Blood Legacy Origin of Species

BLOOD LEGACY:

ORIGIN OF SPECIES

KERRI HAWKINS

ISBN: 978-0-9766231-6-8

Digital Edition

BLOOD LEGACY it’s logo, all related characters and their likenesses are ™ and © 2011 Kerri Hawkins and Red Raptor Productions, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Digital Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook 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 person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Also available from Kerri Hawkins

BLOOD LEGACY: THE STORY OF RYAN

(ISBN: 1-58240-248-5)

BLOOD LEGACY: THE HOUSE OF ALEXANDER

(ISBN: 0-9766231-0-2)

BLOOD LEGACY: HEIR TO THE THRONE

(ISBN: 978-0-9766231-4-4)

THE DARKNESS: VOLUME I

(ISBN: 978-1-58240-797-5)

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CHAPTER 1

THE AIR WAS VERY STILL AND THICK. The sky in the distance was dark with amorphous, swirling clouds. A strange tension squeezed the woman’s stomach, compressed her lungs and clutched her heart. She smiled nervously at a passing neighbor but the other woman would not meet her gaze and hurried past.

The woman continued on, glancing about the street. It was oddly empty and silent for this time of the morning. Merchants should be out hawking their wares in the center square. Children should be running about chasing stray dogs or the occasional pig. The clink of the blacksmith should be a welcome background to the musical hum of the crowd.

Perhaps it was the approaching storm, the woman thought to herself. Bad weather made people act queerly. It was evident she would not be able to buy the bread she had hoped to find in the square; the baker was nowhere to be seen. She turned on her heel and hurried back to her hut.

She paused in the doorway of the simple dwelling. It was a poor home, but at least it had a wooden door instead of a flap at the entrance. She pushed through the door to check her children. Two girls and a boy sat at the table finishing the meager breakfast she had provided. Her husband had left early to hunt in the forest so, god willing, they would have meat for dinner.

The woman brushed the hair from her eyes. She was pretty in a plain sort of way, wavy brown hair, full lips, fair skin that she tried to keep soft with tallow. Her figure would have been curvaceous were times not so lean. She was remarkably ordinary with one exception: the startling green eyes that peered from that unremarkable face.

Those green eyes surveyed her children who glanced up curiously. They did not seem to feel the tension of the coming storm and for that she was grateful. She stepped back out of the house and into the street, assessing the approaching weather. She bit her lip at the sky in the distance. Her husband was beneath that blackening sky and the storm appeared to be worsening.

The woman could not take her eyes from the clouds. They seemed to be growing in strength and number, and the storm front now took up the entire western sky. The shape of the clouds was unusual, less like water vapor and more like a churning, twisting mass of fury. As the front moved closer the clouds grew stranger, less like clouds and more like some great swarm of insects.

The wind shifted and with it came an eerie, leathery flapping and high pitched shrieking. The woman looked back to the storm front, a chill rising in bumps on her skin. Her eyes were good and she could just begin to make out the black shapes within the cloud, at the same time realizing the black shapes were the cloud.

“What is that, mama?”

Her son had followed her out and now clutched the hem of her worn skirt. For a moment she stood wordless, unable to respond. And in that moment of silence the ground began to vibrate, then began to rumble, then began to violently shake.

“Get back in the house,” she said urgently, and the boy responded to her tone of voice with a quick glance of fear behind him.

She knew that she herself should get in the house, yet she could not take her eyes from the churning mass of birds that was now taking up half the sky. There were hawks, falcons, eagles, ravens, and vultures. They were birds of prey and scavengers, but more than anything, they were an omen of massive death.

The rumbling increased and was now a steady roar accompanied by a rapidly approaching cloud of dust. The roar divided, the divisions became distinct, the distinctions resolved themselves into a thousand hoof beats just as the cloud of dust resolved itself into a stampede of terrified animals fleeing from some unknown horror. Wolves, foxes, cows, pigs, deer, rabbits, and squirrels scrambled for their lives. Even a bear ignored the abundant prey about him and instead fled in terror.

The woman was frozen in place. She had seen such a stampede before when the animals fled from a wildfire after the drought. But she did not smell any smoke right now.

The grasp of her oldest daughter’s hand snapped her from her paralysis and she stepped into her house just before the tidal wave of animals crashed past her door. She clutched her daughter gratefully, then pushed the children back as the thin walls of their shelter trembled and shook and the dust rose from the cracks in the floor. She pulled them beneath the heavy table, the sturdiest object in the dwelling, and held them close as the roar became louder and louder. The din peaked, then began subsiding.

Her son was crying and she tried to comfort him while hiding her own terror. Although a fire would have been devastating, she wished for the smell of smoke that would tell her the threat was something understandable. As they huddled beneath the table, the rumble faded away and the flapping wings and shrieking of the raptors grew louder.

“Stay here,” she said, addressing all three children.

“Mama, take this,” the boy said, proffering his most prized possession, the small bone knife his father had made for him. The woman took the knife, clutched her son to her breast and kissed his tear-streaked cheek. She kissed each daughter, then pulled herself from beneath the table. She made her way quietly back to the door, opening the flimsy wooden barrier a crack.

