Between Shadows

  Between Shadows

  Joanne Durann

  Copyright © 2009 by Joanne Durann

  Published by Electric Moon Publishing

  www.emoonpublishing.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter 1

  “I don’t know how this has happened to me, but it has, and I don’t know what to do about it. My family is gone and that may not be my fault; but it was my fault that I didn’t stop it.” Miranda smiled as she finished writing the note she left for her parents to discover. “I’m sorry but it’s my only way out, I can’t take this anymore, and I need to stop them. I can’t risk anyone else getting hurt or killed because of me. Goodbye.”

  Miranda knew her mother would find the note as she left it laying on the kitchen counter, her mother had always left notes there, when she was a child, so that would be the first place Wendy would look.

  It was a dreary, cold, snowy spring day. The kind of day that makes you want to stay in bed with the covers pulled up over your face and snuggle in with the one you love. This was the type of day Miranda would have loved until about eight months ago, and now it was all just a distant, painful memory. The temperature started out in the low 20’s, but the radio said it would rise into 30’s. Today would be the day she planned how things would go.

  Miranda looked back at her small house for only a moment, a moment in time to remember, and to understand. A she looked up at the mountain she thought about how many times the family had walked together on those trails next to the house, until that fateful day they were happy, for one long glance Miranda looked just so it could be the last memory she would have, because this was all she wanted to remember.

  Miranda kept walking with all of the thoughts of that day in her head. So it was hours before she knew it, looked up, and she was miles away from the house. Miranda was thinking only about the loss of her family and never even began to worrying about the loss of her own life.

  None of her surroundings had really sunk in yet, and Miranda was still walking when she hit the plateau at the top of the ridge. It was there that she first started to notice things. The sun shone through and sparkled in way that before would have been beyond anything she could have imagined. It was so incredibly beautiful and the world looked as if nothing had ever gone wrong. It was as if the world knew nothing about her life, past, and family, or even about her gift.

  Miranda liked to call it her burden, something she was born with and could never get rid of. Her burden that was a real life-long sentence and one from the beginning she never really understood. No one ever believed her, and so she had learned she could either face repressing it, or risk ridicule and being ostracized for revealing it. Miranda just didn’t know what repressing it had really meant.

  “I just wanted it to all finally be over with, that would be the best thing for me and the ones I saw,” she thought.

  They were the people of different races that Miranda saw, and thought she could never understand. Psychical beings that no one believed existed.

  The trail was clear ahead, and Miranda climbed for miles before she turned left to go north. There was a strange feeling of belonging here, like she was meant to go this way. Miranda walked on, becoming very sure that she would leave something all along the train behind her for people to find, and realize she was gone. Something to give her family the closure they would need so they wouldn’t go looking for her, and end their own life in the process. Miranda stopped and took a look around it was quiet and serene, the woods seemed calm and inviting, even the animals gave her the peace she needed.

  Miranda stopped and set up camp where she sat down and waited, waited for the fate that was to come. She never thought that her life would ever come to this; but she also thought that her life wouldn’t be so complicated after she learned to repress her mind.

  Miranda was very comfortable having decided her own fate, she knew she had nothing to worry about anymore; the bills, the house, and the weather outside, not even the cold loneliness inside. Everyone else seemed to move on, and they kept telling her she needed to find peace and get on with her life, that she couldn’t change what had happened.

  Miranda’s family had just started to move on from the accident, and his family left completely. They didn’t like all the nonsense she was spouting, they just wanted her to leave it alone and move on herself. They didn’t understand what she was going through, what she saw or who caused the accident. Miranda couldn’t understand why they didn’t want to know who it really was. It was just like that when she was young and even with years of repressing her mind she still ended up here. Miranda was frustrated inside her own mind because of all of the knowledge she had that no one else could accept.

  She was done with all of it, just as she had been done with it when she turned 14. Miranda was done with being told that she was either crazy or that she just didn’t understand what was real and what wasn’t. Miranda was done with people and the doctors making excusing up for her to others who might want to believe her. Miranda was also done seeing what only she could see and what made her look and feel so crazy.

  Miranda knew that she was finally ready, when it felt like the world was gone, and she just started to see again. Things were even clearer now that she decided she needed to see again, because one came to close to her daughter, that was the first time Miranda let herself really see what was out there. Miranda hadn’t realized at the time, how much was out there, and although in the beginning she tried to ignore some of it she couldn’t and that’s when they found her.

  “It was because I couldn’t ignore them and my eyes mistakenly follow one of them that they tried to kill me and killed my family instead. They knew I could see them and they were shocked. It was on their faces and in their minds as I read them, this was the first time in known history a human could be a real problem, and all Miranda could think about is, if I am “a human” then, what are they?” She thought to herself. “Ahh! This is so frustrating!”

