7even Circles: Moon Is Calling (7even Circles Series Book 1)
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Authors: KD Jones
7even Circles
The Moon is Calling
- 7even Circles Series -
KD Jones
Copyright 2016 KD Jones
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Table of Contents
BLURB:
Cassandra Adira Knight...
Born from the light and forged in the fires of hell to be a warrior.
A young woman who had no knowledge of her past, thrust into a world she never knew existed. Powers buried deep inside her are triggered and she discovers the truth about herself.
Will she accept what fate has called her to or will she turn her back on her destiny?
She will have to make a decision...7even Circles is here and the moon is calling.
Chapter 1
“Will that be all?” Cass asked the man in the black raincoat. He’d sat down at her table an hour ago and ordered the special. It bothered her that he didn’t eat his food, just sat sipping his coffee and watching her. It was seriously creepy.
“Yes.” His answer was short and brisk, and he looked at her his eyes were a bottomless black. He reminded her of the Grim Reaper.
“Let me get your bill.” She turned and headed to the counter. Jerry, the owner of the little diner, leaned over from the other side. He was a giant of a man, tall and muscular. He used to be a linebacker for a college in his twenties and though some of his bulk turned a bit on the chubby side he still maintained a good deal of his muscles. Even though he towered over them, he was always so gentle with her and Leeza. He was the closest thing she had to a big brother.
“Is he bothering you, honey?”
She shook her head. “No, he’s just…weird. I need to give him his check so he can leave.”
Jerry handed the bill to her and went back into the kitchen. She looked it over to make sure that everything on it was correct, even though she knew that stalling was only making this take longer. She took a deep breath and turned to walk back to the creepy guy.
“Here’s your bill. Hope everything was to your liking.” She placed the bill on the table.
He pulled out his wallet and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table. When she went to pick it up, he reached out and grabbed her hand, halting her.
“Are you about to get off work? I’d love to get to know you better. My car is across the street—we could take a ride. I know places in the city that you’ve probably never seen.” His eyes seemed to glow red for just a moment. Maybe it was the lighting in the diner, or it could be that her eyes were playing tricks on her.
The creepy feeling she got just from speaking with him now tripled at their skin-to-skin contact. She felt a tingling in her arm that made her stomach roll a little. Everything in her told her she needed to run, to get away from him. She tried to pull free, but he tightened his grip on her hand, almost to the point of pain
She felt sick inside, looking down into his dead eyes. She stuttered, “I—I’m n—not interested.” He released her hand and she felt that buzzing pain fade. “I’ll get your change for you.”
“Keep it.” He stood up, and she couldn’t help but step back out of his way. Just as he reached the door he turned and looked at her, and again she saw that flicker of red in his eyes. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, Cassandra Knight.” Then he turned and walked out into the rain.
Cass rubbed her arm and hand where he’d touched her. How did he know her name? She had Jerry put just her nickname—Cass—on her nametag, and she never introduced herself using her full name. She had a terrible sense that the man would be back, and he wouldn’t take no from her so easily next time.
“Hey Cass, you going to pick up these orders?” Jerry barked out.
She shook off the weird vibes. “On it!”
Well, if the guy tried something, she wasn’t going down without a fight. She hadn’t survived the foster care system and living on the streets by being a pushover.
Four hours later she finished refilling the napkins in the dispenser. She looked over at her friend Leeza, who was turning the closed sign around on the door as she locked up.
“That was one hell of a night.” Tim, their bus boy, came out of the kitchen to help clean up.
Leeza snorted. “It’s not over for me, either. I have to go home and study for my anatomy exam.”
“Shit, you should’ve said something earlier. I would’ve covered your tables so that you could leave early.”
“No way, Cass. You’ve worked double shifts the last three nights covering for Alice while she’s on maternity leave. I couldn’t leave you high and dry. Besides, tuition for med school has just gone up, so I need every dime I can make right now.”
“Did that last Pell Grant not go through?”
“It was approved, but I still have to buy my supplies now; the check won’t be in until next month.”
Cass envied her friend. She’d never even graduated from high school. Things didn’t work out that way for her. Most of what she knew she’d learned from going to libraries, reading books, and newspapers.
“Well, let me cover your shift the day before your final so that you can concentrate on studying.”
“I may take you up on that. You ready to go yet? I could give you a lift home.”
Cass shook her head. “You go ahead. The bus stop’s not too far.” She was lying; she had several blocks to go before she got to the abandoned apartment building she lived in. She usually rode the bus during the day, but at night, she found the oddest people watching her and didn’t want any of them to know where she lived.
She preferred to walk home at night in the shadows. It wasn’t the safest thing, but she knew how to blend in with her background. She was good at that, making herself invisible. Maybe being passed from foster home to foster home trained her to be that way.
She came from nothing; she couldn’t even remember the first eight years of her life. Cops from the downtown Detroit police department had found her wandering the streets. When they questioned her about who she was, she had no idea. She didn’t know who her parents were or where she lived. She didn’t even know her own name.
