Rune Warrior

by Frank Morin

  Book Description

  After surviving the fall of Berlin, Sarah prefers visiting the glories of ancient Rome. Until a mysterious man in a wide-brimmed hat begins haunting her steps.

  The creep is more than a stalker. He plans to enslave her soul as the first step in a terrifying plan to dominate the world.

  Her natural talent with runes suggests a link to a rare soul power, but is it enough to save both her and the world from a deviant psychopath? With time running out, Sarah must take a desperate gamble and travel back to the Middle Ages, seeking answers from iconic figures: a martyr, and a mass murderer.

  But her enemy has his own historical trump card.

  His name is Spartacus.

  And there is a reason his body was never found.

  RUNE WARRIOR

  Copyright © 2016 Frank Morin

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9970233-4-3

  A Whipsaw Press Original

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Edited by Joshua Essoe

  (http://www.joshuaessoe.com/)

  Cover art by Christopher Guerra

  (http://seegenerateartist.com/)

  First Whipsaw printing, March 2016

  Rune Warrior Rune

  Healing Rune

  Chapter One

  When I read a good book, I wish this life were three thousand years long.

  ~Emerson

  Sarah entered a simulated operating room, complete with beeping monitors and the smell of antiseptic. She verified both empty gurneys were in position, and that the Sotrun machine was masked by a white sheet.

  “Relax, everything is ready.” Eirene entered, dressed in a doctor’s white coat. She wore her light brown hair in a simple braid that accented her beautiful face.

  Even Sarah struggled to note the tiny signs that Eirene’s athletic body was not her original form. Eirene looked maybe thirty years old. That was some fantastic aging. No one who didn’t already know Eirene was a facetaker would believe she had lived since the times of the Roman republic. Only when one looked closer, noted the depth of her gaze, might they sense there was more to her.

  “I can’t help it,” Sarah said. “I’m excited we’re actually going to do this.”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Only if it’s abomination cake,” Alter said, already frowning as he followed Eirene into the room.

  Sarah sighed. Alter had argued against the procedure, even though it was such a desperately needed service. The handsome young hunter still struggled to see beyond his strict upbringing.

  He approached and took her hands, his deep, black-eyed gaze intense. In his mid-twenties and in fantastic shape, she considered him a good friend. He also helped teach her to fight. They sparred together every day, so she could have read his emotional state even had he tried to conceal it.

  He didn’t try. Alter was not a master of subtlety.

  Eirene gestured to Domenico, an Italian enforcer who loved to laugh. Today he was pretending to be an orderly. He saluted and left to fetch the patients.

  “Sarah.” Alter said. “You barely know these people. You can’t condone ripping out their souls.”

  “We’re helping them.” Tired of the argument, she grabbed his sleeve and led him to the side of the room just as Domenico returned with an elderly gentleman and a young man. The two were engrossed in conversation.

  “Watch and learn,” she whispered. When he tried to protest again, she added, “And be quiet.”

  “Hello, Walter.” Sarah turned her back on Alter to greet the younger of the two patients. His face looked too mature for the body and Sarah easily picked out the signs of misalignment along his jaw.

  “Sarah, my dear,” Walter said with a grin. “So good to see you again.”

  The elderly gentleman greeted her warmly and kissed her hand. “It is such a pleasure to finally meet you. You’re even lovelier in person.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.” Sarah was used to getting hit on, but not by guys so old. As a top-ten model for Alterego, she’d maintained a waiting list of over eighteen months of renters eager to live in her body for a while.

  “I’m glad you two have already met,” she said. “Have you signed the transfer order?”

  “With pleasure.” His name was Leandro Blickensderfer, a Swiss billionaire. Sarah had spoken with him a few times on the phone and studied his online profile in detail.

  “It’s easy when we both win,” Walter added.

  “I’m glad you feel that way.” She cast a glance back at Alter. “We’re ready to begin.”

  He frowned but made no move to interfere.

  Sarah gestured to the gurneys, and Domenico helped the two men get positioned. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief that no last-minute issues had come up. She had met Walter and his dear wife Gladys after the destruction of Alterego. Walter was one of the unfortunate clients who had lost his elderly body in the fire and been left living as a thirty-something man.

  His wife had been returned to her aging body, leaving the two of them generations apart. To make matters worse, the family of the deceased convict whose body Walter ended up in sued him for child support, and they had been caught up in court battles for months.

  With Alterego destroyed, the secret to the marvelous technology that allowed the transfer of consciousness between bodies was lost. Sarah had learned the truth, that the technology was worthless unless powered by the ancient soul gift of the facetakers. Most people lived in happy ignorance of the truth, but Sarah had fallen into their world, where arcane dangers were very much alive.

  She had managed to escape Alterego with body and soul intact, but had felt driven to help those who had not been so lucky. Now that the secret facetaker council was led by Eirene and her husband Gregorios and controlled the machine that had survived Mai Luan’s fiery death, Sarah had convinced them to help her restore what victims of Alterego they could.

