First Bitten (The Alexandra Jones Series #1)

The main door to the barn is wide open. I wander inside. The barn’s not as big inside as it looks from the outside, but it does look exactly as a barn should look. There’s a tractor looming over to my left and a work bench fixed up against the wall behind the tractor which is littered with all kinds of different tools. To my right, on its own, is a magnificent looking, shiny red motorbike. It’s a Ducati. I know nothing about motorbikes but it looks impressive, and expensive. I wonder if it’s Nathan’s.

At the back of the barn, taking up a large chunk of space, is a big stack of hay bales. I wander over to them and climb up onto the first lot, that are stacked three high, and rest my back up against the higher stack behind.

I close my eyes. I don’t want to think anymore, I just want to clear my mind of everything and sit in peace.

It’s easier said than done and I’m not left alone for long. It’s maybe been five minutes max when I hear Nathan approaching. I know it’s him because I can smell him.

This super smelling thing of mine is going to take some serious getting used to but I guess it comes in handy at times.

I open my eyes and, as expected, Nathan comes into view a few seconds later, walking with purpose toward me.

I repress a sigh.

“Hey,” he says climbing up onto the hay bales and sitting beside me.

“Hey,” I say.

Silence.

If he’s got nothing to say, why is he here? Checking up on me, most likely. I close my eyes again and rest my head back against the hay.

“So you can change into an animal.” The words are out of my mouth before I even realise. But still, I open my eyes and turn my head to catch his reaction.

His eyes are already on me and they look cautious. “Yes,” he finally answers.

“You always been able to do that?”

“Since I was thirteen. The ability comes in at puberty.”

“Ahh.” Pause. “So, do you have a favourite animal you like to change into or … ”

“Wolf.”

“Any reason?”

“Nope.” Or none that he’s willing to share with me.

I look out at the blackness that is casting its shadows in through the open barn door, threatening to infringe on the light.

“You can shift as well, you know,” Nathan says out of the blue.

“What?” My head swivels round on my neck.

“You’re part werewolf remember.” His tone screams ‘stupid’. It irks me, to say the least. “The only difference you have from them is you’re not ruled by the moon,” he adds a little less caustically. “You’re like shifters in that respect. You only change if and when you want to.”

Great. So not only have I changed into a monster that drinks blood but I can also turn into a dog. This just gets bloody better and better.

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my thighs, my chin cupped in my hands, my lips turned downwards, and stare dismally at my feet. “Does it hurt when you change?” I utter into my hands.

“No. For me it’s as natural as breathing.”

I shift my chin onto one hand and look round at him. “Will it hurt me?” I run my hand over the scar on my stomach.

“No. It’ll just feel … uncomfortable, odd, the first time you shift. But the more you do it, the more it’ll become a natural thing for you to do.”

My mind starts to whirl. There’s so much I don’t know about myself. I start to run a list of all the things I know about vampires and werewolves, well all the things I’ve seen in the movies.

“Not everything you think you know about vampires and werewolves applies to you,” Nathan says as if reading my mind.

I can’t hide the surprise from my face. “You read minds as well?” I ask half-serious.

A smile turns up the corners of his mouth. “No. Just faces.”

I shuffle around so I’m facing his side and pull my legs up, crossing them in front of me. “So is any of the stuff in the movies true?”

“Some.”

I pause before asking the question which has been on the edge of my mind since I discovered what I am. I mean, I might feel alive but that doesn’t necessarily mean I am. I am part vampire after all.

“Nathan, am I … dead, like vampires are?” I hold my breath in anticipation of his answer.

“Is your heart beating?”

I rest my hand lightly against my chest. “Yes.”

“Then you’re not dead.”

And now I just feel stupid for asking. Nathan has the amazing ability to make me feel idiotic, seemingly at any given opportunity, and I just keep leaving the door wide open for him.

Looking at anything but him, I start to chew on my fingernail.

Nathan moves around to face me. “Vârcolacs are still living creatures, Alex. You’re still very much alive, you’re just different now, and you need different things to keep you alive.”

I stop chewing and bring my eyes to his. “Blood.”

“Yes.” He nods.

“Can I still go out in daylight?”

“Yes.”

“Garlic?”

“No effect.”

What else? What effects werewolves? “What about silver?” I ask.

He nods again. “Silver bullets straight in the heart work best.” He taps his chest in the place where his own beating heart sits. “Once they’re in there, there’s no getting them out.”

I feel a shudder deep inside. “No wooden stakes then?” I let out a shaky laugh and run my finger over the damp patch on the thigh of my jeans that is still wet from the spilt whiskey before.

