Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle - Books 7-9

by Hart, Melissa F.

  Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle (Books 7-9)

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2015 by Melissa F. Hart. All rights reserved worldwide.

  No part of this book may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written consent of the author/publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  http://www.melissafhart.com/

  Books in the series

  In Darker Shadows- Volume 1

  A Place in the Dark - Volume 2

  To See the Dawn - Volume 3

  By Moonlight Bound - Volume 4

  Only Your Touch - Volume 5

  Broken Bird - Volume 6

  Flying High – Volume 7

  Deep Waters – Volume 8

  An Eternal Love – Volume 9

  Innocent Days – Volume 10

  Dangerous Quests – Volume 11

  Judges Ascendant – Volume 12

  Woman of the Storm – Volume 13

  Wandering the Wilds – Volume 14

  Across a Thousand Years – Volume 15

  ***

  Table of Contents

  Flying High

  Deep Waters

  An Eternal Love

  ***

  Flying High

  ***

  Synopsis

  Benedict Halfdansson transforms into a golden eagle and controls the powers of the wind. No one is more capable of handling a call of distress from a family of shapechangers. Benedict goes to investigate the murders that are taking place in Colossal City, and he finds to his surprise that he needs to deal with mysterious threats in the water, Colossal City's band of superheroes, and a deliciously tempting surprise in the form of biologist Marcie Beauchamp!

  ***

  The cold autumn wind was crisp and sharp, and Benedict Halfdansson, in his golden eagle form, cut through it like a knife. With every beat of his powerful wings, he drew nearer and nearer to Colossal City, which glittered on the horizon like a spread of jewels.

  Though he could see how beautiful it was, there was still a part of him that drew back from that much humanity, that much technology and that much waste. He was a creature of the open air, and even when he took on his human form, he had never cared much for the modern cities.

  “You're like the old ones,” Carson Keynes had chuckled. Carson was a werewolf, and like Benedict, he was a judge, one of the lawkeepers among the shape-changing people. Where Carson controlled ice and water, Benedict was the master of the winds.

  “Am I?” asked Benedict archly. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  The werewolf clapped his shoulder so hard he nearly staggered, and he frowned even as Carson laughed.

  “You are. You never want much to do with the humans at all, and you've always thought it would be better if we all went and lived in the woods.”

  “Safer,” Benedict said simply. “And given that, I find it absolutely ironic that you think I am the right choice for this mission.”

  Carson shrugged, unrepentant. “My wife's having her first child soon, and I don't want to miss it. Morgan and his Yvonne are off running diplomatic talks in Canada between some of the moose tribes.”

  “And Kiya? Why not send Kiya?”

  Carson grinned. “Because I don't feel like making our local werebear do anything she does not want to do. I'm afraid you're it, my friend.”

  Benedict could feel his feathers ruffle with irritation at that memory of Carson, but he flew on anyway.

  He couldn't disagree with the cause being legitimate, and someone needed to go out to tend to it. He took his responsibilities as a judge extremely seriously, and when the young otter girl from Colossal City had come to make her case to them, he had been the first to say that they should help.

  She had been a skinny brown young thing with enormous round eyes. Otters were not normally great travelers, but she had put herself on the five-hour bus ride between Colossal City and Harrispont to find help.

  “There's something in the water,” she had said, stuttering. “It watches us... and... and I think it's killed my brother.”

  “You think?” Carson asked. “You don't know?”

  The girl shook her head. “We wander. We come in and out. But I do know that it's been weeks and weeks since he's come home.”

  The judges of Harrispont had exchanged glances. Just a year ago, they had dealt with a killer, a weredragon madman who had stalked the shores of the lake. The population of shapechangers in Colossal City was much smaller than the population of shapechangers in Harrispont, and so they had no judge to protect them.

  They put the girl back on the bus after promising her that they would send help, and now Benedict, soaring high above the earth on powerful wings stretched more than seven feet from tip to tip, wondered what he was going to encounter.

  He remembered the frenzied battle with the weredragon Brandt Noman that had almost cost the weretiger Morgan Durrant and his lover Yvonne their lives, and he prayed that what he found was not going to be so nasty.

  Though Colossal City was quite large, it was also ringed by a dense and ancient forest. Benedict had resources that he could access, of course, but given his preference, he would never set foot in the city unless he had to. Though he preferred the high mountain ranges close to Harrispont, hunting in the forest would always be a pleasure for him.

  While true gold eagles did not fly in the dark, there was something particularly wonderful and soothing about night-flight to him. There were fewer birds in the sky in the dark, and with his sharp vision, he could see nearly as well as he could during the daytime.

