Marshall's Landing: Chapter 1
This is the latest edition of Marshall's Landing - updated for today's audiences. The book will be posted here in its entirety. Enjoy.
Chapter 1
Traffic was heavy at LAX as the little red Aston Martin pulled up to departures and maneuvered between taxis and Ubers to park at the curb. Aidan Thomas unfolded his long legs from the creamy custom leather seat while Ariel Tanner labored out of the small, not so custom, backseat.
If you could call it a backseat.
She sighed as he leaned over and put her bags down on the cement. Aiden smiled mischievously and leapt towards her with the playful twinkle in his eye that had been making her stomach somersault since she was four and he was ten and they shared a swimming pool in the adjoining backyards of their parents' homes in a small town in Northern California called Marshall's Landing.
Ariel smiled despite herself. Aidan could make the world go away. He was the boy next door, the man of her dreams, the focus of a fate that would bind them together for all time. Ariel had loved Aidan her entire life. Her first memories were filled with Aidan, and her latest memories were filled with Aidan, as were the years of memories dotted between. Aidan was the protagonist on her stage of life, only he didn’t know she existed.
Aidan considered her a child. The little girl who tagged along with him collecting pollywogs and making him laugh. Only she wasn’t that girl anymore. She was about to turn seventeen and had just completed a summer program at UCLA’s prestigious School of Theater, Film and Television. They’d called her a prodigy, and she’d never felt more mature in her entire life. She was ready and eager to take on the world – Aiden include.
If only he knew she was alive.
Today, she was headed home for the summer and then to England for her senior year abroad. She’d graduated high school in three years with a 4.25 GPA, was going to London for a year as an exchange student and then off to college. Stanford, she hoped. A notch above Aidan’s UC Berkeley and his complete rivel. Fitting.
Not that it’s always a competition, she thought and smiled again. Well, maybe just a bit, she reconsidered in her mind.
Aidan was tall and broad and tan –with trusting chocolate eyes and golden-brown hair. He lived in one of those trendy, white boxes off Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. The ones strung together with electrical wire – one to the next and the next to the next on down the endless stretch of road that hugs the curves of some of California’s most pristine beaches.
Aidan was entering his third year at USC Gould School of Law, volunteered at the mission, and brought food to his shut-in neighbor five times a week. Aidan was small town at heart and believed in people and working together to make a brighter tomorrow. But he was big city too. The sprawling streets of LA’s west side were made for his absolute perfection and he relished in their hallow glow.
Then there was Bethany. The girlfriend. The reason Ariel had to climb out of the back of the Aston rather than from her rightful position in the front, next to Aidan. More mannequin than person, Bethany was perfection personified. Svelte body, blonde hair, radiant smile, pearly teeth, nails manicured beyond reproach – inhumanly goddess-like. Almost perfect –almost. Her personality? That needed a little work, only Aiden didn’t seem to mind. This seemed but a minor detail to LaLa land’s perfect couple. Who needs personality in the land of the stars?
"Sure, you don't want to ride with us?" Aidan asked as he casually tossed his arm Ariel’s shoulder. They were both headed to Marshall’s Landing to celebrate the Fourth of July with their families. It made sense for them to travel together.
"In the back of that?" Ariel laughed. "For six hours? It was so much nicer when you didn't have her."
Aidan laughed, only Ariel wasn't kidding at all.
He kissed her forehead. "Want me to carry these inside?" Bethany was TikToking. Aidan was confident he’d return before she even noticed him gone.
Ariel shook her head. "I got ‘um. Drive safe."
He winked and hopped back into the car. "Race ya home."
Ariel stood at the curb watching long after the car disappeared into the traffic merging onto Century Boulevard. A knot twisted in her stomach. She brushed it off as Bethany disdain. If only it was that easy.
Aidan weaved through the cars on the 405 and thought about why he was going home. They were coming off the Grapevine, where Highway 5 meets Highway 99, when it happened. A car cut off a semi-truck heading south and forced it across the wide center divider.
By the time Aidan saw the truck, it was too late to react. There was no time to move out of its way. In a surreal flash, a jumbled instant, it was over. Aidan didn't even have a chance to look over at Bethany who was sleeping soundly in the bucket seat beside him.
Metal against metal, the angry sheets ripped from the vehicles like paper, only with a sickening grind that pierced the dusty heat and sent blackened pieces of steel, plastic, and fiberglass flying through the air like bullets slashing the horizon. Rubber against pavement, the wheels screeched and burned and tore until they too sang the song of grinding metal echoing into the otherwise still valley.
A calm settled in but was short lived. The grinding and screeching gave way to an ominous silence and that silence to a quaking thump as a steel bar broke from somewhere on the semi’s trailer, fell through the air, shattered the space where the windshield should have been and crashed into Aidan - searing him to the creamy leather remains of the custom bucket seat.
Aidan's side of the car took the brunt of the accident and the infallibility Ariel trusted to Aidan laid broken, bruised and very, very still over the drive shaft of the mangled sports car. His shirt was spattered with blood, his chest, his hands, his face lacerated. He was not moving and his breath, when it did come, was in rasping, wet, pulls that raked his body but offered little oxygen. He was broken and bleeding and motionless.
What happened next took only an instant, less than a second in real time, but altered eternity for Aidan and those whose lives with whom he would forever be entwined.
Unnoticeable to his unconscious passenger, a dark shadow washed over the car as the black wings of Kala and Becruh knelt on the hood and peered into what remained of the shattered safety glass.
Kala leaned in, her shiny black wings tussling in the hot wind, her crimson lips sparkling, her black eyes glistening. She was a breath away from the lifeless lips of the fallen when Becruh put his alabaster hand on her bare shoulder.
“You must ask,” he reminded.
Onyx yearning swelled in her unearthly being. “It is in the tiles.”
“The darkness of eternity is his choice,” Becruh said. “It is written in the laws of the ancients. It is a commandment of Lucifer himself. You must ask.”
Kala reluctantly pulled away. Becruh closed his eyes and entered the being before him. When he emerged, he nodded to Kala.
The wanton being raised her arms and spread her wings. Bethany stirred, startling the spirit. Kala whipped around – her wing catching Bethany’s cheek. Bethany faded into a deep unconsciousness. It was unnoticed, but it would matter.
Kala returned her focus to Aidan. The kiss was long and deep and filled with an unearthly desire, and then they were gone. A drop of blood trickled from Aidan’s lips. His breath rasped. Lifeless no more, he struggled to capture the night air.
There were sirens. There were lights. There were jumbled voices as paramedics and helicopters and firemen arrived on the scene, and in the confusion of it all, no one noticed the serene but ominous fluttering of an icy wind in the otherwise scorching July heat.
Look for Chapter 2!
Thanks,
Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti
#novel #marshallslanding #read #reading #freebie
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