The Clandestine Saga Book 1: Transformation, Chapter 1

Today is your last chance to pre-order The Clandestine Saga Book 1: Transformation before it goes on sale tomorrow. You can pre-order here. In the meantime, please enjoy Chapter 1.

Chapter 1

         “We really should do something fun while you are all in town,” Drew exclaimed as she plopped herself down on a giant pink beanbag chair near the window in Cadence’s bedroom. The rest of her friends were strewn about the room already, Taylor and Sidney on the bed, Jon and Kash in the two small chairs across the room, Jack slumped against the wall next to the chairs.  How many times had they all crashed here during high school? Now that all of them except for Drew, the baby of the group, had graduated from high school and gone on with their lives, these times were much more rare, and it had occurred to Cadence more than once that evening that this may be the last time she had her gang all together. 

            While her friends continued their idol chatter, Cadence Findley sat in front of her computer screen, trying to finish the last two pages of her English paper.  Professor Martin was such a jerk for giving them homework over Thanksgiving break! If she could just get this done, she could finally enjoy her friends’ company, rather than haphazardly chiming in from time to time and occasionally shooting annoying glances in their direction when they got a little over-zealous in their enjoyment of a week free off school.

            The group was a bit of an eclectic collection of personalities. Cadence was never quite sure what the glue was that kept them together, though Taylor insisted that Cadence was the glue.  She didn’t think so. With her long brown hair, large brown eyes, and perfectly proportioned facial features, she had been fairly popular in high school. Yet, she had always felt there was something different about herself, like she never quite fit in with the rest of the kids in school. She had participated in extracurricular activities, like cheerleading and choir. She had attended the dances and pretended to care about what others thought of her hair and her clothes.  But at the end of the day, she always felt that the worries of high school were nothing compared to the “real” world.  When she graduated last May, there was no question she was going away to college. She would have liked to have gone even farther than the University of Iowa in Iowa City, but they offered her a pretty nice scholarship and she took it.  And it wasn’t so far away that she couldn’t drive back to her hometown of Shenandoah for holidays such as this.

            None of her friends had gone with her.  In fact, she and Jack had broken off their two year long relationship because he did not want her to go.  He had already signed on to play baseball for the Nebraska Cornhuskers—a pretty big deal—and was hoping that he would show up "Big Man on Campus" with his pretty little lady on his arm. But Cadence had other plans for her life, and his insistence that she follow him to Lincoln had ended their relationship, though they had somehow managed to remain friends, something that Cadence was thankful for.

            The rest of the group had scattered to other institutes of higher learning, with the exception of Jon who went to work for his father’s plumbing company for a bit, hoping to save some money before starting college. And Drew was a senior in high school this year. She had been on the cheerleading squad with the other girls and, though her peppiness was often annoying, she had wedged her way into their group via a short-lived relationship with Kash.

            “Cadence, did you hear me?” Drew’s chipper voice chimed from the corner. Cadence had been so preoccupied with finishing her assignment; she had no idea what the rest of the group was talking about. “I said, 'Have you ever heard of an Eidolon Festival?'”

            Temporarily pulling her eyes away from the computer screen, Cadence turned to address the spunky little blond.  “A what?”

            “That’s exactly what I just said!” Jack chuckled from his slumped position on the floor. 

            “It’s so cool!” Drew said, bounding up from the floor and crossing to where Cadence sat in front of the computer. “I saw a flyer the other day in this gas station. We’ve got to check it out!”

            “Because a gas station is where I always go to meet my entertainment needs,” Jon mumbled sarcastically as Drew shoved her way between Cadence and the computer.

            “What are you doing?” Cadence asked watching helplessly as Drew grabbed the mouse out of her hand and opened up Chrome.

            “Okay, so, Miss English Teacher,” she said, referring to Cadence’s career ambition, “What does eidolon mean?”

            Cadence thought for a moment. She knew she had heard the word before but she wasn’t precisely sure she knew the correct definition.  In fact, she would be surprised if Drew knew. She wasn’t exactly known for her broad vocabulary.

            Taylor was standing behind her chair now, a purple pillow pressed against her chest.  “It sounds like a place lazy people go to drink wine if you ask me!”

            Drew snorted and rolled her eyes.  “It’s eye-dol-in not idol-wine!” she exclaimed.

            “Isn’t it like a ghost or something?” Cadence asked.  Drew was frantically searching Google, trying to find more information than what she had seen on the flyer in the gas station.

            “I’ve never heard of it before,” Kash remarked, “But if it’s a party, you can count me in.”

