The Pentagram Child: Part 1 (Afterlife Saga Book 5) Read online

  The Pentagram Child

  Part 1

  Afterlife Saga

  Book 5

  BY

  Stephanie Hudson

  Copyright

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Copyright © 2014 Stephanie Hudson

  All rights reserved.

  -

  This book is a work or fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning:

  This book contains explicit sexual content, some graphic language and a highly additive Alpha Males.

  Cover design by: © thePaperface

  www.thepaperface.co.uk

  [email protected]

  Other books by Stephanie Hudson

  Afterlife Saga

  Book 1 Afterlife

  Book 2 The Two Kings

  Book 3 The Triple Goddess

  Book 4 The Quarter Moon

  Dedication

  This dedication is close to my heart and in the name of all those who make it their job in life to care for others. The deep rooted kindness that is needed to face your days is something to be admired.

  Holding the Hands of a Stranger.

  We wander down this painful road,

  Alone and frightened, the end untold,

  We sit on a bed that we do not know,

  And hold on to hope, keep letting it grow.

  We fear the worst and pray for the best,

  Surrounded by loved ones so we feel blessed,

  But then the time comes when we’re again alone,

  And our fake smiles have gone away and flown.

  We look around at unknown faces,

  And see the same fear hidden there in traces,

  Tubes and pills and injections await,

  On a daily basis that becomes our fate.

  But then something happens that’s there to be found,

  A kindness like no other that appears all around,

  It comes from people doing more than their job,

  Whether they’re holding a mop or taking a swab.

  There is kindness in nature and there for us to see,

  It doesn’t cost anything and welcomed for free,

  Because in this place we’re never without,

  A stranger’s hand to hold in this emotional breakout.

  Thanks to all the wonderful people who cared for me and held my hand when things got painful, scary and too much to bear.

  Nikki Sarimanolis

  Nicola Pereira

  Elias Ngonyama

  Vicky Davidson

  Ryan Cox

  Sarah Stanbury

  Ama Machado

  Kevin Charles

  Alex Martimez

  June Bockle

  Bindu Joseph

  Grace Jackson

  Doctor David Gore

  June Saunders

  Shirley George

  Sajili Molethekkepurath Paulose

  Jose Munar

  Elicia Williams

  Marisa Tavares

  Carla Carvalho

  Isabel Santana

  Jacky Aldridge

  Lorna Rolph

  Sue Downer

  Anne Marie

  Mel Norwacki

  Janice Mcpherson

  Martina Bishop

  Aiden Sumajit

  Happy Singh

  Jo Paterson

  Jacque Handley

  And to the new friends I made who helped me giggle my way through six weeks in Southampton General Hospital.

  Jean Parson

  Carol

  Lynsie Lynn

  Betty Swanley

  Yvonne Blake

  Marilyn Mettyer

  Maureen Veal

  Marjurie Littleford

  Heidi Rose

  Keira

  PROLOGUE

  How does the moth live in darkness when all light is suddenly ripped from its existence? Sure, the moth is safer from the flame but dangers still lurk in the night. Eyes watching, claws twitching, feet stalking and waiting to strike under the cover of black skies.

  He thought I would be safer without him but what can protect me from myself and my own dreams…dreams that won’t let me go. I never thought dreaming of Draven could be classed as a nightmare but this was now my reality.

  I found myself most nights transported back to that day we first set our eyes on each other. It was just as it was that day. Me wandering too far and stumbling across the clearing like Eve finding herself in the Garden of Eden for the first time. I remember taking it all in and being sucked into the magic of it all before coming to my senses enough to ask why, what and how. And like that day…

  I fell.

  Only this time it was no longer the foot of my destiny there to greet me. I started to fall in painfully slow motion, watching my hair floating as if under water. Then my vision changed. It shot from one pair of eyes to another in a blink of time and I was no longer seeing the earth coming closer to meet me.

  The last time I dreamt this way I was in a temple running with my chest cut deep and leaving behind bloody footprints like a pathway through deadly sand. Well now it was happening again and just like before, it shot back as I screamed ready to watch myself hit the ground.

  One second I was crying out for my other self and then I cried out as I became the me that fell. I felt the moss wet and slippery under my fingers as I tried to grasp the rocks but then as I made a fist it no longer felt like anything nature would have created. It squelched into my pores and underneath my fingernails and a metallic smell wafted up to my nostrils…

  Blood.

  I gasped at the same time my fist uncurled. I quickly scrambled backwards and with a shaky hand moved my loose hair back.

  Then I screamed.

  “No, no…oh Jesus no!” I shook my head but nothing would release me from the sight of bloody body parts that once belonged to someone breathing, living and anything but being chopped into pieces! The sound of my own frightened panting was the only noise in this now eerie place.

