Beyond Everlight: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Fearless Destiny Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  OTHER BOOKS BY DEBBIE CASSIDY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER1

  BEYOND EVERLIGHT

  Fearless Destiny Series

  DEBBIE CASSIDY

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Debbie Cassidy

  Copyright © 2017 Debbie Cassidy

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by JMN Art

  Edited by Read Head Editing.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  OTHER BOOKS BY DEBBIE CASSIDY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER1

  T he sound of my boots echoed like muted gunshots down the primary school corridor. Tiny faces peered at me through open doorways, while educators struggled to usher the small bodies back into the safety of their classrooms. They were doing a half-arsed job though—too enthralled by the two Fearless Officers eating up space. With my 5ft 8in frame, kitted out in my standard issue combats and leathers. A dangerous looking birth mark that ran from temple to mid-cheek, I probably looked like something out of an action comic to these kids. But Brett, nicknamed The Monolith by our unit, was the beast they couldn’t take their eyes off. His 6ft 5in frame of muscle either had people running in the opposite direction or rooted to the spot. Point was, they shouldn’t be here to do either.

  I turned on the first educator we came to. “Why the hell haven’t you evacuated?”

  The teacher, a guy who looked barely old enough to shave, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times; reminding me of a goldfish I used to have.

  I leaned in, keeping my voice low enough not to scare the kids, but firm enough to get my point across. “Get the damn kids out of here. Now.”

  “Kenna?” Brett grabbed my arm before addressing the educator in a softer tone. “Just get them back into their classrooms, and stay put until we tell you otherwise.”

  I resisted the urge to shrug him off. This was too close for comfort.

  “Kenna. Breathe,” Brett said.

  “I’m fine.” But I wasn’t. The tiny ball of hot rage that sat in the pit of my stomach was threatening to expand.

  I was a Fearless Officer. I protected the weak. I killed the monsters, and I didn’t lose control. But today was testing, because I couldn’t see this as just another case. This could easily have been Bella’s school, Bella’s class . . .Bella. The atrocity I was here to remove should never have gotten in. People paid good money to live here, to ensure their safety. But the past few months had proven that nowhere was completely safe. The recent rash of incidences in Everlight had the government scrambling for an explanation. To me it was obvious—they couldn’t keep the problem out, because they couldn’t stop people from bringing the problem in. The next step would be border checks. Our sanctuary was quickly becoming a prison.

  “Did you check the wards?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they’re intact.”

  Fuck.

  We strode toward the end of the corridor. A door opened ahead and a slender woman, hair pulled back in a messy up do, dressed in leggings and a colourful tunic, stepped out. Her eyes behind her spectacles were wide and frightened.

  “Thank god you’re here.” She wrung her hands, glanced back into the room behind her, and then ushered us in.

  I took a deep breath and entered. Brett moved behind me like a shadow. Today he was playing back-up. I scanned the walls, taking in the maps and charts. There was a huge one of Lindrealm—what was left of our world—with the capitol, Everlight, clearly marked. On another wall were close-up maps of Everlight and the surrounding boroughs. The gateways to Twilight and Evernight were highlighted in red and blue respectively. It was beautiful and horrific, because the world beyond those gateways was a mystery to all but a select few. And no one wanted to be one of those select few.

  The windows were all locked with the shutters half down. The tables had been pushed haphazardly to the sides of the room. Chairs lay toppled higgledy-piggledy. And in the centre of it all sat a little girl—head bowed and knees up—rocking gently back and forth. Her hair was a rat’s nest of tangles.

  “What’s her name?” I addressed the teacher.

  “Emily.”

  I nodded and took another step into the room. My hand moved to the holster at my hip where Frieda rested, inert but ready. “Emily, can you talk to me?”

  The girl kept swaying.

  “What is it? Can you get rid of it? Oh, god. That poor child . . . Her parents . . .This place should be safe,” the teacher babbled.

  Yeah, it should. There were no cupboards or nooks and crannies, a
nd the wards were intact. It made no sense.

  “Emily, can you hear me?” I ran my gaze over her tiny frame, and then focused until the veil over my vision dropped and I saw the problem. Distorted and bloated, a monstrous thing clung to the child’s back. The urge to step away was immediate. It doesn’t know you can see it, so just stay cool.

  The otherworld denizen lifted its puffy face. Its eyes rolled around in it its head, and then its body began to pulse.

