Fire Nectar

Fire Nectar

   
By F.M. Hopkins

The characters
and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real
persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this
book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright
© 2013
F.M. Hopkins

Cover Image - Woman © F.M.
Hopkins 2013

Cover Art - Fire © Andrei
Marincas
2013

Used under license from
Shutterstock.com

Published by Hop
Hop
Productions

All
rights reserved.

ISBN-13:
978-0615824604

2013

“You didn’t tell me I’d have to watch all the people I
love, die!” he yelled, the volume of his voice preternaturally enhanced -
painful to human ears.
 
But she was
not human.
 
Not since 16 June 1812.

“I tried.
 
You
wouldn’t listen,” she reminded him, steadily.

“Liar!” Adrian yelled.

What happened next took six seconds.

With violent speed he grabbed her and threw her against
the wall. She hit it with a loud crack and fell in a heap onto the ground. Like
a flash she recovered, stood up and faced him, unscathed – her eyes
filled with anger and compassion. She wished she knew how to get through to
him, but she always wished that.
 
She loved him and hated him.
 
It didn’t matter.

She turned and, faster than his eyes could see, was
gone.
 
Six painful
seconds.

Adrian knew that because Daniella was two hundred years
older, she was faster and stronger than he was, for now. She left no evidence
she’d been there. No blood on the floor. Nothing. Staring in disbelief at the
empty space, he realized he might not be able to find her again. He probably
wouldn’t see her unless she came looking for him and after what he’d just done,
that wasn’t likely.
 
He dropped to
his knees, red tears falling from his eyes, and yelled into the void, “Dani!
Don’t leave me!”

A safe distance away, she slowed to the pace of a human’s
swift gate, becoming once again visible to any who passed. Each quick step took
her further away from him.
 
Her mind
never left. Could she have said something to him?
 
Would he have been able to hear her this
time?
 
She couldn’t believe what she
had seen, that his eyes were blue again. Light baby blue, as they once had
been.

Something had changed. She wished she knew; was it
permanent?
 
Was she in danger
still?
  
Were the others?
 
She had to find out.

But first she had to get to them, see if she could stop
the four of them before they… Maybe when she told them what she’d seen, they’d
have an answer.
 
If they didn’t
believe her, if they didn’t want to investigate, if they thought it was too
late for mercy - she knew it meant a battle.
 
Julian would be on her side - his
loyalty was to her. The other three though…
 
She walked faster.
 
Had she been
more calm
,
she would have felt the pair of eyes watching her, waiting. She would have
smelled the familiar perfume.
 

“Dani,” the voice said.
 
She spun around.

2012

Standing on a cliff off Mulholland Drive, Dani stared at
the view of city lights below. It was 10 p.m. This was where she often came to
think. Sometimes she stood facing south, overlooking Los Angeles, but tonight
she looked north, at San Fernando Valley. Sitting down on the dirt, she stared
ahead, searching in vain for the charm she used to love. The feeling was still
there – the numbness. She felt imprisoned by it more and more each day.
She knew in her heart that she should do something, should shake it, but that
would take motivation.
 
She had
none.
 
What was the point? What
could be done?
 
She guessed this
must be what depression felt like to humans.
 
Was she depressed? She felt sure she
must
be,
because everything looked dull and flat,
including the twinkle lights of humanity below.
 

 
“I remember
when that was beautiful,” she said aloud, her own voice surprising her.
 
She hadn’t known she’d spoken until she
heard it. Even her voice held no color, no light.

She heard the footsteps well before she saw their owner
and her senses perked up, tuned in to the sounds and smells.
 
Leaves and branches
giving way to fur.
Twigs cracked under the weight of paw after paw.
Wounds from
flea bites
bearing fresh scabs.
The stench of dirt and grime…and blood.
From behind a bush
stepped the coyote, male and large.
 
Maybe the alpha of the pack, she couldn’t be sure.
 
It spotted her sitting three feet away,
lowered its body menacingly and smelled her.
 

Only her eyes moved as she watched it, clocking its every
twitch. All at once it realized the dreadful truth
;
that it was the prey and she was predator. With a yelp it backed up and turned
on its heels, lunging away into a bush and beyond, to escape. She could easily
catch it if she wanted to. It might shake away the numbness.
 
