Shameless I know... Lost: Midnight Mist

[dantesparadise]

I've just published my first book Lost: Midnight Mist the preview can be found here: http://www.lulu.com/content/3820976

There was no land of milk and honey, no harps, no white robes, and no wings. Well... maybe I was wrong about the wings... My name is Sita and I'm an explorer, a fighter, and a monster. Oh and I'm prey for a Vampire Lord. Sigh... sometimes it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

I write stories about women and this one is about a woman that dies and is resurrected as a demon.  However, there is no struggle for balance they both want the same thing, redemption. But there are those that would not see them achieve it.  There are those that would kill her and see her sent back to Hell for jealousy or pride or just plain malice.

Check it out if you like the preview buy a copy thanks alot

I'll be releasing a chapter a week for a while hope you guys like it

Prologue


Unabashed the Devil stood making his mock of me; While round him barked the mad and hungry dogs as he laughed in his gaiety; I wept as a child would for naught, save The Beast, was there for me to see; My will is shred and forsaken, I am undone by eternal blasphemy; In his wake I lay strewn, my soul rent asunder, condemned, I still weep for he has defeated me.   

   I died.  There was no life flashing before my eyes.  There were no harps.  There were no white robes.  There was no land of milk and honey.  There were no wings…
…Well, maybe I was wrong about the wings, but there was definitely no peace, not for a while anyway.  Sound confusing?  I know, I still don’t quite understand it myself, but it was an incredible adventure.
Where should I start?  Perhaps at the beginning… I always wanted to be an archaeologist… No!  That would take forever.  Let’s start more recently. Ah, yes, the Guardian.
As you may have already guessed I became an archaeologist, just like my father, Nicco Troy.  I must have gotten my sense of adventure from him, because like him, I more often than not, chose thrill over self-preservation, and I only surrounded myself with people just as insane as I am… was.
I went from the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa to the highest most frigid caves of the Himalayas.  My exploits were becoming legend.  I was the standard to which the younger generations aspired to, and the one that the older ones hated.   The signs were all around me.  You always hear people talk about never knowing when your time is up.  But you know.  Somewhere deep inside, where our ancestors knew instinctively that if you stray from the group, what is out in the dark will get you. It’s beyond thought and more basic than any emotion.
I knew but I ignored all the signs around me.  I wanted so much to be like my father.  And now I’m just like him.
Dead…

[dantesparadise]

