DIESEL (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 13)

by Samantha Leal

  Placing the tray on the bed, Helena walked over to the window.

  “Andra, I am deeply sorry about last night. The news of my brother’s loss hit me strongly and I spoke out of turn. I have not been as welcoming to you as perhaps I should have, and I think that I should start to make amends, especially as you are carrying his child. After breakfast, come walking with me. The air will do us both good.”

  It was a struggle for the older woman to say the words, and her face twisted with every vowel. She was trying hard to be pleasant, but her manner left Andrea cold. Still, if Helena could make the effort, then so could she.

  The girl smiled and nodded. “I could do with some air and exercise too. I will come to you after I have dressed.”

  Andrea ate up her breakfast. She needed to keep up her strength. Then, pulling on her layers of stockings and tunic to keep warm, she wrapped a large woolen blanket around her shoulders to keep off the chill from the sea air. Helena was already waiting for her by the door, and the two women set off into the bright winter air.

  Together they walked over the brow of the Island to the northern-most point, the “Bay of the Breaking Waves,” the locals called it. The view was spectacular and the women walked on in silence, each one thinking of Alex in their own way. As they rounded the hill, Andrea began to break out into a sweat, becoming breathless before the pains started in her abdomen. Clutching her belly, she shouted out to Helena who was walking slightly ahead of her. By the time Helena had turned around, Andrea had already slipped to the stony ground, writhing in agony.

  The Abbess walked over to the girl, a strange look upon her face. She was about to speak when a voice called out to them in the distance, and a small black figure approached them. It was Geraldina, who, noticing that Andrea had not taken her cloak, followed the two women to bring the garment.

  “Geraldina, come quick, the young mistress is unwell, and we need to get her back to the nunnery as a matter of urgency.”

  Slowly and carefully, the two women supported her back to the room. Luckily, they hadn’t walked too far and within half an hour, Andrea was tucked up in her bed with a roaring fire in the grate. The pain had subsided in her stomach, but her heart was racing and she had a fever. The physician had examined her and left another draught of bitter herbs to help her rest.

  She slept for the rest of the day, and by suppertime she was feeling much better and sat up in bed to eat a small meal that Helena had brought for her. The Abbess had showed her great kindness that day, and Andrea wondered if she had been wrong to doubt her. It was only when Geraldina came to check on the fire about midnight that anyone realized the attack had happened yet again. After her meal, Andrea had slept only to wake with a raging thirst and a pounding head. As she had tried to get out of bed for a glass of water, the stabbing pains started again and she was too weak to shout for help.

  The young nun wet a rag with cold water and laid it on her forehead. Andrea was almost delirious with pain but could see Geraldina smiling kindly down at her. For once the girl spoke.

  “Listen to me. There is not much time. Helena is trying to poison you; she does not want you nor the child, now that her brother is dead. She is poisoning you through the food, and I cannot stop her–but I can give you an antidote for the poison. Here, drink this up and you will soon be feeling better.”

  The nun went on to pour three drops of a reddish-brown liquid into a goblet and filled the rest with water.

  Andrea drank down the potion; it tasted sweet and of berries, and within five minutes the fever had eased and the pains gone.

  “You must take three drops of this with water before and after each meal to protect you. Now I must go, I have been here too long.” And leaving a small vial on the bed, the nun left, locking the door behind her.

  She was in deadly danger. If Helena was trying to kill her, then she would stop at nothing. Geraldina’s potion would only prolong the inevitable. She had been right all along about Helena. Grandma Betty had returned back to the present on the seeming death of Andra, but then again she had the rune. What would happen if Andrea died without it in her hands?

  All night she lay awake, afraid of every noise, of every footstep in case it was Helena’s. She tucked the glass vial under her pillow out of sight. Without the young nun’s help, she would have been dead already. She must keep the faith.

  Chapter 12

  Andrea eventually slept, for when she finally awoke the rain was lashing down at the window. She was also not alone; Helena was standing at the foot of her bed looking like death herself, dressed in a long black habit.

