Free Eternity The Beginning by Felicity Heaton

F E Heaton

    Copyright © 2007 Felicity Heaton

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

    The right of Felicity Heaton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

    First published July 2007

    First Edition

    All characters in this publication are purely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

    Edited by Felicity Heaton

    Cover by Felicity Heaton

    Eternity: The Beginning – F E Heaton

    986 BC was the year that I discovered the true meaning of immortality. It was not the afterlife that my Pharaoh believed in but a dark gift given to those deemed worthy by the creature murdering them.

    I was worthy, though I did not know the man who killed me and then granted me my afterlife.

    I was left to discover my terrible power alone.

    “Brother? Is that you?”

    Hyperion pushed the rickety door closed and leaned heavily against it, causing the old wooden beams to strain under his weight. He sighed and swallowed. His mouth was drier than the desert outside and no matter what he drank, nothing quenched his thirst. It only made him feel sick.

    “It is I,” he said and wearily moved to a low stool beside the cooking pot. He stared at the bubbling contents. The sight of it turned his stomach.

    His eyes automatically moved to his sister when she entered. His tongue traced his lips, wetting them as best it could, and his stomach growled with hunger. He could hear everything, the wind outside, the rush of her blood and her heart as it pounded hard but steady against her chest, and the soft swish of her muslin dress. He could smell her sweet fragrance and the slight salty tang of sweat that laced it. He could smell her blood.

    He stood sharply when she went to sit near him and moved to the other side of the room.

    He shouldn’t have come back.
    1
    Eternity: The Beginning – F E Heaton

    Clenching his fists, he frowned when sharp pain ran up his arms. He uncurled his hands to see a row of half moon shaped puncture marks in his palms and then
    stared at his fingernails. His eyes widened in horror at the sight of the pointed, elongated claws they had become. Just what was it that the man had done to him?

    “You are hurt,” Ineru said behind him and he froze when she placed her hand on his shoulder.

    The sound of her heartbeat filled his ears.

    His chest heaved with the desire to kill her.

    His eyes closed at the heady sensation of pleasure it promised.

    She brushed her fingers over the wound on his throat and he moved away from her, throwing her hand off him and growling.

    “What kind of sorcery is this?” he whispered to himself when the bones of his face shifted. He raised his fingers up, feeling the sharp points of his teeth. What had he become? Was he one of them now?

    The man had almost killed him and only then had he been offered salvation. He had taken it, all too eager to live, but in the process something inside him had died.
    His fingers clenched his chest and he listened to the eerie silence inside of him.

    He’d died.

    He realised that now.

    2
    Eternity: The Beginning – F E Heaton
    The man that had been so desperate to live had sold his soul and now he was doomed to an eternity of life. But not life. No. He was walking death. The intense hunger inside of him told him that. It clouded his mind with the memory of how blood had tasted on his lips, on his tongue, and whispered to him how sweet it would be to feed, to take the life of someone to further his own, to live off their death. It