Karolina Dalca, Dark Eyes Read online

  Mama and I had spent the last two years renovating the house. It was my way of spending time with her after my grandparents died. A way of telling her I was still here. It was almost done, but she kept coming up with trivial tasks. My heart told me she was afraid I wouldn’t be around much after.

  I caught chill as the wind rose, carrying an early winter breeze. It rustled through the woods across from our house.

  “Hey Mama!” I called as I stepped inside.

  She stood over the stove, stirring some sort of red saucy stew. The house smelled of meat, nutmeg, and cloves.

  A new can of cooking oil spray was on the counter. My bane and my savior. From the ripe age of two, my clothes had a habit of smoldering into flames on my skin when I threw a tantrum. Talk about the terrible twos. Raising a Fire Charmed child wasn’t easy. It’d cost Mama a lot of patience and extra cash spent on kids’ clothes. She’d come up with the idea of bewitching a can of kitchen spray as a magical fire-retardant. While most women put on their make-up in the morning, I had to spray down all my clothes.

  I warmed myself over the fireplace’s fading embers, which dimmed to darkness. The hum of the power in my chest swelled forward, sensing its fallen comrades in the hearth, and restless from the half release at the police station. I held out my hands and dropped my control. Fire unfurled from my arms and into the fireplace.

  The flames exploded outward, licking up the surrounding walls and into my face. I jumped back with a scream.

  Mama gasped. “Karolina! When will you learn? You can’t use your magic if you can’t control it!”

  The flames died down as quickly as they arrived, leaving only charred streaks on either side of the hearth. I can control it. I just need more practice. I sighed, already accepting the responsibility of painting over the black marks—again.

  “You’re better off using the earth magic I taught you,” she said.

  “I’m not giving into the gypsy stereotype,” I said. “Earth magic is all healing and love potions. Maybe I’ll grow a mole on my face too while I’m at it.”

  A hunk of meat thumped against the cutting board.

  “What’s that on the table?” she asked and eyed the box of candies.

  “A peace offering,” I said.

  “You don’t need a peace offering for a fight that’s already over,” she said. “What date do you start back at school?”

  “I’m due back on campus in two weeks.” I flopped down on the couch, brainstorming how to approach the subject of my father again.

  “Mama? Do you have any other family left I haven’t met?”

  “Just Auntie Miruna in Romania,” she said.

  I looked over the couch and saw she had pursed her lips. She knew what I was about to get at. My fingers fidgeted with my necklace. It was the only item I had of my father’s. A pendant of braided gold, all three shades intertwined into the shape of an oval. Set inside was a ruby. It didn’t melt under heat like regular jewelry, which added more to the mystery of my father. I hadn’t taken it off since Mama gave it to me.

  “If you had more family out there in the world, wouldn’t you want to know?” I asked her.

  “It depends, my darling girl, if they are people worth knowing,” she said.

  “If they help me understand who my father was, what he was like…then it’s worth it.”

  “There are some things you’re better off not knowing, Karolina.”

  “Every daughter needs to know about her father! I can’t believe you don’t know anything else about him. You can try to keep it from me all you want, but I will find out.”

  She’d tried convincing me my father was an injured Russian vampire who dropped unconscious on her doorstep in Romania. She nursed him with her healing magic and her nineteen-year-old self was apparently seduced in the process. No qualms over giving it up before marriage for her.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Karolina? He died. He died the day after I met him, I have nothing else to tell you,” she said. “I was lucky enough to have my parents to care for me and come with me to Canada.”

  “How could you fall in love with a man in one day?” I yelled. “What is it you’re protecting me from?” I gripped the spine of the couch, crunching it inward. “Mama, I have fire magic. The women in your family always had earth magic to be healers, the men were fighters, my fire originated with my father! If I could contact his family, maybe they could teach me more control.”

  “It’s out of the question,” she said.

  “What if something ever happened to you, Mama? Who would I turn to?”

  “The Lupei family will always care for you like you’re their own.” She looked so satisfied with her answer, that my frustration—and my fire—threatened to explode.

