by J. R. Rain
From that position, it disappeared, leaving behind a black, churning mist...and a hole in the center of the floor. A hole that revealed a narrow staircase that led down to depths unknown.
Chapter Fifty
The rain had stopped, and in the far distance, through the missing roof, the sky was brightening.
Morning. It had been a long, long night.
Marion and I stood next to the hole in the floor, staring down, each holding a Godfire torch. Her hand was looped inside my arm, leaning on me physically and emotionally.
The faint moon shone down from above, through a break in the clouds. A small wind found its way into the open church, lifting Marion’s long hair from her shoulders.
The stairs led down into impenetrable blackness. I could only imagine what awaited us below.
“Do we have to go?” I asked again.
“It’s the only way to the Grail,” said Marion.
“And what’s so great about the Holy Grail?” I asked.
She didn’t answer at first. I continued staring down into the pit. I thought I could just make out a very faint glow coming from its black depths, but that could have just been my imagination.
“They say the Cup of Christ gives eternal life,” she said. “And eternal healing.”
And I caught her meaning. Her sick lungs. I tore my gaze from the floor. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned tonight,” I said, “it’s that the Holy Grail is not the only path to healing.”
“It’s the only way I believe,” she said with such conviction that I let the conversation drop.
We were silent some more. I wondered how the town of Glastonbury was getting along the morning after an honest to God dragon attack. I wondered how the attack would be explained away, if at all. I also wondered what happened to Merlin, and if he would be back. Somehow, I knew we had not seen the last of him.
I was quiet. I thought back to the many battles tonight. The many battles I had no business winning. I should have been dead a hundred times over.
“I’m just a writer from Seattle,” I said. “A writer who had some strange dreams, a writer who might now be in the middle of the strangest dream of all.”
“You are many things, James. And you have been many people. But always, always you have remained one soul.”
“Arthur kept calling me his old friend.”
“Indeed,” she said.
“Merlin asked Arthur if I remembered who I was.”
“So he did,” she said.
“I’m just a writer,” I said.
“You are many things, James. Many, many things.”
I lived in the real world. Real people with real problems. In my world, people didn’t bury their friends with their own two hands. People didn’t fly with dragons. And they certainly didn’t fight magical knights.
“What’s happening to me?” I said. “Am I going crazy?”
“No,” she said. “You are simply remembering.”
“Remembering what?” I asked.
“That remains to be seen, James.”
I stared down into the dark hole, at stone steps that curved away into blackness. I could not imagine a more uninviting flight of stairs.
I sighed deeply. “I guess we should get on with it, then?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at me with big, round eyes, and then adding, “My knight.”
With Excalibur sheathed unceremoniously in my belt loop, I took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, and a thrill ran through me all over again.
I took a deep breath and stepped down into the pit, holding my torch out before me. I took another breath and took another step, and Marion followed right behind me. The steps seemed carved from solid rock. Who carved it and why, I did not know.
Torches in hand, our footfalls echoing loudly, I led the way down into the darkness. To where, I did not know. Well, not exactly. To the Holy Grail...and to adventure.
One thing was certain, life as I knew it had ended. And a new life lay before me. One that featured dragons and knights and fair maidens. A life of quests and danger and magical swords. Truthfully, it was a life I’d always dreamed of.
As they say, be careful what you wish for.
Now, I gripped the torch with one hand and gripped Marion’s hand with the other as we descended together into darkness...and into adventure.
Wish us luck.
The End
Also available:
Bad Blood
The Spider Trilogy #1
by J.R. Rain, Scott Nicholson and
H.T. Night
(read on for a sample)
Chapter One
Class was over.
I was making my way to my car in the dark, my backpack slung over my shoulder, when the girl came running up behind me. We had exited class together, junior year United States history, when I heard her fall into step behind me. I didn’t have to turn and look to know I was being followed. I didn’t even have to turn and look to know who it was, because I could smell her.
