by Krystal Wade
Someone knocked again.
“I’ll get it!” I’m going to kill him. I balled my fists and marched for the door. “What now?”
I slapped my hand over my mouth and mumbled an apology.
Derick wasn’t at the door. It wasn’t Mark either. I didn’t know who this guy was, but he smiled like he knew me, and he held his finger to his lips.
“Come outside, quietly.”
Trembling, I glanced over my shoulder and saw Mom and Dad had already started the movie. I could scream. I could scream, and Dad would save me.
“Dadd—”
“Hard way it is.” The stranger grabbed my hand, pulling me outside, then covered my mouth with a white cloth.
Everything went dark.
knew two things: my head was killing me, and I was stuffed in the trunk of a car traveling down a bumpy gravel road. My wrists were bound behind my back, and I was gagged. Dust floated all around me, the millions of tiny particles glowing red from the taillights. Someone’s dirty laundry must have filled the duffel bag my head rested on; the smell would have cleared a skunk out of a room.
Even if I could scream, my voice would have been useless. The kidnapper and the road might have heard me, but nothing else. We were probably in the middle of nowhere, a place I’d probably never escape. No. I had to escape.
I craned my neck, trying to locate the emergency latch. All cars were supposed to have those. Maybe that’s why the guy bound me, so I couldn’t get away while he drove.
God, if I’d just talked to Derick a little longer or invited Mark in, I might still be safe at home. What did this man plan to do with me? Who was he? Were my parents okay?
But I didn’t want details; I just wanted to go back to my mom, my dad, my overly pink bedroom, anywhere but here.
Shudders tore through me. I was cold. Really, really cold. The ridiculously skimpy black tank top I wore to make Derick jealous didn’t make appropriate kidnap me attire.
The brakes squeaked, and the car slowed. I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. What if he planned to kill me? What if he… I didn’t want to think of all the what ifs.
I kicked at the side of the car and released a muffled scream. My hands throbbed from the duct tape wrapped around them and all my squirming, but I wanted out, away. I wanted to run.
The car stopped. I kicked harder and harder, but I hurt my feet and not the trunk. The door opened, then closed. Feet crunched on the gravel.
He’s coming for me.
My abductor opened the trunk, and I pushed myself back—a futile attempt to get away.
Black painted the sky, and a dingy yellow light glowed brightly behind his head. At least it was still dark; I couldn’t be that far from home. He brought a cigarette to his mouth, then took a long, dramatic drag. Blowing the smoke toward me, he smiled, revealing a mouth full of gleaming white teeth. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”
Looking for me? Why me? Maybe he abducted the wrong teenager. Maybe he had the wrong street or house—
“I won’t hurt you. I am a hunter from the land of Copper Rocks. My name is Boredas.” He offered his hand. Did he forget he’d tied me up?
I narrowed my eyes and stared at the psycho above me, memorizing his pale brown eyes, his clean-shaven jaw, his dark blond hair. He wore a light blue T-shirt and faded denim jeans. Take away the cancer stick and the kidnapper status and I might have found him cute. But since he’d bound and gagged me, he was anything but swoon worthy.
“Right. I should untie you.” He laughed. “Given the fact you don’t recognize me, it’s clear you have no idea what you and your people are capable of. I was warned of this.”
Capable of? My people? Add delusional to that list. Awesome. I’ve been kidnapped by a psychotic, delusional idiot.
Boredas—I bet he was ridiculed for that name in school—reached in his back pocket, then pulled out a… knife.
This was it. My end. No high school graduation. No college. No life. I was going to die. I wiggled deeper into the trunk and bumped against the back of the seats, tearing at the tape around my wrists, doing anything for five more minutes of life. Five more seconds. Anything that might give me freedom, an ability to run away.
“Hold still.” Leaning into the trunk, he grabbed my wrists, then cut the duct tape.
Now was not the time to make a move. He could stab me before I got a chance to punch or shove him. I didn’t have a plan but needed one. Removing the gag from my mouth was the only thing I could think of doing. Houdini I wasn’t.
“We’ll return you to your true home soon.”
There are more psychos? Fantastic.
Boredas offered his hand again. I took it, not because I wanted to touch him or his sweaty palms, but because I had to get out of the trunk, survey my surroundings, look for an escape—just like my father had taught me to do if something like this ever happened. Boredas pulled me from the car, and I landed on the crunchy gravel then glanced around. Black Dodge Charger, field of harvested corn in front of a dense forest across the street, rows and rows of scrappy pine trees to my left and right, and a shack of an A-frame house behind me.
