Dark Seraphine (The Seraphine Trilogy)

Dark Seraphine

©
2012
By KaSonndra Leigh

Published by the TriGate Group

Edited by Greta Maloney

Includes the Bonus Story:

Assassin’s Rose A Lost Immortals Novella
published by Crushing Hearts & Black Butterfly for the

Morbid Seraphic Anthology

Amazon Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold, copied, or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

www.kasonndraleigh.com

 
Cover Art © 2012 by Stephanie Mooney Designs

Novel
s
and Novellas
by KaSonndra Leigh

Assassin’s Rose
by CHBB Publishing

Dark Seraphine: The Seraphine Trilogy

Hacienda Moon: The Path Seekers

The Lost Immortals Saga: When Copper Suns Fall

Coming in December, 2012

When Silver Moons Rise (Lost Immortals Saga #2)

This novel involved extensive research that included lengthy periods of time spent at the local skate park, unsuccessfully attempting to learn how to ride a skateboard again, and attending several lacrosse games in freezing cold temperatures. But mostly this story is for my sons, Xavier and Xevandre, aka the X-Men, who taught me about all of
tho
se things. This is the boy book that you wanted me to write.

Chapter
One

That’s it.

I’m putting a for-sale sign on my parents.

Ok wait. Perhaps I overreacted.

The situation wasn’t as miserable as I made it sound. I guess it could be worse.

Last n
ight my parents told me that we we
re moving to a place in the Blue Ridge Mountains next year. Great, right? Wrong! I mean, what were they thinking? Did they seriously expect me to just pick up and leave during my senior year? Yeah, I know. Freaking nuts!

The unstable weather here along the New Bern coastline finally got to them. I figured if I send them to a hypnotist or something like that, then he can make them change their minds. All right, that probably sounded extreme. But a boy’s lifeline consisted of his friends, his posse, and the list of phone numbers programmed into his Droid. No, I wasn’t only talking about the ones I collected from my old girlfriends that I kept stashed away.

When I first saw the new girl walking down the hallways of Ashley-George High School, I lit up inside. I mean, everybody knew how much I loved girls. I was a Ladies Man, the kind of guy who was starving every
 
day and night. What do my hunger pangs cry out for? Girls! I know—a shocker for a seventeen-year-old boy, right? Hey, go tell my hormones that. I don’t swing on fences of any kind. I craved food all day. Sex crossed my mind at least every ten seconds. Trust me folks, I didn’t have any doubts about my playa’s factor. Ask me about my girlfriends any day.  I’ll tell you what you want to know. The only thing I would never mention was how my ex-girlfriend broke my heart when she moved away three months ago.

This girl, the one strolling down the school’s hallway, wasn’t your average female, though. Nah. But then, I figured out she was one of them, the Walkers. That was what I called these strange ghostly people, the ones that nobody can see but me.

Almost instantly, my skin started to crawl. It wasn’t like I could help it. It was just natural. At least for me, because usually when I ignored them, they kind of drifted away. 

“Hey, Caleb. Do you think she wants me?” my friend Kyle Wilkinson asked, nodding his head toward Erica Jensen. I wanted to ask if he could see the other girl, but then decided against it. Do I honestly need him thinking that I’m crazy? “Dude! Erica is so freaking hot.” I love Kyle. He always had something stupid to say. We’d been friends since the beginning of time. Well, that was what we always said, anyway.

“If you were a girl, wouldn’t you want me?” Kyle asked.

“Wait. Are you coming on to me?” I said. “‘Cause, you’re honestly not my type.”

Kyle punched my arm. “You know what I mean. And you wouldn’t be my type either
,
for your info.”  We bumped against each other’s shoulders and shuffled down the hall until we got to class. I turned back to my locker. Erica passed by us, holding her nose up in the air as usual. “Just look at the way she moves. Here, kitty kitty.” Kyle formed a frame with his fingers, staring at Erica’s backside as she walked, and made a little squeal like a tortured tomcat.

“All I can see is the way her nose hooks when she holds it in the air like that. But maybe you’re into witches. And what is that noise you just made?” I asked, still trying to ignore the Walker girl standing in front of the lockers on the other side of the hallway. She stood and stared without opening it. Somebody besides me had to be able to see her.

