by Valerie Puri
The Lemerons
The Secret Archives Trilogy: Book 2
Valerie Puri
Copyright © 2020 Valerie Puri
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission from the authors, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Editing services provided by Brass Rag Press
Cover created by Covers by Christian
Interior formatting by Dark Crown Press
For Jet
Contents
1. Marlene
2. Jennie
3. Travis
4. Jennie
5. Sash
6. Ethan
7. Jennie
8. Marlene
9. Sash
10. Travis
11. Belle
12. Sash
13. Ethan
14. Jennie
15. Marlene
16. Ethan
17. Jennie
18. Belle
19. Travis
20. Sash
21. Travis
22. Belle
23. Ethan
24. Jennie
25. Marlene
26. Jennie
27. Ethan
28. Marlene
29. Travis
30. Belle
31. Sash
32. Jennie
33. Ethan
34. Jennie
35. Marlene
36. Belle
37. Sash
38. Travis
39. Belle
40. Marlene
41. Ethan
42. Jennie
43. Ethan
44. Marlene
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Valerie Puri
One
Marlene
Scaling the wall was easy. The looming structure surrounded the place Marlene Saunders had called home for the last two hundred years. Any ordinary human would find it difficult to make such a climb. But she was far from ordinary. She was cursed.
Peering down from atop the wall, she gritted her teeth. The swarm of grey-fleshed monsters was a reminder of everything she lost. She hated these things. They ruined the life she once had and everything she tried to rebuild.
Lemerons were brainless creatures. They only sought two things in the world: other lemerons to grow their numbers and to feed on the living. But they never bothered with birds or animals. No. That was not enough to sate their appetite. Only human flesh would do.
Marlene would never fall victim to anyone or anything again. She watched as more lemerons emerged from the forest, gathering at the base of the wall. Their feeble efforts to attack the stones made it seem like they were bored.
Their stench was unbearable. Decay wafted off them like the rotting carcasses that they were. The more there were, the worse the smell. It served them well, as others caught the stench drawing them to the larger group.
Marlene’s lip twitched. She wanted to destroy them all right here and right now, but she lacked the strength. They would tear her to shreds before she could kill all of them. She needed help. She needed her husband and his people.
Getting through the hoard would be a challenge. She traded her purple Elder robes for her hardened leather armor for this purpose. Old as it was, her armor was well made. It could withstand a lemeron’s claws…for a while.
Marlene squeezed the handle of her sickle. The curved blade saved her life more than once. Her only path forward was through the lemerons. She would cut them down as though she were harvesting the dead instead of a crop.
“Ethan,” she whispered to the wind.
She had to reach her son, assuming he was still alive. A knot gripped her stomach. What if her baby never made it? What if Brenden failed to get him to safety?
A few of the closer lemerons heard her. They peered up at her with cloudy yellow eyes. One opened its mouth, revealing blackened teeth. A raspy groan erupted from its throat.
As hardened as she was, the sound still made her shudder.
The other lemerons heard the call of their own and added their cracking voices to the choir of the damned. It was a battle cry. A rally to arms. With frenzied speed, they attacked. They slammed into the wall towering before them. They slashed at each other with razor-sharp nails, destroying one another to get to her.
Peering over the treetops into the distance, Marlene gripped her sickle firmly. She was ready.
She brought the blade to her face, inhaling and exhaling. Without a second thought, she dove from the wall into the sea of monsters.
A crunch of bones broke her fall as she landed on one of the lemerons.
One down, hundreds to go.
All around her, blackened teeth snarled, boney arms lashed out, and claws slashed at her. The monsters pressed forward, overwhelming her stance. She tried to advance, but there were too many. They surrounded her on all sides, forcing her back against the wall. She lost her ground. Soon they would engulf her.
Despite the chill of autumn, sweat dotted her forehead.
Damn. I have to get through. I have to get to Ethan and Brenden.
She was being crushed between the wall behind her and the lemerons.
One roared and lunged at her throat, teeth bared. She fell to her knees to avoid the fatal bite. Her sudden disappearance stunned the lemeron. It couldn’t comprehend her changing the rules of the battlefield.
Seizing her chance, she slashed upward with her blade, cutting the monster’s chest open. Clumps of brown blood oozed out from the wound, spilling on the dirt by its feet. For any living creature, that would be a death blow. But to a lemeron, it was little more than a mild annoyance.
It looked around, confused. Marlene reached up and grabbed it by the arm, tugging it down. When it stumbled forward, she cut its head off. The lemeron crumpled to the ground in a heap, finally dead.
