by Kiel Nichols
Tribes of Man
Tribes of Man: The Beginning
Thousands of years ago, there were four tribes of man—Air, Earth, Water, and Fire. Each tribe had power, and they worked together to thrive as a nation. They lived in peace until Adder, the immortal wizard, stoked the fires of jealousy and anger among the tribes. When war broke out, the gods disbanded the tribes and scattered their members across the earth. They prophesied that someday the four tribes' keepers would find each other, and when they did, they would restore the powers to the tribes of man.
When Raina Kallan and Gideon McConnell find each other, they begin to fulfill the prophecy. In order to restore the powers to the tribes of man, they must find the other keepers and perform the ritual, a ritual that Adder will do anything to stop. Will Raina and Gideon find the other keepers and change the world, or will Adder succeed in destroying it?
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 68,276 words
TRIBES OF MAN:
THE BEGINNING
Tribes of Man
Kiel Nichols
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
TRIBES OF MAN: THE BEGINNING
Copyright © 2012 by Kiel Nichols
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-512-0
First E-book Publication: October 2012
Cover design by Christine Kirchoff
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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DEDICATION
This one is for my brothers. You guys are da-bomb!
Huge thanks to Colleen and everyone at Siren Publishing.
TRIBES OF MAN:
THE BEGINNING
Tribes of Man
KIEL NICHOLS
Copyright © 2012
Prologue
The last thing Raina Kallan ever saw was blood.
When she left the house that morning, she didn’t expect to be home before suppertime, but a forgotten book put the kibosh on her precious hour of research time in the library. To add to her aggravation, her car started to sputter a block from home.
Raina whipped into the driveway, hoping her car wasn’t breaking down again, and sprinted up the daffodil-lined steps. She hissed in exasperation when she noticed that the door was ajar. Forgetting to set the alarm was one thing, but Michelle should at least close the front door. They might not have a lot of valuables, but they were two women living alone and had to be careful.
The first thing Raina noticed as she walked down the long hallway toward the kitchen was the smell. As she pushed the swinging kitchen door open, a coppery smell joined the smell of raw sewage, making Raina nearly gag. It took a moment for her brain to assimilate what she was seeing.
The kitchen was splattered with what looked like red paint, or ketchup, or...or blood. Turning her head frantically around, she found Michelle slumped kneeling on the kitchen floor in her own waste, her wrists handcuffed to a cabinet pull. Michelle was naked and had wounds all over her body. Some looked like slashes, others like burns. Her head was tilted back, her eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling, her mouth open as if in a scream.
Raina instinctively went toward her, wanting to help. When she heard something thump against the wall in the hallway, she veered instead toward the back door. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a stocky man dressed in a brown uniform. He reached her just as she opened the door. Before Raina could try to pull away and make a run for it, the man pressed a small black box against her neck. She had the momentary, nonsensical thought it looked like a weapon from a space movie just as the alarm gave off a loud shriek. The man jerked, and Raina felt a sharp pain in her head. The last thing she saw before blackness claimed her was Michelle’s dead, tortured body.
And the pool of blood on the floor.
Chapter 1
“Gideon, your brother’s on line one.” Joanie’s disembodied voice came over the office intercom, making Gideon jump. They had just gotten the thing installed, and he still wasn’t used to it. The old system of shouting from the outer office seemed fine to him. He didn’t know why Joanie was always changing things. She called it upgrading. He called it a pain in the ass. First it was the filing system, and then it was the waiting-room furniture, and then the damn phones.
“Thanks, Joanie,” he shouted back rather than using the accursed intercom.
He jumped again when her “you’re welcome” came loudly out of the box next to the phone on his desk. He picked up the receiver, hit the button next to the blinking line, and ran his hand around the intercom box to try to find the volume button. “Hey, bro. What’s up?”
“Hey, Gid. Listen, I need your help.” Bryce’s worried voice came over the line.
“Sure, anything. You know that.” It was unusual enough for his younger brother to sound worried. He was normally cheerful to the point of nauseating, but it was completely unheard of for him to ask for Gideon’s help. “What’s going on?”