“It’s called the screech of death. As in, being killed by hot looking cheerleaders such as Erica Jensen,” Kyle faked a heart attack.

Snobbish girls with snooty noses just didn’t do it for me. I don’t care how gorgeous they looked, or how much self-tanner they applied each morning. Conceit can’t be covered up or caked over with makeup—zits maybe, but definitely not snobbery.

I glanced toward the Walker girl’s direction. She disappeared the way they always did. Figures. Sighing, I focused on Kyle as we headed toward the gym.

People who walked by us were lively. They laughed, stood in groups, and shared pictures from summer adventures. I’d experienced this scene every first day of school. It was the normal of an
 
everyday life in the 21st century.  Everyone around me was your average kid. None of them could see the spirits of strangers standing and staring the way I always did. I guess that made me a freak, but to me that was the typical way of life. I wanted to enjoy my senior year in high school. Just one ordinary year without the weird ones showing up was all I asked for. But it didn’t look like I was going to get it. My life wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t see them standing around and following me everywhere.

“What’s your schedule look like? I hope you don’t have Old Barracuda Browning for Physics.” Kyle grinned
,
showing all of his teeth in a wicked smile.

“Nah. I’ve got Honors Trig first,” I said.

“Ooh-oh. Look at you all fancy and over-achiever like. Wait. Let me see if I’m still allowed to touch you.” He moved a finger toward my arm,
pokin
g it the tiniest bit
as he made a
sizzling noise. “Yep! Just like I thought. You’re hot, man.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and make that death screech the way you did a few minutes ago?” I teased back.

Erica and her groupies stood just outside the double doors. They were acting all bubbly and full of school spirit while they pinned flyers up on the activity board across the hallway. Kyle’s eyes almost bulged out of his head. “Okay, man. This would be my stop. Anyway, you’re smokin’, so, you don’t even need me around.” He wagged his eyebrows.

“Whatever, dude,” I said. He gave me a mischievous grin. “What about Shani? How does she feel about all of this?”

His face fell. “What about her? She’s doing her own thing now.”

“Okay, right.” Shani Thornton was Kyle’s girlfriend. Or at least she was at the end of the last school year. Something funky happened between the two of them over the summer. Now
they
weren’t speaking again. Drooling over other girls wasn’t going to help smother his feelings for Shani.

Kyle’s desire to be a glutton for abuse amazed me. It was a school fact that Erica Jensen didn’t acknowledge anyone outside of “the circle.” I knew that, and so did Kyle. Her prominent family moved down here from a place called Barrow, Alaska. I swear her chilly attitude was probably just like the weather in her old home town. For the last five years, she’d made it a point to ignore us. No matter what we did, or what we said, she always ended up giving me and Kyle the cold shoulder. And it was with
 
a
 
great
 
amount of
 
honor that I made it my official dut
y to return the favor one day—b
ut not Kyle. He and I had different opinions when it came to Erica Jenson. She has never in her life spoken to him because that would be acknowledging his existence. But Kyle was somewhat of a dreamer. If I were being truly honest, he also had a little bit of an inflated ego. It was like he woke up this year and started thinking that being a senior suddenly made him sexy.

Kyle
’s
desertion left me with no choice but to head
into my Trig class too early. Nobody blazed a trail to be the first one sitting around and waiting on the teacher. Because of Kyle’s hor
mones, I faced looking super un-
cool and nerdy. When you put those words together, you never came away looking sexy.

Stepping into the room, I immediately noticed that I was right. I head
ed straight for the back row,
turned around
,
and almost wet my pants.

The new girl was sitting in a desk
at the front
of the room. She wore that same faraway look they always have, these Walkers do. I gave them that nickname because sometimes a ghostly film trailed behind them. It always reminded me of angel wings. Otherwise, I guess they might be considered plain old ghosts. To label them as spirits kind of took away from their magic. The mystery people were always super gorgeous, like this chick: slick, dark hair that stopped just below her shoulders, a long oval-shaped face, and nice skin. And they always wore something dark: black jackets, jeans, and a tee shirt.

