The Battle of North Shore Beach (The Awakening Rage Book 2)

  The Battle of North Shore Beach

  (The Awakening Rage, Book 2)

  J. C. Skye

  Changing Culture Publications

  The Battle of North Shore Beach (The Awakening Rage, Book 2)

  Copyright 2015 J. C. Skye Changing Culture Publications

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from 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. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  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

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Chapter 1

  The War of the Rowland Roses

  Danielle's mom was in the kitchen when the young girl got back from the White Sands Cafe, putting all of her considerable domestic enthusiasm into a great big pot of stew. Despite this, she spotted Danielle before there was any chance to escape up to the solace of her room. Danielle found herself pulled into the kitchen and quizzed about her first day at work, even though her head was swimming. Everything was alright when she was at work. The White Sands Café seemed to exist in some other world, one where the man she loved hadn't just slept with her sister.

  “How was it then?” Twilly Knowles asked for at least the fourth time since she had dragged her daughter in from the hallway.

  “Yeah, you know ... fine,” Danielle managed.

  “What did she have you doing?” asked her mom.

  “I dunno,” Danielle replied with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders, “everything, I guess.”

  “Everything?” Danielle’ mom asked in a somewhat loaded tone. “It was your first day.”

  She didn't want to seem prejudiced just because Brianne Westrum was a bit different, but there had always been something that Twilly Knowles hadn't liked about that woman. There was some gut feeling that there was something ... wrong with her. Danielle picked up on her mother's tone, but didn't want her digging any deeper into the matter.

  “Well, it's a small place and she's going to have to be able to leave me on my own sometimes.” Sometimes, she thought to herself, as in the entire day.

  “What's she like?” Twilly continued with the interrogation. She barely allowed for a pause in the conversation.

  “Weird,” Danielle answered unthinkingly. Twilly’s eyebrows rose by several inches in an instant. “But nice,” Danielle added hurriedly. “And she’s really kind...in her own way.” Danielle thought briefly about the hundred dollars in her pocket and came to a quick decision not to mention pay.

  “Kind?” her mom pondered suspiciously. Then, in that uncanny way that mothers seem to be able to read minds, she added “What’s she paying you?”

  “Minimum wage, I expect,” Danielle lied. “S’pose I’ll find out on payday.”

  “Minimum wage, huh? That’s probably why she’s being so nice.”

  “It’s a beach café in Astoria, Mom. What do you expect?” Danielle’s tone was a little impatient. She didn’t need this right now. Sensing her daughter’s touchiness, Twilly changed tact slightly, but only slightly.

  “What’s the kitchen like?” she asked. That was a thinly veiled business question coming from a woman who owned a bed and breakfast guesthouse.

  Before Danielle could answer, Cressida breezed into the kitchen looking radiant. She beamed at her mother, but failed to make eye contact with Danielle. That wasn’t necessarily unusual, but at that particular moment, it was devastating. Danielle had just heard from her best friend that Cressida was having sex with her recent ex-boyfriend, Chris. SO she was watching her every move like a hawk. Cressida was singing quietly to herself. It was one of Chris’ songs from the performance last night, something familiar and catchy from the fragments that Danielle heard. Cressida half-danced past her as she moved around the kitchen.

  “Hey Mom,” she chirped, opening the fridge to find the orange juice. And then, after a moment she said, “Hey, my rosy sis.”

  “What?” Danielle said with undiluted hostility bubbling close to the surface.

  Cressida turned to her mom. “She’s a little rose, isn’t she, Mom?”

  “You’re both my roses,” their mother said proudly, grinning about what she thought was a genuine family moment with her girls.

  Danielle couldn’t take it anymore. She felt sick and didn’t know whether she wanted to throw up, cry her eyes out or rip her sister’s face off. She managed to mumble something about needing to get changed and hurried off to go upstairs. On the first floor, however, she met her dad coming the other way. He gave her an easy smile.

  “Hey, hon,” he said. “Work okay?”

  “Yeah,” Danielle replied, managing the smallest of smiles.

  Stanley Knowles was a stark contrast from his wife. True to form, that was as much as Stanley Knowles was going to pry into his younger daughter’s first day at work. As Danielle started to climb the next flight of stairs, he did suddenly call out to her.

  “Hey,” he said, “did you hear about what happened up near Fisherman Towers?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know there’s a convenience store up there,” her Dad said.

  “Yeah, over on Agate Street,” Danielle confirmed.

  “That’s it,” he added with a nod of the head. “Well, there was some sort of attack up there last night. The elderly shop keeper – an old woman, if I remember, I’ve hardly ever been in there – she’s dead. The shop was completely trashed, apparently. But no one knows anything. No one saw anything or heard anything and it’s right in the middle of a suburban street.”

  Danielle felt a sickening chill run through her body. She had felt too many of those recently. Her father shook his head ruefully and lowered his voice a touch.

