Clandestine - Excerpt [unedited]

Happy New Year guys! As promised, here's an excerpt from Clandestine! ENJOY!



She slowed down and
stopped, pulling the keys out of the ignition and putting them in her pocket.
She turned in her seat and faced me.




“You can’t be in a mood,
Brandon. I don’t know how you feel to leave your family, heck, I rarely ever
leave this place, and when I do, it’s to go to another Harper village.” I
watched as she moved her hand to mine and stroked it, like it would somehow
make me forgive her for throwing my phone out of the window.

“It’s the only thing I
have that connects me to my family. What if I can’t speak to my mum again?” I
asked.

She smiled at me. “That’s
a stupid thought, besides, your mum know where we are if she wanted to come and
visit. This is for your safety.”

“So you keep saying.”

I looked up and noticed
her roll her eyes. I was being a little bit childish now, and I could feel it,
but I liked it, for some reason I felt like I was able to act like a child,
like something inside merited me being able to be childish.

“I have a surprise for
you, well, Granddad told me to bring you here, it’s a great place.” She opened
the door and climbed out, so I followed.

We walked down the
makeshift path and the forest around us grew thicker. Kari looked at me and
smiled.

“You’re going to love it,”
she said.

“Why?” I asked, giving in.

She opened her mouth to
speak again, and then stopped and nodded to a huge opening in front of us. I
turned and found it, sitting there, it was peace. A huge lake, so calm, and it
was warm, and besides it there was a huge house built into a tree.

“This is where you dad
came to think, he also wanted his children to have it. And you’re his only
child, so this is yours,” she said.

“More importantly,” I
smiled, “why the hell is it so warm?”

“Your dad could manipulate
the atmosphere.”

I bit the inside of my
lip; the word could hit me. He could do it, but he can’t anymore; he’d dead. I
sucked in a deep breath and headed for the tree house. It was huge, it looked
like a wooden house had just fallen on top of a tree and now the branches
intertwined around it.

“Oh, I have something
inside for you as well,” Kari shouted after me.

I reached the trunk and
found a ladder sprung from a door out of the bottom of the house. I climbed up
it and pushed the hatchet. It was pitch black, and behind the darkness a loud
screech sounded.

“Hello,” I shouted.

A pair of curtains drew
back, revealing the man from yesterday, Harry. He smiled at me, and then my eyes
fixed on something else. I slowly pushed myself up into the house, eyeing the
person who sat in the cage with their shoulders hunched up and their back
dipped whilst they stood there on their hands and knees.

“What’s that?” I asked,
edging away from it.

“That’s how we’re going to
find out just how latent your abilities are,” Kari said, popping her head up.

“But what is it?” I
couldn’t stop looking at it, and from the misty eyed look following me around
the room, I knew that the thing couldn’t stop looking at me either.

“He’s a slicer vamp, and
Harry is his owner.”

“A puritan, I have control
over my lust and I’m not at all like the slicers,” Harry butted in, smiling at
me. And then I noticed it in him as well, that glared over gaze and the toothy
smile.

I smiled back. “Vampires
aren’t re—” I swallowed my words. “Of course they are.”

“We’ve already met,
haven’t we, Brandon?” Harry said, bridging the gap and walking towards me with
his hand out. I shook it, his skin wasn’t cold and he didn’t try and kill me.
That was nice of him.

“I think I understand what
the hunt was all about now,” I said, butting my lips together.

“You know about the hunt?”
Kari asked.

“No, but, I guess it has
something to do with these,” I said, nodding towards the two vampires in the room,
and then it dawned on me, this house was huge. And this was the first room; I
noticed doors leading off, and to the right beside the wall were a set of
stairs leading to another floor.

“It’s a huge house,” Harry
said, winking at me.

I gulped. “Yeah, who lives
here?”

“Nobody, it belonged to
your dad, he made it when he was with your mum,” Kari said. “Now it just
collects dust.”

“Can I have a look
around?” I immediately asked.

“No,” she replied. “I have
to make sure your latent ability is still there.”

This family was full of
deflation. I puffed out my cheeks and sighed. “I take it, he’s involved,” I
pointed to the man contorted in the cage.

Kari nodded. “Get him
out,” she said.

Harry opened the cage and
the pale skinned man crawled out slowly. He was wearing a pair of dirty
underwear and they were held up by a tight knotted piece of rope around his
waist. The man looked up at me, and I saw his eyes dart off in all different
directions.

“What am I supposed to do
for this test,” I asked, backing up whilst the other two walked behind it.

“Nothing,” Kari said with
a grin.

I glanced back at the man
and as I made eye contact with his dull sunken eyes he pounced. He hit me and I
fell back as he gripped a hold of my shoulder blades and pushed me hard against
the wooden floor.

I felt my body vibrate and
for a moment I thought my phone was still in my pocket. It tingled in my palms
as I tried to push him off and flex my shoulder blades, but he didn’t budge, he
growled and hissed, while breathing a disgusting smell in my face. I tried to
keep from gagging or retching, but it made me push harder, until I gave up, and
a tickle popped inside my head.

There was an instant sigh
of relief as the pain around my neck and torso vanished. I opened my eyes and
found myself lying on the ground, and then to the sound of a large whining
sound as the vampire retreated to its cage.

I picked my head up and
frowned. “I thought he was trying to kill me.”

“Great!” Kari shouted and
started to clap. “Your ability is surfacing.”

“What is it?”

“I don't know, but whatever it is, you scared this one off, he almost went flying,” she giggled.

Harry grinned as he
watched the men in the cage shake. “I think we’re going to put him down.”

“What?” I asked. Putting
him down, I continued to repeat to myself. It made my throat swell inside my
mouth. They were going to put him down, a person.

“They’re going to kill
him,” Kari said. “It’s fine though, he probably needs to be put out of his
misery.”

I glanced down at him,
knowing that he was going to die gave me a new found hope for him, I kind of
wanted him to live now. And even though he wasn’t human, he still wasn’t an
animal either.







Joseph Eastwood








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