“Awright now, whose gonna be first!” Before a hand could rise Jamie barked, “Easton, that means you! Since you’re the one who started this whole fit-throwing conniption, you are going to be the one who says you’re sorry first… riiiiight?”
Easton winced, rubbing his aching bottom. A snicker of understanding rippled through the adults as it occurred to them why he was rubbing his rear. He stood up with his head bowed in a most humble way and began an obviously memorized recitation.
“Mr. Jude…”
Before he could get another word out, Jude interrupted, “Easton, it’s me that should be apologizing to you.” Jude scanned the room when all the bowed heads popped up like a jack-in-the-box convention.
Nobody said a word. Jude hid the smile, guarding his thoughts. They know it’s true but were honest enough or cowed enough to be gracious. I love these guys. “All of you, I provoked this whole outburst by my teasing.”
“Ya sure did!” Jamie agreed, using her shrill outside voice. It might not have been loud enough to wake the dead but it jostled them a tad.
Jude rolled his eyes and continued, “And there is no excuse for it.” His voice lowered. “Please forgive me.”
Maggie looked at Gracie, who eyed Ryan, who looked back to Easton, who wisely turned to his mom, who nodded and then looked back at Shani, Bradley’s Sasquatch mother, who elbowed her husband, who grunted and said, “Go ahead, Bradley, tell him what he needs to hear.”
Jude watched the eyeball telegraph flash around the room in shorter time than it took to write it. He looked at the young’uns now standing politely in a row facing him and asked, “What? What do I need to hear?”
Bradley answered in his baritone rumble. “She is going to be okay, Mr. Jude. She’s just confused right now.”
Gracie added, “She doesn’t know who she is. She was raised by Mr. Hank to be a princess and—”
“Now she thinks she is a freak,” Easton blurted out. He glanced at his mom’s wide eyes and sharp eyebrows. He gulped and quickly amended, “I mean a unique product of genetic manipulation.”
Jude sat with a thud on the old rocker. A hundred questions raced toward his lips but only one staggered across. “So where is she?”
There was a ripple in the parent line that stood behind their children. Shani Huslu stepped forward and answered, “Jude, we are not sure, but we know she is safe.” He tilted his head, his eyes narrowed. He was about to ask how they knew when Shani answered, “We know it in our hearts, Jude. She belongs to us, joined at the heart. If she was afraid or in pain we would know. And if someone tries to hurt her…”
Shani’s voice altered to a very feminine growl, “Someone else will intervene.”
Jude caught himself exhaling a long sigh of relief. “Thank God.” Looking at the crowd of sympathetic and loving faces that gazed back at him, he thought, This isn’t a town, this is family!
Gracie interrupted, her little arms moving from her side, to folded across her chest, to finally settled in their rightful place on her hips in the ancient female cross-cultural fashion known to every man who ever had the misfortune to see the expression. “Now can you pleeeassse finish the story?!”
Jude smiled and nodded. “Okay, okay. I reread Mr. Hank’s journals. And I am not as good at this as he or Lizzy is, but here’s what happened…”
Chapter 54
Raleigh saw the bat-like wing of Romlott Hus, alias Laden Long, ready to slice through him. He knew he wouldn’t live through it. He was bleeding in a dozen places, and blood dripped from his lips. Some of it frothed, indicating that his lungs had been pierced. He stood on three legs, his front right paw broken. Belle Rodum lay behind him unconscious, her raspy breathing echoing in the dog’s ears. He braced, haunches bent, preparing to jump. His hope was to time his leap and avoid the razor-sharp wings prepared to slice him in two. Then… his nose caught something, his nostrils flared, and his tail began to wag.
Romlott Hus also caught the scent. His wing relaxed and he sat back on his haunches. I don’t believe it!
The eyes of the dragon, and of the huge white dog, turned. Together they stared at the entrance where the great iron door had stood.
A solitary woman, tall, dark-haired with green eyes, dressed in an elegant Lincoln-green flowing dress, walked into the ruined hall.
Romlott Hus slithered away from Raleigh. His body coiled like a snake about to spring. The young woman slowly approached him, stopping twenty feet away. “You shouldn’t have come here, princess. I have no quarrel with you.”