Two down.
Clambering on top of the fallen lemeron, she stood. She had enough space to swing her sickle. The best way to stop a lemeron was to cut off its head. And so she did.
One after another, she brought down the monsters. Where two fell, one took its place. Her progress was slow, but she was putting distance between herself and the wall.
She cut and slashed through the sea of grey flesh. She was almost to the edge of the forest. If she made it, she could climb a tree and escape the lemerons.
They seemed to sense her plan. Snarling, they attacked with more vigor. A hot sting ran down her back. Her armor loosened around her waist. More searing burns surged over her back and across her side.
She glanced over her shoulder to see a lemeron behind her. Its hands glistened red with fresh blood. It licked her blood off its fingers with a purple tongue.
Ugh. Marlene groaned with disgust. It had tasted her. It wouldn’t stop now until it devoured her.
She had to keep going. Each time she swung her arm to cut down another lemeron, her back flared with pain. She was vulnerable. Her armor failed her.
I have to go on. I have to get to Ethan. I have to tell him everything.
Her head spun. Each effort to push forward, to kill another lemeron, exploded in blazing pain. Her back was soaking wet as
if she just emerged from her bath. Only this was not water. It was blood. The lemerons around her could smell it. Their yellow eyes gleamed. Their frenzied attack intensified.
Make it to the tree, just make it to the tree.
Marlene pushed herself. She fought her way forward as darkness closed in around the edges of her vision. When she thought she would lose consciousness, her fingers grasped a branch. “Now climb,” she urged herself.
Two
Jennie
The tolling bell still echoed in Jennie Caraway’s mind. Only moments ago, Elder Marlene stood in the bell tower crowning the school, ringing it incessantly. It was a call to the people of the Commune to wake up. Not just from the last dredges of early morning sleep, but to wake up to the treacherous group secretly controlling things in their society. Controlling them.
Marlene exposed Victor Glassman’s betrayal for all to hear. He was the other Elder in the Commune; there were always two. Until that morning, Marlene kept silent, letting Victor seize control of the Commune. Anyone who tried to stand in his way or threatened his agenda disappeared.
He never dirtied his own hands. His loyal pawn, Sash, abducted his enemies. No one saw them again… at least not as humans. Victor had them transformed into dociles, mindless creatures who never questioned or talked back. He kept his victims hidden, so people in the Commune were unaware of what really happened to their missing neighbors. Victor would claim they ventured outside the safety of the wall and were killed by lemerons.
The problem was, dociles were too closely related to lemerons. They were alike in every way, except dociles were passive. They weren’t driven by the uncontrollable need for human flesh. Instead, they performed menial tasks to help keep their settlement running. Victor created too many, providing a beacon for lemerons. They were drawn to their kin. Now, the lemerons were gathering at the wall in staggering numbers.
Victor’s hidden hoard of dociles would be the Commune’s undoing. He was responsible for so much destruction.
Jennie scowled at him from the back of the crowd. Her father and his friend Alan Thompson wrestled Victor from the town square.
“Let me go! I’m ordering you to release me,” he cried as he thrashed around. “Marlene’s lost her mind. She’s lying. You’re all fools to believe her.”
Jennie scoffed. He was the one who lied to the entire Commune. He and his secret group, the Order, kidnapped her best friend, Belle. All to get to Jennie… and the book. They got her, but never found the journal.
Sash tortured her for information. Her body ached just thinking about it. She was a threat to them, because she knew what they did to those they abducted.
Jennie squeezed Belle’s hand, glad they could escape before it was too late.
“Let’s get out of here.” Jennie had seen and heard enough. There were more important things to do than to listen to Victor spew more of his lies.
“Ready when you are,” Ethan said.
Victor drilled into everyone that there were no humans left alive outside the walls. Ethan contradicted that just by existing. But Marlene acknowledged that there were others alive out there. Ethan’s people. She would recruit them to her cause to help save the Commune. Ethan had come so close to meeting his mother for the first time, but Marlene left before he could.
His plan was to go after her. She would need his help getting his people to fight for the Commune.
When Ethan departed, Jennie would be with him. She had lost too many people she cared about. She wouldn’t lose him too.
They made their way through the packed town square. People bumped and pushed into them from all directions. Everyone was surging toward the steps of the schoolhouse, trying to get a better look at what was going on.
One of their elders left the Commune to seek help from people who shouldn’t exist, and the other elder was being deposed.
