Breaking Emma (A Divisa Novella) (Divisa series 2.5) Read online

  BREAKING EMMA

  A DIVISA NOVELLA

  BOOK 2.5

  A novella

  By

  J.L. Weil

  Kindle Edition Copyright 2013

  by J.L. Weil

  http://jlweil.blogspot.com/

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition October 2013

  ISBN-13: 978-1492888161

  ISBN-10: 1492888168

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  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 person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Novels by J.L. Weil

  Saving Angel (Divisa #1)

  Losing Emma (Divisa #0.5)

  Hunting Angel (Divisa #2)

  Breaking Emma (Divisa #2.5)

  Luminescence (Book 1)

  Amethyst Tears (Book 2)

  Dedicated to book bloggers big and small. You are a-w-e-some!

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 1

  I am a hunter.

  It is in my blood, flowing from generation to generation.

  So I’m told.

  We aren’t the usual mill of hunters. No deer, elk, wild turkeys, or caribou for my family or the others like us. That would be too normal, and my family is as abnormal as the things we hunt.

  Demons.

  Hellhounds.

  Any ugly thing that shows its head from Hell.

  And of course its offspring. Divisa—half human, half demon.

  You would be surprised at the number of these half-breeds that live among us, or how common it is for demons to leave a human impregnated. Hell will often kill their young, kind of like a wolf spider, but more often a Divisa finds a way to avoid its heritage and survive. Then it falls to us to take care of the problem.

  Leave it to the underworld to make us clean up its messes.

  Before I realized what a crockpot of shit the world was, and before I was molded into a ruthless hunter, I was a dancer…

  A great dancer.

  Talk about yin from yang.

  But God I loved dancing. It was like breathing. Nothing gave me the rush that dancing did, or the immense satisfaction, an outstanding sense of achievement. I always assumed that was what I would be. A professional dancer—the big leagues, but how quickly those dreams of twirling in the Big Apple or the Windy City disappeared. Poof. Like dust, they were gone.

  And so was I.

  Except in my case, magic had nothing to do with it. I never got the chance to say good-bye to the friends I’d made in Spring Valley. I never got the chance to decide if this was what I wanted. And most importantly, I never got the chance to see Travis one last time. If only…

  Maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe he would have been able to save me from what I’d become. It didn’t really matter in the end, because what-if’s were not going to change what had already come to pass. Dwelling on what could have been was for the weak, and I was anything but.

  My instructor saw to that.

  The night I was taken, I’d actually been on my way to see Travis, but someone had gotten to me first. Black mask, bright green eyes, and a familiar face greeted me that night on the abandoned road. I was told that I fainted, but I had a hard time believing that. Fainted? Never had I swooned in my life, but I guess being abducted can have an odd effect on people.

  When I awoke, I was in a room that looked like a sad excuse for a college dorm. The walls were sterile white and the carpet was dull grey. Not an ounce of color touched the room, and I so loved color. Bright. Bold. Eye-popping. The brightest thing in the room was my strawberry-blonde hair. It stood out against the bleached walls.

  Disorientated, I rubbed my eyes, attempting to push aside the workings of a migraine. At first I thought that this was surely a dream or a very bad joke. How could this possibly be real? Slowly memories began to trickle. What I couldn’t shake or make sense of was my dad.

  Why had he been with those men?

  Who were those men cloaked in the night?

  And what did they want with little me?

  You can imagine the vivid and disturbing images that came to mind. I couldn’t help but associate a kidnapping with rape and beatings, yet I just couldn’t see my dad being mixed up with that kind of thing. Sure, I guess he didn’t have a stellar background. He had been weirder than usual. Coming and going at ungodly hours. Running around dressed like some kind of ninja with knives strapped to his pants.

  Okay, so my dad wasn’t what he seemed.

  That much I got.

  But what exactly was he mixed up in? Underground street gangs? Alien experimentation? CIA? And why had he gone to such extremes to bring me here? I still didn’t have the foggiest clue where here was?

  As luck would have it, I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  The door to my new accommodations opened and in walked the man who would become my instructor. A man I thought I knew. The one man in my life who I’d always thought would protect me, guide me, and watch out for me.

  It sucked ass to be so wrong.

  I’d wanted to blame what I thought I had seen that night, however I couldn’t deny what was standing in front of my very own frightened eyes. I’d never really been afraid of him before. It was a feeling I was unaccustomed to. My first instinct when he had stepped through the door had been relief. I had wanted to throw myself into his arms, but something held me back. It was that one memory right before everything went fuzzy and black.

  The one that was on repeat in my brain: He could have a part in all this. That thought ran rampant in my pounding head as I stood up and stared teary-eyed into emerald eyes just like mine.