            “A party about ghosts?” Sidney asked.  She was still sitting on the bed but was no longer reclining.  She strained her neck to peer across the short distance to Cadence’s computer screen.

            “It just means a specter or a phantom,” Drew proclaimed. “I know, I looked it up on Dictionary.com.”

            “And that makes you an expert!” Jon added in his typical sarcastic tone.

            “I’m not an expert,” Drew responded as she continued various searches containing the words “eidolon” and “festival” and “Iowa.”  “But I would like to be!”

            “Well, what did the flyer say?” Taylor asked.

            Drew continued to search, now adding the word “secret” into her search criteria. “It was kind of cryptic, for a flyer. It just said something like ‘Eidolon gather, Percy’s Lot, Villisca, Witching Hour, November 26^th.’  I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t dropped my keys.”

            The rest of her friends exchanged questioning glances, but Drew didn’t notice. She continued to search as the others drew straws nonverbally to determine who got to ask exactly what Drew meant.  Finally, Jon exclaimed, “Explain!”

            Drew was used to having to explain herself.  She was a bit ditzy at times—most of the time.  She sighed in frustration, “I was walking out of the gas station and I dropped my keys. I bent down to pick them up and I noticed a red scrap of paper sticking out from behind a trashcan. It was bright red so it caught my attention. So I grabbed it and read it.  And I had no idea what eidolon meant but I knew that festival meant party!  So, I tried to find out more info on my phone but I couldn’t find anything else out about it. I did find out that eidolon means phantom though, which sounds cool, so I think we should all go. It’ll be totally creepy and fun!”

            “So, for all you know, this is, like, a private party?” Taylor asked confused.

            “No, I don’t think so. It’s a festival and it was a typed flyer so it’s not like someone just wrote a note and dropped it. They want people to go,” Drew said a bit defensively.

            “Then why don’t they advertise it or at least have a website?” Sidney wanted to know.

            Drew sighed, tossing the mouse away and crossing back to the beanbag chair. “Come on, guys!” she exclaimed. “All of you are off in college or working and I’m here going to flippin’ high school. I never get to have any fun!  Would you please just go with me?”

            “It sounds kinda cool to me,” Kash agreed. For a moment, Cadence wondered why Drew and Kash ever broke up.

            “Listen,” it was Taylor this time, “It’s the night before Thanksgiving. I don’t think my parents will like it if I’m out partying until the wee hours of the morning. My mom is going to expect me to help with the dinner, you know.”

            “What time is the Witching Hour anyway? Midnight?” Sidney asked, her expression seeming to indicate that she was considering going with Drew.

            “No,” Cadence said almost automatically.  “It’s 3:00 AM.”

            “Are you sure?” Jack asked.  “I always heard it was midnight.”

            Cadence’s glance became a bit sterner. “I’m sure,” she replied.

            “Search engine it!” Taylor said, taking over the mouse.

            Jon laughed, “Because the word Google is trademarked,” he commented quietly, almost to himself.

            “She’s right!” Taylor exclaimed. “It is 3:00 AM. Says so right here.”

            “On Wikipedia? The most reliable source of information since the invention of the internet,” Jon sneered.

            “No, it’s not Wikipedia! It’s a site about witches!” Taylor said defensively. 

            “There’s no way I’m going out to a party at 3:00 AM the night before Thanksgiving!” Sidney stated emphatically, her hands tugging absently on her light brown ponytail.

            “Me neither!” Taylor agreed.

            “Come on!” Drew pleaded.  “We’ve gone out that late lots of times! Remember when we snuck off to Red Oak Tap?  We all told our parents we were staying at Cadence’s house and she told her mom she was at your house, Sid. It was the best time ever!”

            Sidney seemed to contemplate this argument for a moment, her green eyes flickering with memories of times well spent with this group of friends.  “I don’t know . . . .” she said as the tides began to turn in favor of one last hurray with her gang.

            “Well, I’m in.  And I’ll drive,” Kash said, slapping both hands down on his legs.

            “I’m too scared to go!” Taylor proclaimed, pouncing back on the bed next to Sidney.

            “You’ll be fine!” Kash proclaimed.

            “I’ll protect you,” Jon added, rapidly raising and lowering his eyebrows.

            Taylor laughed. Jon was always flirting with her but, thus far, nothing had ever happened between them. “You’re going then?” she asked, tossing her long blond hair back over her shoulder.

