Within the Cards

WITHIN THE CARDS

By

Donna M. Altman

Copyright Acknowledgement

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author. All characters, mythology, organizations and events, present day, historical, portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously

Within The Cards. Copyright © 2010 by Donna M. Altman. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to any other person. If you would like to share this book with any other person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to donnamaltman.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Primary Category: Fiction / Fantasy / Epic Paranormal; Romance;Vampires;Witches;Immortals;Magic,Mysitical
Country of Publication: United States
Language: English
Authored by Donna M. Altman Kindle Edition

Print copies of this book are available in most online retailers.
.

http://www.donnamaltman.com

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my Grandparents

John B. Hayes

January 26, 1925 - September 18, 2004

Wanda Elizabeth Sisk Hayes

April 17, 1930 - January 3, 2003

RIP Granny and Granddaddy

Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself,

and thank you for the signs you still give me

I miss you both more than you will ever know.

PROLOGUE

The cards

A candle flickered from the wind that seeped through tiny cracks in the walls of the decrepit wooden building. An aged woman named Anesidora picked up the small deck of cards that lay on the table in front of her. Her mind drifted to a time many years in the past.

Her frail body wanted to sleep, but she knew the task ahead had to be completed. She shuffled the cards as she thought of the name Daughtry McRyne. She laid the cards out on the table.

This small deck of cards was nothing more than pictures and paper begging to be shuffled and cut. Meditating on the thoughts of one's existence, they moved through the deck. They lay on the table wanting only to show a story for Anesidora to decipher. Past, present and future, they knew it all. They tossed and turned, flipped and overlapped. Royalty laid with peasant as did The Tower, Death, The Wheel of fortune, Judgment, The sun, moon and stars, The World. They lay in front of her, the beginning and the ending. They told her a story. They told her my story.

The cards read
:

Card;
The High Priestess
in the position of the immediate - Sorrow, a part of you that feels estranged from the world, melancholy, and unfrequented. However, just as the spring reemerges at the end of the coldest season. This introspective, sorrowful state may be setting the stage for a new engagement with one's universe.

Card;
The Queen of Wands
in the position of overlapping the present - still looking for something - perhaps the return of a long-lost soul mate.

Card;
The Wheel of Fortune
in the future position - uncertainty and change; one must be prepared, for the ultimate effect of this card often depends upon the individual’s adaptability, resilience, and alertness.

Final Card;
Death
in the position that overlaps the future - The end of a phase in life, which has served its purpose. An abrupt and complete change of circumstances, the way of one's life and patterns of behaviors due to past events and actions. Alterations.

She looked away from the spread that lay in front of her. The flame from the candle that illuminated the cards flickered. She picked up the deck again and laid one last card. While staring at the card, she spoke the name, “Daughtry” then as she closed her eyes she begged the Gods.

“I’m getting older, and my time is near. Please bring him to me. Come Daughtry or risk an eternity of loneliness and a future of the one you love never being able to remember you.” She whispered as she laid the final card down and placed the remaining cards from the deck to the side.

“He will come in time; he has to come in time. His life depends on what is
Within the Cards
.”

Chapter One

FIRST THOUGHTS

It's strange to start a new semester when the first thought you have is ‘Holy Shit’. Some people say prior to an extreme event in your life, you smell an aura. For me, not only could I smell it, but I felt shock waves race through me that would have leveled a city block. All I could do was sit in my seat and brace myself for the ride. After the initial shock, the next thought that went through my head was ‘what the hell’. As I sat still unable to move, the last several years began to flash through my thoughts like a bad B rated movie.

It felt as if I were frozen and watching the scene from somewhere outside my body. My heart didn’t skip a beat. It didn’t beat at all. I felt like a corpse. I waited to hear a paramedic yell ‘clear’ from somewhere in the distance as the shock waves ran through me. This electrical jolt should have restarted the non-beating rhythm. However, that wasn’t going to happen. Nothing was going to jump-start my frozen state as I watched her enter the room.

Her beauty, her thoughts, her scent blinded me and held me in place. I had waited for so long to see her again and now that she was here, I sat frozen like an idiot. All I could think was ‘ELLIE IS BACK’.

As she sashayed into the room, my body betrayed me. I felt the arms of the chair collapsing under my grip. Her scent encapsulated me. I felt the involuntary action of my chest as I inhaled with a deep, slow motion and filled my lungs with the essences of the familiar scent. I held it in, pulling every memory of her back into my mind.

When I got ready for class this morning, I thought this day would be like any other day. Now, the one person I loved more than anything walked back into my life and all I could do was sit here like a moronic fool. Her name was Eleanor Valeness. She turned my life upside down the first time I met her, and after seeing her today, I knew she was going to turn it upside down again.

