Night Prowler Part One

  Night Prowler Part One

  The First Two Alaska Teen Novels

  Samantha Steele

  © 2012 by Samantha Steele

  Teenagers Edited by Melody Mericle

  Jailbirds Revised by Krysta White

  Jailbirds and Short Stories Edited by Samantha Steele

  © 2012 by Samantha Steele

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real persons, places, or events are used fictitiously. Other names, places, events, and characters are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

  This book may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the author.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Summary: Night Prowler Part One combines Teenagers and Jailbirds, the first two novels in the Alaska Teen Series. In Teenagers, Samantha’s near death experience gives her supernatural abilities. In Jailbirds, Zac learns he is part of an ancient war for control.

  ISBN-13: 978-1469967295

  Other Works by Samantha Steele:

  The Alaska Teen Series:

  Teenagers

  Jailbirds

  Gods (coming soon)

  Killers (announced)

  Night Prowler Collection:

  Night Prowler Part 1: Teenagers and Jailbirds Night Prowler Part 2: Gods and Killers (announced) Night Prowler: The Complete Alaska Teen Series (announced)

  Teenagers

  For Zac.

  Thank you for not liking me.

  For Jacob.

  I’m glad you were a psycho.

  For Annika.

  I miss you.

  For Cami and Kristina.

  I’m glad you make me do crazy things.

  For Taylor.

  I’m sorry I’m an annoying nutcase.

  For Mom and Dad.

  Thanks for encouraging me.

  For my brother Joel.

  Thank you for setting up my website! I wouldn’t trust anyone else with that.

  For my brother Terry.

  Thanks for letting me borrow your girlfriend’s editing skills.

  Samantha Steele

  Prologue

  Three Years After the Incident

  “Relax your mind,” Gaute said, his hand on the bare skin of my arm in case I succeeded this time. “I want you to slow time, but don’t stop it. We can’t rewind if you stop it.”

  He and I were sitting on the floor in one of the training rooms at the Palace. One of the demigods had plugged in a TV

  across from me and muted the sound. The action movie that flickered on the screen was our only indication of time. I was sitting on the floor, lotus style, and Gaute was next to me, softly giving me instructions. My eyes were closed and my breathing was measured. The Gods had enrolled me in yoga and Pilates classes to improve my mental strength, and the belly-breathing helped me focus on manipulating time.

  “How do I do this without touching my temples?” I whispered.

  “That’s what the muscles in your scalp are for,” Gaute answered. “All humans were formed in the shadow of your ability. Why else would they be able to move their scalps?” I laughed and even though I couldn’t see, I felt my teacher smile.

  “Pull at the muscles around the buttons. If you concentrate hard enough, you’ll push them halfway in.”

  I took another deep breath and began to twitch the muscles covering my temples (which is a lot harder than it sounds). At first, nothing happened. But then the TV flickers began to slow, and when I opened my eyes, the thugs were fighting in slow motion.

  “Excellent!” Gaute cried with a huge grin, taking his hand off of my arm to hug my shoulders. “Now, concentrate on reversing the actions going on around you. But don’t focus on me,

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  of course, because I was touching you. I won’t change, remember that.”

  “I know you won’t,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes.

  “Hey, this is important stuff! If you focus on someone who’s with you, you could get stuck in time. Not to mention the fact you almost always forget that touching someone’s skin while you’re pausing will wake them up.”

  “I did it twice!” I defended.

  “No, you did forty times,” Gaute chided. “We just didn’t bother erasing Joel and Gage’s memories. Or Taylor’s. Or Mitch’s.

  Or any of the demigods’.”

  “I still can’t believe you erased Cami’s memory,” I said, crossing my arms. “She wouldn’t have told. In fact, Taylor’s lips are a lot looser than Cami’s.”

  “Cami had been corrupted. We couldn’t risk it.”

  “Zac was corrupted,” I snapped. “No one tried to get rid of him, did they?”

  “Oh, hell, Sam. You know we couldn’t get rid of him.

  Only the Sign can fight the Seeker. And he wasn’t corrupted; he was the corruption.”

  “It’s not fair,” I sighed, laying down on the exercise mat.

  “I don’t want to kill him.”

  “You have to. Neither of you can survive at the same time. The Seeker only exists to kill the Sign.”

  “But why does it have to be him? I mean, he did save my life that one time.”

  “Only because he wanted to kill you himself,” Gaute said, clearly annoyed at having to remind me all the time.

  “He didn’t know what he was back then,” I countered.

  “He thought that he loved me. It’s not his fault the line between hate and love is so narrow.”

  “Sam, why are you defending him? He’s the Seeker! His sole purpose in this lifetime, or any other for that matter, is to end your life. Why can’t you understand that? He is underworld spawn, hell-bent on destroying the Palace. And the only way he can do that is by ending the existence of the Signs.”

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  Samantha Steele

  “Never mind.” I sat up and began to focus on the TV, showing Gaute I was finished discussing the topic. He sighed and opened his mouth as if to say something, but stopped.

  “It’s harder than it looks,” he said after a few minutes. I hadn’t gotten time to reverse yet. “You always did take longer to learn it.”

