Lost Secret

My dying sister vanished in the middle of the night.Usually, Megan called to me before dawn, but sunshine pooled on the bare wood floor beneath the window when I woke.My heart leapt into my throat. She’s dead. After months of fighting, Megan finally...I hadn’t felt it though. Wouldn’t I know if the only person I ever loved—I stumbled out of bed, tangling in my blankets, then raced to her room. Empty. The sheets were folded aside. She must be close. I moved down the hall toward our shared bathroom. The door stood open, but Megan wasn’t there.Backtracking, I checked the living room with its slouchy couches, and the kitchen with its worn countertops. No Megan. I pushed through the French doors out onto our balcony.The music district of Crescent City, a night owl’s paradise, lay still in the soft morning light. Megan’s flowers overflowed their boxes, spilling riotous colors down the wrought iron rail. I stood alone, a gentle breeze lifted a lock of my hair, and tears stung my eyes. Megan was gone.The police assumed she left of her own free will—there was no evidence of a break-in or struggle. "Maybe she was done fighting and couldn't tell you," the detective said, his brown eyes sympathetic."You didn't know her, she would never give up.""Often when people go missing, the loved ones they leave behind come to realize," he paused and took a breath, "that they didn't know them as well as they thought. Everyone has secrets, Darling," his voice drawled over my name."Megan could barely walk," I ground out. "Somebody must have taken her.""But who would kidnap a dying young woman? How did they leave no evidence? Why didn't you hear them?" He asked. I didn't have any answers.It didn’t make sense. Nothing did anymore.Strange, exhilarating dreams began haunting my nights. A new hunger, an unquenchable thirst that felt almost...dangerous...ruled my days.Scared and alone, I couldn’t imagine the dark secrets my hunger hid. They’d been lost for so long—locked away, buried by time,... The universe sings a song, and I can hear it when we kiss... Dimitri's eyes are the ice blue of a glacier—the hottest edge of a flame. His gaze both chills and heats me. His cheekbones are sculpted from marble, lips red as a rose petal and turned up into a predatory smile. He walks like a dancer,—movements liquid, precise, controlled, and strong. He's been following me...sent to protect me. I believed the first ten years of my life were a hallucination—a delusion created by a traumatized mind. I grew up not trusting myself, so I put all my faith in my best friend, Megan. When she disappeared, I lost my anchor... and picked up a stalker. After violence erupts in Crescent City, and the dead begin to rise, creatures I believed only inhabited the world of fantasy—vampires, witches, warlocks, shifters—all want something from me. My whole life, I've feared my own nature... my truth. But I can feel it now, hovering in the near distance. Waiting for me to claim it. It's my time. ***This is the first book in a series and ends on a cliffhanger.***