Authors: Tim O'Rourke
Doorways (A Book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic) (The Doorways Trilogy - Book One)
Doorways
(A Book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic)
(Book 1)
By
Tim O’Rourke
Copyright 2012 by Tim O’Rourke
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
This
eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Story Editor (Hacker)
Lynda O’Rourke
Book cover designed by:
Carles Barrios
Copyright: Carles Barrios 2013
Copyedited by:
Carolyn M. Pinard
For Joseph, Thomas & Zachary
More books by Tim O’Rourke
Kiera Hudson Series
Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 1
Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 2
Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 3
Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 4
Wolf House (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 4.5
Vampire Hollows (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 5
Dead Flesh (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1
Dead Night (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1.5
Dead Angels (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 2
Dead Statues (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 3
Dead Seth (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 4
Dead Wolf (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 5
Dead Water (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 6
Black Hill Farm (Books 1 & 2)
Black Hill Farm (Book 1)
Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary (Book 2)
Sydney Hart Novels
Witch (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 1
Yellow (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 2
The Doorways Trilogy
Doorways (Doorways Trilogy Book 1)
The League of Doorways (Doorways Trilogy Book 2)
Moon Trilogy
Moonlight (Moon Trilogy) Book 1
Moonbeam (Moon Trilogy) Book 2
Samantha Carter – Vampire Seeker Series
Vampire Seeker (Samantha Carter Series) Book 1
You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.kierahudson.com
or by email at
[email protected]
Chapter 1
Zach
Black raced across the empty beach, ignoring the grains of sand the wind jabbed against his skin like needle points. He was away from
that
house and away from
that
man.
His sixteen
-year-old legs carried him faster and further with every stride, and his lungs screamed for him to stop. But Zach didn’t listen. Or care! Running was his release. It was a daily taste of freedom that he devoured like a ravenous animal.
Ahead of him, waiting as always was a familiar outcrop of rock. Black against the skyline, it lay against the sand like a giant’s arm. Zach knew it well. He also knew he had just five more seconds to reach it before the
Atlantic Ocean claimed him.
Zach raced the ocean every day. The challenge reminded him that life could be exciting and exhilarating. It also reminded him that danger could be conquered. But today, danger was winning.
The tide was racing faster than ever and Zach had mistimed his run. Two miles didn’t sound like a long distance. It was a run he had made every day for the last month, since moving to Cornwall with his uncle Fandel. On a fresh spring morning, Zach could’ve made the run in less than twelve minutes. But today, with the wind leaning against him like a heavy drunk, he was struggling. And the ocean could sense weakness.
The first heavy wave thumped against rock, splashing the sand with
stakes of cold sea. The Atlantic retreated, but just for a moment. A second, larger wave broke against the outcrop and this time the water didn’t retreat. One more wave and the cove would be flooded. Zach knew if didn’t make it around the outcrop, he would be stranded. The tide wouldn’t retreat for another four hours and by then his uncle Fandel would come looking for him. Fear tightened Zach’s throat as he imagined the consequences.
Fighting
the lactic acid that already stung his legs, Zach pushed himself through the pain barrier. A shadow darkened the strip of sand ahead of Zach as the raging ridge of a third wave loomed above him like an ogre. The ocean roared in triumph as it sent a wall of water surging forward to devour him.
‘Gotchya!’ Zach laughed as he leapt from the sea-soaked sand and bounced onto a familiar plateau of rock. Cat-tails of ice-cold ocean slapped against his back and across his neck, stinging his skin and soaking his hair. But Zach still grinned. And as he leapt from the rock onto dry sand, he raised
both arms in a victory salute.
Oxygen raced into his mouth as he sucked air into his lungs. That had been close. He’d never had to run so hard, or so fast before. Yet he was glad. He was getting stronger.
Wiping away the sweat from his forehead, Zach looked out across the empty dunes. The scene was a familiar one. Rolling sand dunes retreated from the sea towards the beach huts, criss-crossed by the narrow pathways carved by the summer tourists. Zach had seen it every day for the last month, yet today it was different. Zach’s eyes fell upon something new. Something strange.