She toyed with the idea but
the thought was interrupted by an unexpected car door to her right
.
She hadn’t even heard it pull up. Why? Getting careless, she thought, warning
herself
.

Footsteps approached, passing her own vehicle parked on
the shoulder, a dirty, black Jeep Cherokee. The smell of human wafted into her
nose.
 
Male footsteps, she could
tell from the sound and weight of their fall.
 
His scent had a soft faded soap
smell which
she loved.
 
She turned her head at a deliberate human pace and saw a man of
approximately fifty years of age.
 
He wore a look of concern on his lined face.
 
She could see the blood pumping in his
veins, could smell the cut on his finger from the envelope he’d opened a little
too quickly that afternoon.
Mmm
.

“You okay?”
 
he
asked.

She didn’t answer right away.
 
Her mind skipped to a daydream where she
rose faster than he could see, grabbed his head and fastened her teeth into his
overly tanned neck.
 
She smiled at
the thought. If only she would let herself, maybe it would wake her up and
strip the numbness away for good.
 
But then she’d have to deal with her conscience.
 
Plus it probably wouldn’t work
anyway.
 
Meh.

She turned back to the view, “I’m fine. Just thinking.”
He stopped to keep a polite
stranger to stranger
distance. She smelled cut grass on him from the golf course. They used a
certain kind of pesticide that was unmistakable.
 
So that’s where the lined face came
from, she thought, because nobody allows themselves to wrinkle in Los Angeles
if they can help it, and they usually can.

“Oh, sorry - I saw your Jeep - and you sitting there by
yourself - and thought you might need help,” he said, concern not yet
completely wiped away.
 
She sensed
he was genuine and had no ulterior motive.
 
A disappointment.

She turned to meet his eyes and caught sight of his
jugular vein, pulsating there, taunting her.
 
It begged her to wipe away the
depression by doing something that was against the rules.
 
No one was around.
 
No other cars had passed for
minutes.
 
The lights in the nearby
houses were out, save one, and it was too far away to harbor a nosy witness.
 
He tilted his head in question,
wondering what she was thinking.

“Well, that’s very sweet of you, but I’m fine.
 
Like I said, just thinking.”
 
She said it with a tone of finality that
let him know their conversation was over. He was safe. She’d have to find
another way to make herself feel better. She’d been taught not to kill good
people. There were few enough of them walking amongst us.
 
The villains however…well, they had to
die.

“Right.
 
Of course.
 
Okay
then.
 
I’ll let you get back to
it.
 
Sorry… for disturbing you,” he
said a bit sheepishly and turned to head back.

“You didn’t disturb me,” she called to his back as he
departed, “but you really should be more careful.”

He hesitated at hearing such an odd thing from a woman.
He murmured something like, “okay goodnight,” but his heart quickened and he
tried not to hurry as he went back to his car.
 
He didn’t want to be rude.
 
She watched him walk to his car and get
in. Watched as he drove away.
 
Pity.
 

That Thought nagged at her again as it had every night
for way too long. It wasn’t there in the beginning. No, in the beginning
everything felt new and happy and wondrous. The first time it came, she was
able to ignore it until it passed.
 
The next time That Thought came, she released it with a new and lively
diversion, throwing herself into decadence and all-consuming fun. Decades
passed and again it came. Determined, she threw That Thought away that time
with force by the focus on and acquisition of a new skill - and then another
and then another. In time That Thought returned, though, stronger and made her
angry. She tried to fight it. She would battle away That
Thought,
do whatever she could, within the rules, to make it go away. Finally, recently,
she lost the war. It haunted her. Owned her. Enslaved her, until she didn’t
know how to fight anymore.

That Thought was this: What do you do with eternity?
 

Staring at the twinkling lights below she said it again,
louder this time, “I remember when that was beautiful.” She looked at her
watch.
 
Her friends would be
impatient by now. She forced herself to stand.