CHAPTER ONE


Someone was banging on my door.  In all honesty they were probably gently rapping at it, but due to the 7am-ness of the situation I elevated it to rudely hammering at my door.  I was, at that point, half way through dreaming and waking up and I couldn’t tell what was real yet.  I opened my eyes just enough to see that the covers were half way down my body and my naked breasts were exposed to the cool morning air.  His arm was lying across my stomach, solid and muscular, but as I found out last night surprisingly soft.  He snuggled his face against me, and he was warm, almost feverish, but it felt so good that I wanted to just wrap him around me and live there.
The knocking continued, more insistent, and that, at last, yanked me out of the afterglow I was thoroughly enjoying.  I realized what had happened last night with a start.  Did I actually do that?  Did I agree to this?  David groaned and that answered that question.  It did happen otherwise there wouldn’t be this man, naked, cuddled up against me.  I needed to get away at least for a second, just to think.  Finally, I registered the pounding (read: politely, knocking) at the door, damn they were persistent.   
I pulled him up to me and kissed him, a soft brush of lips, “David, could you get that please?”
He got up and as he stood there, naked with the sun shining in on him, the light played across his chest and abs to great advantage, just looking at that wonderful body again made things low in my own body tight.  Well that explains some of it. He wrapped the sheet around himself.
“Sita, last night, you said that you would marry me.”  He said face blank, gauging my reaction to it being said out loud.
I had to kiss him to reassure him that I was okay with it, even if deep inside it might be a lie.  I didn’t want to make the classic girl mistake of assuming that a man’s feelings can’t be hurt just as easily as a woman’s.  If I care about his feelings this much I must have made the right decision.  Right?
“Yea I did,” I said.  The look in his eyes was so intimate heat rushed up my face and I realized that I was blushing, something only he can make me do.
“Do you regret it?” He asked and his face still empty, giving nothing away.
That was it, that was what I needed to think about, and I realized that he wasn’t going to let me.  I looked up in to those chocolate brown eyes and wanted to lie but I couldn’t, “No, I don’t regret it.”
I realized, just then, that it was true; I didn’t regret it and that made me smile.  He rewarded my correct answer with that brilliant smile that melted me to my toes.  The knocking turned into full out banging and he finally made and about face to see who it was.  When he came back into the room he was holding an envelope.
He tossed me the letter; it had “CERTIFIED” stamped across it in big block letters.  I read the name of the sender, Joshua Troy.  My stomach tightened at that name.  I tore open the letter and read:
Hey Sita,
   Been a while hasn’t it?  I hear you’re doing big things Mr. Jones or would that be Lara Croft.  You know I get those pop culture references all mixed up.  Just so you don’t crumple this up and throw it away let me get to the point.  I found something very interesting that might take your expertise to confirm, but if it is what I think then it’d be like finding Big Foot using the Holy Grail as a pimp cup. You know where to meet me.
                              Josh
If I had any common sense I would have thrown it away and continued to go about my very, very good life.  But my explorer’s curiosity got the better of me and I knew I had to go meet this man.
The letter had soured my mood just a little because the last time I heard from Joshua I found out my mother was dead.  Which I guess would sour anyone’s mood.  David saw the look on my face and even knew why I was wearing it.  So he made a very generous offer, at least he thought so.  “Hey why don’t we take a shower and go meet Joshua.”
I had to smile at that, “We?  One night of okay sex and you think you can just hop in the shower with me?”
He pouted, but it was false because it didn’t reach his eyes.  No, his eyes held a very different look, more salacious, like he knew exactly what he did to me and I couldn’t undermine it even if I tried.  What he said was, “Just okay?”
My smile turned into a complete dopey I’m-so-in-love-with-you-I-can’t-contain-myself grin.
“We can’t,” I said sheepishly.
“Oh I think we can, over and over again.  We proved that last night.”
I giggled, an honest to God giggle.  I never giggle.  I had to leave the room before I made more of an ass out of myself for love.
God I love him…
Stop it.
He pouted again, but I still managed, begrudgingly I might add, to turn down the tandem shower otherwise I would never get out the house.  That excuse brought that damned smile back and I groaned and had to leave or I just might have agreed to marry him again.
After I was fresh and clean I slipped into some light blue jeans, a white polo shirt, and some white Nikes.  After all anything but white was not appropriate for the hell on earth also known as summers in New York.
The letter had stated very plainly that he needed a team to go after his treasure and no one else wanted to go on a suicide mission so I was it.  Thing about suicide missions is as long as you don’t mind dying you were going to be richer than God.  Oh, and to meet him at Smokey’s Diner.  Only the two of us still called it Smokey’s.  It was a restaurant that I knew well.  I came here everyday as a kid.  The owner, Smokey, knew me by name and it wasn’t an act of God for me to get a free meal or two when I was a broke college student.  But I haven’t been here since Smokey died and his kid’s sold it to a soulless coffee giant frequented by the yuppie Manhattanites.
I walk through the front door and memories came flooding back.  The booths still ran along the window but the old burgundy leather was changed into that artificial plastic stuff that is never as comfortable.  The smell of Hamburgers, onions, and beer was changed into Mocha Lattes and briefcase leather.  They kept the set up but the spirit of Smokey’s was gone.  I knew implicitly where he’d be sitting, the same place we always sat.  We saw each other at the same time.
He reclined his long body like a big cat and gave me that slow lazy smile of his before saying, “Hiya’ sis, it’s been a while hasn’t it.”
“Ten years, Joshua.  It’s been ten years.”
“Haven’t seen you since…  What, mom’s funeral?” that made me wince, “How have you been?”
As much as I resisted it I missed my little brother.  It’s been ten years because I can see my father’s face looking back at me whenever I look at him.  Guilt is a multi-splendored thing, isn’t it?  Yea I was a bad sister.
We spent some time catching up; I told him that I’m engaged and that I am a famed and envied archeologist, how arrogant I know but it doesn’t make it less true.  From his letter, however, I don’t think I needed to mention the latter.  He told me how he was doing big things.  He’d made tons of money selling ancient artifacts and relics to museums and private collectors around the world.  It was good catching up for a minute but then that discomfort that usually set in when I spent too much time with my brother… well, set in.  When uncomfortable, focus on business.  That’s my motto.
“So, why did you send me this letter?”