  Emily emitted a low whine.

  “What do you think, Kenna?” Brett said.

  I cocked my head and pretended to consider the situation. “OD Parasite Class.”

  “Yeah . . .I think you’re right.”

  Course I was right, but I needed him to see it too. Not with his eyes, because he couldn’t do that, but with the senses that came with his Fearless status.

  “Fucking hell,” he whispered.

  Correct again. This was gonna be hell. Severing the connection between the monster and the child could kill her, but leaving it would be a definite death sentence. I drew my weapon and flicked my wrist, activating Frieda’s blade. The room lit up with everlight.

  Emily threw back her head and screamed.

  “Oh, god!” the teacher backed up and ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  A quick nod in Brett’s direction. “Hold her down.”

  Brett flexed his biceps, his dark shirt sleeves stretching dangerously. “You got it, boss.”

  Ignoring the screams and pleas and promises to be a good girl pouring from Emily’s lips, I moved in for the kill.

  ***

  Sometimes I hated my job. Those days when I failed to get there in time. On days when we were summoned too late, or on days where the otherworld denizens won.

  But not today.

  Today was a good day.

  We stood under a churning lavender sky and watched as Emily’s parents gently loaded her into their people carrier. Mrs. Finch, the teacher, was hovering with a huge umbrella, shielding them from the downpour that had ripped the heavens just as I’d expelled the dirty little denizen. Emily was sound asleep and wouldn’t remember a thing when she awoke.

  “I’m always astounded at how well you can wield that thing.” Brett glanced at my holster then winced, reaching up to gingerly touch the bruised skin under his eye.

  “Nah. It’s all Frieda. Nothing to do with me.” I winked.

  “Well, maybe Frieda can have a word with Lance?” Brett glanced down at his blade.

  Civilians probably thought we were nuts for naming our weapons. What the heck did they know? Our everlight blades were our only defence against the monsters that lurked in the dark, and naming them had become a tradition; it forged a connection between blade and wielder.

  Brett was a good soldier, but his bulk competed with agility, and although there was power in his strikes, the finesse was absent. I guess that’s why the powers that be had paired us up. On days like this his brute strength was a huge advantage. Parasites could infuse their hosts with all kinds of abilities if they felt threatened. Hence Brett’s black eye.

  The car pulled away and Mrs. Finch hurried back toward the school building.

  I pulled on my gloves and helmet and slung my leg over my ride. I was done getting wet.

  Shooting Brett a grin over my shoulder, I started the engine. “Meet you back at base.” And then I was roaring away down the empty rain-slicked streets. I whizzed past the neatly spaced residences with their open plan living and uncluttered designs. Past the clean, well maintained parks, and through the centre of the capital filled with tall glass buildings imbued with luma, so they not only gleamed, but glowed. It was here that all the decisions were made. There was barely any traffic, the main mode of transport being the railway that criss-crossed throughout the capital, courtesy of Shamateck. All of the motor technology was powered by the corporate giant. At one time there’d been an underground railway, but that had been filled in long ago—too many nooks and crannies, too many places for a breach to develop. Now there were dedicated lanes for the Fearless and law enforcement. We got to park where we liked for as long as we needed. I changed lanes onto the slip road that took me out of the central capital and led me home.

  I made the half-hour journey in twenty minutes, left my ride in the drive, and headed up the two steps into our newly renovated town house. The scent of freshly baked bread hit me as soon as I stepped through the door. My stomach growled, but food could wait. Kicking off my boots and throwing off my leather jacket, I headed straight up the stairs. I needed to see Bella. I needed to hold her and feel her little heart beating against mine.

  Bella’s door was ajar. I carefully pushed it open, intent on sneaking in and jumping on her.

  “I know you’re there, Kenna.”

  Sighing, I pushed the door wide. “How do you do that?”

  “Supersonic hearing,” Bella winked. Yeah, she’d picked up the winking from somewhere and it had been cute at first, but now it was just annoying as hell. Mum said if we didn’t mention it she’d stop; I wasn’t so sure anymore. Stepping into the room, I held out my arms for a hug. Bella jumped off her bed and wound her arms around my waist. She was petite for an eight-year-old. Despite our twelve-year age gap, or maybe because of it, we were super close.

  “So, what you up to?”

  Bella moved back to her bed and picked up her workbook. “History homework.”

  “Cool. What you writing about?”

