SAVED (Book #1 of the Shadow Vampires) by Allegra Skye

saved

(book #1 of the Shadow Vampires)

allegra skye

Copyright © 2011 by Allegra Skye

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author.

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

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

"I must be myself.

I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you.

If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier."

--Emerson

PROLOGUE

Keira Blaine was born second. From the first breath she took, she lived in her twin sister’s shadow. Amanda was bigger, beautiful, perfectly formed. The minute Amanda was born, her parents held her in rapture, tracing her exquisite, delicate features, thrilled with every inch of her.

They barely noticed Keira, born about five minutes later. She was unnecessary after the arrival of the perfect twin. She was picked up by a nurse and placed in a baby crib, awaiting her parent’s welcome. It never really came.

“There’s another one here,” the nurse finally said to her parents.

But it seemed too overwhelming for them to realize that two daughters had been born, identical twins, but not really. Keira was smaller, scrawnier, with green eyes that always looked frightened. She kept reaching out for her twin sister to hold onto, but they were completely separated at birth. Her mother never even allowed the two of them to sleep in the same room.

Keira always felt lonely for the sister she’d been so close to in the womb.

But, lonely or not, the twins grew, two very different sprouts on the same tree, with two entirely different destinies….

CHAPTER 1

Keira remembered everything. Right from the start, she had a fantastic memory; nothing anyone did ever slipped by. So the first day of school, at Bertram High, was particularly vivid for her. It was nothing at all like the school she’d gone to in the previous town.

It was shocking for her to start in a new school during her senior year. Keira didn’t like it, but Amanda, her twin sister, was excited to try something new. Their father, a doctor, had just received a job running the emergency room in one of the best hospitals in Illinois, and the family had to move to be close to his work.

So they all packed up, left the town the twins grew up in, and moved one hundred and fifty miles away to Everstock, a fancy suburb in Northern Illinois that her mother had always wanted to live in. Her father bought a big, white house, on top of a hill, and they unpacked quickly. By the time they moved in, school had already started, a few weeks ago.

Keira and Amanda walked to school together the first day, a cool breeze reminding them that Fall was coming. Amanda chatted easily; Keira, silent, just listened. She was nervous. She actually never had much to say, but Amanda didn’t seem to notice. She just continued to fill the empty space with chatter, anything she could think of.