  “I can’t say I really agreed with your mother and her curfew at first. You two girls aren’t little kids anymore and you’re as capable as you’ll ever be. But something is really wrong in Astoria at the moment. It’s...it’s almost like you can feel it in the air.”

  Stanley wasn’t the slightest bit mystical. He wasn’t a spiritual man either, not in any way at all. As if remembering that fact himself, he gave his head a little shake and continued toward the kitchen, as if physically moving past his last comment.

  “Anyway, you’ve got to be extra careful at the moment,” he called back up the stairs. “Not just at night, but all the time,” he added as an afterthought. “You promise me, sweetie?”

  Danielle nodded back, managing another small, but genuine smile. Her dad was a quiet man, not given to actually displaying his feelings all that often. When he did, it warmed Danielle inside. She continued on up to her room feeling a bit more reassured.

  ****

  Danielle had been in her room for less than a minute when she heard the familiar creak of the old stairs. She knew that Cressida was heading back to her room. It seemed that her sister paused briefly on the landing just outside Danielle’s door, but then she heard Cressida’s bedroom door open and close again.

  After a few moments, Danielle got up to do something she almost never did. She opened the door and headed for her sister’s bedroom. More than that, she was actually going to confront her sister. Danielle was a timid soul and although she and Cressida often argued, it was usually little comments or outbursts in front of their parents. Even those immature spats had reduced in recent years as Danielle got older. She was mature enough to just ignore what her sister did. Today was an exception though. If what her best friend, Xeno, told her was true, then Cressida could have been responsible for her and Chris breaking up in the first place.

  So today she needed to confront her and find out the truth of things. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe Xeno, but maybe there was some way he could have been mistaken. Either way, this was big – a very, very big betrayal if it was true. Danielle had to be very sure of the facts before she laid blame.

  She was surprised at how rational she was being, how considerate her actions were. Maybe another person would have leapt at Cressida the moment she showed her face in the kitchen, maybe even started to pull her hair out and all that. In truth, that sort of behaviour had never been Danielle’s style, but there was nonetheless an extreme and sickening rage boiling just below the surface. It felt like it was stretching the skin in its efforts to break free. Danielle was a little scared of what might happen when it did. So she took a deep breath before she went and knocked on her sister’s door.

  “What?” came the call from inside.

  The word was challenging, but for once, Cressida’s tone was not. Danielle didn’t answer her verbally; instead she just turned the handle and walked straight in. Cressida sat at her desk, which was an old and odd piece of furniture, like so many of the pieces in the Knowles household. It was something in between a writing desk and a vanit
y table. Danielle couldn’t recall whether the thing had been in the family for years, or whether her parents had obtained it at one of the antique fairs they used to frequent when Cressida and Danielle were younger.

  “Hey!” Cressida protested as the door opened. Seeing Danielle’s insistent demeanor, however, compelled her to relax and even smile a little bit. Something was definitely up because Cressida was acting strangely. “You got home alright then,” Cressida stated. Whether it was there or not, Danielle couldn’t help but hear a smug irony dripping from every word.

  “Yeah,” she stated plainly, eager to get to the meat of the topic.

  There was a silence between them that lengthened as Cressida turned to her table’s mirror. She started to apply some mascara to her eyes and her mouth hung open. Eventually, Danielle decided to fill it with an explanation.

  “Did you get home alright?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Cressida responded in much the same tone as Danielle.

  “Who did you come home with?”

  “Just me,” she added, after a pause though.

  “Did you see Chris?”

  Cressida stopped what she was doing at the mention of Chris. Just for a moment, she glanced briefly at Danielle in the mirror. Then, she picked up a tube of lipstick and carried on.

  “Your ex-boyfriend, you mean?”

  Danielle nearly exploded at that, but somehow managed to keep the lid tethered down on top of her rage. Cressida had years of practice in baiting her. She expected as much, but Danielle still needed a confession.

  “Did you see him?” she repeated through gritted teeth.

  Cressida didn’t reply for a moment. She was just finishing applying an almost luminously red lipstick that brought out everything that was fair about her face and hair. She seemed to be accentuating everything that she was and Danielle wasn’t. Then, she stood up and turned around.

  “Yes,” she said with an impatient huff. “I saw him.”

  “What was he like?” Danielle asked, her voice deadpan serious. Between the intense look on Danielle’s face and the almost smug look on Cressida’s, it was as if the conversation had already happened. It proceeded nonetheless.

  “Good,” said Cressida, her luminously red mouth slowly wrapping itself around her reply.

  Danielle staggered inwardly, but kept her feet. “Good?”

  Cressida’s bed separated them, but she slowly started taking steps to move around it and towards Danielle.

  “I’d say energetic even.”

  “He wasn’t himself,” said Danielle. “Did he hurt anyone else?”

  “Oh,” replied Cressida with a sickening grin, “no one who didn’t want to be hurt.”

  Cressida was almost facing her now.

  “What the–?” Danielle reached for another question, something to prolong the conversation and delay the inevitable conclusion. However, she couldn’t skirt the issue any longer, no matter how horrible it was. “Did you screw him?”