It was the new girl. Well, new as of two weeks ago. And she smelled of flowers and shampoo and clean clothing. She also smelled of curry, which is why I knew who she was, since most girls smelled of only flowers and shampoo.
I’ve always liked unique girls, as much as I can like anything.
I had just clicked my car door open, using the keyless remote, when I heard her footsteps pick up their pace. She was moving faster, coming up behind me. I heard breathing now—her breathing, and I might have heard something else, too. I might have heard, mixed with the sounds of cars starting and our classmates talking and laughing, I might have heard her heart beating.
And it seemed to be beating rapidly.
It should beat rapidly, I thought. Here be monsters.
My back was still to her as she stopped behind me. Her scent rushed before her, swirling around me like a dust devil, and I inhaled her deeply and spun around.
Her face was a little orange under the cheap streetlights. She had opened her mouth to speak, but instead she gasped. She hadn’t expected me to turn on her. Heck, maybe she even thought she had approached quietly.
Maybe she wasn’t sure she had wanted to talk to me. Maybe, just prior to my spinning around, she had decided to do the smart thing, turn herself around, and leave.
Maybe she had heard stories of me. Maybe she had heard that I was different from other students. That there was something odd about me.
I heard the stories, too. Mostly, of course, I overheard the whisperings behind my back. They didn’t know I could hear them. They thought they were being discreet. But I heard their harsh words. I heard their hateful stories. I heard them speak ill of me. I heard their laughter, but mostly I heard their fear.
I heard everything.
Her gasp hung in the air, much like her mouth hung open. She was a pretty girl. Long, blonde hair. Brown eyes impossibly round. She was small but curvy. She looked like a doll all grown up into its teen years.
“You are following me,” I said.
She closed her mouth. Some of the students spilling out into the parking lot watched us. In fact, most of the students were watching us. I ignored all of them. All of them, that is, except this new girl.
“Yes, sorry,” she said.
“Why are you sorry?” I asked. I turned and opened my car door. I tossed my backpack into the backseat.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” I said.
I heard her heartbeat clearly now. It thumped rapidly. It even seemed to labor a bit, which might mean she had some sort of heart condition, surprising for one so young. She looked once over her shoulder, and I could almost hear her thinking, although my hearing isn’t quite that good. She was thinking, and I would have bet good money on this, I can still leave now. Make up a good story, or even a bad one. Anything. Just leave. They call him a freak for a reason.
But she didn’t leave, and I knew why. Because they don’t just call me a freak
.
They also call me Spider.
“You need help,” I said, draping an arm over my open car door, letting it support some of my weight.
She quit looking around and now she held my gaze, and as she did, her heartbeat steadied. She was no longer afraid. Then her eyes pooled with tears, but she did not look away even as the tears spilled out.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you have a ride home?” I asked. I’d learned to never trust tears.
“I walk.”
I motioned toward the passenger seat. “Get in,” I said, “And let’s talk.”
Bad Blood
is available at:
Kindle * Amazon UK
Paperback * Audio Book
Also Available:
Aladdin Relighted
The Aladdin Trilogy #1
by J.R. Rain
and Piers Anthony
(read on for a sample)
Chapter One
She was a fine beauty with almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones and lips so full they could hardly close. She stepped into my tent and shook out her hair and slapped the trail dust from her overcoat.
I had been dozing lightly, one foot propped up on a heavy travel chest, when I heard a woman’s voice asking for me. With my foot still hanging over the ornately-engraved chest, I had turned my head with some interest and watched as a dark-haired woman had poked her head in my open tent. My tent was always open. After all, I was always open for business. Once confirming she had the right tent, she had strode in confidently.
And that’s when I sat up, blinking hard. It was not often that such a beauty entered my humble tent. Granted, there had been a time when I was surrounded by such beauties, but that seemed like a long, long time ago.
“Do you always sleep during the day?” she asked. As she spoke, she scanned my simple tent, wrinkling her nose. She stepped over to a low table and looked down at a carving of mine. She nodded to herself, as if she approved of my handiwork. She looked around my tent some more, and when she was done, she looked at me directly, perhaps challengingly.
