Dark Season: The Complete Box Set Read online

  Dark Season:

  The Complete Box Set

  by Amy Cross

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright Amy Cross, All Rights Reserved

  Published by Dark Season Books

  This edition first published: October 2013

  Revised edition published: April 2014

  Dark Season was originally published in serial

  format between December 2011 and January 2013

  For more information about Amy Cross books, visit:

  http://amycrossbooks.wordpress.com

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. If you enjoy it and wish to share it with others, please consider buying them their own copy. Feedback is always welcome. The author reserves all rights in respect of this work. Any similarity to any people, places or events is entirely coincidental.

  ALSO BY AMY CROSS

  Horror

  Ward Z

  Asylum

  American Coven

  The Night Girl

  Devil's Briar

  The Vampire's Grave

  Darper Danver series 1

  Fantasy / Horror

  Dark Season series 1, 2 & 3

  The Hollow Church (Abby Hart)

  Lupine Howl series 1, 2 & 3

  Grave Girl

  Ghosts

  The Library

  Journey to the Library

  Dystopia

  The Shades

  Mass Extinction Event series 1 & 2

  Thriller

  The Girl Who Never Came Back

  The Dead and the Dying: A Joanna Mason Novel

  Other People's Bodies

  Erotica

  Broken Blue

  Broken White

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Series One

  Book 1: The Last Vampire

  Book 2: Sentinel

  Book 3: Army of Wolves

  Book 4: The Civil Dead

  Book 5: The Life, Death, Life, Life and Death of Martin Keller

  Book 6: Gothos

  Book 7: Testament

  Book 8: Dead End

  Series Two

  Book 0: 20th Century Vampire

  Book 1: Nimrod

  Book 2: Shy People

  Book 3: The Ghost of the Girl in the Well

  Book 4: Tenderling

  Book 5: Shelley

  Book 6: Spider, Spider

  Book 7: Fangs Out

  Book 8: The Death of Sophie Hart

  Series Three

  Book 1: Abigail

  Book 2: Quisling

  Book 3: The Bureau of Lost Vampires

  Book 4: Ruins part I

  Book 5: Ruins part II

  Book 6: By the River Dark

  Book 7: A Woman, Waiting

  Book 8: The End

  BONUS BOOKS

  The New Girl (Asylum 1.1)

  The First Shift (The Night Girl 1.1)

  Arrival (Devil's Briar 1.1)

  Dark Season:

  The Complete Series

  Dark Season I

  Book 1

  Dark Season: The Last Vampire

  Prologue

  The Catacombs of New York, December 1905

  I have been delaying this final moment for so long. For many hundreds of years, at least. But now, as I walk the long stone passageway to where they are waiting, I know this is the right time. It has to end.

  I am stronger today than I have ever been, and now it's time to show that strength. Not through violence; I learned long ago that violence merely begets more violence. No, today I have to show another kind of strength. And if we all have to die, so be it. Let us at least try to put aside our differences, and die together.

  After all, we were friends - once.

  As soon as I enter the chamber where I left them, however, I see that things have changed. They are ragged now, driven insane, having spent so many centuries left alone chained to the wall with just one another for company. With madness burning in their eyes, and their sane minds long gone, they moan and strain at their chains, trying desperately to reach me. They have degenerated far more than I could ever have expected. All they want now is to gain retribution, for they recognize me as their tormentor. They know this is my fault.

  They reach out to grab me, but I know where to stand, just far enough away from them. Not like last time...

  I try talk to them. I try to break through their madness, to tell them that the war is over, and that we are the only ones left. I tell them that our species has over-stretched its limits; that we have committed horrible atrocities against one another, and against the humans, all in the name of a peace that never came. We have abused our power for our own gain, we have allowed Gothos to fall into disrepair, and we have become monsters. I tell them that we all have to die now, and that I have chosen to die with them. I tell them that this world no longer has a place for vampires. Our time has passed. Truth be told, it passed a long time ago.

  One of them laughs. Unlike the others, he has just enough sanity left to call me a fool. Torn apart by wolves, he is little more than strips of flesh these days, but he can still scream and shout and rant. He tells me I can't kill any of them. It's impossible. He laughs like a man who knows he‘s damned. He warns me that any attempt to destroy the species will merely result in my own death. He swears that he will one day feast off my flesh, ripping it piece by piece from my bones.

  To him, I say nothing. I simply hold out my left hand and slowly unclench my fist. He smiles at first, but when he sees what I have, he screams, and the others start to scream too. But that's okay. It's what I expected; to die with them screaming all around me. Eventually we all have to go back to where we belong.

  The light in my hand grows until it fills the room.

  The war is over. We all died.

  The End.

  Sophie

  Dedston, New Jersey - New Year's Eve, this year

  If this is how I'm going to die, it's pathetic.

