Illuminated Read online

  Illuminated (Vampire Tales 1)

  Alexa Piper

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright ©2023 Alexa Piper

  BIN: 010672-03469

  Formats Available:

  Adobe PDF, Epub

  Publisher:

  Changeling Press LLC

  315 N. Centre St.

  Martinsburg, WV 25404

  www.ChangelingPress.com

  Editor: Jean Cooper

  Cover Artist: Bryan Keller

  Adult Sexual Content

  This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. Changeling Press E-Books are for sale to adults, only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  Legal File Usage -- Your Rights

  Payment of the download fee for this book grants the purchaser the right to download and read this file, and to maintain private backup copies of the file for the purchaser’s personal use only.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this or any copyrighted work is illegal. Authors are paid on a per-purchase basis. Any use of this file beyond the rights stated above constitutes theft of the author’s earnings. File sharing is an international crime, prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice, Division of Cyber Crimes in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, and Interpol. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by seizure of computers, up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 per reported instance.

  Table of Contents

  Illuminated (Vampire Tales 1)

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Alexa Piper

  Illuminated (Vampire Tales 1)

  Alexa Piper

  Ethan is a photographer who loves the interplay of light and shadow in his work and what it reveals. While working on his latest project, he finds himself at an abandoned church after nightfall. Lured by the prospect of capturing something unique with his camera, he ventures inside.

  What Ethan discovers in that forgotten place is not what he expected. Instead of sights unseen for decades, Ethan finds a man -- bleeding, hurt, and in need of help.

  What Ethan doesn’t know is that he isn’t freeing an ordinary man, but an ancient vampire.

  Through a haze of blood and violence, Ethan will have to come to terms with a situation nothing could have ever prepared him for. Auris drinks blood and deals death with ease, but Ethan soon discovers that the vampire is not just a monster. Auris is more, so much more. As if it were illuminated with a camera flash, Ethan can almost see himself and Auris have a shared future. Yet, those who tried destroying Auris once will stop at nothing to do so again.

  Foreword

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome… to our world. Or almost our world, because this one isn’t quite like you know it. In these pages, you will find out that some myths are real. There is terror and fear here, but both are quiet, resonant more than raw and aching.

  This book started out not as what you see today. Brandi Dixon helped out when the story was very rough indeed, and her feedback has made it so even she would hardly recognize this tale.

  Without further ado, let’s dive in. Have your cameras ready. There are many things here to see.

  Alexa Piper

  December 2022

  Chapter One

  I felt the cold fingers of the changing season reach across the café’s outdoor terrace and right up my spine. The warm fall day drew to a close with the trees all along the coast colored in vermilion and gold, and darkness rolled in with the tide, the sky above pretty as pulped roses.

  “Need another?” said the very attentive server. Her eyes were ocean blue, and her golden earrings caught the fading light slanting in from across the water. She wore a surgical mask like most of the staff in the region I’d come across, even though they were no longer mandatory. “You seem to inhale them. You know that might cost you sleep, right?”

  I smiled back at her and finished the last of my latte. “I always inhale great coffee, but this will have to be my last. I like to work at night.”

  True enough, even if I had captured mostly sunlight and shadows, leaves and people today, not my normal fare. The touristy charm of the place had simply lured me in. That all the cafés I found here had great service, view, and coffee didn’t help me regain my work attitude.

  She looked me up and down, no doubt taking in my slightly over shoulder-length caramel brown hair, the piercing blue eyes most people liked to comment on, and -- last but not least -- my pseudo-geeky Schrödinger’s Cat tee.

  “My mother would tell you that a good boy like yourself should be in bed at night. What do you do?”

  I laughed and tugged a strand of my hair back behind my ear. “I’m a photographer, and I like editing when it’s dark out. Just a night owl thing. Could I get the check, please?” This was beginning to feel more and more like a vacation, even though I was working. I wanted abandoned places for my next exhibition, and if you didn’t mind a bit of driving, this area had plenty.

  “Wow, an artist. You’re the first in Brightam this season, or at least my first. Be right back.” She winked at me.

  I nodded, and she took my empty glass and walked away.

  My bag sat on the chair to my right. I dug for my notebook and phone. My slightly battered but trusty notebook contained my longhand list of places I wanted to go see. I unwound the elastic that held the notebook closed and checked the list I’d bookmarked with an old receipt for a bagel and coffee against a map on my phone to see if I could still get something done today. If I didn’t, this really would be a vacation day, and I was firmly not on vacation. Besides, I was sure some lowlight photos might add a creepy aspect to my work people often told me was there to begin with, even if I never saw it.

  The seventh item on my list was a church that had been abandoned for decades, complete with a garden of headstones surrounding it, and it was only a thirty-minute detour from my way back to Cromere where I had booked my hotel for the month. I had my external flash in the car. Going to the church and getting photos of headstones and a dilapidated building in the background in the almost dark would be perfect.

