Thanátou (The Blood Witch Saga Book 1) - Natalie J. Case

Thanátou (The Blood Witch Saga Book 1) by Natalie J. Case

Book excerpt

My earliest memories are of blood, the hot, sticky taste of it on my tongue, the strange, copper scent of it suffocating me. I had no context for these things. I knew that I was small, and I knew that the stain of it was on my soul, but like so much of my life before I was ten, I could only guess.

That was where my life began, on my tenth birthday.

It began on a bench outside a police station one early Saturday morning. I was found in a semi-catatonic state, sitting with an old beat-up suitcase containing a few changes of clothing, and a backpack with a note inside giving my name, Thána Augusta Celene Alizon Archer, and age, along with a few books and a stuffed dog named Rusty.

I was found during shift change, and my next hours and days were filled with fear and disorientation as I was taken from the police station to the hospital, and from there to a group home. I spent the better part of a year there before they found me a place in foster care. All searches for my parents came up empty. All attempts to figure out where I'd come from came to nothing.

At times, nightmares would soak my dreams with terror, taking me back to that memory. I would wake gasping and rubbing at my skin, trying to clean the blood from it. I was always off-kilter for days when it happened, and it took me until I was nearly seventeen to realize that it always happened on the same night every year. I guessed it was some kind of anniversary.

I was luckier than some, my tour through foster care only saw three homes, and I only left the first one when my foster mother got a job transfer to Texas and the second one because the couple was divorcing. I arrived at my final foster home one week before the start of school my junior year of high school. I graduated near the top of my class, which wasn't hard considering the number of stoners in the class, and I managed to scrape up a few scholarships and grants to apply toward my state college degree. I worked at a bookstore just off campus to supplement my education and allow me to eat. It also served to keep me in books, and even allowed me to indulge my passion for “ye Old English” and the study of the surviving literature from the time. I was wise enough to know that the job prospects were small in such a rarified field, so I graduated with a business degree just generic enough to afford me a chance at almost any kind of job in the corporate world I decided to chase, though I continued to take elective classes to feed my love.

I entered the adult workforce a month after graduation, starting in a mid-sized company that produced small gadgets, at the time it was largely calculators and the like. I started in the quality control group. By the time I was nearing thirty, I had worked my way into middle management. The next year, our company got absorbed into a bigger company, and eventually, I was relocated to El Paso, Texas to work in one of their plants.

I was in a small rental apartment, most of my belongings still in storage back in New York, making do with a bed, armchair, and a bistro table. It wasn't like the place mattered all that much. I knew going in that it was temporary. I was going to be there a year tops before I was sent to Silicon Valley to manage a new product line. I was running late to work one morning in late October, thumbing through a file folder of employee reviews on my way to the car when I heard a man clear his throat. I glanced up and involuntarily took a step back.

The man was disheveled and out of place, his black, dust-covered clothes looking like something from an earlier century, or a black and white movie from the fifties. He had a hat atop his mop of black curls, which hung well below his shoulders, with a ridiculous feather tucked in the band. It alone seemed untouched by dust, or maybe it was sand, its blue and green ruffled by the light breeze. He cleared his throat again and stepped closer. “Thána Alizon?”

I wasn't sure who this man was or why he knew my name, even if he was pronouncing it as if the h wasn’t there, but I found myself nodding slowly. “Thána, actually. Like thick. And my last name is Archer. And you are?” Alizon was a part of my name according to the note in my backpack all those years ago, but it had given my last name as Archer. It spooked me a little bit that he knew that part of my name.

“No one of consequence. I came to warn you.”

My eyebrow arched of its own accord. “Warn me?”

He nodded urgently, stepping toward me again. “You are in danger here.”

“Right.” I dismissed him and moved to my car, unlocking the door, and tossing my briefcase and the review file onto the passenger seat. “Look, buddy, Halloween is next week.”

“I know, that's what I'm here to warn you about. You must be vigilant.”

“Right,” I said again, getting into the car. “Go try your line on someone else. Halloween's a pain in the ass, but it isn't anything more. I'm late for work.”

“Yes, very late,” he said, his eyes lifting to the sky.

“Whatever.” I started the car and pulled the door shut, shutting out the weird man and his weird warnings. If I broke the speed limit down Railroad Avenue, I might get to the office in time for the morning stand-up meeting. My assistant met me at the door of the conference room with a cup of coffee and my day started. It was much like any other day. I handled time off requests and sat in on meetings about circuit board quality and RMAs. By the time I left to go home, the strange man and his strange warning were all but forgotten, at least until I saw him again.

