Lumen Read online

  Lumen

  Blood Luminary #1

  Joseph Eastwood

  Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Eastwood

  www.JosephEastwood.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the author, addressed “Attention: Permission,” at this address: [email protected].

  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.

  Cover design by Joseph Eastwood, Don’t Judge a Book, Cover Art and Design

  For Fran and Eve, because they’ve been there for me from the start, this book is for you two!

  Also, for the people who have supported me thus far and have “liked” my Facebook page before I had anything published. It’s been really encouraging to have so much support for something that seemed like a dream.

  I’d also like to say a huge thank you to Tasha, as she’s been asking and asking for me to release this. As well as being a fantastic driving force behind me getting this finished.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  It’s normal for a child to die on Templar Island. It’s natural selection. Each child born had energy flowing through its blood, but only some lived to manipulate it and keep the flow of energy in order. Natural selection is pure; it will spill blood to clean away impurity, even if it had been in the form of a new-born.

  The little boy, Daniel, played with his miniature blue aeroplane, running around the coffee table in the middle of the living room. The toy sat on his fingertips as he jumped around trying to make it fly. His father told him that it could.

  “That was my favourite toy too,” the boy’s father said, sitting back in his chair with a smile. “Your great-granddaddy gave me that when I was little. He told me he got it from another island. A large island, far far away from here.”

  A burst of laughter came from the kitchen. “Erik, don’t fill the boy’s head with nonsense, nobody has ever set foot off Templar,” his wife butted in.

  “It’s true, Roan,” he grinned and rolled his eyes, then set them back on his son. “We don’t have them, but there’s somewhere that does. Is that what you want to do when you’re older Daniel? Fly in one of them?”

  Daniel continued to play with the toy, his arms outstretched as he ran around barefoot, pushing up on to his tiptoes. He watched the toy on his fingertips with awe and bated breath, letting the little air in the back of his throat tingle and dance around in his lungs.

  “Daniel,” his father said, leaning forward on his chair, trying to catch his son’s eye. “Daniel, look at me.”

  Daniel continued to run around, circling the tree stump coffee table, over and over, while his father watched him, wanting to talk more about his grandfather and about the peculiarities of the childhood he had and the stories he’d been told. He sighed, sitting back into his chair, reflecting on those tales. Daniel knocked his father’s concentration when he began ducking and dipping with the aeroplane and his blissful smile. He called out to his son again but it went unnoticed, as did a fine piece of white string trailing off behind him. Erik reached out and caught a strand of it. He observed the thinning thread and rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb, his eyes fluttered shut and his fingers fell numb, he was relishing in pure energy. He opened his eyes again, to see the mess his son was creating; the string had become thick, and falling thicker by the moment. And then first fluffed feather slipped out of the back of Daniel’s t-shirt.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off his son. “Roan,” he called out to his wife.

  “Erik, please stop fretting, he’s not gone deaf,” she chortled in her gentle tone.

  He turned his head to the kitchen quarters, keeping watch in his peripherals. “Just come through—I—I need you to look at something.”

  She huffed. “Okay, what is it?” she poked her head around the doorway. There was no doubt that she’d answered her question, but she had a thousand more swollen in her throat. She locked eyes with her pasty-faced husband and couldn’t look away.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s his change. Right?”

  “Of—” she cleared her throat, “of course.” She shut her eyes and forced a deep breath, wondering if she‘d ever regain herself. She pressed her fingers into the collar of her neck and swallowed hard at all the stressed vowel sounds inside.

  “What’s—” he started, and turned to see his wife’s calm ignorance.

  She moved her hand to her chest and opened her eyes to see her son still running around. Her glistening tears, ready to pop, shaded her violet eyes, and as her bottom lip trembled, she sunk her teeth into it. She wavered on the balls of her feet and then the first specks of blood marked the back of her son’s white t-shirt.

  “Hun,” Erik said.

  Their little boy continued to run around, his t-shirt tore at the seams and fell to his waist like excess skin. It revealed two thick white stumps of bone at the top of his shoulder blades that had sliced through his skin, and around the base, little pockets of blood dribbled down his back.

  His mother nearly fell, resting herself against the chair and reaching around for her husband’s hand. She blinked at a few tears and took another deep breath. “He’s fine.” Their son continued to run around with his aeroplane in tact on his fingertips. And the blood continued to drip down his back and freckle the floor, and the thin feathers were now growing in bunches at the bone and then falling out in clumps, falling behind him.

