by Melle Amade
SHIFTER CHRONICLES BOOK THREE
HARVEST
A Dark Urban Fantasy
MELLE AMADE
HARVEST
Copyright © 2017 by Melle Amade.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact:
www.melleamade.com
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Book and Cover design by Derek Murphy @Creativindie
Cover art: Consuelo Parra | Model: Tris-marie | Bg: Malleni-stock
ISBN: 978-0-9979806-3-9
First Edition: August 2017
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Dutch born, Matilde, the estranged niece of Lord Van Arend, barters with her scheming mother to spend the summer with the only friends she’s ever had, the Ravensgaard at Castle Brannach. The only problem is, what she has offered her mother is information, information that will break her friends’ trust and begin the downfall of the regime who governs them all.
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For those
who dream of flying
1
I have never heard a horse scream. Until now. The bucking red beast rears its body, throwing its hooves at the iron fence tightly surrounding it on all four sides. The cowboys perching at the top jump back, to avoid the animal’s thrashing hooves and massive head that is lunging back and forth. It crashes against one of the slower cowboy’s knees. He shrieks an expletive, his broad-brim black hat tumbling off his head as he grabs his leg. Others on the ground catch him as he falls backwards and drag him over to the medics.
I whirl on Roman. “You can’t seriously be planning on getting on that thing!” My voice rises to a squeak at the end.
But Roman isn’t even paying attention. His head is down, Stetson low over his eyes and he’s staring at his hands as he pulls his leather gloves tight onto his wrists and hooks the Velcro strap. He stretches his hands open and then curling them into fists, testing the fit of the glove.
I want to slap him to get his attention, but anything I’ve said in the last week hasn’t seemed to make it through since he got this crazy idea to ride a bucking bronco in the Potter Valley Rodeo.
“Whoa-ho! Would ya look at that rarin’ and kickin’ stallion in shoot number five!” The rodeo announcer’s optimistic voice comes over the loudspeaker, bringing on the cheers of the crowd. “One lucky cowboy’s going to have himself a pretty short ride on this animal, whose name is fittingly, Loco-in-Motion.” The crowd roars its approval.
“Would you talk some sense into him?” I grab Callum’s arm. Our fledgling relationship hasn’t been great since we left Topanga, but this is one moment when I need him. He has to stop our friend from doing something completely and utterly insane.
“Yeah.” Callum’s forehead creases as his eyes tear away from the maddened mustang in the rodeo shoot. “Um, Roman, the animal looks a bit insane.” Callum moves past me until he’s standing directly in front of Roman, who can’t help but make eye contact. After all, Callum is the Ridder of Muiderkring West. He still holds authority, even though we are a long way from his Ravensgaard.
“Nothing wrong with a little crazy,” Roman says, his face serious.
“Unless you’re going to get on its back and go for a ride! Then there’s a lot wrong with crazy. That thing is going to kill you!” I try to edge in front of Roman and back into the conversation but Callum waves his hand at me to back down. Should have known they would stick together. Roman is making ridiculous choices and it’s my fault. Ever since we were banished by the Order and had these metal bands put on our necks that stop us from shifting, Roman hasn’t been the same.
“There’s nothing wrong with walking away,” Callum says. “I’m sure you can ride a bronco just fine, but this particular animal looks a little more over-the-top then the rest.”
“I know, isn’t it great?” Cooper, Zan’s six-foot-two blonde cousin, saunters up and slaps Roman. At eighteen he’s a little older than us, but I’m not sure he’s more mature. “You got the best one in the lot. Loco-in-Motion is awesome.”
“I really fail to see how that’s awesome.” I stare up at Cooper. I mean, I like his enthusiasm and all, especially for getting up at five in the morning to do all the chores around the farm, but this is not cool.
“I’m not backing down,” Roman’s eyes are trained on Callum.
Callum takes a deep breath and turns to me, shrugging his shoulders. “At least he’ll heal quickly,” he says.
“No. No. No.” I desperately want this to not be happening. We just watched another guy get thrown from a bronco. The animal’s hooves landed on the cowboy’s legs and he had to be taken out of the arena in an ambulance.
“Come on.” Zan touches my arm. “You’re not going to change his mind, so we might as well watch.”
“What do you mean watch? Are you asking me to sit here and watch as one of my best friends goes to-”
“Maybe you should just let him do what he wants to do sometimes,” Zan says quietly, her brown eyes trained on me, red curls cascading over her shoulders.
My mouth snaps shut. I don’t even know what to say to that.
Cooper is working the rodeo, helping the riders get on their mounts. He steps in now to back up Roman, effectively blocking me from saying anything else. It’s just as well. I don’t know what else to say to him.
Except maybe, I’m sorry.
I am so sorry for getting us into this mess, for taking away his super, badass frog power and having us live so far away from his family. But the truth is, “I’m sorry” isn’t cutting it. It’s all well and good to be sorry but it doesn’t change what is. Like Dad always said; “If you take a plate and smash it on the floor, you can say ‘I’m sorry,’ but it won’t put the pieces back together again. They’re always broken.”
