Read Memory of an Immortal Heart (Immortal Hearts) Online
Authors: Kita Bell
Memory of an Immortal Heart (Immortal Hearts)
Memory of an Immortal
Heart
Book One of the Immortal Hearts Series
by Kita Bell
IAL Publishing
www.KitaBell.com
Text Copyright © 2013 Kita Bell
All Rights Reserved
Sneak Peek: Shadow of an Immortal Heart
The
Kaspians…
Kaspian
children are given lives with no time limit. But they are all born carrying
inside the expectation of dying in blood, and someday soon. So often that
expectation proves true. So tell me, Nikandros, which is the greater tragedy:
Is it
that our remaining children might realize what it means to live forever? Or
does their tragedy stem from the fact they all possess your fatally mortal turn
of mind?
But
you, Nikandros, would call these tragedies “gifts.” You chose to walk that
path.
Know
this, my love: whether gift or tragedy, they are all my children in the first.
I’m
afraid they will remain your children to the last.
-- as spoken by Ashtoreth
Prologue
– Brand
The
worst memory of his life wasn’t his own.
It
belonged to his brother Khael.
It was
worse than the memory of his father dying, worse than dealing with his mother’s
madness. It was worse than losing a sibling he had known since birth. In fact,
that memory –
the
memory – occurred near the start of his
life in the year 1315 AD. It occurred at night, in Spain, during that first
long miserable year of the cold and rains.
It
wasn’t a memory he had wanted to steal. No, he had been given no choice but to
steal it. On more than one occasion he tried to give it back, but couldn’t. It
wasn’t possible.
Yet, he
tried.
Because
the memory he stole wasn’t just a memory. It was a person. It was a heart, and
a smile, and a wistful, teasing, laughing
loving
voice.
The
memory was of a woman. Brand loved her. He had always loved her – like a
sister. Yet, after taking those memories he found himself carrying a nameless
longing. A shapeless wish – an unformed desire. Not for Khael’s amati…but
for his
own
amati.
He
wanted the woman who was his future. He knew she would be a strong woman, a
beautiful woman – a loving woman.
Even as
the once self-assured Khael stumbled around, furious and dead-eyed, miserable
and unknowing with loss, Brand scrubbed his hands through his dark hair and
remembered.
He
always remembered.
Those
stolen memories could make him smile, but they also hurt like too-sharp claws
slicing into the deep muscle of his heart. He felt like a voyeur peering into
them, for they did not belong to him. Those scenes, those emotions, that
pain –
thank the gods, that pain did not belong to him.
He
didn’t ever want that pain to belong to him. He didn’t ever want that to
be
him.
He vowed it never would.
And
yet, Brand still found himself longing for his amati
.
He
longed for a nameless woman.
He
longed for
her.
The
first time he saw her, she was lying naked in the snow off an abandoned road.
Chapter 1
Present day
The
Warnings – those rare, tangled premonitions of death that encompassed
Eva’s small, singular ability – did not come very often, but when they
did, they terrified her. Over the past twenty-six years of her existence, Eva had
learned to leap when they called, to run where they whispered. Most
importantly, Eva had learned to change them.
Eva
never, ever, ignored a Warning. Not anymore.
When
she did, people died.
People
she loved.
Which
was why, when the blizzard cut the power to the Asylum’s electromagnetic locks,
Eva escaped.
Because
this time the Warning had been for
her.
The
instant the Asylum’s power flickered out, Eva held her breath. She began a slow
count to one hundred in the darkness, unclenching her near-frozen fingers as
she cautiously rose to pace toward the door of the tiny cement room that served
as her prison cell. The paper-thin hospital slippers Rohe’s henchmen had thrown
at her whispered on the ice-cold floor, the baggy institutional sweatpants and
thin gray sweatshirt she wore doing little to stave off the chill.
When
Eva finished her count, she raised her hand to the smooth door. There were no
latches, no handles – no way to work the power lock from the inside. The
fluorescent bulb dangling in her cell had dimmed to a pale afterimage, barely
enough for her tiger eyes to see, but Eva reasoned,
If the electric lighting
doesn’t work, then neither should the electric locks
.
She
placed an ear to the lock: no hum.
Eva jerked
back, then sharply drove her palm against the steel door. It hurt; there was a
clicking, grinding sound – the noise of the lock working against the
mechanism, but failing to hold. It had weakened. But was it enough?
“Please
be enough,” Eva whispered, envisioning Rainey’s gentle face. She had to get out
of here – she had to see her sister again. Rainey was all she had left.
