Guardians of the Diamond Book One: The Rose

Chapter One

I believe everyone has several distinct stages they go through in their lives. These can be different lengths, different types of stages. During the first stage of my life, I had a mother. This one lasted about ten years. During the next stage, I had a step-mother and a father who no longer acted like the father I knew during stage number one. The next stage began five years later. In this one, I still had a step-mother, I still had an absentee father, but there was one new addition: I had special powers. Like, actual powers. While this stage came with a multitude of issues, to say the least, it's the one I can't seem to get out of. The world I was introduced to was incredible and frightening and it completely changed the way I thought of everything.

Stage number three began late one night near after the end of my freshman year of high school. That night started rather unremarkably: my siblings and I were watching a movie. A movie, I would like to point out, I was surprised my older brother, Matt, was even watching considering it was rated PG, had excessive singing, and was appropriate for my eight-year-old sister, Ashley. We were alone in the house as our dad and his wife Gilda had gone to a work party (the third one that week). Everything was calm, albeit, a little boring.

I stared at the TV intently in an attempt to skip to the end through just the power of my mind. I loved animated musicals as much as the next teenage girl, but watching one every night gets a bit excessive. For the fifteenth time, or maybe it was the fiftieth, I considered getting up and leaving the room. However, this action was halted by the deafening knock that sounded on our back door. We all froze. The TV seemed louder than it had been seconds before.

Who could that be? I wondered. It was too late for anyone to be casually stopping by, especially at the back door.

My siblings and I stayed seated where we were, not daring to move even a pinky. I thought maybe it was our imagination. Just the wind. That is, until the knock sounded again.

This time, Matt rose slowly from his seat on the coach, telling Ashley to stay put. My fraternal twin sister, Jessica, hopped up to follow him, beckoning me to follow them. Curiosity won the battle against my reluctance, so I trailed after them through our dimly lit kitchen.

"Stay behind me," Matt ordered. He rolled his eyes. "Kate. You're standing next to me.

"Just open the door," I whispered. I folded my hands together with an odd, nervous excitement. Random things like this never happened to us. We could have been opening the door to a murderer or a monster, but a part of me expected Ed McMahon with a big check.

Matt reached out and twisted the doorknob, clicking open the door and causing a sharp inhale by me. Ed McMahon was not who we found standing on the other side of the door, but rather a dark-haired man with a closed mouth grin spread across his face. And it wasn't that nice, pleasant, slightly creepy grin door to door vacuum salesmen seem to have perfected. It was more of a grin that would be given by someone who just buried a body in our backyard.

The man's ink black hair was slicked back against his scalp and his eyes seemed to be glowing red. He was tall and lean with pasty skin that was a color close that of paper. He looked to be in his early thirties and definitely was not unattractive... for a random stranger at my backdoor.

"Is that a vampire?" Ashley whispered in awe. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Ashley's dark blonde head peeking through the wooden archway that led into the kitchen.

The man seemed to grin even wider at Ashley's comment.

"Sorry about that," Matt said to the man. My brother licked his lips and swallowed, looking uncomfortable. However, his wavy brunet hair looked more nervous than him as it was practically flying around his head.