  Walter was the first, and he might just be the last. Although almost twenty couples had ended up in similar circumstances, he alone sought to join his wife in old age. Most of the other couples split by the generation gap had filed for divorce. The younger partners hadn’t wanted to be saddled with a spouse generations older. The break-ups were usually ugly and Sarah found the lack of fidelity heartbreaking.

  All the more reason to help Walter. Sarah smiled at him as Eirene injected a fast-acting tranquilizer into his arm, then into Leandro’s.

  Instead of charging the couple their usual exorbitant fee to grant them new lives, Eirene had agreed to perform this soul transfer free of charge. “It’s a small price to pay to wrap up the final threads of that abomination,” she’d said.

  Phrasing it that way had helped sway Alter. “Abomination” was one of his favorite words, and his entire life as a hunter was dedicated to removing such evil from the world.

  “See you on the other side,” Walter muttered before sleep claimed him.

  Leandro lay back, a radiant smile on his face, his lips moving in a whispered prayer.

  Usually identifying bodies for use as transfer vehicles fell to the consignment team, but their activities skirted and sometimes crossed the line of what Sarah considered morally acceptable. Besides, Alter would have tried killing them all if the facetakers had attempted to procure a new body for Walter using their regular means.

  He’d finally relented when they found a willing transfer vehicle. Leandro had been more than willing. When approached, he’d eagerly agreed to the terms. He not only paid to settle the outstanding lawsuits, but provided Walter a generous compensation package. The two men
would switch bodies, both getting what they wanted.

  Eirene moved to the head of Walter’s gurney and placed her hands over his face, her fingers curling around the line of his jaw. She took a steadying breath and her eyes began to glow like purple LED lights as she activated her nevra core, the source of her soul power. Purple fire rippled along her fingers as she drove them through the skin around Walter’s jaw.

  The process of soul transfers still amazed Sarah. Although she had undergone more than all but the eldest facetakers, during most of them she had lain blissfully unaware of what was really happening. She had since witnessed several transfers, but still shuddered to see it.

  She risked a glance at Alter. He watched the procedure with a frown and with clenched fists. Had Gregorios been performing the soul extraction, Sarah doubted Alter could have refrained from interfering.

  His relationship with Eirene was complex and slowly deepening. Although shocked to learn that Eirene was really his long-deceased great-grandmother, he was coping by small degrees. Eirene seemed willing to invest however long it took, and Sarah sometimes caught her smiling with radiant joy at him.

  With her fingers deep under Walter’s skin, Eirene began to pull. Walter’s face peeled away from his skull with a wet sucking sound, like the dregs of a milkshake worked by a child.

  Sarah hated that sound. It dredged up horrific memories of watching Asoka melt into the floor, or of Mai Luan’s chest vaporizing under the blast of Sarah’s gun. She forced the memories down, refused to turn away from the sight and be ruled by her nightmares.

  The skin of Walter’s face sloughed off, revealing his shimmering, translucent soulmask as it disengaged from the underlying bone structure of his skull. The gap widened and the soulmask broke free as the last pieces of loose skin slipped away. Eirene lifted the soulmask high. The eyeballs shrank to half-spheres, sucking in the dangling nerve clusters. The soulmask thinned, trailing rainbow mist, visible tendrils of the man’s soul. On the blank skull of the body he had just abandoned, the skin flowed together until it looked like a department store mannequin, unbroken but for a thin slit where the nose should be.

  Sarah’s heart pounded and she wiped her hands on her slacks. At least Eirene didn’t throw her head back in silent ecstasy as she took Walter’s soul the way Mai Luan used to. The fact that Eirene didn’t revel in the process helped Sarah see this as the good deed it was.

  Domenico accepted Walter’s soulmask from Eirene, who moved to Leandro to repeat the procedure. Before she began, Sarah pulled up the left side of the sleeping man’s shirt.

  “What are you doing?” Eirene asked, hands poised to begin the extraction.

  “A little gift,” Sarah said.

  “He can’t know about runes,” Eirene cautioned. “We’re only barely holding the illusion as it is.”

  “I won’t tell him what it really means,” Sarah said, drawing a scalpel from one of her pockets. “He can still just enjoy it in ignorance.”

  “Sarah, this is not wise,” Alter protested, but still approached.

  “These are good people,” Sarah said. “Come activate this for me.”

  “No.”

  “Come on,” Sarah pleaded. “Try helping a little instead of just opposing everything. It’ll help you feel connected with what we’re doing.”

  “Why do you think I want to feel connected to this?”

  “Because we’re restoring balance to their lives. Isn’t that what hunters are supposed to do?”

  The hunters were a secret organization, concealed within the Jewish population for centuries. Their rounon powers granted them marvelous enhancements, powered by the force of their souls. They were dedicated to eradicating the heka, or kashaph as they called them, from the world. Heka shared similar rounon powers but stole the force of other souls to power their enhancements.

  “We don’t work this way,” Alter said, but edged closer.

  “Just try it,” Sarah urged. She took his hand to draw him to the gurney and he gripped her hand tightly, his skin warm against hers.

  “There is no guarantee he can bond to it.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “If it doesn’t bond, the cuts heal in a few days,” he conceded. “But what if it’s a partial bond?”

