Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  “I knew that.” I hadn’t.

  She nursed the flames, cupping her hands around them to blow into the base and tease the fire higher. I moved from my rock and collected what dry wood I could find. By nightfall, our campfire hidden within the copse was generous enough to fend off the moorland chill and any hungry wolves. As for wargs, hopefully we had left them with their handlers down in the valley.

  “Here, eat.” She gestured to a small pile of leaves, petals, and berries while plucking a similar assortment from her own collection. She hadn’t been idly picking flowers at all. “I do not know what your kind calls these.” She lifted a sweet red berry. “I know them as su-taloons.”

  I sat on a blanket of moss between rocks and soaked up the warmth of the fire. “Wild strawberries.”

  She’d amassed quite the collection, although one addition did make me smile.

  I poked at the purple flower. “This is a Butterfly orchid. In large doses, it can induce dreams. Whores serve it to their special clients.” Considering how I couldn’t seem to clear my head of Shaianna’s alluring bathing session, the last thing I needed was an aphrodisiac. “I’ll pass.”

  “It’s edible. You’re hungry. Eat.”

  “I’m hungry for a lot of things. And you should lay off the orchid leaves too. Stick to dandelions. They’re safer.” I examined a few more of the berries and various other leaves she had foraged. If she hadn’t already saved my life, I may have suspected her of trying to poison me. “How do you know about foraging? Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “Those are two questions, thief.” Her delicate smile reached her eyes and brightened them enough for me to notice in the shifting campfire light.

  I had many questions, and more sprouted with every passing hour. I wanted to ask about the language she spoke, the land she came from, her people, her queen. I needed to know where else gems touched her body, why they decorated her skin, and what purpose they served. I’d never met anyone like her—I doubted anyone in Brea had—and I hungered to know more. But this was a job, and if I wanted my reward, I couldn’t afford to get tangled in the mystery of her.

  “I know very little about your city or your people,” she murmured, picking the stalks from the small berries. “Tell me about them.”

  And yet she spoke the language flawlessly. I was the least likely Brean ambassador. I regularly screwed over the city and its people, and I did it with a smile. “They’re people. Good, bad, rich, poor. What else is there to say?”

  “From your tone, I assume there is much more to say. Tell me of the Inner Circle.”

  My smile wavered, but I held it in place and picked at my berries. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Then tell me what you have heard.”

  “The Inner Circle is a city within a city. They have strict beliefs, laws, rules. It’s ordered. Some call it a haven, of sorts. Very little information gets through the wall. Nobody inside gets out and nobody outside gets in without permission of the High Guard. But wherever you go in Brea, you see the spire and the tightly packed rows of white houses climbing the steep central hill. It’s clean. Bright.” I paused, popped a berry into my mouth and bit down. The taste was bitter and sharp, nothing like the sweetness I had expected. “The Inner Circle is beautiful.”

  “You make it sound perfect, but there is irony in your tone.”

  Oh, it wasn’t irony. My heart fluttered a little faster. She heard fear in my voice, and my attempts to contain it. “I’m a thief. I grew up in a workhouse. What could someone like me possibly know of the Inner Circle?”

  “Indeed. What could you know? Your sister then, tell me about her.”

  Fear twisted in my gut, turning into guilt and my fake smile curled downward. “No.”

  Shaianna’s expression didn’t register surprise when I faced her. She had the look of the Inner Circle guards: a penetrating glare burning with accusations.

  “Enough questions. We don’t need to know each other, princess. It’s better that we don’t. Once the bond is broken, we’re going our separate ways if you can keep from killing me, and don’t think I’m not expecting it.”

  She blinked those lovely green eyes, but I wasn’t buying their sweet innocence, not when I had seen her cut throats like farmers cut through wheat. “I am merely curious. Is that a crime in your land?”

  “No.” I snorted. “But I’ll tell you this. When the bond is broken, get away from Brea and me. Go as far as you can. Take your crazy and go back to whatever exotic land you came from.”

  “Why are you afraid?”