I stopped at a grocery store to grab a few things because I was sick of takeout in a town where takeout consisted of pizza and Tex-Mex burritos. I had a few things in my cart, and I was rounding the corner onto the cereal aisle when I saw him. He had his hat in his hands and he seemed nervous, more so than he had been that morning.

“Thána Alizon, you must hear me.”

“Dude, are you following me?” I asked, fishing in my pocket for my cell phone. “I could call the cops.”

He shook his head almost violently and held out one hand. “The police cannot help you. Let me.”

“Look, I don't know what you think is going to happen to me, but I'm a big girl and I can take care of myself. So, get lost.”

“You can't handle this, not without help.”

“I've had enough of your crap. Leave me alone.” I pushed past him in a fit of anger, grabbing a box of store-brand granola and throwing it in my cart on my way to the checkout. The man had put me in a foul mood, and I still had to finish employee reviews.

I purchased my meager supplies which mostly consisted of food I could microwave, the granola, and two bottles of wine. Fortunately, my apartment complex was only a few blocks away and I could get home, put away the food and open a bottle of wine. A nice pinot noir would be a good companion to reviews. It wasn't like I'd known any of these people for more than eight months, so my evaluation of them wasn't going to be at full value.

With a bag of microwave popcorn and a glass of pinot, I dropped into the comfort of the plush recliner. Taking a sip of wine, I tucked the popcorn between my thigh and the arm of the chair and reached for the folder. I'd groused that the process wasn't automated and digitized, but I'm fairly sure it fell on deaf ears. Our plant manager was the kind of guy that wanted everything in hard copy, even to the point of making his secretary print out all of his emails.

I worked my way diligently through the folder, and the bottle of wine, until I got to the last few reviews. I'd saved the hardest two for last. Juan Cordova and his buddy Rodrigo Alvaro, the two troublemakers on the line. With a sigh I got up to pour the last of the bottle into my glass, shaking my head as I considered how rough to be on them in the review. They were always the last two to come in for their shift, maybe not late every day, but cutting it close. More than once they'd come back from lunch break with the smell of beer or tequila on their breath. They did good work, most of the time, and Juan's soldering technique was among the best in the plant.

Deciding to come down closer to the middle, I wrote praise for what they both did well and marked them down for attitude and attendance, and called the whole thing done. I was ahead of schedule, which was how I liked it. I could start the one-on-one conversations with them the following week and have them all turned in to my boss before the November first deadline.

I downed the last of the wine, threw the popcorn bag in the trash, and decided to head to bed. It was early, but so was my alarm. I double-checked the door lock, changed into my pajamas, which basically meant a T-shirt and shorts, and climbed into bed. It was a warm night, and I pushed the comforter to the end of the bed and fell into the warm fuzziness of the slight buzz from the wine.

Pounding on my door woke me some hours later, pulling me up from dreams about blood and ash. I stumbled to the door, disoriented. Strong hands pulled me out of the door when I opened it, and that scared me into wakefulness. Sirens swirled in the air around me and the strong arms belonged to the building manager who was shaking even as he let go of me. The building was aflame, residents staring and standing sullen in puddles of water from the hoses trying to quench the flames.

I joined them, watching wordlessly as firefighters tried valiantly to save the building. I blinked and tried to climb out of my wine-soaked brain failure, my vision temporarily obscured by that frustrating and frightening memory. It wasn't coherent, and it changed from time to time, but there was always blood, a lot of it, and sometimes maybe fire. Someone died. Of that I was sure. I pinched the bridge of my nose and pushed the whole thing away. I hadn't figured the dream out in the twenty-two years since waking up on that bench, I wasn't going to figure it out standing there in a puddle of water in my bare feet in the early hours of the morning.

By the time the sun was up, the fire was out, and water dripped from what was left of the building. My apartment still had walls, but the ceiling had been burned away and everything inside was smoke and water logged. One of the firemen brought me some stuff from my dresser, including Rusty the stuffed dog, and my briefcase that had been near the door, and they rescued the folder from the kitchen counter, though that too had been soaked. Everything was dripping wet and stunk of smoke.

