The good news: as some new authors are rumored to abandon their projects before completion, denying readers closure, you needn’t worry. The next two books in this series have already been completed. They will be released. If you’ve gotten this far, and have found yourself immersed in the plot, left with the urge to know what happens next, then rest assured that you will soon get to continue the journey in Book Two of The Keepers of White: Enter the Paladin.
-R.C.
About the Author
Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, Richard Crofton now resides in Florida with his family, where he works as an instructor in the art of Shaolin Kempo Karate. However, his heart has always felt truly at home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and this work of fiction by no means should imply that anything dark or sinister lies within its tranquil farmlands, nor among its neighborly residents.
Richard Crofton can be contacted at:
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: http://fb.me/richardcroftonauthor
Twitter: www.twitter.com#richardcrofton@writercrofton
From The Keepers of White,
Book II: Enter the Paladin
Megan was sitting upon a dirt floor; the upper part of her body leaning against a thick, hard, wooden door; one of two within this strange room. She was exhausted; her hands splintered, sore, and bloody, and her voice was burning with rawness from screaming for help for hours. She had awoken from a drugged sleep, with a splitting headache, on a dusty mattress that lay near one of the four corners of the room. There was a dim glow from a single light bulb that hung from the rafters of an unfinished ceiling above her, consisting of wooden beams. It did not produce enough light to enhance her vision adequately, but only so she could make out her surroundings minimally. The only other item she had found was a tin pail that was halfway filled with dirt, which she had used to relieve herself when nature called for it.
She had no idea how long she had been here. But she had been awake for many, many hours. It seemed like more than a day’s worth, but she couldn’t be sure because her watch was gone from her wrist when she had awoken. However, she determined that she must have been here for some time because she was starving, and dreadfully thirsty.
There were also no windows in the room, so she couldn’t even tell if it were currently day or night. All she could tell was that she was in a dreadful place with walls of dark stone, a floor of dry dirt, and the wooden, unfinished ceiling. It was exceptionally cool in the room, and her cries for help produced no echo. Since she had been awake, and after she had allowed for her eyesight to adjust, she had been pounding on both heavy doors with her fists, slamming against them with her weight, and screaming consistently.
Against the door in which she now leaned, there was a stainless steel handle that was plated to the thick wood, like something one might find on a deep freezer door in the back room of a meat storage facility. The bolted hinges revealed that, if it could open, it would do so inward. The other door, on the opposite side, was just as massive and sturdy. It had no knob with which to turn; only a metal plate where the knob should have been. The hinges being hidden on this side of the door suggested that it would open outward, if she could have gotten it to open. It never even gave the slightest budge when she pushed upon it, for there were thirteen steel bolt locks set in place along the edge; seven above the metal plate, and six below.
Even if she had the skill to pick a lock, and she had no items on her person to make the attempt, she doubted she would find success with all thirteen. A rather excessive number of locks; whoever installed that door certainly wanted to keep the contents behind it hidden. She therefore deduced, after her head was less groggy from the anesthetic, that the wooden door on the other side, the one with the handle, was the way out.
Now however, resting against the door that kept her imprisoned was all she could do. Her screams did not carry in the slightest; it was like trying to scream with her head buried in sand. And the brutal beating she inflicted upon the doors with her fists had only left her with splinters, scrapes, and bruises. With nothing left to do, she managed to crawl back to the mattress, and with a hoarse voice she wept until she could weep no more, and eventually drifted into an uncomfortable sleep filled with nightmares.
****
She did not sleep for long. Aside from the vivid nightmares and the constant tossing and turning on the rather uncomfortable mattress, which did not lack a terrible scent of mildew, the excruciating hunger pains lingered in her stomach with no reprieve. She opened her eyes, and just lay facing up toward the dim light bulb.
Many minutes passed. She tried to recollect what had happened; how she wound up here, but she hadn’t the moment to try because she suddenly heard the booming sound of a closing door not too far off from where she was imprisoned. She crawled to the door on the other end of the room and placed her ear against it.
Footsteps. Someone from outside was shuffling along what must have been more dirt, and the fearful sound drew closer. Megan got to her feet and backed up. If the person on the other side meant to open her door from the outside, she would charge full speed in hopes of ramming into and knocking her captor off balance, then fleeing for her life in whatever direction she could. In seconds, she heard the unlatching and the turning of the handle from the other side of the heavy door in front of her. She kicked off her sandals, braced herself in a runner’s starting stance, and as soon as the door flung open, she pushed off toward the threshold, lowering her shoulder to brace for impact against whoever was keeping her.
She slammed hard against the figure in the threshold, but he was a large and solid man. In spite of his stance slightly giving from the collision, Megan practically bounced backward off his massive chest, landing on her rear end in the dirt. Her neck suffered from minor whiplash, her shoulder that connected was in pain, and she was momentarily seeing stars. She was not a large woman by any means, but she wasn’t frail. In fact, she had kept in shape from frequent morning runs, a healthy habit she had developed since her days as a track star in high school. She at least had confidence in her leg power; to have had minimal effect on the man blocking her path in the doorway came as a surprise to her.
She tried to clear her blurred vision in order to identify the hulking human figure who towered over her while she sat, rubbing her wounded shoulder. When he spoke, she didn’t need to see; she recognized the voice immediately:
“That was effective,” he said.
Megan’s unfocused eyes widened. “Sonny?” she called in a dry, raspy voice.
Agents of Shadow (The Keepers of White Book 1) Page 24
