Della Garvison was born and raised in Guthrie, Oklahoma - a real town with a pop. of 10,000 people.
Small-town life is all she's known up to the moment I, PALADIN starts when she's freshly 16. Farthest she's been from home is a 30-minute car ride of Oklahoma City. Her mother runs a vintage diner inherited from family and she's grown up there as much as at school and their little two-bedroom house. It's been a traditional middle-America life.
Until she had to defend herself from a vampire.
It was a warm
night in Guthrie , Oklahoma Main Street
and cut behind the drugstore. When I say
“drugstore”, I don’t mean a Walgreens or anything like that—it was a
Mom-and-Pop store same as most of the businesses in Downtown.
“Little girls
shouldn’t be alone in the dark at night,” a voice said. A chill ran up my spine.
Turning in a
circle, I looked around me. The air was
eerily quiet. “Who’s there?” Gravel on the asphalt crunched under my
shoes.
A man came out of
the shadows, tall and gaunt. He was
dressed like a homeless person, his clothes dirty, tattered, and torn. Tightening my grip on the strap of my
backpack, I prepared to run, backing away toward the public street. Suddenly, he wasn’t in sight anymore.
My heart pounded
against my ribs.
“Boo,” he said
behind me.
I jumped and
screamed. Pretty quick on my feet, I
thought I could make it inside the drugstore.
A sharp tug on my backpack pulled me backward and I almost landed on my
butt. The man pounced, smelling like
garbage, something rotten and metallic.
I pushed his face
away. He howled in pain—maybe I poked
his eye—and came at me again. His eyes
were red—not bloodshot, but with red
irises. They were nothin’ like movie
eyes with the contacts you know are fake.
Some instinct
within me said you’re going to die if you
don’t do something now. He kept
trying to bite me and it was all I could do to flail my arms, trying to
scrabble back from underneath him. My
hands landed on his face again and I pushed, my heart pounding in my ears to
the point of making me deaf.
Bright light,
heat, and no more man. Ashes floated
down on my clothes and the asphalt.
“What the hell?”
“You tapped into
your power.” A woman walked into view
from the corner of the building. “Well
done.”
I scrambled to my
feet. “Stay away.”
She wore a tweed
suit, wire-frame glasses, and her hair pulled back tight. If she told me she was from The Watcher’s
Council, I was going to hunt down whoever put hallucinogens in my Coke at the
diner. She held up her hands to show
they were empty. “There is no reason to
fear me, Della.”
“How do you know
my name?” For every step she took
forward, I retreated.
This was already
too much scary for me. This was
Guthrie—nothing truly bad happened
here!
“I was sent to
find you. I represent an agency dedicated to protecting humanity from evil. You
have a gift, Della. A higher purpose.”
“No offense, lady,
but I think you’re off your meds. I’m goin’ home and you can go back to England
or wherever it is you came from.”
“Please,” the
blonde said. “We can teach you to
harness your talents. You just reduced a vampire to dust. Aren’t you the least
bit curious how you did that?”
I laughed. Doubled-over-belly-hurting-on-the-verge-of-manic
kind of laughter. A vampire? How could she
possibly expect me to believe that?
“Lady… I don’t know what
happened tonight. I just wanna go home.”
Got maybe five
steps, when she added the incentive.
“We’ll pay for
your education.”
I sighed. She had done her research, somehow. I wanted to be the first woman in my
immediate family to go to college. Much
as the diner was home, I didn’t want to work there all my life like my mother
and the generations before me.
The blonde handed
me a business card, holding it out by the tip of the paper.
I told her I’d
think about it, and ran home.
It was a relief to
get safely inside our little house with its Country
Home décor and the scent of Pledge.
Mama must’ve dusted before going into the diner today. Parched from my run, I went straight to the
fridge and guzzled an orange pop. The
adrenaline started wearing off, and despite it being May, the sweat on my back
began to chill. My hands shook.
Did my best to
convince myself none of what happened before I got home was real, showered, and
went to bed early.
It wasn’t
real.
Couldn’t be.
There was a logical explanation that had nothing to do
with monsters from the movies. Had to
be. In the morning, I’d continue
sophomore year like the average middle-of-the-country kid I was and this would
only be a blip. A stupid little
memory. The business card would
disappear in tomorrow’s trash. There
could be no vampires in Guthrie.
The Guthrie Historic District includes more than 2,000 buildings and is designated as a National Historic Landmark, with its Victorian architecture providing a backdrop for Wild West and territorial-style entertainment, carriage tours, replica trolley cars, specialty shops, and art galleries.
The story of how I got drafted into the world-savin’ business isn’t so complicated.
Amelia Thornhill directed a vampire at me.
Turns out, I have a higher calling and I feel horrible every time I have to lie to Mama about my job. It's been the two of us since I was five years old, so leaving home is painful, but Amelia says I put people in danger by staying. Because I’m not a normal girl, there will be no college graduation ceremony, no wedding to a nice man, and no grandbabies for Mama to spoil, but I'll let her hold on to those dreams as long as possible. Making sure she's taken care of always comes first.
Agent Seven’s origin story.
This series is intended for readers over the age of 18 due to adult situations.
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