  “I am glad to see that you have had a good night. I am surprised; the doctor thought that you might lose the child again. I have brought you some breakfast to keep up your strength. Some beef tea and bread will do you good, now let me help you.”

  Her hand reached under the pillow. The little vial had gone. Her heart started to beat fast as Helena sat by her side and started to pick up the spoon.

  “What is wrong, my dear? You look like you have lost something. Now drink some of this, it will do you good.”

  Andrea had no choice; if she struggled, then Helena would force her. They were both playing a dangerous game, and Helena currently held the upper hand. Her only hope lay in the hands of Geraldina.

  Soon the beef tea was all gone and Helena smiled as she proffered the last spoonful.

  “There, all done. Now I will leave you to rest. I have told the other nuns not to disturb you today. I will lock the door and take away the key, just to make sure you rest in peace.”

  The key turned in the lock and the sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor until all was still. Was this to be her final fate?

  After half an hour, the fever and the pains started anew and within an hour she was almost unconscious with the pain. Her mind kept blanking out, but she concentrated on the pain to keep her awake. The little song kept playing round and round in her head:

  Long ago and far away

  I dreamed a dream one day

  And now that dream is here beside me.

  The words came and went as she tried to sing them out loud, tried to remember the tune that the little nun had sung.

  Her heart was beating fast, and her breath was rasping in her throat. So this was the end. She thought of Steve and New York, of her Grandma Betty, and of Alex.

  Her eyes began to mist. Death was pulling her towards eternal sleep, and there was nothing she could do. As her senses began to shut down, she was aware of a commotion around her. The door had opened and a shadowy figure was in the room. Maybe it was Death paying her a personal visit? But the face was real. It was Alex; he had returned. He was shouting something out loud to another figure behind him.

  “What have you done? What have you done?” His voice was desperate.

  Soon she could feel a strong arm around her, sitting her up, shaking her, trying to restore life, but it was too late—she was slowly breaking down. The last thing she remembered was a small stone being thrust into her hand before all went black.

  At 30,000 feet in the air, it all came flooding back to her. Geraldine MacDonald had found her that morning slumped over a grave in the little Chapel of St. Oran. She had been overdoing it lately, and the stress had taken its toll. Once she was feeling quite well again, the old woman had given her a book on the genealogy of the McDonald clan and not wanting to be rude, she had taken it along with her name and address and telephone number, just in case she happened to be in the area again.

  At first she had tried to sleep. She had an aisle seat and was at least able to stretch out her legs. Yet every time she almost dozed off, vivid dreams and imaginings would wake her up. She looked in her carry-on bag. She had nothing to read except the book Geraldine had given her so she casually flicked through the pages to pass the time. On the third page she paused as she read the name of Alexhander McDonald. Her heart stopped as the memories came flooding back in every detail. Surely it had been just a terrible dream, brought on by
her grieving state? Maybe she had been influenced by her grandma’s diary. She had always had an active imagination.

  She looked at the family tree spread out in the middle pages of the book. There was Alexhander McDonald, married to Andra in 1642. They had a child, Alexhander (dead) in 1644, and another, a girl in 1645. There were no dates of death, only question marks against the entries. The history books couldn’t tell her everything.

  Andrea put a hand against her stomach, remembering the pregnancy. Could it be that she was expecting? She had been sick that morning when she returned to the hotel, and she still felt a little queasy. Deep inside her, it all started to make sense. If it had been just a dream, then she wouldn’t be feeling so strongly. Alex had come through for her in the end, just at the right moment. She fished out the small rune from her jeans pocket and held it in her hand. This tiny object connected her past and present; it was her link to the one man she loved and would return to.

  In the dark room of the nunnery, Alex McDonald held onto the still, warm body of his beloved Andra. The dawn had just started to break, and a weak sun was rising above the mist. He knew that she was safe and that she would come back to him. As long as he kept holding her, she would not die. Their love was eternal.

  THE END

  This exciting story continues with Highland’s Dream, available from Amazon now

  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 started 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.