  He circled over the forest lazily, knowing that the otter clan would be asleep now, but as he banked over the gleaming silver of the lake, his sharp eyes caught movement.

  Benedict would have recognized a coyote coming to drink or a fox dashing through the underbrush, but this was not that.

  Instead, he saw a human form walking amidst the rushes, moving slowly and with care. It struck him that the person, whoever it was, did not know what kind of danger they might be in, and suddenly, the depths of the lake that had looked so beautiful suddenly seemed a great deal more threatening.

  Benedict circled lower, and then he saw the ripple in the water.

  ***

  Marcie Beauchamp was no one's fool, so when she decided that she wanted to go investigate the marshy lake in the middle of the forest, she came prepared. She was wearing hip-high waders that hampered her every movement, but still kept her dry, and the red beam headlamp gave her great detail on everything around her without destroying her night vision.

  She told herself that she was out and about because of insomnia, but if she were honest with herself, she would know that it wasn't the only reason.

  As she used her small hand-held camera to capture video of her experience, she could still feel the throb of excitement that that ran through her whenever she thought of this lake. It was chilly even in summer, and, due to an accident of geography and plate tectonics, far deeper than any lake in this part of the world should be. Though the edges were as shallow and sandy as any other lake in the forest, the center of the lake dropped off with terrible suddenness. There was about one square mile of the center of the lake that might have been as much as a full mile deep, and there were stories about what might live in those depths.

  “Come on,” she
muttered, sweeping her red beam slowly from side to side. “Come on, I know you're in here, beauty.”

  She came to the edge of the reeds that crowded the edge of the lake and looked up. There was some kind of enormous bird flying by, and she squinted at it for a moment. It was large enough to be one of the bald eagles that could sometimes be found in the area, but she knew that they were very much diurnal creatures that were active during the daylight.

  With a shrug, she turned her attention back to the lake. Now that it was so still and she was no longer tromping through the muck, she could appreciate the weight of the quiet night around her. The first frost had occurred only a few weeks ago, but the water was already frigid, and she was again grateful for the waders she wore.

  Marcie found a vantage point where she could keep an eye on the still surface of the lake. The glint of light on the water allowed her to detect any changes in the ripples, and she could hear the patient lapping of the waves against the shore.

  She wished she could venture further out on the lake, but the problem was that the depths of the lake began abruptly. She had examined many government-produced maps, and they all agreed that the drop to the lake's deep water was sudden and could be very treacherous. Though she was tempted to venture further, she instead stayed where she was and kept her camera focused on the water.

  “Tonight, come on, tonight,” she whispered.

  She was prepared to wait until the sun came back up in the freezing water, and she was already very grateful that she had thought to wear very warm clothing.

  A sound by the side of the lake caught her attention, and turning around, her red head lamp caught some weasel-like forms darting around the edge of the water.

  Otters? She frowned. It seemed unlikely. Otters were daylight creatures, and these definitely looked very active. Their motions were short and agitated, and now that she was looking, she could just barely make out the fact that their enormous dark eyes were focused squarely on her and where she was standing.

  She was just turning her gaze back to the open water when two things happened at once. She realized that the waves she had thought were simply the motion of wind over the lake were actually ripples of motion, and there was an enormous bird lunging for her out of the sky.

  What the hell, it can't think I'm a fish! She frantically threw a hand up in front of her face.

  The thing was enormous and terrifying in the darkness, and by the frantically swinging red light, she could see a wickedly curved beak and fierce yellow eyes. The wind from those enormous wings buffeted at her, throwing her backward, and it was only by a feat of intense concentration that she stayed on her feet.

  Her struggles splashed painfully cold water on the upper part of her body that was not covered by rubber, and she knew that if she was not careful, hypothermia could easily be something in her future.

  “No, birdie, go away!” she yelped.

  By some presence of mind, she dropped her camcorder down her shirt and she was able to try beating the bird away with her arms. Even in her fear, she refused to beat the bird with fists; she had been trained for most of her adult life as a conservationist, and a bird this large, no matter how viciously it was attacking her, had to be some kind of endangered species.

  The water erupted into some kind of frenzy, and in her panic, she just barely felt something brush against her leg. Whatever it was, it was huge and enormous, and she yelped again, stumbling back.

  The bird, and now she could see that it was a golden eagle, enormous and incongruous in the middle of the night, screeched loudly, deafening her for a moment, and one of its talons wrapped around her arm. She could feel the immense strength in it and flinched, ready to feel those diamond-sharp points pierce her arm, but instead there was just that intense sense of pressure and she was being pulled.

  There was the splashing in the water again, but the wind was picking up, a wind as strong as what she had encountered when she was living in Chicago and making her way along the wind tunnels formed by the tall buildings and the winds from the lake.

