by H. D. Gordon
Our kiss became less gentle and more intense. I couldn’t really believe what was happening, but now that the man was in my clutches, he was going to have a hell of a time freeing himself from my grip.
I’d only ever kissed two other men in my lifetime, so I didn’t have too much to compare it with, but I did know that kissing Thomas Reid was not the same as kissing Nick Ramhart or Caleb Cross had been.
In fact, there was really nothing I could compare it with. I’d never felt this way before, and for the life of me, I didn’t want it to stop. My body acted, and I jumped up, wrapping my legs around his waist as his hands gripped my thighs to support my weight. Carefully, he took a couple steps back and sat down on the crate where we’d spent many a nights and mornings over the past quarter year talking or just sitting together in silence.
I sat on his lap facing him, drinking him in as if he was water, and I was dying of dehydration. I really don’t know what would have happened next if the sirens hadn’t gone off somewhere in the not-too-far distance.
I paused, pulling back, my head tilting to the side as I picked up the sounds of a struggle, of someone needing help.
Thomas mumbled a curse, his hands still gripped tight on my hips, his eyes closed and his forehead resting against mine. “You have to go, don’t you?” he asked, though it wasn’t so much a question as a resignation.
I hopped off of him before my body insisted otherwise, and reached into my jacket pocket, pulling out the black mask and slipping it over my eyes. Rolling my shoulders and neck, I covered my head with my hood backed away from the ledge.
“I have to go,” I agreed, my senses on high alert and still zinging from what had just happened between us. The night was calling me, or rather, it was calling her, and I had no choice but to answer.
A war had been going on in Grant City long before I’d arrived here, but there was no way past the fact that I’d enlisted myself into it, and it was far too late to back out now. I’d made my choice, and I was going to see it through, no matter what that meant. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had happened, but I had decided that Grant City was mine, and I was a girl who protected the things that belonged to her. I was a girl who would fight for what she believed was right.
And Gods help whoever decided to stand in my way.
Before leaping over the edge of the building, I placed my hands on either side of Thomas’s face and planted the quickest of kisses on his perfect lips. With a smile that I felt deep in my soul, I said, “But I’ll be back… Will you wait for me?”
Thomas stared up at me from where he sat upon his humble crate, the hazel of his eyes hypnotizing despite my need to leave. His handsome face was so full of faith, his aura so filled with emotions I hesitated to give verbal designation to, that I found myself hanging on his next words the way the stars hang from the heavens.
Thomas said, “Aria, I always do.”
With this reassurance, I leapt over the side of the building, my body sailing through the air over Grant City, high above the structures and skyline, high above the people and the problems, amongst the clouds and the rank carbon, but nowhere near the elevation that had lifted my battered heart.
AFTERWORD
The bell above the door chimed as he entered the flower shop, announcing his arrival the same as it did for every other customer who walked through the door at Roses.
As if it were his name on the deed to the place, he flipped the OPEN sign hanging in the window to CLOSED and replaced his hands coolly in his pockets.
Rose, the owner of the shop, and the reason he was here, stood behind a counter, reading a magazine. As her head lifted, a smile started to form on her face, but it slipped free upon taking sight of him.
This did not surprise him. He had that affect on people.
The rise and fall of her throat was audible as Rose swallowed. “Can I help you?” she asked.
He came to a stop before her, the only thing separating them the counter behind which she stood. “That is indeed the question I came to talk about, Roseanne,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
“Who are you?” she asked, but he could see in her eyes that she knew the answer, that she was well aware of why he was here.
He wandered over to one of the refrigerators that held an assortment of flowers, the click of his shiny, expensive shoes the only sound in the small space save for the pounding of her heart, which he could hear well enough to keep time to.
“Where is she?” he asked, and the look in his dark eyes warned her against the continuation of her feigned ignorance.
“She left town,” Rose said, speaking lowly, as if she were afraid someone would hear her. “She quit yesterday, said she was leaving Grant City.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, and had hardly finished saying the words when she yelped out in pain and stumbled back, falling hard on her bum and awakening the arthritis in her joints.
“I don’t know!” she shouted, crawling back on the floor like a crab as he walked around the counter and moved to stand over her.
“Keep your voice down,” he warned.
Rose’s eyes were growing glassy, and she sniffed and lifted her hands as if to shield her face. “I don’t know,” she said again, more quietly. “I swear to you. She just told me she had to leave.”
A silence followed where the fear in the woman’s eyes intensified in steady increments, the end result being a state of true terror. When people came face-to-face with real monsters, they didn’t need to know the beast’s name, or the things done in its past that would prove their title earned. In his experience, they recognized it. They saw something different behind his gaze, or maybe something missing in his soul.
Either way, they were right to cower. This was called survival instinct, and it was rarely, if ever, proven wrong.
