Dawn Of Hope: Charity Anthology

by J. A. Culican

  “Oh, then it must be the way I smell,” I chuckle against her hair quietly in the silence of the church.

  “No,” she chuckles. “It’s because you are inside of me, inside my heart, and I feel you.”

  “That’s impossible,” I say. “You’re crazy.”

  But I don’t lift my hands from her shoulders and I don’t move my mouth from her hair. I don’t want to tell her, this is exactly the way I feel, too. Like sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, I don’t even have to look at the clock or wonder what she’s doing. I know where she is. I can feel the fire telling me if she’s happy or sad. And I feel myself, separate from her, so I wake up and in sadness, but then I notice this other part inside of me, and it’s happy and I can tell it’s her, not me. And it sounds just as crazy in my head as it is coming out of her mouth. I inhale her deeply.

  “There is a fabric in the universe,” she says, “And I believe that all the threads are connected. So, if you were one part of the fabric and I am in another, we are still connected, regardless of how long we have known each other or how often we get to see each other. We are connected and even if I’m not there I can reach out to this thread and feel you.”

  Oh.

  She says it so simply and eloquently and yet she speaks my heart. And there is never a way in a million years I can tell her I feel exactly the same. Because if I admit it, if I tell her that, then there should be nothing keeping us apart. How could I not be with her? How could I not break everything in my life to draw our thread closer?

  “I do not believe in coincidence,” I say.

  “Neither do I,” she says. Then she turns to look at me, her face glowing in the dim candlelight that flows off the candles of the shrine of St. Francis. And I think of the Domani chapel back home in Soriano. And how I want to show it to her. How I thought of her so much as I sat in that chapel, but this is not the right place, this is not the chapel. These are the soaring walls of a forbidden zone.

  But the chapel is forbidden to her, also. It will never be allowed. It should never be allowed. Especially by me. I am the enforcer, the Alpha.

  “I think we met for a reason,” she says.

  “This is not exactly what I mean,” I say. “I do not believe all this New Age ‘everything happens for a reason’ nonsense. All I was trying to say, is there is a pattern to the universe, like this fabric you talk of. So, nothing is random and somehow whatever pattern there is in the universe has you and I in a single form.”

  “The shape of a heart,” she laughs, clutching her hands to her chest in the familiar shape of a valentine heart.

  “You’re such a dork,” I shake my head grinning.

  I grip her wrists and pull apart her valentine heart, pressing her hands down and against her sides as I pull her towards me. I press my lips against hers. Our first kiss. But I can’t just stop. I probe her mouth with my tongue.

  She gasps and pulls back.

  “We are in the church,” she laughs. “And you have a fiancée. You shouldn’t kiss me.”

  My whole body tightens at the mention of Violetta. “I do,” I say the words out loud because I want her to hear them again and make sure we’re clear. But it doesn’t stop the way I want her. It doesn’t stop the way I feel. If I could just take her and have her, press myself into her, I know some part of me will finally be fulfilled and she will ease the burdens and confusion and strains that I exist within. They will all lift away if we could share our bodies with each other.

  But I would be a complete ass if I ever did this with her.

  God, I would like to try.

  It’s impossible to stop myself. I push her back against the wall and lean in to crush her moist mouth to mine. She stops me with a firm hand on my chest and pushes me away.

  “No,” and her voice is very strong and very specific. “Stop.”

  “I can’t,” I say, a growl escaping from my throat. Every muscle in my body stretches against each other as if I’m about to snap apart.

  She looks up at me her eyes blinking bright and clear. “Then leave your fiancée.”

  I snap back from her. “What?”

  “If you want to be with me, leave your fiancée,” she repeats.

  “You are so- so firm, strict…” Words fail me, so I simply clasp my hands together in front of me.

  “If you care for me, if you want anything with me, then you cannot have a fiancée,” she says. Her lips tremble. This isn’t easy for her to say. But she doesn’t touch me and I don’t reach for her. “I cannot be with you in any way while you are engaged to somebody else. I only wanted to see you because we haven’t seen each other in two years. And those five minutes before was nothing.”

  “For me it was everything,” I whisper.

  A small smile pulls at the corners of her mouth, and I’m so happy to see that smile and I want it to grow. I want to make it bigger and I want to- I want to be everything she needs me to be.

  “Constanza,” I murmur. My hands go to the back of my neck and I stretch my chin up. All I see are the claustrophobic walls of the gray stone church rising above me about to crash down. She will cut me off. It’s like a prophecy in my head before she even says it.

  “I can never see you again.” Her words echo against the cold stone.

  I reach towards her, but she’s looking up at me with tears in her eyes, glistening like shallow pools about to drip from her lashes.

  “Stay. Stay with me.” I say, but when I reach towards her, she puts her hands up and ’ shakes her blonde head. “Please.”

  “You must be single.” Her voice is awful and quiet. She doesn’t look at me. She stares down her hands and clasps them together.

  I’d rather rip off my right arm than tell her I can never leave Violetta. But it is the truth. I stand there helplessly, my arms at my sides, my shoulders hunched under the weight of the truth inside me.