15
June 1812

“Millie!” Miss Daniella Harcourt implored, hurrying to
her cousin’s side, unaware she was being watched by an elegant female stranger
amidst persons of high society near the wall opposite. Just moments before,
upon her hurried arrival to
Almack’s
, she’d met this
stranger’s eyes quite by accident while scanning the room for her cousin. She
had averted her gaze immediately, out of politeness. Upon catching sight of the
object of her search, she put the unusual person out of her mind. “Millie!”

Lady Millicent Blackwell, always spiteful and overbearing
in personality, was Daniella’s only chance. She was, in fact, the only family
member she and her beloved father had in London. It was to see her that had
brought Daniella to
Almack’s
Assembly Rooms that
night. Upon entering the social club a fearful thought grabbed her - what if
her cousin was not in attendance? Gratefully that fear was put to rest at once,
and she rushed to her savior’s side.

“Millie! I’m so glad to have found you! I must talk to
you in private. Pray, come.”

“Yes, yes. Daniella. What are you
blabbering
 
on
about? Good
gracious,
look at you. You might have worn something other than this tired gown I’ve seen
you in a dozen times or more!” Millie said, in a voice that should have been
quiet, “However, I dare say it is of no matter to me how you wish to present
yourself.” Daniella glanced down at the lavender muslin gown - her best - which
she’d worn more often than was socially acceptable because her financial
situation afforded her no other option.

She blushed, raised her eyes, and gulped down her pride
to plod on. “Please Millie, let’s not talk of my gown just now. I will take
your sound advice and wear something better next time, I promise you!
 
Now I must beg a private audience of the
most urgent nature.”
 

“My dear cousin, look across the hall. There!” Millie
said, stubbornly refusing to heed her. With her gloved hand she motioned across
the spacious room to the stranger. The striking woman several years her senior
looked directly at Daniella at that very moment and their eyes met again. “Have
you yet been introduced to Lady Elizabeth Jendring?
 
She’s just arrived to town. New, you
know.
 
Never been to London before
this season. They say her husband died of a terrible illness in India.
Thankfully she herself was spared, although I’m sure she must be quite lost
without him. Dreadful isn’t it?”

Daniella became acutely aware of
herself
as the stranger seemed to look through her, indeed to her very soul. Her eyes
were a pale sea-foam green framed by lovely blond hair which fell in perfect
ringlets onto her shoulders. “Quite an inheritance he left her, they say. And I
believe they are right.
 
Only look
at her gown.
 
It’s of the highest
fashion --”

 
“-- Millie,
please, I must confer with you for but a moment, please!” Daniella interrupted
hoarsely.
 

 
“Oh goodness
– you are a trying creature!
 
Fine, let’s be off then.
 
Just look at your hair. You’d think your
abigail
didn’t know how to manage the very simplest
of coifs.”
 
Daniella blushed pink at
this insult.
 
She’d not been able to
employ an
abigail
for some
time. Millicent knew this, of course. She bit her tongue, gulped down her pride
and ushered her sneering cousin to a private room near them. She shut the thick
door, letting out a heavy sigh of relief that they were alone.

“We’ve nothing, Millie.
 
Father has lost it all and then
some.
 
I am throwing myself onto the
ground beneath you in hopes that you will help us.” Daniella held Millicent’s
hand and looked into her eyes imploringly.

Millicent pulled her hands away and spat, “Well, pray,
what do you expect me to do about it, cousin?”

 
“Perhaps if
you could house us for a time until I can contrive a way to carry us out of
this hole.” Daniella looked for hope in her only kin’s face and found none.

“Just so that he may throw you back in it?
 
I think not!
 
It is not my fault that you have
shackled yourself to that wretched father of yours in hopes of saving him from
a fate he himself seeks.
 
Every time
he goes to those rooms, making wagers and playing cards and – things that
ladies of quality like you and I - should not know about, much less speak of!”

 
Millicent
paced the room. “You with your beauty and charms could have married easily as
soon as you were presented, but no, you turned down every hand offered you in
order to stay and lay watch over a father who everyone knew would drive you
into ruin sooner rather than later.
 
That heart of yours has done nothing but drown you
 
– saving him time and again no
matter what it cost you!
 
Has he
ever repaid your kindness, nor shown you any love?
 
I think not!”

“Not true!” Daniella fiercely objected.
 
“My father loves me more than life
itself!
 
