The Blooded Ones

by Elizabeth Brown

  THE BLOODED ONES

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  The Blooded Ones

  Copyright © 2020 by Elizabeth Brown

  All rights reserved.

  For information:

  http://www.ebbrown.net

  ALSO BY ELIZABETH BROWN

  WRITING AS E.B. BROWN

  The Legend of the Bloodstone

  Return of the Pale Feather

  Of Vice and Virtue

  A Tale of Oak and Mistletoe

  Time Walkers The Complete Collection

  Ghost Dance

  Season of Exile

  Through the Valley

  Song of Sunrise

  The Pretenders

  Time Song

  CONTENTS

  THE BLOODED ONE

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  PART FOUR

  THE TIES THAT BIND

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  INSIDE THIS HEART

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  ALL THAT REMAINS

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THE BLOODED ONE

  BOOK 1

  We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.

  - unknown

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  James County, Virginia

  October 2012

  “Stupid freakin’ barn,” she muttered. There really was no good reason for her to be out in the old barn this late, but she would lose what was left of her composure if she sat in the empty house any longer. She could hear grandpa as if he stood there beside her, his accent slurring his words together as it did when he was angry.

  “Maggie-mae, yer head is full of bricks, I swear it, girl!”

  Although she wanted to smile at the thought, she could not. It was still too fresh, too raw. Her lips twisted downward, and she shook off the flash of anger that surged as she thrust her fists into her front jean pockets and took a swipe at a tuft of loose straw with her boot.

  Death sucked; there was nothing much more to say about it. No one to blame, no way for her to fight the advance of time. The Reaper claimed him, and there was not a blessed thing she could do about it.

  Making things right around the farm? Well, there was a problem she could manage, and she had two good hands and two strong legs to work with. At least it was something.

  Sunset dipped away beyond the horizon and the crimson orange sky streaked with that glowing time of peace before nightfall, her anger seeming like an intrusion into the cycle of nature. The wind kicked up, fluttering the edges of her red parka so she zipped it fully closed, putting off the luxury of mourning when there was so much work to do. She heard the roar of the waterfall beyond the meadow, the riverbanks swollen to overflowing from the recent storm. It left the ground saturated, like an overused sponge.

  Her hood fell back off of her head with the next gust of wind and the rain soaked her long hair as she walked through the courtyard back to the barn, the damp earth squishing beneath her boots.

  The old dairy barn loomed first on her to-do list. Over one hundred years old, the field stone foundation stood crumbling in some spots, in dire need of reinforcement. Maggie was determined to ready it for the upcoming construction work by doing some of the labor herself, so she worked to clear the debris most of the afternoon. It was a solitary task, one that kept her occupied until early evening, but she was pleased with her efforts and glad for the distraction. It would be quite useful as a private foaling box when it was finally finished, far enough from the main horse barn to provide a birthing sanctuary for the broodmares.

  She shook the stiff work gloves off of her soiled hands and threw them onto the bale of musty straw at her feet. The muscles in her shoulders ached and her legs cramped at the effort, yet she bent to tighten the laces on her sodden work boots anyway. She rested one hand against the cold stone wall to balance herself, but as she straightened up she noticed a handful of loose rocks cluttering the ground. She considered ignoring the debris, then felt foolish after she worked so hard all day. What difference would it make if she spent a few more minutes picking up rocks? She had nothing else to do anyway.

  “Move yer lazy ass!” she berated herself. A laugh escaped her lips at the thought of how silly it was to be talking to no one in an empty barn, and she promptly bent to the task. She grasped the hem of her parka upward until it pouched, then tossed a few of the smaller stones into her makeshift bucket. As she reached out closer to the wall to chase a stone poking out beneath the scattered straw, something sharp jabbed her fingers and she drew back at the flash of pain.

  “Damn it!” she muttered. She jerked her arm away and sat back on her heels, grasping her throbbing fingers with her other hand and trying to contain the rocks in her parka with her elbow. A trickle of bright red blood dripped from two torn digits, both sliced clean across the fingertips. She instinctively raised them to her lips and stuck them in her mouth and her rock collection tumbled to the floor. It was a disgusting habit and probably not very sanitary, but it was the only thing to do at the time.

  To her dismay, her questionable method did little to stem the bleeding. She swore a few words under her breath and kicked her boot across the straw to find the source of her injury. It would likely turn out to be a rusted nail or piece of metal, and she scowled when she realized her tetanus shot was most likely overdue.

  “What addles yer brain, Maggie? I told you I would clear the barn!”

  Fingers still clenched around her bleeding hand, she glanced up to see Marcus striding toward the barn. Twenty years her senior and adamant about a promise to her grandfather to watch over her, he took his oath seriously, watching for a chance to swoop in and honor his duty. His hulking shoulders braced against the rain, the moisture dappling his unruly swatch of black hair and dripping into rivulets down his tight jaw. She could see his thick brows furrow over the slit of his blue eyes as he approached, stomping through the mud and apparently oblivious to the slush he sent flying in his wake.

