Beautiful Dangerous Love- Teen Sampler

Beautiful Dangerous Love

Teen Sampler

Alicia Kat Dillman

Jessie Harrell

LM Preston

Lorna Suzuki

Shevi Arnold

Chelsea M. Cameron

Do you crave the dangerously beautiful worlds of paranormal suspense, ghostly romances, and otherworldly adventures? The you’ll be swept up in this sampling of six fantastic indie reads including Daemons in the Mist by Alicia Kat Dillman, Destined by Jessie Harrell, The Pack -Retribution- LM Preston, The Magic Crystal by Lorna Suzuki, Ride of Your Life by Shevi Arnold, Whisper by Chelsea M. Cameron.

COPYRIGHT

Beautiful Dangerous Love- Teen Sampler

By Alicia Kat Dillman, Jessie Harrell, LM Preston, Lorna Suzuki, Shevi Arnold, Chelsea M. Cameron

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Alicia Kat Dillman, Jessie Harrell, LM Preston, Lorna Suzuki, Shevi Arnold, Chelsea M. Cameron

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Beautiful Dangerous Love

COPYRIGHT

Daemons in the Mist

COPYRIGHT

Secrets in the Mist

You Don’t See Me

Parallel Universe

Pictures of You

A Thousand Different Ways

Let’s Get Out of This Town

Dreaming Out Loud

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Destined

COPYRIGHT

Chapter 1 - Psyche

Chapter 2 - Psyche

Chapter 3 - Psyche

Chapter 4 - Psyche

Chapter 5 - Eros

Chapter 6 - Psyche

Chapter 7 - Eros

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Pack -Retribution-

COPYRIGHT

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Magic Crystal

COPYRIGHT

Prologue

A Grand Plan

Be Careful What You Wish For

A Strange Encounter

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ride of Your Life

COPYRIGHT

Into the Bunny Hole

What’s Real

Choices

Perchance to Dream

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Whisper

COPYRIGHT

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daemons in the Mist

The Marked Ones Trilogy

· Book One ·

by Alicia Kat Dillman

Finally getting the girl of your dreams; what could possibly go wrong?

Seventeen year old Patrick Connolly has been hopelessly infatuated with Nualla for years but he is all but invisible to her. Until, that is, he rescues her from a confrontation with her ex. Little does Patrick know he’s just set off a dangerous chain reaction that will thrust him into a world of life altering secrets and things that shouldn’t exist, because the fog and mist of San Francisco is concealing more than just buildings.

A deliriously captivating and exhilarating romantic rollercoaster full of unexpected twists and an ending you won’t see coming.

COPYRIGHT

Daemons in the Mist

Copyright © 2011 by Alicia Kat Dillman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Published by Korat Publishing in California

www.koratpublishing.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CREDITS

Cover illustration © 2012 Alicia Kat Dillman

Book design by Alicia Kat Dillman

1

Secrets in the Mist

Monday, January 9th

· Nualla ·

I looked out the window at the never-ending sea of fog, concealing the city as it came alive in its morning rush. In the mist, everything seemed timeless and still and wondrous. The fog drifted past buildings, their tops poking out and making it look all the world like there were castles in the sky.

San Francisco.

The exception, it seemed, to California’s bright and sunny weather. It’s not the foggiest city in the world, but its damn close. People have written books based here, and songs and movies. Even Mark Twain is quoted as saying, ‘The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.’ Though if I hear one more tourist say it, I’m going to hit someone.

So, socks or leggings?

Huh? I turned to see my cousin Nikki standing in the doorway holding up two types of leg coverings. One was a pair of bright purple leggings; the other was a pair of paler blue thigh-high socks with penguins dancing across them.

Which should I wear? She asked again as she jiggled them for effect.

We went to Bayside Academy, a private school for the Bay Area’s elite, so of course that meant uniforms. I was glad our school went in for the whole tieless-v-neck-knit-sweater-over-pleated-skirt look because personally, I think ties on girls are really creepy. Our school uniforms did not extend to things like shoes, socks and hair, so some students, like Nikki, went to town with their individuality.

I clicked my phone on to check the day’s weather. Nikki, it’s like 45 degrees out.

Socks it is, Nikki said, sitting on the edge of my bed to slip them on.

You’re crazy!

Don’t you know it, she said with a wink.

I rolled my eyes at her and stood up. I had gone for the more sensible I’m-not-going-to-freeze-my-ass-off standard black leggings with tall boots for good measure.