  The ATM screen cracks as my head smashes into it, then I'm pulled backwards and the next thing I know I hit the ground with a thud, the back of my skull cracking as it bounces off the pavement. I can hear voices arguing, but my vision is totally blurred and when I try to lift my head, a boot stamps down on my neck. I hear - and feel - something snap. I roll onto my front. A drop of bile comes up into my mouth. I try to scream, but the boot comes down on the back of my head, slamming my face against the sidewalk and knocking out a couple of teeth.

  Short of breath, I try to get up. All I can think is: please don't let this be sexual. I can handle being mugged: they can take my money (I can get more money); they can take my stuff (we live in a world of stuff); they can rough me up a bit (I can heal a few broken bones); but I'd rather die than go through anything sexual. All I want is for them to leave me alone. Please, God, let this just be an ordinary mugging.

  Suddenly I'm overcome with worry about Shelley. Where is she? Is she being attacked too? After all, whenever we go out together, she's always the pretty one. Then I remember: we separated half an hour ago; I told her I'd be fine walking home from the party by myself. She protested, but I insisted: I'll be fine, I said. It's a five minute walk. I told her to stop worrying. I've heard stories about girls being attacked as they walk home alone, but I never thought it'd happen to me. And now here I am.

  A boot slams into my shoulder, and I hear bones splintering. But the strange thing is, there‘s no pain. It's as if my body, knowing it’s about to die, has decided to spare my brain the agony of my final moments. After a moment, I realize I can't hear anything either. I'm becoming sealed off from the world around me, even as my assailants continue to kick and punch my body.

  The funny thing is,
I've always wondered what it feels like to die. Really: I used to sit in class at school and try to imagine it. But I thought I'd live past 21; I thought I'd die when I got old, like in my late twenties or something. And now I hear more bones break, and I feel blood splashing onto my face. It's almost as if it's all happening to someone else, though. When a punch sends my sprawling across the sidewalk, all I feel is a dull thud, and I hear the whole world as it echoes around me.

  I'm really going to die.

  Something big lands with a thud on the pavement next to me. I turn to look and I see it's a human torso. With a curious kind of detachment, I realize my head must have been ripped off the rest of my body. So how long have I got left? Two, maybe three seconds? I stare at the torso. That's my body over there, my arms and legs snapped, my big fat hairy hand with 'HATE' tattooed on the knuckles, my... wait, what? I stare at the hand, and then at the rest of the torso. It's all too big. Much too big. It's not mine at all! And I don't have any tattoos. Which means that it's someone else's body, which means maybe I'm not just a head at all, which means...

  So whose body is it?

  Something else flies through the air and smashes against a nearby wall, slithering down to the ground. I recognize it: that's the body of one of the muggers. In a crumpled heap, it twitches - not twitching like it's still alive, but twitching like it's in death spasms. And there's blood on the wall. That must have been some throw: the body kind of burst open on impact.

  And then... absolute quiet. Just the wind on a cold night, and slowly I realize I can hear the sound of leaves in the parking lot getting dashed across the tarmac, and that low hum you get everywhere in a city. Weirdly, everything looks like it's in black and white, but that's probably because the only things I can see are black and white things: the black night sky; a single metal-gray streetlight with a bright white head; the light gray pavement against my face. This is a black and white kind of town.

  Then I hear something, like footsteps on gravel getting nearer to me, and then something up close, behind my right ear, as if... as if I'm being sniffed. I know that's crazy, but honestly, it's what it feels like. Then, without any warning, I feel hands reach under me, and then suddenly I realize I'm being picked up, and whoever picked me up has started carrying me away. I'm powerless to resist, or even to look up, and I have a vague awareness of extreme pain in my back and legs and arms, but it's not something that seems very important right now. In the very far distance, I can see the lights of the city, mostly black and white too but with a few bright primary colors thrown in.

  I try to look up again, to see who's carrying me, but my neck hurts too much. I think it’s broken. With my vision still blurred, all I can make out is a dark shape, and a light in the distance which I think might be the moon.

  The footsteps change suddenly. We're not on the sidewalk now, we're walking through grass. I hear twigs snap. He - she? - it? - carries me further. I have no idea where we're going, but eventually I can tell we're walking downhill and then the footsteps seem to become less steady. Are we in a forest? We're walking down a really steep hill, and it feels like we're going down forever. Suddenly it feels like we're inside somewhere: it's darker, and we're getting warmer, and now I can hear footsteps echoing around us, echoing in somewhere big and stone. We're still going down and down and down, perhaps down a set of spiral steps. And now I think I can hear music in the distance, classical music, getting louder and quieter at the same time.

  Okay. If this is how I'm going to die, maybe it's not so bad after all. Maybe -

  Patrick

  Her body goes limp in my arms. I stop and look down at her face. She's not supposed to die yet, but she's hurt so badly: there's a bloody gash on one side of her head, a cut on her lip, and the beginning of a black eye. I can already feel as I hold her that some of her bones aren't right, as if they're broken. She's still breathing, just about, but that wound on her head is worrying me. It's not that it's gushing with blood, just that it's continually dripping a steady flow and doesn't seem to be clotting at all.