  “Longer than who?” I snapped. “Longer than Scorpio?

  Longer than the twins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Scorpio sleeps with its teacher,” I sneered. “And you can’t base my actions on the twins. They get to help each other.

  No one fights like I do. Have I not saved the Palace every single time I’ve been in cycle?” Gaute rolled his eyes.

  “I’m not insulting you,” he said. “I’m trying to make you feel better. Rewinding time is the hardest ability a Sign can learn.

  It’s not your fault you struggle; warrior signs have more difficulty with it.”

  I glared and felt jealousy surge in my stomach. The TV

  suddenly jumped into rapid rewind.

  “But your emotions always help,” Gaute said with a smile.

  “Tell me, Sagittarius,” Zeus began, his voice rumbling across the table like thunder. I was having dinner with the Palace Nobles. Ghosts were only permitted to enter the Nobles’ dining room if they had messages for their masters, so I was alone.

  “Have you mastered time reversal yet?”

  “I don’t think I’ve mastered it quite yet,” I answered, “but I feel more confident about it.” The Greeks were the only Nobles who seemed interested in my situation; occasionally the Pagans would listen in, but Jesus and his cohorts were snubbing me completely.

  “Well, you can’t freeze the Seeker, so don’t worry about it too much,” Artemis consoled. As the protector of young maidens and the goddess of the moon, she was my favorite
goddess

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  Teenagers

  (Hecate held that against me, as she was the Pagan goddess of the dark moon).

  “Ares!” came a sudden cry from the doorway. One of Gaute’s friends, and Ares’s ghost, was leaning over and panting as if he’d just run across the entire Palace.

  “What is it, Ragnar?” Ares demanded. He stood up from the table, ready to leap into action. Jesus rolled his eyes; he disapproved of Ares’s godship (war) which, now that I think about it, explains why Jesus disliked me. As a warrior sign, I was under the general rule of the war gods.

  “There is movement,” Ragnar said between gasps of breath. “Someone has entered the Palace grounds without permission of a Noble. We must hide the Sign. It may be the Seeker.”

  “He wouldn’t make a move so soon,” I said, bewildered. I couldn’t recall when I had gotten to the palace, but I was certain it had been just after receiving my powers. The Law stated that Signs and demigods had a two-year grace period to master their powers before they were open for attack. Both the Nobles and the Corruptions followed the Law; it had been written by the pagan God and Goddess when time began. The God and Goddess were the only neutral players. They stayed out of our affairs most of the time, but occasionally they would interfere if they felt like the Law was not being followed. So if the Seeker was after me now, surely the God and Goddess would interfere? I’d only been at the Palace for a year. When I brought up this point, every Noble in the room shuffled uncomfortably, including Jesus.

  “Sagittarius, do you remember coming into your powers?” Athena asked curiously.

  “We don’t have time to discuss this!” Ares cried. “Where is her ghost?”

  “Here!” Gaute suddenly popped into existence right next to me.

  “Take her to the training room,” Ares ordered. “She must regress.”

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  “But… Sir… She’s not ready for regression. We’ve only just begun to recover her memories,” Gaute said tentatively. “She may forget everything if we try now.”

  “She must remember,” Athena said. “Only she knows the Seeker’s weakness, and if she can’t remember…”

  “I know,” Gaute interrupted gravely. “Come with me,” he added, taking my arm.

  Before I could take a deep breath and prepare myself, the floor was whipped out from underneath me and I was surrounded by a chilly mist. After a few seconds, the mist cleared, and I was in the training room with Gaute.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “What is regression?

  What did I forget?”

  “You forgot getting your powers,” Gaute answered. “And you forgot what the Seeker did to you last time. It was horrible.

  I…” he paused and looked at me, anguish in his eyes. “I thought I’d lost you. For a long time, we weren’t sure you’d even recover. I almost wished he’d killed you. At least then I wouldn’t have had to…” he couldn’t finish his sentence.

  I walked over to my teacher and hugged him, still not sure why he was so upset. When he pulled away, Gaute’s eyes were red and he sniffled.

  “Can I help with the set up?” I asked, looking at the altar he had been preparing. He nodded.

  “Light this candle, but not these ones,” he said. “They must be lit in ritual.”

  A few minutes later, the altar was ready and Gaute had given me a red silk robe to change into.

  “Red is the color for passion,” he explained. “And this whole thing is rooted in passion. Not necessarily romance, but passion none the less.”

  Once changed into the robe, I turned around to see Gaute at the altar, dressed in a similar robe, only it was blue.

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  Teenagers

  “Truth,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “As your ghost, I must seek the truth in your memories. As a psych major, you should know all about that.” He smiled.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Basically, you have to rewind your memories. I’ll give you a few reminder cues, like his name, but I can’t say too much or you’ll create false memories and we won’t get anywhere.

  Sometimes we put you to sleep, but if the Seeker is really on his way here, we don’t have time for that.”

