I, Immortal: I, Immortal The Series, #1

By M J Rutter

Amelia Thatcher is an extraordinary girl, the nuns who raised called her an abomination and said she should be destroyed. She has been attacked, left tied to a tree for the wolves to eat and burned as a witch. The thing is, she is still alive and she has no idea why.
Wandering the world looking for a place she can call home, she is drawn to a small village in Tibet, a monk by the name of Pang thinks he has the key to the answers she longs for. But her answers come with a sacrifice, how can she give up the world and all its wonder for a life in the depths of the earth? Will the glorious looking William Gilbert be enough to keep her there or is he her true enemy?
Amelia has a purpose, but all she really wants is to return to the life of solitude she once had, to go un-noticed, but they have huge plans for her. Unbeknown to Amelia, the plight of humanity rests upon her shoulders. But what is the point of fighting for humanity when it has done all it can to destroy her?

They are everywhere, would you know if you saw one?

• Language: English
• Publisher: M J Rutter
• Release date: Sep 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386295655

Book preview

One

The sky is pitch dark ; all I can see are shadows, no stars and no moonlight, just deep dense blackness. It feels like I am flying through the air and I don’t know how, but I have wings, fiery golden wings flapping behind me, tightening my back and making my spine buzz with energy as they flap. The icy wind is ripping through my hair and moisture is dancing off my face. Then I see a blue glow of light. I shoot through the blackness. The light seems good, calming. The light feels like home. But as I get closer, I can see it’s him, my beautiful husband, he has silver wings, and the light radiating from his body lights up the dark. He smiles and holds out his hand. I reach out to take it, but he is too far away. Something is holding us apart. Then he is pulled away. The light fades.

No, I scream my heart feels as though it is being ripped from my chest, Come back... 

Two soft, warm lips pressed against mine. Tearing from my dream, my eyes flashed open and he smiled. His deep blue eyes smouldered, and his tanned face looked soft in the glow of the morning sun.

Good morning, Peter, my glorious looking husband whispered.

Good morning, I replied. The hairs on my arms already stood on end as they always did with every embrace he had ever showed me. What time is it? I asked and stretched cracking my elbows making my spine tingle.

Almost eight, I didn’t want to wake you, but you promised pancakes. He frowned gazing into my eyes. I placed my hand at the side of his face; his hair needed cutting again. The soft brown curls rested on his forehead.

I know. I said sitting up.

We’re out of eggs. He smiled. Do you want me to go to the store or...?

No, it’s alright I’ll go. I pushed off the covers and dressed quickly in blue Capri cropped trousers and a white t-shirt that just happened to be sat on top of the clean laundry pile, while he laid there gazing at me. I rolled my eyes. Peter please stop, you know I don’t like you watching me. I groaned with a blush and tossed my night shirt at his face.

I can’t help it if I have the most beautiful wife in the universe, can I? I loved his flattering comments, and they still made me blush the way they did when he first declared his love for me. I slipped my feet into my shoes and stood from our bed.

I quickly brushed my teeth, and I tied up my hair glaring at myself. My blue eyes twinkled though not the only indication from the night before. My cheeks were rosy, and my brown hair fell in curls on my shoulders, so I used bobby pins to put it up out of the way. I dabbed on a little lips gloss and returned to the bedroom. A golden haze hovered above the bed from the sun as it shone through our window raining glittery dust particles over Peter, and the sky outside was bright blue; a perfect spring day. I turned to him and pecked his lips.

I shan’t be long, can you please bathe Lilly and make sure Ethan takes a shower, you can grow potatoes in his ears?

Of course, he smiled. I lifted my car keys and walked towards the door. I love you.

I love you too. I smiled and crept down the stairs.

The supermarket opened early at the weekend and for this I was grateful. I liked this town better than the last. We move a lot, and, although, we tried to stay in one place as long as possible when people started asking awkward questions we would have to move. I parked as close to the store as I could, not because I am lazy, it was just too risky otherwise.