  The Lupeis were like family, but I wasn’t one of their own. They would never know what it meant to be a vampire. We could share the sunlight, religious temples, and even a poutine, but if they cut their finger—they’d never share the lust to suck the blood from it like honey from a pixie stick. They wouldn’t know what it’s like to have inhuman strength or a fear of silver. And they wouldn’t understand how it feels to never know your own kind.

  The vampire underground—akin to a mafia—had a foreboding reputation. Mama had filled my head with stories of vampires who let their egos run rampant at nightfall. If one got caught killing a human or exposing our kind, the underground would deal with the indiscretion. A vampire could disappear overnight if they weren’t worth the cost of interceding with the authorities. But this was based on Mama’s word—and I already knew she lied about my father. Never knowing another vampire was more frightening than any of Mama’s cautionary tales.

  “Mama, I love you, more than anything in this world, and I know you’re looking out for me, but the Lupeis are not family. I know they’re gypsy too, maybe even Charmed, but I’m half vampire. I need to be with my own people!”

  Moonrise was surely coming.

  She looked back to her recipe book. “The Lupeis love you like a daughter. Roman loves you.”

  I snorted. “Roman loves a lot of girls.”

  “Plus,” she said. “The Lupeis know who to contact if it comes to it, and you have an emergency box in the backyard.”

  “Oh Mama.” I held my head in my hand. “How much more stereotypical can you get? I’ll never dig up that old box.”

  I lay down on the couch again, looked up at the ceiling, and accepted today’s defeat. Even through the closed windows, the strong wind’s howl was coming through. It sounded almost human.

  The outside wall to the kitchen exploded into the house.

  With blinding white light, wood and debris sailed through the air like missiles. Stunned and blinded, the heavy wood crashed into me. The impact drove me back, flipping me off the couch and onto the floor.

  Coldness rushed to my head and the vision drained from my eyes.

  Chapter Two

  The Fire

  My skull could have been a split melon, were it not for the blood throbbing in my temples. I opened my eyes. The room twirled like a merry-go-round of splintered wood and drywall. An acidy taste gushed into my mouth.

  The front of the house was blown open. A gust of wind scattered snow on the smoldering debris inside. The cool air of the phenomenon shocked my skin. The cold steadied the room long enough for me to stand. There was another quaking blast. A flare of light. I dropped to my knees. A whooshing overhead made my spine bristle. I twisted. A thick ribbon of lightning hummed above me like a surging river.

  The electricity zapped into the opposite wall and sent drywall shooting through the air.

  My body unfroze. I tucked and rolled across the rubble and landed behind our upturned sofa.

  “Mama!” I cried.

  Wreckage encircled me. Piles of timber were strewn across the floor; she could have been buried beneath any one of them. Shrieks cut through the night air like a dying animal. I cringed and crouched low. I wanted to stay—to hide.

 
; Courage, Karolina. Grandpa Dalca’s voice played in my mind.

  “Mama!” I called and sprinted out into the open.

  A crackling boom shook the ground behind me. I called up my vampiric senses and skidded behind the next pile. As I turned to look at the couch, now blasted apart and set aflame, another sizzling bolt soared toward me.

  I dove forward into another roll and felt the scorching prickle of electricity narrowly miss my feet.

  A man’s voice called just outside the broken wall. “Bronwyn! The swarm is getting away. Aim to the woods!”

  A blast sounded opposite our house, and I could hear the crashing of trees.

  I dashed to the next pile and searched the rubble. My hand grazed an object, warm and soft. I threw a piece of drywall away to find Mama’s face grimacing underneath.

  “Karo,” she said.

  I could smell the blood before I spotted it and my fangs burst through the roof of my mouth. Hunger surged through me—and I hated myself for it. Her shirt was soaked in crimson, which had leaked through the fabric and pooled onto the floor.

  “Run,” she said. “Run now.”

  “No, Mama, not without you.”

  “You have to, darling. Go now, while you can. Stay away from the Forged.”

