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  Lost Time

  Azarel Chronicles Book 1

  Lost Time

  M.C. Ashley

  Edited by John Alexander

  M. C. Ashley

  2018

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by M.C. Ashley

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

  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.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without permission is illegal and punishable by law.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing: 2018

  ISBN 978-1-5323-6048-0

  www.starvingwritersguild.com/mcashley

  Ordering Information:

  Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, educators, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the above listed address.

  U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers: Please contact M.C. Ashley by email at [email protected]

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my grandfather Quentin Mims Rhinehart, a great man who is sadly no longer with us on this Earth. Without his constant love and affection, I wouldn’t have been able to be where I am today. I am truly blessed to be his grandchild. We finally did it, Grandfather.

  Acknowledgements

  This book never could have been made without the generous donations of my friends and family. Because of you the dream that I had been talking about for years has been realized.

  But a special acknowledgment must go to John Erdely, for without him I never would have considered the platform through which the funding for this book came from. Looking forward to all the successes we’ll share in the future, old friend.

  Chapter 1

  Part of me had been here before, but the rest of me had no clue how I’d gotten there.

  In front of me were the remnants of a gas station. The pumps had long been siphoned off, and the filling stations were now rusted beyond repair; a car had wedged itself into the second window of the mart on my right. The billboard that had once proclaimed the glory of Mordecai’s Gas Depot had fallen in front of the gas station’s mart, but left enough room to let me get inside if I wanted to. To my right, I watched the sun fade from the sky, ushering in a new night. I sighed, wishing I had more to protect myself with. I took off my sunglasses, and concealed them within the right inward pocket of my trench coat.

  A harsh shrill of a woman under attack greeted my ears from inside the gas station and I immediately headed for the entrance. I had sensed the presence of other human beings earlier, but my powers were weaker for some reason, almost as if I had seen action earlier that day. My memory failed me for the moment. I shrugged the thought off and forced myself over the billboard. I wished the doors had had the decency to allow me the chance to knock them down first. Dramatic entrances make for better stories, or so I’m told.

  No one greeted me in the front half of the dilapidated store, so I rushed to the back, careful to have my hands ready should I need to attack anyone stupid enough to get in my way. There was no one in the back. I honed my senses, feeling a wave of energy to my right. I headed that way, cheering inwardly when I saw a door. Probably an office or something. Mustering my might, I brought my right leg up and shoved my foot through the door, trying to think of something witty to say as the door caved in. However, my leg ended up stuck in the door as I nursed my pride. Typical. It should’ve splintered apart, but that’s my luck. I quickly grabbed my leg and pulled it back so no one could take advantage of my exposed foot. Then I grabbed the doorknob and politely opened the door.

  In the room before me stood two men, hunched over with blood covering their mouths. They were wearing black cloaks with an ancient symbol—ליל—written on the back of their hoods, allowing me to know their origin immediately. They were both magnificently pleasing to the eye, belying their true murderous intent. The tallest one glared at me, as the shorter one seemed mildly amused by the interruption, but I knew neither of them would tolerate my presence for long. Beneath the tallest one was the woman I’d heard scream earlier. Her tattered clothes were covered in blood, which I surmised came from the dead old man to her left. Crouched in the corner was a small, gaunt man with blond hair who was eyeing me with suspicion.

  Cracking my neck, I moved forward to look over the body of the old man, finding that I had been right in my suspicions about who these gentlemen were. Vampires.

  “Who the hell are you?” the tall one asked.

  I continued examining the body, discovering a hint of fear had been ripped from the old man before he’d died, causing his heart to enter cardiac arrest. This, coupled with the severity of the attack, had made his heart explode out of his chest, which had strewn parts of his body around the room. Typical Sanguine Collective activity, from the Fear Lord branch. I’d seen it hundreds of times before. Nothing new here.

  “I said,” the tall one said, approaching me with venom in his eyes pushing the woman to his subordinate, “‘Who the hell are you?’”

  I looked him in the eye and he turned to avoid my gaze reflexively. That wasn’t good; it meant he had suspicions about who I was. Ignoring him, I looked to the young woman, who trembled underneath the small one’s talon-tipped grasp.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She froze, confused for some reason.

  “Hey, meat, you’re talking to me, remember?” the tall one retorted, trying to grab me but I pushed him out of the way. He tripped, and fell near the wall. His companion did nothing except eyeball me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her again, smiling gently.

  “No,” she mouthed, too afraid to speak.

  “Did you come here voluntarily?”

  She shook her head and I noticed a standing floor mirror in the background. Everyone in the room showed up in it, eliminating a fringe hypothesis I’d had.

  I stood up and nodded, saying, “Few ever do,” as I walked over to the mirror to examine myself.

