Surviving the eclipse, p.1
Surviving the Eclipse, page 1
Surviving the Eclipse
Dusk to Dawn Series, Volume 2
W.J. May
Published by Dark Shadow Publishing, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
SURVIVING THE ECLIPSE
First edition. August 31, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 W.J. May.
Written by W.J. May.
Dusk to Dawn Series #2
By W. J. May
@Copyright 2024 By W. J. May
THIS E-BOOK OR PRINT is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book/paperback 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 arduous work of the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2024 by W.J. May
Surviving the Eclipse
Bk 2 of the Dusk to Dawn Series
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.
Find W.J. May
Website:
https://www.wjmaybooks.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-WJ-May-FAN-PAGE/141170442608149
Newsletter:
SIGN UP FOR W.J. May's Newsletter to find out about new releases, updates, cover reveals and even freebies!
https://www.wjmaybooks.com/subscribe
Dusk to Dawn Series
PREQUEL: Enchanted – Book of Spells
Bk 1 – Awakening the Night
Bk 2 – Surviving the Eclipse
Bk 3 – Hunting the Forsaken
Surviving the Eclipse
“YOU ARE THE KEY TO either ending the war or starting a new one.”
“Vampires, witches, and humans alike can feel a storm brewing. A civil war is on the horizon. It’s believed that vampire covens are teaming up to lead an attack on Sanlow.”
Almost twenty years ago, the vampire-run city that kept humans as slaves was decimated by a single merciless vampire named Amate, who abolished the “blood cattle” system.
Half-vampire, half-witch Bastian Hayes is haunted by the mystery of who his parents were—until it is unraveled in a dangerous encounter with his half-sister, who reveals a shocking truth: they share a father. A father who, as it turns out, is one of the powerful, ruthless coven leaders of Sanlow.
As the reality of his parentage brings new, more powerful enemies, Bastian learns of a rumor that a strange event could allow a vampire to walk in the daylight—the only time humans are safe. An eclipse is the opportune moment for vampires to mount a full-scale assault on Sanlow to reclaim it from Amate and reinstate the system.
Meanwhile, the notorious spellbook Bastian was entrusted to safeguard has been stolen. He and the Kairos—the vampire-hunting revolutionary organization—must locate it before it lands in the wrong hands and sparks a catastrophic war.
Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives...
Contents
Find W.J. May
Dusk to Dawn Series
Surviving the Eclipse
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 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Dusk to Dawn Series
Have you read ENCHANTED?
Chapter 1
Find W.J. May
More books by W.J. May
Chapter 1
Family was complicated.
I didn’t realize how much so until I was tangled in the roots of their trees.
I never thought one of them would be mine. As an orphan, I figured my family tree was pretty much dead. I was the only branch left.
Apparently not.
Ciel Kaladin, one of the most lethal vampires around—and one of the most wanted dead by Amate, the most lethal vampire—held my lower face in her clawed hand, her nails digging into my skin as if she wanted to crush my jaw in.
It wasn’t impossible. Her father died that way. Maybe she was looking for karma-inspired revenge.
I definitely had no intention of that happening today. No thanks.
“It’s good to finally meet you, little brother.”
Horror was already sluicing through my veins like ice water, but at her words, it rushed through me anew. The sharp gray of Ciel’s irises surrounded by the depths of black sclera pinned me in place—it wasn’t like I could move if I wanted to with her holding me hostage by a single hand—as she bared her inch-long fangs with a low hiss. I stared at them as if I’d never seen a vampire before.
Yet somehow, sarcasm was my coping mechanism. “Um. Say that again?”
Ciel’s lip curled in distaste. “You heard me.”
“Bas, don’t—”
Tess’s voice was cut off with a muffled shout of protest. Ciel’s grip on my jaw was ironclad when I tried to thrash out of it to see her. Gideon, Ciel’s witch lackey, conjured a leather mask over Tess’s mouth and cuffs around her wrists to prevent her from using any spells to get them to safety. I wanted to punch the crooked smirk on his face off.
“Don’t touch her!” I snarled. It didn’t sound as threatening as I hoped it would when my jaw was threatened to be crushed. “Tess, stay still—”
A grunt burst from my throat when Ciel drove her fist into my gut. I made to double over, gasping for breath, but she held fast. I was half-vampire thanks to my pureblood father; I could take a good couple of blows. But this close with this much force? If she hadn’t been holding me, I would have sailed across the room.
I heard Emalyn gasp a split second before she was restrained by another witch who materialized out of nowhere, too.