Hope
cut through the cold, dull daze in Eva’s mind, and she threw herself against
the steel door. The reverberation was loud and flat, and the impact bruised her
shoulder, jolting her unexercised body. She hated the weakness. The places Rohe
had bled pulled and began to bleed again, but she ignored them. There would be
no second chances, not here.
She
couldn’t last much longer in this cage. Escape was burning a hole inside her.
Eva
slammed into the door again. And again.
Finally,
it gave.
The
hall outside was dark, black, like the stomach of a monster. Faint residual
energy glowed weakly in the fluorescent bulbs, fading now that the power had
cut. There were no guards outside, there never were. But that was part of the
fear Eva lived with – of being locked away, forgotten forever. She rubbed
her arms, fighting goose bumps as she moved forward, unsure whether to turn
right or left – then shook her head. Much as she needed to escape, she
also needed to make sure someone else got out. She owed it to him.
They
had put Eva in cell 114. He was in 113. Eva didn’t know his name, or how Rohe
had captured him, but she knew he must be a blood tiger. He had a blood tiger’s
hearing, anyway.
Eva
gave a mirthless smile as she turned to the right. Her sister Rainey had been
obsessed with codes when they were kids. For a few years, Morse code had been
their “secret code.”
Now
that code belonged between her and the man in cell 113. In this place of
madness, that code – and that stranger – were the only things that
had kept Eva sane.
She
owed him.
And she
needed to know if he was real.
Eva
quelled the urge to go running down the hall and stepped toward the large steel
door. She brushed her fingers against the number plate, then reached to grip
the handle. She gave a careful tug, testing it.
Easy
.
Her
stomach lurched as the door swung outward, leaving a tingling static charge on
her palm.
Eva
shivered. She slapped her thigh, neck prickling from the electricity that
filled cell 113. The stale air smelled like copper and blood, and her stomach
tightened. Eva forced one foot inside.
It felt
like a trap. Another trap. It was closing in on her.
Only
this time the trap was inside her own mind, caught somewhere between hope and
fear and the prayer that she wasn’t delusional.
“Hello?”
Her voice was raspy from disuse. “I don’t…know your name. Perhaps I should have
asked…”
Eva’s
words dwindled as she forced her other foot forward, gripping the doorframe as
she squinted into the pitch-black. The walls tightened. Eva’s heart began
hammering. The shards from a light bulb glinted dully on the floor, and Eva
took a wary step around them while the darkness gathered like a physical force.
She was shaking.
Okay, I’m done here. I need to leave, go home to Rainey
,
and forced herself to speak anyway, “It’s Eva. From 114. I can’t see anything.
Where are you?”
Please
be real
.
Ice-cold
fingers gripped her ankle like a manacle; it was as if all the electricity in
that room broke towards her. Eva stifled a scream, and the hand relaxed.
“Don’t
come closer,” a hoarse male voice said from the floor. “Glass shards. Camera
wires.”
The
terror in Eva’s chest loosened: the man
was
real. He wasn’t some
delusion or coping mechanism. Her brief exchanges with him – tapping
through the walls where cameras couldn’t see – had
happened
.
“You’re
real
,” she breathed in utter relief. “
Alive
.”
A
moment of silence. Then: “I suppose.”
“What’s
wrong? We have to get out of here.
Now
.” Eva crouched, pulling his bulk
up and toward the outline of the door. They had to get as far as possible from
Rohe. Soon.
Immediately
.
She was
weak, but it would take more than three weeks of Rohe before Eva lost her
Kaspian strength. On the other hand, the man leaned heavily on Eva’s shoulder
– and seemed shaky.
“Did
she bleed you today? I thought today was my turn.” Eva tried to understand his
unsteadiness as they moved into the eerie hall. She couldn’t make out his
personal scent; he smelled too strongly of burned electrical wiring. Eva
quelled a sneeze and hesitated as they reached a second corridor.
“Left.
Go left,” he rasped and shifted to take more of his own weight. “And no. I
think…I was attempting to break the camera in my cell when the power surged. I
got caught in…that.”
Eva
shuddered. “She is a monster.”
They
turned. “You were in 114. Eva, you said?” He asked it like she had surprised
him. He sniffed her shorn hair.
“It’s
me,” Eva promised, his uncertainty oddly reassuring. She didn’t know him. But
he understood how it felt to be trapped in a cell, what Rohe was like. “Don’t
worry. We’ll get out.”
“Yes…”
the man shook his head, a bare movement in the darkness. “I know.” They
stumbled to a dark intersection. There were no sounds, no signs of life.
Everything was silent and cold. “Left,” he said again, with a stark knowledge.
“Take the stairs. Up one flight.”
“Rohe
never took me through here before.”