“Well, yeah, I’m guessing it’d eventually kill you if someone stabbed you in the heart with a wooden stake. You’re not immortal, Alex.” He smirks and yet again I feel like an idiot. “You’re strong, you heal quickly, so you’ll bounce back from most things, but silver in your system is the real killer. It’s like a disease once it’s in your blood, hence why, if I wanted to kill a Vârcolac, I’d go for the heart, silver straight into there and it’ll flood their system, killing them in a matter of minutes.”

“Is that how you killed the one that attacked me and Carr … ” My voice wilts as the pain ruptures deep inside of me.

“I caught him off-guard when he was … busy.” His tone quietens. He stares straight ahead past me. Nausea washes through me and my head starts to throb. “I broke his neck,” he continues, his voice still lowered. “It left him incapacitated. I carried you back to my car, got my silver blade out of the glove box, went back and stuck it straight into his heart.”

I inhale deeply, pulling tears back with it.

It should make me feel better hearing how he died. But it doesn’t. My brain is so messy, I’m struggling to make sense of anything anymore.

“Are you okay?” Nathan asks. I feel like it’s all he asks me.

“I’m fine.” I shake the thoughts out of my mind and yank the elastic band out of my hair as it suddenly feels tight. I put the band around my wrist and rub my scalp, brushing my hair out with my fingers and fanning it out around my shoulders. I catch my hair on the plaster on my hand. I’d forgotten about that. Pulling it free, I look at it. There’s a tiny blood stain where my blood has seeped through. A strand of my blonde hair is still stuck under the plaster. I pull it free.

Then, without a word, Nathan reaches over and takes hold of my hand. I raise a confused eyebrow at him but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are on my hand. His large hand is warm and dwarfs mine, making mine look almost child-sized. He picks at the corner of the plaster and peels it back, pulling it right off.

I can’t help the gasp that escapes me. The air just rushes straight out of my lungs.

The cut has gone. It’s healed completely. Just like he said it would.

“It’s gone,” I say, voice quivering.

He gives me a knowing look and lets go of my hand, leaving it feeling cold.

I bring my hand closer to my face to examine it, and run my fingertip over the place where the cut should still be. “Do you heal this quickly?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Not as quickly as you do,” he answers. “But, yeah, a lot quicker than a normal person would.”

“Do you have the good hearing and other stuff as well?”

I want to talk to him about it. I want to know what I’m working with here. However, he apparently doesn’t because he moves away from me, sitting himself on the edge of the bales, letting his long legs dangle down. For a moment I wonder if he’s just going to jump down and leave without another word, then he finally answers a quiet, “Yes.”

I get the distinct impression Nathan doesn’t like to talk about his abilities. Dejected, I stare at my newly healed hand.

“I’m sorry about Cal’s behaviour before,” Nathan says, breaking the silence and surprising me. “He can be a bit of an arse at times. That’s why we hadn’t told him about you yet.”

“Run in the family?” The words are out before I can stop them.

He looks sideways at me, his eyebrow raised. “What, being an arse?”

I feel my cheeks turn pink. “Hmm.” I nod, lightly.

He rests his chin on his shoulder, his even eyes fixed on me. “No, that quality’s just reserved for me and Cal.”

“Sorry, that sounded … what I meant was … I didn’t mean your dad and Sol … I meant … I mean … ” I’m flustered. I take a quick breath, “ … I like them, and you of course.”

A smile flickers over his face. “Of course.”

My cheeks turn from pink to red. I sweep my hair around my neck and start twisting strands around my finger. “What about your mum?” I ask.

“What about her?” His sudden cool tone sucks the air right out of here.

“Well, I just wondered where she is?” My words are careful, measured.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs averting his eyes. “She left, seventeen years ago. I was twelve, Cal was fourteen, Sol was two. He doesn’t remember her.” His voice has gone as flat and cold as I’ve felt since I woke up this morning.

“I’m sorry … ”

“Don’t be,” he cuts me off. “I’m not.” He glances back at me but his face is unreadable, impassive.

“I lost my parents,” I blurt out. “They died.”

Where the hell did that come from? That’s the first time I’ve spoken about them in years. I always think of them. Always. I just never talk about them. If I do, it makes the fact they’re not here all the more real.

“I know,” Nathan says, blindsiding me. “It said in the papers about your parents, about how they died in a car accident when you were sixteen.”

I stare at him, confused. “Why would it be in the papers about my parents? They died ten years ago.”

“You’re a missing person. It’s a big story in the news at the moment and … well, in these sorts of cases they tend to give a back story about the … victims.” He hesitates, then asks, “Do you want to see the newspaper?”

It’s my turn to hesitate.

