The Uninvited (The Julianna Rae Chronicles Book 1)
Read The Uninvited (The Julianna Rae Chronicles Book 1) Online
Authors: Aral Bereux
Special thanks to my departed grandmother – my only wish is she rest easy now.
With all my heart, I miss you, Nana.
First published in 2013 by Amazon.
This edition published by Aral Bereux Indie Publishing
355 Linton Naringhil Rd, Linton, VIC. Aust.
Copyright © Aral Bereux, 2013
The moral right of the author has been assured
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organizations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
THE JULIANNA RAE
CHRONICLES
CHRONICLE #1
THE UNINVITED
ARAL BEREUX
How boring for a reader to read an author’s acknowledgments, but without them, people get cranky; and I for one, don’t want to rock the writing boat.
Not in order, but close, I would like to thank Shane, Mitch, Riley, and Zoe (little Boo) I thank you for giving me the motivation. A writer’s journey is never complete, and certainly far from easy.
My writing family and community of newfound friends, I thank you from the depths of my heart: Brian Rathbone, my mentor, my voice of reason, my inspiration; Nat Russo, my grammar king and friend; Rob Pruneda, my comic relief; all my Twitter friends and so many more . . .and not forgetting my precious beta reader, Teagan. Awesome, awesome, awesome, Teags, you rock. Thank you for giving me the courage and confidence to move on with this project. Mark Z, I’m still waiting for you to return my beta copy with notes but how can I be miffed at someone I have known since we were five? Anna, my editor; VB (no, I’m not an alcoholic), and Ando, you know who you are; Rastas cat, Rousseau, and so many more .
One final acknowledgement, which seems a little crazy as I sit here at 11.08pm in the dark on my laptop, but I’m still listening to the music I started with in the beginning of this journey and without it this book would never have happened. Thank you to Good Charlotte for providing my music, not to mention Blondie, Killing Heidi, The Shins, Nada Surf, The Cure, and Keith Urban. You guys kept me company when even my characters abandoned me for their sleep.
Lastly, my fellow readers, without your encouragement on blogs, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus; my workplace mates (old and new) and everywhere else, I thank you. I write this for you.
May the light shine bright for us all.
Aral Bereux
The Militia are a large organization who believe in the New World Order, and that the best way to serve the order, is to depopulate it either by cleansing or reprogramming camps. Those reprogrammable will be – the rest exterminated.
The Militia are traditionalists who support the notions of the Old Council, and are against any of those who are half-castes, with no ability. This is a world ruled by the watcher, the serpent of the preternatural world that has become the New Order. They hold mystic abilities and strengths. They are a creature to be feared, but revered.
This is Julianna Rae’s story of the New World Order after it has taken hold in the United States of America. It was once a nice place to live, now it is not. This is an account of her personal struggle and the struggle in the throes of the Rebellion against the New World Order’s Militia, and her family who commands it, led by Taris Madison.
Her journey into the sectors is a brutal one, but one she must endure in order to discover herself and to remain alive. With her journey comes many characters and situations, most of which even the “nice” ones are prickly with dark personalities. It’s advisable to refer to the index to the back of this book when you can. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers.
On this note, it’s time to ride with J Rae into the darkness…hold on, strap yourself down, and prepare…
“. . . she felt the world as she knew it slipping away. She’d killed a person and he hadn’t even flinched. It wasn’t a world that she wanted . . .”
FEBRURAY 2017. CAMP 4.5.2.
They were sinister kicking boots from the kicker and her ribs hurt like hell. Her wrists shook from exhaustion and her knotted hair clung to her damp face as she checked his departure. The arrest flashed back. Everything had happened so quickly.
But still, she thought. I never shared a damned thing.
‘Prisoner 64721 secured,’ boomed the voice from the watcher owning the kicking boots. ‘Lock down!’
No surrender. The thought caressed her mind while she lay pressed against the hard floor. Resting quietly in her cell, just for a minute, she sifted through the desperate events of her arrest: the truck escorting her to the camp, the clamor of chains pinning her feet and wrists against the interior steel walls, it all echoed in her mind. The joke was on them. The inconvenience she had created, the lengths that the Family had executed to find her, to arrest and interrogate her, bemused Julianna as she lay on the cell floor waiting for their return. But what thoughts she had, clouded. She craved sleep, and what little sleep she could get she needed to embrace, for she knew a second interrogation was certain.
If she hadn’t been so tired, if her nightshift dancing at Club Star hadn’t been so brutal, she thought, and her mind returned to the formal knock, knock, knock on her door from the Militia. Maybe I would have alerted to run.
The underground club where the preternaturals prowled to exploit the unsuspecting, while she danced in her barely there costume, had been relentless. She’d fought the watchers, pushing away their whispers stretching into her mind.
Julianna recounted the events colliding in her concentration as her eyes fought to stay open. The exhaustion was impossible to fight; the cool floor eased her fresh bruising. For the moment, she was safe, away from the walkers and the watchers in the Club, away from their lurking and manipulation, and abilities that she struggled to stop.