Apart from the weird-looking
tablets his uncle had been giving his sister for the last month, Zach had never seen anything so bizarre in the sixteen years that he had been alive.
Zach thrust his hands into his jeans pockets, shielding them against the cold, and stood staring at the door that protruded from the sand. The sea crept up the shore in grey waves of froth, lapping against his trainers and the bottom of the odd wooden protrusion. A curtain of hair flapped in front of his eyes, which he knocked away with his hand; he was anxious to get a better look at the door.
Why was it there?
He ran his gaze up and down the wood. It was painted white and appeared to be made from cheap, knotted planks. The door didn’t appear to be attached to anything; there were no hinges and no frame, just a rusty looking doorknob sticking out from the centre of the woodwork like a brass pimple.
Zach glanced behind him, looking back up the stretch of deserted sand. Aside from a few smooth pebbles, tossed like litter by the retreating tide, the only thing Zach could see was his own trail of footprints, now being devoured by the incoming tide. The beach was desolate and he wasn’t surprised. Only he was mad enough to take a run along the shore on a freezing cold December afternoon. Yet Zach had good reason to be here; even a freezing deserted beach was a warmer place to be than
that
house. At least here, on the windswept sands, he could forget about his dying sister Anna. He could also avoid his cruel uncle, Fandel Black.
The wind’s icy fingers clawed at Zach’s face and he turned away to gaze back towards the door. He frowned. Why was there a door in the middle of the beach? And why this beach?
Curiosity pushed Zach forward. He peered around the edge of the door to see what lay behind. He wasn’t too surprised to find more sand, waves and giant black cliffs that reached towards the sky like mountains sides.
‘Who would leave a door standing in the middle of the beach?’ he whispered to himself as his eyes followed the curves and twists on the knots in the wood as they spiralled this way and that.
Zach stepped closer to the door and traced the rings with his fingertips until his hand brushed against the doorknob. A surge of energy that had seemed to leap from the doorknob, made his arm fizz with pins and needles.
‘Aw!’ he yelped, snapping his hand away, ‘That hurt!’
Zach slapped his hand against his thigh, trying to bring some feeling back. He couldn’t take his eyes off the doorknob. The urge to take hold of it and throw the door wide open was too much to resist.
Glancing over his shoulder, Zach stretched out his hand and curled his fingers around the doorknob. That surge of energy exploded across his chest. Gritting his teeth, Zach twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.
A rush of air belched out of the open doorway, slamming into his chest and knocking him backwards into the sand. Dazed and disorientated, Zach forced himself onto his elbows to stare in disbelief at what lay on the other side. The strangest looking creature Zach had ever seen. He had thick lengths of ropey brown dreadlocks hanging from his head, from his cheeks and even beneath his chin. Hair grew across his hands too, and down his fingers, which were long and bony, capped by ivory nails.
Perched on this creatures
nose was the weirdest pair of glasses, which protruded from his face like two silver telescopes with huge lenses. Behind the lenses, his eyes looked like saucers.
Odder still, Zach noticed that something else was wrong with the scene – the image appeared to be see-sawing up and down and side-to-side, as though it were moving at great speed.
‘Faster!’
screamed the hairy-creature, yanking backwards on something held tight in his hands.
Zach pulled himself up into a kneeling position, ignoring the grey waves that were soaking his jeans. Peering through the op
en doorway, he noticed that the hairy-creature on the other side had what appeared to be a set of reins wrapped around his fists. He pulled on these with all his strength and roared:
‘Faster I’m telling ya dumb creatures!
Faster!’
Zach climbed to his feet, mesmerised by what was unfolding on the other side of the doorway. As if being coaxed forward by an invisible pair of hands, Zach inched closer to the open door. Millimetres
away now, he saw that hairy-creature was sitting atop of what looked like an ancient stagecoach. Zach blinked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, because the stagecoach was being pulled by a quartet of the strangest looking animals he had ever seen.
The creature
glanced back over his shoulder and fear lit up his magnified eyes. Turning back to the animals, he whipped the reigns.
‘Faster! Faster!’
he yelled,
‘They’re nearly upon us!’