“Come on,” Callum slips his hand into mine and leads me to an empty space on the nearest bleachers. My skin is cold and clammy and my breath catches in my throat. I can’t stand the idea of Roman doing this, but I have no way to stop him.
It’s high noon and the bleachers are uncovered. The late summer heat of Northern California makes it feel like a dry sauna set on overdrive. I have sunglasses, shorts, and a tank top on, but nothing stops my forehead from burning. I want to take the bandana off my neck and tie it around my head, but I can’t take it off, not here. The metal collar is about an inch thick. There’s no clasp on it, no way of getting it off. If I exposed it to the sun it would become a branding iron, burning into my skin. Besides, the few times I’ve forgotten to cover it up when I go out in public, even for the couple of people over at
Hopper’s Corner Store, I get eyed and asked the question, “What are you wearing around your neck?”
We’ve been up in Potter Valley for a couple of weeks since we were banished by the Order. I left Topanga with high hopes of removing the collars and going to find my dad, but we haven’t even begun to understand the collars, much less get them removed. And El Oso, the Berzerken killer who leads the Order, has disappeared with my dad.
We’ve settled into country life, doing chores, avoiding people, and pretending at some point we’ll have a plan to rescue my dad. But it’s hard to rescue someone when you don’t even know where they are.
Zan waves over at her aunts and uncles. They’re sitting with Mom and Henry in a different section. Her family are long-time community members who get the premier and limited seating in the shade. When Henry sees us, he jumps up and bolts over to join us. He gives me a quick hug before stepping away from my body heat. This was one of the rare moments he hasn’t been tailgating me every minute of the day, like he’s been doing for the last two weeks
“Do you have sunblock on?” I pull his baseball cap a little lower over his eyes.
“You sound like Mom.” He rolls his eyes.
“Do you?” I ask again, starting to eye the people around me who might have sunblock in their purses.
“Yep, it’s been a three-slather day already.” His laughter mocks me.
“Roman’s mounting,” Zan says.
Henry’s body lurches forward as he peers to see Roman in action. “Oh my gosh! I’m so excited! Can you believe he’s going to ride a bucking bronco? Roman is the coolest.”
“Why didn’t he borrow body armor like I told him to?” I chastise myself.
“I think he tried, but they didn’t have any his size,” Callum says.
I shake my head. “He’s not some abnormal size. It’s not like he needs some special body armor. He just needs some. You know, like everybody else. Why won’t he wear it?”
In fact, many of the cowboys look like they’re knights going into battle. They have molded plastic body protection from the neck down to the waist. Some of the cowboys even went without their hats, in favor of full helmets and face guards. Not Roman. Roman insisted on riding in nothing but cowboy boots, cowboy hat, jeans, and a worn green T-shirt with a picture of Kermit kissing Miss. Piggy on it.
“It’s not like we can go into town and just buy something the right size.” Zan says pointedly. In fact, since we arrived in Potter Valley we had been to “town” exactly zero times. The metropolis of Ukiah, with about sixteen thousand people, is twenty miles away. It apparently has all the regular small-town America fixtures, like Walmart and McDonald’s, so I doubt we’re missing much. But at least there were more options than here. The central business district of Potter Valley consists of exactly one store, or one and a half stores if you count the small Native American store, The Lodge, nestled between Hopper’s Corner Grocery Store and Hopper’s Corner Saloon.
“Relax,” Callum reaches over and pulls my face to his. “It’s still Roman were talking about. He’s still a bad-ass. Just because he can’t turn into a frog doesn’t mean he doesn’t have all of that agility and capability still inside of him.”
I bite my lips and tightening my grip on Callum’s hand. “I hope you’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
We watch, Henry still at my side, as the cowboys pull the halter tight on the bucking bronco and get it under control just long enough for Roman to climb up on the fence and carefully stand spread eagle over the raging beast.
“He’ll drop down and they’ll open the shoot,” Zan explains. While none of the rest of us have ever been, this isn’t Zan’s first rodeo. Apparently, she’s been coming to the Potter Valley Rodeo for years. Yet another thing I didn’t know about her.
I’ve discovered so much since we first got to Potter Valley and arrived at Spotswood Ranch as guests of Zan’s Aunt Emma. We’re staying in the safe house where Mom and Henry have been hiding. It’s an old Gothic mansion the coyotes built back in 1887. Apparently old houses aren’t equipped with a huge number of bedrooms and the ones here were already taken by Aunt Emma’s immediate family, which included Uncle Steve and their four kids. Zan’s Aunt Natalie stays in the cottage out back.
We were relegated to the barn.
