Stormbite the storm seri.., p.1
Stormbite (The Storm Series Book 1), page 1
Stormbite
Book One of the Storm Series
T. Hearts
Stormbite was first published in 2018.
Edition 2 (Updated 2021)
This is the 2nd Edition with edits and corrections.
Text copyright © T Hearts, 2018
Cover Illustration and header illustrations by T Hearts, 2018
Edited by T Hearts
Twitter: @StormbiteBook
Wikia: https://stormbite.fandom.com/wiki/Stormbite_Wiki
All rights reserved.
All characters within are works of fiction, as is the world it is set in, and all characters belong to T Hearts.
ISBN 9781718052789
ISBN9781-7180-5278-9
Typeset in 10 pt. Garamond.
Cover font typeset in Libby
For Joelle
No matter how horrible things can be and how far away you are,
always remember that I am here for you, and I will continue to do my best, correct mistakes and keep on creating things that will make you smile, cry, and laugh.
Stormbite Universe Books
The Storm Series
Stormbite
Silverbird
Skybourne
The Compass Projects Series
Sirocco
Gregale
Libeccio
Mistral
Far Horizons
Broken Arrow
Ten of Feathers
Glasswing
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Loch Mullardoch, Scotland.
Eleven Years Prior.
“…Alive…”
“Storm! Breathe!”
A scream filled the air around her with a piercing echoing note. Her own scream. She gasped as the adrenalin hit her system. Heart pounding in her ears and hungrily gulping in lungfuls of sour air. Everything felt cold and sharp against her skin, a sickly metallic taste lingered in her mouth, as oxygen was forced into her through the mask that was pressed to her face. Head throbbing with every heartbeat, the world before her swam before her, blurry in distorted colours of grey and white shapes, until the blue uniform of a nurse came into view as she lolled her head.
Where was she? What was happening?
A shone a light in her eyes, the shock of the brightness making her flinch.
“Patch Professor Mira in immediately. Tell her we have a problem and can’t scan her. The claustrophobia makes her panic, and we can’t administer any more sedatives because it’ll put her at risk of respiratory failure.”
Their voices were distorted, barely audible against the noisy throbbing of blood in her ears but growing clearer. Senses returning, the bright white room, and clinical stink of hospital disinfectant was an assault on her, sharp and burning. She squirmed and struggled, pain shooting across her back, held down by a crushing weight on her chest making it hard to breathe.
In panic, she screamed; a piercing raptorial noise that drove the doctor and nurse away from her, clutching their ears at the sound.
“Doctor Sang! Help!”
“Oh Jesus Christ- How much adrenaline did you give her?”
“I didn’t! The sedatives just wore off!”
“What do we do?” Another nurse shouted staring as the girl began thrashing wildly. Her left arm came free from the cuff, giving her the means to tear at the remaining restraints, still shrieking.
“Loosen the straps! She’ll break her bones!”
“What about us?”
“Just do it!” The doctor rushed forward, hands scrambling to loosen the restraints on her. She slashed at the doctor with sharp talon-like nails that sliced cleanly through the blue plastic gloves and cut into the skin. The nurse fared no better as the girl caught him across the face, leaving four deep slashes through his cheek, forcing him back.
“Storm! Storm please! It’s just an MRI scan, we’re not–” The doctor tried to assure her, releasing the straps across her chest, but her assurances fell on terror-deafened ears.
She struggled to take the girl’s arms as the last restraints were freed. A jolt of electricity shocked her, forcing the doctor to reel back with a shout and release the girl.
Rolling forward onto the balls of her feet and perching up upon the rolling bed, for a split second she caught her reflection in the one-way mirror.
She saw herself, distantly familiar in her state of confusion. A lean little girl face sharply featured, pale eyed and body oddly proportioned with her deep chest, her long limbs and even longer wings.
Slate-grey feathers, banded with dark midnight blue and edged in silver, the same colour that ran in a gradient across her shoulders and up her neck to face, all the way down her back to an ankle length fan of a tail. Rolling her shoulders, the wings moved with her arms, their actions subconscious and refined.
They flexed softly, reaching to the ceiling where the meter-long primaries had to bend as they ran out of room. Every feather on the ventral side a stark white with narrow bands of charcoal grey, sliding softly and smoothly over each other with a gentle rustle. Her tailfeathers fanned out wide, patterned with the same dark bands as the upper side of her wings, tense in aggression and fear.
All as much a part of her as her heart in her chest.
Seeing the awe in the eyes of the doctor’s reflection as she moved them, and noting their empty wingless backs, she was struck with an awareness that they were not the same species as her.