  “Me brain is just fine, Marcus,” she teased, mimicking his thick accent. His lips thinned in a gesture of annoyance she was quite accustomed to, but his eyes softened as she rolled her eyes upward and gave him a half-hearted grin. She held up her damaged digits for his inspection. The wound to her fingers continued to pulse, obviously in need of a few stitches. “It’s my fingers that are the problem.”

  “Funny girl,” he grumbled as he inspected her hand. “What on Earth! Did you need to work yerself bloody? Couldn’t just listen to me for once and stay in the house, you red-headed hellion!” he snapped.

  “I couldn’t stay in there anymore, Marcus. Everything reminds me of him. I needed to be busy.”

  He blotted her bleeding hand with the edge of his flannel shirt, but raised his gaze to hers at her response. The annoyance in his face faded as she scrunched her nose and tried to shake off the glimmer of wetness threatening to spill from her eyes.

  “Ah, I’m sorry,” he grunted, dropping her hand and pulling her into a hug. “I didn’t mean to shout at you. Your granddad would kick my arse
for losing my temper.”

  “I can kick your ass on my own,” she replied, leaning her head against his shoulder for a moment. His chest rumbled and his arms tightened around her as he chuckled, and she could not resist a poorly aimed punch to his kidney to lighten the mood.

  “Maybe, my wee terror, maybe,” he agreed. With one calloused hand, he smoothed her damp hair from her forehead and looked into her face. “I miss him, too, you know, very much.” His voice cracked with the confession, and Maggie flinched at the uncommon display of emotion. Marcus had always been her constant, a steady guide throughout any crisis. The oldest friend of her grandfather and the closest thing to family she had, the solemn giant was all that was left to keep her grounded to a life that seemed more like a distant dream.

  “Yeah, well, there’s still work to do,” she mumbled. Mourning their common loss wouldn’t help get the work finished, and it was thoughts of missing her grandfather that she had been trying to ignore by working in the barn. She stepped away from him and wiped her hand on the leg of her denim jeans, avoiding his gaze to avert any more shared grief.

  “Yeah, there is, but you need a few stitches first. The mess will still be here on the morrow, I promise to leave it for you, but yer done for tonight. I’ll bring the truck around and we’ll go to the clinic. Wait here out of the rain.”

  She said nothing but nodded, acquiescence easier when it remained unspoken. His mouth tightened and he shook his head as he walked away, muttering under his breath. Maggie turned back to the pile of debris and bent to clear it before he returned.

  She did not locate the source of her injury, but she gathered the last few rocks. She picked one up and meant to toss it in her makeshift pouch, but it felt warm as if it had laid in the sun all day and she paused to look closer at it. It was oval shaped and smooth against her palm, and in the glare from the single light bulb hanging above her head, it gleamed a dark green color, nearly black. Her hand throbbed again, but this time it was from the spreading warmth in her palm beneath the stone. She leaned one hand against the wall to steady herself as she looked closer at it and noticed there was a vein of crimson running through the center. Was it some sort of red quartz, or had she stained the stone with her own blood?

  Bile suddenly rose in her throat and she choked back a wave of nausea. Shaking her head in disgust of her own weakness, she supposed the chore could wait until the morning and she could surely use the rest. She clutched the smooth rock in her bloody palm and pushed off the wall with her good hand to stand. Her vision abruptly exploded in a halo of darkness.

  “Whoa,” she said, reaching for the wall and missing. Tiny bursts of stars filled the blackness, and she grabbed for the wall again without success. Was she going to pass out? She thought it might be best to sit down, but control of her traitorous body was lost. Her legs buckled and collapsed in a useless heap as the rest of her flaccid body followed.

  “Maggie? Maggie!”

  She heard the echo of his voice but could not respond, unable to push the words from her throat with the pressure of the darkness engulfing her. An urge to lie down on the ground pulled her closer to the floor, as if she could melt through the dirt and join somehow with some primal force to stop the maddening spin of her senses.

  She felt a burning in her palm as the strange pulling sensation increased, reminding her of that time as a child when she waded too far out in the ocean and the current became too strong. The riptide sucked her out, persistent at first, but quickly changed into a demanding dredge that pulled her further and further from shore. Her first impulse was to fight the pull, but as it began to rise the pressure was too great, the only thing left to do was to submit and let it carry her away. Marcus was her savior that day, but in the barn, no one could help her. As the power surged from the stinging in her hand, the tide heaved her down to the earth where she thought if she could only press her cheek to the damp ground, the urge might be relieved.

  A sliver of fear washed through her blood as her vision began to change, the dark haze overcome by a growing ember of light. Bright, it was so bright! Her shoulder gave way and she let her head follow, eager to make the pressure stop but perplexed that the light now surged stronger, blinding her, with each inch she pressed closer to the earth. Numbness throbbed in every muscle, coursed throughout her limbs, and churned in a heap in her belly. It proceeded to drop down deep through her gut, and she thought she surely would vomit. She opened her eyes.