Then, sensing
he was being watched, the hairy-creature turned to stare straight at Zach. Releasing one of the reigns, he thrust a claw-like hand towards Zach and bellowed:
‘If you want to save your sister’s life, come with me!’ Flashing a mouthful of yellow broken teeth, he grinned as if he were insane.
‘What ya waiting for Zach Black? Are you coming or what?’
Zach considered the question for a moment. The chance to save his sister was too tempting. He stole a quick glimpse up the
deserted beach, grasped the creature’s hairy hand, then stepped through the doorway.
Chapter 2
Zach looked back over his shoulder. The doorway he had stepped through slammed shut, folded in on itself and then disappeared, leaving behind the white glare of a sun that now beat down on him in seething hot rays. Just as the icy waves on the beach had stung his face, the heat from the sun prickled his flesh like cactus spikes.
Spinning round, Zach found himself sitting atop the stagecoach, which raced across a hard, flat surface. The ground was bleach-white and arid, cracked and blistered like a corpse left too long in the burning sun. Ahead in the distance, Zach could see mountains and a forest that stretched across the horizon like a dark smudge. The stagecoach hurtled towards it, pulled by four black beasts.
Glancing at them, Zach thought they looked like horses, but they were bigger and sleeker. The creatures’ legs were long and spidery-looking, and they had six each. Spraying up a shower of dust from beneath their pointed hooves, they scuttled across the desert. The beast’s bodies were muscular and their flesh rippled beneath a coat of bristling hair.
Unlike horses, their necks were long and serpent-like with heads that jerked up and down as if they were receiving bolts of agonising electricity. The animals manes flowed out behind them in thick waves, and it was these hairy-boy was using as reins.
‘Who are you?’ Zach asked, looking at the creature that sat beside him. On closer inspection, Zach could see that under all the hair and behind the huge glasses, the creature did have what looked like a human face. Zach guessed that he was perhaps a little older than himself, maybe eighteen but no older than twenty.
‘William!’ the hair covered creature shouted, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Don’t just sit there gawping, do something!’
Starring into William’s big saucer-like eyes, Zach said: ‘Do what?’
Without saying anything, William nodded in the direction back over his shoulder.
Spinning round, Zach roared,
‘Whoa! What are they?’
Just feet from the rear wheels of the stagecoach, four hooded figures raced after them, each riding what looked like the skeletons of four giant gorillas.
‘Don’t just sit there –
shoot them!
’ William wailed.
‘Shoot them?’ Zach shouted.
‘Shoot them with what?’
‘Those things!’ William said, glancing down at Zach’s waist.
Zach looked and to his amazement, he was wearing a thick leather belt with holsters. And each housed two weird-looking crossbows. Unlike crossbows they were made of wood, and looked more like two small crossbows.
‘Where…what…how did they get there!?’ Zach yelled over the sound of the high pitched neighing coming from the creatures up front.
‘Does it matter where they came from!?’ William wailed.
‘Just shoot them or we’re gonna die!’
Looking into William’s magnified eyes; Zach could see fear brimming in them like tears.
‘Okay, okay!’ Zach said, fumbling for the crossbows. ‘But I don’t know how to shoot!’
‘What’s to know? You just pull the trigger!’ William grinned at him, t
hen faced forward and howled, ‘faster I’m telling ya! Move faster or I’ll be feasting on your lazy hides for me supper!’
The stagecoach lurched from side to side like a baby taking its first steps. Standing, Zach took aim, but before firing a shot, he wobbled and almost lost his balance. The stagecoach hit an uneven piece of ground and lurched forward, its back wheels lifting from the earth. Staggering like someone in the dark, Zach fired one of the
crossbows releasing a shot that went whizzing over the head of his companion.
‘Not at me! Them! Your s’posed to be shooting at
them!
’ William shouted, jabbing one of his long, bony fingers in the direction of the macabre looking hoodies.
‘Sorry!’ Zach said, regaining his balance. The
crossbows thundered in his fist like cannons, this time in the direction of their pursuers.
Small razor-sharp looking stakes shot from the end of the crossbows and
screamed through the desert sky. One missed but another smashed into one of the skeletal-gorilla’s huge thigh bones. A spray of chalk-white bone erupted into the air like an exploding flour-bomb. The skeletal-gorilla stumbled and rolled forward, crashing into the hard packed ground, throwing its hooded rider into the air. The gorilla shattered on impact with the ground and disintegrated into splinters.