From the back pocket of her jeans she pulled out a picture of a woman with dark hair holding a baby. On the back of the picture was one name, Knight. Cass also wore intricately designed silver cross with a word inscribed on the back:
Adira.
The cops called in a social worker and put out word that they’d found a missing child, but no one ever came forward to claim her. She’d been placed in the foster care system and forgotten about.
The foster care system wasn’t the worst, it was just flawed. Some of the other kids in the system were able to find forever homes. Just not her.
She managed to keep the picture and the cross with her throughout the years. They were the only two things that linked her to her past. She’d looked at them every day of her life, hoping to find a clue to who she was. Even now, years later, she saved part of her tips from waitressing so she could one day afford to hire an investigator to help find her parents.
Cass went to the back door and unlocked it to let herself out. She looked around to make sure no one was there before she walked down the alley. The various sounds of the city were so familiar to her now. She heard the sirens of police cars going after criminals and people yelling at one another a few blocks down. It amazed her how much she could hear from such a distance. It came in handy at times.
She stopped to look behind her after she crossed the street, thinking she’d heard footsteps following her. When she turned, no one was there. Maybe it had just been her imagination.
Cass walked faster around the corner. She felt relieved when she got closer to her apartment building. It had been abandoned years ago, but someone had rigged up the power to come on for several hours a day. She took the fire escape and climbed up to the top-floor landing. There was no door on this side of the building, but she left one window unlocked and rigged it with a coin that would lie flat if someone had tampered with it. The coin still stood upright, wedged between the window and the pane, telling her the window hadn’t been disturbed.
This wasn’t the first abandoned building she’d lived in. She’d learned that the safest places were the ones where she could control the way she entered and exited the building. Inner stairways and hallways were too dark and dangerous. Sometimes they were filled with drug dealers selling their products, hookers selling their bodies, or other homeless people like her needing a dry place to sleep. She didn’t have to pay rent or utilities. Her apartment was run down, but it was hers, her only real home.
She spent six years going from foster home to foster home. Every time she was placed somewhere, something would happen that would make her foster parents send her back. She seemed to attract trouble without meaning to. It was hard to never have a real home or be able to make real friends. She couldn’t figure out who she was or what she wanted. She saw her parents in every couple she met, only to be disappointed when they too turned away from her.
When she turned fourteen, she decided she’d had enough of being shuffled from place to place and never having any say in it. She grabbed what little she owned, stuffed it in her book bag, and ran away. She’d been living on her own ever since.
She shimmied through the window, closing and locking it behind her. She checked over the locks on her apartment door next, thankful for the sturdy deadbolt in place. She’d taken the doorknob to the local hardware store and had them help her make a key just in case she ever needed it. She’d learned a lot from four different apartments in the last six years.
The first year was really hard; she had to scavenge for food and for safe places to sleep. By the time she was fifteen, she discovered that it was better to sleep during the day and go places at night. Her favorite haunts at night would be the public library. The public ones were open until seven at night but the college ones stayed open until midnight. She used her visits to the libraries to educate herself.
One time she’d tried move farther out, to a suburb, but it was harder to find transportation. She didn’t have a license, and the suburbs had limited bus routes. The city’s public transportation was much better. Also, she found that in the city it was much easier to find a job that paid her under the table.
Her life was hard, but it was hers. In her spare time she searched for her parents. There were times she’d though about leaving Detroit, going somewhere else, but something pulled her back and kept her from leaving. Cass wasn’t sure why, but she felt like the answers to who she was, were close to being revealed.
She looked around her studio apartment and the old beat-up furniture she’d salvaged from the dump. “Ah—home sweet crap.”
It wasn’t messy, but nothing there was new. She usually got things like her clothes from shopping at thrift stores or dumpster diving. Cass knelt down by the corner and pulled up a floorboard. Inside was a black lockbox, which she stored her tips in. She had several lockboxes in different buildings throughout the city, just in case someone did break in to this one. She’d learned the hard way not to put her money in just one location.
The lights flickered. She reached for her candles and lit them, just in case. She’d read for a few hours until the sun started to rise, and then get some sleep. He dreams were always filled with strange sights and sounds, but she could never remember them when she woke up.
*****
He stood outside the building, watching from below. She returned home at her usual time, which wasn’t such a smart thing to do. She should never keep a regular schedule. It made it too easy to get to her. All a person would have to do was watch her to get the opening they needed; like he was now.
He wrapped the hoodie further over his head and took a deep inhalation of his cigarette before he threw it to the ground and smashed it with his boot. Footsteps alerted him that at least three men were approaching him.
“Give us your money.”
He shook his head. “Why would I do that?”
“To stay breathing, man.”
“I am breathing.”
That just angered the leader of the little gang. “If you piss me off, you won’t be that way for long.”
“Interesting. Can you back up your words?”
“Son of a bitch, I’m going to kick your ass!”
He moved his head side-to-side, making the vertebrae pop. “You can try.” He needed a good fight to let some of his energy out, anyway.