  Because I was wrong and my sister was right.

  The campfire flames danced. Embers drifted skyward and the smoldering wood hissed and spat. Memories hid screams inside the sounds of the fire burning. Terrible screams that had chilled me to my soul while two raging pyres had warmed my face. I couldn’t answer her, to do so would mean admitting too much.

  She held my stare, searching for answers in my eyes, but she wouldn’t find them. I had hidden them for years, and I would hide them for many more to come. She lowered her gaze and ate the remainder of her berries. I could only hope she would listen where I had failed to, because if she returned to Brea with her Dragon’s Eye, not even her magic could save her from the fate that waited.

  Mist seeped through the trees. The campfire smoldered. Something had woken me, though I couldn’t determine what.

  I lifted my head. Shaianna wasn’t in the camp. After our fall into sullen silence, she had gathered her cloak around her and left. She couldn’t go far, so I had settled down to snatch as much sleep as I could. But she hadn’t returned. The night was still thick, and we were a long time from morning.

  She was entirely capable of looking after herself, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been gone too long. Moving quietly in the dark, I caught sight of green light filtering through the sparse trees and moved closer. By the time I reached the edge of the woods, the ripple of green light had flooded the mossy ground and flowed down the steep moor-side climb. And there she was.

  She stood at the crest of a rocky outcropping, backlit by a sharp crescent moon. The emerald light I’d followed spiraled around her and wove through itself, swirling and dancing in ribbons. Captured inside it, Shaianna teased it with her hands, lifting the ribbons high, pulling the light with her, pushing it down, and directing it across the moorland. Her body gems glowed through her dark clothes, sparkling like morning dew on grass.

  I gripped the tree beside me, digging my fingers into the bark. That felt real enough. The air smelled of wet grass and overturned earth, and its midnight dampness kissed my face. This was real. Not a dream.

  Magic is forbidden. Magic is wrong. Magic will corrupt. May the fire cleanse your soul. Those words had been drilled into me from as far back as I could remember. Black and white posters had marred the Inner Circle’s crisp white walls. Magic is forbidden. Magic is poison, they declared. May the fire cleanse your soul. Those words had been said before every meal, and I heard them in whispers before I closed my eyes at night. I had believed it all. Believed it from my earliest memories to this new one. Outside the Inner Circle, magic was a tale. It was fantasy, nothing more.

  I crouched low, my hand still resting on the harsh but solid tree bark, and stared up at the woman dancing in the emerald light beneath a pale sliver of the moon. She lifted her hands. The blanket of light rushed in, washed over her, and swirled into the starlit sky. By the Halls of Arach, I had never seen anything like it, like her, before.

  I blinked wetness from my eyes as a rush of guilt turned my insides over.

  I had been wrong. So very wrong about … “Everything,” I whispered.

  My sister had tried to tell me. She had begged me to listen, her little hand tugging on my arm as tears streaked down her face. But I wouldn’t believe her. I couldn’t believe her. Giving them up had been the right thing to do. My mother, my father … Back then, I was a good citizen. I wanted to be a guard one day. I knew the l
aws. I knew what had to be done. May the fire cleanse your soul. And so, at fifteen, I ran to the council and told them all I had seen. How I had watched my mother cup diamonds in her hands and raise them up. How tears had glittered on her cheeks. How my father’s racking coughs had instantly ceased and he’d laughed for the first time in months.

  I told the guards everything—to protect the people.

  And then they came.

  I remembered the ruby blood more than anything else. I’d stared at the splatters of vibrant red on the white-painted walls. And I’d known… I’d known I had done the right thing.

  Watching Shaianna dance inside the light showed me exactly how wrong I had been. I squeezed my eyes closed, not wanting to see, and let the tears fall. Fingernails digging into the bark, I gritted my teeth and willed the sickening guilt away. Magic is poison. But it was the Inner Circle’s lies that were poison.

  A gunshot cracked through the quiet. Shaianna fell at the same time as a burning pain scorched my side, stealing my strength and dropping me to my knees. I looked for the rifleman as the green light fled, soaking into the earth and exposing dark figures moving toward where Shaianna lay.