  Only a shimmering sunset greeted her confusion, a sunset that seemed to grow larger and larger until it engulfed her. At last, when she thought she would burn because she could not tolerate the heat anymore, she dug her face into the cold mud and closed her eyes to the madness.

  CHAPTER 2

  Something tasted gritty and damp when she tried to moisten her cracked lips. She figured she must have slept like a rock if she was waking up with a cottonmouth, but when she tried to swallow all she could taste was dirt. Maggie sighed and rolled over, and when she opened her eyes, nothing made sense at all.

  The palms of her hands were caked with wet earth when she pushed herself into a sitting position.

  “What the hell?” she groaned. She blinked a few times in an effort to clear the sleep from her eyes, and when her gaze finally sharpened, she was dismayed to find she truly was sitting on the ground. It also appeared she had rolled around in the dirt, because as she extended her arms away from her body she could see the mud slathered on her skin.

  A crescent moon was shining overhead illuminating the evergreens in a silver glimmer, the sounds of a busy forest smothering her senses. She was sitting in a patch of damp earth in the middle of the woods. Her fingers dug into the ground as the heady scent of evergreen needles fell upon her, and she could still taste the bitter blood residue in her mouth from her wound.

  Ok, she knew what was going on. She must be dreaming. It was the only explanation. Time to wake up! She closed her eyes again, knowing when she opened them she would be safe in her own bed, snug and cozy like she was supposed to be. Not sitting on her ass in the middle of the night in a forest.

  She gave it a go. Eyes closed, she counted backward in a methodical manner from ten to one. Yup, that should do the trick!

  Oh, good Lord Jesus!

  It did not do the trick. She remained there on her wet backside, just as before. Unease nagged her consciousness, turning into a rising howl as she glanced down at her hand covered with dirt and her own dried blood. Before she could make another attempt to wake from her curious dream, she heard the snapping of branches and could see the brush ahead separating. Something was making its way through the undergrowth, pointed in her direction.

  Maggie had never seen a bear before in real life, so it was a bit of a shock to see how immense the creature looked in her dream. Ah, okay! If she was trapped like a dirty little pig in an insufferable dream, she might as well get to see a bear up close! She smiled at her predicament and hoped she would remember it when she woke up.

  Walking on all fours, the massive bear was a solid chunk of dense brown fur. He lumbered toward her in a lazy swagger, his enormous head swinging back and forth. The creature’s head stopped abruptly when his deep brown eyes swung her way and his weight shifted somewhat backward on his haunches, although he did not actually sit down.

  Maggie stuck her dirty palm up and waved, as if the bear was sitting behind a fence at the zoo.

  “Hey…bear,” she whispered. It seemed odd that she could feel the dampness through her denim jeans as she rolled forward onto her knees. She was fine with ignoring that bit of information, much more focused on getting close to the animal in her dream. As she reached for him, the beast opened its mouth and uttered a snarl, and she scrunched her nose. Rancid breath, indeed!

  The beast rose upward on his hind legs, still roaring his displeasure, his front limbs extended outward so close to her head she could see the round pink pads on the underside of his paws. She pushed off with her feet and scrambled backward on her bottom, then
turned over to crawl away faster. Dream or no dream, she did not want to be eaten by a wild animal.

  Didn’t someone once say if you died in a dream, you died in real life?

  She was not willing to test the theory. She was still considering that idea when she felt the blow to her right shoulder followed by a searing pain as she was slammed flat to the ground, evacuating the air from her lungs in one painful rush. Her mouth again tasted like dirt as she struggled to gasp for air.

  “Ikali-a!” A shrill voice whooped from very near her face. Maggie could not see with her cheek pressed down into the ground, but she felt the air above her swoosh and the weight of the massive paw was suddenly gone from her back. The bear sounded angrier at the intrusion, his roaring mingled with the sharp rapid cries coming from what sounded like a man. Maggie pulled at the ground with her broken fingernails and struggled to breathe but her crushed ribs refused to expand. She managed to curl into a half sitting position and backed away from the melee at her feet. Her shoulder screamed in protest with every move and a steady trickle of blood trickled down the front of her parka.

  The scene in front of her was very much like a movie. The brown bear stood on his hind legs, his front paws extended outward, looking as if he was about to give the man standing in front of him a hug. Except that the bear was truly, really, there in front of her. Moreover, crouched between her and the bear was a tan-skinned man, lithe and quick on his toes, wielding what looked like a rather small knife in consideration of the size of his opponent.

  “Ikali-a nusheaxkw!” the man roared, as if in challenge to the beast.

  The stranger danced away from a swipe by the bear, eliciting another frustrated bellow from the beast. Maggie could see the muscles of his legs flex through the leather leggings he wore, and there were colored beads attached to a belt at his waist that bounced when he jumped. She had not gained enough breath back in her lungs yet to scream, but if she had, she would have been screaming by now from the absurdity of it all.