Queen of Skye and Shadow complete box set : Queen of Skye and Shadow Omnibus books 1-3

by Thea Atkinson

  I knew it was best to just gather up whatever I could from my New Denver home and lift off out of town for a while. Maybe find my way to the water and set up camp while the weather was still warm.

  I felt sad at the prospect. I'd put down roots that I was happy with. I'd thought I could settle.

  Hunter coming to town made that impossible.

  Each step I padded away one thought ticked through my mind.

  Get out. Get out while I could.

  I'd spent enough of my life running from things. The few years I'd spent with Hunter and his cronies I'd convinced myself my life had meaning, that I had a future. Roots. I even convince myself that I could live with myself doing the things they wanted of me. I was able to pretend that I'd put my past behind me. That I'd grown up. That those things didn't matter anymore.

  One year into my tenure with the Ruby Skulls, I realized exactly how much the past shaped the person you became. And I couldn't escape the memories of my childhood and the life I'd lived with my grandmother and my mother in New Denver before my life became untenable.

  I'd been scrawny then by all accounts, a girl in love with stories and with knives and swords who lived lived on the outskirts of New Denver and had plenty of places to pretend to be the warriors I'd read about in the old books.

  I'd taught myself to become ambidextrous and hunted squirrels for stew and eggs for breakfast. I fancied myself Boadicea or Joan of Arc. I was a warrior at the ripe old age of five. In my mind anyway.

  None of that mattered when my granny died. That was the year brigands arrived at the homestead. Come to think of it, both of those things might well have been related. I had faint memories of men with bushy mustaches and pock marked skin slipping into the front gate one hot afternoon. I distinctly remember the gang of men telling her they'd take care of us if my mother did her share.

  Her share. Seemed a pretty benign term to call what they wanted from her especially with all that hope staining the air. No one took the time to hide what they did with my mother. There wasn't a day or night that someone didn't use her if she so much as walked by. None of those benevolent bandits turned an eye to me at all until she died too.

  Nothing was the same after that.

  Maybe it hadn't been the same before and as a kid I just didn't know the way of things. My mother wasn't strong, at least not by my measure, not like my grandmother. Not in a way I understood as strength.

  She gave into those men, let herself get used up by a gang of thugs living on their own too long and withered herself into an early grave.

  All to protect me.

  I knew that now if I didn't know it then. I finally realized the kind of strength it took to make that sacrifice. I battled the guilt of my judgement for years and I didn't think I'd ever escape it.

  I knew what sex was by the time I turned six. I killed my first man when I was ten, and by the next year I was on my own.

  That was what? eight years ago?

  What I'd learned of the world was that it was a mess of tribal defense and xenophobic violence. It had gone back to the way things had been in the legends and books of old. It was medieval in the worst of ways.

  Every city and township in the nation quarreled with the other. They reaped and raped and created chaos out of a world starved for peace. Hunter and his Ruby Skulls kept them in line, but it was out of terror.

  When I'd returned to New Denver just months ago, it was out of desire for vengeance as much as to flee Hunter. I'd grown uncomfortable with the Ruby Skull's credo because it brought memories bubbling to the surface that made my skin crawl. I tried my best to run from them too, but in the end, I knew I had to face each nasty recollection, cauterize the wound that kept reopening in the dark of night.

  But when I arrived, the men who had ravaged my home and mother had long gone and left the homestead in a dilapidated mess. I was left to do nothing but stew in my own sullen anger. I filled my days trying to fix the place up and make it habitable as a way to burn off the energy created by fury

  It was in bartering supplies from my neighbors to fix up the place to something passably livable, that I began to see something different about the world I lived in. There were still some good people in it. They were beleaguered and afraid and in some cases jaded, but there were still some goodness some sense of decency. I started to feel as though there was hope.

  Now, as Gentry trotted along the road, the dregs of Old Denver gave way bit by bit to the long and dusty rode that led into the new, and I felt the weight of those years.

  Gentry was dragging his feet by the time we came within sight of the town because I refused to stop and rest and wasn't sure if I'd make it before dusk if I dallied. Usually, when I visited the library, I made camp in the big reading room with the still-working fireplace, reading by the light of the fire and eating jerky I'd made from apples. I'd sleep wrapped in my blanket and head back the next day.

  Not today. Two trips in one day was pushing both our endurance. My nerves were shot keeping an eye out for wolves and the odd dark fae. Twice Gentry reared back at nothing and I'd had to fight to stay on his back.

  And that was exactly what he did now, except this time, I lost the battle, and he dumped me backwards onto the dirt several feet from the town signpost.

  I watched him bolt off down the street and head for home, leaving me wondering where he'd got the last bit of energy.

  Exhausted and sore, I limped along the last few feet of the inroad, glad that I'd dropped the books and sword back in Old Denver.

  The sight of the first shops lining the street, their exterior stalls etched out in sunset put a bit of fire in my step. I could smell the smoke from a homesteader's chimney that suggested they were burning old rubber. The black sworls that rose over the town confirmed it.

  The sounds of activity filled the air: horses in paddocks along the strip snorted and dogs ran the length of the street, getting yelled at when they snitched a piece of meat from a butcher's stall.

