Blood Prize (Bloody Dance #1) Read online

  BLOOD PRIZE

  A. MUSE

  Copyright © 2015 A. Muse

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2015

  Author : A. Muse ([email protected])

  Cover Design Artist :

  Content Editor :

  ISBN:

  ISBN-13:

  DEDICATION

  To Skinner,

  Yes, I sold out.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Autumn Breeze. She was the one telling me it was okay to slack off and play around when I was stressing myself out to get this book written. She was also the same person kicking me in the butt when I was more lazy than I should have been. Thanks a million.

  I would also like to thank all of my follower from Wattpad. If not for how much you all loved this story I probably wouldn’t have published it. Thanks for taking this journey with Zero, leaving all of your votes and comments and demanding that I make Zero end up with the right person.

  ONE

  The scent of death lingered in the air like a cheap perfume. It’s intoxicating smell awoken desire in man and beast alike. The honey nectar that was known as a person’s life force painted the walls of this home. It surrounded me like a familiar blanket my mother once wrapped me in.

  Walking through this house it was evident that we were too late. That was the M.O. after all. Always a day late, always a dollar short. Outstretching our hands and never able to reach the objects that dangled just a hair’s breath out of our reach.

  The demon my team and I have been hunting was taunting us. For the last forty years, he has taunted this team I called family. How many times have I walked into a house just as this one? Where the sweet scent of death hung heavily in the air. When the blood of the family painted the walls of their home. All but one room.

  The room of the youngest child was always left untouched. The body always was found. The child appeared to just be sleeping. When you touched them, they were stiff and cold. I almost wanted to think there was some kind of mercy that was showed to the youngest child. Demons didn’t know mercy.

  Walking to the bed I could see the child better. Her blonde hair was resting on the pillow around her head. It looked posed as if someone was trying to create a halo around her. Her eyes were closed; her hands were folded as they rested on her stomach. The pink bunny pajamas she had on looked faded from washes.

  Sitting down beside the child I didn’t peg her for older than twelve. Younger than this body of mine. Seeing things like this should upset me. It should anger me. It should make me want to scream. My soul didn’t stir though.

  Within the two hundred years I’ve been alive this wasn’t the worse thing I’ve saw. Looking at me no one would guess I was older than sixteen, seventeen. I’ve lived so long though. I’ve been through so much. At least she died. Sometimes I think death is better than . . . me.

  Digging in my pocket I took out a pack of cigarette. Placing the stick between my lips a flame lit at the edge of my finger. There would be no cops to come to this home. There would be no justice for this family. Someone would clean up the mess made inside then a new family much like this girl’s would live here.

  I exhaled the smoke that filled my lungs. It relaxed me as I touched the soft blonde hair of the young child. If I was a praying man, I might have prayed for her soul. I might have wished she was with her family. I just wasn’t that kind of man.

  Death had a way of lingering in your memories. On the average day, I didn’t even know what month we were in. If you asked me to tell you about the final moments, I could. Closing my eyes, I could picture the day I lost everything in perfect details. The day I died was the only human memory I possessed.

  When I woke this particular morning, I went downstairs towards the kitchen. My feet paused on the last step before entering the kitchen. I could hear my parents talking. If I looked around the corner, I could see the red hair of my mother. I could remember her green eyes. She had always been a tall, pretty woman. She was the trophy wife.

  “What would you like me to say to your children? How am I suppose to explain to them why their father is never around?” It was my mother’s voice that spoke. She had a flare for the dramatics. None of my father’s children cared when he got home. His wife did though.

  “Tell them if they want the big house and the cars and games I provide for this family I have to work! Nothing is free Emma!” They were fighting again. It was nothing new in my home. It seemed as if the longer my parents stayed married, the worse their marriage became. Maybe that was just how marriage works.

  “You’re supposed to be their father, not their debit card.” I didn’t think my father was just a bank number. He was always busy, always working. I couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t leaving in the middle of dinner for work.

  When he was around he made the most of his time with us. He was attentive to us. He listened when we talked. He gave us advice when we needed it. He was a kind but strict father. I guess it wasn’t enough for my mother.

  “You don’t seem to mind using me as an ATM.” That was probably the worse thing that he could have said. I couldn’t see my mother’s face, but I imagined it was . . . murderous.

  “This isn’t about me.” Her voice was tight, hostile. It wouldn’t be long before she was throwing dishes at him.

  “What?” There was mocked shock in my father’s voice. “I thought everything was about you Emma.” This man was digging his own grave. A part of me wanted to help him. Another part didn’t want to be buried beside him.

  “Who is she? Who’s the slut you’re fucking? I know you’re not working.” For the last year that seemed to be my mother’s go to theory. My father had to be cheating on her. There was no way that he was working as much as he said he was.