Sarah tilted her head and answered quietly, “But I have one with you, Laden.”
The dragon’s head moved slowly toward Sarah, slithering close. Its split tongue darted in and out, spittle dropping from its mouth and sizzling as it hit the cold stone floor.
“Do you really think you can beat me? I have destroyed armies! I’ve pounded mountains into dust…” The contempt in his deep voice rolled off the old cathedral walls. “I’ve killed—”
Sarah did not wait for him to continue his boast. She flashed and struck. Before Long’s next word was loosed, her claws had ripped into his face. Two dragons stood face to face. The bloody dragon shrieked, turned, and struck with its tail, but Sarah had been waiting for that. She leaped, her great jaw snapping, barely missing Long’s backbone. His wing swept across, slamming into her side, slashing open a long bloody streak. Sarah cried out, adding her dragon screams to Long’s constant wails. The room was too small to maneuver. Long realized that and launched upward, smashing through the rest of the ancient church’s ceiling.
Sarah followed. As soon as her head broke into the icy-cold night she heard a voice. “It’s me, Sarah, I’m here. You’re not alone.”
“Where have you been, Liv? I sure could have used your insight sooner!” Sarah screeched as her wings tore through the night in pursuit of her nemesis.
“Long story, honey, something about old spells, and bloodshed—and demigods—choked me off. Watch him close, Sarah. Romlott Hus or Long or whatever the demon is calling himself now is crafty!” Liv screamed in Sarah’s mind, causing her to cringe.
“I can beat him, Liv. You’re the book on dragon battle and you taught me everything you know. I’ve beat other dragons before. Yesterday, as a matter of fact.”
Liv’s voice trembled. “You’re right, Sarah, I taught you everything in the book… But… Romlott Hus wrote the book!”
Sarah didn’t have time to react. Suddenly Hus flipped, somersaulting in midair. He tucked his body, his wings shifted, and he went over her, his claws raking her side as his body flew past her within inches. He wound up behind her, his teeth biting deep, then ripping. Sarah shrieked in agony.
Liv’s voice screamed at her, “Down, Sarah. Can’t fight him in the air, back to the church. Constrict his movement.”
Sarah dived like a rock, her slender build and lighter weight enabling her to rocket through the night. The air crackled as she sliced through it.
She heard Romlott Hus’s dark laugh behind her. “Run, little Sarah, run.”
Sarah dropped into the ruined sanctuary, backed into a corner, and prepared for Hus’s onslaught.
“You can’t hide in here, Sarah. I am coming for you! Oh, there you are.” The huge beast laughed again as he lumbered closer. “You’ve learned a lot since we last met. Gained some weight too, I see. By the way, you didn’t happen to meet an old friend of mine, did you? An old manuscript? Talks a lot, keeps a lot of secrets too. Did she happen to mention I wrote her? Hmmm. And did she tell you that an author always controls his book?”
A deadly cold ripple ran through Sarah’s body as she listened to Hus’s words.
“I bet she told you to come back down here, didn’t she? Go back to the cathedral, she said, so you could take away my advantage in the sky…” The old dragon chuckled. Sarah began to shake violently. Hus saw her tremors and sneered. He relaxed… she was his! Then he lunged. She pivoted, causing him to miss and meet the impregnable rock of the stone wal
l, breaking his claws against it.
Sarah laughed as Hus screamed, jerking back his broken claws. Her teeth snapped against his jugular, tearing a hole in his neck. She spit out the bloody mass and shrieked, “Liv did tell me about you, Romlott Hus. Of course she did. We are BFFs. She also mentioned something you didn’t know!” Sarah’s pointed tail crashed into the ancient worm’s side, breaking his ribs. Sarah kept yelling. Hus was down, his back broken, his ribs crushed, his neck sputtering blood. With eyes full of fear, he looked back at her as her razor-sharp wing slashed through his neck. The last thing he heard before his head tumbled away was Sarah’s wicked laugh. “She’s been edited!”