  I managed to get to my feet and looked down to see the piece of thigh seconds ago I had had my hand embedded in. I quickly turned my head and heaved. I lifted my hand to wipe away my tears and that’s when I noticed the new liquid crimson glove that now covered my skin.

  More blood.

  I closed my eyes and took small steps backwards, all the while chanting,

  “It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream…wake up Keira…wake up NOW!” I shouted the ending as I backed into a tree. My eyes shot open and the first thing I noticed was no longer just the blood and gore but now the pattern in it all.

  All the body parts had been arranged into some weird symbol and somewhere deeply buried was a place in my mind where a light had just been switched on. Switched on for the first time since that day. The very day I said goodbye to Draven for the last time.

  “It…it… can’t be…possible!” Even as I said the words my mind brought back the image where I had first seen this symbol but what did it all mean? I tore my eyes away from the butchery that lay in blood stained grass and puddles of carnage.
But in doing so I now had to witness the same thing that happened so long ago. I could almost feel Draven’s arm band around me to pull me closer as I watched the Garden of Eden become the Garden of Death.

  The trees transformed from lush greens into grey dust, leaving only sinister looking branches that stretched out like flexing claws. The flowers folded in on themselves and crumpled like burnt paper. I clung to the tree trunk at my back but when it too started to shake, I side stepped shrieking out in surprised fright. I spun too fast and nearly stumbled into another plant, the bird of paradise.

  I managed to stop just in time as I was now less than an inch away from one deadly spike piercing my eye. The once beautiful and exotic looking flower had turned into a fatal weapon. Each stunning orange petal had been transformed into a fan of blades and the central blue stems were now poisonous barbs tipped to a needle point and ready to kill.

  “Ahhh!” I shouted and again scrambled back, only this time managing to stay on my feet at least. I spun back round to face what looked like a mass ritual sacrifice lay out on the floor that merely waited for its master to say the right words. But which master would it be?

  This thought quickly brought on the wind and it whipped furiously around me as if disapproving of where my thoughts had taken me. But what else was there for me left to think…? There was only one place I had seen this symbol and no amount of shaking my head would undo the memory.

  “WHY!?” I shouted as the wind picked up replacing my fear with anger. How could this happen, even in my dreams how could these things still haunt me?

  “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!” I screamed this time looking up at the Gods and hoping they heard the pain being ripped through me. But their only answer came in the form of the storm that battled furiously around me and the centre of the symbol circled on the ground. I raised my hands to my ears, bloody or not, I didn’t care. I just needed to hold onto something. Then without knowing what else to do I let loose a screamed sentence,

  “YOU DAMNED MY LOVE FOR YOU!” And suddenly the world of chaos stopped revolving around me. I was left panting into my hands and could taste another man’s blood on my lips. It was a sickening thought and pulled me from my mental breakdown enough to realise the storm had passed. I lowered my arms slowly and gasped as I was now left to take in the figure that stood in the centre of the bloody symbol.

  “Draven.” I said his name on a breath of spent air. He didn’t say anything but just stared at me from across the placed body parts. I looked around him and that was when I saw the bloodied campsite in the background. My mind took only seconds to process the memory of a newspaper I once read about missing campers found slaughtered.

  Was this them?

  “Draven…I…I don’t understand.” I stumbled out painful words but he just shook his head at me slowly, telling me I was wrong.

  “What Draven, what is it?” I asked nervously and with my growing anxiety my fingertips start to tingle.

  “See me… come and see the place I go.” He whispered to me and my skin prickled with fear as this was the first time I has heard his Demon voice murmur at me seductively. Draven held out his hand and again his voice unravelled my nerves and began to destroy my defences one by one.

  “Come with me…come and see…”

  “Come and see what?” I asked when he didn’t finish. I was just about to step forward and grab his outstretched hand when his eyes suddenly changed to the likes I had never seen and his Demon voice bellowed,

  “ME KILL YOU!” I screamed and fell backwards just before he could grab me. I landed painfully on my bum and watched in horror as he started laughing a dark and menacing laugh. He threw his head up to the thunderous clouds above and I now noticed the marks on his arms were still there. Only now they seemed to burn their way through his long sleeved t-shirt at the height of his demonic madness and I watched as my fears came true.

  The symbols soon burned all the way through until his sleeves were nothing but charred edges above his elbows. The very same symbols that were mirrored on the ground in the form of wasted human life.

  “No, Draven…what have you done?!” I sobbed looking up at the insanity that had gripped my heart’s keeper. He heard me and quickly his laughter died as he lowered his head to stare down at me. He then raised his arms to the sky and all at once the limbs were set ablaze, creating a circle of fire that surrounded him.