Ciel hissed in annoyance. “Chattering birds.” She knifed her gaze back to me. “Until recently, I thought I threw you in a river. The only threat to my throne, a bastard half-breed. It’s because of you that I watched Amate murder my father in cold blood.”
A deranged laugh bubbled in my throat. She loosened her grip as if she could tell I wanted to say something—as if I had to say something that wasn’t sarcastic. “Me? A threat to your throne? What throne? Hold on. You threw me into a river?”
Ciel’s snarl curved into a wicked grin, her irises gleaming sharper, surrounded by the blackness of her sclera, than if they were white like a human’s. “It’s true. You don’t know who your mother is.” She glanced at Gideon, who nodded in confirmation. “How amusing.”
“Of course I do!” I snapped. I wanted to blurt her name, Lily Hayes, with defensiveness. She was a human, and she died giving birth to me. For most of my life, I blamed myself for her death. But I knew who was really guilty. And his daughter was standing just inches away. “How do you know?”
“Of course I do.” She mimicked my tone, and it stung because it reminded me of all the times Egan and I had mocked each other without a single shred of ill will toward each other. If Ciel and I were siblings—yuck!—there wasn’t a speck of amicability between us. She hated me.
I’ve known you for all of five minutes, I thought with bitterness souring my tongue that I tried not to let out a sarcastic comment in return, but I know I hate you just as much. I didn’t kill my mother. Your father did when he took advantage of her.
In a normal, matter-of-fact tone, Ciel continued, “Of course I do, sweet brother. I have been fleeing for my life ever since you were born. It is critical to my survival to have eyes and ears everywhere so I may leave somewhere at a moment’s notice.”
I tried to bare my fangs even though she wouldn’t be fazed by them in the slightest, especially because they were half an inch shorter than a pureblood vampire’s. “Don’t call me that,” I snarled.
“Trust me,” she snapped, baring her more impressive fangs as if to prove that point, “I would rather you not share a single drop of blood with me.”
“Wh
The words escaped my mouth before my mind’s common sense could stop them. Tess and Em thrashed in objection. I couldn’t help but look over. Angry tears shone in their plainly human eyes. With their hands and mouths bound, there was no hope of escaping.
Wait, you idiot, I thought furiously. You aren’t cuffed. You cast some spells!
“I intend to.” Ciel’s tone was conversational, following my gaze on the girls. “And if you don’t behave for me until then, those witches’ lives are in your hands. If you so much as irk me, remember what their fingers look like because I will have them cut off for each blunder you make. Is that clear?”
I swallowed hard. Tess and Em tried to shake their heads frantically in a warning. I could imagine their voices: Don’t listen to anything she says! They were far more experienced than I was in these situations. Way smarter. I had no idea what to say or do in the fanged face of danger.
But I wasn’t a coward, and there was no way I was letting Ciel think that any of us were just dumb, helpless kids.
“I am a female of my word, Bastian,” Ciel crooned, tilting my neck slowly back and forth as if testing how much strength she needed to apply to break it. “I can give you a rundown of things if you wish. Cirillo Kaladin is our father. We are half-siblings. My mother, the placid fool, was killed in the Liberation. Your mother...”
She dropped her voice, which was scarier than if she had yelled. Suddenly, it felt like the whole world was just her and I, and there was nothing and no one to stop Ciel from doing whatever she wanted.
Why was I just frozen to the ground? I had fended off a dozen enemies before just days ago. I trained my entire life to fight and kill vampires.
But Ciel was different. She wasn’t fighting with claws or fangs. She was using words to tear me apart slowly. I wasn’t equipped with a sharp enough tongue to devise a defense. Any defense I did have crumbled under the temptation of Ciel revealing a secret I wondered about since I could remember.
I mentally shook my head to berate myself again. No, you idiot. You already know who your mom is! Her name is Lily Hayes, and she—
And she was what?
“Maybe the question,” Ciel murmured, tilting her head to the side so her long blonde hair swished, “isn’t who she is, but what she’s done.”
The silence that left was ringing. What in Death’s name can that mean?
Gideon cleared his throat pointedly. “Lady Ciel, the spellbook.”
Ciel hummed, not affronted by the interruption, clearly more amused with leaving me reeling. “Ah, yes. I want it.”
But I wouldn’t lose my footing. “No.”
“No?” the vampire repeated in a whisper, tightening her grip on my jaw again.
“Your lackey already knows.” I shot a glare at Gideon as anger suddenly reared its ugly head, banishing my self-pity. I remembered the too-fresh memory of Tess telling the witch that Galen Shayla’s spellbook had already been stolen.
Gideon glared back. “Lackey?”