We had to try and look normal, on the outside no one would know any different, why would they? We appeared to be a regular American family that liked to move, a lot. Even though I am English, I refused to speak with an American accent unless it was completely necessary. Sometimes it was better to blend, sometimes my English tongue would leave too much of an impact so I would slip in the odd American phrase such as ‘cool’ and ‘Okay’.

I decided to shop for the week, the fewer trips in to town I made the better, so I bought extra milk to freeze along with bread and fabric softener. The vegetarian section always supplied our freezer and refrigerator; luckily for us they had plenty in, so I could completely restock.

It’s, Mrs. Moorcroft, right? A pretty blonde woman with grey eyes asked, she had a boy with her about my son’s age, I recognized her from the school, Marion Arnold. She smiled, Reece is having a birthday party next weekend and he wondered if Ethan would like to go?

Oh, we were meant to be going camping. I lied.

Oh dear, such a shame, she sighed. She looked about thirty two, although, I tried to look older, I wore clothes an older woman would wear, a mother even, but I didn’t look older and after four years here I knew we’d have to move soon. I am sorry Ethan isn’t playing soccer too. She added in a prying tone.

He has developed asthma, I lied again. He can’t really do anything to do with sports. I looked at my watch, I really have to go now.

Sure, well it was nice to see you again uh...

Amelia, I smiled. Please call me Amelia. 

Have a good weekend, Amelia. She nodded and left taking Reece with her. I finished shopping then I paid for the groceries and pushed the cart out to the car.

Can you spare any change? A man asked as I left the store. He looked filthy dirty and I shook my head. I felt sorry for him, but he would have probably spent it on drink. I didn’t realise that he had followed me to the car. Please ma’am. I turned to face him, he smiled arrogantly. The star in the pupil of his eye twisted and my heart leapt into my mouth. Hello, he said. He was dirty and unshaven, but I would recognise those cold, soulless eyes anywhere.

I’m sorry, do I know you? I asked dismissively, while loading the bags in to the trunk.

It’s been a long time, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t believe I have changed. He smiled again. I may need a wash though. He mused gazing at his black fingernails. So, where is the doting husband?

At home, I replied and straightened my back. He stared for a while, oh how I detested him now. I have to go.

You are not afraid of me are you, Amelia? he asked with an icy tone.

Why should I be afraid, you only tried to kill me about a hundred times? I retorted.

That was before, I am different now. I am a changed man and I had no choice in that did I? I removed a twenty dollar bill from my purse and placed it into his dirty hand. That’s very generous of you. He said gazing wondrously at the money.

Buy a bus ticket and never come here again. I snapped and climbed into the car. I started the engine and pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor, I didn’t even return my shopping cart and I always returned my cart.

Back at our home I sat on the driveway in my car and stared at the house. I didn’t want to leave the only home I truly loved. So I looked at the wooden shutters and cream painted walls. The lush emerald green lawn and yellow rose bushes. Aside from loving this home, I couldn’t do it to them again. I couldn’t make them move away, but our time here had come to an end, and we had to leave. I didn’t want to force Peter to find another job, and Ethan and Lilly to make new friends. It wasn’t fair to them, but he knew where we were now, and though he posed no physical threat to us anymore, he could do far worse things by just talking.

I had to think of our children, what he could do to them to hurt me. Peter came out to the car and smiled as he climbed in beside me.

What’s wrong? he asked frowning.

He’s here, I saw him. The words fell from my lips.

Where? He knew instantly who I had seen as panic crossed his face.

He was begging for change at the grocery store. I explained.

Did he see you? He grimaced.

Yes, he even spoke to me, I frowned.

Come on, we need to make some calls. He said enthusiastically opening the door.

Where will we go this time? I asked as I climbed out of the car.

I am thinking Arizona. I’d like to see the sun a lot more. He smiled, I knew Arizona well. How could I forget the place I was held captive for weeks on end? It’s okay sweetie. He smiled. We knew it was coming to an end here anyway, that is why we started packing.

I know, it’s just the children love it here. I sighed as he met me at the back of the car.

Well, we’ll get a pool next time; they’ll love that more. You call U-Haul for a trailer and I will call work. He took my hand and kissed the back of it, It will all work out again honey, I promise.

