Evil Unbound
Death’s Mistress Returns
by Daniel Grayson
Evil Unbound
by
Daniel Grayson
Copyright © 2020 by Daniel Grayson
All rights reserved.
Cover image licensed through Shutterstock.
Cover created by Heather DeVore.
The following is a work of fiction. Any and all characters and events herein are creations of the author and all rights to use, replicate, or represent said characters belong solely to Daniel Grayson. Any similarities between events or characters in this story and other factual events or persons is unintended and purely coincidental.
This book is licensed and published for personal use only. It may not be resold or given away without the express written permission of the author and/or copyright holder.
Special Thanks
This book, more than any other, would not have been possible without my wife and editor! She literally saved the day on this one in more ways than one and I could never express my appreciation for her enough!
I also want to thank my amazing team led by Lori Laflamme for all that they do every day to help me find success in this crazy book world!
Thank you
Jackie,
Sarah,
Jen,
Linda,
Elena,
Melanie,
Sharlie,
& Aaron
Last, but certainly far from least, I want to thank all the amazing readers who have rallied behind me and offered their support for this first publication. You are all a part of an amazing community and it means the world to me as an author!
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Prologue
A metallic taste filled my mouth, and the scent of iron hung in the air. The moon was hidden and I couldn’t see my hands, but the warmth dripping from my fingertips told me that they were covered in his blood. Every aspect of the kill was exhilarating, but I’d come to find that the smell triggered a rush of euphoria. It only lasted a moment before souring, but it was a moment that I longed for, especially after abstaining for too long. The smell of justice.
He’d fallen right in front of my feet, a look of disbelief frozen on his face. I kicked him into the awaiting hole and heard the familiar thud as his lifeless body landed heavily at the bottom. That was another aspect of my hunt that brought me great joy; not only did I kill these wretched men, but I outwitted them as well. They marched themselves into my killing grounds all too willingly. Whether I used my beauty and sensuality to lure them, or the pretense of trouble to call to their naturally protective instincts, they came to me like dogs in heat. Even the vilest of men would follow me unquestioningly. They were blinded by their preconceptions. They could see me as a maiden in distress, or a temptress able to satisfy their desires, but nothing more. They couldn’t imagine me as anything other than a vessel to fill their needs, couldn’t fathom that I could be the threat, and it lead them straight to their graves.
Sin was tied up only a few paces away, ready to finish the job for me. I untied the horse and led him forward. He strained toward me, pulling a platform piled with dirt behind him. It slid forward and dropped down into the hole, covering the body. All that was left now was to smooth the dirt out. I had honed my craft to perfection over the years. There would be no witnesses, no trail, and no body. This disgusting man would just disappear and the village would be all the better for it.
I smiled to myself. Joseph had been the one hundred and nineteenth man to cross my deadly path in this way, and he wouldn’t be the last. I untied the rope from Sin’s saddle and mounted him for the short ride back to my castle.
“Do you know what I’m doing?” I asked my horse, wondering if there was any sense at all in the beast that he was helping me to take these men’s lives.
“You’d do it for me, even if you did know – wouldn’t you, boy?” I said as we crested the hill and the firelight from my castle appeared in the distance. “Home now,” I called out, and the horse kicked into a gallop toward the valley below.
The night was pitch black. A thick covering of cloud kept even a single star from shining down, and the fire in the distance stood like a beacon against the shadow. When another source of light appeared on the horizon, I took note of it immediately. It moved slowly over the hill across the valley. As it grew closer, I could see that it was not one light, but many dots of light travelling together. My heart quickened. It had to be torches; people must be marching down the long road from the village. There was only one place they could be going – my castle.
No sooner had my mind pieced together what I was seeing, than I could hear that the crowd was yelling and screaming.
“Murderous bitch!” one man shouted out.
“She must be a witch, or a demon sorceress!” another screamed. “We need to burn her to be safe!”
I swore softly under my breath as a shiver of fear ran down my spine, but it quickly gave way to anger. I had been overconfident and impulsive. I’d known it was a risk to take another man so quickly, especially after having been seen with him, but I’d cast aside my misgivings, utterly convinced that I was above suspicion. I was their queen after all!
My eyes narrowed as I watched the villagers approach. They were close enough now that I could almost make out who they were, but their faces were distorted by rage, and by the red glow of the torches that spilled across them, causing sinister shadows to pool under their eyes. I recognized their burning need for justice and could not fault them for it, but they didn’t understand. I was not a murderess, I was an executioner; ridding the world of the depraved. I had never killed an innocent man. They should be grateful.
My heart hammered in my chest, echoing in my ears as my anger rose. What right did these fools have to judge me? What right did they have to keep me from my purpose, from my destiny? In that moment I longed to kill them all. I breathed deeply, summoning the practiced calm that had guided me through each of my kills. Confronting them meant certain death, and my work was not done; I couldn’t let them capture me. Although I despised the idea of fleeing in the night like a common thief, I knew that escape was my only choice.
I turned Sin around and pushed him hard back over the hill from which we’d only just come. His hooves thundered through the night as we retraced our path through the trees and across the blood-stained ground of my killing field. I needed to gain as much distance as possible. The villagers believed me to be home. By the time they searched the castle to be sure of my absence, Sin would have taken me far, far away. I could leave this country and make for London. In a city such as that, I was sure I could maintain my pursuits without anyone knowing of my past.