            “Well,” Jon said hesitantly. He looked at Kash, who was nodding his head.  The two of them had gone almost everywhere together since the beginning of high school. Even now that Kash was attending Iowa Western Community College, they still found plenty of time to hang out together. He would hate to miss out on a chance to have another adventure with his best friend.  “I guess so,” he said slowly.  “If Kash is going, then I’ll go.  I’ve never been to a festival based on wickedness before, but I can only assume this may be a prime opportunity to see some boobies.”

            The girls all groaned in disgust and Sidney threw a pillow at him, while the boys chuckled in agreement.

            “Jack?” Drew asked.

            Jack was fairly reserved so the prospect of seeing topless women was not a motivating factor for him, at least not one he was willing to verbalize. But, the idea of spending time with his friends, one friend in particular, was appealing to him. “I don’t know,” he began. “Cadence, what do you think?”
            Cadence had kept her back to the group as they discussed the potential adventure. She was hoping no one would notice that she was present, and therefore, she wouldn’t be asked to go. Of course, since they were sitting in her bedroom, the chances of this were slim.  “Well,” she sighed, “this certainly isn’t my thing. There’s nothing at all interesting to me about ghosts and goblins, vampires and all that.”

            “Seriously?” Drew asked, slumping her shoulders.  She knew that, if Cadence didn’t want to go, she probably couldn’t convince anyone else to go with her.  “Fine, I’ll just go by myself!” she pouted.

            “I said I’d go,” Kash reiterated but Drew didn’t lose her wounded kitten expression.

            “I don’t think it’s a good idea for some of us to go and not all of us,” Jack stated assertively.

            As much as Cadence wanted to disagree with him, he did have a point. Drew was only seventeen years old and even if Kash and Jon went with her, they still might end up in a situation that wasn’t safe. However, if all seven of them stuck together, like they always had, she felt better about their chances of avoiding evil regardless of the theme of the revelry.  She glanced at Sidney, who was chewing furiously on her bottom lip, a sign that she had not decided whether or not to risk it, and Taylor who was staring at the floor, shaking her head back and forth slowly.  Taylor clearly did not want to go.  Then, Cadence looked back at Drew. Her arms were crossed, her chin forced into her chest. “Fine,” she finally acquiesced. “Let’s go.”                        

                                    ***

            The sky was pitch black; clouds covering whatever stars may dare to shine. The moon hung low, it’s enervating journey home to the horizon almost concluded. Though it was late November, the chill seemed to come from within, not from the cool breeze that gently nudged her back to the safety of their vehicle.

            A glitch in the passage of time took place and suddenly they were in the midst of the festivities.  Flashes of smoke and fire clouded her vision.  Many of the participants were masked or perhaps their faces were contorted.  They wound their way amongst the ghouls and specters.  A parade of undead gamboled by, clad in crimson and black, shrill laughter ringing, percussion jarring them along. A pair of eyes that seemed to see through her very soul. Pure evil incarnate.

            Suddenly, the search was on. Frantically looking, running about.  She did not know who or what she was looking for, but she knew she must become whole again at once.  And then a vision of horror. Scarlet droplets turning to an endless flow. Disbelief overshadowed by rage and it was over.  An incessant need to run, to escape, to flee this place, never to return.  They would never return....

            Cadence bolted upright.  Despite the chilly room, she was sweating.  At first, she couldn’t remember exactly what she had been dreaming about but she knew she had been sprinting in her dream, and her chest heaved as if she had been truly attempting to outrun a predator.

            She wiped her brow on the sleeve of her flannel pajamas, and after a moment to compose herself, turned to her nightstand and a drink of water. Whatever she had been dreaming, it was terrible, and she was afraid to go back to sleep.  She glanced at the clock next to her bed. It was 3:00 AM.  She felt chills climbing up her spine as she realize at this time tomorrow, she would be at the Eidolon Festival.  Suddenly, she remembered, she had been dreaming about attending the fair.  But, if her dream was any indicator of what type of phantoms they might encounter at such a place, it wasn’t ghosts and ghouls they should fear. It was vampires.

            Cadence pondered making a phone call to one of her friends, possibly Sidney or Taylor. As the details from her dream came flooding back, it seemed more and more real. Considering the time, she decided not to disturb them, though she was sure neither of them would mind if she woke them up to discuss her trepidation. Nevertheless, it was in fact, just a dream.  She finally withdrew her stare from her iPhone on the nightstand and slid back down under the covers. She would talk to Drew the next day and tell her she didn’t think attending the Eidolon Festival was a good idea at all.

                                                
Order The Clandestine Saga Book 1: Transformation here.