  Cressida smiled. “I’d say it was more like he screwed me.”

  Danielle snapped and flew at her sister, fists beating at her face. Driven by fury, with muscles trembling with rage, still she held her anger in check slightly and the blows did not fall as hard as they could have.

  “You bitch!” she cried out. “You selfish whore,” she loudly accused! “The one thing I had and you had to have it! The one thing I had that you didn’t!”

  Then something very strange happened. It sounded like a roar. Something bestial, guttural and it came from Cressida. It wasn’t loud as such, yet it filled Danielle’s ears in that moment. With it came a terribly primal fear that cut even through the great thickness of her rage.

  One moment she was pounding on Cressida and the next minute both her wrists were held in a vice-like grip. Then a hand was shoved into her chest, gripping clothes and flesh together. She found herself travelling backwards at great speed. Danielle hit the wall hard, knocking much of the breath from her lungs. Yet before she even had time to think about what was happening, the hand left her chest and tightly gripped around her throat.

  “But you didn’t have him, did you?” Cressida snarled. “He chucked you away like the pathetic, whiny piece of rubbish you are.”

  “Cressida!” Danielle gasped through the tightness of the hand which squeezed the life from her throat. “Wha’ y– ?”

  She tried to knock her sister’s arms away, but her strength was incredible. Cressida was taller than Danielle and, although slim, not exactly stick-thin either. But where this strength was coming from was a mystery to Danielle. As she continued to struggle, the other hand left her chest and grabbed her right arm, slamming it painfully into the wall. Cressida lifted Danielle from her feet and she began to properly choke.

  “You thought you were so perfect,” she accused, “with your perfect little rockstar boyfriend, didn’t you?” Cressida’s eyes were wild, her pupils huge, and her mouth virtually foaming with lipstick rubbing off against her teeth.

  Danielle tried to reply, but couldn’t speak at all. It was becoming harder and harder to breath as Cressida’s grip continued to tighten.

  “But you know what?” continued Cressida. “You’re not so special. And your ex-boyfriend did unspeakable things to me last night...things I’ll bet he never did to you. He did things you’re far too perfect for.”

  Danielle really couldn’t breathe. She tried to kick her legs, and spots appeared in front of her vision. Cressida’s spitting, animal fury suddenly dissipated slightly. Her expression changed although her grip on Danielle’s neck remained just as strong. She brought her mouth close to Danielle’s ear.

  “I am hers,” she whispered. “I am his...we will kill...kill them all...starting with you.”

  BANG! BANG! BANG! There was a loud, urgent knocking at the door.

  “Everything alright in there?” the strong, masculine voice said. It was Stanley Knowles. “I heard some banging.”

  Cressida let Danielle down and released the grip on her sister’s neck. For a moment or two, her face still held something of that animal visage. Then it was gone and she was just Cressida again, opening the door to her father. Cressida only opened it a foot or two and their dad’s eyes keenly scanned the room behind her. He looked over to Danielle whose hand was held round her neck, her eyes watering.

  “Oh, Danielle just had some water go down the wrong way,” Cressida said, rolling her eyes. ”Seventeen years old and she still has problems swallowing!”

  Their father laughed at the joke with Danielle tried to recover her breath.

  “She panicked herself and nearly put a hole in my wall. Idiot!” There was a little bit of nastiness thrown in there, just to make everything look normal.

  “Alright then,” he said, giving the room one last look over.

  Danielle’s breath was back a little. She didn’t know what to say, or if anyone would believe her. So she took the opportunity to push past Cressida and escape.

  “You okay?” Mr Knowles asked as she passed him. Danielle just grunted in reply and quickly closed her own door behind her. She heard her dad tell Cressida that, “You’ve got lipstick on your teeth, you know.”

  Chapter 2

  Some Time Ago

  The sun went down over the western cliffs and night time descended on Astoria. Dusty McNair was skateboarding into town. He did this most days, a feature of Astoria which was almost as significant and recognisable as seagulls on the beach or the old cinema at River Walk. Dusty McNair was like a living landmark, announcing his coming with that growling, rolling, scraping sound of approaching skateboard wheels. The older members of the community called it teenage thunder.

  Except Dusty wasn’t in his teens any more. In fact, he wasn’t even in the first half of his twenties. Being a skateboarder didn’t have an expiration date on it, but somehow his older face would have fit skateboarding better if he was riding up the ramps at some pro competition, rather than down the long asphalt descent of Exchange Street in Astoria.

  Astoria was particular in having a few long hills that stretched for miles, from the back of town right down to the cross near the hospital that led over to Commercial Street and on towards Mill Pond. Dusty McNair had been coming down that hill on his skateboard since he was twelve years old. People – including his mother – would always tell him that he would end up under the wheels of a car someday. He proved them wrong so far, (although he had once gone across the bonnet of a BMW), and that was his own little victory, a point of pride in his life.