WitchBlood
By Emma Mills
Copyright © 2010 Emma Mills
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
Witchblood
Copyright © 2010 Emma Mills
www.witchbloodthenovel.com
www.twitter.com/EmmaMwriter
Cover Image : Laura Zalenga
www.laurazalenga.de
For Corrina,
my friend.
A girl who danced with the faeries,
and now rests with angels.
Acknowledgements
A huge thank you to all my friends and family, who gave me a boost when my confidence was flagging. Thanks especially to my fantastic mum, Lynne, who read every new draft and searched tirelessly for my many grammatical errors! Thanks also to my friend Ann Billing for your insightful and enthusiastic comments, which kept me writing. Thanks to the agent, Eunice McMullen, for all her time spent on ‘Witchblood’, and her belief in it. And finally my happiest thanks to my lovely husband, Tom and gorgeous children who have supported me through the whole drama, and for always believing in me.
Thanks also to Holland House who did the final edit, although let it be noted that some UK/US discrepancies may not have been altered to US taste! I am a UK author with UK characters and the language sometimes illustrates that!
Prologue
The party was supposed to be taking place tonight at the cricket club in the village where I’d grown up, and where my dad had lived until this very week. But I say ‘was’ in the literal sense, because here I am looking at the empty building. It should have been bustling with people decorating it and bringing food, yet it was devoid of life; empty but for one rather cute guy, looking slightly taller than average with broad, toned shoulders. He was sitting on a wooden bench overlooking the green, tears silently tracing patterns through his unshaved stubble, his piercing blue eyes glazed with grief.
He’d been there for at least twenty minutes, not moving. I knew this because I’d sat through every one of those minutes, watching him - the boy I loved. The boy I’d had impossible dreams about for weeks. The boy I couldn’t let go.
It was ironic that I'd been the one who'd been watched, secretly and completely unbeknown to me ever since puberty. For five years they watched and waited, expecting my unusual genetic code to kick in, hoping to help me choose the right path but I suffered no prophetic visions. Not once did the electrics blow up on me, and so the code lay, dormant, unused and unneeded, whilst I fell in love with the boy next door.
But now it was my turn to be the watcher, and with my genetic code awakened and running riot in my body, I found it difficult to stay still, stay hidden. I watched his tears and imagined he was waiting for a sign and wishing things were different. Wishing he hadn’t gone away to Dublin, wishing I hadn’t gone clubbing in Manchester with my girlfriends, wishing he’d never left my side and wishing my best friend hadn’t gotten so drunk she’d left the club without me.
Was he questioning life and death, wondering if there was a heaven, and if so did he think I was there? Could I see him sitting there, wishing things were different? Yet I am here, standing in the shadows watching him, unable to come out of my hiding place. I cry silent tears for his pain. I want to run to him, but my feet remain welded to the ground, unable to move a step closer for fear of what may happen. Still, I’m equally powerless to leave him alone, unable to take my eyes from his face. A face of which I know every contour, a face I grew up with, a face I want to hold in both my hands and feel his tears against my cheek.
I know exactly how his dark blonde, unruly hair would feel if I could clench it between my fingers. I know how his lips would feel: dry, a little bit cracked in the winter sunshine, but warm, always warm. And this is the reason I stay away; this is my secret, because only half of me wants to hold him, kiss him, curl into his arms and cry with him.
The other half I struggle to control. The other half wants to leap the short distance to his feet, hold his head in my hands, breathe in all his scent, and bite. Bite down hard and feel his warm thick blood rush into my mouth and throat and heat up my body, setting it alight like he’s never done before, and suck until there’s nothing left of him.
So for now I stay in the shadows. Watching and waiting.