  In planning her own death, Miranda was hoping to find some peace with herself and her family could move on. Her family could finally stop making excusing and wondering what would come out of her mouth next. They could be happy at family gatherings and not worry about what she would see or learn about some family member or another.

  “Would I find out which person was cheating on the other, or who was going to die next? No one in our family even wanted to be around me anymore and I know they always forced someone to talk to me. They could keep people on the outside from hearing what I said but on holidays all of our family members knew that I knew what was going to happen next and that it was somehow always true, and so some of them stopped coming around because of me. Now it won’t be a problem for them anymore. It’s not like anyone ever seemed to worry about my pain or feelings and what all of that knowledge does to a person on the inside.”

  “No
one even tried to think about what I was going through!” She yelled out at the mountain as if it could feel her pain.

  Miranda was very deep in thought, when she felt him coming, she met up with her fate and his name was Jared. Miranda knew him right away though she had never talked to him.

  She thought back, “it was when the others first saw that I could follow them with my eyes; Jared was one of the first ones who kept an eye on me. Even then ultimately I knew it was by his hands I would die. I am ready to be alone with him and accept what is about to come.”

  Miranda saw him coming in her mind while he was still far off and she watched as closely as she could so she could time him, his moves, his thoughts and even how he would attack her. The weird thing was as Jared got close Miranda looked right at him, right in his eyes and couldn’t see her death.

  Miranda was angry at first. “I should have seen it, it was what I do and yet it’s not there. This is the one thing that is so wrong with me, I always saw what someone was going to do, what they did, and what was on their minds, even their death, yet where is my death? Shouldn’t it be right there in his eyes? Wasn’t it in his plans? What is happening to me?” She thought. “I always see it, and I had planned to see it this time. Could it be that now something had gone wrong? Could I have finally been normal now that I’m so ready to die?” She continued to think aloud, “Could this be nature’s way of giving me a final last breathe of peace, not seeing what pain I would need to endure in my final minutes?”

  Miranda approached the area that she knew he would find her in and she waited for him.

  Jared came in quickly but then suddenly stopped because Miranda seemed to know his moves, and what he was going to do. Jared was very shaken by thought that a human woman could read him well enough to know where he was going before he knew, or just as the thought seemed to enter his head. Even as Jared changed his moves, Miranda seemed to react, and move with him. Jared watched Miranda the whole way into the clearing, even though he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. No one had ever made it this easy, no one had wanted to die this much; Jared could almost feel Miranda’s strange need to die.

  As Jared got close he began to watch, he was waiting for a trap, a trap that would send problems through his entire world. Jared wouldn’t make it that easy for a human to trap him and to become any closer to his world then Miranda already was, he waited and wondered what would happen next. He knew he needed to be cautious and be very sure; first that she was alone, and second why had she made it this easy for him to kill her. Jared approached Miranda with an uneasiness that he had never known.

  Jared was a pure trained predator and killer, designed to be lethal in so many ways, always to win, never to faultier, and he wasn’t used to worrying about anything or anyone.

  Earlier that day Jared had been told what to do, he would go in leaving no evidence behind, and get out quick. This should have been a normal job to him, but today something was different, and he knew he would need to be more cautious. Jared had planned to go to her house and make it look like a robbery gone wrong, but here she was in their forest waiting for him, with no witnesses. It was way too easy and he couldn’t understand why the wolves hadn’t detected her. Vampires only killed in the human world, the wolves killed humans on our land, why didn’t they know she was here? What was going on?

  Jared started toward her in his normal stealth-like movement, as Miranda waited, just at the right moment she spoke, asking for just the right amount of time to explain things so she could feel better about giving up her life.

  Jared laughed as he thought; a human planning her own planned death had so much emotion, that’s what makes our races so different. I’ll give her some time so I can see if there is a trap, then I’ll know and I can get on with the kill.

  That’s when Miranda spoke with her voice Jared realized that when Miranda first asked for time it wasn’t with her mouth, it was with her mind. It made him jump back off balance he was very uneasy, and now Jared was really confused, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

  “Maybe we should go back, way back to the beginning so you can understand me, and what I’ve been through. After that it’s ok for you to finish your job, and end my life.” Miranda said this with a cool easiness to her voice; and it wasn’t just her voice but, also her face that surprised him. It was like Miranda knew what Jared would do to her, why he was sent and that she was truly ready die.