Another look at the clock said we’d better head out or we were totally going to be late. Come on, Nikki. Let’s not be late the first day of spring semester, okay?

Minutes later, we coasted down the street, the buildings sliding into existence just a few seconds before we passed them, my car’s engine quietly purring. Most people hate driving in the fog, but I love it. It keeps you on your toes; you have to be ready for what might appear before you at any moment.

Like this cat darting across the road in front of me. I took my foot off the gas as she streaked past me, a flash of smoky gray, like the fog materializing into a solid form. As her paws hit the curb on the other side of the street she turned her lamp-like eyes to stare at me. She knows me, the true me. Not this mask I have to wear each day. There’s something profoundly odd about that. That a cat could be more calm and rational than—

Hey, Earth to Nualla, Nikki says as she waves a hand in front of my face. What are you looking at?

The cat’s gone, disappearing into the mist like a dream. Nothing, I answer slowly. That’s when I realize the cat used a crosswalk. Smart little thing, even she’s not stupid enough to jay-walk. I mean sure, she did cross against the red, but hell, at least she wasn’t mindlessly listening to an iPod as she stepped off the curb. Sometimes I think they’re smarter than people; cats. Or maybe they just have a higher level of self-preservation.

I return my focus to the road and hit the gas. The buildings float past, an odd collection of shapes so far from matching it’s almost funny. The city weaves together stringent modern simplicity and Victorian mystique in a way that almost seems intentional in its randomness. Cultures seamlessly blending into each other so slowly as to be unnoticed, while at other times they change rather abruptly, like the China Town Gate, announcing your passage into another world in large, imposing glory. The residences themselves are almost as odd; the houses in most cities are colors like tan, brick and the occasional sage. But not San Francisco; it’s a mélange of colors. I even saw a house once that was lilac with chartreuse trim.

Yeah—chartreuse.

The light slides to red and I drift to a stop. I lean back into the seat and fold my arms as I glance over at my cousin. Nikki sips her coffee in the seat next to me, the steam rolling off it already fogging up the windows. She wipes the window with her sleeve so she can peer out at the buildings.

You know it’s just gonna fog up again in like two seconds.

Then I’ll just wipe it again, She answers as she slides her arm across the window like a windshield wiper.

I roll my eyes at her and press my foot to the gas as the red blur in the distance shifts to green. The globes of light lining the streets float past, the sky still too dark for them to register that it’s morning.

It’s like driving though a dreamland; some of the things you see just seem way too unreal. People in shiny disco ball Gaga-esque clothes dancing outside Ghirardelli Square, joggers in tutus, and water valves painted up to look like video game mushrooms are just a few of the crazy things I have seen on the streets here.

But the mists also hold a secret.

They conceal a world that exists between yours, around yours, underneath yours. We may look like you, we may act like you, but we are not you. We pass among you unnoticed, carrying our secrets to the grave. You carve us into your stories, into your fears, distorting us into something that no longer seems real.

Humanity races forward trying to catalogue and destroy the last mysteries of this world, but we are one step ahead of you, hiding away the things you refuse to believe are possible. Some of us work in your favor, while others try to tear you down. Protectors and destroyers. A world of opposing forces battling for the upper hand. Muses, demigods, devils; the humans of antiquity gave us many names. But we claimed one for ourselves.

Daemons.

Every triumph and travesty in human history has a daemon behind the scenes. Like mist, we run through your world seeping into your lives and disappearing when you try to look too hard. In the beginning, we tried to reveal ourselves to you. But well, let’s just say concealing our true nature was just better for everyone.

Sometimes I wonder if you’re ready to know the truth now. That we have been silent passengers all along in humanity’s struggle to thrive.

Probably not. People get crazy when you mess with their paradigms.

As we arrived at school, the fog was already giving way to lighter swells of mist. I pulled into the last above-ground spot and opened the door into the utterly cold morning.

I burrowed down deeper into my heavy velvet pea coat with a shiver. The wind was picking up, swirling the mist past the students. I could already tell Nikki was rethinking her choice of socks over stockings by the expression on her face.

She turned to me, her teeth already starting to chatter. Ready to go inside?

Naw, I think we should hang outside longer since it’s a balmy 45 degrees out.

The weather thingy could have been wrong.

By what, 30 degrees?

Sometimes you really suck. Nikki said as she crossed her arms and scowled at me.

Yeah, but you know you love me. I said as I looped my arm through hers and started walking toward the building.

We drifted among the other students; just another set of pretty faces in a sea of prep school uniforms.