  Sarah hadn’t thought of that. Those were supposed to be very dangerous. “How often have you actually seen a partial bond?”

  “Well, I’ve heard of them.”

  “Walter’s already experienced one soul transfer.” She squeezed his hand. “I feel it, Alter. This is the right thing.”

  She couldn’t explain why, but she couldn’t deny the strength of her conviction. Runes called to her in a way nothing else did. They made sense. This made sense.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, get on with it,” Eirene said. “Walter will come around any second and I don’t want him experiencing true dispossession.”

  “I’m doing it, Alter,” Sarah said. “You decide if you’re going to help or just keep sulking.”

  Chapter Two

  You are a little soul carrying about a corpse. Some may carry more than one on their journey, but the end is the same.

  ~Marcus Aurelius, fourth life of Emperor Nerva

  “Let me mark it,” Alter offered.

  “No, I’ve got this,” Sarah said.

  Alter was a runesmith, an expert at designing runes, marking them onto living flesh, and activating them by virtue of his rounon gift. That soul power somehow allowed runes to bond to the soul of the person who wore them.

  He’d helped Sarah design her first rune, a beautiful, custom symbol that had turned out to be the same design Eirene had developed generations ago while living under cover among the hunters for one of her many lifetimes.

  “Figure it out, children,” Eirene said, her eyes beginning to glow.

  While she removed Leandro’s soulmask, Sarah inscribed a complex rune into the left side of the body, just above the lowest rib. She had memorized the rune when she first saw it, that terrifying day when the rune had saved Tomas’ life. Sarah included the altered lines she had made to improve the healing rune for Tomas.

  With the sharp scalpel, she easily cut the skin. That day she’d cut it into Tomas’ side around that ghastly knife wound, her hand had shaken so badly, she’d barely managed to complete the work. Today she worked with careful precision and completed it just as Eirene pressed Walter’s soulmask into place on Leandro’s empty body.

  The rune didn’t look very good yet, with the lines still bleeding, but Sarah pressed Alter’s hand over the mark. “Hurry.”

  Alter sighed and focused over the mark. The skin of his hand grew hot against hers. She’d never held his hand while he activated a rune and was fascinated to feel that there was a physical effect of using his rounon gift. She wished she could feel more, feel the process of bonding the rune to the soul. She loved studying runes, but hated that she was still an outsider to the heart of the process.

  There was no guarantee it would work. Many souls lacked the fortitude to bond runes, but she suspected Walter did. The skin of the blank skull was flowing over the soulmask as it fused with the underlying bone structure, altering the shape of the skull slightly to best fit the new owner. The face shook like water in a pond on a windy day for a moment. Eirene maintained her hold for several additional seconds, smoothing the connection between the soulmask and the host body, erasing the scarring, wrinkles, and bumps along the jawline and forehead that often resulted from slight misalignment to a new host.

  Sarah and Alter pinned Walter’s upper body while Domenico braced the legs. Walter began to shake as his soul bonded to the body. The first time Sarah had experienced a new bonding without first having been tranquilized had been an overwhelming experience. Every muscle, every nerve had clamored for attention as her soul took possession.

  Walter only shook for a few seconds. His mind was still asleep, reducing the trauma of the transfer. Plus, he’d only been dispossessed for a short t
ime. The longer the dispossession, the harder the transition.

  Sarah bumped Alter with her shoulder. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “I don’t know how you talk me into these things,” Alter grumbled.

  “Because you can’t resist me.”

  She had intended it as a light-hearted tease, but his expression changed and she easily read his desire. Standing so close together, she became far too aware of their proximity and edged away.

  Alter leaned after her. He’d been attracted to her since the first day they’d met and had resented her deepening relationship with Tomas. Usually he kept his feelings in check while studying runes or sparring with her, but they were always there, simmering just under the surface.

  By the time Walter blinked his eyes open, Eirene had already pressed Leandro’s soulmask onto Walter’s recently-vacated, younger body.

  “How are you feeling?” Sarah asked as she helped Walter sit up.

  He took stock of his elderly frame and grinned. “I feel old. It’s wonderful.”

  Leandro woke up a few seconds later and shouted with the joy of renewed youth. “This is amazing!”

  “Enjoy it, son,” Walter said.

  Leandro pumped his hand, then swept Sarah off her feet into a twirling embrace. “You’re my angel deliverer!”

  Sarah avoided the kiss he tried to plant on her lips, letting him peck her cheek instead. He was taking to his new youth with style.

  “I’m glad you’re satisfied,” Eirene said as Alter approached, looking like he wanted to punch the young old man for handling Sarah like that.

  “Thank you, doctor!” Leandro hugged her too. “If you ever need anything - anything - call me.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Eirene said with a gracious smile.

  “I mean it,” Leandro repeated. “I’ll be traveling the world for the next few weeks, but call me any time.”

  After he left, laughing with the joy of new vitality, Tomas wheeled Gladys in to see Walter. Sarah met Tomas’ gaze and gave him the smile she reserved only for him. He grinned back and winked.