To admit this girl made my skin crawl sounded sissy and weak. This wasn’t the time to be a wuss. Manning up, I squared my shoulders before I sat down. The little kid in me wanted to run away like a baby. But then she laughed. It was a high-pitched giggle, a normal girl’s chuckle. It surprised me. That wasn’t right. I couldn’t ever remember the Walkers laughing before.

“Go ahead and run. I’ll just simply find you like I always do,” she said, her face still turned toward the teacher’s wipe board.

Her voice was smooth like a forgotten s
ong, a hypnotic one. I could lis
ten to it all day l
ong. But even
a
super sexy voice didn’t change the fact that she pretty much read my mind.

“Have you decided whether you’ll run or not yet? I have an awful lot of things to take care of.” She turned her head the slightest bit to the side
.

My underarms prickled. I was glad that Mom forced me to start using the clinical strength deodorant this morning; to say I was nervous wasn’t even close to how I felt.

“Are you an angel?” I asked, my voice squeaking on the last word. What a dork. She didn’t frighten me too badly, but I wasn’t exactly ready to get her phone number either. As a little kid, I remember talking to a few of the Walkers. As soon as I hit my thirteenth birthday the ability to communicate with them disappeared. This was the first time I’d spoken to one in years.

“I hate to tell you this, but I’m not a ghost an angel or a zombie. Sorry.” She turned around to face me, an amused expression on her ridiculously gorgeous face. I inhaled sharply and held my breath. The word beautiful didn’t do this Walker-girl any type of justice. Her strange, dark eyes with the specks of blue and green inside the irises pierced into me.

I swallowed hard and found my voice. “So then, what are you? You’re not the only one I’ve seen or talked to. And why do I have the honor of being the stalked one?”

She made a light laugh and tilted her head. Her slick black hair flowed around her face as if it were made of silky thread.

“Others have come before me?” She seemed to have said it to herself rather than asking me. One thing I did know for certain. I was probably going to be committed to the loony ward after all of this. “I’m going to need your help soon, Caleb. So be ready.”

“Be ready for what?” I asked, crossing my arms and feeling just a tad flirtatious.
D
esperate idiot.
Kyle was chasing Erica the Stiff. And me, I got some sort of angel girl sitting in front of me. A good man always knows when to aim for the right goal.

She glanced behind my head just before a sudden crash thundered behind me. My heart leapt into my throat. I jumped up and spun around thinking it sounded like gunshots. But I was being paranoid. It wasn’t a gun or anything at all threatening. The classroom clock had fallen. Bits and pieces of it lay all over the floor.

I groaned. “Oh hell. They’ll think I did this.”

“What in the world did you do, Caleb Wood?” a girl’s nasal voice asked me. I turned around to find Jillian Bowman and her tortoise shell glasses grinning at me. She was the last person I wanted to see. What,
or rather who did I not find?—t
he Walker girl. She’d vanished.
Something hitched in
my chest. I wanted to know more about her. I’d never gotten so intimate with them before. She told me to be ready. Exactly what did I need to get ready for? The curiosity stung.

Jillian stood there smiling at me while I used a folder to sweep up the glass fragments of the broken clock. I shrugged. “What? I didn’t make this mess.”

“What a way to start the year, Caleb, screwing up school property. You did it just in time for the teacher to walk in the door, too. Bravo.” She nodded her head toward Mrs. England walking through the doorway. She hadn’t noticed me on the floor yet.

I sighed and shook my head. “And how was your summer, Jillian? Did you find any dweebs, oh I’m sorry, any other guys as smart as yourself to annoy?” I asked with sarcasm.

Giving me a smug grin, she said, “No, you clumsy ox. I bet I know what Mrs. England found on the first day of school, though.”

Our gazes travelled over to where the teacher stood glaring down at me, her hands resting on her hips. I turned on the charm and said, “It was like this when I came in. I swear.” That wasn’t a total butthead lie. Would my dimpled grin work on the Ice Queen of Trigonometry
who also just happened to be our assistant principal
? Um, nope.

Mrs. England pressed her lips into a thin line and folded her arms. More students shuffled through the door as I sat in embarrassment hell. “Class, it seems that we already have our first candidate for detention.” If the floor were quicksand, I’d gladly sink inside it. My face burned, and an uncomfortable sense of being watched by the entire room made me feel hot. Again, I found myself thanking Mom for the new deodorant.