2

You Don’t See Me

Monday, January 9th

· Patrick ·

Every morning they arrived by luxury sport car, chauffeured town car, or taxi. I came via MUNI. My parents were just barely well off enough to get me into the school. They were apparently not wealthy enough to let me drive a car in the city.

I don’t mind the bus really; you find the most interesting people in San Francisco on the bus. Foreign grandmothers chatting in a language you can’t understand. Convention goers with badges that proudly tout their names for all to see. Art students carrying more supplies than body mass, and urban yuppies playing with the newest handheld tech all crowd into the buses of SF every day. If you really want to get to know a city, ride its public transit. You’ll find a whole city’s worth of culture crammed like sardines in a 320 square-foot space. It’s the only place in the city where they’re all equals.

Occasionally I would get the stares from those who recognized my school uniform and would give me that why’s a kid like you riding the bus look? Mostly they just ignored me, leaving me alone to make up their life stories in my head.

I ignored one such stare and looked out the window. The fog was impressive today, drowning everything in a misty cover. The tops of tall buildings disappeared into it, leaving you to wonder just how tall they really were. On mornings like this you were lucky to see a block or two away.

I pulled for my stop and fought my way to the door, always an adventure in and of itself. The stops around Market are the worst: most of the time it’s like trying to swim upstream through a sea of angry fish. Half the time you literally fall off the bus onto the sidewalk as people push past you to get on.

The bus lurched to a stop and the doors popped open. I stepped off the bus alone. It wasn’t only the students that didn’t seem to ride the bus around here. Stuffy rich attitudes practically wafted through the air in this part of the city.

Sighing, I started trudging down the sidewalk toward the school. The air whipped past with a biting cold to it. January in San Francisco, cold as crap but at least it wasn’t raining sideways. If you think I’m joking about the rain, I’m not. Most tourists don’t believe you when you tell them how cold it gets here; they always forget about the wind chill. The wind in San Francisco is a tricky beast; you can walk down one street and have it gently tousling your hair, then turn the corner and get smacked in the face by a gale.

I came to the corner and took a deep breath before I crossed the street to the school. Bayside Academy is a nice enough school, but it’s hard to feel at home in a school filled with the children of diplomats and CEOs.

Bayside Academy’s campus sports an impressive amount of grass and trees for being in the middle of a city. The building itself is three stories with a glassed over atrium and underground parking, but what doesn’t have underground parking in The City, really?

The front of the school was nearly deserted. Like most winter mornings, everyone was in a hurry to get into the building; though most wouldn’t actually make it to class until just before the bell rang.

As I neared the entrance of the school building, an electric blue Aston Martin Vanquish pulled into the last available spot in the above-ground parking. Everyone stared—in a parking lot of nice cars this one was in a league completely its own.

The door opened and Nualla Galathea stepped out shuddering at the cold. I stood transfixed as she glided toward the building in front of me, arm in arm with her cousin Nikkalla Nikki Varris. They didn’t look at me as they passed and I fell into step behind them.

Nualla had the most beautiful hair I had ever seen. Not the short kind of long we see in magazines and movies today but the kind straight out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Black loose spirals spilling down her back to just below her hips. It might have seemed old fashioned if it wasn’t for the electric indigo streaks through parts of it.

Her cousin’s hair was in sharp contrast; pale blonde with light blue streaks and a short a-line cut. But the two were extremely similar in build, the slender waspish shapes of dancers; same heart shaped faces, same large eyes.

They were some of the extremely popular kids but theirs was an odd sort of popularity. With that much beauty, wealth and intelligence, they should probably have had hordes of friends.

But they didn’t.

They seemed to spend the majority of their time with their best friend Shawn Vallen. Though they were kind to all the students, they mostly kept to themselves. But it was a self-imposed isolation; most of the students at the school looked at them with a strange sense of admiration. In a lot of towns the beautiful popular kids would have used their gifts as an excuse to abuse the other lesser students, but not these three.

I had never heard Nualla say anything unkind to another person. Well, aside from one really. The only person she seemed to openly despise was Michael Tammore. Which was perfectly alright with me, since he was a pretentious wank anyways. He was one of those people who used their power to abuse others. Michael routinely picked on the shy, the less affluent and anyone he felt was less intelligent than himself.

My friends, on the other hand, were the kind of friends you always hung out with at school but who never seemed to call you to do things on the weekend. Well, with the exception of my best friend Connor. There wasn’t a Saturday that went by that he wasn’t hanging out at my place or me at his.