I am not doing anything yet, I frowned. They cleaned their rooms; they are getting their pancake reward. I lifted the groceries from the trunk and glared around. The location of our secluded house was perfect for us because here we could be ourselves, I’ll race you. I smiled closed my eyes and waited for the tickle to pull me, before I knew it I was back inside the house, in my kitchen, the best kitchen I had ever had. Peter appeared seconds later. You are getting slower in your old age. I grinned placing the bag on the marble counter. 

You cheated. He smiled placing his bags down as two children came running into the kitchen. Ethan was chasing Lilly until she crashed into her father’s legs. Whoa! He chuckled. Hey guys guess what? He then asked lifting Lilly and sitting her atop the kitchen counter. We are going to move.

Again? Ethan, the double of Peter frowned. His blue eyes darkened.

Well, I have to find a new job so we thought that perhaps we could move somewhere it’s hot all year round. Peter explained.

No snow? Lilly asked curling her lip.

Nope, just warm sunshine and maybe we can find a house with a pool.

Yay! Lilly smiled showing her gaps in her teeth and clapping her hands together. Her ringlet curls bounced on her shoulders and her crystal blue eyes sparkled. I packed the groceries away and began cracking eggs into a bowl and mixing up Betty Crocker with a fork.

Has someone found out about us already? Ethan asked, he was definitely too old before his time and at only eleven he seemed to already carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Not exactly, I replied. It’s just time to move.

I don’t understand why though. He pouted.

You know why, honey. I frowned and swept my hand over the curls in his hair.

I hate this stupid secret. He snapped and ran out of the room; it was so fast the papers from school flew up into the air.

Wow! Lilly exclaimed.

I’ll go and talk to him. Peter smiled and left Lilly and I making breakfast.

I completely understood why Ethan behaved this way and it was never going to get any easier, sometimes I wondered if having them was the right thing to do. I loved them with all of my heart, but had I known that hiding and running away like this would have hurt them so much, maybe I would have waited until the world was ready to accept us for what we were and not what we portrayed ourselves to be.

Peter returned and said Ethan didn’t want pancakes for breakfast, it annoyed me because I had just stood there and made them for him, so I shifted to his room, shifting is something we can do, we picture a place in our minds, our insides tickle with a pulling sensation and when we open our eyes we are where we pictured. Shifting at the speed of thought is a handy gift to have sometimes.

Mom, please. He groaned as he ducked behind his bed.  A little privacy.

It’s not like I haven’t seen you with nothing on before. I frowned.

Well, I’m not seven anymore either. He retorted, I rolled my eyes and turned my back so he could finish dressing. I get it okay, I know we have to go, but I don’t like that we have to go.

There is somewhere else we can go. I said. Somewhere no one will find us, where we could stay and never have to leave.

It’s okay, you can turn around. I turned and he was wearing his black jeans and a long sleeved green t-shirt, I watched as he pulled socks over his feet.

But it means we have to leave America. I frowned.

Why?

Someone is after us this time, it’s not because they have guessed that Dad and I are not aging, or someone seen us...shift, it’s because they want to hurt us, you know you are in danger?

Until I am eighteen, he nodded. I never kept the fact that until he was eighteen he would be mortal, until then, he still could die.

"They don’t know that I had you two and you are not safe while you are still children. Lilly doesn’t understand that she has powers like you do, she has no idea that she shifts in her sleep and I find her on the kitchen floor."

Or out in the front yard. He smiled. I remembered that day, we had put her to bed and Peter and I settled down to watch a movie, after an hour into it a neighbour from our old house knocked the door; he had Lilly in his arms and said he found her asleep in the yard. We lied and said she would sleep walk and I guess it was kind of funny but extremely dangerous. So, where is this place? he asked tying up his laces.

It’s in Tibet.

That’s where you met Dad, right?

Right, I nodded. But there are no cars or televisions, no computers and we wouldn’t have a telephone or cheese pizza, it will be us and a few monks. He thought for a few moments.

Let’s try this new place out first. He eventually said. Then if it doesn’t work maybe we could go to Tibet.