Interested next week will be chapter two can't wait try: http://www.lulu.com/content/3820976

[dantesparadise]

CHAPTER TWO


Joshua pulled out a portion of a map, brown and decaying, of an area I knew all too well. Etched in one corner of the map was a shining crimson jewel.
“Where did you find this?” I asked trying not to drool.
“Well, you know how you made me keep all of dad’s things?” He asked.
“You found this in there?”
“No. I had never been up to it, but my maid had been cleaning and she decided to organize for me… “ His voice trailed off.
I held the map in my hands. The texture was familiar but not paper or parchment. It had a dry waxy feel too it. I knew what the parchment was made from, and the brown etching confirmed it. The map was made of dried animal flesh. I refused to speculate as to what kind. And I am fairly certain that the brown “ink” wasn’t ink at all. It was a map of a path through a jungle to a temple. I knew this jungle, also. I’d been there only once before, and something had always kept me from going back. We had been there one time with our father. It had been the last time either of us saw him. Maybe that was it.
“You want to go after the Heart?”
“Yes. I want to go after the Heart.”
The Heart of Khan was a magnificent ruby that Genghis Khan wore on his cloak. It’s what made him such a fierce ruler and supposedly rendered him unkillable. When he died of unknown causes in the early 13th century it had been lost, and it wasn’t until my father found this map that there was talk that it might be in the jungles of the Philippine Islands. It is said that the heart is protected by an indestructible juggernaut, simply named The Guardian. The mythology didn’t interest me, only the thrill of adventure, the exhilaration of danger, and the call of my father’s life’s work. It was the treasure that my father died trying to find.
As much as I would like to blame him or anyone else for the outcome of this particular venture it was I who spent weeks assembling the team, and researching the locale. I was fully enthused and no amount of foreboding was going to change my mind.
The day of our flight everyone assembled on the runway for a last inspection. I personally assembled a team of the most insane thrill seekers on the planet, each one an innovator and master of his or her craft as well as close friends. We were a surrogate family of misfits among our peers. No one liked us and that’s how we liked it. Besides they were just jealous.
Jillian Thomas, the only other woman on this trip was my engineer and pilot. She has a double Masters in Engineering and Computer Engineering and can pretty much MacGyver her way out of any situation.
There was Daniel Harvey, ex-Navy SEAL, bodyguard and all around badass. He’s almost a foot taller than me which puts him well over six feet. I would never arm wrestle him but I would always trust him at my back. His loyalty was absolute and it never hurts to have some muscle who knows a little something about explosives.
My brother, a human world’s languages dictionary, was along. I know seven different languages but he makes me look like an idiot child with how easily he picks up other dialects. Finally David and I rounded out the group.
I usually ignore that cold sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach I get before every mission because that is a good way to not get famous. With the work we do you should be afraid. It means that when you succeed you are all the more famous. But the butterflies in my stomach this time were vicious and rabid. So I slept to ignore it.
I rarely dream on these flights but I do now and I wish I hadn’t.
The rain falls in sheets. I’m crying in great heaping sobs as a man scoops me up off of the ground. Mud and leaves clinging stubbornly to my new dress. I remember that making it so much worse. The dress was a gift from daddy. I ground my face into his shoulder so that my brother doesn’t see me lose it. How undignified, ugh.
”Sita… Sita? Where’s daddy? You were with him weren’t you? Why didn’t he come back with you?” he asks.
In a voice thick with tears I reply, “Don’t worry Joshua I will protect you from now on. It’s you and me forever ok Josh?”
“Ok, Sita. I love you big sister,” he said with a smile.
“I love you too, little brother.”
I woke up on the plane as we were landing; dried streams ran down my face. I looked over and Joshua is there excited like a child on Christmas morning.
David tapped me, “We’re here Sita,” and in a lower voice he told me, “you were whimpering in your sleep. Are you up to this?”
“Yea of course I am,” I said voice thick, not with tears, but sleep. Really, just sleep.
“Good cause there ain’t no going back now. Get ready.”
I stepped off of the plane and this airport was just like any other, modern and state of the art, but apparently the only difference was that this one was on the surface of the sun. The sweat beaded on my forehead and I could feel it trail down my back. I had forgotten how hot it was in Manila this time of year.
After procuring a couple of guides and some hands to help with the dig we took a speed boat to Batangas, which is a few hours away from Manila and composed of dense forest, wholly uncharted.
Batangas has a couple of villages on the outskirts of the jungle. The locals don’t dare risk wandering too far into these jungles. Each person we passed knew who we were and what we were planning on doing. They have seen it all before. With all there local folklore and legends the superstitions were deep rooted and real. For them these forests were cursed. Luckily enough for me I had courage powered by good old American skepticism, so off to see the wizard.

Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. Stay tuned next week same place same time and as always if you can't wait and want to buy the book here ya go: http://www.lulu.com/content/3820976

[dantesparadise]

CHAPTER THREE


Most people have no idea what a jungle is. I mean, they have this abstract image in their head that it’s hot and thick with trees and animals, but that doesn’t even come close to describing what a jungle is at all. A jungle is a force of nature all on its own, alive. It is alive the way that any predator is alive. It breathes. It sees. It hunts and kills. If you don’t respect the jungle you don’t make it out.
The heat was pressing against the back of my neck as we marched through the trees. David took point, clearing a path, not so much cutting one with a machete as giving himself over to the trees cutting only when necessary. He was always so at home in the jungle. It was as if the trees moved out of his way.
This trek would have been like any other trek through the jungle except something was off. The closer we got to the temple the more I felt we shouldn’t be here. I looked at the others so see if it was just me. It wasn’t. The locals that we got to help us were huddle together speaking in a language I didn’t know. They were speaking quickly almost frantic.
“Something about this place doesn’t feel right,” I said to David.
“I know what you mean,” he replied, “Do you hear that?”
I listened.
“No.”
“Exactly. I don’t hear anything but us. We’re in the middle of the jungle and I don’t hear any birds, wind, streams, there are no sounds of any kind. The jungle is quiet as the grave. It’s never this quiet in the jungle.”
My brother, Joshua came over to me and said, “I don’t feel right about this mission. The villagers over there are protesting going any further. They say this ground is tainted with death. Old death like what ever is here has been killing for a very long time and its desire for it is soaked into the very ground.”
The only excuse I have for what I said next is that I was scared and that what he said is exactly how I was feeling. “What’s wrong with you,” I replied, “how many missions do you think I’ve been on. Do you think we get famous by turning back because a few locals have some scary fables?”
“No, but…”
“Then what makes you think I’m gonna turn back now.”
“But Sita maybe there is something to that Guardian thing. I think…”
“I’m not paying you to think. I’m paying you to translate.”
“But…”
“So translate this to them. They weren’t complaining when they were taking our money, so they and you can shut the **** up and stop being such pussies. This could be the greatest event in our careers. We’re making history, and I’m not jeopardizing that for your gutlessness. They and you need to grow a pair and stop being such bitches.”
I told you I was a bad sister.
The moment I said it I wish I hadn’t. The look in his eyes was so full of hurt that I would have given anything at that moment to chase it away. But I didn’t.
We walked the rest of the way in complete silence, I told myself that I was going to apologize for what I said when were safely back on the plane. That was all I thought about until the jungle broke and we emerged into a grove and at its center loomed an ancient temple, with striking familiarity. A chill shot through my body and a feeling of nostalgia came over me as if I had been here before.
David saw me and asked, “You okay, love?” But something tells me that he had been talking for awhile but I hadn’t heard a word of what he said.
“Yea I’m fine, just a bit of déjà vu.”
The temple was covered with overgrown brush; it looked like nobody had been here for decades. We made our way to the back of the temple where all that stood in our way were two enormous stone doors. This made me nervous because there were no obstacles or traps, no carvings and no second exit. There was nothing but the two stone doors. It was as if the architect were building a prison instead of a temple. Maybe that is just my fear projecting. Inscribed on the doors in Baybayin, an ancient form of Tagalog, a simple warning:
“To Those That Desire Riches and Grace, Beware The Guardian Awaits.”
When I opened the doors a red glimmer shone from the back of the chamber. The glow sparkled off of all the jewels and gold; the majesty was far beyond any of our wildest fantasies.
The ground was littered with the treasure of centuries untold and the bodies of failed attempts, but while my men were preoccupied by the sights around them I was drawn to the back of the temple, to the eerie crimson glow. The shine was haunting because even though it illuminated the room with no apparent source of energy there was only darkness that surrounded it. The shadows were thick like the densest fog. When I touched the glowing stone the darkness peeled back like a cape being flung aside.
