Destiny's Dark Fantasy Boxed Set (Eight Book Bundle)

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  Philip and Bracus walked to the fire side-by-side, Bracus reluctant to disarm. He wished to take a bath in his dwelling. He would lay his weapons down in his own dwelling. Matthew and Stephen's quiver and bow lay at their feet as they used a log pulled close to sit upon.

  Matthew watched their approach, his backside tight against the ground and his feet crossed at the ankle, arms resting on the log. “Tell us. Our weapons finished... our day spent.”

  Stephen gave a sour look, obviously tired of being left out of the immediacy of the president's inner circle.

  Anna watched the group of huge men come together near the fire, the Band. She scooted back a few steps, giving up the warmth of the fire for the feeling of security the distance gave her. The captain, Bracus Goodman, was the only one she might trust at this time... might, and one other, her mind whispered. He was their leader and garnered respect through his treatment of others. He even took time with the children, a true and decent thing. Memories of her clan hovered near her, threatening to suffocate with the sheer terror they provided. She had prevailed, narrowly escaping. Anna forcibly relaxed her shoulders. Near a half year she had been here. She would not be able to keep her clan of origin secret forever. Possibly, the one who had abused her would find her and kill her.

  He had told her so. She shivered, remembering.

  *

  Anna could feel his body pressing into hers, filthy hands groping about her clothing while one hand covered her mouth to quiet her. She remembered the trees that night as she lay upon her back, their swaying a black outline against the moonlight which spilled about her, the forest her witness. She kicked with all her might, bucking and fighting, his hand left her mouth and backhanded her across her face, she saw stars, stunned, she lay still and he continued his onslaught. He was a member of her clan's Band; one sworn to protect the clan, protect the females... yet he did not.

  She felt her mind leave her body, this could not be happening to her. Just as he would have his way with her, a figure loomed above them, an older female, small boulder raised above her head. Anna's eyes bulged, the male seeing her reaction a moment too late before the rock fell on his head, and he slumped over, off Anna's body. She sat up with a hiccuping sob. Relief washed over her in a sickening adrenaline surge, overwhelming her limbs, numbing them. She opened her mouth to say something and it was Della, who put a finger to her lips to silence her.

  The two women turned to look at the male, Anna's attacker. “Go now, far away. Before he awakens.”

  “But what of you? He will hurt you,” Anna said, her body quaking.

  She smiled grimly. “No, he will be occupied with explaining himself. However, this one is of a mind to not be remorseful. He will try again. You must go.” Della's stout body and dour face was set in purposeful lines. She held out a pack, with odd straps that wound around ones arms.

  “This has what you need for a journey of this length.”

  Anna peered inside... jerky, dried fruit and nuts. More food than she would need. She gave a confused look at Della. “You need what is here and more... than I can give you. Follow the cobbled road until it ends. Head west.” Della rifled through the folds of her skirt, producing a rough map. “There are rumors that the mid-western clans are governed more fairly.” Della gave a significant look at Anna. The translation was: the males were true, without criminal transgression.

  That was how the Clan of Ohio had found Anna; dirty, delirious, and half-starved. Her fear not as awesome as her desperation.

  Anna started when a male spoke to her, “Anna?”

  She instinctively backed away, then stopped, steeling herself. She must be brave. Not all males were as the one she had escaped from. Joseph stood looking at her, eyebrows raised, waiting for a response. She usually just nodded in return. But this night, still in the grip of her memories, out of the warm shelter of the fire, she wished to have some human contact, even if male... especially male. She purposely stepped closer, regaining the steps she had given up. She needed to start to believe.

  To trust.

  Joseph regarded Anna in surprise. She did not run off as she usually did. He watched as resolve formed in her eyes and he fought not to show his shock. He had been greeting her from the very first. When she came to them a starved, filthy thing, delirious from dehydration, asking over and over, “...is this the midwestern clan?”

