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

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  John rolled down his window and already had his sealed document to hand to the guy. The guy took the paper, gave it a cursory examination, then handed it back. His attention was more on John’s passenger: his daughter.

  “You can go. But the girl stays,” growled the guard.

  John looked over at his daughter. Where was the cat? Who cares. This would go south if John didn’t tread very carefully.

  “I understand the quarantine, particularly for those three and under. But the pass is for both my daughter and…” the scent hit his nose with the cross-breeze into the cab and the reality of the situation became crystal-clear. This was really going to go south, and fast. These two men were shifters.

  How fast they change, thought John as he was snatched from the vehicle by the wolf. The fight he put up was non-existent––by the time he could react he found himself in mid-air and approaching the ground rapidly. He hit with an “UMPH!”––his face felt dirt and rocks and he could taste the blood already.

  “Daddy!” The type of scream he hoped to never hear from his daughter emanated from somewhere over an embankment. How far had he been thrown? Real far. He was downhill from the road and could only see the glow of the lights over an embankment. Seemed like a good fifty yards…might as well have been fifty miles…

  He mustered up all his energy and stumbled/crawled up the embankment. Before he got over the crest, a hiss then an explosion throttled the air. Oh dear Ancient One no! He scrambled over the hill and…

  Crickets chirped in the night along with the bing-bing-bing his truck was making due to its doors being open. His little girl sat on the roadway, hugging Gabi, who was on her lap.

  John scanned the entire perimeter. The wolves were nowhere in sight. He hobbled to his daughter and smothered her with a hug.

  “Are you okay? What happened, latke?”

  “We okay. Gabi and I made bad dogs disappeeuhl. Why woo they bad?”

  John stood up and took her by the hand. They walked to the truck, led by the orange tabby.

  He lifted her up into the passenger side of the truck. “They are bad because they chose to follow darkness. You did good my little latke.”

  “Gabi, too!” She pet the cat, who had already been waiting in the front seat for her.

  “Yes. Gabi too.” He got in, shut the door and drove off.

  IV

  The Chosen One

  The mid-level lackey knocked a few times, then quietly entered the newly minted corner office of the new sole Counselor to the Prime Master. In the middle of the floor, seated cross-legged on a large pillow, was the Counselor—Magnus––with his eyes closed, apparently in some deep state of transcendental meditation. The lackey wasn’t expecting this and didn’t quite know what to do, so he just stood there and waited.

  About a minute or so later, Magnus spoke. “What is it?”

  The lackey cleared his throat. “Sir, the sensors picked up a rather large magical event at Checkpoint Zero North about 5 minutes ago. We tried to contact the unit there, but they are not responding.”

  Magnus kept his eyes closed. “Have there been reports of anyone trying to pass through the first checkpoint at city limits?”

  “Not sure…I'll look into that right away, sir.”

  “No. I will do that. You may leave now.”

  The lackey promptly exited the office.

  Magnus’ eyelids fluttered. He went back into a deep trance and this time his astral-body left his physical one, then hovered out of the office and over the city of Mysterium. He floated northward, over the smokestacks and factories, then zeroed in on the checkpoint at the edge of town.

  The two young guards were pretty much half asleep when one of them jolted awake.

  Someone is here, thought the guard. Nothing but the empty road, darkness and crickets. Must’ve been dreaming.

  His mind wandered back into the realm of sleep and he dreamed about an orange tabby cat, a pickup truck, a guy and a little girl. The man in the truck handed him a piece of paper with the signature of Prime Master Bachar on it. He examined it then handed it back to the man, who rolled up the truck's window. He saw his reflection in that window. That’s not what I look like, he thought. The reflection was that of Magnus. The guard began to float.

  I can fly! he shot up higher. The exhilaration of dream flight was quite something, and for a little while the dreaming guard was ecstatic. Wait…not this high! The ground was getting so far away and he was jettisoning higher and higher and the exhilaration was turning into panic and terror. His heart drummed fast...he just wanted to wake up or float back down. Finally, his ascent stopped. For a brief moment, relief warmed him.

  I am going to let you go now, he heard a voice speak in his own mind, but it wasn’t his voice

  He began to plummet faster and faster toward the earth, the air blasted his face and his breathing became laborious. He tried to scream. The ground approached rapidly…

  He never woke up.

  The truck’s engine worked overtime up the narrow and winding mountain pass. The glow of the moon––though brightening the night sky and the pavement of the road––only accentuated the dense blackness of the woods far below. John would stick to these mountain passes and back roads and avoid driving through the city of Endor; not that he feared a populace composed almost entirely of witches and warlocks, he simply wanted to minimize any and all potential risks. Magnus would indeed have agents stationed in that city––and most of the cities of the Confederated Six, for that matter. Except for Madlands. That’s why it was John’s destination. Any Confederated Six government operative working there––if discovered––would be skinned alive and eaten by Madlands' locals. If they were lucky.