When I came in contact it flashed bright as a captive star made of garnet, and when it did it lit all the dormant torches that hung from the walls. The light made us quickly aware of what awaited us behind that darkness. All there really was for us to claim from that chamber was our destiny. Death was there to be paid his due.
Resting on a solid gold throne was an immense sentinel, clad in scarlet and ebony armor and wrapped in chains. The chains were connect end to end with two colossal blades that rested across the beast’s shoulders, as amazing and terrifying as this situation had become all I was focused on was what lay embedded in the titan’s chest.
He stood up; towering over us all and said only one thing, “I am Guardian and your end is come. Time to DIE!”
With a lightning quick gesture he whipped the chain and it coiled itself around Joshua and lifted him into the air. That snapped me out of my daze and I screamed, “NO!”
He moved with a grace something of his size had no business of possessing. It was like a great cat and a dancer combined. It was almost like he was swimming through the air. It was unnerving.
I tried to help him but David stopped me. “No! Let go of me David!”
“You’ll be killed,” he warned.
“Sita…?” Joshua called to me.
“No! Stop it, please… I’m supposed to protect him! He’s my little brother…”
The blade seemed to awaken like a mighty snake beckoned by its master. My eyes were instantly hot and my chest tight with the urge to scream. It all happened in slow motion. The blade glided toward Joshua’s head like it was barely moving at all. But that wasn’t right. I think my sense of time had dilated from shock.
Once the Guardian decapitated my brother then crushed his body like an over ripened fruit time went back to normal.
No… actually it seemed to speed up as if it needed to work a little harder to get back to normal. He tossed Joshua away like some useless refuse.
“He’s all I have…” squeezed out of me in a choked whisper.
I dropped to my knees, my whole body trembling and did nothing. Even when my exterior seems calm, I have never stopped crying over my brother. All my men opened fire and he shrugged the bullets off like gnats and worked his way through us like a butcher sent by Satan himself.
The gun blasts in the small chamber were like deafening concussion grenades and it made the screams seem miles away. Their bodies smacked the ground with wet plops and it laughed. The blood rained down over the chamber like a gruesome spring shower.
All who were left was David and me. Dread, the feeling of imminent doom, filled me. I knew that it was time for me to die. The Guardian had had its fun and now he wanted to end it, he began to twirl the chain. He spun it faster and faster until all you could see was a golden blur.
David pulled from his side his machete and made some distance between him and me. The Guardian threw the blade at David with so much power it was like it was shot from a cannon. David rolled to the side and the shining weapon struck the ground with devastating force.
The blade chased David around the room always inches from killing my love. But David had always been supernaturally swift. He made a sharp turn and ran straight at the Guardian with a battle cry, the machete poised to strike. The blade came, spinning back, toward David.
I shut my eyes and screamed, “NO!!!”
Then everything was silence. When I opened my eyes the Guardian was lying on its side with the blade plunged hilt deep into the Heart. It was leaking some sparkling red fluid on the ground. David was on one knee.
I ran to my fiancé and put my hand on his shoulder and he coughed up blood and fell to all fours. He looked at me with bloody tears welling in his eyes. He held on to himself, his whole body was oddly still, as if he were afraid of what would happen if he moved.
He spoke around blood thick in his throat, his last words, “Sita I love yo… Oh my God! Run, run for your life, please, plea…” then burst into an ungainly tangle of arms and legs.
His blood was all I could see as it splashed on my face and crept around my knees, warm, almost hot with the adrenaline.
The heat behind my eyes that had already been there exploded into hot streams down my face. When I turned around looming over me in all his diabolical grandeur was The Guardian. I tried to scream but he gripped his massive hand over my face and lifted me high into the air. He brought my face close to his. I looked into his eyes and they were just black wells. I felt myself fall down, impossibly down, into those black pits.
I was cold and lonely and the only warmth was the tears running hot and steady down my face. His grip on my face tightened and I suddenly couldn’t breathe, but before I had the chance to suffocate he snapped my neck with a flick of his wrist, and so I died.