  He had watched these months as her shyness was for males, but females, she trusted. That had given the Band pause. They considered her to have been a victim of some kind. But when questioned she just shook her head. Even Bracus, who had found her and established some trust, could not extract the reason for her state upon arriving. What clan did she hail from? A mystery.

  One Joseph wished to solve.

  “Yes, Joseph,” she croaked out, her voice unaccustomed to being used.

  The remaining Band around the fire looked up sharply upon hearing Anna's voice, a rare sound.

  She immediately noticed their attention and faltered, but Joseph said, “Please.. .tell me what you think upon.”

  Anna stood stupidly before him, all thoughts gone, save one. “I am cold.” However insignificant the statement, it was what she could say.

  Joseph smiled, that he could manage. He extended his hand, sweeping it toward the fire. “Join me by the heat then, Anna.”

  She gave the barest of smiles and Joseph's heart soared; to see this quaking female regain a semblance of who she was, giving him the slimmest regard.

  They walked toward the fire together, a man of the Band and a female hanging on to a grain of hope, fiercely.

  CHAPTER 11

  Charles and Clara climbed the steps leading to the Royal Manse, Clara with trepidation, Charles sure-footed as ever. He looked at her rumpled work skirt and blouse, tired from the day in the fields, her rosy cheeks giving testimony to the outdoor work. The sphere felt cloying with the moisture this day. Charles realized the time was coming for the cleanse of the sphere. When that time was near, the moisture level became unbearable.

  “The cleansing is near,” Charles remarked, wiping his brow with his once-white handkerchief.

  “Yes,” Clara said, smiling. She was nearly immune to the humidity of the sphere.

  Charles gave her a glower, she looked much fresher than he, his breeches sticking to his body as a second skin.

  Clara laughed, her smile fading as Peter swung open the double door, ushering them into the wide foyer, the steam-chandelier not yet operating. Fading sunlight streamed through the many stained glass windows like fractured rainbows slicing the interior.

  “Princess, Olive has your change of attire waiting in your chamber.”

  “Thank you, Peter.”

  Clara turned to Charles, looking over his sticky breeches and slightly rumpled blouse, he shook his head. “You Princess, she will require formality in her audience, I am as a bug.”

  Clara laughed, and he winked. “You will await here then, while I change?”

  “Yes.” Charles and Peter watched her climb the great staircase which led to her chamber.

  Peter sighed. “She leads a hard life, our highness.”

  “Yes she does.”

  Peter and Charles stood in mutual silence. They were bound by the same laws that governed everyone in the Kingdom of Ohio; pretending their monarch was not ruled by her own selfishness and the ebb and flow of wine, rather than commerce and the daily yield of life.

  Peter and Charles continued in amiable quiet. For years, since Charles was a youth, Peter had been at this door. He had seen many things.

  An intuitive man, he remarked on Charles' bearing, “What has happened this day?”

  Charles hesitated, then continued, “Clara's cream field yields a pink wash.”

  Peter's face fell. “The Queen will not like this. She will blame the daughter, whether it be her fault or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is why you accompany her?”

  “Yes, and with Prince Frederic still about...�
� Charles let his words trail off.

  “Yes, a troublesome man, most troublesome.” The older man looked at the younger, a gaze of perfect understanding passing between them.

  “It will be good when he takes his leave,” Peter said.

  “Yes, does he not have a kingdom to rule?”

  Peter's lips curved into a wry smile. “Yes, that is the way of it. However,” he arched a brow in apparent amused disdain, “I believe whatever 'ruling' there is may be done by King Otto.”

  “He is too weak, by far, to rule that sphere,” Charles remarked, to which Peter only nodded in agreement.

  They looked up at the same moment that Clara descended, resplendent, the day's glow still upon the creaminess of her cheekbones, a dress of the palest pink falling to brush the tops of white shoes. The bruise the only reminder that hers was not a life of softness, but of survival.

  She nodded at Peter. “Where is the Queen?”