Ciel tsked. “Oh, hush, dear. Galen Shayla is a well-known witch,” she explained. “My father—our father—took great pride in having her under his thumb. But he was too consumed with obsessing over useless human women to notice that she was conjuring up the future that would lead us all to our deaths—you being one of them.”
“So?” I growled, my anger steadily rising. “Why do you want it if all you want is me dead?”
“Because she wants it.”
I stiffened. She meant Amate, the vampire that all other vampires feared. She burned more than half of the vampire-run town of Sanlow in a single day, dubbing the massacre of her own kind the Bloody Liberation. Though it happened when I was just an infant, I saw the destruction myself through my ability to dream others’ memories as if they were my own dreams. I watched the Liberator brutally murder Cirillo Kaladin, the former coven leader of the Moros coven.
No one really knew—or at least wouldn’t tell me—why Amate did what she did that day. The surviving residents of Sanlow fled, and she claimed the entire town herself. When she wasn’t residing there, she was out destroying any coven she found that had formed afterward.
Before I could respond, Ciel continued, “Did you like the memory I sent you? No doubt it could have happened naturally, but I wanted to let you know I was around.”
Tess cried out wordlessly, again trying to warn me about something. My guess? It was about Ciel’s power. That made me angry, too, but at the universe. Why do the most evil vampires have powerful abilities?
Thanks to my vampire blood, I was gifted the dream ability. Piroska Niran—wherever she was—had an emotion-control ability. I knew the former coven leaders of Sanlow each had one. It seemed Ciel did as well.
Great. Just great.
Focus, Bas, I told myself as I started to give in to despair again. I glared at Ciel. “Yeah. I remember exactly what Amate said to your father. ‘The moment you die is the moment I will chase her to the end of the world if need be. She must die, and I will relish in the knowledge that she now watches us. I know you are watching, and I hope your scheming was worth it. I will not kill you today, but rest assured, you will die by my hand.’”
Ciel curled her lip, not expecting my memory to be as good as any vampire’s. “Yes,” she growled. “How about I show you something else?”
“No,” I snapped, writhing to break myself free from her grip. “Let us go! If you think I’m helping you with anything, you’re delusional. I’m not stealing anyone’s so-called throne, and I’m not finding the spellbook. I am going to protect my friends and get us as far away from this dump as soon as we possibly can!”
Unexpectedly, Ciel released me. I bolted over to Tess. She was sitting on the couch with Em, leaning on each other’s shoulders. “Let’s get out of here,” I panted. “One of us has a token, right? Or were they all left behind again?”
It was always our luck that we had escape plans literally stashed in our pockets in the form of our loved ones’ belongings like a scrap of clothing, but every time the moment came that they were needed, an enemy whisked us away or stripped us of our belongings. It was cruelly ironic.
“There’s no point.”
I jerked toward the rasping voice that was neither Tess’s nor Em’s. My adopted brother, Egan, was sitting next to them, blood gushing from a savage bite to his neck. His face was drained of color as his life began to fade.
“No!” I gasped, throwing myself down in front of him—
But then he was gone, replaced by Zaria, my adopted mother. She was dying, too. And then she was gone in a blink.
“Bas,” Tess wept from behind me. She wasn’t on the couch anymore. I whirled again to see her on her knees with her back to Ciel as Ciel’s hand curved around her throat, her long nails piercing the skin to draw blood.
Terror seized my heart as I lurched forward. “Don’t hurt her! Fine! I’ll do whatever you want—”
My words cut off in a gasp when suddenly Ciel’s hand was around my throat. She whispered in my ear, “You and I are very much alike. I have a power, too. I can make you see, hear, smell, and taste whatever I want you to. I projected my memories of our father’s death into your mind.” Ciel withdrew to murmur in my other ear, barely stirring my hair, “You should be thanking me, by the way. I tricked Cirillo into thinking you were dead.”
Egan, Zaria, and Tess were just hallucinations. “You threw me in a river instead. That doesn’t count as a mercy.”
“Hm. True. Your survival that day was my fault, I suppose. I should have checked to make sure you really drowned.”
“Too bad,” I growled. “You’ve been on the run for seventeen years blaming me when you just admitted it’s all your own fault.”
Ciel shrieked inhumanly in my ear and shoved me so hard that I stumbled onto my knees. As I lurched to my feet to spin on her, another voice called my name, and it felt like the sun parting storm clouds.
“Koen,” I rasped, searching the spacious room for my father figure, praying to nonexistent gods that this was real and not Ciel’s manipulation. I blinked, and for a moment, the place was completely empty of everyone, but then the trick shattered like glass to reveal a scene of chaos.