  His daughter slept with her head leaned up against the passenger side door. Gabi was curled up on her lap, asleep also. What was this cat’s deal? John couldn’t figure it out. But he did reckon––based on the prior two engagements––that it’s intentions weren’t nefarious and that it's presence was fortunate.

  The cat abruptly poked it’s head up. He softly padded off the lap of the girl and jumped up the backrest then into the back of the cab, perching himself up on the top of the backseat. He gazed out the window for a half-minute, then returned to the front seat. He looked up at John and meowed.

  “What’s going on, orange guy, need to pee? We’ll be taking a pit stop––”

  A burst of lightening exploded before the truck and John impulsively jerked the wheel to the right, causing the vehicle to veer off the road.

  The sky was cloudless…where had that lightening come from? Why do I have no control of this vehicle? I feel like we’re floating…Why is that cat meowing so much?

  They had gone over the edge of a cliff. Everything to John seemed to go in slow-motion…

  Little Latke!

  In the blink of an eye he undid his seatbelt and shielded his daughter, as if his flesh-and-bone body would protect her from the brunt of the undoubtedly cataclysmic impact between machine and earth... Her eyes were open and she didn’t scream or cry––she simply stared at him with a mixture of love and wonder.

  John found the starry sky to be quite beautiful. His heartbeat slowed down, his breathing normalized and in that moment he truly understood just how fleeting and precious life was… The blast of violet light bursting forth from his daughter’s chest was thought to be, at first, a hallucination. The light radiated into the entire cab of the truck and enveloped all the occupants in a cocoon of incandescence.

  Though the entire free-fall seemed to last forever, the impact was quite sudden and jarring. It sounded like an explosion of metal and glass; the truck’s front end caved-in then the entire vehicle flipped over a few times before coming to a stop upside-down on the gravel shoulder of the same winding road a thousand feet below. Once the various loose shards of glass, a rolling hub-cap and the slight rocking of the frame settled, only the crickets and a lone owl filled the night soundscape.

  A thousand feet above hovered the
astral-body of Magnus, gazing down on the wreckage.

  Best to be thorough…

  He began his descent to inspect more closely the scene when he heard an explosion and felt a sudden wave of pressure at his back. His astral-body seizured, throttled then shot right back into his physical body which was still back in the office but somehow airborne. His face smashed against what he thought was a desk and the sound of glass shattering and air roaring was quite perplexing.

  A strange silence ensued momentarily, followed by the blasting of alarms, yelling and manic activity. Magnus stood up, wobbled then leaned upon the desk he had just careened into. His right eye burned with what he thought was sweat until he dabbed it and saw the redness of his own blood. A gash loomed above his right eye.

  “Sir!” the lackey, out of breath, tattered and bleeding himself, entered what was left of the office. “You’re cut. Let me get you…”

  “What happened?”

  “Um––explosion, sir. Believe it came from Admin. Half our floor is gone…”

  Magnus pried a shard of glass from his palm and tossed it to the floor. “Round up all known Leftbanker zealots. Get me Prime Master Bachar––he and I need to chat.”

  “Yessir.”

  John was out cold, but Gabi stood outside the truck licking his paws and waiting for the little girl to exit the crashed vehicle. She made a few attempts to awaken her dad, then decided to get out.

  “Aryay!” the little girl pointed.

  There, about twenty feet outside the vehicle and on the gravel––dirty but in-tact––lay her little stuffed lion. She toddled over, scooped it up and gave it a hug.

  Gabi strolled up to her, meowed, then rubbed his face on her leg. He locked eyes on her, purring in various tones and pitches.

  She nodded. “I undewstand, Gabi. Say bye-bye to him.” She gave the cat a hug and turned around. In the distance, lights flickered through the tress. A car was approaching.

  The orange tabby strolled the opposite direction, toward the truck. The girl was mesmerized by the approaching lights in the distance, flickering in and out of the trees. Had she turned around, she would have seen a brief but profound orange glow.

  The headlights got really big, then two vehicles––one of them a limousine–– stopped when they got to the girl and the wreckage. A young woman stepped out from the back of the limo and approached the little girl.

  She kneeled down. “Are you alright? What happened? Where are your parents?”

  She’s pretty, like an angel, thought the girl.

  An entourage of big men with flashlights got out of both cars and a few ran to the heap of a truck.

  The lady brushed back the girl's hair. “It’s okay.”

  The men poked their lights into the wreckage then fanned out to scour the surrounding woods.

  With the stuffed lion close to her chest, the girl held her gaze on the woman’s gentle blue eyes.

  “Let’s get you warm, into the car. Does that sound nice?”