  They watched him as he moved around in the syrupy air, his movements locked in slow languid strokes, letting the last couple of seconds settle in time as minutes. A cacophony of coarse crunches broke as Daniel fell to his knees and his aeroplane came loose and crashed into the wall ahead. He dropped to his chest in a small pile of feathers. The protruding bones on his back crumbled and congealed with the blood, making a paste against the feathers.

  Roan kept a tight grasp of Erik’s hand, tightening as Erik tried to move from his seat. “We don’t want to intervene,” she said, sniffling, and taking a tight hold of her necklace; a small star with seven spokes, her grip strong enough to draw her own blood.

  Erik closed his eyes and shook his head. He massaged the bridge of his nose,
trying to push the tears back. Daniel screeched and his limbs flailed for a moment. “Daniel.” Erik dropped to his knees beside his son as his wife’s arms flopped to her side, she watched; the whites of her eyes turned pink, as a nurse she'd been taught about controlling her emotions. “Hush, Daniel, hush,” he said cowering over his son. He stared up at his wife. “They can’t. They can’t decide his fate. We have to do something, Roan. We have to help him get through this change.”

  She pinched at her lips with her teeth and rolled her eyes. “No.” she grabbed her husband from under his arm and pulled him back to his feet. “No.”

  Blood started to pool inside Daniel’s ears, thickening and drying; engulfing sound. His eyes were screwed shut, but beneath them it had become scratched film. Trapped inside the skin, like it wasn’t his skin anymore, and as a cough shook this skin-tight vessel, bloodied phlegm broke the lips, tainting them. He pulled away. This wasn’t his fight.

  Chapter One

  Daniel’s light yellow feathered wings unfurled from his back and threw him to the ceiling. It was an innate feeling as his fingers slipped into the grips of the worn away brick. He stayed, shaking, trying to control his breathing, before looking around and finding himself back in his bedroom.

  His mother burst into his room, panting. “Daniel,” she said, holding a hand against her chest, “get down from there, we have a guest.”

  Daniel’s fully formed wings started to molt away; the feathers danced around in the air until they touched the floor and the skeleton of the wings thinned back into his body. He closed his eyes and took a tighter hold of the brick as his body filled with ecstasy.

  “I’m not going to repeat myself,” she said, shaking her head at him.

  “Well you don’t understand what it feels like,” Daniel said, releasing his fingers from the ceiling and sighing, he fell straight to his bed, half of the feathers bounced off while the others started attaching themselves to his skin. He lay there for a moment, taking in the rush of energy as his mother watched. “I wish you could live that nightmare, for just one night.”

  “Daniel, you know I hate to see you in pain, but this man is a very special guest. Come on, honey. Get dressed and come down, we’ll be waiting,” she said, closing the door as she left.

  He lifted his head and all he could see were feathers, there wasn’t a part of the floor that hadn’t been covered. He swung his legs around and faced himself in the wall mirror across from his bed. He noticed he wasn’t wearing a t-shirt; the t-shirt he’d been wearing was now on the floor in two pieces, laid beneath the mass of feathers.

  “Isn’t there an easier way of doing this,” he groaned, standing and walking through the feathers. They stuck to his feet and ankles, thinning into his skin and raising his energy level.

  Daniel needed all the feathers back into his body because it was the product of him and his energy, and energy wasn’t easy to come by, especially not in the measure that Daniel used. But he was nearing the age of full ability, and full potential, yet every morning he displayed signs that he still wasn’t maturing, and that he still didn’t have full control over his abilities.

  He hunched his back and arched his shoulders as the peak struck; numbing his fingers to a tingle. He ruffled his hands through his shaggy black hair and stretched to his tiptoes as he yawned. He bent down to pick up another white t-shirt from his open drawer and slipped into it, pushing the drawer shut with his foot. “Can’t go wrong,” he said pulling at the bottom of his t-shirt to straighten the kinks.

  Daniel stepped down the stairs slowly, a hand trailing the cool rock face which the house had been built into. Before he took the last step into the living room, he paused for a second while another fragment of his dream toured his mind. It had happened in the living room, and again, briefly. He shook himself out of it and glared straight ahead at a dark grey overcoat hung on a peg beside the front door. He glanced from that to a man sitting in his father’s chair. He frowned and looked the man up and down; he was wearing a black pinstripe suit, and with his right hand, he'd placed it on the tip of a black onyx walking aide. Daniel smirked, thinking sure enough he’s from the Upperlands.

  “Where’s dad?” Daniel asked.

  His mother walked in from the kitchen with a hand on her hip. “Oh, thought you’d have at least changed out of your pyjamas. This is Reu- Mr Reuben Croft.” She tilted her head to the man, “of the Croft Academy.”