  Now this I remembered, thankfully. I was garbed in my normal attire: A simple white undershirt surrounded by my father’s first trench coat, a knee-length, beige in color gabardine jacket. I was also wearing heavy-duty cotton khaki pants. Embroidered into my left-hand sleeve was an insignia of a shield—the mark of a Sentinel. My fedora was off center, so I removed it.

  I stepped to the right to avoid an attack from the tall guy, paying no attention as my foe fell into a broken cupboard. I checked my hair—still dirty blond, like I remembered. I looked at my eyes; hazel on the left and red on the right. Frowning, I tried to remember if I knew how that had happened, but nothing came to me. The tall one recovered from his failed attack and came after me again, but I sidestepped to the left this time, which made him collide into the wall. Smiling, I gazed at my skin, which was a bit darker than usual, although that’s what you get when Armenian and Scotch-Irish genes collide. On my left hand’s ring finger was a black ring decorated with a bony dragon, which I didn’t remember seeing before.

  “I’m getting tired of you ignoring me, kid,” the tall one said, snarling.

  “I’m twenty-seven,” I said, placing the fedora back on my head. “I know, I know, I don’t look it, but believe me when I
say that my kind doesn’t age like normal humans. You should know, seeing as we’re enemies.”

  “Impossible! Your kind is dead! We slaughtered them years ago to the last man!”

  I paused. Had I just heard that right? Surely, he was lying. The very idea was preposterous. There was no way some pissant group like the Sanguine Collective had managed to wipe out the Gray Forum.

  “What year is it?” I asked on a whim, checking my teeth.

  “100 S.R.,” the tall one said.

  “S.R.?” I repeated.

  “This one’s a retard, boss,” the small one said. “Why else do you think he’s acting this way? He doesn’t even know about the Sacred Rebirth!”

  “Shut up, idiot!” the tall one shouted. “What is your name, stranger?”

  I turned around and smiled gingerly. “My name is Magnus Blake Macbeth Azarel, but I go by Blake,” I said. “It’s a ridiculously long name with many wonderful meanings and literary references, I know, but it’s the one my parents gave me. I figured it’d be tantamount to parricide to ask the government to help me change it legally.”

  “I’ve never heard of you.”

  “Really? You’ve never heard of me? Well surely you know my father’s name? The leader of the Sentinels? Commander of the Gray Forum’s army?”

  To my surprise, he laughed heartily. “You were right, Fetch—this one is stupid! The Gray Forum’s been dead for one hundred years!”

  I cringed, trying not to let it show, but failed miserably. This couldn’t be true; I had just been with them yesterday, hadn’t I? Why couldn’t I remember the last thing I’d done? I saw my mother and father smiling at me, but they weren’t the last memory I should have had. For some reason, I knew that there had been seven years in-between that memory and now. What had happened to me?

  “Is it true?” I asked the young woman, who simply nodded.

  Rage built up inside me, ready to spring out at the slightest provocation. My hands trembled as I wrestled with a mixture of anger, hurt, and loss. I had no idea what was going on, but I had to figure it out soon.

  “You have until the count of three,” I said, growling, “to leave these people alone and gain the chance to live, vampires.”

  They laughed at me in unison this time, figuring I was too crazy to be bothered with.

  “One,” I said.

  “Please, who do you think you are?” the tall one asked. “You know what we are, and still challenge us?”

  “Two,” I said.

  His face contorted, revealing the creature that inhabited his body, a form only shared with those who are about to be killed by a member of the Sanguine Collective.

  “What do you think you can accomplish here? We are vampires. You are the meat. Nothing can be done by acting against us.”

  “Three,” I said, lunging forward.

  He met me halfway, but I was quicker, blocking his outstretched right hand with my left arm. I head butted him, forcing him into the wall, where he stood for a moment, too stunned to move. Taking the initiative, I continued my assault and charged up an attack.

  “Fiat lux!” I shouted out, as a beam of light shot from my hand, striking the vampire and making him explode.

  He was weaker than I’d suspected, otherwise he’d have survived that blast. Charred flakes filled the room and fell like snow to the floor, coating it in ash. Fetch realized he was out of his league and ran off.

  “He’s getting away,” the woman said weakly. “He’ll bring others.”

  I held up a finger, then two, and finally a third. Placing my left hand out in front of me, I mimicked an archer holding a bow and shouted out, “Ageg!” Out of thin air, a bow of brilliant white light formed. It had a single arrow tied to an ethereal rope that was nocked and ready to fire. Homing in on where my enemy was about to be, I shot the arrow, which hit the fleeing vampire in the back. Ageg automatically reeled him back to me. Fetch tried to escape the trap, but the arrow remained stuck no matter how hard he attempted to pull it out. Before he could do anything else, I mentally ordered Ageg, the bow, to dissipate and grabbed the vampire by his face.

  “Tell me everything that I want to know,” I said.

