Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Witch’s Reign
The Desert Cursed Series, Book 1
Shannon Mayer
Contents
Witch’s Reign
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Afterword
Witch’s Reign
The Desert Cursed Trilogy Book 1
Shannon Mayer
Acknowledgments
For the readers who hang with me.
For the dreamers who fly on the wings of the dragons, and harpies.
For the believers in magic.
You are my tribe, you are my people, you are my pride.
This one is for you.
Copyright © Shannon Mayer 2018
All rights reserved
HiJinks Ink Pubishing
www.shannonmayer.com
.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a database and retrieval system or transmitted in any form or any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the owner of the copyright and the above publishers.
Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Original illustrations by Ravven
Photography by With Love Photography
Models: Bayley Russell and “Parker”
Mayer, Shannon
ISBN: 978-1-987933-37-6
Created with Vellum
Chapter One
The thing about giants is that while they are dumb as a bag of rocks, they’re fast and mean, and don’t like giving up on prey. Especially prey that is running flat out, prey who just stole a prized possession from them that they believed kept their power at its peak, prey that may or may not have flipped them off as it ran away.
I smiled to myself and dropped my hands. What could I say? The giants deserved at least a one-finger salute.
I bent low over my horse’s neck, urging him to greater speed, even though the ground was rock hard, covered in a thin sheen of ice in some places, and bubbling toxic waste in others. No problem.
A pool spewed to my left and we veered to the right to avoid splash back from the stinking green fluid that could burn through flesh and bone if so much as a drop landed on us. I glanced over my shoulder, then let out a low growl at the big-ass creatures charging down the gorge after us.
Weighing in at five tons per giant, they literally thundered along behind, their feet slamming mini craters with each step.
“Nasty shit eaters,” I grumbled, doing what I could to squash the fear. Really, it was nothing new. Steal the jewel, run from those we stole from. Simple, yet not really. The giants let out a cacophony of roars that made the hair on the back of my neck stand. The sound was like a wicked choir singing for our destruction.
“Zam, distract them!” Steve shouted from ahead of me, panic lacing his words.
I turned my attention to doing just that. Balder, my horse, could outrun Steve’s bigger war horse, no problem, but I couldn’t leave him behind. My job was to get the idiot, and the jewel he carried, back to the Stockyards—preferably in one piece.
I glanced back again at the giants. “Shit.” I whispered the word and Balder tried to turn on the speed, picking up on the tension that raced through me, but the ice below us made traction for that kind of speed impossible and dangerous. If we fell, that would be bad, worse if we tumbled into one of the toxic pits. Even my shifter healing metabolism wouldn’t save me then.
I held Balder back even as the giants closed in around us. He fought and shook his head, knowing as well as I that we were very much the prey of the day.
Seven giants drove us from behind, and that would have been bad enough. But the gorge we galloped through had fifty-foot-high sides blocking any easy escape. But wait, it got better.
On those walls were five more giants, two on the left, three on the right. They used their clawed toes and fingers as if they were enormous, maw-gaping spiders, leaping and working their way toward us on all fours, horizontal. As in sideways. Like gravity somehow no longer existed for the oversized dumbs that they were. Then again, they weren’t so dumb that we’d been able to slip in and out without being noticed.
“Steve,” I growled. He’d just had to try and get all the glory of the theft.
Now, though, I had work to do. I dropped the reins, giving Balder his head despite the danger of added speed. I needed both hands for dealing with our retreat. I reached for the weapon tucked behind my leg. An over-under shotgun with a grenade launcher, one of the few toys of my father’s I still had. And one that I used sparingly. Coming by ammunition was not a small task.
“Please work,” I whispered to the weapon. It was finicky at the best of times in perfect conditions. Of which we were not in, with the cold and ice frosting every damn thing around us.
I pulled my feet out of the stirrups and twisted so I sat backward in the saddle, facing the oncoming horde. Goddess of the desert and all she held holy, they were ugly creatures. You’d think they’d be just upsized versions of the average human. But not so much.
Some of them had two heads or multiple arms. Or two arms on one side, and no arms on the other. They all had disfigured faces thick with teeth, noses, and eyes. Like everything was just larger in terms of their senses to make up for their lack of brains, but nothing was really in the traditional place. Like a mouth on the forehead, eyes on the chin, and that sort of shit.
