. He was snagged. It had nothing to do with the kettle corn or the Coke. Neal wasn’t sick. He just needed someone to force him to do things. Luckily, he had her for just that. “Of course.”

  “I guess getting out might help. I’ve been cooped up inside all day,” he said.

  Cooped up all day for no legitimate reason. “If you don’t feel well later on, we can leave,” she said. He’d agreed to go out, but still needed sympathy or empathy. He also needed an out, so he knew he wasn’t trapped. The last thing she wanted was for him to change his mind.

  “You won’t give me a hard time about going home if I want to leave?”

  “I just told you if you felt sick, we could leave. And have I ever given you a hard time?”

  “Um, remember like just one minute ago?” he said.

  She wasn’t going to argue about whether or not she’d given him a hard time. “I still need help finding a top,” she said.

  “Are you wearing the dark blue jeans and your boots?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Go with that purple top, the one where the sleeves come down a third of the way and have like that black henna patterning look to them?”

  “Why that one?”

  “Looks good on you with those jeans, and I like the henna designs,” he said. The next small coughing fit was strictly for show. Neal wanted her to know how sick he believed he was and to ensure his sacrifice wasn’t missed. “What time are we going?”

  “As soon as you get here.”

  “Meet me outside. I don’t want to come in.”

  Madison understood why he wouldn’t want to come in. Few people came over anymore. After graduation, she planned to move out. She loved her mother, but her mother’s boyfriend was an overbearing and creepy slob. When Neal did visit, he climbed onto the grill in the backyard, pulled himself onto the awning over the patio, and walked across the roof to her window. “Fair enough,” she said.

  “Give me a half hour.”

  Madison pulled her phone away from her ear and checked the time. “Perfect.”

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “I better finish getting ready,” she said. “See you soon.”

  Knock. Knock.

  She put on the purple top. She looked at herself in the mirror. Neal had been absolutely correct. The top did go perfect with th
e jeans and boots.

  “Madison?”

  Oliver Northrup moved in about a year ago. She had no idea what her mother saw in the guy. He was nothing like her father. Maybe that was her point. She accepted that things between her parents hadn’t worked, but over the last several years couldn’t understand why her mother continued to scrape the bottom of the barrel guy after guy.

  Madison didn’t want to have to deal with this. Oliver had two faces. There wasn’t much variation. The different features were just slight enough, but she noticed them. Her mother, blind to all things real, could not. “I’m getting ready.”

  “Did you hear me knocking?”

  She stuffed her phone into her pocket and sat on her bed. “I had headphones on.”

  “I heard you talking to someone on the phone,” he said.

  “I was singing,” she said.

  “Open the door.”

  “I’m getting ready,” she said. She wanted locks. Her mom was against it, always claiming the only door in a home that needed locks was the bathroom. This wasn’t about privacy, which she felt everyone deserved, it was about security. “I’ll be down soon.”

  “Your mother just called. Said she has to work ‘till eleven.”

  “I know,” she said. It was Saturday. There was nothing uncommon about her mother pulling a double at the diner on the weekends. Someone had to make money to pay bills. “She told me before she left this morning.”

  “She also told me she told you to fix us dinner,” he said.

  “Never mentioned it to me.” She didn’t want to move. The idea of him outside her room with an ear to the door made her apprehensive. Her eyes darted around the room.

  “I just talked to her,” he said. He sounded intoxicated. Another thing that was not uncommon on a Saturday night–or any night for that matter. The guy worked part-time as a cashier at the corner store. And the word part-time was being used generously.

  “I’m headed out in about two minutes,” she said. She hated feeling trapped inside her own home. She stood up and went to the window. She slowly pushed it open and sat with her legs out, feet on the sloped roof.