Alpha of the Dawn
Chapter One
Rating: T
Author's Note: This is the first chapter of Alpha of the dawn. I hope everyone enjoys reading this and I would really like to get peoples thoughts on this. Anyway, here the first chapter.
0
00
0000
00
0
They had thought it would be funny. They had thought it would be one hell of a laugh to have her waltz right up there, in the center of a godforsaken cemetery, and kiss something. Already smashed and in a rather foul mood, she would like nothing more to crawl through the miles of underbrush that they went through and find the car. Then she would proceed to crawl up on the floor in the backseat and forget that the world exists.
That would have been the most logic conclusion, but he will have nothing of it.
As of now, on Halloween at midnight of all times, she would like nothing more than to repeatedly bash her head into the wall. Archer, she knows, can be an ass. He always is when he is drunk. His attitude is not her current problem – far from it. At this very moment, the only thing she knows is that she is screaming bloody murder, running through the woods that line the graveyard, like a mass murderer is chasing her with an ax. She hardly cares about anything else – not how this started or how Blake is fleeing a few feet ahead of her.
She knew he could haul ass when scared. A drunken Blake, scared shitless with a madman screaming profanity and swinging a scythe at them, makes one hell of a sight. Had she not been about to piss her pants in fear, she would be laughing.
But, back to the scythe and the screaming madman – he's not far behind.
To think she actually kissed him – but he hadn't been flesh at the time. He had been a godforsaken statue! He had been a forsaken statue that had been sitting in one of the oldest parts of a cemetery with vines crawling all over him like they were good buddies – but that is obviously not the case.
Thinking back on it – and what a crappy thing to do at this moment – the only thing she can recall is the sounds and the…warmth. They dared her to kiss a freaking cold, crackling, shapeless, faceless statue that was glowing like someone crafted it out of 'glow-in-the-dark-rock' and, to get them to leave her alone, she agreed. Mistake number one.
She only lingered with her lips pressed to the corner where its 'mouth' was supposed to be. She had thought it was the alcohol talking when she felt warmth, like skin, where her lips were pressed. She lingered for about ten seconds – long enough to bore her watching friends. And as she started to pull away it freaking grabbed her.
To say she screamed would be an understatement.
She only managed to get away by kicking him in the one place the sun never shines. Then she bolted, screaming at her friends to hightail it out of there. When they tried to find out what was wrong – the bastards left her before it grabbed her – they had their answer as it came bursting through a wall of one of the mortuaries.
Blake screamed even louder than she did.
Archer chocked on his beer, spewing it in the once statue's face. That only made it angrier.
And that leads to where they are now – fleeing through a dense forest that surrounds the graveyard they chose with no signs of life for more than mile. They only meant to have a good time. Instead she and her two friends are sprinting through the graveyard, smashed and partly high because some dumbass didn't tell them what was in the brownies they bought. Being drunk makes it hard to move, their motor skills all messed up, but add the trippy side effects of twisting trees and mirror-like funhouse landscapes creates – her person hell.
She races through the woods, branches cutting the tanned flesh of her exposed arms and legs. She is picking up speed; Blake is right in front of her. If she reaches out, she can touch him.
Instead, she hurries him along. Yells at him.
He responds by picking up speed and he hurries his skinny ass along. She stays behind him, not glancing back even though she can hear the person yelling in gibberish – a scary version of the SIMS.
She blinks, the thought being so absurd that it captures her attention. She tells him to run faster, than Mr. SIMS is right behind them, and he stumbles. She swears that, for a moment, something like chocked laughter comes from him.
SIMS speak in gibberish, this crazy man speaks in gibberish – I wonder how they are related…
Really, thinking is not something she should do when frightened. She tends to do stupid things – like fall over or trip and then fall. Thankfully she does neither: she plummets down a hill instead.
It is a hill that Archer has already gotten down and is currently fighting a bush that has snagged the belt loops of his jeans. The words that leave his mouth are loud, slurred, and very colorful.
"Damn it all to hell! Lemma' go you fucking bitchy bastard!" she hears him yell as he tries to pry himself free of the vines that have wound themselves around him.
Like she said: colorful vocabulary.
"Damn it, Archer! Stop talking to inanimate objects!" she yells at him and he snarls, "Go jump off a fucking cliff, Leon!"
"Plants are alive," Blake corrects as he skids to a halt next to his friend. With practiced hands, he untangles Archer from his vine-y doom and they all race towards the closet house – which is still not anywhere in sight.
"Where the fuck did I park that damn car?" Archer, yet again, using vibrant words at the most inappropriate time possibly known to man.
The three of them tear through the thick foliage, making like hell towards the road that is looming right ahead of them. From here, she can see the van. From here, it is possible that she, Leon, is about to pee her pants in joy.
So, logically enough, she throws herself at the van. And miraculously goes through the open window on the passenger side next to the driver's seat.