  Jared was amazed at her coldness because humans just didn’t act like that. He started to wonder about this women and what Miranda really was. Humans had feelings like fear, hate, and love; they just didn’t sit there so nonchalantly and talk about their own demise as if they were ordering a food. This one truly was different but Jared couldn’t figure her out.

  Jared just looked at Miranda with curiosity, and it was not because she was so willing to die at his cold, monstrous hands, because most people who had met with his kind were more than willing to die. You see dyeing would have been much better than the alternative, must people in this situation had begged to just die. It wasn’t that they really wanted to die, mostly they wanted to get away, they had just come to understand that they wouldn’t have the chance; no matter how hard they tried. So as Miranda spoke, Jared stared at her curiously because she somehow knew everything, she knew way too much.

  Miranda seemed to know everything about all of them. Every one of the other kinds out there and Jared couldn’t understand; this was something no living human became aware of. If they were foolish enough to encounter one of our family lines, they didn’t live long enough, they certainly never meet more than one kind and lived to tell the story. They simply disappeared from the world and the humans eventually passed them off, they called them unsolved cases.

  The fact is that with no traces ever left behind and there was nothing to even look for. It was that there were just too many questions that couldn’t be answer logically, unsolved became the easy way out. Sometimes people would make up legends for areas that had a lot of “unsolved cases”, but the cases could never really be answered, and the Concillium dealt with the race causing the problem from our end.

  Jared thought about how hard this job would be if Miranda had been someone of great importance. If she had been political or famous and found out about the races she would need to disappear even more swiftly because she would have too much access to large crowds and people might have believed her. Fortunately she wasn‘t because it would have been harder for the humans to let her go, and Jared’s family would have needed to use the dense woods or a plane.

  That didn’t answer the main questions Jared had right now, how did Miranda know about them? How could someone like this woman know about them? Where did all of Miranda’s knowledge come from? When the Mattis and Michael said she saw them, Jared wondered how they could be right. How could Miranda see them? Vampires were faster than any mere human eyes could see, let alone follow. They were stronger than anything that existed on earth, so what had happened? Had they just been careless? How could four vampires be that careless?

  So many things were running through Jared’s head, and yet he just stared at Miranda, she seemed so ordinary. So unable to understand and process all of the different kinds of information that it would take to understand his life or his world. Jared couldn’t understand how she would know any of this, and how much of his world was really within her reach.

  If you looked at her Jared though, you might even just look right past her. She is a plain woman; she doesn’t wear much makeup she obviously doesn’t worry about fashion. Miranda wore very plain, but nice clothes. Jared noticed for some reason she seemed to have had a hard time in her life, it wasn’t something he could quite put his finger on, but it was also something that he really had no care to learn about.

  Jared couldn’t really see anything special about her, nothing at all that could bring on all of the knowledge and experience that Miranda had learned and that the Concillium had learned about her. Jared looked at her a
little longer, studying her features; she was only about 27, she had an average build, and her eyes were blue, they were nothing out of the ordinary. Still, could that be how Miranda survived for so long, just going on unnoticed, without anyone realizing she even existed?

  Her face was round and had a nice human glow; it was one of only two things that stood out about her. That’s when Miranda took off her hat and Jared saw it. It was the only real thing that even made you notice Miranda existed; it was her hair; long and a strange but beautiful red. It was a color Jared had only seen once before, it was a color of hair that had never existed in the human world. A leader from a very long time ago in a place nowhere near their current location and with a particular person would never come even close to being with a human. Suddenly Jared started too worried.

  Jared thought about where he had seen that strange color before, which he had realized was more than similar, it was a perfect match to a very particular man. Gage was a member of the Concillium, and he had come from the oldest of families. A race Miranda could never have been a part of or person she could never have known. Gage was a being that would never mix his family’s blood line with one of their races, let alone be with a human. It seemed that right at this point that was the only thing Jared could be completely sure of, Miranda may have looked like Gage but she could not be one of that family line. Jared knew one thing about this particular member; in fact leader of the Concillium had vowed to never mix with another race. Jared wondered how she could be so much like him and yet be a human. That’s when Jared realized it didn’t matter, he had a job to do and he needed to get on with it.

  This particular job Jared needed to do was a job that Mattis and Michael couldn’t do correctly themselves and it made Jared angry that he was stuck cleaning up their mess. Michael may be his brother, and Mattis, Jared’s best friend, but this was above and beyond.

  As he tried to listen to Miranda’s story he realized he just didn’t care, she was human, and he couldn’t help thinking this was not his mess to clean up. Jared wasn’t paying attention to Miranda and he just wanted it to be over with. Jared couldn’t believe how easy it should have been for Mattis and Michael to do the job right, “take out the girl, she has seen us” that’s exactly what the Concillium told them to do.