by Ann Gimpel
“Maybe. Unless it’s one of those six unfinished ones.”
“Yeah, then we’ll have to wing it.”
He tipped her chin with his index finger until she had to meet his gaze. “It was how we faced the Cataclysm, and that turned out all right. We have to believe this will too.”
Every major failed military campaign in history marched across her mind, mocking her. Those generals and commandants had high hopes too.
Juan shook his head. “Uh-uh. We take this one day at a time. One difficulty at a time. It will take us a month to transit the globe south to north. Maybe more. Depends how things go. What we run into. What we run out of, where we can’t continue until we resupply.”
“Remember what I said about his common sense and experience being more useful than all your book learning,” her cat spoke up.
“I heard that.” Juan grinned. “Tell your bond animal thank you.”
“Tell it yourself,” she countered. The corners of her mouth twitched until she grinned back. “I shouldn’t be smiling. Nothing much to be happy about. For all I know, none of us will survive.”
He smoothed his thumbs over her cheekbones. “There’s a lot to be happy about. You and me, for instance. No matter what happens, we found each other.”
Remorse smote her. “You’re way too important to forget, and I didn’t. Not really. I was focused way ahead.”
“Too far ahead.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I suppose not going to Wrangel Island isn’t an option.”
“It’s not. It might buy us another few months. Maybe as much as a couple of years, but eventually evil would reign. Everywhere would look like Arctowski, replete with monsters and evil overlords.”
Juan angled his head, a thoughtful expression on his face. “It’s the same decision Rowana faced. Where she sacrificed herself in hopes her companions would make it out alive.”
Aura hadn’t viewed events in quite the same way, but Juan nailed it. “Thank you.”
“For what?” This time he placed butterfly kisses on both her cheeks.
“Reminding me courage is grace under pressure.”
“Hemingway said that. I read all his books through my years at sea.” Juan let go of her. “I’m off to herd everyone to the dining room before the food gets cold.”
She gripped his arm. “I love you.”
Juan’s hazel eyes glowed with pleasure. He settled his lips over hers, the kiss sharp and sweet, before hustling out of the galley.
Aura turned back to the cooling pans of food and began cutting it into portions. She’d face whatever fate threw in their path. Her ivory-tower life hadn’t been much of a proving ground, but it had taught her how to think through problems.
“We all have our strengths,” she told her cat.
“Indeed, we do, and you and Juan are stronger together.” Her bondmate sounded insufferably smug.
“I love you too,” she said.
“I never doubted it for a moment.” The cat hesitated. “I’ll miss Ro and her eagle.”
“Aw, sweetie. So will I.”
A deep, sad purr rumbled from her belly. Aura opened her mouth and let it reverberate through the galley.
“No matter what happens”—she stood tall—“Rowana will not have died for nothing. We’ll do everything in our power to thrust evil back into the shadows and force it to remain there.”
“Yes,” the cat chimed in. “We will. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
YOU’VE REACHED THE end of Twisted, book two of Bitter Harvest. Stay tuned for Abandoned, next book in the series. Read on for a sample chapter.
About the Author:
Ann Gimpel is a USA Today bestselling author. A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction has appeared in several webzines and anthologies. Her longer books run the gamut from urban fantasy to paranormal romance. Once upon a time, she nurtured clients. Now she nurtures dark, gritty fantasy stories that push hard against reality. When she’s not writing, she’s in the backcountry getting down and dirty with her camera. She’s published over fifty books to date, with several more planned for 2018 and beyond. A husband, grown children, grandchildren, and wolf hybrids round out her family.
Keep up with her at www.anngimpel.com or http://anngimpel.blogspot.com
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Book Description, Abandoned:
A handful of Shifters. A hardy ship. An upside-down world where evil runs rampant and none of the old rules apply. Taking a stand against the Cataclysm solved a few problems, but others rushed in to fill in the void.