I swallowed hard. His hideout scared me more than he did. People die in shacks—no, people are murdered in horrible, horrible ways in dilapidated cabins in the woods.
Pressing his hand between my shoulder blades, Boredas urged me toward the house. My feet skidded on the rocks. Going in wasn’t an option. I couldn’t. He was deranged. He’d claimed I had a true home and that he’d been searching for me for a long time. I shook my head, took one more look at the house, then turned and ran for the cornfield.
“You won’t make it far, and I don’t plan to hurt you,” he shouted.
I didn’t look back. I kept moving forward, jumping over the chopped stalks, avoiding patches of ice from the recent freeze. I hurried into the forest. The trees were bare of leaves, providing me little cover, but it was dark, and I wore black; even my hair was dark. I could hide in the night. Daytime would be another story.
Ducking under a low-lying branch, I slipped on some slick underbrush and landed on my butt. I jumped to my feet, not even bothering to look back. I couldn’t slow down. I wouldn’t slow down. I’d run for days if I had to. But my chest hurt, and my legs were shaky. And I didn’t know where I was.
Boredas couldn’t be behind me. He stayed still when I took off.
Add lazy to the list of strange personality traits.
I stopped. My lungs burned, and my pulse raced in my ears, thrumming faster than ever before. I needed to figure out what direction I was heading. I needed to listen for the highway, for any clue to help me out of here.
“You shouldn’t have run,” someone behind me said, but it wasn’t my captor. This voice sounded deeper, ominous, and very close to my ear.
Warm, humid breath greeted my skin, raising the hairs on my neck.
Shaking rocked my core, and cold prickles of fear raced to my fingers and toes. Turning around wasn’t an option. Running wasn’t either. He stood too close. If he was armed… Oh, God, I really am going to die.
“We were paid to deliver you alive, but no one ever said we couldn’t hurt you.”
Pain radiated through my head. White spots appeared in my vision, and the world around me faded.
lost my freedom. Not only were my hands duct taped but now my ankles were too. To make matters worse, I was hogtied and lying on a smelly couch. I guess I pissed off Psycho Number Two. My head throbbed, and I knew without touching it that I had a knot. Probably a concussion.
No one would be taking me for a CT scan though.
These men were hired to capture me, but by who? Questions swam through my groggy mind. Questions I was too afraid to try to make sense of or answer.
I kept my eyes shut. Boredas and his not-ashamed-to-hit-a-girl buddy weren’t talking. Who knew where they were, but I certainly didn’t want to open my eyes and find them staring at me.
Wriggling my fingers, I tested for any w
eakness in my bindings, but my effort was useless. Tape held me tight.
I lay still, too scared to move, listening for any sound, any movement. I heard the wind blowing through the trees, heard the roof groan, mice scratching in the wall, but nothing else.
Did they leave me alone?
Click, click, click.
The noise sounded far away. Maybe it was just the mice infestation.
I shuddered. How bad was this place?
I had to see. I couldn’t take blindness any longer. Barely opening my eyes, I squinted around the candlelit room. My stomach churned. Decayed animal carcasses littered the floor. A raccoon or two, maybe a cat or dog…
Maybe the smell wasn’t the couch after all?
Empty bags of potato chips, soda bottles, pizza boxes—these things were tossed about. Cleanliness obviously meant nothing to these guys. My hope for survival diminished, deflating my lungs. Hot tears slid down my cheeks, soaking the upholstery beneath me. I didn’t care. I wanted to burn this place down, burn it and the people in it—well, the crazies anyway.
A laptop was the only sign of electricity—or modern times. It sat on the edge of an ancient writing desk nestled against the wall by the stone fireplace.
Psycho Number One and Two were not in the room, so I fully opened my eyes and tried to see what displayed on the screen.
Black background, white banner across the top with someone… no, something—an elven woman and some big, toothy monster-looking thing. An RPG Paused button blinked in the center of the page. RPG? Role-playing games? My kidnappers were role-playing?
Oh. It all made sense now. Boredas, hunter, Copper Rocks—these idiots took their game playing too seriously. Somehow they confused me for part of their made-up world. This was bad. Really bad. Maybe I could talk my way out of it? Maybe I could… wait, Psycho Number Two said they were paid to catch me.
Nothing made sense.
A door banged closed somewhere to my left. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath, but it did little to calm my pounding heart. My hands were cold yet sweaty, and my feet were freezing.
“She’s still asleep, but it looks like she’ll wake soon,” a man said, his voice too close. He probably stood right above me, staring, thinking about what he planned to do with me. “She’s shaking.”