‘I got one! I got one!’ Zach roared, taking his eyes off the creatures that charged at them.
‘Stop looking at me and keep your eyes on them!’ William warned, but his warning came too late. One of the hoodies drew level, its skeletal-gorilla shoulder-barging the stagecoach.
The back of the vehicle spun to one side, sending Zach flying over the edge of the coach. Corkscrewing through the air, Zach squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the explosion of pain to tear through his body as he hit the ground that raced below. But the pain never came. Opening his eyes, Zach blinked as the cracked earth whizzed past just inches from his face. Glancing upwards, he saw that one of his boots had been caught in the frame of the stagecoach.
‘Help me!’ Zach roared
,
hanging upside down on the outside of the carriage.
Despite the terrifying situation Zach found himself in, the first thought that raced across his mind was:
Where did those boots come from?’ Where are my trainers?
Looking to his right, the gigantic fists of one the dead gorillas smashed into the ground next to him like a sledgehammer. Gritting his teeth, Zach twisted his body to face the approaching beast. Dust blew up into his eyes like
gunpowder. Squinting, Zach raised his left arm and took aim.
Almost blind, he squeezed on the trigger and his arm recoiled l
ike a rattlesnake, as the stake exploded from the barrel of the crossbow. An ear-splitting screech cut through the air as the sharp wooden stake whizzed towards the gorilla and its rider.
Opening his eyes, Zach watched the beast tumbling out of control across the desert, crumpling like the bonnet of a car in a head-on-collision. The hooded figure slammed into the desert floor; its black robes fluttering in the wind like a downed raven.
‘Gotchya!’ Zach screamed with relief.
Looking-up at his entangled boot, Zach could see his foot coming loose. Realising he was in danger of falling to his certain death beneath the wheels of the carriage, Zach roared up at William, ‘Hey! Help me!’
There was no reply.
Sensing that he was going to have to save himself, Zack looked around in desperation, searching for something, anything to grab that would help him lever himself back on top of the carriage. Seeing the handle of the stagecoach door, he grabbed for it like a drowning man. Knowing that if he could reach it and get the door open, he could climb inside to safety.
Holstering his crossbows and, using what little strength he had left, Zach arched his back and tried to pull himself forward. Clenching his teeth and eyes watering, Zach managed to heave himself up. Fingers clawing for the coach door handle inches from his grasp.
‘C’mon!’ he yelled aloud, willing himself on.
Screwing his eyes shut, he made one last grab for the handle and to his utter delight and relief he felt his fingers curl around its metal surface. Then someone gripped his wrist, yanking his hand free.
Snapping open his eyes, Zach looked up into William’s hairy-face.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ Zach yelled, ‘Do you want me to die!’
Staring at Zach with his huge fiery eyes, William grinned.
‘Stop ya whining’ he said, yanking on Zach’s wrist and pulling him back to safety. ‘You can’t open the carriage door. If you do she’ll die!’
‘Who will die? Who’s
she
?’ Zach asked bewildered.
‘You’ll see,’ William replied through his crooked smile.
‘Faster!’
he yelled again, pulling on the animals’ manes.
Plucking the
crossbows from his belt, Zach noticed that not only had he been fitted out with a crossbow holster and thick brown boots, he was also wearing a long black coat that flapped around his knees.
‘Where did all this stuff come from?’ he shouted.
‘It doesn’t matter now! I’ll explain later!’ William yelled, refusing to take his eyes off the fast approaching forest that loomed ahead.
Looking back over his shoulder, Zach was ready to take aim again, but was surprised to see the hooded figures slowing down on their skeletal looking-gorillas.
‘Why are they slowing down?’ Zach asked.
‘Because we’re heading for the forest!’ William said.
‘Why won’t they enter the forest?’ Zach pushed him.
Taking his huge eyes off the approaching
tree line and flashing his broken teeth at Zach, William said, ‘Cos’ of the dead people!’
Turning, William yanked on the creature’s manes and sped into the forest.