  She steps forward placing her hand so it rests over my heart. “I love you,” she says softly. “I don’t know why and I don’t know how I do, but I know that will never change.”

  Her hand burns through my shirt and into my bones making my heart beat faster and harder. It races to pump blood throughout my entire body, blood soaked in her energy, her love and her truth, and I am stronger and more powerful and more capable than ever before in my entire life.

  But I don’t dare touch her. If I touch her I will never let go.

  She takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “You know exactly how to get a hold of me,” she says firmly “But please do not contact me until you are single. I can’t take it.”

  The tears that have been threatening to spill over her cheeks fall in sad tendrils down her face. She swipes them away. I close my eyes, because the last thing in the world I ever want to see is her crying. Especially over me. I’m the last person she should ever shed tears for.

  She takes her hand away from my heart and a part of me goes with her, held in the palm of her hand. I inhale sharply, closing my eyes.

  When I open them, she’s gone. I want to run after her but it makes no sense. This way I feel about her. The way I crave her, it makes no sense. And there is no future in it. I must let her go. Forever.

  I stumble three steps forward and sit down on a bench facing the saint. Will she come back? Maybe she’ll say it’s okay for us to simply make love and then I can get her out of my system.

  I should never have come here to see her.

  My fingers grip the edges of the bench. My stomach turns as if I’m on a turbulent ship. My head hangs down, pulled forward to the ground but I need to desperately hold it up and stay steady. I must. My entire clan relies on me. An entire people need me. And here I am, sitting in a church of all places, desperately wanting to choose a young American human to keep with me like a pet.

  It was so wrong of me to even come here.

  I stand up to leave, a deep sigh ripping from my chest. The stark grief as if she has died in my arms drags at every cell in my body.

 
It’s best I go to the camp and check on the ones there.

  But there is something under the smell of the stone and incense. There is a tangy, musk in the air.

  A shifter.

  But not one of us. The smell is darker and deeper, mangy and massive. If I place it… that’s the smell of a Berzerken.

  And if I can smell him, then he can smell me too.

  I slip off the bench and head towards a side door of the church, pushing it open and letting light stream in on me.

  “What the hell were you doing in there?” Lucia’s voice is grim as she yanks at my arm.

  I blink in the bright light. “Go!” I push her away from the church and into the long shadows of the afternoon.

  “Not until you explain to me what you were doing with that blond girl and in a church!” she exclaims.

  “There is a Berzerken in there!” My grip is firm against her elbow. I will drag her if I have to.

  Her skin pales and eyes go wide. “Berzerken?” The horror is deep in her voice as she turns and runs low with me. We round the corner, but I don’t lose my grip on her elbow as we make our way down a small alley lined with cafes.

  We have to shift.

  We have to get out of here. But shifting here is not going to happen.

  “Slow down,” Lucia hisses as people start to stare at us.

  I pace my steps to hers, though every particle of my body wants to shift and escape. Leave the church, leave the Berzerken, leave Constance…. Leave myself.

  “Marcello?” The American accent rings loudly in the small street. Lucia and I both whip around to see Constance sitting in a sidewalk café with her parents. My life is a cliff that has just crumbled into the stormy ocean below.

  Lucia is behind me, hidden, but I know Constance has glimpsed her. By her crestfallen face I am sure she believes it’s my fiancée.

  “Constance.” The word is a whisper trailing out of my mouth. But Lucia is pulling at my hand, taking me away from the place my heart feels most at home. My eyes close briefly, as I turn. I can’t watch Constance’s expression as I leave her.

  Forever.

  Lucia drags me around the corner to a place where no one is watching. She doesn’t waste time with words, she reaches for the energy, the golden light in each of us and her body shrinks. Hair sprouts along her limbs as her face elongates. In seconds, she is in her fox form nipping at my ankles.

  I sigh as I let go, allowing the animal in me to rise and take over escaping into the beast who lives within me.

  Together we race for the city gate that will give us access to the Tuscan countryside.

  The End

  * * *

  Continue the Domani Curse Series in book one, Forever Fated.

  Coming Soon

  https://www.amazon.com/Melle-Amade/e/B01LXJQ7YD

  * * *

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  Headmaster of the Invisibles

  By Elizabetta Holcomb

  Headmaster Of The Invisibles

  Prequel Novella to The Invisibles Series

  Copyright © 2016 Elizabetta Holcomb

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted an any form or by any means including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written consent of the author.

  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 events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editor:

  Brenda Letendre, Write Girl Editing

  www.facebook.com/writegirlediting

  The Margate Royal School of Deaf Children, 1806

  There are times I wonder if I was daft in the head when I agreed to this assignment. Being in a French prison camp wasn’t so terrible. The French prisoners were separate from the foreigners. We were allowed confession, mass, and it was my understanding that our food was better. The bread didn’t have maggots and the broth was—usually—fresh. We each were assigned to our own bed with semi-clean linen. Let me clarify that by clean I mean there were no lice in my mattress. I had my own piss pot, too. That in itself was a boon.