  Am I too late? Did I wait too long before going to get her?

  I take her to the door of my father's study. I know I'm supposed to knock before I enter, but sometimes he makes me wait for hours, so I carry Sophie straight inside. My father looks up from the maps he's been studying. He opens his mouth to berate me for interrupting, but then he sees what I have in my arms. He rushes over and immediately begins to examine her, telling me to put her on the couch by the bookcase. Then he sends me off to get a bucket of warm water and some cloths. When I get back, he's already begun to dab at her wounds. This continues for a few minutes, until suddenly my father stops and stares at her, and then he looks up at me, an expression of shock across his face. I think he just realized who she is, and why we have to save her life.

  As he gets to work, I stand back and close my eyes. I can feel her heartbeat in my mind. It's her. After all these years, I've found her at least.

  Sophie

  I wake up suddenly, nearly coughing my guts out. I roll onto my side, convinced I'm going to throw up, but it's just dry retching. My head is pounding with the most intense headache of my life, and my body aches all over. After a full couple of seconds of this, I finally start to catch my breath, and it's now that I realize I'm not at home. I look up and realize I'm about as 'not at home' as I could possibly be.

  I'm on a blanket on a red leather couch, next to a huge bookcase that fills an entire wall, packed with old books. There are candles burning on a nearby table, and on the other side of the room there's a large writing desk next to an old globe. There's an ornate looking chandelier hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room, but there must be something wrong with it because it's not hanging straight down, it's hanging down at an angle. In fact, the whole room seems 'off' somehow, but I can't quite work out why...

  I look at the window. It's dark outside, so I can't see anything. As I try to sit up all the way, I feel at first as if my balance is totally off, but then I realize it's not my balance that's the problem, it's the room: the whole room is tilting by about 30 degrees. If you put a marble on the floor, it'd run straight down to one end. For a moment, I wonder if I'm on a boat, but I soon realize that there's no movement at all. Quite the opposite: everything is very still. Still as a dream...

  "You're awake, then," says a voice from behind me. I turn to see an old man standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, smiling with a face that's so friendly I don't think it could possibly be faked. He looks to be in his 80's at least, with an old-fashioned, almost Dickensian sense of fashion. "Don't worry, you're safe. Tell me how you feel."

  I look around at the room again. It's as if I've gone back in time about a hundred years. Either that, or I'm dreaming. I guess that makes more sense. I'm asleep right now, or dead. One of the two. Perhaps I'm even in a coma.

  "It's natural to be nervous," says the man, entering the room and limping slowly over to a small table to pour a glass of water. "You're quite welcome to leave as soon as you wish, although I'd prefer you to stay for a few hours until I'm sure there's no concussion." He comes over and hands me the glass of water, which I've already decided I don't want to drink. "It's okay," he adds, "I'm a doctor. Among other things."

  "This isn't a hospital," I say cautiously.

  "No," the man says. "Well, it is in some ways. You're certainly not the first person who has been brought down here to be healed." He nods at the water. "It's quite potable," he says, then grins. "Oh, I know our facilities might seem a little basic compared to what you're used to, but we get along perfectly well and I manage to keep up to date with modern techniques. But you know, sometimes all those machines in real hospitals rather get in the way, and they beep too much. I don't like all the beeping."

  I take a sip from the water. It certainly tastes safe enough. And this man seems nice, although I remember reading that's how sociopaths hook their prey: they're all friendly until you're relaxed, then they whip out an ax and start s
licing you up. Still, if he wanted to do something like that, he could have done it while I was unconscious.

  "My name is Vincent," says the man, extending a hand which I cautiously shake. "You're a very lucky young lady. Not a broken bone anywhere."

  "Got an X-ray machine down here, have you?" I ask, frowning as I run a hand along my legs to check for damage. I swear to God, I have this vague memory of getting beaten to a pulp, and I'm sure I remember my bones being broken. Did I imagine all that?

  Vincent holds up his old hands for me to see. "These are the only machines I need." There's an awkward silence. "I'm sorry," he says. "I don't mean to make you blush. You did have some broken bones, just a few, but they're all healed now." He wriggles his fingers like they're worms, and smiles like a child at them.

  "How long have I been here?" I ask.

  "Almost two hours," he says, as if that explains everything. "We can get a lot done in two hours down here, Sophie. There are no machines to slow us down."

  "How do you know my name?" I ask. "How did I get here?"

  "My son brought you," he says. "He found you up above and he brought you down here. He found you in a terrible state and he hoped I could take a look at your wounds. He was quite right, of course. We couldn't possibly have left you in such a state. You'd have died."

  I stand up, aching all over, feeling the way an old lady must feel on her hundredth birthday. "What wounds?" I ask. I sort of half remember something happening, but it's all a bit vague. Taking a deep breath, I realize that this whole experience is almost certainly a dream. Any minute now, I'm going to wake up and find that I've passed out somewhere. It's the only thing that makes sense. I guess the attack was a dream too.