  Breathless, I grasped at the wound in my side, but the pain shied away. I had been shot before and knew exactly what this was. Yanking my shirt up revealed no wound—only smooth skin.

  The wound I could feel wasn’t mine.

  The bond. I hadn’t been shot. Shaianna had.

  I was about to bolt from my crouch, when I saw the figures emerge from the other side of the tor. Four, no five of them, with two wargs. One of the men threw a net over Shaianna. Their laughter and lurid jeers echoed into the night. I couldn’t fight them.

  I eased back into the tree cover, but I kept my eyes on the highwaymen. They gathered Shaianna in a motionless bundle and one by one disappeared over the rocks.

  Facing down five men and two wargs would get me killed. But there was another way, a thief’s way. I checked my dagger, breathed through the phantom pain in my side, and set off after Shaianna.

  Chapter Eight

  The Draynes highwaymen had made camp at the mouth of the valley, where the steep moorland sides funneled into an area permanently drenched in darkness and dampness. Light rarely penetrated the heavy mist here.

  A circle of caravans tucked into an old quarry left few vantage points. I’d taken up residence on a nearby jutting rock face, wedging my outline between two slabs of stone so as not to be seen. From my position, I had an excellent view of their camp, but no means of breaching it without them spotting me. A crescent of a dozen fires chased away any shadows I could have hidden in. Then there were the wargs, currently dozing beside the farthest caravan, bellies likely swollen with Boots’s and Ratsnest’s bodies.

  I could make out a windowless caravan at the very back of the camp, tucked deep into the quarry face. The single door had been wedged shut with a timber brace. I could bet it was padlocked too. That had to be where they were keeping Shaianna. The lock wouldn’t be a problem, but getting past the men and their wargs would be.

  I tucked the jeweled dagger between two rocks, hiding it from any wayward glint of rogue moonlight, and scuttled back, away from the edge and out of sight. At least I didn’t have to distress my clothing; I was already splattered with blood and filth—halfway to resembling a wild man of the moors. I ran my fingers across the lock-picking tools threaded into the seams of my coat and headed down into the valley.

  The wargs noticed me first. Two of the three beasts sniffed at the air and then grumbled bowel-loosening growls. I lifted my hands and kept my shoulders low and chin dipped. “Ho there.”

  Two men rushed through the campfire barricade. Their animal-hide cloaks bulked out their size, though they were still easily twice my weight. I dropped to my knees. “I mean no harm, sirs. No harm!”

  Rough hands gripped my neck, another my arm, and they dragged me forward.

  “I don’t wants no trouble. I’m hungry, is all. I be passing through. Can you spare some food for a wanderer? Or just let me warm me’self—”

  A knee to the gut cut off my rambling. Hands did a quick search of my person—making me grateful I had left the dagger behind—and then they dropped me face first in the wet quarry gravel.

  “Unarmed,” someone grunted.

  They stomped back to their central fire pit and left me to pick myself up off the ground. I faced the five men who had taken Shaianna and one woman who eyed me with a healthy dose of suspicion. The woman wore furs and leather wrappings and had a weathered look about her. She reminded me of the stones we had passed, the ones leaning into the weather, surviving the worst the seasons had thrown at them.

  “If he’s worthless,” she said, “might as well finish him off and feed him to the wargs.” She lifted an overcooked joint of meat to her lips and bit deep, tearing a mouthful off. My empty gut grumbled.

  “I’s just passin’ through, m-ma’am,” I mumbled. “I got turned around in the mist. Don’t know which way is east. I won’t be no trouble. Just need a touch o’warmth in me bones.”

  “You Brean?” she asked, sliding her shrewd stare over me, reading my clothes, my hair, my face, her appraisal like a slow, wet lick.

  I gritted my teeth against an all-over shiver. “Was, once.” I ducked my head. “Not no more.”

  She chewed noisily some more and then dangled the joint between her knees and sniffed. “What d’yah think, boys? Fresh meat?”

