Without a Shadow by Julie Steimle (red queen ebook TXT) 📖

preparing to protect myself. It was Will. He shook his head at me, gesturing with his sword.

“You and Jane were supposed to meet us. What happened?” Travis asked, tapping his own blade on his arm. His musketeer hat was off, and he glared at me.

I shrugged, quickening my pace toward the front door. “We had problems, so I took a walk to blow off steam. Jane decided to stay home.”

“No, she didn’t!” Travis snapped, still tapping his sword. “She just called and said you flew off after a scuffle. Explain.”

I scratched the back of my head. “We ran into a vampire.”

Will’s mouth popped open. “A real vampire?”

“A real vampire,” another voice answered.

I turned then took a step back with my brothers. Behind me on the walk stood a regal looking man dressed in a dark business suit with a neck scarf tacked down to his shirt with an opaline brooch. His gaze was stronger than Marvin’s was, and his age could be felt even though he appeared no older than forty.

“Come closer, dear,” he said to me with an intense, seductive, and rather eye-watering stare. I had to blink after a few seconds.

“Why?” came out of my lips.

Travis stuck out his sword and pointed it at the man. “Leave my sister alone!”

Will placed his hand on my shoulder, pulling out his sword also. “You stay right there.”

I didn’t know if he was speaking to the man or me. I had no inclination to walk closer to a vampire that I was sure was old enough to have written the entirety of Mr. McDillan’s history texts from memory, so I assumed he meant the man. The man did not keep his distance, though.

“Eve, I know what you are seeking,” the vampire said, still speaking with that mesmerizing voice. “You are seeking the truth. You want to know what you are. You want to know where you belong.”

“She belongs right here!” Will shouted, but I could feel his hand shaking. His heart pounded like booming drums, so much that it was hard to think.

“You can hear it, can’t you?” the man said, ignoring my brothers while taking another step towards our house. “The beating of their hearts. The pulsing of blood through their veins.”

I could feel my own heart pounding now. My breathing grew shallow and my mouth dry.

“You hunger for it.” The vampire was just a few feet away from us. We stood rooted to our spots, unable to move. “The taste of blood on your tongue—”

I grabbed hold of my brothers’ free hands and jerked them toward the house door. “Let’s go inside. This old fart is sick.”

I don’t think the vampire had ever been called an old fart. He just stood there as if I had just slapped him in the face, watching us go up the steps and shut the door. Will double-bolted the lock.

“Who was that?” Travis cried out, bending over with his head between his legs in the living room.

“An old vampire,” I said, peeking through the curtains to see if he was still there. The vampire stood staring at the door, then shook his head as if in a daze. With a shrug, he transformed into a bat and fluttered up to the tree in the front yard.

“Push your brother outside and shut the door again.” I heard the loud shout of an imp next to me. I turned, annoyed to see a tall orange-eyed man leaning against the wall next to the coat rack.

I walked to the door, undid the locks, much to the protest of both my brothers. It caused such wicked glee on the imp’s face to see them so distressed. But then I grabbed hold of that imp, yanked him to the door and shoved him out of the house. Both Will and Travis stared out at the imp when I slammed the door closed again.

“And what was that?” Travis pointed out the window where the imp lay muttering to himself.

“An imp,” I replied, walking towards the kitchen.

“How did he get into our house?” Will shouted. He was breathing hard, staring from me to the door and back again.

With a sigh I explained, picking up the bowl of candy my mother obviously left for the trick-or-treaters. It was nearly empty. “The imps are everywhere. You just can’t see them.”

Wordless, they both gaped at me.

“Look,” I said, already testy, “I didn’t start seeing them until yesterday. But they are all around us, only smaller and more annoying.”

I saw them blink—twice.

“Come on. Haven’t you ever had a completely naughty thought that you have either brushed off or given in to?” I asked.

They both slowly nodded at me, casting glances at each other.

“Well, that’s them.” I figured that was the end of the discussion. There were smaller imps around the room weakly shouting at them to call me a weirdo, but these creatures were looking at me with fear. I snatched one up and held it out for my brothers to see.

Both of them screamed. I opened the door again and chucked the imp onto the front walk.

“That thing is what I’m talking about. I think they are only big for today. They didn’t get big yesterday.”

My brothers still just stared at me.

Giving up, I put down the candy bowl and stomped up the stairs to my room. “Forget it. I’m going to bed. They’ll probably leave you alone if I am not with you.”

