by Johnny Miles
Yuletide Knights 3:
THE HUNT FOR MAGIC
Johnny Miles
www.loose-id.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
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
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
Loose Id Titles by Johnny Miles
Johnny Miles
Yuletide Knights 3: The Hunt for Magic
Copyright © December 2016 by Johnny Miles
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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eISBN 9781682522813
Editor: Kierstin Cherry
Cover Artist: Syneca Featherstone
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the 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.
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Dedication
To Gary and Victor. Thank you for being the first.
To the crew at my local Fort Lauderdale Starbucks, where most of this was written and edited. Thanks for not kicking me out.
And as always, to my loving husband, who will never know the depth of my love for him
Prologue
Winter Solstice—345 AD
Temmen awakened with a start. Cold and disoriented, he felt something rough against the side of his face and the palms of his hands. Had he fallen asleep again on the forest ground and not realized? Lightning flashed, illuminating the inside of the hut. Temmen gasped. He had started off in bed. That he remembered. But in his sleep, he must have risen off the bed, pressing up against the thatched roof. If his parents found out he had levitated once more, they would surely tie him up at night, the way they used to when he was a child.
Struggling to contain his panic, Temmen carefully pushed himself away from the thatched roof and willed himself back down to his cot. Except he lingered, floating in midair.
Thunder rumbled in the near distance, frightening him. Temmen gasped and fell. The tiny cot he’d slept in since he was a baby and had long outgrown broke his fall, but his jaw snapped closed, and he bit the tip of his tongue. Temmen could taste blood. Outside, howling dogs helped mask the crash as well as his pained cry. Behind him, his parents muttered. Temmen remained still and held his breath. He prayed they wouldn’t awaken. For the most part his parents were heavy sleepers, but they possessed an uncanny sensitivity to forces they considered odd or dark. He didn’t even turn around to look at them for fear they might already be awake. But then he heard a creaking that meant they’d turned in their sleep. Seconds later they were snoring.
The twelve-year-old breathed a sigh of relief. He then rolled onto his side and managed to sit up without a sound. He looked up at the ceiling. It wasn’t a far drop. Five, maybe six feet. Temmen had jumped from much higher escaping the village bullies and their taunts. Falling from that distance, especially on one’s backside, was entirely different. It hurt like hell.
His entire body began to throb from the jolt of crashing onto his own bed. Gingerly, Temmen ran the tip of his swollen tongue over his teeth. Even if there was a wound on his tongue, at least all his teeth were in place, which was more than he could say for his parents.
Temmen stood and rubbed his backside, at the nub of excess skin that grew there like some mockery of a tail. He extended his arms, moved them around, then walked in a circle to ensure nothing was broken. He should have been grateful. Instead, there was a heaviness in his heart.
It’s starting again.
If he was unable to hide the strange happenings from his already cold and distant parents—or the villagers—they would all turn against him.
Alone. That’s what I need to be. Alone, they can’t hurt me.
Temmen imagined what it might be like living out in the woods by himself like a savage or some wild animal. He’d never survive the winter. He knew that much. First, he’d never learned to hunt. Second, he wouldn’t know what plant life he could eat. And third, he didn’t even know how to make fire! Not unless it involved an already lit torch pressed against another piece of wood. And yet, as frightening as it was to think he might not be able to fend for himself, it frightened him even more to think what people might do to him if he stayed. Including his parents.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the hovel. Temmen jumped as if he’d felt the stinging lash of a switch, while their meager possessions—a wooden table and chairs to his left, the creaky bed to his right where his parents slept, and Temmen’s crushed, splintered cot in front of a dying fire within the hearth—were bathed in a ghostly, silver-blue.
Thunder rumbled, and wolves bayed at the oncoming storm. Seconds later, the village dogs whimpered and whined. It felt like a warning.
The Wild Hunt!
The very thought of spirits, demons, and gods flying through the night sky made Temmen feel like something had crawled along his spine. His skin tingled with goose bumps, and the hair at the back of his neck stood on end. In the hearth behind him, the dying embers crackled, popped, and hissed, stoked back to life.
Temmen grew cold.
He had to get out before his parents or the villagers blamed him for what was about to happen. And yet he remained, paralyzed with fear.
From his right came a grumble, a snort, a creak. Then the loud passing of gas. Temmen dared glance at his father. The man lay on his back, eyes wide open, a stern look on his face. The boy held his breath. Had his father seen what h
ad happened?
