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  In the Forests of the Night

  ( Den of Shadows - 1 )

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  By day, Risika sleeps in shaded room in Concord, Massachusetts. By night, she hunts the streets of New York City. She is used to being alone.

  But someone is following Risika. He has left her a black rose, the same sort of rose that sealed her fate three hundred years ago. Three hundred years ago Risika had a family- a brother and a father who loved her. Three hundred years ago she was human.

  Now she was a vampire, a powerful one. And her past has come back to torment her.

  In the Forests of the Night

  Den of Shadows Book 1

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  In the Forests of the Night is dedicated to everyone who contributed to the story, especially:

  Julie Nann for her excellent teaching skills. Carolyn Barnes for talking to my agent about me. All the members of the Candle Light circle for their slightly insane inspiration. Sarita Spillert for her encouragement. Dan Hogan for enduring a telephone conversation at four in the morning. Laura Bombrun for her house, which coincidentally is exactly the same as Risika's. Also, I need to mention my family: my heroic father, William; my brilliant and inspiring sister, Rachel; my beautiful and slightly telepathic mother, Susan; and my overly insightful cousin, Nathan. I love you all.

  The Tiger

  Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  In what distant deeps or skies

  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand dare seize the fire?

  And what shoulder, and what art,

  Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

  And when thy heart began to beat,

  What dread hand? and what dread feet?

  What the hammer? what the chain?

  In what furnace was thy brain?

  What the anvil? what dread grasp?

  Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

  When the stars threw down their spears,

  And watered heaven with their tears,

  Did He smile His work to see?

  Did He who made the Lamb, make thee?

  Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye,

  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

  William Blake

  PROLOGUE NOW

  A CAGE OF STEEL.

  It is a cruel thing to do, to cage such a beautiful, passionate animal as if it was only a dumb beast, but humans do so all too often. They even cage themselves, though their bars are made of society, not of steel.

  The Bengal tiger is gold with black stripes through its fur, and it is the largest of the felines. The sign reads "Panthera tigris tigris"; it is simply a fancy name for tiger. I call this one Tora—she is my favorite animal in this zoo.

  Tora walks toward me as I approach her cage. The minds of animals are different from the minds of humans, but I have spent much time with Tora, and we know each other very well. Though the thoughts of animals can rarely be translated into human thought, I understand her, and she understands me.

  Such a beautiful animal should not be caged.

  CHAPTER 1 NOW

  I RELINQUISH MY HUMAN FORM for that of a hawk as I leave the zoo, which has been closed, for hours. The security guard fell asleep rather suddenly, as many do upon meeting my eyes, so there is no one to witness my departure.

  I could bring myself to my home instantly with my mind, but I enjoy the sensation of flying. Of all the animals, the birds are perhaps the most free, as they are able to move through the air and there is so little that can stop their flight.

  I land only once, to feed, and then arrive back at my house in Massachusetts close to sunrise.

  As I return to human form, I catch a glimpse of my hazy reflection in my bedroom mirror. My hair is long and is the color of old gold. My eyes, like those of all my kind, became black when I died. My skin is icy pale, and in the reflection it looks like mist. Today I wear black jeans and a black T-shirt. I do not always wear black, but that was the color of my mood today.

  I do not care for the new, quickly built towns humans are so fond of scraping up out of plaster and paint, so I live in Concord, Massachusetts, a town with history. Concord has an aura—one that says "This land is ours, and we will fight to keep it that way." The people who live here keep Concord as it was long ago, though cars have replaced the horse-drawn carriages.

  I live alone in one of Concord's original houses. Over the years I have made myself the long-lost daughter of several wealthy, elderly couples. That is how I "inherited" the home I live in.

  Though I have no living relations that I know of, it is not difficult to influence the thoughts—and paperwork—of the human world. When mortals do begin to question me too closely, I can easily move to another location. However, I make no human friends no matter how long I stay in an area, so my existence and disappearance are rarely noticed.

  My home is near the center of Concord; the view from the front windows is the Unitarian church, and the view from the back windows is a graveyard. Neither bothers me at all. Of course there are ghosts, but they do no harm besides the occasional startle or chill. They are usually too faint to be seen in daylight.

  My home has no coffin in it; I sleep in a bed, thank you. I do have blackout curtains, but only because I usually find myself sleeping during the day. I do not burn in sunlight, but bright noonday sun does hurt my eyes.

  The vampire myths are so confused that it is easy to see they were created by mortals. Some myths are true: my reflection is faint, and older ones in my line have no reflection at all. As for the other myths, there is little truth and many lies.

  I do dislike the smell of garlic, but if your sense of smell was twenty times stronger than that of the average bloodhound, would you not dislike it as well? Holy water and crosses do not bother me — indeed, I have been to Christian services since I died, though I no longer look for solace in religion. I wear a silver ring set with a garnet stone, and the silver does not burn me. If someone hammered a stake through my heart I suppose I would die, but I do not play with humans, stakes, or mallets.

