Banished

Banished

By

Elissa Daye

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

WCP

World Castle Publishing, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © Elissa Daye 2015

Smashwords Edition

Print ISBN: 9781629891941

eBook ISBN: 9781629891958

First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, January 15, 2015

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Smashwords Licensing Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

Cover: Melissa Davis

Editor: Maxine Bringenberg

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 1

Hate. It’s a small word—four letters—yet its meaning is colossal. If I said I dislike the man that created me, you would never fully understand the feelings that swarm deep inside of me, never even get close to touching the rage that ignites my soul. If I told you I hate, detest, vehemently abhor him, then you have just reached the bottom of the ice berg, that part that lurks below the surface waiting to obliterate anything that nears it.

Yet when you find hate, you find that sometimes its beginning is tainted with love. Love him I had, with every single fiber of my being. I had wrapped my entire world around him, so tightly I thought one day he would explode, but he knew my intentions. He had counted on it, as he bided his time before he turned me inside out.

I looked in the mirror, the light in the darkness more often a void that would never be filled again as it streamed down around me. I could see the room clearly echoed inside the silver frame, every piece of furniture littered with the decay of my rage and every speck of dust that now streamed down in the aftermath. I could see all those things, but I could not see me. I yanked the blue wig off my head and watched as the remnants fluttered harmlessly to the floor…the infamous blue wig from the Aqua Club, where I had worked as a serving girl. The same meeting ground that had led me on this path with Demetrius. I had no idea why it was still on my head, a minor annoyance amidst a cataclysmic mess.

I smashed the mirror with my fists, slicing a few knuckles in the process. The smell of blood teased my nostrils. An acrid, metallic longing filled me, but I forced the monster inside me to remain at bay. I went to the bathroom and found a towel to wrap around my cut hand. As I sat there waiting for the bloody trail to contrast the bleached white towel, the stark reality of it all came slamming into me yet again.

My life was torn in two between the land of the living and the land of the dead. I was stuck somewhere on the outside of oblivion, because Demetrius had changed me without so much as a thought for how his creation might impact the world around him. If he had known my secrets, the ones that had been buried so far deep inside, he would have thought twice before he sunk his deadly fangs into my body. And now the world I had learned to navigate had crumbled to dust before me.

The demon inside, the restless darkness that I had fought with every day of my human life, was nothing compared to the memories of a life long forgotten. They were circling my mind like vultures, as if to say my damnation was only the beginning. The old, deep, bitter, dark magic that had placed the demon inside long ago now raced through my veins and beckoned her closer, but the angel inside, the woman who had kept a lid on the ancient darkness, was all that had kept it at bay. I had captured it inside me early on and had stuffed it deep inside. Now, it swarmed like bees in a Mason jar, with only a thin cotton lid to keep them tucked safely inside. I felt the stings of desire slicing through me and I closed my eyes then put my hands to my ears, hoping above all else that the cursed life that had been passed down to me would go silent once again.

The demon, the vampire, the innocent. I was fighting a battle I could not win. One way or the other I was damned and it was his fault. Truth be told, I was damned long ago, before he had ever entered the picture. Remnants floated to the surface; images of the world long ago that had been planted in my mind like an evil seed and rooted deep into my consciousness slowly grew like an abscess inside of me. As of late, I had begun to realize that my life had been planned for me long ago, long before I had conscious memory. Sometimes I felt as if I had been stuck in a loop, my memories older than my own existence, for I shared my cognition with another. Even though those memories had not happened in my lifetime, they were quite vivid, as if they had happened yesterday.

When the world divided my course had just been plotted, and I was just an ink spot scribbled into a legacy of evil, a planned spawn of the inner sanctum of the Brotherhood. A prophecy of doom surrounded my conception, for I was her progeny. My creator, long ago named Gladius, had a desperate need for a new body to house her cursed soul. The demon mistress tired of the usual suspects and wanted to start her life over from the beginning. From infancy until early adulthood, I had aged the same as any of her other hosts.

My memories were in bits and pieces now, as I tried to wrap myself around them. I had it all figured out before Demetrius had sunk his fangs into me. Now that I was under this tumultuous transformation, somewhere between the dead and the living, I’d lost touch with reality. This new course that I traveled came with far more obstacles than the ones before it. The tide of emotions that ebbed and flowed in a self-contained environment could no longer be held at bay. The basest natures that lurked just underneath the surface were reaching a boiling point, with no stopper to hold them back. I wanted nothing more than to satisfy the thirst that was crippling my control, but to do that would mean giving up the last trace of humanity dripping through my veins. As the hunger pains rippled through me, I crumpled to the floor and held my head in my hands.

Don’t give in, Grace. You can get through this. Don’t let them win. Taking several slow breaths, I waited for the dizziness to take me away, as it had every night since Demetrius had taken my humanity. He had sucked the life from me and tossed me into the streets like a wet rag tossed out with the trash. I lay there between the scattered cans and garbage bags behind the club, while the world spun around me. No one thought to check on me; to them I must have looked like I was sleeping off the excess from the party inside.

When the world came back into focus, I detected Demetrius arguing with someone just inside the door. I could not quite catch the entire focus of the conversation, but recognized the owner’s voice. He had shouted at Demetrius to finish it or at least take me away before the sun rose. At the time I did not understand what or who he had been talking about, but when Demetrius had refused, Art came out and lifted me up off the ground. He carried me through the streets that separated my studio apartment from the Aqua Club.

