The angle was a little steep, but it’d work. Correction…it might work.
“Hey, Evie…”
“Yeah?”
“Ever hear of a zip line?”
***
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah?” Lydia said with a shrug. “It’s totally safe. I mean, okay, no, but hey…” She had taken a chair from one of the tables and put it up on the two-foot-thick stone windowsill. Opening the window had been a task, and luckily it hinged on the sides, split up the middle and swung outward leaving their path unobstructed. The chair had been necessary to reach the rope that was secured to a hook over the window.
Evie was standing beside her, looking up at the arrangement nervously. “I don’t like this.”
“I don’t really have any other ideas. Do you?” Lydia had a candelabra in her hand. It was a heavy forged iron piece, crudely hammered into curls and a vague attempt at adding detail. It was what she was going to throw over the rope and grab on the other side. Evie held one in her own hands, clutching it to herself like it was a shield.
“No,” Evie admitted and looked down through the window. It was about a hundred-foot run to the other building the rope was attached to, and the angle was steep. That and the flags tied every ten feet weren’t going to make it a gentle ride. “But I’m scared.”
“Yeah, me too.” Lydia climbed up onto the sill. “I’ll go first.”
“Good. I wasn’t going to offer.” Evie snickered.
Lydia opened her mouth to tease the girl, but their time was up. One of the doors to the room clicked and began to open.
Evie squeaked. “Go!” she whispered loudly.
“Wh—”
“I’ll stall them. Go,” Evie insisted.
“No, I’m not—” She wouldn’t leave the girl behind.
“Otherwise neither of us will make it. Don’t be a nit. You have a home to go back to. I don’t.” The door was swinging open. Before Lydia could argue, the girl ran from her side and toward one of the other doors. She threw it open, stormed into the hallway, iron candelabra still in hand, and declared loudly, “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!”
With that, Evie took off running and laughing. Lydia heard the footsteps quickly pursue the girl.
Lydia was shaking. She had to struggle to calm herself down enough to climb onto the chair and look up at the rope in front of her. She wasn’t sure about this at all. But now, if she didn’t at least try, Evie’s sacrifice would be for nothing.
She put the candelabra over the rope and grabbed it with her other hand. Looking down the line, she swallowed hard. It wasn’t that Lydia had a fear of heights, but this was different. Oh, hell.
Maybe her hands would slip, or she didn’t have enough grip strength to hold on. If she fell and broke her neck, at least everyone’s problems would be over. Maybe she’d just shatter both her legs. Y’know, no big deal.
The sound of shouting from the hallway spurred her on. She jumped.
The speed of her descent and the fact that she was slapped in the face with a flag every ten feet made for a hell of a ride. Lydia prioritized two things—don’t let go, and don’t scream. She tried to just hold on for dear life, squeezing the iron so hard she knew her knuckles must be white.
It wasn’t until she saw the side of the small service building at the end of the rope coming at her full tilt that she had the wherewithal to react. She was going to smash into it head-on if she didn’t do something.
So she did something.
Namely, she finally let go. She was only a few feet off the ground now, and she hit the dirt with so much momentum it sent her tumbling over herself, rolling to a stop as a complete mess of limbs.
Lydia couldn’t suppress a groan of pain from where she lay. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and managed to figure out what end was up, at least. Lydia was face down on the tightly packed dirt. Some of it had wound up in her mouth, gritty and earthen, and she let out a “pleh” as she tried to clear it. The bruises she was going to have were the least of her concerns right now.
Voices nearby sent her scrambling to her feet, forgetting the pain in her limbs from the impact. Whatever this building was, low and squat and made of rough slabs of wood with a thatched ceiling, she didn’t care. She grabbed the nearest door she could see and threw it open, ducking inside.
She shut the door behind her, doing her best not to slam it or make a noise in her fear, and heard the voices pass in front of it. Whatever they were talking about, she couldn’t understand the language they were using. French, maybe?
Lydia leaned her back against the door and tried to catch her breath. Tried to calm the pounding of her heart in her ears. Oh, poor Evie.
She could barely see in the darkness of the room. It took a long moment for her eyes to adjust. Was she in a barn? No—a stable. Rows and rows of bays stretched out on either side of her, blocked off with high wood sides. The whole place looked like it had been hacked together by people whose tools were a hand saw and a mallet. It looked like something out of a history documentary, impossibly old, even if it was well kept.
The air was thick with the smell of animals. Hay, wood, and the fetor that came along with beasts being nearby, doing what they did best. There was another smell she recognized from her line of work—the acrid scent of blood.
She could see those bug-horse things in several of the stables, horns arching behind their heads, insectoid eyes and weird exoskeleton bodies. The troughs in front of them were stained crimson with gore and bits of bone. Lydia shuddered, remembering that everything in Under was carnivorous.