Thanks guys that have been reading and for those of you that don't know this book is released and available at amazon.com as well as here: http://www.lulu.com/content/3820976
For those of you not hooked maybe this chapter will do it, and just like before the next chapter will be released next friday.

[dantesparadise]

CHAPTER FOUR


There was darkness, followed by a blinding light.  Next my eyes opened, and every thing was clearer than it had ever been.  So clear, that I could distinguish the spaces between the cracks in the stone walls on the far side of the chamber.  Everything had changed, yet stayed the same.  Statues seemed to move, but didn’t.  It’s something that no human can ever know. 
The Guardian stood among what was left of our bodies, reveling in his victory.  He’d removed the blade from his Heart and it was as unmarred as when we’d first arrived.  His bellow clipped short and he looked down.  An arm was sticking out of his chest.  He followed the arm up to the body to the eyes and there was this look on his face as he stared at me.  It was a look of confusion like he couldn’t understand what was happening to him.  I didn’t understand the look.  Everyone dies, why was he so surprised it was happening to him? 
I tore the heart from his body, and watched as his body convulsed like he was having a grand mal seizure or dying from strychnine poisoning.  He decayed right before my very eyes.  His body shrunk in on itself as if he were dying of consumption.  The near skeletal remains exploded into black and scarlet motes and he was gone from this world as if he’d never existed.
I licked the blood from my fingers, and then the realization of what just happened flooded into me.  I took a deep shaking breath in preparation then dropped to my knees to let out one long ragged scream after another. 
I looked at the blood on my hands. 
I shrieked as if I could scream the pain out of me. 
I looked at the carnage all around me. 
I screamed long, hopeless, pitiful screams. 
I looked to my fiancé who was nothing more than so much ground meat.
And nothing more came out but hoarse squeaks. 
Finally, I threw up and the world went all Starry Night.  Blackness ate at the edges of my vision then there was nothingness again.
   When I regained consciousness there were dried streams that ran down the sides of my face.  As I was recovering from the grogginess of unconsciousness I got up and stumbled outside to the jungle.  The sun was low in the sky stuck between twilight and true dark. 
I began to feel something rise to the surface, swimming up through me frantically like a diver deep under the surface desperate for air.  I closed my eyes and I could almost see it as a pit.  An expanse so dark it was like an inky ocean of blackness.  It was filled with shimmering color like an oil slick.
I thought, “How could something be so dark and shimmer,” but the thought faded as something rose up out of the darkness. 
It was nothing I could see with my eyes, but that didn’t make it any less real.  It began to pace in the darkness like some giant predator pacing its cage at the zoo.  You could sense it was something that wasn’t used to being trapped.  It knew freedom and it would be damned if it stayed captive.  Like any animal not yet broken it tested its boundaries, it slashed the bars of its cage.  The problem is that that cage was me. 
The pain didn’t build it exploded.  I was suddenly overcome with agony so immense by spine bowed while I was still standing.  I didn’t so much collapse as my body slammed into the ground as if I had fallen from a great height.  It wasn’t a sharp pain or burning or any kind of pain that I had words for.  It just was.  It existed as the pure essence of anguish.  I offered my body the only release I could think of. 
I screamed. 
It was a piercing shriek of a sound that my human throat had never been able to make.  It was a sound like something that would come out of a leopard but that wasn’t exactly it either, and I could swear that under that there were the distant screams of thousands other of people; it swept over the land like a great tempest and it sent birds fluttering. 
My own voice brought something to my attention the absence of sound that I remember from walking through this jungle was no more.  It was like everything was in hyper-focus.  I could hear the fluttering heart beat of the birds flying away.  I could hear the quickening breath of the small animals in the trees as if they could sense a predator near. 
Sight had become secondary; the night was alive with sounds and smells.  I could smell the animals creeping just behind the trees like some curtain covering a buffet.  I could have everything out here.  Own it in a way that human beings rarely think about owning things anymore.
My outburst must have attracted some attention because I could hear one more thing the rhythmic march of visitors.  But as loud as the breathing and stomping was it was distant somewhere behind that curtain of arboreal infinity.  I said out loud in barely a whisper how I could own all that beautiful life because, own, was too complicated a concept.  But there was something else something much simpler that they could be. 
“Prey…”
I gave myself over to the jungle like you do to water when you are swimming.  And the same as water the trees flowed around me in that liquid grace.  I was suddenly aware of every stone and stump, every root and branch.  I flowed through the trees like a ghost or the wind or something equally as intangible. 