There was movement behind the mirror, the ghosts of figures running to the door on its right. A pale membrane flicked across her eye in an alien blink, though she could still see through it. She bared her mouthful of sharp cat-like teeth at the figures on the other side with an angry hiss, drawing her wings back, she crouched on the edge of the table, tensing as the door swung open. As it did, she launched herself across the room, drawing her legs up and catching the guard in the face with her heel, knocking him down to the floor.
They were so slow to move and before they could even react, she had bounced from his body and off the wall behind him, out the door and charging blindly down the hall, barrelling through several porters, and knocking them over.
“Stop where you are!” A second guard shouted, firing at her. It missed, the projectile clattering and ricocheting off the floor tiles as she raced towards the doors. Wings straining to beat in the confined corridor, the porters and guards were hot on her heels.
They fired again and this time the dart sank into the back of her leg, stinging like a wasp and throwing her off her sprint. Falling flat on her face at the sudden paralytic shock of the dart, the porters quickly pounced upon her, wrestling her strong arms and flailing wings into restraints with considerable difficulty.
She snapped her fangs down onto a nearby hand. Tasting their blood in her mouth, she spat it back out into the face of another trying to hold onto her wings. Their shouts were a cacophony of incoherent sounds that she cut through with another piercing scream, then with a sharp heavy blow to the back of her head, she fell still and back into unconsciousness.
Black.
Quiet.
Calm.
Then an agonising jolt of electricity shot through her, lighting up the world and bursting through the blackness.
“Wake up!”
A familiar voice and another shock with a high-pitched siren of tinnitus. The shock made her aware of her physical body, each nerve ending on fire as the shock leaped across each synapse and startled her back into consciousness.
“Please wake up! Don’t be dead! PLEASE!”
‘I’m not dead, don’t worry…’ she thought loudly, wondering how long she had been lifeless for.
With a third shock and the sound of the real world began to breaking through the haze. Blurry at first, the sounds distant as though she were underwater, then it all snapped into focus. The alarm was blaring in the distance, an oscillating drone doing nothing to cover the screams.
“We can’t leave her!”
“I’ll carry her out, just get the doors!”
Gunshots, screams, shouts, the sound of shattering glass and explosions. The metallic smell of blood and burning plastic overpowering the cleanly disinfectant stench.
“Wake up!”
Her eyes snapped open with the world back in focus, her limbs numb from the dart still, the floor moving below her as she was carried away. Flames flickered up from one passing hallway, followed by piercing screams from other children.
Terror set in at the bombardment of her senses, overpowering the paralysis of the dart. The feeling in her limbs returning rapidly, she flailed, kicking and lashing out at her captor, beating her wings against his head in panic. She clawed his neck and shoulder, ripping at his shirt and skin with her sharp talons slicing into him. The doctor swore at her as he dropped her from his bleeding shoulder, cursing and calling after her as she scrambled to her feet and began to sprint down the hallway.
“Storm! Storm no! Come with us!” The familiar voice.
Stopping dead in her tracks, she spun around to face the doctor and a girl.
It was like looking into the mirror again. At the other end of the hall stood a small and feathered girl with long limbs and even longer wings, grey-blue like her hair and the same sharp pale green-blue eyes. Behind her were more winged children, just like her and just as terrified.
“This way!” Her sister shrieked ushering her towards herself, the other children and the doctor, “Come with us! It’s not safe that way!”
Tentatively, fearfully, she took several steps towards them, but a blast of fire erupted from the hallway she had run past startled her. With a scream she bolted away from the group.
Fight or Flight; no time for thinking it through.
Flight was always her answer.
“Storm!” Her sister shrieked as she was lifted off her feet by the doctor and dragged off down the hall to escape the blaze. Hands reaching out towards her, she thrashed in his arms.
“Don’t leave me! STORM!”
Run.
Run.
Fly.
Too frightened to remember the layout of the building her only goal was to get up and away. She broke out into the stairwell, fire above and below and screaming all around. She didn’t want to run the entire way up through the many basement levels and so launching herself out into the square space she beat her wings hard, struggling to gain any height in the stairwells, which were now acting as chimneys to the rising smoke. The heat and smothering smoke made it hard to go more than four levels, forcing her to land before she reached the top.
Rumbling explosions echoed from down the hallways, bursts of flames gutting the building quickly. The dense smoke was making it impossible to breathe and stinging her eyes. Fire licked at her tailfeathers and scorched her arms as she darted past a blazing doorway, turning the edges black and curling them up, she’d never realised how quickly feathers burnt and how awful the smell was.
Coughing, she stumbled out of the basement levels onto the ground floor of the stairwell, following after a crowd of fleeing people, shoving the door open and falling to her knees.
A hand grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, pinching at her hair and the feathers of her nape, hauling her to her feet. Unable to breathe at the smoke and fumes, she struggled to fight back against him.
