Winter Thirst Read online

  winter

  thirst

  Volume TWO Of The

  Frostbitten

  Series

  A Novel By

  Ilia Bera

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright Ilia Bera 2015

  Copyright Cover images are as follows:

  Model License:

  Ramon Espelt Photography

  Cover design by Ilia Bera

  This book is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious and any similarity to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidence.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses

  permitted by copyright law.

  ISBN-13: 978-1508582571

  ISBN-10: 1508582572

  DEDICATION

  To the love of my life,

  Sorry I almost died in a Mexican massage parlour.

  MORE FROM ILIA BERA

  Want to keep up to date on Bera’s next release? Visit the Facebook Page here:

  www.facebook.com/iliaberabooks

  Be sure to like the page so you can be the first to get in on any Frostbitten updates.

  Want to get updates directly to your email account? Sign up for email updates here:

  eepurl.com/baKOqb

  Thank you kindly for your interest, and I hope that you’ll be there for my next one!

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE

  AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  a cunning and most beautiful siren

  It was a cold morning. Every morning was a cold morning in Snowbrooke, but that dark early morning was particularly so. The way the wind whirled the frigid frost against your sensitive skin; the way the freshly fallen powder lodged itself inside the tongue of your boot—mother nature had a particular grudge that icy winter morning—a certain omnipresent nemesis.

  It was that night, during that insufferably cold winter wind that you could almost hear the ethereal whispering of some evocative, invisible banshee. Her words were elaborate yet elusive; mellifluous yet tortuous. Every unheard syllable resonated deep under your skin, causing every hair on your cold body to stand up straight.

  It was a rare morning—an anxious morning; the kind or morning where you feel the unusual and pressing need to call your loved ones, for no other reason than to ensure everything is okay.

  It was a quiet morning.

  I still stay inside on mornings like those, opting to stay near the warmth of my inglenook—still getting chills each time that violently cold, whispering wind blows against my window. Listen, and you can hear her again—that ephemeral chilling sound that is only audible inside of your heart, eliciting a peculiar sense of mourning—a mourning for a soul yet to pass; a mourning for a lost piece of yourself.

  I still remember that particular morning, as a ghastly gale roared through the monolithic mountainscape, eliciting a distant rumble as the alpine snow thundered down the rocky bluffs. A deep, subterranean grumble could be heard as the endless pounding snow settled momentarily, in wait for the next glacial gust. And between the tacit howling through that ubiquitous snowfall...

  It was a quiet morning.

  Even the most learned man can’t dispute that there is a strange phenomenon that exists in this world—one that can’t been explained by any science, or proved with any test. But we know that it exists because we’ve all experienced it at one point or another. We’ve all heard her fleeting voice in the pit of our souls, warning us and moving us in a different direction.

  We love her voice; we hate her voice. Its the voice of reason—at times it is our own voice, and other times it is a voice so foreign, we can’t possibly attempt to understand it. It’s a teasing voice; the voice of the most beautiful siren, whispering the password to Pandora’s Box just quietly enough that we can’t quite make it out, but loud enough we know that it is close.

  Throughout history, we’ve given this peculiar sensation names; names that lose their meaning thanks to shameful misuse. Epic, a word once used sparingly to describe something of legendary proportions—too incredible to even fathom. The epic scale of the pyramids of Giza; Columbus’ epic voyage across the Pacific Ocean. The last time you probably used the word was to describe a mediocre burrito from the nearby Taco-Bell, crafted by some teenager who probably isn’t even remotely related to a Mexican. But I digress...

  Similarly, words like Chi, Prana, Qi, Mana, Lung, Ruah, or as it’s been called in the west, Life Force or Energy Flow—are all words to describe the same phenomenon. You feel it when an important moment is about to happen in your life—a sense of dread you feel the moment something bad happens to a loved one. It’s the force that stops the experienced flight attendant from getting on the plane; the same plane that ends up crashing violently into the ground because of an unpredictable storm that no human, and no technology could have foreseen.

  “I had a bad feeling about it,” the attendant says when asked by the media. It gets written off as a coincidence. Science doesn’t dare face the issue.

  It’s something we feel inside of our bodies, but it has no physical shape or form. It lays dormant at the bottom of our spine and then it’s released at curious moments in our lives. They say that you feel it in your body when you wake up, on the day you will meet your future soul mate. Likewise, they say you feel it the morning you wake up, before a terrible event in your life.

  The day that Derek Enderby was stabbed by the homeless Philip Riley—I felt it inside of me, but I didn’t know what it was—not until it had happened.

  Some people think it’s the same force that binds lovers together—the same force that connects a mother and her child.