Chapter 55
Belle Rodum leaned back onto the soft cushions of the hospital chair. The last few days were a blur. Memories of Brady carrying her into the night flashed in her mind. They had boarded an airplane; she remembered thinking jörmungandrs were faster. Then she had awoken to the sight of two huge brown eyes gazing up at her and the furious thump of a very large white tail. Raleigh had his head in her lap. He was bandaged and hobbling on three legs, the fourth in a plaster cast, but he was still with her, unwilling to leave her side.
Her hands were wrapped in bandages, and she had some new scars on her legs and side, but she could move without too much pain. None of that concerned her. Next to the chair in the English hospital room was a patient; he was much improved. The doctors who examined him were astonished at his wounds and even more so that he had survived them.
Belle knew the reason was the armor that Brady had stuffed him into. It was from a different place and time. They removed it before allowing the English physicians to examine him, then placed it back on him after John Timothy had secured the room in the London-based stronghold. Churchill himself had visited. Belle was stunned by that, especially the sincere gratitude and grace the leader had shown her. She was the enemy! Yet he treated her as though she were a long-lost cousin. As Belle thought back over the last few days, Raleigh grew restless. She reached over to stroke his massive head. As she did, she glanced toward Harry and noticed he was staring at her.
“Hey,” his voice cracked in a barely audible whisper.
Belle stood up, groaning in the process. She grabbed an ice chip from a small cup and placed it in his mouth. Harry tried to smile through cracked lips, then nodded. His eyes slowly closed. Raleigh was licking his fingers, and Harry was sluggishly moving his index finger up and down the dog’s long nose in response. Belle heard his breathing change. He had slipped back into unconsciousness.
She shook her head in disbelief. His body was a wreck. The surgeons had run out of thread twice trying to stitch his wounds. He had gone through eight pints of blood. The doctors believed there was internal bleeding and were debating whether to open him up when suddenly the flow stopped. The armor had done its job again. Now the rubber tubes flowing into his veins brought nutrients. The day they had begun to feed him, his color changed and his breathing stabilized. His body was healing.
However, Belle’s concern was not just Harry’s body but his mind. She knew that Oberheust had injected powerful nerve-stimulating drugs into his veins. They had tortured his mind as well as his body. The acetylcholine inhibitor combined with suxamethonium chloride had overwhelming hallucinogenic effects and were rumored to destroy memory. Belle worried and waited. Late that night Harry stirred. He rolled his head toward Belle, and a weak smile lit gently on his face. He tried to lift his head to speak but the effort cost him. Exhausted, he fell back into his pillow. Belle leaned over him. He looked up at her and carefully spoke. “This is rea…l, isn’t it? We aren’t in the cave… and I’m not dreaming… right?”
“We are not in the cave, nor are we captured by Long and the Nazis. The Strongman project was destroyed… and you are safe.”
Harry’s body visibly relaxed. Then he opened his eyes and tried to raise his head. Belle Rodum was still hovering, watching his every move. He looked up at her again and said, “This is real, isn’t it? We aren’t in the cave and I’m not dreaming, right?”
Belle grimaced. A forced smile settled into place as she took a cool washrag and wiped Harry’s forehead. “We are not in the cave, Long is dead, the Strongman project is destroyed, you are safe.”
He smiled, closed his eyes, and after a long moment asked, “Belle, why are you here? I thought you would…”
“Would what, Harry? Go back to the Nazis? Report to Hitler? Ha, I don’t think so. They aren’t very happy with me right now. They blame me for their failure. I am a wanted woman… as far as they are concerned.”
Harry’s brow crinkled and his eyebrows furrowed. “But the thorn? You used it? It didn’t destroy you?”
She turned and eased back into the chair next to his bed. “I tried to use it… but Long stopped me before I had the chance.”
Harry was definitely feeling better and his conversation was improving. “You tried to use the thorn?”
She swallowed, then whispered so low he could barely hear her. “Yes.”
“Knowing what would happen if you did?”
Even fainter she responded, “Yes.”
“Belle Rodum, I think your cornbread is not done in the middle.”
Belle frowned, staring back at him as he lay with his eyes closed.
“What?!”