  “The Forged?” I wanted to scream. “Shadow Forged?” I shook her in a bout of panic, then repulsed by myself, swept the hair from her face. “They’re not real, Mama, not here. I’m going to get you out of here. Everything will be fine.”

  “Run!” Her eyes bulged as she looked over my shoulder.

  I turned my head.

  A dark shadow glided toward us like a spider, puncturing a trail of holes into the floorboards. It sprang into the air, revealing a twisted human face in place of a spider’s head. I screamed. It landed on me. High on the adrenaline thumping behind my ears, I grabbed a leg on either side of it. My foot kicked up and I rolled backward throwing it off.

  Like a centipede it folded in half and changed direction midair.

  I seized a nearby two-by-four and rammed the weapon through its chest. My hand slid all the way inside. Its innards were like jelly mixed with tar. The texture repulsed my hunger, like it knew the flesh between my fingers was an abomination. I yanked my hand from its unmoving carcass and the murky outline of its skin faded. Its arachnid body was made of an assortment of human parts—like a spider who’d been created on Frankenstein’s table. Its skin crumbled like sand and collapsed in on itself.

  There was movement at the front of our house. A blonde woman blustered into view outside the broken wall. A gale of swirling snow encased her. Balls of light surrounded her hands, making her look like a candle in a snow globe. She extended her palms and the light turned into beams of lightning which crisscrossed in front of her. She propelled the bolts into a group of Shadow Forged, delving a trench in their wake.

  A redheaded man charged behind her. “Bronwyn, left!” he cried. “Protect the innocents in the house!” He smashed a glowing axe into a Forged that lunged at him. An orb of piercing light emanated from his other hand, which he rose over his head and slammed down into a Forged. The ground shuddered with a sonic boom. Light circled outward, carrying the smell of burnt tar through the air.

  When the man’s back was turned, the woman he’d called Bronwyn turned to face us. A hardness moved across her face like a stone mask. Her gaze fixated on me. Snow swirled around her like a frozen whirlwind. She flung her hands forward.

  A bolt of lightning coursed through the air.

  I rose slightly from my crouch at Mama’s side while fixated on the redheaded warrior—leaving me wide open. Training aside, a rookie was still a rookie.

  Something slammed into my side just before the bolt touched my chest knocking me to the ground.

  The world curtained white.

  Mama screamed beside me.

  I scrambled toward her, and a rancid smell filled the air. I’d never smelled the scent before, but its presence made my body tremble. I met her side and my vision faded back, but I couldn’t bear to touch what was left.

  The blast had stripped her beauty from her face. The features we shared were gone, and so was the life from her body. She lay shriveled, like she’d been put through a microwave.

  I wailed and folded to the floor. My breath fluttered back and forth, neither inhaling nor exhaling.

  “Ma-m!” I cried.

  The floorboards beneath my fingertips smoked and crumbled to coals. Fire rushed up my forearms. Like a bomb detonated inside of me—my whole body erupted into flames.

  A white blast hurtled at me.

  The bolt met my fire. Flames plumed around me. Rather than frying under the heat of the lightning, I pummeled into the floor, burning a pothole into the foundation. The concrete liquefied. I sank deeper until the force of the blast was gone. My hands clawed their way back up the hole and then I was barreling toward the woman.

  The scene around me, our burning house, the woods outside, all blended into obscurity. All I could see was the woman who killed my mother. I leapt into the air. Her hands glowed, conjuring another bolt of lightning.

  A blazing light reflected into my eyes off her breastplate. For an instant, I was faced with the burning image of myself. An orb of fire encircled me like an explosion inside a sphere of glass.

  Bronwyn rolled backward, escaping the flames as I fell. She swung her arm and snow gathered in front of her, solidifying into an ice wall.

  The wall steamed into the air on contact.

  She threw both hands outward and a frigid gale rushed to form an ice shield.

  I burned into the ice squall, shoving toward her with each step.

  “You killed her!” I screamed.

  I thought of Mama’s face, and a white-hot pain overtook my senses. Fire flared outward in an amber flash, sucking the oxygen from the air, and tearing the leaves from the trees.