  It might have an ancient west feel except the bustling had the distinct flavor of actors in regular clothing, practicing their parts in a medieval period movie. Stone and soddie buildings lined the main street and the winding dirt pathways cut out of the wilderness that was the foothills of the mountains shouldering their way heavenward behind the town.

  Swords hung from scabbards on exterior walls.

  There were no pistols, guns, or bullets in the nation to be had. And if there were, ammunition had long been exhausted.

  I suspected Sadie Shaw and her Ponies carried any of the few pistols remaining in the country. There was rumor that she'd come upon a government bunker early in the inception of the Pony Post and that she hoarded the weapons and ammunition she'd found, then sealed the bunker, which was the only way she and her Ponies could travel the nation unaccosted.

  But the regular citizens didn't have that kind of weaponry. They had no technology. And not because of some explosion or nuclear war that plunged the 21st century into chaos and devastation. No. Hope did that just fine.

  Two generations past had ruined the water with chemical spills and noxious oil. Somewhere in the South Pacific, a load of heavy water leeched into the system. What little fresh water was left ended up under government protection. A new world order was formed around keeping it clean.

  Minds from around the globe puzzled it out. And they managed it, by damn. They found new technologies to clean up the water—even the liquid we'd thought irreversibly tainted. And then they went to work cleansing the world of parasites and disease. And they managed that too. It was a victory such as the globe had never seen.

  We got clean water galore and the coalition that formed because of the emergency agreed to shoot their nuclear armaments into space where they would remain pristine but unused for all eternity. Because by Jesus, what was the sense of risking annihilation after coming that close?

  We had a renewed hope. At least that's what my granny told me. I wasn't born in those times. I was born later, a full
generation past the Great Hope. But I remember my granny, and I remember the light in her eye when she spoke of it. I might have only been four or so, but heck, even a kid got infected by the dream of a new Eden as she called it.

  It wasn't technology that ruined our society. It was hope. With no threat of annihilation from nuclear means, some folks began to think what we really needed was to return to a world free of technology. A cultish sort of leader emerged: Cliff Arnold.

  Such an ordinary, plain, and uninspiring name that is for a spectacular sort of megalomaniac.

  In his eyes, technology was the devil and nature was the god.

  So what did he do?

  He set off an electro magnetic pulse that knocked out every bit of technology that used electrical signal. The world changed in the time it took for a light to go out.

  Planes fell. Word was they burned on the ground all over the globe for days. Cars crashed in the streets. The internet became no more than a memory. And then those elite minds who marshaled creative thought for the good of all humanity rallied against Cliff Arnold, even managed to take out one node before the organization who called themselves the Shadows overran them and took back their command.

  The Shadow members rebuilt the EMP, then they armored it up to keep anyone from knocking it out again.

  Ever.

  After that, the government and all those creative masses of brains just gave up. They retreated into bunkers. Thought themselves too good to live above ground and hunkered down beneath it.

  And even when a bunch of earthquakes and tsunamis turned the states of the west coast into one long string of islands and destroyed the EMPs in that area, the government stayed underground. They didn't care that anyone above them was dying, suffering, or killing.

  They just set up their own military on the Seychelles, created electricity all their own that they wouldn't share because word is they used it for communications and video surveillance.

  No one gets on the islands and lives to come back.

  And so that's where we were. Plunged into the medieval ages with a 21st century mentality.

  We have swords and knives and hammers. Things you could blacksmith into existence.

  A purity came to the world that showed in the encroaching bits of nature as She reclaimed the water and the woods. Fauna crept back from extinction. Breeds of legend dipped their toes back through whatever portal they'd fled to.

  But it didn't change the fact that humanity wanted ease of living. They craved the same things they'd always had. Living without technology was work, even if you were used to it.

  Evidence of that culture was everywhere, from the clothes people wore to the way they bartered for items never seen during the Renaissance. To my eye, looking onto the streets of New Denver, knowing I'd heard music from an MP3 player from a rock and roll band long gone, I saw the town with fresh eyes. I heard it with new ears.

  I wasn't sure I could go back to keeping it simple. The taste of technology was like honey. No wonder the old world had nearly destroyed itself in its pursuit of more. Didn't matter how beautiful the world was becoming as nature crept back in, those few notes had stirred something in me.

  I scanned the stalls around me with a sense of longing and noticed Myste Vandran ambling along the market side as barter stalls pulled in their wares for the night.

  It was odd to see her out at all. She was peculiar in her way. I knew her on sight, most of the town did, but it wasn't because she was disrespectful or mean-spirited. She just kept to herself and didn't go out of her way to help anyone. Never a nod or word of invitation.

  I understood that, and I even respected it. Most times I felt like that myself, but Myste took it a bit further. She wore a bedraggled shirt from a generation earlier that read I Don't People and she partnered that piece of fashion with a leather collar lined in studs and a nose spike that went through one nostril all the way to the other one.

  But to my eye, she wore those things as a way to maintain her distance from people. It worked. But she looked uncomfortable in them; she kept running her finger beneath the collar.