  Since I am speaking about my kind, I might as well say something about myself. I was born to the name of Rachel Weatere in the year 1684, more than three hundred years ago.

  The one who changed me named me Risika, and Risika I became, though I never asked what it meant. I continue to call myself Risika, even though I was transformed into what I am against my will.

  My mind wanders back the road to my past, looking for a time when Rachel was still alive and Risika was not yet born.

  CHAPTER 2 1701

  THERE WAS ASH on my pale skin from helping to put out the fire. As my sister, Lynette, had been preparing the evening meal, flames had leapt from the hearth like arms reaching out to grab her. My twin brother, Alexander, had been standing across the room from the hearth. He was convinced this accident was his fault.

  "Am I damned?" he asked, staring past me at the now cold hearth.

  How did he want me to answer? I was only seventeen, a girl still, and certainly not a cleric. I knew nothing of damnation and salvation that my twin brother did not know as well. Yet Alexander was looking at me, his golden eyes heavy with worry and shame, as if I should know everything.

  "You should ask these things of a preacher, not me," I answered.

  "Tell a preacher what I see? Tell him that I can look into people's minds, and that I can…

  He trailed
off, but we both knew what the rest of the sentence was. For months Alexander had been trying to hide his powers, which were just as undesired as the fire had been. Shaking with fear, he had told me everything. He could sometimes hear the thoughts of those around him, though he tried to block them out. If he concentrated on an object, he would make it move. And, he had added, if he stared into a fire, he could make it rise or fall. Despite his efforts to control these powers, they were sometimes stronger than he was.

  Lynette had been cooking supper. Now she was at the doctor's with our papa, being treated for burns.

  "It is witchcraft," Alexander whispered, as if afraid to say the words any more loudly. "How can I tell a clergyman that?"

  Once again I could not answer him. Alexander believed far more than I in the peril of the soul. Though we both said our prayers and went to church without fail, where I was skeptical, he was faithful. In truth, I was more afraid of the cold, commanding preachers than of the fires of Hell they threatened us with. If I had the powers my brother was discovering, I would fear the church even more.

  "Maybe that is what happened to our mother," Alexander said quietly. "Maybe I hurt her."

  "Alexander!" I gasped, horrified that my brother could think such a thing. "How can you blame yourself for Mother's death? We were babies!"

  " If I could lose control and hurt Lynette when I am seventeen, how much easier would it have been for me to lose control as a child?"

  I did not remember my mother, though Papa sometimes spoke about her; she had died only a few days after Alexander and I were born. Her hair had been even fairer than my brother's and mine, but our eyes were exactly the same color as hers had been. An exotic honey gold, our eyes were dangerous in their uniqueness. Had my family not been so well accepted in the community, our eyes might have singled us out for accusations of witchcraft.

  "You are not even certain Lynette's injuries are your fault," I told Alexander. Lynette was my papa's third child, born to his second wife; her mother had died only a year before of smallpox. "She was leaning too close to the fire, or maybe there was oil on the wood somehow. Even if you did cause it, it was not your fault."

  "Witchcraft, Rachel," Alexander said softly. "How large a crime is that? I hurt someone, and I will not even go to the church to confess."

  "It was not your fault! " Why did he insist on blaming himself for something he could not have prevented?

  I saw my brother as a saint—he could hardly stand to watch Papa slaughter chickens for supper. I knew, even more surely than he did, that he could never intentionally hurt someone. "You never asked for these powers, Alexander," I told him quietly. "You never signed the Devil's book. You are trying to be forgiven for doing nothing wrong."

  Papa returned home with Lynette late that evening. Her arms had been bandaged, but the doctor had said there would be no permanent damage. Alexander's guilt was still so strong—he made sure she rested, not using her hands, even though he had to do most of her work. As he and I cooked supper, he would occasionally catch my gaze, the question in his eyes pleading: Am I damned?

  CHAPTER 3 NOW

  WHY AM I THINKING these things?

  I find myself staring at the rose on my bed, so like one I was given nearly three hundred years ago. The aura around it is like a fingerprint: I can feel the strength and recognize the one who left it. I know him very well.

  I have lived in this world for three hundred years, and yet I have broken one of its most basic rules. When I stopped last night to hunt after visiting Tora, I strayed into the territory of another.

  My prey was clearly lost. Though not native to New York City, she had thought she knew where she was going.

  The city at night is like a jungle. In the red glow of the unsleeping city the streets and alleys change and twist like shadows, just like all the human—and not so human — predators that inhabit it.

  As the sun set, my prey had found herself alone in a dark area of town. The streetlights were broken, and there were more shadows than light. She was afraid. Lost. Alone. Weak. Easy prey.

