The Blood Wars-Crystal Secret (Only Human#2)
The second in the Only Human Series is out now!
Aecia has enjoyed her freedom as a human for only a few short months when her uncle Kasen goes missing! Fearing the worst, she embarks on yet another dangerous quest with her family and friends, and they are hurtled into a vicious conflict which will become as historic as The Great War, in which the bloodthirsty vamps were the absolute victors.
These are the first battles of The Blood Wars, and the secrets they uncover will terrify Aecia's soul, and plunge her into an age of confusion, life-threatening danger, and quivering doubts about the one truth she holds as sacred inside her heart; the fact that she is Only Human!
Excerpt: Chapter 2 Crystal Girl
Ow, my head; it’s about to explode! The pain is unbearable, but where am I? What happened? I…I fainted, I remember now, but how? Why? They didn’t give me drugs did they? How did…? The water! The water the two servants brought me, and I actually thought the female was feeling something for me! She laced it with something, and I’m such an idiot that I had to drink a slug of it before I escaped! I should have known Amica, I’m a fool! How long was I out? There are no tubes sticking out of my arms so I’m not in the clone farm. Oh God, where are the young clones who were holding my hands, and the older ones from the basement in the Ordinatio?
All is deathly quiet, but I sense that I’m not alone. I’m indoors, and the shaft of grey light shining through a crack in the wooden wall tells me that it is now dusk outside. All of Uncle’s training is flooding my brain, and I know not to move yet, but to pretend I’m asleep until I gauge where I am, and can startle my jailors with a surprise attack.
Straining my ears, I can hear a low murmur coming from the next room. It is too quiet to work out what they’re saying, but they sound so ordinary they offend me friend. They could be talking about what’s for dinner instead of what they are probably talking about i.e. ways to torture and kill me! My only way to get out of here is the surprise attack, but one small flaw in that ingenious plan is that I have no weapon. If I move to try and find one in the next room, there won’t be an element of surprise at all.
“Use your mind!”
I am using my mind Amica, and it’s not giving me even a grain of an idea that will free me from my captors.
“No, not use your mind like that, I mean use the power we know you have within your mind, to give them pain; as Kasen did to you when you were discovered in the Ordinatio.”
Brilliant idea friend, if I knew how he did it! I don’t even know if I have that same power.
“You can communicate with your mind obviously, just like Kasen. You can also see into the sanguis’ mind with no effort, and you are the only one able to do that out of our group. You know that you are different; very different, from the clones, watchers, sanguis and vampires. Whatever unknown power which you possess, must be capable of at least distracting, if not hurting the people in the next room.”
Your faith in me is unswerving Amica, but my own is bordering on nil! I guess I have to try something, so here goes. I will draw on the pain I felt when I was in the clone farm, and try to transfer it over to them. They should be ready to commit suicide after experiencing that, at least, that was my reaction to it. Trouble is, I have to know who I am transferring to. I have to know how many is in there, and be able to look into their eyes, as Kasen did, when he inflicted pain on me. Or maybe I don’t, maybe I can do it just by focusing on them all, but I at least have to see them. If they have their backs to me when I slide open the petition, I may have a better chance.
As I slither silently on to the floor I can hear another alien sound from the next room. It’s a weak, tired squeak of despair, like a tiny animal, miserable and exhausted. What on earth? Now it is a louder searing cry, and a flapping of wings against metal! A clatter of something falling to the floor! This is my chance to move! I burst through the opened petition to watch the surreal sight of a BAT flapping and squaling against the bars of a cage tilted sideways on the floor. There are three scruffy, ragged male vampires with gold, black eyes rimmed red and bloodshot. Their sides to me as they are attempting to lift up the cage with the trapped animal, I half close my eyes and relive every ounce of the pain and misery I felt when I was strung up in the clone farm. I’ve kept this horrific memory in a steel box, pushed deep into a pocket at the back of my mind, never to opened again. With no choice I am letting its contents fill my own eyes with tears at the memory, and as each of my captors finally stare into my face, I can watch their own eyes widen with fear as everything I feel is absorbed into their heart.
They fall to the floor moaning and holding their heads, and as I rush to the door my own heart won’t let me leave until I have freed the caged animal lying on the floor. Strength borne out of desperation allows me to rip the rusty lock and open the cage door, but my distraction is easing the pain of the vamps, so I have to leave, and hope that the bat can make its own escape from there.