  I didn’t understand though. If you were the trophy wife then what else would the man want. Maybe I just didn’t understand the ways adults worked. Back then, I didn’t understand a lot about the way the world worked. Back then, we didn’t understand that the world was changing. It was becoming a dangerous place.

  “So now I have to be cheating on you!” I could hear the outrage in my father’s voice. I sighed. Tonight was family night. Later on, we would all gather together and play lame games like on of those corny sitcoms.

  I knew that they could go on forever. If they weren’t stopped, they would keep yelling at each other until someone came down. I decided to save them both the headache. Moving down the rest of the stairs I stopped in the kitchen.

  Both of my parents looked over at me. My father gave this small smile. I didn’t know if it was thanking me for getting him out of another senseless fight. Or if it was a smile out of pity for having to hear my parents argue the first thing in the morning.

  “Hey, Zero,” he spoke and I smiled towards him as well.

  “Dad,” I sat down at the table next to him.

  “Zero, are you hungry?” My mother sweet voice was back in place. My eyes shifted over to her. Nodding my head I was always hungry. It came with being a teenager.

  Zero, I wasn
’t sure where the nickname came from. I just knew that it has been my name for a long time. When I woke from my death sleep, it was the only name I remembered.

  I found the name fitting when I woke. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know where I been. I was no one; I was nothing; I was Zero. Had we known what was waiting for us at the end of this night I wondered if we would have done things differently.

  If mother and father knew this was our last day together would they have fought that morning. If my sister knew she was going to die would she have stayed home. If my brother knew his whole family would be lost to him would he have come home and joined us. I had so many questions. In the end, the memory played out as it always did.

  My mother made me breakfast, my father fell to sleep before it was done. My brother and sister came downstairs lured by the scent of bacon. We ate; we laughed; we weren’t the best family but even with the fighting we were happy. It was a good morning. It was our last morning.

  “Zero,” a deep voice called. I blinked drawn out of the memories of my past. Why did I hold on to that memory? Maybe it was because it was the only I had. It was the one reminder that once upon a time I too had been human. It kept me sane. To know that there was a humanity inside of me. It made me more that what I was.

  At the door was the leader of the demon-hunting group I was a part of. I had been with this group for forty years. Back then, it was this man’s grandfather who was the leader. The old man found me on the side of the road broken and beaten.

  My body was wracked from a battle I had lost. The demon that left me for dead was much like the one who painted these worlds with blood. I faced off with him and he beat me again. Every time I faced him he won.

  I was so weak back then. Being a part of the group gave me strength. They taught me how to fight, how to use my magic. They taught me how to stand for something greater than myself. When the old man found me, I was ready to give up on life. He reminded me why I was a demon in the first place. He reminded me that it was I who fought so hard for life. I tried so hard that to stay alive that even after death I came back to the land of the living.

  Now I looked at the man who I watched grow up. His grandfather was long since dead, but he was still here. This was the man I met when he was just a boy. The one that I smoked and drank with when he was a teen. The same man that grew older than me, taller than me.

  Shu has been my best friend since the day we met. He changed a lot over the years. Brown hair was shaven close to his head now. Hazel eyes were still as bright as the child I met forty years ago. Shu was a scary looking man. Tall, buff, the kind of person you didn’t want to get into a bar fight with. That was a good thing in our business. A demon hunter had to be tough.

  Besides myself and Shu, our once large team was now down to only two others. Neither of those two knew my true nature. I had a belief that if you choose a life of hunting demons you had been personally affected by one. Everyone on our team had some kind of encounter with a demon. We all had our own reasons to hate them.

  I pulled the cigarette from my lips. Flicking away the ashes that built while my mind wandered. Shu’s eyes fell to the girl that was in the bed I sat on. I could see the conflicted look on his face. I wondered if he thought of his daughter just now.

  “How long has she been gone?” Shu asked leaning against the door jam. Gone, was that it? When you died, you were just gone. This girl’s whole family was gone. There would be no one left in this world to remember her, to miss her.

  “A few days.” She had been laying here a few days already. No one found her yet.

  “You need to feed. I’ll distract the others. The blood is probably still good.” I looked down at the sleeping child. She looked so peaceful, so . . . Untouched by the world. Shu wanted me to drink from her. He wanted me to feed on the dead child.

  “I won’t. She deserves respect.” Shu frowned at me. I knew what that look meant. It meant he remembered the last time I fed. It met he was starting to worry about me. Shu worried over me as if I was his child. Sometimes he forgot that I was the thing that went bump in the night. I was one of the monsters we hunt. Sometimes Shu only saw me as the sixteen-year-old boy I appeared to be.

  “It’s been three months, Zero. You need to eat to keep your wits.” Had it been that long already? I couldn’t remember I never kept up with that kind of things.