Recco misses his cozy lab and well-organized veterinary clinic, but ten years as a Vampire stripped him of any illusions. Life is done handing him everything he wants. He could rail against fate—which never bought him much—or suck it up and keep going. Defeating the Cataclysm broke Vampirism’s hold on him, though. Even better, it threw Zoe square in his path.
When Zoe left Ireland for a visiting professorship in Wyoming, she assumed she’d be home in a year, but her assumption swung around and bit her in the ass. The Cataclysm, a spell trapping her in Ushuaia for a decade may be gone, but it left a hell of a legacy. One that’s far from done chasing her.
Darkness stalks the ship. Evil that will stop at nothing to protect itself.
Chapter One: Borrowed Trouble
Zoe Seisyll lurched from one side of the generous galley to the other, compensating for the motion of the ship. She was alone in the stainless-steel kitchen that ran behind Arkady’s dining room, but it was her turn to prepare the evening meal. The beginnings of biscuits spread before her. Half the dough was shaped into rough circles. The other half still sat in an enormous mixing bowl. Back before the Cataclysm, Arkady had been home to as many as sixty passengers and a sizeable crew, which explained the industrial sized pans and cookware.
She flexed her fingers, coated with cornmeal, flour, powdered eggs, powdered milk, and enough water to hold it all together. Maybe focusing on her hands would drive the infernal song from her head. The elusive mix of chords that mocked her, slipping away before she could identify their origins.
“Och, and I brought it on myself,” she muttered.
Zoe adored music. She played guitar and piano passably well, and could hold her own on the flute. Cooking and singing went together like old, cherished friends, and she’d been deep into an Irish folk tune when the discordant melody intruded.
The one she hadn’t been able to get out of her head from a few weeks after they fought the Cataclysm. Not for long, anyway. Whenever she gave in and hummed or sang anything, she rarely got away with it. When she did, her victory was brief.
Aye, verra brief.
Her mind voice was thick with the brogue from her native Northern Ireland. She’d spent nearly as much time in Scotland, so her speech held hints of both accents, something that had confused folk in the U.K., many of whom amused themselves by placing wagers about her origins. When she’d taken a visiting professor position in Wyoming, everyone there chalked her up as a Brit. Or God forbid, an Aussie.
No self-respecting U.K. native would ever make a mistake like that, but to North Americans, everyone from across the Atlantic—or the Pacific—sounded alike.
She swallowed a snort and plunged her hands back into the dough, working on autopilot until three pans of cornmeal biscuits were ready for the waiting oven. Popping them inside, she set a mental timer for fifteen minutes. At least the jarring music in her mind had fallen silent. It was like the intruder knew the moment she let her guard down, waiting in in the wings to pounce when she was vulnerable.
The worst part was it killed the spontaneous joy she’d always taken in music.
Moving to the sink, she rinsed her bowl and her hands. Something about the eerie melody was familiar, but it was unsettling enough she always tuned it out before she could identify it. A knee-
jerk reaction to unpleasantness. She perched on a three-legged stool to wait until the biscuits were ready to rescue from the ovens but was too antsy to sit still.
A quick tour through the pantry identified other items to add to dinner preparations. It was too early in the day to do much more than get the biscuits done, though. No point wasting electricity keeping a casserole hot for hours. Everything on the ship was generator powered, but those generators required fuel. The scent of warm cornmeal wafted through the kitchen, comforting and reminiscent of home.
Aye, home. Is aught left of it?
She rolled her shoulders back and stood straighter. No point thinking about Belfast or the family she’d left behind. Parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. She’d never meant to be gone forever. Her plan had been a one year visiting professorship at the University of Wyoming. Their offer included full access to newly excavated Native American settlements and the expectation of several research papers in prestigious journals. Journals that were already lined up and anxiously awaiting her impressions—and her photos.
Definitely a career-making move, and one that would have guaranteed the offer of a full professorship when she returned to Queen’s University in Belfast.