  She flew backward from the burst, her armored legs scorched black. Her scream cut through the noise of battle. She hit the ground and scrambled back—just as I crouched to lunge.

  “Bronwyn!” The redheaded man screamed and charged me from the side, abandoning a pile of Forged falling to ash. The air around him crackled with electricity. His glowing hands thrust outward.

  A bolt of lightning three feet across thundered toward my chest.

  I crossed my forearms in a panicked block. The liquid flames around me concentrated into a center shield, swelling out into a stream. The blows collided midair and the ground blackened beneath the meeting of the elements.

  An instant later, the flames I forced into a stream propelled back. An electrical firestorm hurtled into me.

  My shoulders braced.

  I skidded across the dirt into the garden, right through the juniper bushes I always hated. My legs locked. The shrubs tore into the air after being sizzled in half. Hunks of clay liquefied and sprayed at my back. I dug my heels down and slowed. I muscled my arms forward against the blast. I lunged deeper to keep my foothold in the dirt, but the fireball advanced with each passing second. I poured more power into the stream, keeping it at bay, but the force was too great.

  Tears rimmed my eyes. I had to draw more power.

  My skills with fire magic had been lazy and uncontrolled, but I knew it was fueled by my emotions. I thought of my mother. That she was gone.

  A boiling heat rolled off my body. The horrific image of her as I crawled to her side replayed in my mind. Rage. Unyielding and uncontrollable, it seethed from me.

  The flames around me darkened, the deep hues weaved through the fire.

  The blast soared toward the man.

  “Lukas!” Bronwyn cried.

  He dropped his guard and rolled across the ground to her.

  The blast hurtled into the grass where he once stood and shook the earth as it formed a fiery crater.

  They clasped hands. A blinding white light flashed out around them with a hiss, and then collapsed in on itself. When the light faded, they were gone.

&nbs
p; I stood staring where they once were. My flames diminished. My body shook with sudden weakness. I looked back. Flames engulfed the house and roared into the night. Mama’s body burning with it.

  I stumbled closer to the fire, but it bellowed kicking out flames. The heat burned my skin the nearer I got. A crash echoed out as the roof collapsed. Wood flew across the driveway. My heart beat wildly.

  I can’t get to you, Mama.

  Tears streamed down my chin. A heaviness set in on my muscles. I gave into exhaustion and fell to my knees. All I could do was stare at the burning flames.

  Chapter Three

  Hunger Calls

  Smoke billowed up from the falling timbers. The firelight played patterns of gold against the dark plumes. A thought broke through my numbness. Smoke. Neighbors would notice the smoke and call the fire department. The firefighters would be here soon. The police would come with the firefighters.

  My tears blurred the scene of our burning home. To say a woman blew up my house with a light beam and I accidentally set it on fire—was insane. Even if I used my magic, I couldn’t smooth this over. I would be blamed for my mother’s death. I would be charged with murder.

  Run. I had to run. But how could I even get away? My keys, wallet, and cell phone would burn to ash with Mama.

  “No,” I said.

  Giving into despair wasn’t an option. Grandpa Dalca raised me to be stronger. Mama hadn’t given up her life for me to huddle into a ball and cry. She’d even planned for this very moment. The box.

  I willed my legs of lead off the ground, commanding my limbs to work. I ran around the heat of the flaming house and into the backyard. My fingers raked the dirt as I frantically threw clumps of grass out of my way. Clay wedged under my fingernails and rocks scraped my skin, but the fear of living behind bars was more painful.

  Metal gleamed in the dirt.

  I snatched it up, only to shriek and drop it. The corners of the wooden box were silver. Charmed markings were carved into the wood. I looked down to see the silver pattern burned into my skin. I whipped off my jacket, wrapped the box inside, and dashed into the woods. I ran hard, putting distance between the house and myself. My lungs burned. I tapped into my vampiric strength. My senses shot alive with the thrill of the speed and the fear of falling prey to the manhunt that might yet pursue me.