  “I’ll eat, but not from her.” My eyes shifted back to the child in the bed. I was a demon; it shouldn’t matter where my meal came from. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to take it from this child.

  “When then?” When would I take that meal?

  “Look at her, Shu. How could you ask me to drink from her? She’s been through enough already.”

  “Zero, Shu, there’s no sign of him.” A softer voice spoke and Shu and I looked towards the door. Aya was standing behind Shu. She was just like the rest of us. She lost her father to demons when they raided the village she lived in.

  We found her two years ago. She was just a child, not much older than the body I resided in. Aya had strong magic and an even stronger hatred for demons. Shu invited her to come with us. He gave her a reason to live again. To revenge her father and all the others that died that night in her village.

  I felt . . . sorry for Aya, I felt sorry for every child born in this world. Back when I was human Aya would have been a popular girl. She was shaped nice, blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. She would be the head cheerleader type.

  There were no cheerleaders in this world anymore. There were hardly any schools. Demons always came where the massive gathered. When all of this first started schools was some of the first places that the beasts attacked. Destroying any hope for the future.

  “Is this a bad time?” Aya asked looking around the room. My eyes locked with her eyes.

  “How can you stomach this, Zero? You look death in the eyes and you don’t even turn away. You’re so brave.” I wasn’t brave. There was a time when I looked death in the eyes and I screamed, I begged, I offered up my very soul just so I could live. In the end I still died. I still became something less human.

  “There’s no room in this world for weakness so I’m strong.” It was that simple really. Only those who understood that could make it in this world. “Let’s go back to the city, Shu. We missed our chance. He won’t pop up again until he’s ready to feed.” Shu sighed rubbing the top of his head.

  “Alright, Aya go find Dante,” Shu told her and Aya nodded turning and leaving the room. I stood from the bed moving towards the door. Before I could leave the room, Shu grabbed my arm. My eyes shifted down to large fingers around my bicep.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Don’t come home until you eaten.” I squeezed my eyes shut. He was worse than his grandfather. Shu was such a worrywart. I started to open my mouth, but Shu shook his head. “This is for you, Zero. Dante just joined us. He might attack you if he finds out.” Dante had only been with us for a few months now. He was the kind of man that would die fighting demons. It was probably what he wanted.

  If Dante found out what I was, we would kill him. Then we would have to kill Aya. We? Shu wouldn’t get human blood on his hands. I would kill them. They were two people that I thought of as friends. Yet there lives met so . . . little. Maybe that was what made me the worse kind of monster.

  “I’ll eat.” It was about time that I ate again. Nodding Shu released my arm and we both left the room. We had to walk through the house again. The blood still stained the walls. The house still smelled of death.

  Moving out towards the car Dante and Aya were already waiting for us. My eyes shifted to Dante. He was a mountain of a man. All muscle and height. He towered over me. He was impressive to look at. I knew that if you put an axe in his hand he would take off the head of any demon that got close to him.

  About five months ago we found Dante in a demon hunter bar. He was fighting everyone who got in his way. Yelling about getting a mission even though he didn’t have a license to hunt demo
ns. It wasn’t about the money for Dante though. He just wanted to kill demons.

  Dante picked a fight with Shu and Shu took him down quickly. A man like Dante respects the strength that others had. He started to follow Shu around everywhere we went until Shu agreed that he could be on our team.

  Looking back at the house I frowned. The demon that killed this family was the same demon that killed Shu’s family. His grandfather had been a boy when The Blood Demon came to his home. Luckil,y he heard the cries of his family and ran. He vowed to hunt The Blood Demon. That vow was passed to his son and then to Shu.

  Shu likes to call The Blood Demon his white whale. We all had a white whale. Even I had a demon that I wanted to kill, above all else. Those of us who are lucky get to meet our white whales. We get to kill them. Then there are those of us like Shu and me.

  “Were you okay in there?” Dante asked me. I looked over at him. His hair had turned blue from bad magic, his gray eye was studying me. The left one was covered with a patch, he said he lost it in a fight. Dante saw me as a child. No, most people saw me as a child. I died when I was sixteen. I would forever and always be sixteen.

  “Yes, what about you?” This wasn’t the worse thing I ever saw. The death of my family was far worse than anything The Blood Demon could do. Dante nodded his head. He had respect for me too. He thought I was one tough kid. I felt bad for lying to him. For not telling him I was over two hundred years his senior.

  Instead, I let the issue drop as we got into the car. The smell of smoke quickly filled the small space of the cabin. I needed to eat. I would do that when we made it back to the city. Closing my eyes, I pretended to sleep.

  I didn’t sleep but once every month. All demons have a day of rest. You sleep for the day, recharge your battery. I wasn’t sure what Shu told the other when my day of sleep came. His wife and daughter were the only people who knew what I truly was. We wanted to keep it that way.