“I have this friend.” He paused
, as though unsure of how to continue.
“Shit, Bryce, you didn’t get a girl in trouble, did you?” That was one of Gideon’s biggest fears. He’d always figured that Bryce’s carefree and frequent dips into the pool of love would get him into trouble.
“No, nothing like that.” Bryce hesitated again, raising all of Gideon’s instincts for trouble. “My friend was assaulted in her home about a month ago. Her roommate was killed, and Raina lost her eyesight. It was difficult for her at first, but she’s moved back into her house because it’s been in her family for generations. The cops have no idea who did it. She’s only been home a few days, but she’s worried that whoever broke into her house might come back.”
Gideon automatically started taking notes on the yellow legal pad sitting on his desk. “They have no idea, or they just haven’t made an arrest yet? Do you know?”
“As far as I know, they have no idea. Raina said that there are no suspects and that there was no evidence.”
Gideon grunted. If they had no solid leads by now, they weren’t likely to get any.
“And…” Bryce began but hesitated.
“Yes?” Gideon asked, his gut tightening.
“She feels like she’s being watched,” Bryce said in a rush. “She said that because she can’t see, her other senses are sharpening, and she can sense someone watching her.” There was doubt in Bryce’s voice.
“Has she reported it to the police?” Gideon paused, hand poised to write his answer. It didn’t come. He sat back. “OK, Bryce, what aren’t you telling me?”
“She went to the police, OK? They didn’t believe her.” His voice was defensive.
“Why wouldn’t they believe her?”
Bryce let out a long sigh. “For a few reasons, I guess. First of all, she has no proof. The camera at her house hasn’t picked up anything.” There was a long hesitation before he continued. “The other problem is that her blindness doesn’t seem to have a medical cause.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Gideon asked sharply, leaning forward to place his elbows on his desk again. “Are you saying that she’s faking?”
“No,” Bryce answered quickly. “She has what’s called ‘hysterical blindness.’ The doctors think it’s caused by trauma. She found her roommate’s body. She had been badly tortured before she died.”
Gideon winced in sympathy. When he was on the force, he’d once gotten a case of a hooker who had been tortured. It was a tough sight even for a seasoned cop, much less a civilian. “Did they find any ties to organized crime? That’s usually what torture killings are about. That or serial killers.”
“They didn’t find a connection to either. Right now, they have no idea who did it. Neither the roommate nor Raina seemed to have any habits that would bring something like that down on them. I guess they were pretty stumped.”
Gideon just grunted. He’d had a few unsolved cases in his time, and he hated them. Each one felt like a personal failure. “So, they don’t believe her because her blindness has no medical cause, is that right?” He started doodling on the pad, trying to think his way through the quagmire. “And why do you believe her?”
Bryce let out a long sigh. It was the sound of a lovesick puppy. “I knew her a little before this all happened, and she was like a ray of sunshine. She was always sweet and happy. You would think that this experience would have changed her personality, and I guess it did a bit, because she’s jumpier now, but she’s still basically the same positive person she always was. She’s one of those people who goes out of their way to make you feel welcome, ya know?” He sighed again.
Gideon decided right there that he’d meet her, even if he couldn’t help with her problem. He’d never heard his brother so gone over a woman before.
“She’s a little older than me,” Bryce continued. “She’s a PhD candidate. She was helping me with my master’s thesis when this happened. She’s brilliant with ancient languages and classical studies. If it hadn’t been for her, I never would have found the texts to support my paper. She knew of this book written in ancient Latin”—Bryce cut himself off—“never mind. That’s not the point.”
He was relieved when Bryce didn’t go into details. As soon as he started talking about the tomes of the past, Gideon’s eyes started to glaze. He decided to get back to the details. “How long have you two been dating?”
“Oh, we’re not dating,” Bryce said. Gideon could almost hear him blush over the phone. “We’re just friends. I date around. You know that.”
Gideon decided to ignore that. “So what do you want me to do? If the police haven’t found anything, I don’t think I will.”
“All I want you to do is to meet her and talk to her. Maybe investigate a little. If you don’t find anything, maybe she’ll calm down.”