Hiking up the pant legs of his custom-tailored suit, he knelt down in front of the woman, the gold and diamonds around his wristwatch glinting as the fluorescents above caught on its edges. He reached up and brushed one of her tears away with his cold, rough thumb.
With a twist of his thin lips, he wiped the tear on her shoulder as she shuddered beneath his touch.
“Okay, Rose,” he told her in the gentlest of voices, “here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to tell me everything you know about your former employee, Miss Aria Fae, and in return, I’m not going to hydrate every plant in this place with your blood.” He paused, smiling. “How does that sound?”
The woman whimpered, nodded.
“Good,” he said.
“If what I know leads you to her,” Rose said, gathering every ounce of courage she must’ve possessed around her, “will I still get the reward money?”
This made him laugh. He had a terrible, gut-twisting laugh, and the woman couldn’t help but cringe away from it. “So predictable,” he muttered, a certain indifferent disgust filling his face.
“It’s for my daughter,” the old woman said quickly, the pleading tone of her voice setting his nerves on edge, like nails down a chalkboard. “She’s really sick and—”
“I know about your daughter,” he snapped, his face drawing close enough to hers to kiss. The fear practically reeked off of her. “And I’ll kill her myself if the mood strikes me.” He paused again, his head tilting. “Do you understand how things are now, Rose? Do you understand what you’re into? Whom your allegiance must be to?”
More tears sprang from her eyes as she shuddered and nodded.
He stood, sniffed once, and inclined his head, staring down at her where she sat hunched against the wall as if she were a vermin who had ventured through his living room. “Good,” he said. “Very good.” He smoothed a hand down his suit jacket and leaned back against the counter, that chilling smile back on his cold face once more. “Let’s hear it, then. Tell me everything you know about the Masked Maiden of Grant City, and I don’t think I need to remind you not to leave anything out.”<
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“Okay,” Rose said, fighting through the tears. “But what are you going to do to her? She’s just a child. Aria’s just a girl.”
He laughed again, a grating sound that carried no humor. Like a flash of lightning, or the strike of a coiled cobra, his hand shot out and gripped her throat, cutting off her air in an instant.
Rose’s face began to go purple, and he watched with indifference as it did so. Between teeth that would have more aptly been fangs, he said, “It’s much too late to be worried about that now.” With one last clench of his fingers, he shoved her back down to the floor, releasing his hold on her throat. “Now, talk.”
Once Rose could draw in air again, she did.
THE END… FOR NOW
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, thank you to my family, friends, and readers. I wanted to do this section a little differently, and send some shout-outs to people I’ve met over my past few years of publishing, strangers who have supported me and my work for no other reason than they wanted to. I thought it was time to acknowledge some of you by name, and please know that if I’ve left you out here it’s only because there are too many to list, and there is a likelihood your name will be featured in future books. So, here we go.
The utmost of thanks goes to:
Janelle Stalder
Karina Espinosa
Larissa Boinelli
Alexia Purdy
Dave Michael
Jamie Johnson
Kayleigh Gore
Melanie Hall
Matthew Jones
Tiffany Halliday
Laura Thomas
Becca Vincenza
Laura Del
Ariel Mathis
Sherry Fundin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. D. Gordon is the author of young adult and adult paranormal and urban fantasy fiction. She is a poet, a mother, a philosopher and an earth-lover. She believes our actions have ripple effects, and in the sacred mission of bringing love and light to the world.
She loves big dreamers, animals, children, killing zombies, eating dessert and old souls.
H. D. resides in southern New Jersey—which she insists is really quite lovely.
For more information, please visit: http://www.hdgordonbooks.com
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Read on for a sneak peek of The Blue Beast (The Aria Fae Series, Book 3) AVAILABLE NOW in the Kindle Store…
THE BLUE BEAST
THE ARIA FAE SERIES
BOOK 3
H. D. GORDON
PROLOGUE
The clipboard went flying from the doctor’s hand as Subject 413 arched off the table.
The straps containing S413—which were made of reinforced steel—broke with audible cracks. In one heartbeat, the subject had been contained, serene even, lying flat with his back on the observation table. In the next, the subject was loose, the table was tipped, and the doctor was doing his best to escape the danger that had so suddenly and completely taken over the laboratory.
Behind him, Subject 413 let out a sound that was not human, but rather the guttural growl of a beast. The sound rebounded in the doctor’s own chest as it rang in his ears. He jammed his fingers so hard on the escape button on the wall that he let out a little growl himself, but it sounded very much like a whimper when heard alongside the sounds coming out of Subject 413.
The doors containing the room slid open, but before the doctor could make an escape he was snatched off his feet and dragged back inside. Just outside this room, soldiers in SWAT gear were coming to the rescue, but as his body was slammed into the west wall of the lab, knocking over steel tables and glassware and all manner of scientific instrument, he knew they would not be quick enough.