  Someone howled a laugh, another grunted what sounded like a curse, and a third mumbled something about pretty boys and what he could do with them. I hoped I had heard wrong and kept my head down and stance meek.

  She lapped up the hoots and jeers, nodding to herself, and then patted a stump beside her. “Come then. Tell us of your city, wanderer. We soon might be findin’ ourselves at their gates if the wargs have their way.”

  A warg to my right grumbled as I inched forward. Having had one of these beasts recently chew on my shoulder, I was keen to keep as much distance between me and them as possible. Although the leering look from the woman seemed just as grotesquely hungry.

  I settled myself on the stump and soaked up the fire’s warmth while I could. Their camp smelled like woodsmoke and a greasy odor that I hoped was nothing more ominous than sizzling animal fats.

  Acting like a fearful wanderer was easy enough. A few quick glances here and there, and the rest of the time I kept my head down, but inside those quick glances, I counted the men, their weapons, the easiest exit route through the caravans. They had at least one rifle between them, the one they had used to shoot Shaianna. I could still feel the dull ache in my side, the pain reminding me of our bond. All the men wore hatchets at their hips. A few had short knives, but by the condition of the sheaths, I couldn’t imagine the blades were sharp. Still, a blade didn’t need to be sharp to kill.

  “You’s people is low in the valleys …” I muttered, eyeing the rack of meat sizzling over the fire. I wet my lips and wiped them with the back of my hand.

  “Where the wargs go, we go.”

  “You don’t control thems?” I flinched when the wild woman reached out a hand, but she plucked a joint from the rack and handed it out to me.

  “My name is Jodelle,” she said.

  “Thanks to you and yours.” I took the joint and bit down, not needing to pretend I was starved.

  “Few control the wild things of the moors,” she said. “I do my best, but the beasts are restless. Never seen ’em so before.”

  My mouth watered around the meat, and I forgot my questions in my need to fill my belly.

  “Do not trust the woman, thief.” I paused my chewing, startled to hear Shaianna’s voice inside my head.

  “The woman and her words cannot be trusted. Her thoughts are black—” The mental conversation cut off so abruptly I was left blinking into the fire, thoughts vacant and quiet.

  “Did you happenchance see a woman on the moors, traveler?” Jodelle asked, leaning in closer.


  “A woman? No, only you,” I replied.

  “Mm …” She tossed her bone into the fire and licked the juices from her fingers. “You’ll not long survive alone here, wanderer. These lands are restless. Our road takes us to Brea. You should move on, before the gods of the moor claim you. Or we do.” Jodelle’s smile was like that of the wargs, sharp and hungry. A few of her men chuckled.

  “There ain’t no gods here. Just mist and cold.” I concentrated on picking my joint clean and avoided eye contact.

  “They watch, and they listen, traveler. Did you pay your fee to pass through the Draynes?”

  “Aye,” I replied, remembering my little stone in the pile of hundreds.

  “Then you believe.”

  I wasn’t about to argue that my belief was based more on tradition than faith. “Do they protect you and your men, ma’am?”

  She must have sensed something lacking in my words, because she smiled. “You Brean city folk inside your high walls, you forget your history. You bury it under your self-worth. They know, the Restless Ones. They always know. And one day soon, they will rest no more.”

  “You believe it?”

  “I know it. My mother was a moorswoman. There are few left who know the truth of the gods.”

  “She has the rifle beside her and a pistol inside her coat. Take both now. They plan to molest and kill you once they are certain you are alone.”

  I swallowed hard, forcing the suddenly dry bite of meat down, and casually noted how the men had stilled. Either they were engrossed in Jodelle’s tale, or they were readying to strike.

  “Jodelle …” I began. “It’s not the restless gods you should be concerned with.”

  Her eyes widened. She dropped her joint and reached inside her coat. I lunged, slipped my quick hands inside, and yanked a pistol free. I had it cocked and pointed at her forehead before any of her men could let fly their hatchets or reach for the rifle.