Harry laughed and immediately regretted it. “Owww… umm… that hurts.” He pretended he had not heard her, but the mistress of body language wasn’t fooled.
“Harry Ferguson, did you just accuse me of mental instability?”
Harry smirked and answered, “Wasn’t an accusation, it was a statement of fact. You knew that if that thorn pricked you, you would instantly be thrown into an everlasting torment…” His voice cracked as he tried to continue. “And yet you charged the strongman anyway.” Harry paused to gather strength. “Damn it, Belle, you’re supposed to be a witch. You were working for the Nazis, you helped them steal the thorn. And then… and then you risked eternity to use it against them? Can you possibly explain—I mean explain in such a manner that this poor redneck can understand—why you would do that?”
Belle felt like shriveling up and running out a knothole and would have done so had she found one available. But she couldn’t. Harry had her cornered. After several seconds of sighing and a few failed efforts to reply, she crossed her arms and simply answered, “No.”
Harry groaned, trying hard not to laugh. His heart was rejoicing but his body wasn’t hearing it. He laughed and groaned some more, then said, “Belle Rodum, did I ever tell you that the only difference between a witch and a prophetess is whom they serve?”
She tried to think of a response but was interrupted by a knock on the hospital room door.
Belle stiffened. She knew who was behind the door. Finally, after a second’s pause, she answered, “Come in.”
Sarah Linscomb opened the door and walked in the room. While Harry had slept, she had kept her distance. But as he drew closer to consciousness, her heart knew he was wakening and she could not keep away. Now she stood in the doorway. She was beautiful. Her short black hair fell perfectly into place. Her green eyes radiated. Faced with Sarah for the first time, Belle understood how Harry could love her. She was a princess in every meaning of the word. The way she carried herself, the power that radiated from her. Belle also saw into Sarah’s heart. She was knit to Harry. Made for him. Belle withered in her own sight. I’m only a witch. How can I compete with that?
Belle knew at a glance that Sarah was still in love with Harry, and she had no doubt that Harry Ferguson had never stopped loving her. Now they faced each other and Belle’s heart broke. She had known better than to love a man like Harry; he was a one-woman man, and that woman was standing in the door.
Belle rose to step out of the room and give them some privacy. Sarah glided to the foot of Harry’s bed. He opened his eyes to see who had come into the room and why Belle had started to move away. His eyes met Sarah’s. He stared at her, then back at Belle. He returned
to Sarah, confused. Finally, he said, “Do I know you?”
Epilogue
The tall Greek man and the beautiful Aryan woman sat facing each other in the train compartment. Dr. Oberheust and Cadmus had escaped the disaster of the Strongman project. Oberheust knew the moment the dragon had begun to move back into the doorway it was time to run, and Cadmus had left before that. He had realized when Belle Rodum said Harry Ferguson was just waiting that the witch was right. He had also remembered from thousands of years earlier that the old demons did not look favorably on demigods like himself. So, he had hedged his bets and slipped Belle the thorn. Now he lived to fight another day, or simply lived.
Dr. Oberheust was not sane. That was a given. Brilliant, absolutely, but sane… hardly. Between them nestled a large Halliburton suitcase, insulated with a German product called polystyrene. Inside the insulation, sealed in cryogenic freeze, was insurance. And possibly a weapon. Something that Harry Ferguson and Belle Rodum would come for. And if Cadmus had his way, die for. It held their child.
Trailer for Rivals
Chapter 1
Detroit Michigan Current Era
Lizzy Ferguson, former librarian and current murderer, watched as rain dripped off the roof and poured down the gutter. The glow of the street light caused the water on the dark pavement to glisten. It was cold out. Lizzy hated the dismal weather, and even though she was looking through an insulated window, and standing in a warm room she shivered. She missed Texas. She wasn’t even sure where she was, just another big city in a northern state, crowded with masses of faceless people and walled in by buildings that scratched the sky and hid the horizon. She hated the noise and the loneliness and the cold. She wanted to go home. But there was no going back. She was what she was and slowly learning to live with it.
The Harry Ferguson Chronicles Box Set Page 72