Being in the same room with Ellie woke up things inside of me that died a long time ago. It’s funny I used the word ‘died’ because well believe it or not, I died many years ago. I was turned into what most would think was a mystical imaginary creature. I am a vampire. Now, the one that did this to me was back. It was hard to believe she was here. I never imagined this morning when I woke up my boredom would become unsettled, and I would become a stupors frozen hull of a man.

Ellie was my maker. It had been a century since I saw her. Her family took her away from me after they learned of my existence. I was illegal and was not suppose to exist. To this day, I don’t know why they left me behind. Maybe it was some form of punishment for being Ellie’s betrayal to her race or maybe it was just some sick joke where I was their punch line. The Witchyres have a warped since of loyalty and hated everyone.

After Ellie’s sisters took her away, I drifted around not caring if they did come back for me. However, they didn’t so for the last one hundred years I waited for Ellie to return to me as she promised on the last day that I saw her. The last words she spoke to me rang in my head. "I will return for you", now she was back. However sitting here, I realized something was very different about Ellie. She was back, but she was not the same Ellie that left me. For lack of a better word, she was a total bitch, and this bitch hated me. She hated me for being what she turned me in to, a vampire.

Immortals hold bonds with their maker. When your maker was gone, the bond leaves a dark hole that nothing can fill. It was a deep aching hole that time could not heal. The only way I can describe it would be to say it was like having your heart ripped out, knowing it is near, but unreachable. The hole that was in me was worse than normal because Ellie and I were more than maker and vampire. We were in love. I knew I had to do something to make her hatred go away. Her feelings of hating me made the hole plunge deeper into the darkness.

Getting ready for class this morning, I expected this semester would be dull and uneventful just as my many other years in college had been. My life for many decades was a constant cycle of enrollments in college. My youth never changed as the years passed. I continued to remain in a limbo between my mortal youth of nineteen, and my immortal birth at the same age. New styles and trends came and went as the years passed. I watched people of valor lose their youthfulness and settle into the one thing I would never enjoy.

This morning before my entire existence changed; I walked to my second block class alone as usual. The other students considered me strange, so I didn’t have many friends and the ones that like me were just plain weird. As I walked to class, I viewed the world around me. I saw the coldness in the air and knew the season was changing. The leaves were already turning a brilliant yellow and orange. The air smelled crisp and clean. The wind whipped and caused the leaves to pull away from the home they knew and fluttered lightly to the earth. As I walked, the discarded debris from the massive wooden giants began to stick to my shoes. It seemed funny these leaves had a life cycle I would never know.

I looked around and saw the humans with the same destination as I. For them the change in the weather caused pain and discomfort. They huddled in their coats as they ran to the building that housed their next class. I didn’t feel the changes of the weather, I only saw and smelled them. I was the walking dead. My body was already cold, so physical changes didn’t affect me. I don’t remember how the cold felt. The only things from my human existence that I did remember were small glimpses that on occasion bled through my thoughts. My clear memories were of my changing and everything that followed it.

When I was first changed into an immortal, humans thought we were creatures that only existed in the imagination of those that were of the devil. As the years and decades continued more and more people begin to believe that we were real. I found the humans that believed in us were either deadly afraid or terribly intrigued by my kind. The longer I existed I found people were becoming more the latter than fearful.

A vampire’s life cycle was eternal. These humans that believed in us wished to live forever, but they had no idea that eternity came with a price of many years of boredom and blood lust. Our existence thrived on the death of these humans. Most of the misconceptions humans had about vampires were funny. It was true we are dark creatures that hide from recognition. However, this was only because humans made up myths about us that were ridiculously misconceiving.

Contrary to the myths about my kind, we do not sleep in caskets nor would we burn at the sight of the sun’s rays. We cannot be killed with a wooden stake through the heart. I mean really, we don't have a heart that beats; it's ridiculous to think this could kill us. These myths were fairytales humans made up in their minds to give them some heroic ability to eliminate my kind. These ridicules devices would not work on a real vampire. The only way a vampire could be weakened or eliminated was by his or her maker. A human had no chance against us. This was true for me, as well. The truth is I'm not a purebred vampire. I maintained the same strengths as a purebred, but I had an added advantage. I was different from other vampires. I had magical abilities. These were abilities transferred to me by Ellie. Yes, my maker the one that presently hates me.

Once I arrived at my destination, I sat in this class in the institution I now attended called Delmont College. The name came from the town of Delmont, Maryland where the college was located. It was a small town with a population of around thirty thousand people. I sat this morning waiting for my class to begin, and I thought of the town and its people.