One chance meeting can change everything.
Meet Ethan Cristescu, vampire and owner of the Crimson night club.
Ethan enjoys the good things in life, the company of beautiful women and a sip of blood every now and again. Little does he know, everything is going to change in his perfectly ordered world when a frightened woman who smells of sunshine walks into his club. This woman is nothing like those Ethan normally admires, yet when her big blue eyes latch onto his he is suddenly enthralled and determined to discover what she is. How can she smell like the sun? And how is she able to withstand his powers of compulsion?
Crimson is a novella of The Ultimate Power Series, telling Ethan’s tale of the night he first met Tegan and how inviting her into his life would inevitably alter it.
The story continues in Book Two from the Ultimate Power Series
Tegan’s Return
Read on for an excerpt from L.H Cosway’s YA Paranormal Romance Novel
A Strange Fire
Chapter One
The Story of Florence Vaine
I was born to be a victim.
I was born to be timid. I was born to be a prisoner. I was born to gaze at my shoes and not be able to get the words out. I was born to be the target of my father’s hate. But still, I was born. Doesn’t everything that is born deserve to live?
The daisy growing on a patch of grass outside of my grandmother’s doorstep tells the truth. All things that are born do deserve to live, but that doesn’t mean they are going to get what they deserve. Because I’m sitting on the step and looking at the daisy, just as my father storms out of the house and stamps the defenceless little flower into the ground. Crushing living things seems to be his speciality. Or maybe just poisoning them slowly.
I barely know my grandmother, and yet he is abandoning me here. I should feel liberated. But I don’t. I must have become institutionalised by his brutality somewhere along the way. How could it be possible to be sad about getting away from a tyrant? I am being freed by a cruel and evil dictator, and somehow I feel let down.
There must be something wrong with my brain. All the years of abuse has messed with the chemicals. Besides, all of this h
as come as kind of a shock, since only last week as my dad knocked back a bottle of Jim Beam, he slurred, You’re a worthless excuse for a daughter, but don’t you ever think of running away, because I will bloody well find you. The hateful words still ring in my memory.
He’s always saying things like that to me, whenever he thinks I might pluck up the courage to run away. All the time with the threats. I still don’t understand his sudden decision to send me to live with Gran. Perhaps it was divine intervention.
He takes the last drag out of his cigarette and then throws it away, stubs it out with the sole of his black leather boot. He looks at me as I peer up at him.
“So Flo,” he begins, without even a hint of regret in his voice. “I’m off now, you better be good for your gran, you hear?”
I take a deep breath, before managing, “Y-y-yes s-sir.”
I’ve always had a stammer. It kicks up when I have to talk to Dad, or if I’m meeting new people. Social interaction is not my strong point.
“You’ll be starting school on Monday, your gran registered you.”
“O-okay.”
“Still with the stutter, eh?”
“S-sorry.”
He glares at me disdainfully and then looks over at his truck. “I’m probably gonna be gone a long time, so, you know - take care.”
This is certainly the most love he has ever shown me, and I’m not even sure that telling a person to “take care” can be classified as actual affection. He gives me one last squint eyed look before getting in his truck and pulling out of the driveway. I stand up for a minute and watch as he gets further and further away from me, and then completely disappears from sight. I wonder if he’ll ever come back.
My grandmother is in her seventies and has very little vision. I haven’t spent much time with her in my life. I could probably count the number of occasions Dad took me to see her on one hand, without using up all five fingers. But even though I don’t know her very well, I still know that she’s a good person. Not like Dad.
I can see everybody’s aura, the colours of their soul. It’s a gift. It’s a curse. It’s ambiguous really. I never asked for it, and yet I have it. I still don’t know if it’s real, there’s a good chance I’ve got psychological problems. Maybe all of those cracks to the skull have caused me to start seeing colours that don’t exist. Gran’s colours are a mixture of lavender and silver, most elderly people have silver mixed in with their aura. I’ve come to think of it as a mark of distinction. Once you get to a certain age you get your silver badge, or whatever. The lavender indicates imagination, sometimes a daydreamer, which is unique for an elderly person. Gran must be one of those old ladies who will always be young at heart.
The colours change with a person’s feelings, with their mood and inner thoughts. Gran’s are telling me that she’s both happy and nervous to be having me stay with her. I don’t blame her for being nervous. Her son is a devil. She probably thinks I’m one too. I’m not though. I’m just me, a nervous, stammering idiot. I sit down on her floral print sofa across from the mahogany rocking chair she’s perched in. I wonder what her degenerating eyes can see, probably just a misty outline of me.