  “NO!” I shouted but it was useless. He was at once consumed in the centre of death and he held out his arms as if embracing it.

  “DRAVEN!”

  “Keira.” He finally said my name like a lover’s whisper and for the first time I heard a slice of my Draven come back to me.

  “Yes, yes it’s me!” I pleaded with him, the Gods, all of Hell and anyone in between that would listen, all in hopes of making this stop. But stop it never does… because he only ever had one thing left to tell me in this dream and as I listened to the words I knew were coming, I was still left empty as always…

  “The Pentagram Child, he comes”

  Draven

  Chapter 1

  Visions of Pain

  Ten months…

  Ten long months of agonising visions to call company. Visions of nothing but a pain so raw, it shredded my insides every time I closed my eyes. Watching those delicate fingers rip away the last part of me, as if the very memory of me was burning against her skin. I could still see it all, playing out in slow motion over and over. Her arm falling down as her muscles were spent, her fingers momentarily clenching around the necklace, as if some deep part of her didn’t actually want to let go.

  But then my world came crashing down around me as I watched the length of it slip through her fingers, only to find a new home in the rubble that was left of our love. A destruction I had not only caused but forced her to endure as her last moments with me.

  What had I been thinking? Did I really choose all this just so that my memory could be one of love instead of hatred? Had I really put her through all I had, just so I could claim the right to be held eternally infused within a piece of her heart? But I knew the selfish answer to that question.

  And so, I lived with the pain from my actions every wretched minute of the day. Even now as I stood in the wreckage made that night all those months ago, I still couldn’t bring myself to tear my eyes away from the spot where she had once stood, just as I couldn’t bring myself to fix any of it. Because this was the one thing in my existence I wasn’t allowed to fix. And so it became a reminder at just how real this living, breathing nightmare had become.

  I walked slowly onto what remained of the balcony. My boots crunched on the glass shards like shrapnel left over from the only war I did not win. All these sights and sounds I tortured myself with everyday as punishment. A prison far more damning than one Hell could ever have imagined for me and this small scattering of evidence was a cruel reminder of my biggest failure all my years had ever known. Simply put…

  This was what it felt like to die inside.

  “Dom?” I heard my sister’s voice behind me but my body didn’t react. It remained statue still like one of the poor souls of Pompeii and not even the Wrath of the Gods could persuade me to do otherwise. This was what I had become now, this broken shell that acted like this on a regular basis. So much so that my siblings were no doubt immune to my insanity.

  When I didn’t answer her she cleared her throat and stepped closer, which was a brave move even for my sister, who admittedly was the only one these days that I didn’t allow my anger to lash out at and attack with a venomous barb. But no one…absolutely no one, was permitted to come out here. For this was the very room where my lies finally crumbled. It had crashed down on the shores of deceit, killing all the hope my Keira had built up like a Gods be damned fortress in Heaven!

  “What is it, Sophia?” I asked trying to keep the impatient disapproval out of my voice that came back at me like whiplash when I heard her quick intake of breath. I didn’t mean to keep hurting those that I cared for b
ut when you suddenly hated the world for cursing you for sins that were meant to save…well, then it was like swallowing barbed wire in aid to cure a stomach ulcer… utterly pointless.

  “I came to tell you that we’re leaving.” I wasn’t surprised hearing this. If anything I was surprised it hadn’t come sooner. I hadn’t left this godforsaken villa since the day she walked from my life, leaving on the back of another man’s bike. Fucking Viking! If it hadn’t been for that promise I had given Keira then I would have slaughtered…no! I would not go down this dark path again. I would not sully the last thing she ever asked of me with thoughts of death and pain and revenge…not again.

  I shook my head slightly as if clearing the sticky remains of my darker days and concentrated on what my sister needed, which was a reassurance she would not believe. But I was her brother and I had to try.

  “I understand, you do as you must.”

  “By the Gods, Dom! When will you wake up?!” My sister snapped and this wasn’t the first time I had heard Sophia’s temper rise on the matter.

  “Sophia.” I said her name as a warning, one I never relished in giving to someone so dear to me.

  “No! Not this time, Dom. If this is the last thing I fucking wish of you, it will be in this moment right now and in this moment Brother, I wish for you to know the depth of the mistakes you make.” At the sincerity of emotion in Sophia’s voice I was ripped from my private Hell to witness the unusual sight of tears in my sister’s eyes. The glassy depths I saw there nearly brought me to my fucking knees.

  “I am fully aware of the mistakes I have made Sister…”

  “You have no clue Dom, you think because you have witnessed heartbreak from your actions that you have some right not to live with the consequences lying in plain sight… hiding here in this hole, like some punishing memory you want to live in for the rest of your days, while your Chosen One is…”