  “Here you go,” the server said and dropped the check on the table. “I put my number on there in case you’re staying in town and want to do something later. Together.”

  I had seen that coming about two lattes ago, and I did consider it. Yet, the church actually sounded interesting, more interesting than vacation sex when I wasn’t even on vacation.

  “I’m afraid I have to get some work done, actually.” I indicated my notebook before putting the receipt back to mark my spot and packing everything back into my bag. “But thanks for the offer. Maybe another time,” I said and tipped her generously.

  She shrugged. “Keep the number. In case you change your mind.”

  I did and smiled at her over my shoulder when I left the café.

  Over the ocean, the pinks were surrendering to indigo and teal. Night’s breath was icy on the breeze.

  * * *

  I pulled on my jacket and left the car back at the mouth of the path that led to the church. It was a short walk of not even ten minutes, and I was glad that I also kept a flashlight in the trunk, because even with an almost full moon above, it was dark out here.

  The trees grew tall on all sides, branches eating at the dusky sky. Insect noises and the sound of me walking were the only things I could hear, and there was something wonderfully peaceful about that.

  I hadn’t lied to the server, I was a night owl and always had been, but I lived in the city, and night in the city was never really dark nor silent. Being out here was a different experience and refreshing in its way.

  The church came up ahead of me like a looming scarecrow, raggedy and weather-beaten, but its former function clear even in its current condition. It was slightly uphill, which helped with that perception, but there was something… I had the overwhelming sense that the church had been waiting for me. That was nonsense. Buildings didn’t wait or want. They just were and aged and crumbled, but the fact this place did make me feel like the church was a living being boded well for the photos. I snapped a couple, looking up toward the church.

  The church itself was really just a small building that might have held a congregation of maybe two hundred. From what I had read, there had been an abandoned mining town nearby, and the church had been left behind when the ore ran out. The bodies already in the earth had been left as well, a strange sort of exchange for the ore, iron paid for with bone.

  When I reached the cemetery grounds, my flashlight licked against dark headstones that were leaning this way and that in time’s pull. With the dark church behind them, all this needed to be a perfect set for a horror movie was some fog and maybe a wolf howling. I chuckled. This was wonderful.

  I decided that I would just walk around a bit so I could get a feel for the place, take some shots as I did so to begin with. I turned the flashlight off, put it in my camera bag, and started. The strobing light of my camera flash threw odd shadows that lingered on my retinas. I made my way toward the church doors in a slow half circle,
not really planning anything, just going by instinct. Then, with a shot of a cracked church window, I saw that the door to the building was open, just enough to draw a hard shadow in the light of my camera flash.

  I stopped and turned my flashlight back on, aiming it at the door. I took another picture even if the flashlight would mess up the lighting. I wasn’t sure why, because I was pretty good about not wasting shots. Some instinct maybe, or a random muscle jerk.

  “Oh, opportunity, you call me,” I whispered, running the flashlight up the door, which was indeed open.

  I walked right up to the door, already planning to come back tomorrow to take another series of photos of the place in daylight. I could overlay them maybe, that might give me some interesting effects, or I’d just put them one next to the other. With the pandemic still going strong, I’d also started considering virtual expositions -- virtual experiences, really -- and this place seemed ideal.

  To continue the theme of spookiness, the door creaked louder than the insects humming when I pushed it inward, but it gave readily enough, not at all like I would have expected from something that hadn’t been moved in decades.

  I ran my flashlight up the wall on my right, but this church had been a simple one even when it had been in use. There were no carvings or other decorations, nothing of the ostentatious gold leaf and vain decorative elements a lot of churches seemed to go in for. I skimmed fallen and rotting pews with my light, ahead toward the altar, and all of a sudden, the peacefulness drained out of the night.

  There, in the orb of my flashlight, was a person, or something looking like a person. They had been bound to a cross that was propped or nailed to the altar. They were dressed in all black, and long black hair fell over a head that hung limp. In the light, I watched as a drop of blood glistened back at me on its way down. There was a puddle on the floor, bright still, and before I knew what I was doing, I was running toward the person.

  “Hey!” I said, but there was no reaction. Someone had done this, had taken another human being here and hurt them. I wasn’t thinking rationally, because if I had been, I would have tried my phone to call the police. Instead I did what anyone would do when they see another person hurt. I helped.

  I let the camera hang on its strap around my neck and very carefully lifted up the person’s head. This was a man, and he had longer hair than me. His face had been cut up, deep gashes, painful to just look at them. His eyes were barely open, but his lips sort of quivered.

  “Oh, you’re not dead, you’re not dead,” I heard myself say. “Hang on, I’ll help you, just hang on.”