Lightning struck once more, quickly followed by thunder. When his father did not move, Temmen forced himself to exhale, berating himself for being so frightened he’d forgotten his father at times slept with his eyes open.
And they call me odd.
Outside, the wind began to shriek and howl. Then came the unmistakable sound of tree limbs creaking and groaning.
Temmen stepped toward his parents’ bed.
Beside his father, Temmen’s mother whimpered and turned in her sleep. He tried to tell himself she was simply having a bad dream, that she was unaware he stood there looking at them. But over the years she’d turned away from him too many times for Temmen to take it as anything but rejection and a sign of her dislove.
A pang of longing filled Temmen suddenly.
Were other mothers so cold? Did other mothers deny a child love because that child was different? Were other fathers as harsh as his own? Did they take pleasure in beating out of their children what they themselves did not understand?
Lightning flashed, and the skies rumbled at the same time. The room was lit yet again as something crackled outside with an ominous tone. In his mind, Temmen saw a tree limb falling.
Leave. Leave now. Flee!
Temmen stepped away from his parents’ bed and hurried for the door, but a hand clasped suddenly about his wrist. He moaned with dismay, yanked back to where he’d just been standing. He looked away for fear of what he might see in his father’s eyes.
“What have you done, boy?” his father demanded, but Temmen would not answer. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
Temmen slowly turned his head to face the man. In the glow of light from the fire, his father’s eyes glittered with hatred.
“Did you hear me? What did you do?”
There was another flash of lighting. Thunder followed. The sound reverberated in the boy’s chest.
“N-nothing. It wasn’t me. It’s the Wild Hunt. I swear it!” Temmen tugged against his father, still trying to escape, but the man’s grip tightened.
“I don’t believe you, devil imp,” his father snarled.
“But it’s true, father! I swear it on my mother’s—”
Slap!
Temmen’s eyes watered, and he bit down hard on his already swollen tongue. He’d have fallen on his ass again if his father hadn’t still been holding on to him.
“Don’t you dare blaspheme you…you monstrosity!”
“What’s happening?” Temmen’s mother sat up and rubbed at her eyes.
“It’s your son. He—”
“Oh, so now he’s my son, is he?” Temmen’s mother snapped.
Lightning flashed and thunder clapped. The hut rattled beneath the awesome power of the storm now overhead. The hair at the back of Temmen’s neck bristled.
Heart racing, Temmen tried to pry his father’s fingers off him, thinking only of escape. Except the man was far stronger than he looked. He might be small, unbelievably thin, and almost frail, but Temmen had seen his father lift, then toss heavy sacks as if they were filled with nothing more than feathers.
“Please…let me go!” Temmen pleaded, ashamed of the sudden tears streaming down his face.
Outside, a woman screamed.
His father released him.
Temmen fell on his ass. Despite the pain and humiliation of falling a second time, he fixed his gaze on his father. As Temmen rushed for the door, it burst open. A gust of frosty winter air whooshed inside and knocked him back.
Did I do that? Temmen briefly wondered, but the sight just outside—a sight both terrifying and exhilarating—pushed the thought from his mind.
The hut across from theirs was ablaze. Dry since spring, it went up like kindling from the lack of rain. And yet, the villagers who lived there would no doubt blame it on him. They always did.
Temmen jumped to his feet. He pushed past his mother, who had climbed out of bed to help his father up from the floor. He felt one of them grab at the back of his nightshirt and heard it rip as he raced on.
“Grab him before he gets away!” his mother screamed.
Temmen’s father tackled him to the ground.
Struggling to break free, Temmen tapped into his fear and anger. Something swelled within him and blasted through him. Suddenly, his father no longer lay on top of him. Temmen dared to glance over his shoulder. His father hovered three feet in the air, a look of fright on his face. Temmen scrambled, but he heard the wind knocked out of his father’s lungs as the man fell.
Temmen stumbled. His father grabbed at his ankle. Temmen kicked back with his other foot and knew he’d connected when his father released him and wailed suddenly. Despite his initial reaction to flee, Temmen couldn’t help the surge of satisfaction that made him want to turn around and laugh with glee.
But there was no time for that.
Temmen forged on, blood racing, heart pounding, even as someone else picked up the cry.
“He’s getting away! Stop him!”
Temmen stared straight ahead and—
Fwump!