  The girl shyly nodded her head then took the lady’s hand. They went to the car and got in. The lady sat across from the little girl and smiled at her.

  Big car. Smells good.

  The lady didn’t push for any more answers. She figured the girl was still in shock, though she did seem rather serene and nonplussed for having just survived such an apparently violent car wreck and her parents nowhere in sight…

  “Ma’am.” One of the big guys was back from his search, peering into the limo. “Not sure how anyone could have survived that…but there’s no sign of anyone in the vehicle or in the woods.” He looked at the girl, then the back out to the heap of wreckage.

  The others from the entourage trickled back from their respective searches, pontificating on what possibly happened.

  “Thank you Jasper. We’ll keep an eye out on the road for her father, but I have a feeling he’s disappeared…”

  Father? Disappeared? Why had she said that? The words simply entered her brain and came out of her mouth… She had the impression something supernatural was going on––this was, after all, witch and warlock country. Perhaps a parent who could no longer look after this girl––rather than leave her on a doorstep with a note––had decided to stage this rather extreme and dramatic scene.

  No, she knew that wasn’t the case. She looked again into the jade eyes of the girl. Whatever this was, it was far greater and more vast than anything she could fathom. She smiled, and the girl smiled back.

  “She’s coming with me to Alexandria.”

  The End

  See the prophecy fulfilled: visit www.simonepond.com for more information on where to purchase.

  About the Author

  I write novels. I’m also obsessed with Boston Terriers, Victorian dresses, and the end of the world. I’m a warrior of light. I grew up in Kensington, Maryland––a small town just outside Washington D.C.––and spent most of my time filling up journals. In 2013, I published my first fiction novel, The City Center, which won a gold medal in dystopian fiction. I publish a book every couple months, so be sure to sign my mailing list for updates on new releases.

  Read More from Simone:

  www.simonepond.com

  The Seas of Time

  Jayne Faith

  The Seas of Time © 2015 Jayne Faith

  * * *

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published in the United States of America

  The Seas of Time

  Enemies become allies in this story of star-crossed lovers.

  When Talia agreed to take a break from her research to spend a week at the beach, she never dreamed she'd end up a captive in the depths of the ocean with her friend Janelle. Janelle has a fondness for fairy tales and she's sure their abductors, with their gold-medal swimmer physiques, are sea people—mermen. Talia knows that’s ridiculous, but when one of the men, Ballard, slips her his knife and lets her in on his own purpose for being there, she starts to suspect that the truth is beyond anything even Janelle could have imagined.

  Ballard spent the past year infiltrating a rogue military group suspected of breaking the sacred and critical First Tenet of Below: Do not contact those Above. His mission is to discover the location of a secret deep sea base and destroy the rogues' ability to travel to the sea's surface. But he can't help his feelings for Talia, the beautiful, intelligent woman from Above. The deeper he falls, the more he risks his own mission—and the future of every human on Earth.

  As they are drawn deeper into danger, Talia and Ballard begin to realize that their only hope for survival is each other.

  Prologue

  May 2565

  Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States of America

  Two decades after the achievement of light speed travel, unmanned exploratory missions located a planet in a neighboring solar system that had the potential to support human life. More unmanned probes were sent to explore, take samples, and gather data. And later, larger unmanned carriers hauled supplies and machinery to begin the task of readying a new home. The New Horizon was built. A crew was selected.

  The launch of the New Horizon, the second of several scheduled long-range manned space flights, went smoothly. The gigantic carrier—the largest vehicle ever built—contained 100 people and life support to last at least 150 years. It was designed to be not only transportation for the long voyage to a new planet, but also a temporary home and advanced science and research center during the first phase of colonization.

  After launch, the New H
orizon reached its proper orbit and gathered speed as it rounded Earth. As planned, the sub-light speed system began to power up. The light speed system was not supposed to switch on yet.

  But it did.

  In a blinding flash that engulfed Earth for a brief moment, the New Horizon disappeared. It was never heard from again.

  May 1725

  Marianas Trench, Pacific Ocean

  Immediately after the malfunction, the crew of the New Horizon knew only that the carrier was submerged in water. They ran calculations over and over again, sure that they must be wrong. But every time, they got the same answer: the New Horizon now sat deep in the ocean. They’d never left Earth.

  Every available piece of data told them the carrier was now resting in the Marianas Trench, at a point far deeper than had ever been measured. But the New Horizon was built to withstand a variety of extreme conditions, and the life support systems continued to function exactly as designed.

  The New Horizon crew sent a small probe out to explore the carrier’s surroundings. The probe found that approximately eighty percent of the length of the carrier was wedged into a cave under a ledge made of an unknown but extremely dense rock-and-ore substance. The ledge appeared to be blocking the SOS messages that the crew had been sending on a continuous loop to Kennedy Space Center.