Do I want to see the newspaper? No. Yes. No.

“Yes,” I hear myself saying, despite all my reservations.

Nathan jumps down from the bales, lithely landing on his feet, and goes over to the tractor. He opens the door, climbs halfway in and emerges back out a second later with a folded newspaper in his hand.

Blood starts to beat in my ears as he walks back toward me. He climbs up the bales and sits down again beside me, closer this time I notice, and hands me the paper.

It’s my local newspaper, the Scarborough Evening News. I notice the date at the top of the page. “Is this today’s?” I ask.

“Yep.”

I unfold the paper, revealing the front page.

There’s a sizeable picture of me and Carrie on the front. I recognise it instantly. It was taken last Christmas Eve. Angie and Tom had a party at their house. Eddie came with me. We were just getting back on track after I had found out about his first indiscretion.

Carrie looks beautiful. Her arm is around my shoulders, eyes sparkling, smiling widely, with her red hair ablaze around her face. I look drunk. Actually, I was drunk. It really is a great photo of Carrie, though. It captures the essence of her. I know that Angie and Tom have it in a frame on the mantelpiece in their living room. Angie loves this picture, she was the one who took it.

My face starts to tingle with the memory.

“Your story’s made the nationals as well,” Nathan informs me. He doesn’t sound happy about it.

The national newspapers? Hackness is a really small place and I used to live in Scarborough. Both Carrie and I went to school there, so I can see why our disappearance would have a big impact on the local community. But to make the national newspapers, well you’re either a celebrity, a criminal or … you’ve been murdered.

My throat starts to feel tight. It’s getting hard to breathe again. A fat teardrop leaks from my eye and lands on the paper, directly onto the picture of me and Carrie. Dismayed, I quickly try to dab it dry with the sleeve of Nathan’s leather jacket. Instead I smudge it.

The picture’s getting ruined. Panic grips me tight. It’s the only picture I have left of Carrie. It’s all I have left of Carrie.

Nathan, seeing my upset, pulls the sleeve of his top down and dabs the paper dry. He does a much better job than me. Now there’s only a slight smudge on the part of the picture with me in. Carrie looks fine.

I exhale with relief. “Thank you,” I utter gratefully.

“I wasn’t thinking when I brought you this.” He indicates the newspaper with his finger. “I should have realised it would upset you. Do you want me to get rid of it?”

“No.” I wipe my wet eyes dry with my hand and rub my hands against my jeans before touching the paper again. I can’t risk any more smudges.

I stare down at Carrie.

She’s gone. She’s never going to get married or have kids, or go travelling like she always talked about doing. I’ve stolen her life from her.

I try to breath but stale air ghosts its way through me.

“She was really pretty,” Nathan says in a measured voice. I glance at him. “You guys look like you were having a good time in this picture,” he adds.

“We were. Carrie was the life and soul of the party.”

“You were close?” he inquires.

“Like sisters.” I stare down at the picture. “She was my family. Her, Angie and Tom, they were all I had left in the world.”

“You got no other family? Grandparents, aunties, uncles?”

“No.” I shake my head. “”My mum and dad were both only children and my grandparents on both sides died a long time ago.” I let out a sad breath, tracing my fingertip over the picture. “I’m an orphan.”

The silence that follows carries a heavy weight.

I let my eyes drift over the paper. I read about mine and Carrie’s disappearance and the odd circumstance surrounding it. There’s the mention of my parents’ death that Nathan has just mentioned. It goes on to say that Angie and Tom have put up a reward for anyone who has information about my and Carrie’s whereabouts, leading to our discovery. A hundred thousand pounds.

Angie and Tom are wealthy, but still, a hundred grand is a lot of money even for them.

There’s a quote from Angie in the text saying, ‘We’re not missing one daughter, we’re missing two.’

I feel sick and it aches all the way through my chest, straight into my hollow heart. It’s all I can do not to throw the paper down and run straight to them. If only there was some way I could go to them and tell them what has happened. It won’t bring Carrie back but it will allow them some peace.

I look to Nathan, pleadingly. “Isn’t there any way I can tell Angie and Tom what has happened, end their suffering?”

He stares back at me with sympathetic eyes and I already know his answer before he speaks. “We’ve already talked about this, Alex. You know it isn’t a possibility. If you go to them, you’ll only end up putting them in danger too.”

Frustration practically burns up my insides. I know he’s right but I don’t want him to be. I owe everything to Angie and Tom. They deserve more than this from me.