“Only until the sun goes down.”
She had been looking at a pile of my dirty robes sitting in one corner of my tent. She snapped her head around. “I hope you’re joking.”
“And why would you hope that?”
“Because I will not hire a sluggard.”
She was a woman of considerable wealth, that much was for sure. She also did not act like any woman I had even seen, outside of the many courtyards and palaces I had once been accustomed to. She reminded me of all that was wrong with wealth and royalty and I immediately took a disliking to her, despite her great beauty.
Through my tent opening came the sounds of money being exchanged for any number of items. At the opening, swirling dust still hovered in the air from when she had entered. The dust caught some of the harsh sunlight, forming phantasmagorical shapes that looked vaguely familiar.
“And why would my lady need to hire a lazy wretch like me?” I asked. As I spoke I lifted my sandled foot off the chest and sat back with my elbows on my knees.
“Emir Farid said some satisfactory things about you. In particular, that you have proven to be somewhat reliable.”
“Emir Farid has always greatly admired me.”
She studied me closely. Her almond-shaped eyes didn’t miss much. Her long fingers, I saw, were heavy with jewels.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a seat?” she asked.
I motioned to the area in front of the chest. The area was covered in sand and didn’t look much different than the desert outside my tent.
I really ought to clean this place, I thought.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll stand.”
I shrugged and grinned. She fanned her face and looked around my tent some more. She didn’t seem pleased, but she also looked desperate. Desperate usually won out.
She said, “Despite your many flaws, according to Emir Farid, he says that you are particularly adept at...finding things.”
“I’m also adept at losing things, my lady, but funny how no one seems to want to hire me for that.”
Outside, a few tents down, an animal shrieked, followed by sounds of splashing, and I knew a goat had been slaughtered. A dry, hot wind found its way into my tent, swirling the dirt at her feet, and lifting her robe around her ankles.
Nice ankles.
She caught me looking at them and leveled a withering stare at me. I grinned some more.
“You make a lot of jokes,” she said. “This could be a problem.”
I moved to sit back in the position she had found me in. “Then I wish you luck in your quest to find whatever it is that’s missing. May I suggest you take a look around our grand market place. Perhaps this thing of which you seek is under your very nose.” I closed my eyes and folded my hands over my chest.
“Are you always like this?” she demanded.
“Lying down? Often.”
She made a small, frustrated noise. “Is there anyone else in this godforsaken outpost who can help me?”
“There’s a shepherd who’s been known to be fairly adept at finding lost goats—although, come to think of it, he did lose one last week—”
“Enough,” she snapped. “I don’t have much time and you will have to do, although you are older than I had hoped.”
“My lady is full of compliments. I am not sure if I should blush or sleep.”
“Neither, old man. Come, there’s much to do.”
I heard her step towards the open flap of my tent. I still hadn’t opened my eyes. I lifted my hand and rested it on the corner of the chest. I hunkered deeper on the padding that doubled as my bed. She stopped at the entrance.
“Well?” she asked impatiently.
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you coming?”
I turned my head and looked at her. She was standing with her hands on her hips, silhouetted in the streaming sunlight. God, she was beautiful. And irritating.
I said, “Not until I know what you want me for and we have discussed my price.”
She turned and faced the bustling marketplace just outside my tent. She wanted to leave. She wanted to run. But she needed my help, that much was obvious. I waited, smiling contentedly to myself.
She said, “If I tell you on the trail, I will double your asking price.”
Double was good. I jumped to my feet and grabbed a satchel and my chest. The rest could stay.
At the tent entrance, I nodded at her. “You have yourself a deal.”
Aladdin Relighted
is available at:
Kindle * Amazon UK
Paperback * Audio Book
About the Author:
J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time in the Pacific Northwest. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.
Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.
Add him on Facebook.
Add him on Twitter.