He was suddenly several feet from where he’d previously stood. Stunned, he looked over his shoulder at where he had been standing only a second ago. But he had no time to try to comprehend what had just happened. The growing mob of villagers, their anger building, was coming for him. Men. Women. Children. All of them coming at him with knives, pitchforks, and torches, ugly with a hatred that seemed to pour out of their souls in a thick, black plume.
The dogs, most of them riddled with fleas and bald from scratching—not to mention skinny with hunger—picked up on the excitement and joined in the chase.
Temmen ran, but he wasn’t fast enough. The dogs yapped at his heels. If only he could repeat what he’d done earlier! But what had that been exactly? Maybe it was as his parents said. Maybe he was the devil’s imp. How else could he have moved so far, so quickly?
Devil’s imp or not, I need to do it again!
Temmen trained his gaze on a spot before him, a spot where he wanted to be. A spot that would get him farther ahead of the crowd. He imagined himself there, and just like that—
Fwump!
Temmen glanced over his shoulder, at where he’d been less than a second ago. He’d gone farther, but it still wasn’t far enough away. The dogs—eyes bright with excitement, tongues lolling, ears flapping—still approached.
“Wait!” Temmen stopped suddenly and held up his hand. The dogs skidded to a halt, some of them piling into the ones before them with a whimper. Temmen would have laughed under different circumstances.
“What have I ever done to you? I’ve not beaten you like the villagers have. I’ve not kicked you or thrown you into the face of danger. All I’ve ever done was touch you. Scratch you behind the ears. And while everyone else ate the meat you hunted, while you looked on in hunger, was I not the one who shared with you?”
The dogs glanced at one another.
Could it be? Temmen wondered. It wasn’t possible that he’d just spoken to the dogs and that they’d understood, could it? And yet, thoughts popped into Temmen’s mind, so clear he would have sworn he were eavesdropping on a conversation already in progress.
“What were we doing?”
“Chasing boy!”
“No. Hunting. I like to hunt!”
Temmen heard a collective sniffing and panting in his mind. But it couldn’t be the dogs, could it? No. It had to be his own imagination. He tried to contain his confusion, but his mind was far too wild for him to understand any of what was happening. Plus, he couldn’t afford to remain where he was. He needed to keep moving. Already the villagers drew near, exciting the dogs with their own focused hatred.
Temmen ran.
A rock nicked him on the shoulder and sailed past. Another struck him in the back. Something hit the nub of his tail and caused great agony. Temmen grunted and tripped, tumbling to the ground. He felt the dirt beneath his nails, tasted the sweat on his upper lip as he dug into the cold, hard earth and
somehow managed to somersault into a stand.
He kept running.
Panic set in, along with a primal fear that made him forget all he’d witnessed, all he’d done.
Something thick and heavy and vile struck him between the shoulder blades with a splat. A stench exploded, so bad Temmen knew it could only be dung. Something else hit the back of his head. Something clipped his right ear. Wet trickled down his neck, and Temmen knew he was bleeding.
And still he did not stop.
He kept running, hoping they would stop, praying they would leave him alone. There was a sharp, stabbing pain in his side, and his shins ached. His lungs felt as though he were inhaling fire.
Temmen could hear the villagers. They sounded like a herd of horses. The din grew louder and the very ground shook from the stampede. But that couldn’t be the villagers, could it? That wasn’t just the rumble of thunder behind him. He pressed on, fighting the urge to look back.
A woman screamed. A man cried out. There were a handful of muffled groans. Then came a sound eerily like that of a lance in flight. Temmen heard a shrill cry and a thunk that sounded like someone getting pierced to a tree.
The wind at his back came faster now. Temmen could feel it on his neck like some live, wild animal. There was an odd and unpleasant sensation that made his spine tingle down to the very nub of excess flesh at his tailbone. It felt as though someone were about to poke him with something extremely sharp.
Temmen skidded to an abrupt stop. Instinct made him drop. He cried out as he landed painfully on his knees and clutched at his head. He cringed in anticipation as something hissed past and struck the ground nearby. Temmen glanced through squinted eyes at the arrow still quivering less than three feet away. He went ice cold with the realization that he could be dead or dying if he hadn’t stopped and dropped.
Temmen flipped over onto his backside, legs splayed, arms behind him. His eyes grew wide, mouth agape, and he wet himself as the villagers were cast aside by an invisible force like so many leaves in a storm.
Then the dirt and clouds parted. The moon shone brightly and the stars glittered.