The giant in the middle was the queen, or what passed for their queen. She was the biggest of the brutes and had three tits that hung almost to her waist. As I watched, two of them swung so hard that they hit the giant next to her, knocking him backward onto his ass.
For once, I was grateful I hadn’t been so blessed in the boob department. A smile twitched over my lips as I lifted the gun. “Steady, Balder, this is going to be loud.”
I aimed for the wal
l to my right, tucked the butt of the gun against my shoulder as I tightened my legs on my horse, drew a breath and slowly let it out as I pulled the trigger for the grenade launcher.
It blew out with a roar that echoed through the canyon. Before it hit, I spun around to the front of the saddle and jammed the gun into its holster under my leg. Behind me, the explosion of the grenade hitting rocked the air, sending out a shockwave that rumbled through my back.
The reverberation continued through the stones and the ground under our feet. That shouldn’t be happening. What the hell had gone wrong now? I had to dare a look back.
The air was filled with dust and shards of rock, and for just a moment, I thought we’d escaped the big assholes—check that, I’d gotten us clear of them. Steve, as always, was too busy saving himself to bother thinking about anyone else. I frowned as I stared in the direction we’d come. Something was off, my senses twitched and I turned to face the direction we were running.
The scrabble of rocks ahead of me was the only warning we had and Balder saved us both. A giant leapt off the side wall—how the fuck he’d gotten so far ahead in stealth mode was beyond me—and came at us with a wide mouth and three grasping hands.
Balder zigged to the right, turning on the speed, slipping only once as his iron shoes somehow miraculously took hold on the ice. The giant landed where we’d been only a second before, a three-fingered hand that would engulf us both snaking toward us, closing the gap Balder had created. I grabbed the shotgun, yanked it out and twisted around, shooting before I even sighted properly. I pulled the trigger and the gun bucked against my shoulder, unbalancing me. I hit the giant’s middle finger, blowing the tip off. He roared and snapped his hand back but I knew it wouldn’t stop him.
Basically, I’d just pissed him off and given him even more reason to come after me long beyond the edge of his territory.
Good fucking job, Zamira.
I straightened and tucked the gun away, looking for Steve.
His horse was a black bay and stood out against the browns of the gorge walls, which meant I should have spotted him right away.
“STEVE?” I yelled for him. Where was that camel’s asshole anyway?
There was a low roll of laughter from behind me and my heart sank. I spun Balder around and he slid and slipped to a stop.
Behind us was the queen of the giants and at her feet were Steve and his horse. The horse—Batman by name—seemed stunned, but was still standing, if shaking like a leaf. One of the spiderlike giants grinned back at us, preening. They’d gotten ahead of me in the mess and snagged Steve.
The giant I’d just blown a hole in scurried back to his queen, whimpering and whining, holding up his bleeding finger. She grabbed it and shoved it in her mouth, biting the whole hand off. He howled as she chewed as if she’d gotten a wad of tobacco and then spit the mangled limb to the side.
Steve was alive, his eyes about as big as I’d ever seen them, and I’d seen him caught red-handed cheating on his wife. No small thing that was either. I suspected he’d preferred being caught by the giants than by his now ex-wife.
The queen held him up by one leg, dangling him as though she would bring him to her mouth and bite his head off. I sighed. I should probably let her do it as it would solve so many of my current gripes about life.
Steve’s death would make my life a lot easier, yes, but what if she swallowed the jewel? Then I’d have to wait around and dig through her shit to get it. That possibility was not cool; I had no interest in digging through a literal giant pile of shit and body parts for a jewel the size of my fist.
The queen shook him from side to side, her tits jiggling with the movement. “You wanna wanna your mate back? You gimme gimme my jewel.” She smiled—though I use that term loosely with the size of her teeth and the twist of her face and mouth. Blood trickled over her lower lip and she slid an overly thick tongue out to lap at it. I grimaced. Disgusting creatures. How the hell they’d found a jewel and understood it gave them power was beyond me. Perhaps it was the emperor’s way of making a joke. He’d stolen all the jewels from my mentor, Ish a hundred years before and handed them out to others to make her weak. Giving a jewel to creatures like the giants in front of me was a slap in the face.
“He’s not my mate. And no, I’d rather not have him back.” I grinned up at her, knowing I was playing a dangerous, reckless game. But what was new about that?
Nothing. Reckless was my middle name. No, really it was. Zamira Reckless Wilson. That’s what you get when your ex-marine dad gave you your name. My mother chose my first name, and that had been good enough for her.