"What the hell, Leon?" Archer asks as he slides into his seat, jamming the keys into the ignition as Blake slams the door to the car shut with a whimper. "Hurry up, Arc!"
"I'm going as fast as I fucking can!" he snaps as the car roars to life. They roll their windows up, lock the doors, and as he shifts the gears into drive, the man appears in front of their car with a bloodthirsty grin on his face.
And Archer does the most logical thing – he runs him over. The 'thump, thump' of the car running the man over doesn't satisfy him so he reverses the car. The same noise a second time and then he runs him over once again as his car cuts through the asphalt that is the road.
"Three times is the charm…" he whines as he makes hell down the road, swerving.
"Oh my god, you ran that bastard over! THREE TIMES!" Blake wails in the backseat, curled up despite the fact the seatbelt is on him.
Archer only tightens his grip on the steering wheel, eyes focused solely on the road ahead of them. He doesn't bother with a snappy comeback. That, to Leon, is scary than the scythe man.
"Archer?" she twists, knowing that lying across the seats might not be the best thing, but it gives her a better view of Archer.
He hardly spares her a look – regardless of the fact that her head is resting on his lap.
"Oh god, can police ID cars by tire tracks?" Blake's voice rises another pitch before they can even answer him, "Oh god, oh god, I don't want to go to jail! I haven't even got to college yet!"
She casts a look at the black-haired male curled in the backseat, eye glasses missing and clothing disarranged. His gaze shoots up, meeting hers. She gives him a small wave that he returns with a sour glare.
She readjusts herself, sitting upright in her chair. She grabs the seatbelt, buckling herself in, and casts one look into the review mirror. No sign of pursuit.
She reaches over, twisting the knob to the stereo and sighs when the soft hum of techno pulses into the vehicle. There is a notable ease to Archer's shoulders as the song continues and he sighs.
"Fuck."
One word from him expresses all that he is thinking. Having grown up with him, and Blake, speaking comes easy to them. They don't even need to verbally communicate to get a message across to one another – most of the time.
She stepped up to the statue, eyeing it for a moment before turning back to the two males who were grinning like children on Christmas. Archer gives her the motions to go on, a 'swoosh, swoosh' of his hand and she groaned.
Quickly, she pressed her mouth to the stone. She kept her hands in her back pocket, letting only her mouth touch. The stone was cold, hard and smoothed over to perfection, but it was warming up. She could already hear them, laughing and shoving as they made their way down one of the secondary paths that they had yet to travel. So she started to pull away.
And two hands grabbed onto her – at the elbow and held her into place.
For a moment, she thought that one of the guys had come back and decided to be an ass. Then she realized – the hands were coming from in front of her. Like, where the statue was.
Which couldn't be right.
And then she looked up, into pale purple eyes that were slowly blinking at her. The confusion was clearly written onto the face. She could even feel a warm breath misting across her face.
Leon sighs, reviewing the scene over and over again n her head. It didn't make sense. How the hell did it come alive? Or was someone behind it…
No, that didn't make any sense.
At all…
So…a statue came to life…
"What the hell?"
She casts a look over her shoulder to Blake who is staring out the back window, eyes slowly getting wider and wider. She twists all the way around, looking.
"What is it?" she asks when she sees nothing and he murmurs, "I could have sworn I saw something."
The statue had an impossibly strong grip – even as she tried to pull away it refused to budge. It just blinked down at her, confusion turning to anger.
And then it said something in gibberish.
She pulled harder.
It snarled.
She screamed.
That had been amusing. It flinched, releasing her long enough so she could bolt. Bolt she did, bolted while screaming bloody murder through the cemetery past midnight.
It would seem that drinking is the one thing she will never do again. Not if she will be hallucinating about statues coming to life and swinging a fucking scythe at her and her friends. Or if it also has to end up with someone getting ran down by Archer in one of his damn cars.
Within the next hour, they rolled to a stop outside her house. She throws the door open, stumbling out into the crisp morning air, and nearly falling. Blake, who shot out of the backseat, isn't as lucky.
He faceplants, sprawled in a haphazardly fashion, and she stands there a moment to just stare at him.
"You okay?"
He groans into the asphalt as she and Archer haul him off the ground. She eases them into the house after she gets the door unlocked, a struggle between her key and the door and a drunken haze.
Archer drags the younger male to the backroom as she stumbles to her own bedroom. She collapses onto the soft mattress as this night rewinds in her head.
"Good, talk about nightmares."
She waited for them to fall asleep, lying in her bed. At three in the morning, she grabbed the wine and drank. A lot.
If she wasn't drunk when all that happened she is now.
Drunk and happy and forgetting everything that happened. She managed to get back to her room and get out of her jeans. Falling onto her bed, she curls up and hums a little tune to herself. She fell asleep, content that everything was just a really nasty dream.
And, within the next three hours, she is abruptly awakened by someone dragging her out of the bed.
A male that she has never seen, a man with red eyes, is standing above her while she just lies sprawled on the ground in a tee and underwear.
"Who the fuck are you?"