  So why was I here, in this school, teaching a pack of misfits how to behave? I wasn’t a nanny. My specialty was extracting vital information. I was a spy; a friend of Napoleon (the term friend used loosely), and taught by the best of the French Fleet. There were times I felt I was living a nightmare.

  “Pardon, headmaster. You have a guest in the north foyer.” It was the pretty, petite maid. I remembered her because her hair was a bright shade of ginger. I set down my pen and closed my eyes. My diary would have to wait.

  “Who is it now?” I barked. I could hear her fidgeting, and that placed me in an even fouler mood. The silence stretched. “For goodness sake, speak!”

  “It’s his l-l-lordship. He c-came all the way from—”

  “I’ll take it from here, Lucy.” The voice of his “lordship” cut through the air like the gunshot of a battering war announcement. There was more shuffling as Lucy darted out of the room in a whirlwind of the layered clothing maids insisted on wearing. Her ugly little lace cap was more than likely tumbling off her curls. “I see you’re busy.” The door slammed.

  I was caught like a mouse in a trap. “These papers will not be correctly marked by themselves,” I said, opening my eyes. I wasn’t about to tell him I kept my private thoughts in a journal. His lordship was attired in full naval regalia. For an Englishman, the Duke of Margate made a fierce appearance. “Really, Simon. Your timing is awful, as usual. How will I ever finish grading these essays?”

  Simon bristled. “Time is at my disposal. There is no bad timing when one travels time.”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed away from the desk, sliding the journal under a stack of loose papers. “Must you remind me of that each time we meet? I understand your ego is overly stimulated and inflated. Like most dukes, you need constant affirmation. However, I’m not one of your subjects. There will not be any ‘your lordship’ from me.”

  “I didn’t expect it,” Simon growled.

  I smiled. “Would you like a seat, then? Tea? You Englishmen love your tea and savories. Shall I ring for a tray?”

  Part of me knew I should fall to my knees and kiss his feet. He’d saved me from being tortured and beheaded. But I could never manage the gratitude. One look at his smug, handsome face and I wanted to punch him. I had no tolerance for the lifestyle that followed the titled gentry in this foul country. There was no loyalty, no faith. They were Protestant! Vows meant nothing to them, and the Duke of Margate was the worst heathen of all.

  “I haven’t the time,” Simon said.

  I smirked. As usual, our conversation was revolving like a wheel with no end. “And yet you only just said that time was of no essence to you.”

  Simon’s nostrils flared; his hands fisted.

  I inspected the cuticles on my left hand. “But we digress. I’m sure I will have plenty of opportunity to be disrespectful in the future.” I waved my hand and gave him a bored look. “Do go on telling me why you are here. I have a classroom of children awaiting. My time does happen to be important, and it’s fleeting by the moment.”

  “There is a rumor circulating; we intercepted it in medieval Dover. A band of gypsies traveling by horse and carrying bow and arrows met up with a group of peculiar looking men. They heard the men ask a pub maid in Kent if the Tremaines frequented the village. We suspect the heir to Dover’s seat will be kidnapped. Again.�
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  I squared my shoulders and damn if I didn’t pop up a bit in my seat. “Jareth’s son?”

  “Aye,” Simon replied. He didn’t appear to delight in my unease. He wrung his hands together and I realized he was anxious. He was showing me a vulnerability as well. “No one saw this coming. We didn’t think our enemies would be stupid enough to repeat the matter.” He looked me in the eye. “The Amalgam is placing all compounds on high alert.”

  Yes, yes, I knew all of this. The kidnapping of the heir of Dover was what originally brought me here. I arrived a month after the event and found a dormitory of scared, untrained children. It had taken years to set things in order, and now this?

  “All right.” My words were weighted. I shifted papers, looking for anything blank on which to make notes. I reached for the quill and dipped it in ink. “Tell me all you know concerning the possible abduction. I want dates, places, and names of all involved.”

  Simon paced as he dictated and I jotted the information. My insides were churning as the visions of a child abduction swam about my mind. I actually liked Jareth despite the fact he was an Englishman and a duke. Jareth’s children often played in the school when he visited. Among the thorns of the English, this family was a rose. Nothing about Jareth Tremaine’s family followed normal society. The Duke of Dover was a kind, generous employer and faithful to his duchess. That was rare.

  “Auguste, do you hear me?” Simon asked.

  I shook my head, clinching the quill. “Oui, je comprends.” A heavy fog surrounded me. I shook my head again and repeated, “Yes, I understand.”

  Simon frowned. “See that the children stay alert and are prepared for an attack.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” I mumbled. I passively waved my hand. “They will be prepared. I will begin immediately.”

  “Jareth offers the aid of our best guardians.”

  “Good heavens, no,” I said sternly. If I disliked Simon, then I hated the guardians. The ‘best’ of them were rude and brutes. I didn’t want them among my pupils. They’d leave no stone unturned until they uncovered everything. “I will be well on my own. I know the students better than anyone.”