FLASH (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 15)

by Samantha Leal

  Andrea stepped forward.

  “That is not so Helena. You are wrong. Yes it was foretold that a brother and sister would rise to take power, to rule, but that is not you and Alexhander. It is not your time; it is ours; mine and Alex’s time. The power will pass to our children, or our children’s children - when the time is right.”

  Helena glared into the darkness.

  “How dare you, you stupid bitch. What do you know about us or what has been written? You aren’t even the real Andra. You have the two runes but you do not know their power, now hand them to me and I will be merciful to both you and the girl.”

  Andrea felt the two small stones stored safely within her pocket.

  “And Alex is not the real Alexhander. He is not your brother. The truth is that you two were not even of the same blood.”

  Throwing back her dark hair, Helena laughed out loudly.

  “Aha, so Miss Prim, and how do you know of all these details?”

  “Geraldine told me, and I believe her.”

  Helena was silent for a moment, the name of Geraldine sobering her for a second.

  “The young nun and the old woman; she talked too much. Well I soon stopped her idle tongue. You should have seen her face when I sat with her at the Hotel. She knew her time had come. She was strong, but not strong enough. I only had to touch her to cause an embolism in her brain. It was fun to watch her frail form slip away before me, the spittle dribbling from her mouth like an imbecile.”

  Alex could take no more. At the mention of his poor grandmother he lunged at Helena and felt his hands upon her throat. As he touched the pale skin he was almost knocked to the floor by a sudden surge of energy. The lights seemed to flash in front of his eyes and when he opened them again Andrea was standing before him with the child.

  “You have seen sense Alexhander. You must come with me now as we regain our rightful place.” She held out her hands towards him.

  “Alex, don’t!”

  A voice rang out clear and loud from the darkness behind him. It sounded familiar but his head was foggy.

  “Alex, it’s me Andrea, don’t be fooled by Helena.”

  He looked at the woman standing before him. The face of his beloved Andrea, he was confused.

  “Alex, it’s me Andrea, don’t go with her, it’s a trick.”

  A figure stepped out of the darkness, the dark hair and the green eyes, it looked like Helena.

  Helena struggled with her emotions. She must stay calm, but the young woman was annoying her. The spell she had cast over poor Alexhander would not last for too long and she needed him to take her hand willingly. She also must have the two runes that were in Andrea’s possession to give her absolute power.

  “Alex, listen to me. You must fetch me the two runes from Helena. She is keeping them from me and stopping the both of us from gaining the powers which are rightly ours.”

  Alex looked at both women; he was confused. Something was not quite right.

  Helena was becoming bored with the charade. Soon the spell would wear off and she could not afford to wait.

  “Alexhander, if we do not get hold of the runes then we will have to sacrifice Elizabeth to the Gods, it is the only way to appease them. Do you want to see your daughter slaughtered?”

  He looked at the woman’s face. It looked like Andrea, yet the words she was speaking were not those of his wife. She would never harm one hair of her own daughter’s.

  The lights shone once again in his head and he could barely think.

  “Alexhander, fetch me the runes, I must have them!”

  Her voice was shrill and demanding in his ear and he had no other option than to obey. He approached the woman standing in the darkness. She was calling his name over and over again.

  “Kill her, Alexhander. Get the runes. Quickly now!”

  His head told him to kill the woman. She looked like Helena but there was something in her eyes, and his heart was telling him something different.

  He could feel his hands upon her throat, the pleading look in her eye.

  “Alexhander, can you hear me? Take the runes, do what you wish, but you must save the girl, save our daughter Elizabeth.”

  It was then that he knew, and the image of his beloved Andrea, of Andra and all that had been before merged into his head.

  His Andrea, the mother of his child, would not talk about sacrificing her own daughter. The eyes, although they looked like Helena’s, did not have the same cold stare. He could see the fire burning deep in their depths. The woman he was trying to kill was not Helena, but his beloved Andrea. Forcing his hands from her throat, Alex summoned all of his strength to throw his body away from her and onto the ground. As he did the spell was broken and he reached out his hand to his Andrea; love had brought him to his senses.

  Helena was livid and stood angrily at the altar. The spell seemed to have been broken and she held Elizabeth tightly by the arm as the girl reached out and sobbed for her parents. Helena had drawn a great knife from her belt and was pointing it at the child’s heart.

  “Give me the runes.”

  Alex could feel the pains behind his eyes, but they were nothing to the anger he felt within his chest. His wife, his child and his grandmother, he had to be strong for all of them.

  Rushing forward he grabbed at the string of ancient stones that were strung around Helena’s neck, the source of her so called power.

  The leather cord stretched in his fingers and she shrieked as the strong twine dug deep into her slender neck, before he felt it finally give and the ornament snapped in front of her. The sudden release pushed him back and Alex found himself reeling across the ground, knocking his head against a sharp stone plinth. He was out for the count.