I’m out, and running as fast as I can to God knows where! It is growing darker by the second, and I can’t see any nearby buildings. I am running over earth, not pavement or stone roads. There are no street lamps or warm bright windows from a town house to light my way. I think I am back in the Barren lands! I must keep going; maybe I am near the forest or Mount Ignifero, There must be some landmark that would help me determine where I am. There is a draught as a huge bird has flown above me. It has stopped to land on the stump of an aged tree in front. My eyes are sore and smudge the outline of it in the distance, but it’s weird. It seems to be looking at me; waiting even. It….It’s not a bird, it is the bat! The poor bat I freed from those tramp vamps or whatever they were. It’s moving again, but just a little way, to the top of a tree lying a few feet ahead. Does it want me to follow it Amica?
I have been continuing this way for such a long time now. The bat is huge, and every time I get within a couple of feet it’s off again. I can’t get a good close look at it and I don’t even know if it’s leading me to safety or to certain death, but it’s the only idea I can come up with to get anywhere. I’m lost friend! This so-called powerful and gifted offspring of the Original has no clue where she is or what to do next.
It is so dark now that I can barely see my hand in front of my face, and I am so thirsty and tired. We have come to a mound of hard earth with a roughly shaped half-circle hole at the foot of it. The bat is higher up on a branch of the tree to my left and looking at the black entrance, then looking back at me. Oh no, you don’t seriously think it expects me to go in there friend, do you? Although it would keep me out of sight of any marauding vamps out for a night spree wouldn’t it? But it could lead anywhere.
“Don’t be such a wimp!”
Oh, so there you are Amica, I haven’t seen you all night, but you always turn up to give me a kick up the backside!
“Yes.”
Thanks friend; I guess I have to go in then; one last glance at the bat, which is still up above, watching me intently as I gingerly step into the opening. It is an uneven and downward slant so I cautiously move an inch at a time while trying to find a foothold, and something I could grab with my arms to steady me. As I move further in there is a strange glow from parts of the rugged wall around me; like stars up above when it is foggy. For some reason it makes the cave (it must be a cave Amica) seem more inviting and less threatening. I’m not a one for Geography or Geology, but I seem to remember reading about some kind of rock formation that has this kind of a glow around it. Was it light reflecting off calcite…. something… I don’t remember? Whatever it is, I am glad of its amber glow now.
I don’t think this is a man-made cave Amica, or at least it didn’t finish up that way; forces of nature have done their worst and it is now chaotic and rugged, and it widens out into a kind of ragged rectangle enclosure; I can see pot-holes, and Oh My God, there is water inside! Cupping my hands and drinking the fluid is like an answer to a prayer. Each new crisis I seem to be constantly presented with, serves to remind me of how fragile I really am. Without water for any length of time, and my body begins to shut down. You think that I’m different, special Amica? You’re wrong! I’m as weak and as fragile as any human clone when it comes to my physical needs. Which reminds me that I’m absolutely starving too!
What was that? Something is moving behind me friend. Tiny shards of blushing rock have just passed my left ear. “ Who is it?” The vibration and echo of my voice has loosened more of the crumbling rocks and I’m frightened to speak again in fear of an avalanche of shingles to bury me! I can see a little better than I could before. I am not far from the bottom and there seems to be a lot more glimmering formations in the wall, and also the ground. Looking behind me I know what is following me. He is gazing at me, his head tilted to one side; it is my friend the Bat or Chiroptera, which is what I would have called it before, when we often used Latin. He fills me with a feeling I have only experienced when I have been with my uncle. As if I have been walking a tightrope and have just reached the other side. I can exhale and relax my soul because I am safe. He is large, much larger than any bat I have ever seen in photographs at school. He is hopping nearer to me, and I can see that his wings are badly damaged. I would stretch out my arm as a perch for him to land on but he is way too big. I daren’t move, so I will wait till he is near and will pick him up, as I would a small dog.
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Reviews from Only Human #1:
Only Human won the Indie Book of the Day in October 2013
great read!, November 13, 2013
Great Twist on Vampire theme, October 19, 2013
This is a really good story. Imagine being or thinking you are the only human living on the planet that isn't a vampire. You have to act like one to get by which is what our heroine does. She just wants to be popular like any other school kid. She detests blood but drinks it anyway. She does everything at night, but dreams of the day. You get the idea. Then her world takes a complete turn and she is betrayed by her new "crush". This is where the adventure really begins and it is an edge of the seat thriller.
begins 5.0 out of 5 stars.
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
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