  No, too strong, she had time to think, and then the wind toppled her over entirely, sending her feet out from underneath her. She hit the lake with a powerful splash, and the shock of the cold was so much she would swear afterward that her heart had stopped for a split second. After the shock, there was pain, and all of her exposed skin stung and burned.

  Now she knew she felt something in the water with her. God, it was enormous, thick, and smooth, and she would have screamed but the water was over her head. She retained the presence of mind to fight her way back up with her mouth clamped shut.

  Marcie broke through the surface again, gasping and shouting, and she realized that the bird had really not let go of her. Instead, it took a further grip, and with a sweep of its wings, it tried to drag her.

  If she hadn't been so terrified and cold, she would have laughed. No matter how powerful a bird was, it could never lift a human, but then there was a frigid blast of cold air, surely stronger than anything outside of a tornado. Her teeth chattered, and with a kind of detached amazement, she watched ice crystals form on the fluttering wisps of her hair.

  The wind and the bird lifted her up and out of the water, momentarily dragging as the waders filled with water and were left behind. The cold invaded every bit of her, and everything slowed down. She was being carried, somehow she was being carried out of the water, lifted clear and blown to the shore. She was so cold that she could barely understand it, but then there was a tall, slender man with black hair and the most piercing molten gold eyes she had ever seen bending over her.

  “You little fool, you could have been killed,” he said, and there was a slight hoarseness to his voice that made her think of the cries of eagles. In the bright moonlight he was washed out, but there was a vitality to him that she could never mistake.

  “You.... you...”

  “Yes, me,” he said impatiently. “Are you all right?”

  “You were an eagle,” she managed to get out, and he looked a little shocked and chagrined.

  “That's neither here nor there,” he snapped. He looked around in something like despair. “You're going to be frozen through if I don't get you to some kind of shelter... Dammit, I don't know these woods.”

  “C-c-c-cave,” she managed to get out, pointing. At least, she thought she pointed. Instead, because her limbs felt so numb, it was like she was merely flopping her arm over to one side. “Cave, supplies there. Stash for forest rangers.”

  He nodded brusquely, and before she could understand what he was doing, she was being lifted up in his arms.

  “Too heavy!” she found it in herself to protest. She was no small girl, but he lifted her as if she was as light as a feather.

  “Let me worry about that,” he said shortly. “Just try to hang on.”

  ***

  The cave that she indicated was easy enough to find. From the beach, there was a path, and after he had reassured himself that there were no animals denning there, he realized that the cave was exactly what she had promised. There were full camping and survival supplies tucked at the back in a steel locker that was likely used by rangers who needed to rough it, and he found a pair of sleeping bags that were rated for low temperatures and a drop cloth that would protect them from the cold.

  He spread the ground cloth out, and he even found a light expanding cloth that would sleep two and keep them from the cold ground. There was even an improvised fire pit nearby, a circle made of large, half-buried stones, and Benedict quickly started a fire with the wrapped logs in the locker and the matches.

  Benedict looked over at the woman who lay on the ground. Her clothes were soaking, and if he tucked her into the sleeping bags in wet clothes, it could make her very sick. He hesitated for a moment, but then she stirred and moaned and he knew what he had to do.

  “I hope you understand that I'm not a monster,” he muttered, and he started stripping her clothes off of her body.

  As he removed l
ayers of thermal clothing, he was surprised to see a very shapely form. She was wide hipped and large breasted, but her waist was almost ridiculously small. There was a softness to her flesh that he couldn't help lingering on for a split second longer than he should have, and underneath it, he could feel firm muscle. He could see that her hair was as black as his own, and though her lips had a slight violet tinge from the cold, they were perfect in a way that tore at his heart.

  She could take a man apart with lips like that, he found himself thinking, but his hands never stilled. In a matter of seconds, she was naked, and he was carrying her to the cot, where there was an open sleeping bag waiting for her.

  As he lay her down inside the soft folds, she started awake, her eyes a surprising light gray. She started to groan, but as he tried to comfort her and reassure her that he meant no harm, she shook her head hard.

  “You come in here, too,” she said, her teeth chattering but her voice relatively clear.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Two sleeping bags. Strip. Zip them together. More warm that way. You're cold. too.”

  He saw what she meant instantly. The two sleeping bags could be zipped together, allowing them to share much more body heat than they could generate on their own.

  “Remember you asked for this in the morning,” he muttered, and he was surprised to hear a shaky laugh.

  “Not my first time at the rodeo,” she said, her voice still quavering but lucid and present. He had been afraid that she was dazed or delirious, but when he glanced at her, he could see that her eyes were calm.