  The ancient stones scattered across the floor and around Helena’s feet, striking the slabs with a sharp click as stone met stone. As she scrabbled to retrieve them, she released her grip on Elizabeth who fled quickly, sobbing into her mother’s arms.

  Without delay, Andrea bundled the girl against her cloak and fled quickly down the aisle and out into the storm.

  Her arms ached with the weight of her daughter but she could not stop. The rain was still torrential and dragged down at her clothing, her feet slipping and sliding in the mud below.

  Andrea could feel the other woman hot on her heels and she turned her head to see Helena almost upon her. She had tried in vain but it was all too late and as she reached for the gate her feet slid from underneath her body and she and the girl were sent crashing onto the muddy grass.

  Helena was standing over both of them, a look of triumph on her face. She held the sacred stones in her hand and Andrea knew she would now stop at nothing to retrieve the runes. Everything had been in vain; all of their efforts useless. Everything that she, Geraldine, Alex and her grandma Betty had been through was all for nothing.

  Helena lifted the knife from her belt and held it high, the blade glittering against the night.

  There was a cry from the Abbey and Helena hesitated for a moment and looked around. It was Alex, but he was too late. He could not save Andrea or the girl now.

  Raising the blade she stood in victory, ready to deliver the death blow. Andrea looked her enemy in the eye; like Geraldine she would meet her end with dignity, and she drew the girl closely towards her.

  A great crash of thunder roared from the heavens as a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, lighting up the shimmering steel of the blade in Helena’s hand.

  The smoke swirled into the atmosphere as her pale flesh fizzled and crackled in the damp air. Andrea had thought that she heard a woman’s voice laugh out shrilly into the night as a second bolt of lightning hit the ground. For a moment she was blinded by the light.

  ***

  An eerie calm settled on the Abbey grounds. Andrea opened her eyes slowly, afraid of the sight that would greet her. She was lying on the grass and the sky above her was blue. It was a cold day and yet the sun was shining; she could feel the warmth upon her cheeks.<
br />
  There was a murmuring beside her and she glanced to see Elizabeth happily stirring in her buggy.

  “Andrea!”

  His voice rang through her head and she looked up into his eyes.

  “You OK? I think we made it.”

  Taking her hand, he pulled Andrea gently to her feet and kissed her. They were home; all three of them had made it back to safety.

  She could see that the ferry had just arrived into port and that the tourists were disembarking. They would soon be making their pilgrimage, down towards the Abbey.

  There was so much to say, so many questions to ask, but for now they walked back home in silence, step by step into the Future.

  THE END

  Dystopian Romance

  Finding Love in a Dark World: Book 1

  Cynthia Wilde

  Copyright © 2016 by Cynthia Wilde. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Prologue

  Earth is not what it once was, or so the story goes. It had been over twenty years since the third World War began. America was pulled into a conflict between China and Japan over a small set of islands that bordered the two nations. Russia and Iran jumped on one side and most of Europe and Australia jumped on the other. What had begun as a little dispute over a little island in the sea ended up killing billions of people.

  War no longer resembled the entity it once was in the beginning of the 20th century. There were no more boots on the ground. Instead, war was fought with drones and weapons of mass destruction; nuclear weapons were a threat now turned into a reality. Once the first strike was launched, many more followed. No one even knew who started it or why it had begun, and there were few left to wonder. Less than one percent of the population survived the combination of bombs, radiation, EMPs, hunger, civil wars, weaponized flu strains and the full breakdown of society. Many people could not deal with the world the way things were. Many were driven to end their suffering themselves, taking their families with them.

  Large cities were turned to rubble and most people didn’t dare go near them. Hundreds of thousands of house pets had taken over the urban areas. They had changed from comfort providing companions into radioactively-charged beasts. A few human survivors still lived in the midst of the chaos, though they lived in the underground, only coming out in the mornings while the beasts slept. Humans were no longer the top of the food chain. They had to learn humility in their new role in the world.

  Humans now carved out small communities that were usually no more than a few hundred people, and they quickly learned to stay close together for safety. There were no governments, though there were leaders and followers as there had always been. Man’s evils still found their way into this new world, as they always had in the past.

  1

  Jessa sighed. It was going to be another hot day. She looked up at the sky and didn’t see a cloud in sight. There hadn’t been rain in weeks and the plants needed it. She resigned herself to fetching pails to water the garden instead. After she was done in her own yard, she still had to tend to the community garden in town. She braced herself for a long day.

  They were always long days. She couldn’t remember it any other way. If only they still had those huge irrigation booms that she remembered passing in her childhood. She had passed by them as a little girl, riding in a car back then, with the wind blowing her hair back from her face. Jessa smiled from the memory.