No, he thought. They would not be quick enough, because this was retribution. This was the price one paid when they decided to play God, to mess with things men have no business messing with—even men who fancied themselves lords.
In his last moments, as the beast hulked over him, drool dripping from its once-normal mouth, veins pulsing in its now grotesquely bulging muscles, and crazy in the red streaks that had cut across the whites of its eyes, the doctor knew without a doubt that this was indeed the reprisal of all he’d done, of all he’d agreed to.
He saw now, in his very last moments upon Earth, that he should have just let the Man in the Shadows kill him rather than submit to these soul-damning experiments.
It was too late now to go spawning regrets. There was no time. He would die for what he had done.
When the response team made it into the laboratory, the doc was long dead. They shot enough tranquilizers into Subject 413 to take down a herd of elephants, but this had little effect, so they sealed the room and didn’t fret. In ten minutes or so, the subject would die anyway.
All the ones before it certainly had.
Men in white coats and others in tactical vests stood observing, but Subject 413 lived not for ten minutes, but for ten days before his body gave out on him. That was the worst part of it, visually, anyway. Once the subjects died, their bodies always reverted back to how they’d been before the Blue Magic was given to them—they always reverted back to normal.
By the tenth day, the laboratory was smashed to pieces. The high-tech walls had held, but by a margin of just barely. Everything inside the room was destroyed and coated with smeared saliva and blood. Subject 413 had slammed against the walls so many times that it had injured itself in the process.
Now, S413 was little more than the crumpled remains of a failed try, but this additional disappointment would not deter the Man in the Shadows. After all, S413 had lived for nearly ten whole days, and if that wasn’t progress, then he didn’t know what was.
Indeed, they were getting closer.
CHAPTER 1
“Do you see what a little effort can get you, Miss Fae?” asked the school guidance councilor, peering at me over the horned tips of her glasses. “Your grades have seen a significant improvement in the past month.”
Though I was no longer a Peace Broker, a solider in that particular army, I still couldn’t help the fact that my chest swelled with a bit of pride. You could take the operative out of the training, but it was a whole other matter removing the training from the operative. I liked to have my efforts praised, and since the Masked Maiden of Grant City was currently on a necessary hiatus, I’d been able to direct more focus on my schoolwork.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “Thank you.”
“Have you thought about college?”
I shifted in the chair where I sat before her desk, the small office too intimate for my liking. It was more like I’d tried not to think about it. With the Peace Brokers, I’d never really had to consider such a question, because all such decisions had been made for me. Since I’d been raised as an operative in the human world, I’d always figured I’d attend university to keep up with my public persona, but I’d never entertained the idea of choosing one myself.
Also, there was the small matter of money. Without the Brokers, I had all the choices in the world, and none of the funds required for choosing them.
“I don’t have money for college,” I admitted, the words more embarrassing to speak than I’d anticipated.
Mrs. Pete nodded, shifting through some papers on her desk, reading whatever was written upon them. “Well, I see that you haven’t taken on any extra-curricular activities since you moved here. Doing so can make a difference when concerning scholarships and grants, so is there anything you’re interested in doing outside of your schoolwork?”
/> Oh, you mean like running around the city in a hood and mask, rescuing people and getting blamed for my efforts?
Okay, so maybe I was a tad bitter, but I am half human, after all.
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“What’s your ethnicity?” Mrs. Pete asked. “There’s plenty of money up for grabs for minorities.” She looked down at the papers. “On all the forms, for ‘race’, you’ve checked ‘other’.”
Smiling, I said, “That’s right.”
Mrs. Pete was silent a moment, studying me over her horn-rims. “You look pretty athletic. You could probably get on one of the spring teams, maybe get noticed by a scout.”
I rubbed my palms on my jeans. I appreciated her efforts, but being a Halfling, with Halfling abilities, competing against humans in sports just seemed unfair. “I don’t… I think I’ll just have to take some time to think it all over, but I appreciate your help, ma’am.”
Mrs. Pete gave a sympathetic smile and nodded. “Okay, Aria, but we’re entering the last quarter of the school year. Summer is only a couple months away. You’ve got graduation, then what? What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” She paused. “There’s always student loans… Just promise me you’ll actually put some thought into it.”
I promised that I would, thanked her again, and promptly scooted out of her office, feeling as though the air were suddenly more breathable on the outside. I understood that the lady was just doing her job, but dang, could a girl get a few months without being forced to make a life-altering decision?
I realized with a start that I felt unprepared, that life with the Brokers, while having trained me for certain things, had left me utterly unable to direct myself. Perhaps that had been the point.
With these thoughts always came reflections of my former life, of what I’d given up to stay in Grant City. Of whom I’d given up. I’d like to tell you that I hadn’t thought much of Nick Ramhart since I let him step on that train out of town without me, but that would be a lie. It seemed that man would always hold a place in my mind. Or maybe it was my heart.