  “The Event.”

  My heart sank. I hated that topic, but I understood how it could fascinate a child with Bella’s inquisitive nature.

  “What you got so far?” I parked my butt on her bed and held out my hand for the workbook.

  Bella handed it over before hopping onto the bed beside me, her dark ponytail bobbing up and down. She’d got her colouring from dad, and I’d gotten my silver-blonde tresses from mum. I scanned the neatly written paragraph.

  Over a century ago, some stupid scientist did an experiment that made our world bash into another world and most of our world was lost. Evernight, Twilight and the fifth dimension are part of a separate realm that has existed alongside ours, unseen and unknown forever. But now we have two gateways into their world. One opening into Twilight, and one into the Evernight. We made a new world and learned to survive with the djinn and fight the monsters. That’s when the marks were born.

  I read the rest of the paper to make sure Bella had explained what the marks meant. There was a neatly drawn diagram underneath. An oval to represent our world, Lindrealm, and two overlapping ovals touching Lindrealm—one labelled Twilight and the other Evernight. Beyond that she had written the words fifth dimension. It was precise and to the point but . . .

  “Maybe you shouldn’t call the scientists stupid?”

  Bella huffed. “Why not? They were stupid. Playing with stuff they knew nothing about. The world was a better place back then. No monsters, no gateways, no djinn.”

  She was right. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think any world is perfect. I’m sure the old one had its fair share of monsters too. ”

  “But not like these. And it used to be bigger. Miss Harris showed us the globe. We used to be part of something huge! There were oceans and seas and deserts!”

  “Yeah, and famine and war.”

  Bella sighed. “There are more of them than us now. What do you think happened to the rest of the world?”

  Popular belief was that the rest of our world had ceased to exist, but I liked to think it was still out there somewhere, ticking along, free of the denizens, free of the djinn.

  They’d always been there, the djinn, their dimension pressed up against ours. But we hadn’t seen. We hadn’t understood. And then the scientists had found proof of the existence of other dimensions and other realities. Their experimentation had caused the membranes of our realities to collide and almost destroyed our world entirely. Now we were forced to play by different rules. We were victims to the djinn’s monsters, while the
y sat back and did nothing.

  “Kenna?”

  Crap. I hadn’t answered her question. “I think the rest of the world is fine. Maybe one day we’ll have the technology to know for sure.”

  “Or magick.”

  “Or magick.”

  With Shamateck on the case it wouldn’t be long before everything was powered by magick. They were responsible for all the runes and sigils on the market, each able to absorb and channel the magick that surrounded us. Our luma rides, everlight blades, and all the wards in the city were powered by runes and sigils. Formerly known as scientists, the shamans were now the new authority on the magick that was slowly replacing our old-world tech. Soon there wouldn’t be a home or a street without the Shamateck influence. Despite this fact, the government still believed we could hold on to the old ways. Use the magick to modify our existing technology, but keep it at bay.

  They were bloody delusional.

  “Mum said you had to go to a school in the city today,” Bella said.

  Dammit! I’d have to remind mum not to discuss my work with Bella.

  “Well, did you?” she pressed.

  I couldn’t lie. I mean, I wanted to, I just found it difficult most of the time. This was one of those times. “Yes. I did. But it’s okay. The monster is gone.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Back to Evernight?”

  “Yeah, back to Evernight.”

  Bella scanned her room and I knew exactly what she was thinking. She was wondering if there were any doorways, any spots of absolute darkness where a monster could crawl in.

  Once upon a time the monster under the bed had been a scary story, the fruit of a child’s overactive imagination. The bogey man in the wardrobe was nothing more than a coat hung oddly on its hanger. Now it was more than real. Now every dark spot was a threat–a possible gateway from Evernight to our world for the smaller denizens. I never wanted to see what the larger ones looked like.

  Everlight, however, was a haven. Our homes were designed to eliminate the pockets—no wardrobes, no cupboards, just shelves and racks—most were even open floor plan. Our streets were designed in the same way. The houses spaced far apart enough to eliminate shadows. And then we had everlight itself. Created from luma and imported from Twilight; it was used in our street lights, home lighting, and sprayed over the streets weekly by huge everlight treatment trucks. It meant that even on the darkest night our city glowed. The city was re-named around sixty years ago to reflect its luminous status. I forget what it used to be called. Linden . . . Lindon . . . Something or other.