Cooper gave his room to Mom. He insists he actually likes sleeping in the barn. Definitely a red flag to any prospective girlfriend. When he invited us out to the barn the first night, I thought it was just to hang out, but then he’d thrown us some musty sleeping bags and lumpy pillows, telling us to pull up some loose straw and make ourselves comfortable. He’d proceeded to fall asleep in the loft, snoring loudly with one arm flung over his head, hand dangling precariously over the edge. It almost seemed kind of fitting, all the animals sleeping in the barn.
I glance over to Aunt Emma, the meticulous matriarch of Spotswood Ranch. Every few seconds she’s nodding and saying hello to someone in the crowd. For a woman who lives out in the country taking care of cows, sheep, and straw bales, she certainly has the nicest manicure I’ve ever seen. But she’s always saying, “How you do anything, is how you do everything.” I guess nice manicure means champion show animals. Also, she isn’t the one getting up at six in the morning to feed the animals. She clearly pointed out when we arrived that with her other three kids on an extended trip to the Midwest, we were expected to step in. I’m pretty sure they were sent away when we showed up. Two banished shifters and a Ridder may be being tracked by the Order, even though I don’t think so. Still, neither Emma or Natalie were too keen to have us around although they were always polite and willing to feed us.
Apparently, a few of Zan’s ancestors, whose shifter roots were indigenous to North America, had hidden in Potter Valley back in the day when the Murtaghs and the Van Arends were still vying for control over Topanga. The recent events of Murtagh’s revolt against Lord Van Arend, simply elongated the tumultuous history that started over a thousand years ago, when the Vikings were still invading Ireland, the Murtagh homeland. Back then, the Van Arends were one of the most powerful families in all Europe, based in the Netherlands.
It’s clear the shifters know a thing or two about self-preservation. They built resources so they can take care of themselves and made havens where they can survive. This wasn’t just something that happened when the Order came into power, it was something they had always needed. I remember Zaragoza, his paintings of the witch hunts in Europe, and how many shifters had died. Money and secrecy seem to be keys to self-preservation; it was something Zan’s family had taken to heart and used to create their own life away from the Order.
Spotswood Ranch and Potter Valley were just another way for the shifters to practice self-preservation. Though, I’m not sure how much of that sank into Roman. He’s risking his neck to go full Potter on a crazy bucking bronc. The beast is still bucking in the stall as Roman jumps around trying to get on it. Finally, he lands and the announcer’s voice booms out.
“Cowboys and cowgirls, we’ve got one brave city-slicker riding Loco-in-Motion today. All the way from the big smoke, from the bright lights of Hollywood, we’ve got Roman Da Costa! At eighteen years old, this is Roman’s very first rodeo ride, and by the way that bronc is bucking, I’d say he pulled the short straw.”
Loco-in-Motion lets out another shriek trying to rise up against the cowboys holding him down. Roman leaps to one side of the shoot to avoid the animal’s withers from pounding him in the crotch.
“He’s not eighteen!” I say.
“He had to be to enter,” Zan says.
“You forged his documents! You knew he was going to do this!”
“Well, looks like they got Loco-in-Motion calmed down now, so let’s see how this city-slicker rides!”
The gate snaps open. Roman’s hand is wrapped tight in the leather strap and his legs raised up, heels on the points of the raging equines shoulders, one hand in the air. The crowd lets out a whooping holler, but I ju
st clutch Callum’s hand tighter and lean forward, sucking in my cheeks.
Eight seconds.
It’s supposed to be an eight second ride.
I don’t think I’m going to make it.
The animal twists out of the chute and pitches forward, all four legs clearing the steel fencing and flailing into the air. Roman angles his body back almost connecting with the animal’s butt as it raises it. The animal lands on its hind legs and rears backward. Roman leans forward as if he actually might even know what he’s doing.
Zan lets out a whoop. “Ride ‘em, cowboy!” She screams. She excitedly points at Roman who is riding the wild beast in dizzying circles pitching forward and back around the rodeo arena. “See how he’s raising his legs there and encouraging the animal? That’s going to get him extra points.”
I can’t believe it hasn’t been eight seconds yet.
The beast lets out a snort that’s louder than the cheering crowds. It starts to spin one direction but stops practically mid-air, flipping itself backwards to rid itself of the rider who’s tormenting it.
“No!” I scream, standing up as the animal tilts over backwards. Roman hits the ground and the beast is thundering down on top of him.
At the last possible second, Roman thrusts himself away and the animal hits the ground right next to him. The crowd gasps as the stallion trumpets his rage.
Both Roman and the stallion try to get up simultaneously but as the beast rolls over, it’s dragging Roman with it. His foot is caught in a stirrup.
Clowns and riders race in to try and extract Roman, but the horse is still bucking hard. Now the saddle is its worst enemy.
Even the cheery announcer is in shocked silence.
Roman’s been hit but he’s not knocked out. As the animal drags him forward, jumping and kicking, Roman propels his body towards the lurching beast. He deftly grabs the stirrup and releases his foot as he is flung into the air by the whirling animal. Roman lands on both feet, springing up and holding his arms wide and head thrown back as if he’s just completed some Olympic gymnastics move.