“Is this one of those ones that Rex wanted?” A mask man asked, dragging her towards two other men dressed from head to toe in black, both in fire masks and armed with guns. One crouched and took her by her chin, twisting her head until the membrane blinked across to wipe away the tears. She snapped her sharp little teeth at him, hissing like an animal but the man didn’t flinch.
“That’s one of them,” He growled, “but one’s enough, now let’s go.”
She snarled at them, trying to slash and kick her way free, but she was lifted and tossed over their shoulder as they broke into a sprint away from a bomb that they had planted.
The people in black charged for the exit, breaking out onto the balcony above what once was the reception area. The glass doorways that once were the entrance were shattered by armoured vans that had been run through it into the foyer. More armed masked men patrolled the foyer, wingless, faceless beings that were carrying children and dragging adults into the back of vans.
“Charges are set! We’ve got two minutes people! If you’re not out by then you’re barbeque!” The leader shouted into a radio, kicking the body of a huge abomination of a dog that had been gunned down. “Get the kids in the van and go!”
“There’s still Synths and men in here Rex!” A voice crackled in response, but the leader didn’t seem to care.
“Collateral damage.”
“They’ll die Rex!”
“They’ll produce more Synths in time, just take whatever is closest and leave the rest. The less they have, the better for the world!”
Fury pierced through her fear, snapping the world into logical focus of what was happening. Armed and dangerous, he didn’t care there were people there who had done nothing wrong, he was just going to burn everything to the ground no matter who was there.
“Rex! I got your bird!” Her captor shouted, holding her up by her arm. Their leader with his red hair glowing in the light of the fires, looked up to them. Even beneath the mask that covered half of his face, she could see the glee in his eyes.
“That’s the one! Give that one to me.”
They lifted her over the balcony and dropped her into his arms. There wasn’t much she could do, but she couldn’t get away. He hooked his arms round her chest and began hauling her kicking and screaming towards the vans.
Out.
Out!
Need to get out!!!
His nails bit into her skin, inflaming the burns she had received from her escape. The pain gave her a nudge of realisation.
His fingers were exposed.
All that armour and he’d left his fingers exposed.
Yanking his hand up, she bit down hard. Her sharp little teeth piercing his skin and crunching though the bone, she shook her head like a dog with a toy. The man shrieked, tightening his hold on her. The more he tightened the harder she bit until she felt a crunch in her jaw and the man dropped her, holding his hand in agony.
Her head snapped round, taking in her surroundings in a single glance, processing all the possible escape routes and letting the world seem to fall into slow motion again.
Fire flickered all around, glinting off broken glass and blackening once white walls. Between the armoured van and the ground, a gap too small for a grown man in Kevlar to get through, but small enough for a tiny ten-year-old girl.
Spitting out the finger she had bitten off, she slammed her wings back against her captor, winding him and throwing herself forward. She could move faster than them, she knew she could. Her slate-grey wings flared out and beating hard as she ran for speed. The other men were slow to turn and follow her as she dove beneath the van. Wings drawing in tight, she slid beneath it out into the open darkness, the stones tearing at her stomach and knees.
There were more armoured vans outside, some already driving away, whilst a few lingering men who were waiting, were startled by her eruption from beneath the van. The fire cast a dull orange light on the landscape, a blazing beacon in the night, glittering off the lake the facility stood by and the patches of January snow. She bolted as the men turned to stare at her. They couldn’t chase her across water. Icy frost stung at her burnt feet as she raced towards the dark lake at a full sprint and beating her singed wings down.
With a leap, she had lift off, rising into the air and sailing over the loch. Several of primaries were missing and damaged, and her tailfeathers were still smouldering with the fire, but she had enough power in her near fifteen feet of wings for her to get skyborne, driving herself up with all her might.
Chest burning with the effort, she arced round in the sky, circling back over the estate, trying to locate one of the other exits where her sister may have escaped from. So much of it was on fire, the people pouring from it like ants, silhouetted black against the flames. The large buildings were engulphed, with the sign that read ARCDA: The Arcadia Corporation, which hung above the entrance crashing to the ground as the mercenaries threw grenades at it. Even the homes on the hill were burning with the wooden playpark reduced to scorched embers.
The north end of the facility exploded into a ball of fire, illuminating the valley and catching the light on the whites of her wings. The shock of heat seared her and she was knocked back. Catching herself before she could drop too far, she looped and righted herself into a hover to see a second explosion in the western end closest to the mountains and village.
They were razing it to the ground. Everything.
The lights on the vans began to glow, the attackers evacuating themselves from the devastation. She looked down, trying to pick out any semi-familiar faces of doctors or even her sister, but she shouldn’t have lingered. Scanning the people escaping she made direct eye contact with the leader of the attackers through the sights of a gun.