  “She takes rest in her chamber,” Peter paused. “Princess,” Clara turned, having already begun to make her way to the corridor, “...the King and Prince await you as well.”

  Clara felt this was worse news. Ada seemed to gather more strength and anger when she had an important audience. At least she had Charles. “Thank you, Peter.”

  “You are most welcome, Princess.” Clara knew that it was Peter's way of subtly warning her to be prepared for more than just the Queen's ire. She and Charles walked down the long corridor to Ada's chamber. It felt like the old stories of pirates, when the end had come, one walked the plank. Clara knew how those lost souls must have felt, her life balanced on the narrow wood.

  CHAPTER 12

  Bracus looked up, startled, Anna had responded to Joseph with actual words. It was a rare thing when she spoke. As a point of fact, it was he, Bracus, that she most often spoke to. She was reticent with males.

  He observed the two of them say a few things to each other then they walked over to the fire together. Amazing... and wonderful. It would be a great thing for that female to find solace and finally reach out to a male, a member of the Band would be especially good. He swung his head back around and both Matthew and Stephen had matching expressions of surprise. Even unflappable Philip, usually the one that chose his emotions carefully, had paused at the scene. He turned and looked at Bracus, his gladness a cloak about his face, shadowed in the twilight that was giving way to night.

  “Joseph has cracked her, I see?” Stephen said derisively.

  Bracus frowned at him. “It is a good thing that she responds to anyone, you should be glad of it. She is not an egg, dolt.”

  Matthew smiled, calm as always. “You just wanted her for yourself,” clapping Stephen on the back, who slapped his hand away.

  “I care not. There will be females aplenty when the sphere is penetrated,” Stephen said.

  “I caution you, President Bowen has only authorized a negotiation with this Princess. It is no guarantee that they will wish to help us in our plight. After all, it is not theirs, obviously,” Bracus said.

  Stephen grimaced. “That may be. But, as I see it, if the negotiations fail,” he paused for effect, “I, for one, will be inclined to sway them to see reason.”

  Bracus saw a vision in his head of the Princess, being coerced into cooperating by means of force or anything. He did not like it. He was managing his emotions again. Something as foreign to him as imagining life as a sphere-dweller. When he clamped down enough to not let his emotions show, he responded, “That would not aid us. If we are to convince the sphere-dwellers to come to our aid, coercion and violence will not be the way of it.”

  Matthew looked between the two of them, the least volatile of the three. “Perhaps you are both in the right.”

  The two Band members looked at him in surprise, he as steeped in logic as twenty bags of tea.

  “Do you now?” Bracus quizzed.

  “Do listen. If the Princess is disinclined to assist us, we may be able to persuade the other sphere-dwellers with our logic.”

  “She as hostage?” Stephen intuited, and Matthew nodded.

  “It is the same,” Bracus argued.

  “Do you not see? She will either say yea or nay. If she does not, we go to her sphere, and tell them any matter of thing that we wish. And they may be so inclined with the sure knowledge that we have her. As you are well aware, they presume us primitive.”

  Stephen said, “Only you. I, on the other hand, am naturally sophisticated.”

  Bracus gave Stephen a sound punch in the arm. “Say Captain! Why do you strike me?”

  “Your voluptuous laziness in the field today. Nary an ounce of sophistication was in evidence then.”

  “He speaks true,” Matthew said.

  They laughed together for the moment. Soon enough, Bracus imagined tensions would run high as the time drew near to acquire the Princess.

  The guard watched the shy female with Joseph of the Band. He kept his smirking to himself. His time would come. A female would not be his weakness. He would bend her to his will. This slobbering obsession with protecting the females and groveling before the sphere-dwellers in the hopes of acquiring their females made his blood boil. His patience was a built thing, a manufactured thing. It was his greatest weapon. No one was as sly as he. He would use their emotions and weakness towards females against them. No female would ever be important to him again.