I did not wait to see if they went off to the dance. I just shut my bedroom door, leaving the light off, and dropped into bed. There was no point in bothering to change my clothes.

Deciding Moment

“Get up,” a voice I didn’t know yelled.

I blinked open one eye and saw a man. I suppose most girls would scream at finding a strange man in their room, but I had gotten so used to seeing large imps around that I just rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

“I said get up,” the thing shouted.

“Bug off,” I replied, covering my ears. “I’m not interested in your pranks.”

He shoved me and then yanked off my bedcovers. “I said get up!”

I dropped to the floor with a painful thud, staring up at this glaring, orange-eyed man. With a huff, I punched him in the stomach when I got to my feet. “I thought you imps weren’t able to touch people.”

The imp bared his teeth at me and said more quietly, “We can in certain circumstances. The council has gathered in the backyard. You have to meet them, now.”

Snatching my blankets from his arms, I climbed back onto my bed. “I don’t have to do anything of the sort. It’s late. I’m going back to bed.”

Another giant imp appeared in my room. It was a woman with a scowl on her face. Her orange eyes glared at me. “You are going to the council meeting right now. Now get!”

No one had ever told me to ‘get’ before. This woman spoke to me as if she had right to command me, which made me entirely indignant.

“I will not! My mother does not want me staying up past curfew. And look at the clock! It is nearly midnight!” I shouted.

The woman imp rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. I am your mother, and I say you must come to the council meeting now.”

Shivers ran up and down my arms. I stared at this scowling orange-eyed woman more closely. Her hair was red, not black. Her skin was olive, not white. But her eyes and face shape were just like mine.

She tossed her hair smugly when she saw that I believed her. “Now come, child. It is time to decide.”

“Decide what?” I asked, following her out my door then down the stairs to the kitchen.

“To decide who you are going to be,” she said. A mischievous smirk crossed her lips, and her eyes flashed as if she was having great fun now.

“You mean a career?” I looked around at the dark kitchen. The candy bowl was empty, and there was no sign of the rest of my family. I figured they had all gone to bed, though I didn’t think the Halloween dance at the school was over yet.

“No,” the imp sounded annoyed. “I mean, what life you will take.”

“Oh, no,” I pulled away, standing in the open door that led to the back-yard from the kitchen. “I’m not going to be taking anyone’s life.”

“Ho, ho! Such an impish response!” I heard a man shout from near the archway that led towards the garden.

“Fie, no! It is characteristic to think of death first, for a vampire,” said the young man from the park. He was lounging on the porch swing.

Looking around in the darkness, I could see the yard full of bats in the trees and imps fluttering about the porch or standing in their large forms around the shrubbery. Then there were the imposing figures of the vampires, looming in their dusty decaying attire from not only ages back but also from eras not too long ago, all of their eyes fixed upon me with deep, penetrating stares. Men, women and even some teenagers who looked worn out from eons of living without rest. I suddenly felt very young and outnumbered.

“Eve,” that deep resonating voice said to me from the shadows under the lilac bush. The regal vampire stepped out with a nod to me. “It is time for you to decide whom you will join.”

I knew I could handle a few imps and a couple of vampires, but not a yard full. My heart started to hammer again. The vampires grinned wider. The imps’ eyes glittered in excitement, eating up the mischief with glee.

“Decide?” I murmured aloud. I looked up at the imp that said she was my mother. I then searched around to see if a vampire would claim to be my father. “Why should I make such a decision? You abandoned me! My father told me that a bat dropped me in his lap, and that is how I ended up here. What kind of parent does that?”

The crowd flustered and buzzed. I could hear murmurs of some say that I was not actually meant to survive. The imp woman remained silent through the remarks, her face flushing in discomfort, and so did the regal-looking vampire that had tried to get me to bite my brothers.

I blinked at him, drawing back. “You were the one that left me here.”

He bowed. Some of the vampires hissed at him. Others of the imps made ugly faces. The old vampire remained stoic, just watching me.

“And now you have the opportunity to decide which group you would join. The Order of Blood—or those little imps,” he said.

“Little imps?” my impish mother snapped at him. She hopped into the center of the yard, waggling her finger at him. “If I knew then you thought so little of us, I would have made that man stake you!”

I blinked at her.

She turned with a smirk and said to me as she danced a little, tiptoeing around the grass, “We imps have so much fun—teasing, playing all day. And you never have to worry about someone chasing after you with wooden sticks. Invisibility. Free to roam—”

“I don’t turn invisible,” I said, shaking my head.

“But