Though the walkers had physically cornered her, the watchers intrusions during stage performance were relentless. Their prodding ability to enter into a person’s mind only slowed when she’d started drinking between routines. She’d drunk plenty and danced more, hoping to blur the thoughts they reached, but they were unforgiving and cunning and their whisper ability full of deceit and power. Their manipulation of her thoughts, their words spinning as they spoke to her inside her mind had distracted her from the Militia presence in the Club. While she danced in their world, their attempts to lure her to their call, had consumed her, and so she continued to drink enough to sink a ship, to cloud their readings when her singing to herself couldn’t obstruct them any longer.
Now the drunken blurs were a blessing. The alcohol had helped during the interrogation, too; the watchers amongst her captors could only make out ramblings of slurred speech. Their skill, their ability at manipulating her mind had failed, prompting more torment instead.
Just an informal chat, they had said, as they led her to the truck, her feet barely skimming the ground. Then she arrived at the Militia’s core reprogramming camp.
Julianna lifted her head. The clock outside her cell said it was three hours after midnight. The arrest had been thirty-six hours ago, or so she estimated with rough calculations as she tapped her fingers out on the ground. Counting nightshift, the thirty-six hours of sleep deprivation was easily forty-two, and, as sleep threatened, her better judgment hazed. The interrogation had started on the thirty-seventh hour and had proven cruel, even under Militia standards.
She stretched her fingers as much as the plastic binds around her wrists allowed and she moved her arms until they were happy again. The concrete floor offered comfort, and Christ she needed to use the bathroom real bad, but right now she would rest and make do. Her reality was fracturing beyond the point of caring; it came and then faded back and forth and then back again. The visions blurred, the countless questions echoed.
Who is Isis? What connections do you have with the Rebellion? Where’s the Safe House?
She barely had a notion of what they were asking; she was a delivery girl for the Guild, an impartial coven that stayed hidden from conflict. She danced for a living when she didn’t courier their packages. No one told her anything. Isn’t Isis a bird?
Her question prompted a rush of water over the towel already suffocating her face and she had passed out, and then the kicker had arrived for his inspection.
Her eyes flicked open in the cell that held her captive, and sleep abandoned its final chance.
Heavy footsteps approached, confident and pausing between each footfall, and she lifted her head.
Julianna shifted focus to the lower bunk beside her.
Lifting her tired body until her knees were comfortable on the hard ground, she leaned into the thin mattress. She wanted to greet her visitor. She wanted to smile for her old acquaintance.
She waited for the footfalls to stop.
The Sergeant Kicker had returned, or maybe he’d never left. She noted the pistol, a Sig Sauer P-229, good for combat and he pointed it in her direction. Her big green eyes concentrated on his twitching finger readying on the double trigger. Engaging it once initiated its semi-auto prowess, and she knew one false move would see a good twelve rounds pack tightly into her chest.
‘Put it away, Sergeant.’
Her heart sank; they weren’t the Sergeant’s footsteps after all.
‘We have her now,’ the voice continued.
The Sergeant gave her a sinister glare. He wanted to squeeze the trigger. She’d frustrated the crap out of him during their talk and now he was hunting for payback. Like the ribs aren’t enough – and as soon as she finished her thought she knew the watcher had tuned into her frequency to listen to her every word.
He smiled. The Sig holstered tightly to his thigh. He turned from her gaze to walk safely along the yellow line painted in the center of the walkway, whistling softly. A large painted six displayed in the same yellow loomed on the grey concrete wall across from her cell; when Sergeant Kicker moved, she could see it clearly. The line he walked served as a safety barrier. Crossing made the officer prey to the prisoner, and so she waited, crouched and silent in cell six, hopeful his arrogance would betray him, and for Sergeant Kicker’s conceited whistling to stop.
‘Isn’t that right, J Rae?’ The footsteps stopped short of her sight. ‘The Senate no longer offers you protection. Your family’s done with your bullshit.’
‘Well, if the family’s done with my bullshit and the Militia serve the family...’She paused. ‘You can see where this is going, right?’
She received no response. Since age four, her uncle had raised her; now he’d turned her in. Senator Douglas Cathan, a Master walker on the Senate, was one of the few left, and he held the balance of power. Her refusal and rejection of the Senate stance and their Militia support in the New World Order, came at a cost. Most paid with their life, some paid with their freedom. She had refused initiation too, a reprehensible crime in her family, and they weren’t in the trade of forgiveness.
Now her arrest, under order of the New World General and Senate, had landed her in a reprogramming camp. What was found in her apartment had cemented the deal. They had a traitor in the Family, and, of course, it was Julianna Rae. Finding the comms transmission plate was her downfall, and even though they were blank with no intelligence on them; the possession of a comms meant one of two things: communication with the Rebellion or communication with the Militia, and she sure as hell didn’t support her Militia captors.