She could see her neighbor across the street doing the same, then saw the crack disappear as the door slammed shut. She knew she should follow suit, but her desire to know what was happening was at war with her common sense. She pushed the door open a little wider.

The enormous flock of birds was blotting out the sun. The flock seemed to stop at the far edge of town, wheeling and turning about in a frenzied mass. The woman realized they were hovering over the livestock pens, and within seconds, the frantic squeals and screams of the penned animals could be heard. The woman imagined she could hear the tearing of flesh, so vicious and agitated was the attack.

Although she was trembling, she could not help but crack the door a little wider. Something was walking up the far end of the street. The gait was odd and shuffling but the outline indicated it was a man. Several other figures appeared alongside him, also staggering along. She could not make out any of their features because they were still too far away, but one figure paused in front of a hut, and then pushed to enter. Within seconds, screams were heard that just as quickly went silent.

The figures continued to limp toward her and the woman closed the door, peering only through the tiny crack that remained. One of the children made a noise and she turned to them, violently waving for them to be quiet. They shrank back under the table.

She looked back through the narrow opening, the limitation to her vision adding to her tension. Several of the figures went shuffling by her. They did not turn their heads but seemed dazed, almost as if they were sick. She pressed her eye closer to the crack. They wore gear that indicated they were soldiers and they were most definitely sick. All had a deathly pallor, lesions on their skin and festering wounds that appeared to rupture from the inside out. She choked back a scream as one man’s arm fell off, detaching itself from the rotting flesh of the shoulder then falling to the ground. The man continued on, oblivious to the loss, and a giant vulture landed to claim its feast.

The woman stared at the vulture. Such creatures were hideous even in their normal form, but this one appeared to have flown from the depths of hell. It had two beaks and four eyes, three which focused on the rotting flesh it was consuming, and one that seemed to be looking right at her. She swallowed the vomit that rose in her throat, terrified to make any sound.

The parade of death continued on, the men, if they could be called that, marching onward in an endless display of deformity and mutilation. Screams and the crashing sounds of a struggle would rise above the cacophony of feasting birds, then go abruptly silent.

The woman watched in horror as her neighbor went senseless from fright and bolted into the street. She was quickly set upon by three men who tore her limb from limb in a barbarous fury, blood and flesh flying everywhere. The woman went still and the men returned to their stupor, staggering away from the pile of remains.

“Mama,” her oldest daughter said, her voice trembling.

“Shhh!” the woman said, still peering through the crack.

“Mama!” the girl said, her voice terrified and insistent.

The woman whirled at the tone of voice to see a man standing behind her, facing her children under the table. With extraordinary relief, she recognized her husband.

“Simon,” she exclaimed, rushing to embrace him. She wrapped her arms about his sturdy form, desperate to feel his strength.

“Mama,” the girl said again, as if nothing else would come from her mouth.

Simon turned around and the woman took a step back in revulsion, the knife dropping from her nerveless fingers. He was sick as well, his skin gray and his eyes dull with fever. He did not appear as bad as the men outside, though, and the woman was momentarily hopeful. Perhaps a poultice, some herbs…

“Lia,” the man said, and the woman’s hope grew with the articulation of the name. Those hopes were cruelly dashed with his next words.

“Kill me,” he said, pleading, clinging to the last of his reason. “Please kill me.”

Lia shook her head, taking a step back. “I cannot, Simon. I cannot. Please don’t ask this of me.”

The man closed his eyes in resignation, and when he re-opened them, all of his reason was gone. He sprang at her like an animal, taking her to the ground with incredible strength. In an instant, he fastened upon her neck, tearing out her throat with razor sharp teeth.

Her son sprang from beneath the table and the man turned, dropping Lia like a bag of stones. Her head struck the ground hard, dazing her but unmercifully not knocking her unconscious. She lay there helpless as her husband picked up their child and swung him by the heels, shattering his skull on the hard wooden table and dashing his brains out. The eldest daughter tried to flee but he caught her by the shoulder and tore her arm from its socket. The youngest daughter crouched terrified beneath the table, but he dragged her out by her skirt and snapped her neck.

Lia lay against the door, wishing for death. But it would not come and she was forced to watch from her immobilized position as her husband killed and then began eating their children. She watched as the mindless beast chewed on his progeny, hating him and fearing him and mourning him all at the same time. And when at last he began vomiting a green milky substance and appeared to be dying himself, she cursed god for keeping her alive to see the sight.

The beautiful dark-haired man watched his fair-haired child twist in the bed, imprisoned in some sort of nightmare world. He could not imagine what she was dreaming, but whatever it was, it was causing her great suffering.

CHAPTER 2

THE STRANGER WATCHED THE THREE from the shadows. He had initially been drawn to the trio by the red-haired one, the woman who was one of his Kind. He could feel her even from a distance, so vulnerable, so young, yet surrounded by a strange exotic power that was enticing and assailable, asking for violation. She was beautiful and luminous, and upon first sight he wanted to destroy that beauty by drinking the life from her. When he stumbled upon them, he took quick note of the older boy, also auburn-haired with a pronounced resemblance to his mother. Sturdy and handsome, the human boy was ignored by the stranger entirely.