One of them slammed something down.
“You shouldn’t have hit her.”
“Oh, come on, I was just having a little fun. You shouldn’t have untied her. You know she could easily slip away if she comes into her powers.”
Insanely delusional.
“She doesn’t have a clue about her powers.”
Plastic crinkled—I hope that’s not to wrap my dead body in.
“She’s scared, Ruckus. This poor girl has lived in the realm of man her entire life, given up by her parents when she was a baby, and now her father wants her back to off her publicly—”
I held back a scream. They did mean to kill me. And it sounded like they’d been role-playing for years. I wiggled my fingers, trying to dig my nails into the sticky tape. I had to get away. I had to get free. Why couldn’t my problems just be about Mark and Derick? Why did I have to get caught up in some kidnapping scheme? Some sick, twisted scheme at that.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, brother.”
“Not soft. But look how beautiful she is. Imagine—”
Footsteps. Heavy, fast footsteps. They stopped right in front of me. A clammy finger trailed from my temple to my collarbone, and I couldn’t hold back the trembling any longer.
“I thought you might be awake. You should not eavesdrop. It is rude.”
I opened my eyes and faced the men, anger filling every inch of me. I was going to die anyway. “Kidnapping, stuffing a girl in a trunk, punching said girl and tying her up on a couch with intent to kill her is rude. Me overhearing you say all that is unfortunate.”
Psycho Number Two knelt, smiling and revealing all his crooked, yellow teeth. He looked nothing like his friend, and I already knew Ruckus wasn’t as nice. Not that either of them could have been deemed ‘nice’.
“Such spunk. But we do not intend to kill you. Your father will handle that.”
“My father is probably worried sick about me right now. Maybe he’s out looking for me—or at the police station trying to get help. You have me confused with some disgusting game.”
He looked over his shoulder and grimaced. “Game, huh? Is that what you think? It’s just a game to you? We fight wars. We battle good—”
“For evil,” Psycho Number One piped in.
Short, dark, and hairy growled. “It’s not just a game. There is so much more you do not know. You will be taught. Then you will be killed.” He chuckled and cupped my cheek with his huge hand. “And such a shame. You would make a fine breeder.”
Bile rose in my throat, and I spit it in his face.
Rising to his feet, he backhanded me.
Ringing split my head in two, and my cheek vibrated with heat.
I inched myself against the couch and tried holding back tears, but the stupid things slipped out anyway. I didn’t want to die.
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Shattered Secrets, by Krystal Wade
(http://bit.ly/1br92zk)
Magical beings who guide human emotions are fighting an invisible war dating back to the dawn of time, and Abigail’s one of them. The more she learns of her heritage, the less she wants to know. Armed with a very old, very massive book to teach them about their history, Abigail and Derick run away to a place where they think they can be safe and happy, only to have their troubles secretly hitch a ride.
Her history book is in a sharing mood, and it tells her to keep a secret of her own. But has she put her trust in the wrong place?And will the world survive if she has?
Wilde's Fire, by Krystal Wade
(http://j.mp/1ak2Ju1)
When Katriona Wilde inadvertently leads her sister and best friend through a portal into a world she’s dreamed of for six years, she finds herself faced with frightening creatures and a new truth: her entire life has been a lie.
Lost on the Edge of Forever, by Michael Haley
(http://j.mp/1rLV2nn)
Leila, a fatal victim of a college mass-murder, is searching for answers to her death; Alejandro, a depressed and listless freshman, is searching for a new beginning. The two souls meet and quickly find themselves irrevocably intoxicated with each other.
The friends swiftly become lovers and dream of finding a way to make their relationship last forever, yet their dream explodes once an act of evil reveals the true purpose of their star-crossed romance.
Will their love allow them to accept a destiny that surpasses time and perhaps even God, or is their love destined to die loud and young?
The Charge, by Sharon Bayliss
(http://j.mp/1f0Tsc5)
Warren never lets bullies mess with his family, no matter now big or bad – so when the King of the Texas Empire kidnaps his brother, Warren embarks into a still-wild West to save him. On his journey, he makes a discovery that changes his life forever – he and his brother are estranged members of the Texas royal family and the King wants them both dead!
Warren soon learns that a legacy of violence isn’t all he inherited from the brutal Kings of Texas - the myths of their supernatural powers may not be myth at all. Warren must save his brother and choose whether or not to be King, follow a King, or die before he can retire his fake ID.
Appetizer:
Book Cover
Title Page
Main Course:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Dessert:
About the Author
A Taste Of Shattered Secrets, by Krystal Wade
Copyright & Publisher
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