I stare back down at Angie’s words, letting them burn into my retinas, and something catches my eye. Eddie’s name. Eddie’s in here, of course he is. He was my boyfriend after all. I scan the text. The story on him only just starts when it ends, saying, ‘Turn to page 5 to continue … ’

I turn the pages quickly. There’s more about me in here but I’m not interested in me, I’m only interested in Eddie.

I see a small picture of him halfway down the page. He looks distraught. It makes my heart hurt. And, as I stare harder at the picture, things start to stand out, like the police station behind him. This picture is of Eddie leaving the police station. I swallow down hard. As I read the text directly below the picture, it says Eddie’s a suspect in our disappearance.

Oh God. He might have cheated on me but I don’t want Eddie to go to prison for something he didn’t do. My heart starts to beat erratically.

I let my eyes scan over the words, picking out the important parts.

‘Alexandra Jones and Eddie Thomson had been in a relationship for three years … Eddie Thomson works for Tom Ross, Carrie’s father … Jones and Thomson had argued the day before her disappearance … Jones discovered he’d been cheating on her … They argued and had split up the day prior to Alexandra and Carrie’s disappearance … Jones had moved out of their two bed house on Princess Street … the last call received to Jones’ mobile was from Thomson … Thomson was taken in for questioning but was released without charge when his alibi was corroborated … the night of their disappearance Thomson was with a woman, Serena Travers. She confirmed to police officers yesterday that he had spent the night with her at her house on Scalby Road, Scarborough.’

My heart sinks down to the stony floor.

He called me begging me to go back to him and all the while he was at her house. Carrie was murdered, I was left fighting for my life, and Eddie was getting his jollies on with his tart.

I fucking hate him, the bastard. And I truly hope he feels so guilty that it swallows him whole and he chokes the fuck to death on it.

My whole body is shaking with rage. I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with it.

I jump down from the bales and begin pacing the floor, the paper still tightly clutched in my hand.

“You okay?” Nathan asks me, concerned.

“No!” I yell, throwing the paper to the floor. “I’m not bloody okay. I’m having a really shit time of it, if you hadn’t noticed!”

“I noticed.”

I stop pacing at his firm tone and stand there facing him.

His serious eyes meet mine for a long moment. “You can be as hurt and pissed off as you want, Alex, but it’s not going to change anything. This is how it is for you now and you’re just gonna have to find some way to accept it.” He sighs. I feel like an irritation. “I don’t know what other way I can say this to you to make you understand.”

Does this guy have no heart at all?

I feel all consumed by my grief again. I’m so close to the edge. I could scream.

So I do.

I scream until my head throbs and my throat feels sore. And when I’m done, I open my eyes and see Nathan just looking blankly across at me.

And now I feel even worse, not better.

“What if I don’t want to accept my situation?” I cry at him. “Then what?” My head is buzzing around like there’s a swarm of bees inside.

He shuts his eyes briefly in silent apology and I can’t bear to look at him for a second longer.

I grab the page of the newspaper featuring the picture of Carrie up from the floor and, clasping it to my chest, I turn and stalk out the barn.

“Where are you going?” Nathan’s deep voice is at my side within a matter of seconds.

I stop and spin around to face him. My heart is pummelling my rib cage.

I push my hair angrily off my face and scowl up at him. “I’m going back to your house, Nathan. You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to try and leave. I mean, it’s not like I have anywhere to go.” I can feel my bottom lip starting to quiver. “I know I’m stuck here and I know you hate that thought as much I do … ” My voice breaks, betraying me. I bite down hard on my bottom lip.

Nathan frowns down at me. His light eyes look almost black in the darkness. “Alex, you’re not a prisoner here, but it’s also not possible for you to leave at the moment. You already know this.” He exhales, raking his fingers through his hair. “And it’s not that I don’t want you here, it’s just …”

“I don’t want to hear it!” I cut him off with a wave of my hand, blinking back my pathetic tears. “Really, I’ve heard and seen enough crap today to last me a lifetime. No more! I don’t want any more.” My loud voice echoes around nature’s silence.

“What do you want?” His question catches me off-guard. He takes a step toward me, towering over me, the toes of his boots nearly flush with my trainers, leaving a veil of air between us.

I feel off-balance. I dig my feet into the ground to steady myself and look up at him. “What?” My voice comes out sounding weaker than I intended.

“Just what is it that will make all of this better for you?” His voice sounds dry and intense, and he’s wearing an unfathomable expression on his face.

My heart has set a battering ram against my chest. I’m sure it’s about to crack through a rib any second now.

I take a shaky step backwards. “Nothing,” I say affected. “Nothing will ever make any of this better. Just leave me alone!” I shove him away from me, hard in the chest, and then I’m turning on my heel and running toward the house, leaving Nathan behind.

And this time he doesn’t follow me.