  I sat down on the other side of the altar and crossed my legs. Gaute began the ritual, anointing both of our foreheads with a special oil. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but I did pick out a few Latin words I recognized. I assumed this was a cross-religious ritual, so he would be speaking in multiple tongues.

  “Light the white and blue candles,” he instructed, then continued to speak in some other language. I felt a fuzzy heat surround my robe, and when I looked down I saw my entire body was bathed in a red and blue glow.

  “Think back to your freshman year of high school,”

  Gaute said in a soothing tone (and in English, thankfully). I automatically closed my eyes and slipped into a meditative state.

  “When did you meet Zachary Bell?”

  “In February,” I answered promptly. I knew all these answers. Why were we bothering?

  “Did you know he was the Seeker?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know you were the incarnation of Sagittarius?”

  “No.”

  “What was your relationship with Zachary Bell?”

  “I dated his best friend, Mitch,” I said. Suddenly the fuzzy glow around me turned black and green and I felt a chill spread my from toes to my eyes. “What’s happening?” I cried. I tried to open my eyes, but they were frosted shut.

  “You lied,” Gaute said calmly.

  “No, no I didn’t lie! I did date Mitch!” I screamed.

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  “I asked you what your relationship with Zachary Bell was,” Gaute repeated. “You must answer properly or you will die.”

  “Gaute! Make it stop! Why are you doing this to me?” I screamed.

  “I told the Greeks you weren’t ready but they won’t listen to a ghost. Samantha, you must listen to me. Answer properly and the ice will go away.” His voice was a struggled calm. I could tell he didn’t want me to be in pain anymore, but as a ghost he was bound to the Nobles’ orders.

  “I don’t know! Friends? I liked him!” I cried, the ice on my lips making it increasingly harder to speak. Suddenly the warm glow returned, and the ice was gone. My mind began to flood with memories of how I met Zac, vivid and warm. The true memories chased away the false ones.

  “I asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance, but he said no,”

  I whispered. “I was sad, but he asked for my number so I thought he liked me.”

  “When did you discover he was the Seeker?” Gaute asked, an air of relief in his tone.

  “I… Gaute, I don’t remember,” I said, bursting into tears, afraid I’d be covered in ice again. “I don’t remember getting my powers. I don’t remember losing Mitch. I don’t remember coming to the Palace. I don’t remember meeting you. All I know is that those things happened and I recognize all these people, and I know things about them, but I don’t remember meeting them.”

  “That’s what regression is for,” Gaute said kindly. “I can’t tell you what happened to your memories or it will compromise them. But I can help you find them. Now, have you ever met anyone named Jacob Fastner?”

  Jacob Fastner. He was the key that unlocked everything the Seeker had tried to make me forget.

  Memories began to bombard my brain. I felt like my skull was cracking. I remembered the pain of first learning how to manipulate time, how Gaute had crushed the bones of my temples in to activate the buttons in my temporal lobes. I could hear my

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  temples cracking again. My brain ached even though it had no pain receptors.

  I felt the scar tissue in my throat tear again. I could feel the blood dripping down my neck and chest, wetting my robe. I choked as I remembered the first time I read Mitch’s mind.


  The space between my legs began to ache as I remembered losing my virginity, the first time I ever used my time skill.

  I saw my parents, and a wave of sadness drowned out all my other ailments. I hadn’t seen them since I was a junior in high school, over a year ago. They still thought I was in London, studying abroad with my best friend, Gaute.

  And finally, I remembered my last meeting with Zac, the Seeker. I had come into full control of my abilities, except time manipulation (which was useless with the Corruption), and we were supposed to fight to the death.

  Only he didn’t kill me.

  He left me with this awful curse instead.

  “Sam! Sam! Sam, are you alright? Please! Wake up!”

  Gaute was sitting next to me, frantically wiping blood from my neck. “The ritual is over; you regressed! Please wake up!”

  I moaned and coughed, my throat still sore and aching.

  My eyes fluttered open and I saw Gaute, sitting next to me, looking relieved. His hands were stained with my blood.

  “Oh thank everything,” he sighed. “I really thought I’d lost you again.”

  “I remember,” I said. “I remember it all.”

  “It worked,” Gaute said calmly. He was making a report to the Nobles. “Sagittarius regressed and remembered everything the Seeker’s spell had taken from her. Has the threat been contained?”

  “It was only a human,” Ares said, brushing off the inquiry with a wave of his hand. “They do manage to wander into the

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  Samantha Steele

  Palace from time to time. Ragnar should’ve known that the Seeker would’ve been much more careful.”

  “Do you have your report?” Zeus demanded. Gaute nodded.

  “Right here, sir. Before this happened, as some of you know, I also managed to copy most of Mitchell Mantel’s memories as well. These are also included in my report.”

  “How are those useful?” Athena asked curiously.

  “There are a few humans who know about the Sign and the Seeker,” Gaute said. “Mantel is one of them. I also managed to cleave one memory from Taylor Gills, another of those humans. I could add that to my report, but it seems rather useless.

  Her mind is a jumble of song lyrics and medical terms.”

  “Add whatever memories you have that pertain to the Sign and Seeker,” Zeus commanded.