Jennie couldn’t blame them. Under other circumstances, she probably would be eager to get a closer look, as well. But she had seen too much and from far too close.
After finally emerging from the solid mass of people, Jennie could breathe again. Standing in the empty alleyway, she inhaled and instantly regretted it. The putrid stench of the lemerons filled her nostrils. The reek was more prevalent here, away from the crowd. It only intensified the closer they got to the wall… and the lemerons on the other side.
“Ugh, that smell.” Travis pinched his nostrils with his fingers.
Ethan nodded. “More are gathering. More will come.”
“Thanks for that. I feel so much better.” Belle rolled her eyes.
“What will happen now?” Travis asked.
Change always terrified Jennie’s little brother. It only got worse after lemerons killed their mother.
Four years ago, the monsters snuck up on them in the woods. Her mother saw them first, screaming for Travis and her to run. They did. But Jennie looked back to make sure her mother was coming too. That’s when she saw it all. A lemeron slashed at her mother’s face with its claws.
Red gashes opened across her mother’s soft cheek sending blood flowing freely down her face. The lemeron clamped its jaws around her neck, as though it were hungry for her blood.
Jennie shrieked and tripped over a branch on the ground. Afraid she would fall and be the next meal, she looked away. Travis sobbed as he ran in front of her. They made it to the wall and through the gate. Jennie closed the door and did her best to lock it.
She collapsed to the ground, screaming and crying. She couldn’t shake the image of what happened. Clutching Travis in her arms, they both trembled. Others nearby heard their cries and came running.
She pushed the thought from her mind. It didn’t help to dwell on such dark things from the past.
“We go somewhere safe,” she said.
Jennie led the way. There was only one place in the Commune where she truly felt safe: the stables. She was at home with her horses. They were kind, gentle, and loyal. No one ever bothered her or her four-legged friends. It was more of a home to her than the house she shared with her father and brother. The stables were her sanctuary. It was where she felt closest to the mother she lost.
The streets were eerily quiet. Beyond the town square, the Commune felt abandoned. Only the wind swept along the cobblestones where feet would normally tread. The hairs on the back of Jennie’s neck stood on end.
A slinking figure darted from behind one building to another. As fast as he or she was, Jennie still spotted them. Whoever it was, they were trying to avoid being seen.
“Someone’s sneaking around up there,” Jennie warned the others.
“Who do you think it is?” Travis asked.
Belle huffed. “Who else? The Order.”
“Not good,” Ethan pulled Jennie by the hand down a nearby alley.
This was all so familiar. She fled through these streets with Belle and Travis once before trying to avoid an unseen foe. That was before everything she ever believed about her home turned out to be a lie. That was before she met Ethan.
Her heart fluttered. It was either from the adrenalin or from the way Ethan squeezed her hand. His firm grip was reassuring. The calluses of his fingers matched her own. He was strong and would do anything to protect her. He already proved that in the brief time she knew him. She would do anything to protect him, too.
The buildings thinned out, and Jennie saw the open fields and the apple orchard ahead. And her beloved stables.
Ethan studied the alleyways behind them. “Whoever that was creeping around, we lost them.”
“I’ll feel better when we’re back inside,” Belle said.
Jennie sprinted with Ethan to the safety of the stables. Belle and Travis kept pace behind them.
Jennie had to gather her thoughts, and her belongings, for the trip ahead. She nearly lost her footing as she ran down the hill, her body wanting to move faster than her feet.
She slid open the barn door. After they entered, she shut it, sealing them inside the safety of her stable
s. It was time to prepare for her trip.
Her stomach fluttered. She had never in her life taken a trip. She would leave the Commune with Ethan. It had been four years since she stepped foot beyond the wall. Back then, she never ventured much past the tree line.
With the lemerons gathering at the wall, she was overcome with nerves. The last time she was on the other side, those monsters attacked then killed her mother. She bit her lip and tasted blood. Sash split it open when he punched her. What little it had healed, she just undid. They weren’t safe inside the Commune, and they weren’t safe outside its walls.
No matter the danger, she and Ethan would find a way to get help.
Three
Travis
Travis looked on as his sister swept through her office, packing her shoulder bag with essentials. As she stuffed a hoof pick in her bag, he wondered what that was for. He didn’t think she would really go. Not out there. He couldn’t forget what happened. He couldn’t forget the screaming.
Four years ago, the monsters killed their mother in the forest. There were only a few of them back then. Now there were dozens, hundreds, maybe even more gathering at the wall. He could see it happening all over again… only this time they would kill his sister.