  Some Eastern cultures believe that this power can be controlled, harnessed and manipulated. Some Buddhists believe in a phenomenon called a Kundalini Awakening, where someone learns to awaken the life force dwelling inside of their body, using meditation. They think that Life Force—that Chi; that Prana; that Ruah holds the power of wisdom. Some even think that it can be used to induce Astral Projection—leaving your own body and exploring the universe, and other dimensions. After a Kundalini Awakening, you start to see the world through different eyes—things begin to make sense. You begin to observe life objectively, and you begin to understand the interconnectedness of every person, every animal and every thing in the universe. As you begin to understand the mystical Life Force, you begin to understand that it is not unique to you—that you have the same Prana inside
of you that every single other person has inside of them. Every time you are upset, it can be felt subconsciously through every living thing on the planet. Likewise, when you are happy, there’s an invisible energy lifting up the rest of the world.

  Believe what you will. While I’ve never considered myself a mystical person, or a spiritual person, or even a religious person—It’s hard to dispute that there is something inexplicable that exists within our bodies—something that is, for lack of a better term, psychic.

  I remember reading about this study in school, where thousands of people got together. They all sat peacefully and meditated—visualizing happy things, and pushing negative things out of their minds. Perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps it wasn’t—but the next week, the city saw record low crime rates—down a whopping twenty-five percent. Another study showed magnified images of frozen water crystals that had been next to different people, in very different moods. The calmer and happier the person was, the more symmetrical and perfect the molecular structures were—like beautiful snowflakes on a still winter morning. When the water was exposed to someone who was angry, anxious or frustrated, the crystals were a scattered mess—with no definable patterns. They say our bodies are over seventy percent water...

  What does all of this prove? Maybe nothing—maybe something. Who knows? All that I know is, I’ve felt something before that defies any science that I know about.

  Whatever strange Life Force might exist in the world, Kane Patrick felt it too. That early morning when Kane stood at Brittany’s doorstep, he felt a particularly strong surge of energy lingering in his spine.

  It began at a very particular moment—the moment Brittany decided her problems would be easily solved by killing the hunter on the other side of her door.

  Kane looked back down the street, where a young passing woman cautiously watched him—nervous given the recent string of ritualistic murders that had plagued the small town of Snowbrooke. Kane stopped knocking on the door and composed himself. He stopped yelling to be let in, and smiled at the young passing woman.

  “Don’t get yourself arrested, Kane,” he muttered to himself through his forced smile. He considered running back home before the cops were called in on some domestic dispute call. He took a long, deep breath in.

  At the same time, he wanted to see Brittany and try to explain himself. While he weighed his options, he watched the nervously suspecting woman turn around the street corner, out of sight.

  ONE

  a hunter’s curse

  Kane leaned his body against the door, defeated. “Brittany—Please open the door. Just give me one minute to explain,” Kane said.

  Suddenly, the door opened slightly. Kane stepped back. His heart rose back out of the pit in his stomach—all hope was not lost after all.

  “Brittany,” Kane said.

  “What is it?” Brittany asked.

  “I know that stuff makes me look like a crazy person—but I’m not. You have to believe that I won’t hurt you.”

  “Kane—I don’ think you are a crazy person. I just need time to think about it, okay?”

  “Can I come in?” Kane asked, pushing the door open more than the sliver Brittany held it at.

  Brittany swiftly stopped the door from opening any wider. “Not now,” she said.

  “Please?”

  “No, Kane.”

  “You need to understand that I do what I do to save people—I’ve saved a lot of people. I didn’t choose this life. It fell on to my lap. I didn’t want to take it, but I couldn’t live with myself, knowing that if I didn’t take it, people would die—People I could have saved.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe it scares me because I worry about you? Not me? You’re covered in scars and cuts! What if you get in a fight, and one of those cuts ends up across your jugular?”

  “That’s the risk I take.”

  “Okay, well it’s not the risk I want to take!”

  “Brittany—I want to be with you. I want you more than anything. Really—I do.”

  “Would you quit hunting?” Brittany asked.

  Kane sighed as he thought about it. “I—I just can’t. Morally, I have to keep doing it.”

  “Then you don’t want me more than anything. You’re greedy. You want everything, despite the consequences of others.”

  “Don’t say that,” Kane said.

  “Admit that it’s true!” Brittany said.

  Kane sighed again. His heart was pulling him in two different directions. Before Brittany, he’d never loved anyone. Maybe it was greedy to expect her to accept the risk to be with him.

  He clenched his hand into a fist, holding back a sudden surge of rage in his body. Being with Brittany, and remaining a hunter was unfair to Brittany. Being with her, and hanging up the crossbow was greedy to all of the future vampire victims. There was no happy middle—no situation where everyone benefits. At the end of the day, the only victim of injustice was Kane, who was yet again choosing the well-being of strangers over his own life. Kane’s life was, simply put, unfair.