Once I began moving though I couldn’t stop or slow down or rather didn’t want to.  As a matter of fact I just kept going faster and faster.  It felt so good to give myself over to the movement.  I was moving so fast that the birds around me appeared to be suspended in mid-flight, and my speed was still increasing.  I was unstoppable but just as I began to appreciate my new athletic achievement an obstacle. 
“Humph… obstacle, ri-ight,” I thought. 
It was damn near a mountain. 
Needless to say, I stopped but I stopped inches from the wall with out even a hint of slowing down.  I wasn’t breathing hard, winded, or tired in anyway.  That was odd enough but it was what happened next that was the most disturbing. 
I heard the footsteps and breathing again but this time they were accompanied by heartbeats many, many heartbeats.  I heard them surround me, and salivating at the mouth.  I could feel them; feel their need, their hunger.  They were barely human just another kind of beast of the jungle. 
I was surrounded by a horde of savages with blood on their breath, and I could guess what kind.  They would like nothing better than to devour my flesh and keep my head as a trophy; however that was what we had in common.  Disturbed yet?
I began to feel something, something that I had never felt before.  It was not a good feeling; as a matter of fact, it was a very, very bad feeling.  Heat rose up through my skin.  It was like fire ants marching up and down my arms and across my back and face. 
I could say I was filled with hatred, malice and contempt.  But that didn’t quite do it justice.  The breeze felt cool against my hot skin because all that consumed me was pure rage. 
My mind went to an empty place.  It was that blackness in me, filled with nothing.  No anger, no fear, no love, nothing just a kind of white noise, staticky.  For a second I wondered if this was what it felt like to go crazy.  If it was I could live with that.
I laughed.  It was a deep throaty sound, touchable and close, full of promises meant for darkened bedrooms.  It was a familiar sound that was never mine nor the words that followed, “Such a nice day for a bloodbath.” 
It was as if I stepped outside of myself and watched from afar as my body took control of itself in a merciless, bloody slaughter. 
My eyes switched into slow motion, but that didn’t mean that I did.  Actually it was precisely the opposite.  My movements were so quick that all they saw was a blur, a wave of invisible death.  I became a death dealer and for them it came swift, cold, and brutal. 
I repelled off of the rock with such force that I was momentarily airborne.  Traveling though the air horizontally I gave the one closest to me a blow to his chest with my feet. 
I struck him with enough drive that I crushed his breastbone, ribs, and the heart that lie beneath.  He flew back, hard, crushing the three men that were behind him, finally slamming into a tree and collapsing it onto the jungle floor.  I didn’t waste the momentum, with unnatural agility I twisted my body and mule kicked the head off the man adjacent to him. 
My body was instinctively moving in ways that it had never moved.  Upon landing I struck three men in the throat crushing three consecutive windpipes.  My movements were as fluid and elegant as a dance that I had practiced thousands of times before.  After that minor display the smart ones ran, but they could not escape my wrath.  A battle ensued and they were only the first victims. 
I looked around sizing up my prey and it looked as if they weren’t moving at all.  I had enough time to carefully plan out how vicious to be.  And I planned to be incredibly vicious.   
I took two heads and smashed them into a third one; they dropped to the ground with their brains hanging over their collars, moistening the grass with their blood. I relieved the fallen of their weapons: one hatchet, a ritual knife carved from human bone, and a razor sharp throwing disk. 
I chucked the axe at the deserters and split them in half like firewood.  Their blood splashed on the ground like warm water from a broken fire hose. 
Next the razor disk, it had an interesting ricochet effect, cleaving multiple skulls like pudding before getting jammed in a tree.  And then… there were three…
They bolted to the protection of the trees where they had the advantage.
“Yea…advantage.”
I couldn’t help but smirk at the prospect of them feeling safe among the trees.  High above the ground I leapt through the canopy.  I caught up to the first one with very little effort.  I waited until he had stopped to rest then dropped straight down and sliced him in half with the bone-knife. 
Back in the treetops I found the other one resting a few hundred yards away crying. 
I could smell the fear on him like some bittersweet perfume.  I knew that the fear made the blood sweeter with adrenaline.  I knew exactly how it would taste.  I don’t know whose memory I was channeling but I knew that I have never thought of blood in that way.  But the sensory memory was so strong I had to blink twice just to make sure I wasn’t someplace else… someone else.   
I dropped down hanging from the branch with my legs.  He looked into my eyes and I was going to let him live but suddenly flashes of him murdering and gorging himself on innocent people raced through my mind.  The rage welled up inside of me again and I snapped his head all the way around and he slumped lifeless to the ground but I had already caught up to the last one by that time. 
He was determined; he was still running.  He hadn’t stopped once but he was not near fast enough to evade me.  I landed right on top of him.  He seemed to be headed for a clearing, a village.