  Reuben stood and pulled at his pants to straighten them out. Daniel approached him and shook his hand. “Daniel Satoria?” Reuben asked and shook his hand harder while Daniel nodded.

  “I’m fine you know, I already told my mum that I didn’t wanna go to school,” he said, and nodded to himself.

  “Your mother thinks it’s in your best interests,” he said, “and I will be the judge of whether you’re Croft Academy material. Shall we begin?”

  “But I don’t have adolescent power.”

  His mother held a hand to interject. “He’s due to change anytime now, it’s been ten years already.”

  Reuben nodded. “What can you do with the most skill?”

  “I can grow wings like a seraph,” he said and saw the blank expression on Reuben’s face, he was unlike other people; after he’d told them their eyes would be full of wonderment. “I read a book about them once.”

  “Oh really, and who told you that you could pull it off?”

  “It’s just projecting an image in your head and then shifting.”

  “You sound like you know a lot, do you read often?”

  “Yes, yes, he reads all the time. My husband – his father works in a library,” she said. “Oh, and he’s good at shifting. Show him son.” She nudged Daniel with her elbow.

  Reuben sighed. “If you’re going to join my academy, I’ll need a demonstration of this ability.” It was a common tone to use, considering every parent he visited bragged about the gifts of their child and how fitting they would be in his school, Daniel knew the tone too well.

  He stared from Reuben to the excited expression on his mother’s face, he felt both obliged and compelled to do right by her choice of inviting the owner of the most prestigious school on the island, and to prove a point that he was good. “We’ll need to go outside then,” he said, and led them out the front door.

  There are three regions on Templar Island, the Lowerlands, closest to the sea, the Upperlands, closest to the sky, and the Centrelands, well Daniel lived in the Centrelands, on the 3rd Tier, that closest to the Lowerlands. There are three tiers of the Centrelands, each built from dropping cliff faces with houses built inside and the tiniest landing ledges which could only account for the room to open a door. Daniel’s house had a huge ledge with tree, which you could say they were lucky to have, considering Daniel’s slopping landings.

  Daniel stood in his dent; a usual landing spot. He has his back turning on his mother and Reuben. He took his t-shirt off and threw it to the ground behind him.

  “Daniel, honey,” his mother said. He turned around; Reuben stood shading his eyes from the sun, while his mother swayed with a grin on her face. “Do me proud.”

  Daniel nodded to his mother and smiled. He turned and puffed out his chest. He rolled his head on his shoulders until the quietest crack coiled inside him. He then arched his back. The air stopped in his lungs and his face turned red. He pushed himself up to his tiptoes and then fell to his knees with a crunch, the bones in his spine shot up out of his back, leaving two clean lacerations.

  Using energy which he didn’t have wasn’t his strongest suit. He whispered to himself, “in through the nose, out through the mouth,” whilst gritting his teeth together to keep composure. And with the thought of his nightmare he couldn’t help picturing his skin as the bone cut through it to resemble his clothes ripping at the seams and being stretched. He sucked it up in a deep breath, and stood with the look of ferocity in his strained face. His spine glittered with sweat as he shivered again and in the same instance ashy white feathers define
d the bones on his back as wings.

  “Can you use them?” Reuben asked.

  Daniel grinned, it wasn’t everyday he could show off in front of someone as renown as Reuben Croft. “Of course,” he said, and Reuben tilted his head at him to take the stage and perform. Daniel smiled as he envisaged Reuben tipping a fancy top hat his way.

  He felt his wings go limp on his back. He flexed his shoulders and then led his wings to curl inside and create two neat rolls, like wringing a wet rag out, he paused at the peak of the twist. Reuben watched, waiting to be impressed while Daniel’s mother chewed on a fingernail. His wings spread and enveloped the morning sun, painting a giant shadow over his mother and Reuben.

  Reuben raised an eyebrow while pulling his sun-guarding hand away from his eyes. Daniel had never put on a ‘show’ before and if school didn’t work out for him, he could probably perform and act out as a seraph. With that in mind he jumped into the air, being caught by his wings he was thrust higher.

  “He’s been doing that since his first shift,” Daniel’s mother said.

  “It is impressive. Do you have records of your bloodline to hand?” he asked glaring into the shaded spots of the sky where Daniel was gaining height.

  Daniel watched from fifty feet above, hovering in a gentle flap of his wings. It became old quick, and he didn’t know how else to show him his power. He continued to keep the height above the ground, and glanced up the cliff faces trying to see beyond Tier One; the land, the air, the people, the schools.