  “Dad?” I squeaked.

  “Emma.” I recognized his serious business tone. No BS allowed. No time for cuddling or emotional breakdowns. “We have a lot to discuss. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Sit down? I didn’t want to sit. I didn’t want to be here. What I wanted was for him to take me home. I didn’t like the sound of this one itty-bitty bit, but when my dad commanded, you obeyed. At that time, rebellion wasn’t something I’d ever thought about. Maybe I should have…

  Folding my hands neatly in my lap, I sat on the edge of the cot-like bed. It was probably better I sat anyway, since my knees were wobbling and my legs were shaky. “What’s going on? Why am I here?”

  “This, Emma, is the family business, and it is time you took your place.”

  Family business? My place? This was the first I’d heard of it, but I still didn’t unde
rstand the need for such extreme theatrics. I rubbed my sweaty palms on the thigh of my jeans. “I don’t understand. Why drag me here?” Not to mention scare the piss out of me.

  “It was necessary. Trust me. If I could have done this anymore…delicately, I would have, but precautions were a must. This facility is highly guarded and off the radar.” He paced in the tiny room as he talked. Two steps to one wall, two steps back to the other.

  Under my fear and skepticism, my interest was piqued enough for me to ask, “Why? What is so secret about this place?”

  His red hair glinted off the overhead lights. “Demons. And, more importantly, their half-breeds, Divisa.”

  I gulped. Oh boy. If he only knew how much I did know about half-demons. His dark green eyes narrowed at me. Something inside me told me that I needed to kick up my surprise a notch, like someone who didn’t know that demons walked the earth. “Deviza?” I echoed as if it was a foreign word, tripping over the pronunciation and trying to look confused.

  That seemed to do the trick as he relaxed his shoulders—well relaxed for the sergeant, as I have nicknamed him—and continued, “I know that this might be hard to believe, but we live among demons disguised in human forms. They prey on us, manipulate our minds, get us to do things we normally wouldn’t do. Rape. Murder. You name it. They impregnate our women and leave them to raise their half-breed bastards. These abominations are dangerous. Extremely dangerous. They need to be taken care of. To keep families like ours safe, we need to wipe every Divisa from existence.”

  I twiddled my fingers in my lap, trying to look anywhere but at my father as I tried to process what he was telling me. He hunted Divisa. He hunted people like Travis. And he expected me to do the same.

  I gulped, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat.

  I was going to hurl.

  “From here on out, I will no longer be your father… I will be your instructor,” he informed in his deep military voice. There was no room for argument. My shoulders were rigid even though I knew I was in a hopeless situation.

  My stomach fell through the concrete floor as I realized I wasn’t getting out of here or this situation. Dread overwhelmed me. I knew there was one thing I could never admit, that I had to keep hidden for my sake and for the protection of the guy I loved. My dad—errr instructor—could never find out what Travis was. Never. That was if he hadn’t already figured it out. Everything in my body told me it was vital that I told no one what I already knew.

  Those first few days I was naïve and delusional.

  I should have listened to that sinking feeling in my gut that told me my dad already knew what Travis was. He might have met him only twice, but maybe that was all it took to decipher Travis as something other than human. But I was no expert yet, that was for sure.

  For now, I played dumb.

  The first thing my instructor confiscated during my training was my iPod. Before, I’d never left my house without it. I was always moving to the beat of music. In the car, relaxing on my bed, walking the halls between classes, anywhere I could get away with it.

  Hall High.

  I couldn’t believe how much I’d miss it. Being homeschooled wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Sure it sounded glamorous when you were sitting in a classroom day in and day out, but I thought it sucked.

  It probably had something to do with the fact that I hadn’t been given a choice, like most things in my life lately. My freedom and decision-making had been stripped from me. My worst fears come true.

  Six months ago all I had wanted to do was graduate with my class, in the town I loved, and study dance at a great college. It was amazing how fast dreams could be crushed.

  In a blink, I saw the life I’d always envisioned disappear. In its place, I saw blood, death, and murder. I saw someone I didn’t recognize as myself. I would never again be that naïve, youthful girl. Dancing was a useless dream, my instructor told me that first day…a little girl’s fantasy.

  Cruel words from my own father, who was now my mentor.

  I was given a new path in life, one I just accepted because in the beginning I thought I could save Travis. But really, there was no other alternative.

  Not if I wanted to survive. I wasn’t given one…

  Chapter 2

  Sitting in my room that first night, all I thought about was Monkey and my mom. When would I see them again? Would I ever see them again was probably a better question.

  Abigail with her baby soft strawberry curls and the biggest green eyes you’d ever seen, always bright with excitement. Everything was shiny and new in Abi’s eyes, the perks of being a three-year-old. God, I was even going to miss her sticky fingers and chocolate-smudged mouth.