Even with all that, she’d hedged about going until the university in Wyoming sweetened the pot by offering to underwrite her travel and living expenses. Zoe would have been a fool to refuse what was any archaeologist’s dream. Once she’d gotten her visa squared away and moved into a cozy cottage walking distance from the campus in Laramie, she’d been delighted to meet Aura MacKenzie, another Shifter who was also a history professor.
Aura had introduced her to the local Shifter pack, and Zoe’s doubts about the wisdom of traveling so far from home evaporated—
The smell of almost-overcooked biscuits sent her flying to the ovens, mitt in hand. She pulled the pans out, thanking all the bloody saints she’d gotten to them in time, and turned off the oven. They had sufficient supplies on Arkady, but it didn’t mean she could ruin an entire batch of anything daydreaming. Their food stocks wouldn’t last forever. Between now and then, they had to figure out a way to resupply.
She located cooling racks and stacked the pans atop them. Wisps of the eerie, haunting melody were back, but she didn’t want to dig any deeper. Something about the song drew her to the restless ocean churning beneath the ship’s hull.
Had something followed her from Ushuaia?
Worse, had she done something wrong during their group incantation to defeat the Cataclysm and absorbed some of its fell energy?
No point borrowing trouble.
The corners of her mouth twisted into a grimace. Her long-dead grandma had been partial to that phrase.
Zoe arranged the rest of her dinner preparations in a neat row and left the galley intent on layering up, so she could spend some time out on deck. She trotted up the stairs to the corridor leading to her cabin and let herself inside the small, neat space. Bunks ran beneath the porthole and at right angles along the back wall. A small desk and chair were the only other furniture in the room.
She flipped the duvet into place to cover her unmade bed with its rumpled sheets and pulled gear from one of the cabin’s many closets. Because this boat had ferried tourists through the world’s polar regions, it held a full complement of cold weather clothing, saving the passengers from packing bulky gear on long transoceanic flights.
Zoe stepped into thick black trousers and an insulated red jacket that she zipped to her chin. Red waterproof bibs came next. Followed by knee-high Wellingtons and a weatherproof rust-colored parka. She tugged a woolen hat over her head, before snugging the parka’s hood into place, and stuffed her hands into fluffy down mitts. After a quick glance at her Tarot deck and a few magical accoutrements—mostly gemstones—she’d hung onto through her years in Ushuaia, she felt guilty. Maybe her time would be better spent immersing herself in chasing the intrusive song to its roots.
I won’t be outside for long, she promised herself. Only enough to clear my head.
Before she could overthink her decision, she trudged out of her cabin and along the corridor to the first door leading outside. The ship had a million doors and almost as many staircases. She supposed they’d been placed strategically to maximize safety, but things like insurance companies were part of the old world order.
None of that mattered anymore, and maybe the demise of things like insurance companies was one of the plusses. No one to bail you out when you fucked up meant you were a hell of a lot more careful.
Cold hit her like an unyielding wall after the ship’s interior warmth. Her first full breath stuck in her throat, making her gasp, and she buried her nose and mouth in the parka’s neck ruff.
Zoe walked mindlessly. She started to hum, but cut it off fast. For once the marauding melody didn’t insert itself. After a while, she wrapped her arms around herself in a feeble attempt to preserve her body’s heat. Icy wind cut through her layers of clothing, and sleet stung her face. The cold air searing her lungs was clean, though. A welcome counterpart to the years she and eleven other Shifters had been trapped in Ushuaia wondering what was going to kill them first. A marauding Vampire or tainted air and water.
Years ago, Aura had talked her into joining their group on a trip to the tip of South America. At the time, it sounded like quite the adventure, and it occurred during a week when the university was closed for one of many U.S. holidays. The Shifters had planned to harness the power of an eclipse, something that would have enhanced their Earth-linked magic. Except the eclipse never happened. Instead, a spell gone bad imprisoned them at the ass end of the earth.