There was talk about where we would stay and how it would be arranged, followed by most of us breaking up into small groups. For once I was grateful to have left my cell phone in the car and for the fact that I kept a spare key in a magnetic box hidden under the back bumper. I called into work to let them know I wouldn't be in. My boss was sympathetic and told me to let her know if I needed anything. I sort of laughed and told her I needed just about everything.

That was when I saw him again, the strange man. His suit was clean and unwrinkled, his hair practically shined in the morning sun. His green eyes were watching me as I got out of the car and started toward the property manager. I detoured toward the man. “Did you do this?” I asked when I got close enough, my voice pitched a bit higher than normal.

“Of course not. I warned you.”

“No, you were a cryptic creep. Is this what you were warning me about?”

“I told you it isn't safe. They know where you are.”

“Who?” I asked, crossing my arms. It probably looked ridiculous in my shorts, T-shirt, and bare feet, but I knew that when properly suited for work, it had a withering effect on anyone I leveled the look at.

“I could explain it all if you would just come with me.”

I shook my head. “I'm not going anywhere with you. Explain now or I'll tell the fire marshal that you were acting strange and following me.”

He shook his head and tried to take my hand to lead me away. “Please, it isn't safe. They weren't sure which apartment you were in, but now you're exposed. They are probably watching us right now.”

“Wait, are you saying that whoever started this fire was looking for me?”

“It fits their way. They would kill an entire building of people just to flush you out so that they could get to you.”

I don't know if it was the fire, the old memory dancing in the back of my mind or what, but somehow his words chilled me. “Who would want me dead?” I asked, glancing around us. “I'm nobody special.”

“It isn't so much you specifically, and they’re trying to kidnap you…so that they can kill you later. Come with me, I will keep you safe.”

“I'm not going anywhere with you. I don't even know your name.”

He took a step back and removed his hat, sort of bowing toward me. “Forgive my manners. I am Finneas Connor. I was a friend of your father's.”

That brought me up short. “My father?” I shook my head. “I've never had a father. Or a mother. You clearly have the wrong person.”

“How many Thána Alizons do you think exist in this world? I am not mistaken. Neither are they.”

“Who are they?” I asked, frustrated now that I'd let him draw me in this far. “You keep saying 'they' but you're not explaining.”

“It is a long story, one better told by a warm fire with a glass of brandy. Come.”

“I've had enough fire for one day, thanks.” I turned away and started back toward my car. I needed to try to get the smell of smoke out of my clothes and find a pair of shoes and sort out what else I needed. I didn't have time for fairy tales.

“Who is that?”

I looked up to find the woman who lived in the apartment beside mine. “Some whack job,” I responded. “He says he knew my father.” I snorted and looked back at him. “I didn't even know my father, so…” I let the thought trail off before looking back up at her. “Sheila, right? So, what are we doing?”

“Chuck's getting us set up at that motel across the street, at least short-term. Bill has been through this before.” She pointed at a man I didn't know. “He lost a house about five years ago. He said he'd help with getting through the Red Cross stuff and whatever. He's collecting information for them.”

I nodded, locking my car with its reeking pile of clothes and my briefcase. At least I had that which meant I had my wallet, so I could get money. I followed Sheila to where Chuck, the building manager, was on the phone. All in all, there were about ten of us out of a home, all of us in our thirties and early forties. All of us without spouses or families. We were a sad lot.

By noon, we were checked into the motel and able to shower. Bill had scrounged up clothes for us with the help of the Red Cross. I pulled the track pants on without bothering with the underwear of unknown origin and tugged on the T-shirt over the sports bra they'd given me. The bra barely covered my larger than average breasts but held me in tight. Everything was very clearly secondhand, especially the broken-in sneakers, but I was dressed. That meant I could get food and clothes for work in the morning.

I returned to the bathroom to pull a comb through my hair once the mirror had defogged. My black hair was super curly, except that I visited a salon once a month to get it chemically straightened. Left to its own devices, it would become a mop of frizz. I seldom bothered with makeup, my vaguely olive skin was naturally smooth and evenly colored, and I’d always thought that eye shadow and mascara and the like were just too much work for every day.

My dark-green eyes looked dull and tired, which I suppose was a pretty fair assessment of my state of being at that moment. I wasn’t sure how much sleep I’d gotten between the end of that bottle of wine and the fire.

Satisfied that I was presentable enough for hitting the mall, I grabbed my car keys and headed out, though I admit to glancing furtively around me as I went, vaguely afraid some boogeyman was going to jump out to grab me.