Deal, I smiled and walked to his door. Now, will you please come and have some pancakes, I made them for you? I asked.

Okay. He smiled slightly; I could feel he was still upset. I knew how much he liked his school and his friends here. I felt cruel, but I had to protect them, in seven years time Ethan would be fully matured and Lilly would follow four years after, that’s all we had to hide out for another seven years.

Two days later with our lives packed up into the back of a U-Haul trailer, we hit the road and headed south. My teaching job at the school was transferable and Peter’s knowledge of History meant that we need a museum for him to find work as a curator, so we headed to Phoenix, a city big enough to hide in for the time being, disappear if we had to. Lilly and Ethan sat in the back of our Tahoe watching a movie. Leaving Oregon made me feel quite sad too, I loved the fresh air and the view of the mountains everywhere we looked, the coast was an hour away from our home we had everything and now were leaving it for sand and red rocks.

Every time we left somewhere I left a piece of me behind, we had been hiding and running for years, all of our married life, when it was just Peter and I, I could cope, when I had no one else to worry about it became second nature, but dragging my family around because of what we were seemed like no life at all.

‘It’s okay honey, we’ll be fine.’ Peter told me with his mind.

I heard that. Ethan said. His powers were coming in stronger every day, now he could read minds too. I looked at Peter; he was smiling, proud of his son,

Is that how you aced that Trig test? Peter asked him.

Well, I didn’t study for it. He smiled conceitedly.

Just before we turned onto the highway Lilly asked for the bathroom, she drank apple juice like it was going out of fashion, so we pulled into a rest stop and I took her to the bathroom.

After washing our hands we walked outside, two tall men dressed in black trench coats were standing by our car. Peter and Ethan were nowhere to be seen. Fear and panic rushed my heart at the same time; the taller of the men removed his sunglasses and smiled, his hair was short and a golden wheat color, I recognized him, but the shorter of the two had soft curly hair and I had never seen him before. They still looked menacing and I knew what they wanted, me. 

Hello, Amelia. The taller one who went by the name of Rathbone smiled. I saw Peter and Ethan over by a picnic table his hands resting on Ethan’s shoulders, relief briefly filled my heart. Going somewhere? he asked.

That’s nothing to do with you. I snapped. Lilly go and find Ethan. I said.

She looks like you. He mused.

She’s a friend’s, we are taking her camping. I frowned.

She’s your child, Amelia, we can both see and smell that. She reeks of you. He nodded and his eyes followed her as she ran towards Peter.

‘Get them out of here,’ I thought to Peter,

‘No,’ he replied, I took in a deep breath,

Is there something you wanted? I asked folding my arms across my chest.

You know that he will find you wherever you go. He knows how to track you down, and you also know what he wants. He snarled. I looked at Peter. He nodded his head. I could see him as he wrapped his arms around the children, mouthing the words ‘One, two three.’ With everything inside of me, I allowed it to burst out through my veins like a shock wave throwing Rathbone and his comrade twenty feet back smashing into a car. Peter said ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I nodded and shifted at the same time. I didn’t know if we would end up at the same place or not. I had to take that chance. I could not let them touch my children.

There is only one place I wanted to go, where it didn’t matter if I had no money or anywhere to live, they would look after us, they always had. It had been almost a century since I had said goodbye to them and left. I wondered before I opened my eyes how they would receive me, I turned my back on them and on what I was to try and be normal, but that is something you can’t be when everything about you is the complete opposite.

I felt exhausted, I have been trying to protect us, hide us and live in a tangled web of lies, I have had no choice but to, and yet they still find us. This was my purpose, my reason; this is why I was created. I am immortal; I am a being created for the greater good, or so I have been told, but it hasn’t shown me anything good yet, yes I have an amazing husband and two beautiful children now, but it hasn’t always been like that. 

I am not a demon or a vampire, I do not crave blood, in fact, I do not even eat meat. I can run faster than the wind, I can move at the speed of thought, I can read minds and I can sense feelings and emotions, I do not need to drain a life force to gain energy, I can shift to anywhere in the world, I am not from space and certainly not a fairy. So I will take you on my journey, to the beginning of my life to where it all started for me.