Focus! Now was not the time to dwell on meat-eating cricket-horse-monsters. If she didn’t get out of here fast, they were going to be the least of her concerns.
Think, Lydia. Think!
She had to come up with a plan. Had to come with some means of escaping. What did she have? What could she use? She had a candlestick, a fork stuffed into her boot, and…
Oh, she was an idiot.
Bug-horses. She had bug-horses.
***
For a while, it was a mystery where the spitfire of a mortal had gone until there was shouting from outside. The sound of hooves on packed dirt was enough to send Edu charging through his halls and bursting outside. The stables had been emptied, sending the small herd of horses charging into the darkness, letting out screeches and cries of joy as they broke for freedom in all directions.
Edu clenched his fists. One of them would have the girl on its back. It would take time to chase them all down. And now, they had no horses on which to do so. They’d have to wake the wyverns that slept in the rookery to give pursuit. And by then, the girl would have made it to the woods.
His jaw twitched in fury. He stepped down the stairs of his home, and with a gesture of his hand, a crimson pool of fire appeared in front of him. From it rose his own steed, climbing out of the ground as if summoned from some netherworld. Its claws dug deep into the ground, wrenching up dirt and leaving thick gouges in the surface as it slithered up from the depths. This was no horse.
It was foolish to ride the drake-like monster he reserved for battles and war only to hunt down a girl in her desperate bid for freedom. His beast would find it a pathetic excuse for exercise. He would have to have him fed well to compensate. Perhaps tonight the girl Evie would learn what it meant to be eaten by a dragon.
Edu slung himself onto the back of the creature and kicked his heels into its sides. It let out a roar.
The hunt was on.
***
Suddenly those horseback-riding classes she could have taken as a child seemed less silly than they had at the time. Maybe she should have done that instead of the piano lessons after all.
At least the bug-horse had plenty of jagged bits to hold onto, with its exoskeleton and all. Lydia did everything she could to cling for dear life. A road curled into the woods ahead of them, and while she had no clue where she was going, it was the only path she could see.
Lydia kic
ked the thing to move faster, and it was happy to oblige. It was in a full gallop now, which was actually far more comfortable than all the gear shifts it took to get up to that speed. For the moment, she felt free. The wind whipping her hair behind her felt amazing. It was cold, and she might care about having no sleeves if she weren’t being driven forward on adrenaline alone.
The woods around her were pitch-black and terrifying. It looked like every nightmare forest from a fairytale, twisted and warped with bare branches and jagged vines. There was no doubt in her mind that monsters lurked in the darkness.
The wind and the speed and the sheer overwhelming need to hold on consumed her thoughts. Lydia barely heard a roar from back toward the keep. Barely listened to the echo of creatures in the woods. It didn’t matter. Right now, she had one task—forward. Ahead. Away. Freedom.
Maybe she could make it to the city Yej on horseback. Maybe she could make it to the gate in the center of town and back home to Earth. Without a mark on her, maybe she could get away and not be found again. She had a lot of maybes.
There were two moons in the sky that had risen to replace the turquoise one. One was a deep and saturated magenta, and the other was a rich blue. Where the two mixed, it almost looked like white light, like a typical moon. But the shadows were strange and one color or the other, alternating depending on the angle.
The horse seemed overjoyed to race down the road, seeing an empty stretch ahead of them, tossing its head as it galloped along. They both wanted freedom for different reasons, but for now, they had the same goal.
It was funny how quickly things could change. It was incredible how quickly things could happen.
You never saw chaos coming. You could never predict exactly how or why it hit. Only after the moment was over could you parse it out and figure out exactly what happened when, and in what order, to try and lay out a timeline and better understand it.
She had been racing through a nightmare forest on a nightmare horse in a nightmare world. Hope had bloomed in her heart for the first time since this whole mess had begun.
Then she was on the ground. Everything hurt. Her body ached with searing pain as if she had been in a car accident. The wind had been knocked out of her, and for the second time in as many days, she couldn’t breathe. Her head was bleary, her sight clouded.
Lydia managed to finally pull a gasp into tortured lungs and felt the clarity the cold air gave her. Then she remembered the strike of lightning. It had come down on the path in front of her, the air splitting with the tangy taste of electrons and ozone. The light had been blinding, the sound was deafening, and left her ears still ringing.
The lightning had struck the path in front of her and her horse, sending the creature hauling up to a stop and rearing on its back legs. It had thrown Lydia to the ground in the process.
That was why everything hurt. At least she hadn’t landed on any rocks. Small favors.
After she had managed to catch her breath, she pushed herself up off the ground. She was trembling, her hands were shaking. She felt loosely connected to the world around her. But she had to get back on that damned creature and keep going. There was no way the lightning strike hadn’t been on purpose. It was far too convenient.