“Aw, too bad, you were almost there,” I said sarcastically, “You thought that you would be safe among the trees, that if you could just get back to your village you would escape me.   Silly rabbit…”
He started to whimper, “Ang Diyabla,” he continued to snivel; “I do not want to die.” 
My nails dug into the tender flesh of his throat and a small stream of crimson fluid ran down the side of my hand.  I looked at the big pulse in his throat.  I watched it jump under the surface like some trapped thing.  I wanted to help it free.  The more I looked at his throat the thinner his skin seemed to get.  Until I could smell the blood beneath the surface, hot with fear.  I felt a need so strong, a need that didn’t exactly have to do with sex or hunger but something akin to both. 
I looked at the blood I drew from him in a new way, not as that vile necessity, but something more inviting, more attractive.  I started to see food.  Releasing my grip I tasted the sweet nectar. It was incredible, I looked down at him from atop his chest and bent forward placing my lips inches from his quivering ear lobe and grimly replied, “Then…you should have never been born.”
Once again the words aren’t mine.
I sunk my teeth into his supple throat and allowed the sweet flow to drain down into my body.  It was hot and thick.  It tasted sweet and metallic.  I was entranced by it.  I felt a pull and the air became thick with something.  It pushed against me as I tried breath against it.  It was like a wall but there was nothing to see.  There was a pull to him and something inside me pulled back.  Then as that throb in his chest slowed to a flutter I felt its grip grow weak and with one last rasping exhale from him I pulled all that power from both of us back into myself.  It was wondrous.
  Suddenly, the tortuous assault returned.  It felt like something was trying to rip out of me.  This time, however, the pain manifested itself in a more physical form.  In one last eruption of excruciating pain two enormous bat-like wings burst from my back as if unfolding from a thousand year sleep.  Without warning I shot up into the air and flew. 
With a part of my brain that was beyond thought I flew back home.  By the time a thought would form in my head that none of this should be possible I landed in the courtyard of a Manhattan apartment complex before I had the chance to realize that I had even been flying. 
I scanned the area and noticed a discarded wall mirror.  There I stood; I was 5’2, short even for a woman.  My hair was still straight dark brown almost black. My skin, still that soft tan, the color of coffee with lots of cream in it, I was still me but there was something decidedly unfamiliar.  I would like to say it was the drying blood on my clothes and flecks of reddish brown spots on my face, but that wasn’t it. 
No it wasn’t the fact that I looked fresh from the slaughter.  It was the wings the same color as my skin, but larger than any wings I have ever seen.  They looked like hairless bat wings; the large thin, yet muscular arms and long crooked fingers descending down the flesh connecting it all so paper-thin I could see the blue veins weaved through it. 
That wasn’t the only difference. 
I had a tail waving, cordially, at me its movement was so fluid, not like any animal with a tail that I have ever seen, almost swimming through the air.  It was thin but had a sense of power to it and topped with a point like an arrowhead.  But the most disturbing of all the additions, yes even more than the wings, my toes were fused into hooves all shiny and black under the moon, finally topping it all off the most subtle of the changes the fangs in my mouth.  I looked like a medieval painting. 
I was a Devil.  Yes, a capital D, Devil, at true manifestation of a demon.   There I stood a beast, a monster.  My ordeal in the jungle had left me changed.
What happened?  I can’t think… can’t remember…  I sat down and tried to think.  But thinking wasn’t a luxury I could afford at the moment.  Just then, a menagerie of heartbeats approached me from behind, “Damn!”  I had no idea what to do; all I could think was that I needed a way to hide my new preternatural upgrades.  Then as quickly as they appeared they disappeared into a thick dense mist that swirled around me with the stray breeze.  However, my fangs remained as a sign of what I was…whatever that was.

Once again thanx for reading leave comments if you like i'd love to hear what you guys thing of the story so far.  This is about 20% of the book.  If you're interested please pick up a copy and tell your friends also Lost: Midnight Mist can be picked up on amazon.com, target.com, and barnes&nobles.com as well as from my distributor here: [url=http://"http://www.lulu.com/content/3820976"

Thanks again for reading

[dantesparadise]

[dantesparadise]

For those not introduced to this story it is a book I wrote called Lost: Midnight Mist, these are the first four chapters.  The Dresden Files was definitely one of my inspirations.  The book is self-published so i have to do all of my own promotions but if you are interested in a new vampire novel or you like romance or even if you are just into some of that good old ultra-violence you can get that here. If you can support a member of the Dresden Universe even if its just to tell your Twilight addicted friends (awesome series btw).  Thanks to all.

[dantesparadise]

I'd just like to thank you all for your support.  Even selling one copy has made the effort worth it just knowing that one person is reading it.  Thank you again.