My friends and I definitely weren’t the most popular kids in school but we also weren’t the least popular either. We were somewhere in the realm of people not caring. No one aspired to be us and no one shoved us in the janitor’s closet. Our little group was made up of Connor, Sara, Beatrice, Jenny and myself. We had ended up sitting together the first week of freshmen year and had just never bothered to find new seats… or friends.

After a quick trip to my locker I walked into Trig, my least favorite class, and took my usual seat in the back of the room next to Connor.

***

Trig went by as it normally did; painfully. I really liked Mr. Savenrue, he never called on me, but Trig was just about the least interesting thing in the world.

Connor and I left class heading for our lockers when Nualla came out of the Calculus class next to us.

I opened my mouth to say something to her, Hey.

I know I’m a lost cause really.

She turned back toward me and I held my breath. She had turned, she almost never turned. She looked right at me. Well not at me exactly, it was more like through me. Her brow furrowed in confusion and she turned back and continued walking to her locker. I let the breath go. I don’t know why I kept trying. I must be less than nothing to them; to her.

Sigh.

Nualla and her friends mostly flat out ignored me, looked right through me, as if I wasn’t even there. It was like they couldn’t see me; like I was invisible. If it wasn’t for the company of my friends, I might even think I was a ghost.

However, this did not affect my infatuation with Nualla Galathea. I would watch her, not in a creepy stalker way but more in observational awe; like one would admire a statue or a beautiful painting. I noticed everything about her, but she had only looked at me once, the first day I saw her. She had been walking to a table in the atrium with her friends and had looked up and smiled at me through the glass.

As I watched Nualla travel down the hall to our next class, I popped my locker open. After nearly four years there, I didn’t really have to look too hard to spin the dial to the correct combination.

She stopped at her locker and dropped her bag inside in one swift, beautiful gesture of her arm. Every movement she made was like a graceful dance. I don’t know why I hadn’t given up on her yet and gotten myself a real girlfriend. Something in me just couldn’t seem to let it go. Like it knew something I didn’t. Though I did wish it would get over itself and let me in on the secret.

Are you staring at that Galathea girl again? Connor asked with a sigh as he folded his arms and leaned against the locker next to mine. His hair was a well-kept spray of dreads pulled neatly into a ponytail. His mother had probably gotten on his case again and threatened to cut it off if he didn’t keep it neat. Which, knowing Connor, would probably last for all of a few weeks before it started getting into disarray again.

Connor looked over at Nualla before looking back at me and rolling his eyes. I’m telling you man—never gonna happen.

Yeah, I know, I said as I turned back to my locker and tossed my bag in.

Mr. Lucas had demanded we not bring bags to Chemistry so no one would accidently trip over them. He had said something to the effect of ‘This is chemistry, not physics. We don’t need to see what happens when someone falls on their face.’

We need to get to class, you coming?

You go ahead, I’ll catch up. I wasn’t really listening because I was still starting at Nualla without actually appearing to look at her; a skill in and of itself.

Well hurry up, I heard a rumor that Mr. Lucas is switching up our seats again. Connor said and strode off toward our Chem II class.

‘Kay, I said, but he probably didn’t hear me. In a few seconds flat he was already halfway down the hall. But then again, he was a 6’4" black kid, and most of that was legs.

I closed my locker. I really couldn’t stand around staring anymore and I would see her in class anyways. Tablet in hand I started walking toward class. I picked up my pace when I noticed how sparse the halls had gotten already.

As I was staring at Nualla, a sudden piercing headache flashed across my eyes. I stumbled and dropped my tablet on my shoe; it bounced and landed a few feet away. I bent down to get it while I rubbed my temple.

What the hell was that?

When I stood up, Michael was standing next to Nualla and they were having a heated argument. They seemed fuzzy and out of focus, like they were much farther away than they should have been. The more I concentrated on trying to look at them the fuzzier they got and the more my head hurt. This actually happened to me more than I wanted to admit.

I would have just gone to class and taken some Advil if it had not been for what I saw next.

· Nualla ·

I knew what was going to happen a split second before it did. I always knew with Michael. As good as he was with his illusionary abilities, I could feel the impact to the air as he prepared to release it.

Michael grabbed my arm. You’re going with me to the Winter Ball.

"No, I assure you, I’m not." I jerked away from him, folded my arms and glared at him with contempt.

Then who are you going with?

Frak! I hadn’t actually asked anyone yet. I looked out at the nearly vacant hall; the students that were