  She turned onto another street, searching for something familiar. This street was darker than the one before, but not in a way a human would recognize. It was one of the many streets in America that belong to my kind. These streets look almost normal, less dangerous, though perhaps a bit more deserted. Illusions can be so comforting. My prey was walking into a Venus flytrap. If I did not, someone was going to kill her as soon as she entered one of the bars or set foot in a café, which had probably never served anything she would wish to drink.

  She seemed to relax slightly when she saw the Cafe Sangra. None of the windows was broken, no one was collapsed against the building, and the place was open. She started toward the café, and I followed silently.

  I sensed another human presence to my left and reached out with my mind to determine whether it was a threat. Walls went up in an instant. But they were weak, and I could tear through them if I tried. The human in question would feel it, though that did not matter to me.

  "This isn't your land," he told me. Though I could sense a bit of a vampiric aura around him, he was definitely human. He was blood bonded to a vampire and probably even working for one, but not one of my kind. He was not a threat, so I did not even bother looking into his mind.

  "This isn't your land," he told me again. I knew he could read my aura, but I was strong enough to dampen it, so to him I must have felt young. Even so, he was very foolish or he was working for someone very strong—possibly both. Since there are no more than five or six vampires on Earth who are stronger than I, I had little to fear.

  "Get out," he ordered me.

  "No," I replied, continuing toward the Cafe Sangra.

  I heard him draw a gun, but he had no chance to aim before I was there. I twisted the gun sharply to the side, and he dropped it so that his wrist would not break. My prey's eyes went wide as she saw this, and she ran away blindly, darting around the corner. Stupid human.

  I stopped veiling my aura, and my attacker's eyes went wide as he felt its full strength.

  "Is that all you were armed with?" I scoffed. "You work for my kind—you must have more than one gun."

  He went to draw a knife, but I grabbed it first and threw it into the street hard enough to slam an inch of steel into the ground.

  "Who—Who are you?" he stammered, afraid.

  "Who do you think I am, child?"

  I tend to avoid most of my kind, and destroy those who insist on approaching. Because of this, few recognize me. "Whose are you?" I snapped when he did not immediately respond. I received only a blank stare in return.

  I reached into his mind and tore out the information I wanted. Those of my line are the strongest of the vampires when it comes to using our minds, and never have I found a reason to avoid exercising that power. When I found what I sought, I threw the human away from me.

  I swore as I realized who this human belonged to.

  Aubrey…He is one of the few vampires stronger than I. He is also the only one who would care about my presence in his land.

  I had been in this part of New York City before but had never encountered Aubrey or any of his servants here. Yet, according to this human, the place belonged to my enemy.

  My attacker smiled mockingly. Perhaps he thought I was afraid of his master. Indeed, I fear Aubrey more than anything else on this Earth, but not enough to spare this boy. Aubrey would learn about my being on his territory one way or another, and this child was bothering me.

  "Ryan," I crooned, finding his name as I read his mind. He relaxed slightly. I smiled, flashing fangs, and he paled to a chalky white. "You made me lose my prey."

  Before he had a chance to run, I stepped toward him, placing a hand on the back of his neck. As I did so I caught his eye, whispering a single word to his mind: Sleep. He went limp, and did not fight as my fangs pierced his throat. I could taste a trace of Aubrey's blood in the otherwise mortal elixir that ran through Ryan's veins, and that taste m
ade me shiver.

  I did not bother disguising the kill. If Aubrey wished to claim that street, he could deal with the body and the human authorities. Either way, Aubrey would feel my aura and know I had been there; very few would dare to kill one of Aubrey's servants on his own territory.

  Though I feared Aubrey and dreaded what would happen should I confront him again, I refused to show that fear. That was the first time our paths had crossed in nearly three hundred years; I would not show that I still feared him.

  Aubrey…Hatred flickers through me at the thought of him.

  The long-stemmed rose lies on the scarlet comforter over my bed, its petals soft, perfectly formed, and black.

  I pick up the rose, cutting my hand on a thorn, which is as sharp as a serpent's tooth. I look at the blood for a moment as the wound heals, reminded of a time long ago; then absently I lick it away. My mind returns again to the time when I was still Rachel Weatere—a time when I was given another black rose.

  Then I did not lick the blood away.

  CHAPTER 4 1701

  "Rachel," Lynette said to me. "You have a caller. Papa is waiting with him." Her tone reminded me of a pouting child.

  Nearly a month had gone by since Lynette had been burned. My sister was unaware of Alexander's tortured mind; she knew nothing of the powers that he was so afraid of, and believed the fire to be an accident.

  Alexander had not spoken to me again about the things he saw, though I recognized the moments when the visions surfaced in his mind. I alone noticed when his face went dark and his focus changed, as if he was listening to voices only he could hear.

  When I reached the door, I saw what had made Lynette unhappy. The caller was a dark-haired, black-eyed young man whom I knew only vaguely. Lynette was fourteen, and she resented the attention the boys in town paid to me, though she would never have said so aloud.