  After a few hours of watering, Jessa was finally finished, with that part of her day anyways. Her son was wandering around the flowers, looking for bugs. She had to smile at his antics. He was always happy, no matter what. She had feared that the death of his father would make him change for good, but after only a few years he was getting back to himself. Kids were resilient. Jessa sometimes wished that he could remember like she did, the way things were, but maybe this way was actually how it was supposed to be. Maybe it was easier for those that did not have the “before” memories to make the days now seem so much darker by comparison. Or maybe it was better to think of those memories of happier days as bright patches that lit up her life, however fleetingly, before the sun was blotted out again.

  “Shane my love, time to come help me in the greenhouse, we have a lot of planting to do this afternoon.”

  “Coming Mom.”

  The rest of the day was spent under the clear plastic of the three greenhouses in the community garden. It was Jessa’s responsibility to make sure there were always new sprouts and plants to replace the old for the next crop. The village she lived in did not have a name, but they had taken her and her son in after her previous home became uninhabitable. Something had been present in the water, and it had killed most of the community. Her husband, Kraven had gotten them across what once was Mississippi before he died. Jessa found the small village twenty or thirty miles north of his final resting place. She was not sure what state she would be in now, maybe Kentucky would be a good guess, though it really didn’t matter where those once important imaginary lines were now.

  The weather was decent there and with the rise in global temperatures, it was far enough from the equator to be habitable. Most gardens could be maintained all year round. There really were only two seasons at this point, the wet and the dry. For the moment, it was the dry season.

  “Hey Jessa, are you coming by for dinner tonight?”

  Jessa cringed a little inside, yet put on the fake smile that she had learned to add on in the morning when she brushed her hair. She could not stand Teresa and it seemed the women had annoyingly made it a point to make her a friend.

  “Yeah. We will be over in a bit after we both wash up.”

  “Okay, I have a friend coming over too. I think you guys will hit it off.”

  Jessa had to smile to herself as she turned away. No doubt this was another one of her neighbor’s ploys to get her with someone. Why was it that everyone who was married or with someone decided that everyone else must do the same? She would never understand that.

  Considering her general lack of any feeling of connection with her neighbor, she doubted that Teresa would ever choose someone that she would even actually consider being with. There were slim pickings in the town. There were quite a few men, but hardly any that were in any way her type. Men actually out-numbered women three to one and as a result it was seen as ludicrous to be a single woman in the new world. Naturally she should be adding to the population and be in the process of creating more babies, or so the prevailing wisdom went. With so many people lost in the last couple of decades, there was a constant push to procreate. But many women were lost in labor, as modern medicine was a thing of the past.

  Relationships and sex were just not in her plans at this point. Jessa had lost her true love a few years before and she still was not ready to even think about starting something new. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to stay where she was. She had barely found anyone to talk to that she had anything in common with, and there was only one other child Shane’s age. But for the time being this was home to Jessa and her five-year-old son. She was trying to make the best of it. Anything would be better than being on the road, or heaven forbid being close to one of the old cities. Those were dangerous places in this new world.

  Walking into the little house that Jessa was given when she moved into town, she instructed Shane to pour some water in the basin and wash himself. It was still warm enough outside to enjoy the cooler water and he happily went into the bathroom to take a sponge bath of sorts before they went to Teresa’s house. Teresa was also the mother of the one boy Shane’s age, Aidan, so Jessa tried extra hard to play nice with the neurotic housewife next door.

  Sighing again when she saw her reflection in the mirror, she poured herself a small basin of water to wash up in. She grabbed a wash cloth and start
ed to wash away the day’s sweat and grime and she quickly was able to see her face once again. The years had not changed her that much, though there were a few more lines from the last time she had cared enough to look. Deciding that her hair needed the same treatment, she refilled the basin with water and unwound her waist length hair to dip into the water. She quickly had her blonde hair cleaned and combed.

  “Mom, are we going to Aidan’s tonight?”

  “Yes honey, as long as you still want to go.”

  “Yeah I do. Aidan found a new toy car yesterday and I have been dying to see it and he just got back this morning.”

  “Well if you would spend some time looking, maybe you could find some new toys too. There are tons of houses that haven’t been searched up the hill that are safe to go to.”

  “I know Mom.” The last syllable dragged out for emphasis.

  2

  Jessa decided on one of the dresses that she had not worn in a while. She did not know why, but she wanted to look nice for once. She even put on a little makeup before she brushed her hair out and left it down. The dress held close to her curves and accentuated the woman’s long legs. She usually did not dress that way so as to deter unwanted attention. As the new girl in town she got a lot more of it than she wanted anyways. They had been there almost 6 months in the town with no name and she still was receiving lascivious looks from all the wrong people.

  About a half an hour later, Jessa knocked on the door of Teresa’s little villa style home with her son swinging his arms by her side.

  “Come on in, dinner is almost ready.”

  “Do you need any help?”

  “Sure, come on in the kitchen, the men will be here soon. You look real nice. I don’t see you dress up much. Is it because of the fella I told you about?”