It took every ounce of strength Lydia had to push through the searing pain and back up to standing. By the sharp sting and the sticky feeling on her leg, her knee was bleeding. With a shaking hand, she pushed her hair away from her face.
When she looked up, all her thoughts of freedom were dashed away. All hope was gone.
Edu hadn’t been the source of the lightning bolt.
A figure stood there watching her, standing at the spot where the blast had struck. He was tall and thin, the carefully tailored suit belying the lithe muscle underneath. Dressed entirely in a mix of black fabrics and cast in stark contrasts by the glow of the overhead moons, he was imposing.
When he spoke, his voice was just as it was in her dreams. A knife, wrapped in velvet—a low tenor that was as dangerous and dusky as it was sharp.
“Hello, my dear.”
Aon.
About The Author
Kat has always been a storyteller.
With ten years in script-writing for performances on both the stage and for tourism, she has always been writing in one form or another. When she isn’t penning down fiction, she works as Creative Director for a company that designs and builds large-scale interactive adventure games. There, she is the lead concept designer, handling everything from game and set design, to audio and lighting, to illustration and script writing. Also on her list of skills are artistic direction, scenic painting and props, special effects, and electronics. A graduate of Boston University with a BFA in Theatre Design, she has a passion for unique, creative, and unconventional experiences. In her spare time, she builds animatronics and takes trapeze classes.
Thank you for reading King of Flames. I hope you enjoyed this first installment of the Masks of Under series. Stay tuned for more!
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Thank you again, dear reader. I hope we meet again soon in the world of Under.
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Way of the Wolf:
Ascension
The Wulvers Series
Book One
Rebecca Anne Stewart
Chapter One
Hierarchy
Rolling hills blanketed in thick trees stretched as far as the eye could see. Every shade of green leaves fluttered in the breeze that cooled hot skin as I sat on the step of the caravan. Pups growled and fought in the clearing in front of me, teeth on fur and tails that caused no damage. They were glad to finally have the chance to stretch their legs after so long spent cooped up in cars.
I smiled.
The pack was enjoying the summer heat after a colder than normal spring that gave more snow than it did any new life. It brought a warm feeling over the sorrowful reason we were travelling so far from our territory.
Golden eyes scanned over the view once more, taking it all in before it would disappear when night came to shroud everything in black. I hadn’t been able to relax all day. Being confined in the caravan as we drove for hours had tested my calm. Part of me even wanted to join in the play fighting with the pups to work off pent-up energy, but for some reason, I was too lost in my own thoughts to do so.
My wolf was unsettled being so far from home, not liking the uncertainty of staying in unclaimed territory for so long and hating the idea of being in another pack’s even more. Most probably felt the same but they seemed far better at hiding their insecurity.
We were a tight-knit community, more so than most packs because of our smaller size, yet our land was coveted for its expanse of forest and rivers that flowed into the sea at the edge of the territory. We were the most Eastern pack in the country, stretching from the city of Dundee all the way up to the highlands of Glen Shee.
As much as we all hated to go, though most remained to look after what was ours, when my father got the call, we had left straight away. An Alpha pair dead, their son only just grown enough to take over. Disputes needed wo
rked through between pack mates and rivals, a challenge that my father was known for being able to settle for he was famous for his calm.
Only a few had joined us, those who had family in the pack west to us that wanted to show off new pups, and the two warriors my father brought to help if any fights occurred. His Beta also joined us, much to my dislike.
At least those wolves had gotten to decide to come for themselves; I was given little choice. Bitterness rose up at that thought. If I had stayed on at university, I would have been graduating this year, and the thought of all my old friends in their graduation robes receiving their diplomas while I was here soured my mood.
There were other reasons that I had begun to resent being tied to a pack. I had only ever voiced them out loud to Oria, but she didn’t really understand. My eyes flicked to where the pack were gathered, watching them cooking over a barbecue while females surrounded my mother like a protective shield disguised as smiling faces. She spotted me watching and waved away her protectors to come over to me. I did my best to put a bright smile on my face in greeting.
“Not much further,” my mother promised, sitting next to me with a hand on her swollen belly while she greeted me with her cheek to mine.
Inhaling her comforting sweet scent, I relaxed a little more.
Her ginger hair was tied tight away from her face that was a little plumper than normal, something pregnancy had brought along with a glow to her skin, one that my father had told me all pregnant women had because they were carrying new life. This pregnancy had been difficult on her, and I knew she was struggling; she couldn’t hide the reason she suddenly allowed herself to be surrounded by females from me. I was worried for her, but whenever I would say so, she would flash me a glimpse of fang in a display of strength and I would back down.
Destiny: A Fantasy Collection Page 105