“So you think she’s being paranoid?” Gideon asked.
“Not necessarily,” Bryce said doubtfully. “I’ve just never seen any sign of someone watching her. Of course, I only see her a couple of times a week.” He paused. “So will you do it?”
“Sure, bro. When?” Gideon was good at making snap decisions. Many times his life depended on it.
“This afternoon?” Bryce sounded doubtful. “She has a therapy session at the hospital, but I can pick her up and come by around two?”
“How about I meet you at her house after work? I have a few meetings this afternoon, and I’d like to see the setup at her house anyway.” If he was going to check it out, he wasn’t going to do it halfway.
“Thanks. That would be great.” Bryce sounded relieved. “I’ll e-mail you her address. Is six OK?”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you then.”
After they hung up, Gideon started to type up the facts as he knew them. He’d done this many times over the four years since he’d opened Phoenix Detective Agency. This time, however, he had a weird feeling about it. His instincts were telling him that there was trouble coming. He rubbed his hand over the network of scars on the side of his face. Of course his instincts weren’t always reliable. When an image of an explosion flashed through his mind, Gideon purposely got up, grabbed the sheet out of the printer, and headed toward the door. He leaned through, handed Joanie the sheet, and said, “Get a file together, would you? I think we just caught a case.”
“Sure, boss.” When Gideon turned back into his office to work on a missing person case that seemed to be growing cold, he heard her say, “Next time, just use the intercom.”
* * * *
The sun was just beginning to set when Gideon pulled his silver Honda into the driveway at the address Bryce had sent him. The file he had on the seat beside him was already filled with the police reports, autopsy, and research on hysterical blindness. He was hoping that Raina had undergone a CAT scan or MRI while in the hospital right after the attack. After looking at Michelle’s autopsy, he had a hunch about Raina’s blindness.
The driveway was fairly steep, and Gideon had to brace his hand on his leg to help him climb up the hill. The fire had damaged the tendons and muscles in his left leg as well as scarring the side of his body. He could walk for hours, but climbing hills or stairs was torturous. When he reached the front porch, he paused again before ringing the bell. He wanted to catch his breath and pull himself together before seeing his brother. He didn’t want Bryce to know about the lingering effects of his injury. The fact that he couldn’t hide the scars on his face was bad enough.
Gideon turned to look out over the Seattle skyline. The pretty little house in Queen Anne set high enough for Gideon to see twilight settle like a blanket on the city. Seattle was no longer his city to protect and serve, but he never lost his appreciation for it. He was startled when the door opened behind him. He expected his brother to open the door and was unprepared for what he found when he turned around.
My God, she’s beautiful.
He couldn’t stop the thought and was surprised to find that he almost said the words out loud. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t pla
ce it. The only thing average about her was her height. She stood a little under five and a half feet tall and had dark-brown hair that swung down in gentle curls. One long tress was startlingly white. It lay across her full breast so that the slight curl at the end seemed to hug the tip of it. Her body was lush like a woman’s should be. Her eyes were a deep ocean blue, and upon further notice, as blank and distant as slate.
“Miss Kallan?”
“Yes. You must be Bryce’s brother, Gideon. Please come in.” Raina opened the door and gestured him in. She was smiling and facing his direction as though she was looking at him. “Bryce is in the living room. Can I take your coat?”
Gideon looked at her sharply. “How do you know I have a coat?” She smiled so that a dimple appeared in her cheek. “Magic,” she said. She laughed at his silence. “OK, I figured that, since there was a possibility of snow tonight, it must be cold enough for a coat.”
Gideon felt like an ass. “Sorry,” he said as he shrugged out of his coat.
Raina just laughed again. “I wish I had seen your face when I said ‘magic.’ I bet it was priceless.”
Her laugh was contagious. Gideon chuckled.
He was amazed that she referred to her blindness so casually, and even more amazed that he wasn’t uncomfortable with it. Whenever he had to deal with someone who had a disability, he found himself trying to ignore it, yet feeling like it was the invisible elephant in the room. It was just like Bryce had said. She made him feel comfortable immediately.