  “You can’t do this to me!” Fetch shrieked. “I am protected by the Sanguine Collective! We own this part of the world!”

  “Tenebris regni!” I shouted, letting loose a small patch of dark energy into his face, causing his skin to erode. “First question: Where are we?”

  “Two miles away from Vice City! Please stop! It hurts!”

  I discontinued my attack.

  “Mess with me and I attack again,” I said. “Second question: What happened to the Gray Forum?”

  “The Gray Forum’s just a legend these days, man,” he said, voice wavering. “If they ever existed, they must’ve been nothing to us. We wiped them out a hundred years ago.”

  “So I’ve been told. Third question: How?”

  I inspected his eyes and he looked into mine. Christened individuals like me can tell if someone’s speaking the truth if we make eye-contact with the person under questioning. Whoever Fetch was, he was telling the truth.

  “They never tell us these things. They’re useless facts these days, Blake.”

  “Don’t use my name. I don’t want peons like you abusing it. Now I am to assume that you have no clue what I’m talking about, so that means you are just about worthless to my historical questions. I’ll take another route. Question four: Who do you work for?”

  “Zoë Slinden. She controls Vice City. It used to be called Corpus Christi.”

  I grimaced. Slinden—now that was a name I recognized. The Slindens were all members of the Sanguine Collective. When they turned someone into their version of the vampire, they gave them their last name to show bravado to others that they were the strongest ethnic group of vampires in the world.

  “Question Five: How many Sentinels and Psionics are left?”

  “I don’t even know what those are.”

  I stared uncertainly at my captive. I gazed into his eyes and then penetrated his innermost thoughts. A quick sweep through them let me know that he had never heard the terms before. It was dangerous to look into someone else’s thoughts—you could see things you could never forget if you weren’t careful. Also, it only really worked when they were thinking about what you wanted them to think about.

  “Impossible,” I said. “I can’t be the last one. I just saw them, didn’t I?”

  “Look, I don’t know what you did or didn’t see. I’m telling you what I know.”

  I returned my focus to him. “Fine then. I’m getting nowhere with you. Get out of here. Tell everyone you meet that they have a Sentinel to deal with.”

  I released my hold of Fetch and stood up, placing my right hand into the inside of my trench coat to find something.

  “Are you stupid?” Fetch asked, snarling, as I had my back to him. “You’re gonna pay for what you did to me. Once Zoë hears that someone messed with us, then you’re a dead man! She’ll reward anyone who kills you! In fact, why don’t I do that right now?”

  He growled and lunged at me. I watched him from the mirror and whirled around in time to slice open his throat with the silver knife I’d removed from my inner coat pocket. Fetch fell to the ground and gasped, trying to draw on the fear he’d fed on earlier to restore his health, managing to close the wound, but I was on him before he could do anything else, knife held to his throat.

  “What are you?” he asked, trembling. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I am a Sentinel—Christened by the Almighty Himself to take care of all His creations!” I yelled. “And it’s my job to make sure scum like you are brought to His judgment seat!”

  Then, before he could say anything else, I shouted out, “Rudis vis!”

  The knife was surrounded by an unseen telekinetic force and vibrated intensely, giving me enough power to slice through Fetch’s neck and fully decapitate the unholy creature. His body crumpled into dust immediately aft
erward, unable to keep itself stable after dealing with so much pure energy.

  Sheathing the knife back inside my trench coat, I stood up and gave a silent prayer to God, thanking Him for aiding me in my time of need. My prayer soon ended and I was made aware of the young woman standing beside me, her body trembling from fear.

  “Your fear is necessary, my dear,” I said, “but do not fear me—I am but a conduit of His power. Fear Him alone. Are you okay?”

  She blinked twice and then nodded.

  “What happened here?”

  “We were trying to escape Vice City before the Feast could begin,” she said. “Thead, Bob, and I were caught on our way out by some of Zoë’s fresh ones. Bob died before you got here. My name is Perdita Cause.”

  I turned and found the blond-haired man from earlier, in the corner. He was looking at me and I mentally identified him as Thead. He looked far more confident now, like he had never been in any danger in the first place. I felt a pulsating movement across my body and shook my head, as I thought I saw a purple light flash across my arms. When I refocused my eyes, I saw nothing and decided I had imagined it.

  I pondered the phrase “fresh ones” for a moment. In my time, new members of the Sanguine Collective were referred to as “dead hopefuls.” It seems the trademarked Slinden humor had changed in the past one hundred years.

  “What’s this Feast?” I asked.

  “It happens every twenty-five years, in celebration over their defeat of the Gray Forum,” the woman said. “All the Sanguine Collective’s major cities have a sacrifice. Three-hundred and twenty-four men, one-hundred and seventy-one women, and one-hundred and eight children are brought to the city and killed by the leader of the city, commemorating the exact number of people killed when the Gray Forum was wiped out.”