She pushed past the chill leaching into her bones and strode briskly from deck to deck, covering a familiar pathway. She tried to get outdoors as much as she could, but foul weather had kept her inside the last two days. Her coyote had pitched a right fit at the confinement.
“Better?” she asked her bondmate and picked up the pace.
“Yes.” The word held a grudging tone.
Zoe waited. After twenty years, she knew better than to argue—or cajole—her bond animal into anything. That strategy never worked.
“What happens after this McMurdo place?” the coyote asked.
“Depends what we find there.” Zoe was hedging, but she didn’t want to break the news about a blue water voyage that could take a month or better. For some reason, the coyote hated water—or maybe it was the combination of water, cold, and being stuck in a small space. She tried a different tack. “Before we left Ireland, you enjoyed our jaunts in those little boats I used to rent.”
“That was different, and you know it. How can you compare a sunny afternoon when we’d spend an hour or two within sight of land to this? Everything here is white or gray. It’s unnatural. I miss green and trees.”
She gave up on telepathy—the coyote would hear her either way—and chose not to mention that most of their sailing time around the British Isles had scarcely been under sunny skies. It had been green, though. A byproduct of incessant rain. “What bothers you most?” She channeled a thread of magic to her feet before her circulation shut down entirely.
“All of it.”
“Could you narrow that down?” Zoe reached the sixth deck and reversed course. Clouds the color of hammered pewter boiled across the horizon, limiting vision to fifty yards. Wind ripped at her, pushing her first one way, and then another.
“I assumed when we defeated the Cataclysm and left Ushuaia the world wouldn’t be quite so hostile.” The coyote yipped, wistful and somber.
“We all hoped that.” Zoe sent warm thoughts inward.
“What have we encountered so far?” the coyote demanded, not mollified by her attempt to soothe it. Without waiting for her to reply, it kept right on talking. “Four reluctant shifters. A mad priest. Demons. Vampires—that apparently aren’t all dead yet. An evil dark mage—”
“I know all those things. I was there too,” she cut in. “Goddammit. This is hard enough without you catalo
ging all the bad shit. Besides, the men made peace with their bond animals, so at least that part is on its way to being fixed.”
A vicious blast of wind chopped sideways. She gripped a nearby railing with her mitten-clad hand, but her booted feet slipped on icy metal risers. A quick blast of magic kept her upright.
“What’s wrong?” she repeated a variant of her earlier question and hustled to the next deck down. “It’s not like you to be such a pessimist.”
“I want forests. I want you to shift so we can run and I can hunt.” Rather than petulant, the coyote’s words were bittersweet, as if it were bidding farewell to a life it figured was gone forever.
Zoe chose her words carefully. “You can have those things. But not with me right now. In the special world you share with the bond animals, nothing has changed. My feelings wouldn’t be hurt if you retreated there to roam.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she reassured her bondmate.
“But what if another wicked mage shows up? And you need my magic to strengthen yours?”
“I have a feeling you’d know. No matter where you were.” Caring and gratitude for the coyote tracked from her toes to her head. Its last bondmate had died in a bloody skirmish during the first World War, and it had always blamed itself for not keeping its human partner safe from the shrapnel that had torn him to bits.
Wars had been simpler then. At least they’d had beginnings and ends. Winners and losers. Not anymore. From the time a magical barricade trapped them inside Ushuaia, they’d fought an amorphous enemy. One without defined boundaries that was a magnet for evil. Zoe shivered and set her teeth together to keep them from chattering.
They’d fought Vampires too, but they were pikers in the evil department. Nowhere near as daunting as demons or powerful mages. Besides, Vamps seemed to be on their way out. The battle against the Cataclysm had paved the way for them to lose their fangs and welcome a bond animal if they chose to do so.
Zoe broke into a shambling trot. Perpetually cold outside. Stifling heat within. She reminded herself it was good to have choices. Any choices at all. Those years in Ushuaia hadn’t offered much in the way of alternatives. She’d spent most of that time helping humans survive and avoiding Vampires.