  My mom had the sunniest smile. She always found ways to make things better. From scraped knees to broken hearts, my mom had always been there for me, and now, alone and frightened, I wanted my mom more than anything. I needed her to brush back my hair and wipe aside my tears. I needed to hear that everything was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t.

  The facility wasted not a second in their transformation to mold me. I was only allowed a few hours of sleep that first night before I was awakened by the blaring of a horn. It bounced off the walls in my tiny room, and I bolted up from bed with my heart in my throat. The alarm was followed immediately by what sounded like multiple doors unlocking. The clanking echoed down the corridor outside my now open door.

  I was already used to a strict regime. It was how the Deen household was run, so falling into the routine the facility had in place was natural for me. Bedtime, mealtime, and training were precisely to the minute, the same time each day, every day.

  Yep. Seven. Days. A. Week.

  No holidays.

  No vacation.

  No day of rest.

  The other recruits and I moved robotically day after day. And socializing with each other was a big no-no. The facility kept us engaged in fighting, demon education, and weapon training, and then we went to bed bone-tired. Each night it felt like I’d been beaten to a pulp. My body was used to being pushed, but nothing like this. I would close my eyes, and, like Groundhog Day, when I woke up, I’d do it all again.

  Some nights I prayed that I wouldn’t wake up.

  The facility had made me their bitch.

  I was put through grueling paces that left my body bruised, worn, battered, and scarred. Eventually those scars and bruises turned to me into a hardass, and with each day that passed I began to lose more of myself. I began to forget those promises I’d made to myself that first night. I lost sight of those I’d wanted to protect and became so consumed with my training and becoming the best student. The best hunter.

  It was a lot easier to lose focus on what I couldn’t see. Memories began to fade, feelings began to dwindle. No pictures to be reminded of the faces I once loved, the faces I vowed to protect. There was no place for feelings or love at the facility. The only thing anyone there cared about was killing. Over time, I could no longer recall the scent of Travis’s skin, the color of his vibrant sea-green eyes, or the touch of his magical hands. The dimples I’d fallen in love with vanished.

  Before life decided to blow up in my face, it was Travis’s voice I’d fallen asleep to. Now all I heard was the voice of my father pushing me further and further. Not necessarily a voice I wanted running through my head night and day, barking orders in my ear. Being his daughter gave me no perks. If anything, I was treated harsher, pushed harder, and I became mentally broken faster. It wasn’t long after my recruit that I no longer thought of him as my dad. He was the lead operator at the facility, the meat and bones of it all.

  That was a heck of a pill to swallow.

  Now I was fully immersed in the thick of the operation. I was too exhausted to even dream, and the rare occasions where I did were anything but pleasant. The things I’d seen, the pleas I’d heard, and the crap I’d done were Etch-A-Sketched into my brain. When I closed my eyes at night, all I saw was pain, all I heard was screaming,
and all at my hands.

  Yeah, so I pretty much avoided sleep like the black plague.

  Throwing my hair in a messy twist, I stood in front of a small mirror as I prepared for my first field lesson.

  This should be fun.

  The first rule in demon hunting was…kill or die.

  Poetic, I know.

  As I stared at my reflection, the girl in the mirror looked unfamiliar to me. Dressed in black cargo pants and a tank top, I looked far more confident and badass than I felt. My eyes were hard and sharp like broken green glass. My pink lips were turned down in a frown. There was nothing happy or free spirited about me. I looked like a girl on the brink of adulthood with a giant chip on her shoulder.

  My reflection frightened me.

  I wasn’t sure what to except on my first real hunt, but it hadn’t been this. Literally, I was booted off the truck and rolled smack dab into the middle of Bumpkinville. Getting to my feet, I dusted off my pants and glared at the taillights of the truck speeding off in the distance, a smoky trail of dirt in its tracks. Figured their so-called lesson would involve me on my own in miles upon miles of cornfields.

  Lovely.

  Trying to understand the facility’s rationalization was like nailing jelly to the wall. So I gave up long ago and just went with whatever they tossed at me. And trust me, most of it was daunting. Every time I thought they couldn’t surprise me, they found ways to make me remember what fear was.

  There were two large red barns in the distance and a green tractor that looked like it had teeth. The chompers on that bad boy looked lethal. Even as the thought of making a run for it crossed my mind, I knew they would only come looking for me. The facility did not lose weapons. Especially ones they thought had promising futures.

  I wouldn’t have exactly called my future promising; it felt more bleak, cold, and heartless.

  That was how I felt inside. I guess six months in the hole, so to speak, would do that to anyone. Truthfully, I didn’t have any idea how I survived this long. The things I’d gone through…I didn’t like to think about them.