  Bracus took stock of the Band, all in attendance by the great fire. He had not spoken with three of his team: Joseph, Jacob and James. He would wait for tomorrow. He did not wish to disturb Anna and Joseph with their fragile bond linking together before his eyes, sitting at the huge log worn smooth from a hundred years of fire watching. Joseph dwarfed her form from a solid two feet away, she was less than half his size. He was a good hunter, fighter and protector, he liked the man at his back.

  The clans were not always on good terms with one another. Bracus' face darkened. He wished that all the Bands could see the strength of uniting. President Bowen did:

  *

  “Before the Earth Breathed Ash, Bracus, there was a force such as the one I am proposing, named the Po-lice. Their sole job was to serve and protect,” President Bowen stated.

  “We are a different people,” Bracus stated.

  “Not so different, warrior.”

  “I have read the accounts. They were civilized, they gave people trial. There was much time spent on proving innocence when guilt was guaranteed.”

  “It was flawed, however, we are as well. I accept that. But our strength lies in that which the Evil Ones gave us. This physical manipulation was initialized for a reason. You were bred to protect. It is physical; it is instinctual. We must come together and embrace that purpose.”

  “We do have a cooperative with some clans,” Bracus said.

  “Not all. That is the goal. I endeavor to acquire the Princess, and the negotiation being a successful thing, may create a positive ripple, one which inflates a sense of hope in all the clans. Once they see there is a possibility of a future for our peoples, they may be more willing to listen.”

  Bracus nodded. Much of what Arthur said made sense. But Bracus understood human nature, and where there was not reason, fear would do as a handy substitute. He had seen the evidence of such.

  He snapped out of his reverie as Jacob and James approached, cousins. Many of the Band were related, some distantly. They looked as different as two men could be. One fair haired and skinned with blue ice chips for eyes, cheeks a ruddy mask, the other with ink black eyes, dusky skin and hair that blended in with the surrounding night.

  When James spoke, his teeth flashed in his mouth, “We see that Joseph has managed to get Anna to speak,” he said in a hushed tone.

  The three men (and Philip, who had added himself to the group) smiled and nodded; Stephen the only one with a stony expression. They hung back at the edge of the forest clearing, enjoying the fire at a distance.

  Jacob said, “A good thing, that.”

  The Band n
odded, with the ratio of males to females a dismal fifteen to one, any match was celebrated, births were greeted with a feast.

  “I would give much to know of this clan that she comes from. That they would give up a female...” Jacob began.

  “She was not given up, cousin, she escaped,” James said.

  Bracus pressed hands to his hips, legs spread apart. “What say you? She has not mentioned any detail, nary one.”

  “Nor to I,” and he leaned forward and all heads neared his, until there was a circle of six heads huddled together. “But Lillian has managed to get some story from her.”

  The Band stood silently, James loved drama but would eventually get to the end of it. A great story teller, was James.

  “She did not say all, but only that a male had attacked her.”

  “I knew it!” Stephen intoned.

  Bracus looked at him sharply, too loud, his look said. This would explain much. Her shyness of the males, where none had transgressed against her.

  He had suspected as much.

  Matthew and Philip stood quietly, thinking it through, as was typical of them.

  “Is there anything more?” Jacob asked.

  “Yes. Lillian thinks he was part of that clan's Band.”

  There was a pregnant silence as the members deliberated on a female being in the hands of a Band member that meant them harm.

  They would come to harm, of that there was no doubt.

  “How could she escape him?” Matthew asked. Excellent question, if phrased oddly.

  Philip looked at Matthew in question.

  “Come now? You are all thinking it. How would that female,” he gestured to Anna, still sitting semi-stiff beside Joseph, her small form looking tiny next to Joseph, “defend herself against any of us?”

  It was disturbing. All the Band felt similarly about females. Who would know how they would feel if the situation were not so desperate? But, they seemed uniformly protective toward females in a way that was above that of other males of the clan. The few clans that were allied with them had a similar urgency and protectiveness. To hear that there may be a faction desiring to abuse was against all that they stood for. It was expected from the fragment, but not of the clan.