He has not the capacity to
harm a fly and you know it!”

Millicent raised her brow in such a way as made it clear
she did not appreciate the tone, nor did she believe a word of what had been
said. “Truly?
 
You cannot believe
it, cousin.
 
If he loved you more
than his cards, then and only then would you have a roof over head and food on
the table!”

Tears spilled out as Daniella choked out words she did
not believe. “You are right.
 
Everything you say is true. Forgive me. I’m so tired. Please Millie,
pray, have mercy on us.
 
I have
nowhere else to turn but to your merciful heart, dear cousin.”

Millicent stared at her, unmoved, until she finished.
Then, to Daniella’s dismay, an evil smile spread slowly across her lips and she
hissed,
 
“It was said you would be
such a success, you know.
 
I
remember it well. My own parents agreed aloud and never once said the same of
me.
 
‘Daniella, with her beauty and
accommodating nature, will be the bell of the ball as soon as she is presented.
She’ll be married, and married well, by the time she is not yet eighteen, I’ll
wager.’
 
Wager…wager…” she repeated,
thinking on the words. “Ah yes, I remember.
 
It was your father who said that and
quite often, after your poor dear mother died.
 
And now it has become yet another wager
which he has lost!” she spat as she strode to the door in finality. Turned at
last toward her victim, her hand ready upon the knob, she released her final
blow, “You’ve made your bed, my dear cousin.
 
I shall watch you lie in it.”

Just then the door opened but not from Millicent’s
hand.
 
The knob indeed turned and
the opened door produced, quite shockingly, Lady Elizabeth Jendring.
 
Her excessively pale green eyes surveyed
the room and found the air quite thick. “Hmm
..
” she
said in a voice that was silky smooth, “Lady Blackwell and Miss Harcourt, I
believe? It is my intense pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Elizabeth
Jendring. I hope I find you both well?” Both ladies addressed nodded with
rounded shocked eyes, their voices lost to them.

Lady Elizabeth smiled in return and continued in a voice
as soothing as molasses tea, “It is beyond rude of me and I pray you will
forgive my impudence, but Lady Blackwell, may I have a word in private with
Miss Harcourt, unless of course you have not yet finished your discourse? I
don’t mind waiting.
Here.
”
 
She smiled coolly and it was clear that
she expected an exit from the viper, and a quick one.
 
Had she come to rescue Daniella? The
timing was impeccable.
 
It could not
be so. To be heard through walls and doors as thick as those which surrounded
them was not possible, unless perhaps one had yelled at the top of their
capacity.
 
Since Millicent’s voice
had hissed quiet as a snake’s tongue, both cousins were at a loss as to why and
how this strange beauty’s entrance had been so opportune.

Millie stared blankly a moment longer than was
comfortable, unsure of what to do.
 
Her eyes shifted from Daniella - who looked as confused as she - to
Elizabeth who gazed back at her with such calm stillness as to be excessively
unnerving.
 
Millicent
struggled,
shifting her weight from foot to foot before her
wits returned and she forced a polite smile.
 
It was plain she was jealous that the
newcomer should want an audience of Daniella and not herself. As no request for
her to stay came forth, she bowed stiffly and reluctantly left the room as
slowly as she could, looking quite ridiculous.

When they were alone, Lady Elizabeth Jendring turned to
Miss Daniella Harcourt and said in a voice filled with poise and confidence,
“Daniella, I’ve been observing you, my dear, and I believe I have a solution to
what plagues you.
 
Won’t you give me
the pleasure of being my guest for dinner this time tomorrow evening?
 
Do come and we shall discuss matters in
great length, or not at all - should that be your wish. May I rely upon you?”
Elizabeth held both her hands out.

Daniella nodded innocently and reached out to take both
hands in hers. “Good,” Elizabeth continued with reassuring ease, “I’ll send a
card to your residence so you know will the way.
 
It’ll be just after sundown. Come alone,
will you?” Elizabeth gave her hands a light squeeze, smiled, and was gone.

Unaware she’d been holding her breath, she exhaled.
 
Daniella felt exceedingly drawn to the
strange woman. She had such striking eyes. But her hands...

Her hands had been so very cold.