Taris knew her loyalties, too – he had ever since their ritual walk together on the family estate one evening. Her slip of the tongue on the eve of his conscription about sympathy for the Rebels in the Sectors had been all he could stomach. Their engagement had halted the following morning and they had been rivals since that fateful stroll. Now his signature scrawled across her arrest warrant. She’d recognized the writing on the article when they’d shoved it under her nose. The orders were explicit, yet his absence during the entire process of her capture didn’t go unnoticed. If the rumors held truth, Taris didn’t have time for pitiful arrests.
Before the arrest, life had been good. No, it had been certain. Now it wasn’t. The rumors surrounding Taris placed him on the Council as a new member and as a solid contender for the Senate. His ambitious nature gave him power. She was safer in the cell than beside him.
Julianna coughed. A spattering of blood sprayed over the sheets on the bunk. Their questioning had been brutal. The New World Order experience fell short of the warm and fuzzies like its promises in the news. Unfamiliar faces in a familiar uniform had tormented until her body gave up in spite of itself, passing out in the very chair that held her hostage.
She didn’t mean to break, not so easily, but ignoring their questions and posing her own had infuriated them, turning the interrogation into a savage torture.
Thank you, New World Order, thank you so very freaking much, but the thought did little to comfort the pain under her ribs.
The NWO had turned the world to shit in two short
years. No one escaped its forceful nature.
Her bound hands rubbed together and a fresh trickle of blood rolled onto the stained sheet to connect the dots of the already scattering of blood.
She sensed him watching from the cell door.
Prisoner 64721 looked up at her captor.
Taris Madison stood tall and his already broad shoulders were large in the all-black commando uniform that he proudly wore. Three gold lines displayed his senior rank on his shirt sleeves and his epaulettes, and the Lieutenant Madison name badge read easily from a distance. His wispy blonde hair with its natural wave displayed his only fairness while he hung on the bars of the cell door to peer in. His arrogance disregarded the yellow line and he gave her a wide, flawlessly aligned smile.
His newfound respect in a pressed uniform and shining boots gave him the control he craved. The military life agreed with him. She’d rarely seen him clean-shaven in their time together, but today he was entirely perfect. The standard Militia-issued Sig Sauer was holstered tightly against his thigh, but as a senior, he also carried a combat knife. It was for appearance more than action, dating back to the family traditions of sword-carrying over the centuries. They’d modernized it for practicality, but its intent was the same, and it rested beside the firearm, available for swift action.
‘Right where you should be, J Rae.’ His hands gripped the bars loosely and he leaned back, nodding to the cell next door. ‘In the company of another Rebellion loyalist, too.’
‘Locking away young girls now, Taz?’ a male voice teased from the cell next door. The charm it held made her smile. How she’d missed the shuffling of footsteps behind the wall so close, dully surprised her.
She straightened her legs, stretching to find the face belonging to the deep voice next door. Her body’s reluctance with its forming bruises screamed against the pain, as her bare feet found their place on the floor,.
‘My boys roughen you up, sweetheart?’ He glanced down the line and yelled at his officers playfully. ‘I told you men to go easy on her.’
She heard a ‘Sorry, boss,’ and used the top bunk to lean against.
‘Sorry, J Rae. They’re an overzealous bunch. Tough to control.’ His eyes lingered over her body. ‘Though a traitor like you wouldn’t understand the passion they hold. The conviction they possess.’
She discarded her spinning thoughts. Closing her mind to a creature of his status, power, and ability, drained her strength. Her head ached with concentration. She’d slipped with Sergeant Kicker, and Taris patiently waited for his chance to leap frog into her mind on the next opening.
She limped to the cell bars, keeping her eyes down and her mind empty as she pushed her wrists through the gaps, and sung inside her mind. He reached for his knife and sung the gentle song with her. She wasn’t alone in her thoughts, she couldn’t block him completely, but it was a distraction. He edged the blade from its holster.
She waited for the knife to oblige with her bindings.
Her auburn hair covered most of her exotic features as she hung her head and hummed the song aloud.
The cold blade slipped between her wrists. The sharp edge cut through the binds like butter and the bounds snapped away, rushing blood through her long, fine fingers as she flexed them to life again. Her telling smile was his only warning. Crossing the yellow line betrayed him, and she bit down on his hand, tainting the yellow line with a spray of his blood.
‘Fucking bitch!’ he yelled.
The knife dropped from his grasp, bouncing through the bars and into her cell as they both leapt for it. She reached it first as he gripped his bloodied hand. The salty, red liquid on her lips reminded her of what she would become if she took her initiation. She had tasted him before during a binding ritual he had forced. With her blood in him, and his blood in her, Taris sensed her every move and knew her every location. She wiped her mouth clean, removing temptation and the very thoughts she had tried so long to escape. She went back to her thoughts of the Guild.
Should’ve listened. They warned me, they knew this would happen.
Only she had listened, but the months of covering her tracks had failed. Now she was squaring off a watcher and batting her usual out-of-league average.