  “Can you do me one favour?” Kane asked.

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell anyone about me or my secret—Especially not Hanna. Okay?” Kane asked.

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Don’t stay out alone at night. Don’t go into dark alleyways or parks. That’s where vampires like to feed. I’m going to track down the vampire in this town, and then I’ll be out of your life.”

  Brittany was silent as she stared down at her feet.

  “Bye Brittany,” Kane said.

  “Bye.”

  Kane turned around and left. Brittany closed the door and took a deep breath. She couldn’t gather the strength to go through with killing Kane. Her emotions overrode her sense of self-preservation. No matter how badly she wanted to remove herself from her feelings, she just couldn’t do it.

  She wiped the last of her tears from her eyes. Until Kane was out of town, she was going to need to be careful.

  TWO

  alibi

  Kane sat in his old Mustang, watching Hanna’s house from a safe distance. He tried to drown out the sounds of his screaming emotions with the car radio. Whenever Brittany’s voice started to ring through Kane’s mind, he reached for the old rusted dial on the dashboard and turned the volume of up.

  But no matter the volume of the radio, he couldn’t get her beautiful face off of his mind. Angry, he slammed his dashboard with his fist, splitting his knuckle.

  “You idiot!” he yelled at himself.

  Blood started to pour out of the deep cut.

  “Shit,” he muttered as he pulled a first aid kit out from his glove box. As he opened it, the walkie-talkie he kept tuned into the police channel began to buzz and crackle.

  Crr-Chhhzzhttt!

  “We’ve got reports of another potential one-eight-seven down at twenty-five Boundary Crescent,” the female police officer said. “Neighbours heard screaming—suspect may still be on the scene. All cruisers please report.”

  “I’m five away,” an officer responded.

  Kane quickly looked the address up on his gps. He was only a single block away.

  He fired up the old Mustang and drove around the corner towards the house. With his headlights off, he slowly drove up the road. The lights were on inside of the house. As Kane got closer, he could see blood on the walls through one of the windows.

  Kane scanned the quiet neighbourhood. Carefully, he drove towards the alleyway and looked down it. He watched the alleyway carefully, looking for any signs of movement. After a moment of stagnant silence, he drove up to the next alleyway and watched closely.

  Suddenly, a dark humanoid silhouette ran across the alleyway, leaping over a fence. Kane could hear sirens in the distance, moving towards the house. He drove up to the next alley and looked down it. Again, the mysterious fleeing figure ran across the alleyway, jumping a fence and running through the yard. Kane continued his silent pursuit.

&nbs
p; “This is Constable Hendricks. I’m at Boundary Crescent, on the scene of the one-eight-seven. There’s no sign of the suspect on the scene,” an officer announced over the radio.

  “Wait a minute for backup, Constable. It’s on its way.”

  “I can see a lot of blood through the window. Looks like another one of those vampire attacks.”

  “Roger that, Hendricks. Remain in the safety of your cruiser until backup arrives. Also—Let’s refrain from calling them ‘vampire’ attacks.”

  The police feared that the serial killer—or killers that were loose in the town took pride in the media calling them “vampires”. They tried to avoid using the term, suspecting that it was only further fuelling their desire to recommit. But it was a difficult term to avoid when the victims matched the classic vampire victim profile to a tee.

  Kane watched the next alleyway carefully, waiting for the ostensible vampire to make another appearance. After a moment, it did. The dark figure ran into the centre of the alleyway and looked around, deciding whether or not it was far enough away from the crime. As it stood still, Kane was able to make out a few details. The culprit was wearing a hooded coat, and was short; shorter than the average man—possibly a woman. It was too dark to make out much more than that.

  After a moment, the potential criminal casually stuffed their hands into their pockets and began to walk down the alley, away from Kane.

  Kane put his car back into drive and started to drive around the block, intending to cut the person off on the other side and see whom it was—and maybe even make the kill.

  Wheeeoooo!

  Red and blue lights suddenly flashed the inside of Kane’s car, startling the young vampire hunter. Kane had been too focussed on the suspect in the alleyway that he hadn’t noticed that a police cruiser had crept up behind him.

  “Shit,” he muttered to himself.

  Heart racing, he pulled his car over casually. His trunk was loaded with weapons and his police intercepting walkie was sitting on the passenger seat, next to his laptop, which was currently hacked into private police records. Frantically, Kane pushed it all onto the floor of the car. The blood from his cut knuckle was all over the steering wheel, and the dashboard.