  I didn't know Myste well. No one did. You couldn't barter help out of Myste. Her small piece of property was on the edge of the hogbacks, out of sight of town.

  I got that too.

  I lived in a small bungalow cut into the face of the hogbacks, a dark little hovel that I'd booby-trapped with anything I could find to keep that seclusion guaranteed. I didn't like invasion. Once I'd escaped the gang of thugs who killed my mother, I trusted few and far between.

  I could see the outline of my own chimney against the outline of the mountain now. It rose above the treeline in a crooked line. It had been an unusable tower of rust-colored brick since I'd returned and I knew it well by now as a marker.

  I was ten minutes from home by horse. Twenty by foot. And I was incredibly thirsty and hungry. With Gentry might have managed a burst of energy that no doubt had him already picking his way up the path to home but I needed fuel.

  I ambled over to the stall in front of the brothel. They always had the best barter for hungry, thirsty folk in the hopes that they'd also be randy.

  Or was it the other way around?

  I knew Sadie had found her partner there, and I knew they were friendly.

  I contemplated the pencil in my pocket that I'd taken from the dead guy. I'd figured it could go nicely along with the ledger I'd bartered with Sadie some time back, but I was hungry now. I didn't need a pony to send a message or carry goods.

  That meant the pencil might be more useful to me now then later.

  I shrugged and headed toward the stall but didn't make it more than three steps before I heard the beat of horse hooves. Lots of them.

  I spun on my heel, a cloud of dust rising from my boots to swirl toward the one announcing the arrival of a band of horsemen.

  I knew one face.

  Hunter Wolf had arrived, ahead of schedule and in force.

  -4-

  Catching Hunter Wolfe's eye was not something anyone wanted to do. Not if they valued their life, anyway. You catch his attention and he sees you and then his wheels of scrutiny begin. The judge button engages and he starts measuring you in ways that will come back to haunt you later if you so much as steal an apple peel to feed your kid.

  I turned my head just enough that I could see him out of the corner of my eye.

  Hunter, the bastard himself, and five of his Ruby Skulls dismounted and stood right in the middle of the street as though they belonged there. I didn't recognize any of his cronies, but I recognized him.

  I couldn't make out if he was looking at me, or indeed, if he even saw me. The encroaching dusk was biting into the the light and casting deep shadows along the ruts of street made from tangles of upheaved asphalt. I'd been one of the residents who worked to hammer and dig them into the earth and I knew virtually every inch of it.

  Where he stood, an old world dime had been pressed into the petrified tar. It was a remnant of a world long gone and I'd taken particular care in arranging the hunk of pave so that the head of the dime was facing the East, where the old city lay. I wasn't sure why I'd done so, but it seemed fitting to have the head of that coin facing the rising sun the way the dead were buried.

  It seemed equally fitting now, that Hunter would scuff his filthy boots over it.

  "Get me a room," he yelled at one of him men, a swarthy fellow who looked to have a bit of golem in him.

  The man's movements were slow and deliberate and seemed to annoy Hunter who kicked him in the backside to propel him along faster.

  A few kids ran to collect their horses and hobble them in the community stable. They'd barter dear for the reins later, I knew.

  Everyone else stepped one foot closer to their wares even as I sidestepped behind a fabric stall. I had no doubt they'd be packing up faster than usual this evening. Most folks didn't know Hunter Wolfe by sight but knew trouble when they saw it. Especially when trouble looked like a man in his forties who car
ried a weighty sword already pulled from its scabbard.

  The message was clear to all but the dirt. Justice could be compelled at any moment.

  "I need a room," he said to the general vicinity. "I'm here to stay. Someone needs to see this place turned into a shining example of justice."

  At the word justice, several barterers spun on their heels, leaving their wares behind as they fled.

  Folks sure knew what justice meant. The nation knew by now. Much of it thanks to the Pony Post who spread the news far and wide even as they delivered packages to each township.

  The Ruby Skulls had a reputation and it was nasty.

  Hunter's men were already fanning out onto the sidewalks, heading for shops getting ready to shut down for the night. They might pretend they were here to set up court, but I knew there was an ulterior motive besides justice. I'd never told Hunter where I lived; he knew some of my past, but much of it I had kept to myself.

  I immediately suspected Colton Musk. If he had tied together the threads of Hunter and my history, then he had undoubtedly passed on the information. I wondered what he was going to get from it.

  I noticed Myste studying at Hunter from her spot on the sidewalk. It wasn't an outright stare, but more of a surreptitious one from beneath a lowered head. But her posture said everything I couldn't read in her eyes.

  For the first time, I noticed the bow slung over her back and the quiver of arrows that partnered it. She actually looked like she wanted to pull one and send it Hunter's way but with a quick click of her heels she spun and strode down one of the alleys that led to the hogbacks.

  If I were smart, I'd do the same thing.

  Except I've never been submissive and if I was going to get caught, I was going to go down fighting.

  Save for the brief bit of out-of-character flight back at the library, I preferred to face my demons. The physical ones at least. All the others, I just buried until I didn't feel them anymore. Detaching from emotion made it easier to do what needed to be done, even if it was violent.