Two

Iwas born in the winter of 1659, my hair was dark brown with ringlet curls, thick and bouncy apparently, even at only a few days old, and my eyes are icy blue in colour, my mother left me on the steps of St. Catherine’s, a small convent and orphanage just outside of Oxfordshire, in England. I was only days old and the nuns gave me a birth date of January fifth.

The winter was cruel that year and a heavy layer of snow covered everything in a thick blanket. My birth mother had wrapped me in a wheat sack and placed me on the steps of the orphanage. She then rang the convent bell and ran away before anyone could answer. She had left a letter addressed to me, Amelia Rose Thatcher, and with it, a gold sun and moon pendant wrapped in a white cotton handkerchief. The nuns took me in, fed me and kept me warm. I can’t remember the early days at the convent, though Sister Angela, the first face I can recollect, seemed to care for me the most. She told me many stories about the mysterious baby that had the convent captivated by her exceptional knowledge, and the way she took in the information around her.

The older nuns seemed to be afraid of me, but not Angela, she cared for me until I could care for myself. I walked at eight months old and talked by the age of one. I couldn’t hold conversations, but I understood what they said to me, so Angela would give simple instructions and I would obey.

My intolerance to meat was discovered when they tried to wean me onto solid food. Apparently I vomited it back up as soon as it hit my stomach and in the end they gave up trying to get me to eat meat. So I lived on fruit and vegetables, bread and bread slops, which is bread soaked in warm milk with a little sugar. Some of the nuns called me an abomination, saying that I should have been left out in the cold to die. They thought I was too young to understand, but I remembered it and asked Angela what they had meant, I was three at the time, she just said,

You are special, Amelia and that frightens them, no one as beautiful as you could be an abomination. I loved her so much; she was the closest thing I had to a mother.

Like the other children, I went to school and was able to read by the age of three so school work for me came with ease, my teacher disliked me for that reason and called me a show off, I didn’t even know what that meant either. Her cane across my hand told me that the world was not as Angela had led me to believe, that people are cruel and can hurt you. Even those that are supposed to look after you could be monsters.

Many whispered around me, the strange girl that knew too much for her age. I’d ask, but no one could give me the answers to my questions. I read so many books, to see if I could find out why my mother would have left me, was it because I knew things, like long words that the other girls didn’t know? Or that I could tell how someone was feeling even though they never said.

At night I would cry myself to sleep, I hated my room and the damp musty smell it had, the cob webs in the corners, water dripping down the walls when it rained. I hated the fact that the birds would fly away when I tried to feed them crumbs, horses would butt their heads when I passed, dogs would howl and bark cats would hiss and run, why was I so different?

The convent sent us out to earn money selling vegetables on the markets or working on the local farms to help raise money to continue care for us. Our weekends were filled with as much work as they could get out of us, God does not like lazy people, Sister Margaret would tell us. We worked hard to help the convent, we had no choice and we were punished if we refused. It could mean that we were confined to our rooms without food or water, or made to have an ice cold shower and scrubbed with yard brooms until our skin bled. Life in the convent seemed cruel, but for me it was home, it was all I had known and if not for my one true friend, I would never have survived. I called Angela my Angel, because that is how she felt to me, my best friend, sister and mother, the only person I felt I could trust.

I longed for the day I could leave and dreamed of travelling the country. But at least the days spent on the markets got me out of there for a little while. Some afternoons I would sneak off to the surrounding meadows and sit in the long grass, gazing at the clouds as they floated by, wondering where they would go next. What they would see and if they would have an adventure. Those afternoons were worth the risk of a beating with a horse crop, or a scrub down, because I would close my eyes and float away like the clouds. Angela tried to protect me, but even she couldn’t stop Sister Margaret, a shrewd woman, so full of hate and resentment.

I finally turned eighteen, and was given the letter my mother had left for me, and in it she explained how special I was, that no one would understand me and that there would be others. I had to leave if I wanted to find them as they were in Tibet. I had never even heard of such a place, how on earth would I find it? She said that I would not get any