The giant queen frowned and I reached slowly to the left side where I’d stashed one of the other things I’d taken from the giants’ hoard.
Steve had grabbed the jewel, and I’d taken two other items. A black jewel that was flashy as hell, and the flail with my family’s crest etched into the wooden handle. The face of a lion in mid-roar, its mane a mass of hair, and eyes studded with tiny green emeralds. Coincidence that I should find it there, only a few hundred miles from my homeland? I think not. Anything with my family crest was rightfully mine, so I didn’t consider it stealing, just taking back my birthright. The black jewel I’d taken, well, that was prep work for the next hunting trip for Ish. I was, if nothing else, prepared.
At least, that’s what I liked to tell myself.
I let the flail slide through my hand until I was holding just the end of it, and the eyes of every giant followed the movement. A tingle started in my palm and rose along my arm, which I noticed, but ignored. So far so good. Lighter than any other weapon I had on me, I had no illusions about it. This weapon was not made for fighting; this show was to draw the giants to me—they were almost as bad as dragons when it came to guarding their treasures and what they believed was theirs. I swung it once, the two spiked balls hanging at the end of three-foot-long chains clicking, the chains holding them to the wood creating a nice patterned staccato of a rhythm. The tingle on my skin intensified.
“I have the jewel,” I said. “So . . . what are you gonna gonna do about it?”
Steve groaned as the giant queen tightened her hold on him, lifting him as if to put him in her mouth. “I kill kill him. Eat eat him.”
“He likes to be eaten. Don’t you, Steve?” I laughed and he glared at me.
“Ish is going to hear about this,” he yelled.
“Not if you’re dead.” I shrugged and turned Balder around with my legs, giving my horse silent cues. “No loss to me. He’s a right bastard, that one. Nobody likes him back at home.”
“Zam, don’t leave me!” he howled. I lifted a hand, waving at him while I stared forward, my heart clambering up my throat. I didn’t really want him to die. I just . . . didn’t care like I had once if he lived. Bad spot for him to be, really. I’d trusted him at one time. I’d trusted so many people and they’d all shown me that trust was stupidity.
Trust would break your heart and get you killed all in one fell swoop.
I gave Balder a gentle nudge, urging him into a slow gallop. Fast enough that the giants would think I was running, not so fast that we used up everything Balder had left in his reserves. The sweat on his gray hide was still slick and he glistened in the light of the dying sun even in the cold of the northern desert. While he had amazing stamina, I knew we were pushing it if we had to go hard for very long.
This was a gamble and if I was wrong, I’d sentenced Steve to death and lost the jewel we’d come so far to find. His death would be bad, the loss of the jewel . . . worse. The closest thing I had left to family was depending on us to get that jewel. I took a quick look under my arm like a jockey on the racetrack. Steve was falling to the ground, dropped like the useless piece of shit he was. Perfect. One problem down, one more to deal with.
My jaw tightened with each stride of the horse beneath me. The rumble of heavy feet reached my ears as the giants once more gave chase. I leaned over Balder’s neck. “Time to go, my friend.”
He plunged forward and once more we streaked down the gorge, drawing the heaving mass of giants after us. They were slow to get going, like a boulder rolling downhill. But once they were moving they were fucking hard to stop just like that same big-ass boulder.
I dared a look back to see them gaining on us once more, but the giants were not what I was looking for. No, I was checking to see if Steve was still alive after his fall.
I squinted, finally picking him out in the distance beyond the tree-trunk legs that hammered their way toward us. His golden hair and eyes seemed to catch the dying light as he turned his face toward me. He stood next to his horse and lifted a hand in a salute, then flipped me off.
That was about right for our current working relationship.
Saving him, keeping him alive was part of my job—and I hadn’t failed yet, nor did I plan to. I might have screwed up everything else in my life, but keeping Steve alive was not on that list. My pride alone would never let me just give up. The taste of failure was not something I needed to have coating my mouth.
I put my boot heels against Balder’s ribs, giving him the ignition spark he needed to finally unleash the remaining portion of his speed. He gave a grunt and then leapt forward as if I’d cracked him with a riding crop, when in reality . . . he just loved to run. I held my breath as he picked up speed, taking off as if we’d been standing still.
The giants behind us roared, the fury coming through clear along with a waft of horrible rotting teeth and soured stomach acid. I scrunched my nose, wishing not for the first time that I didn’t have such a strong sense of smell.
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