Art had dropped me on the stoop outside my apartment. He must have thought that someone from my building would help me back to my door. He had been mistaken. As the first rays of the morning sun filtered across the sky, I had just begun to stir from the drunken stupor of my transformation. It was then, on that very first morning, that I started to remember the strange drink that Demetrius had handed me. It had been a clear liquid, but the faint trace of red streaks had been swirling inside like the wispy trail of a candle that had just been snuffed.

From there my world began to fade in and out of focus, only to be brought to a stirring halt the moment Demetrius sank his fangs into my skin. He had drained me to the brink of death, then tossed me aside without a thought. I had very little time to ponder it that morning. Knowing for the first time in that moment that Demetrius was a vampire did nothing to shake the reality inside me. The burning singe of my toe that had dipped into the open sunlight shook me fully awake, completely aware that my reality had changed. I remember pushing myself up from the ground and reaching around for the knob that would gain me access to my building. It seemed to take a lifetime to make it to my room. When I did, I sequestered myself inside the windowless bathroom and slid to the floor, letting the exhaustion that filled me take me away.

The first few days from there were a blur. My body craved that which I was unprepared to give it…human blood. I could smell it all around me. It filtered in through the vents that connected my room to every part of the building, as strong as rotting decay, yet so deliciously sweet to my nose. My eardrums pounded loudly inside my head. It took me a while to realize that the blood that flowed inside of me was squeezing and constricting the rest of my life force as my body prepared for its mortal death.

I was left feeling nothing but emptiness as I waited for the climax of my mortal death. The pain sliced through my body, a piercing agony unlike any I had ever experienced that wrenched through me. That night I hunted for something that would appease the hunger that throbbed inside, the fierce longing for the life force that would set me free. I found a victim, no more willing than any other, but the fact that it was a four legged creature of some kind made me feel a little better about its sacrifice. At that point, I couldn’t even tell you what that creature was, only that it had put up very little fight as it died beneath me. With the hunger appeased, I returned to my small apartment to brood over the events that had made my life careen to a bitter end.

Another sharp slice cut through me as my body hungered for what I refused to offer it. I put my hands to my head and shut my eyes, hoping to ignore it, but the pain was no easier to ignore than Gladius had been. Demetrius! Damn you!

My hands grabbed on to the nearest object and it jettisoned to the wall, shattering into sharp porcelain shards that dropped to the ground with tiny clinks. Shit! My mother’s prized ballerina now lay on the floor, a metaphor for my broken world.

My life had just started to find a peaceful coexistence. The demon inside had been easier to pacify with each calming technique that I had learned, techniques that my mother had fostered in me from an early age. The demon’s control over my body was limited, save for the fact that her existence inside me had seemed to slow my aging process.

My age was a question I seldom answered when asked. I let people tell me how old they felt I was, and tried not to laugh when they picked late teens to early twenties. I was thirty-five this year, young enough to feel new to life, but old enough to have known better where Demetrius had been concerned. It was not like I hadn’t had anyone else drawn to me before. Over the past twenty years, I’d actually had quite a few relationships…short ones, for when they got too close, Gladius seemed to rise to the surface to end my world with her bitter destruction. But, with Demetrius it had been different. Perhaps the demon knew the darkness that was secretly below the surface, or at least hidden to me.

I hated the fact that I had fallen into his trap. How had it happened? One night I was serving his small entourage drinks, and the next I had become ensconced between them. Any night I had off I would spend with them. With each passing day, I had been wound tighter into his plans. Like a small rabbit caught in barbed wire, I had become helpless to his charm. Impulse filled me and my emotions ran away from me. Control had simply not existed.

Images of his arms wrapped around me filled my mind. The heat that had passed from his body to mine had crept through my veins like molten lava. I had never experienced that kind of feeling with any other man or I would not have allowed him to take me so easily.

The first time had been in the bathroom against a sink. His hands had traveled up my skirt as his mouth masterfully coaxed me into a climax I had never expected. When I was throbbing for him, he entered me so violently I thought my insides would explode over him. My body had never experienced such desire before Demetrius, as if I would die without his touch. From that point on, I was his to control as my body craved his in ways that would never have made sense before. My mind was soon tricked into thinking that my relationship with him was more than the lust that fueled my longings. When it became clear that I was doe-eyed for him, he had tossed me aside like a rag doll.

I walked over to the curtains, checked the sky outside, and let out a deep breath. Figures. I locked myself in the bathroom and climbed inside the bathtub, for the second time this week wishing that I had taken the apartment upstairs with the large walk-in closet. It would have been so much more comfortable than this crappy tub. I picked the pillow up from the floor and shoved it under my head, attempting to find some comfort in a comfortless world.

Chapter 2

Shadows loomed over me in my dreams. Blood filled urns poured over chalk lined circles. The light from metal torches echoed silhouettes around the cavernous room. Men in robes muttered words I could not understand, but Gladius did, for I felt her need to answer them. I could feel her calling out to them, but her voice could not travel on the wind, for she had no foreseeable way to contact them. I felt the danger rising, and knew that if this was reality