  In the light I saw that the way he had been bound to the cross was elaborate. There were restraints, not ropes, that kept his arms and torso and legs in place, a sharp contrast to his clothing, which was all black but high end. It was the kind of thing people wore for gallery openings, not flashy to impress, just simple and beautiful. In places, it glistened wetly. Blood.

  The restraints actually made it easier for me to get him off. There were no knots to undo, just buckles, which I attacked with shaky hands while also holding the flashlight.

  When I began working on the first restraint, working it open with clumsy fingers and holding the flashlight in one hand, I had the strongest déjà-vu I ever had. In fact, this was more than déjà-vu. It was like almost remembering a dream you had that night, catching glimpses of that dream, only to then lose the whole of it in waking all over again.

  I shook my head and kept working on getting him free. I started with his right arm, which fell to his side when I finally had the restraint open, then I went to his left. Before I did the strap across his chest, I had the good sense to undo his legs. I had dragged bloody footsteps all around the cross in the process, I saw that as my light tumbled everywhere, but I didn’t care. I cared that he lived, that I didn’t have to see him die, watch the life drain out of him as if the headstones outside were calling it to them.

  “Okay, almost done,” I said, and then did the strap across his chest. This one was difficult, because his weight pulled against it, making it so there was hardly any give at the buckle. I did my best to push his torso up, hoping he didn’t have any major injuries I’d upset further by doing this.

  Working as fast as I could, I got the buckle open and freed him from the cross at last.

  His whole weight sagged against me, and I managed to hold him with a huff. He was a dead weight, and I a photographer who didn’t really work out beyond the occasional yoga session. I couldn’t quite hold him, had to let him go to the floor, although I tried to get him there as gently as I was able.

  He moaned. His back felt wet under my hand, and I looked from it to the cross. Words stuck in my throat. Spikes had been hammered into the cross from behind, and he had been mounted on them. He had to be hurt badly, and I had to get him help.

  “Can you hear me? My car isn’t far away. I’ll get you to a hospital, but I need you to get up,” I said.

  As I was draping his arm over my shoulder, I heard noises from outside the church. The door was thrown inward moments later, and the commotion started.

  Everything happened very fast, and I’m not sure I remember the sequence of events correctly. I do remember there were three of them coming into the church. The beam of my flashlight caught them, and the tone of their angry voices will ring in my memory forever.

  “What are you doing? By the Holy Lord --” and more religious stuff and prayers that -- luckily -- didn’t sink into my memory. They were wielding guns, and they took aim at me and the man. Like a deer in a car’s headlights, I froze.

  I couldn’t even begin to comprehend this. This church was supposed to be abandoned, and now there were people here. The man leaning on me heavily was close to dying, and crazy people dressed in black were here to get the job done sooner rather than later. They would kill me too. I’d had the chance to go home with a cute waitress less than an hour ago, and now I was about to die.

  And I didn’t want to die.

  The man moved, and there was screaming. A part of my brain struggled to understand this, because right up until that moment, he had seemed too weak to do anything, closer to dying than I’d ever seen anyone in real life. The way his body jumped into gear now was beyond anything someone fit and rested might have been able to do. It didn’t compute.

  There were the screams as well, and I did not comprehend those, not at first.

  My flashlight fell to the floor, rolled away from me, and all I saw were broken pieces of what happened, caught in the kaleidoscope of scattered light and movement.

  If what happened then were photographs, it would be one of the man, blurred for his speed and half out of frame, the others voicing their wide-eyed despair. My flashlight didn’t catch anything splintering or tearing, but even though I’d never heard the sound, I imagined twisted limbs and broken bones. Then, wet noises in the dark that made my stomach turn.

  It did not take very long until the church was almost silent again, and my flashlight finally came to a stop by a pew. The noise I could still hear over my own breathing, I couldn’t place. There was the rustling of fabric against fabric, a low groan, skin on skin. It was less of a fighting noise, closer to lovemaking, but different from that in an unsettling way.

  Trembling, I reached for the flashlight, because I needed to see.

  Dark hair fell down his back where the black wetness of blood from his wounds still lingered. His shirt was torn too, and I watched. I watched and didn’t understand what I saw. The broken skin from those spikes, the violently tattered edges of his skin, the way what was beneath his skin had been laid bare, it… fused, healed, became whole again.

  The other man’s hands were around him, grabbing on to the air in wild, clawing seizures of the despairing animal caught in the lion’s jaw. The man I had taken off the cross had his head close to the other man’s throat, and the other man’s eyes were staring upward, wide as gates that welcome death. There was blood.

  Instinct rode me, and I got to my feet, started walking, and walked around them toward the exit. There was another corpse in my way -- a priest judging by the collar. I stepped over him. I needed to get away from this.