Sin carried me so swiftly that we reached the creek that lines the edge of my property in nearly record time. As we crossed over it into the clearing on the other side, he slowed, seemingly agitated by the less familiar land. He tossed his head and whinnied.
“Ssshhhh, boy, it’s okay,” I assured as I urged him forward, but he wouldn’t go. I glanced around nervously. “Sin, go!” I shouted, nudging him with my heels.
He reared up and screamed, nearly throwing me from his back. In the dark of the night, I could barely see the ground in front of me as I clung to him, but two eyes appeared in front of me.
“A lie!” I shouted back. “None that I have killed can claim to be innocent. All were loathsome creatures.”
“You are wrong, my dear. Your lust for their blood has blinded you. Now you see only what you want to see when you look into the eyes of men. No longer are you gifted with the sight you once possessed.”
Who was this woman? How did she know about my sight?
“The villagers will kill you when they find you,” she said, stepping closer. The clouds parted and the faintest light shone through, giving me a look at her.
“I won’t be found,” I replied, examining her weathered face. She was an old woman, at least two generations beyond me.
“I won’t let you be found,” she said, eyes narrowing. “If they kill you, the spirit you have invited will only haunt another. You must be bound, and the spirit with you!”
“What are you talking about?” I spat.
The woman stepped back and began to speak in an old language that I’d only heard elders use on occasion during a festival. No one knew what the words meant anymore, but this woman did not speak a repetition like the elders. For her, this was as natural as speaking the common tongue. The clouds shifted once more, joining together like grim hands of death to block the pale starlight. Her face was reduced to her two glowing eyes, fire reflected in both of them, though I held no torch in my hands. I looked around; there was no fire light anywhere to be seen.
As she chanted the strange words in her raspy voice, she seemed to be calling on the shadows around her. They rose up at her command, blotting out what little light there had been, plunging the world into total blackness. Everything was gone in that instant, even sound. The trickle of the creek, the crickets, the stirrings of my horse; all gone. The all-consuming silence seemed to roar in my ears, filling me with terror. I could feel my heart pounding rapidly in my chest, my breath was coming in ragged gasps, but even those sounds had been stolen.
I frantically spun around, blindly searching for something, anything to orient me, to give me a clue as to what had happened; but there was nothing. Nothing except for two tiny pinpricks of light. Everywhere I turned, they followed. My breath caught in my chest. I wasn’t alone; she was still here.
“What have you done to me?” My lips formed the words, I could feel myself straining to scream, but I had no voice. “Please!!!” I mouthed desperately, but she didn’t respond to my anguish. Those eyes just hovered before me, unblinking and pitiless. I fell to my knees, and with one final flicker of light, the eyes closed.
I had never known true darkness before. I had never known what it meant to be utterly alone. Time stretched before me, vast, but meaningless with nothing to mark its passage. I don’t know how long I existed in the blackness before my mind learned to fill it in with memories. It was like being in a waking dream. I could walk through the garden of my past, stopping when I chose to explore certain moments. With no senses or distractions, the vividness of my memory was striking. Long forgotten details came flooding back to me: the flecks of color in someone’s eyes, the feel of a certain dress on my skin; it was almost like being alive, but I wasn’t. Nor was I dead. I was trapped in a prison of my own mind.
Eventually, I found that I had the power to reshape my memories. I wasn’t bound to simply relive them; I could change what I said or what I did and live out the fantasy of a different future. I wondered if this was why I was here, had the witch expected that I would grow remorseful? That I would choose a different path for myself? Fool. I often revisited my kills, and I never changed a thing.
After an immeasurable time, I felt something whisper against my skin. The hairs on the back of neck stood up. I felt it again; it was wind, but not the memory of wind, which I had dreamed many times. Real wind. In my dream-state, I could see every detail, but I could feel nothing. This was cool on my cheeks. I opened my mouth and inhaled deeply, I could smell it, I could taste it. Something stirred in me that I had not known for so long. Hope. I opened my eyes.
All at once, my senses came alive. The smell in the air was unfamiliar, and the light around me was blinding. I closed my eyes again as quickly as I’d opened them, only to find myself back in the dream. No! This had been real! I shut my eyes hard; I could not let myself be pulled back into the nothingness. I could hear noises I did not recognize, I was sure they were not echoes of the past. I opened my eyes again, and this time I could see. I was awake.
My hands flew up to touch my cheeks, wondering how many years had passed, how much I had aged. They felt the same. My hands looked just as smooth as I remembered. It hadn’t been as long as I’d feared. Had it all been a dream after all? I was looking up into the sky, lying in the cool grass, when something passed overhead making a sound like thunder.
It was beyond description. Bigger than any animal in existence and louder than anything I’d ever heard, it didn’t seem to be alive, but what was it? I jolted upright and watched it descend onto a long path on the other side of a strange looking fence. It landed on small wheels and tore across the ground at an impossible speed before coming to a surprisingly gentle stop. There were many more of the enormous objects on the ground. I watched as another began moving, faster and faster. Its front wheels rose from the ground and suddenly the entire thing lifted away from the earth in flight. I was dumbfounded.
Another noise caught my attention, and I turned my head, seeing more of the world. There were buildings and movement everywhere; the sheer magnitude was overwhelming. Wherever I was, it wasn’t home. The idea that perhaps this was a dream crossed my mind, but something about my senses assured me that I was very much awake. What magic had sent me here? I’d clearly been taken far, far away; or was this somehow a new world altogether? There was simply too much to process all at once. I closed my eyes to calm my mind. I had a lot to figure out.
Chapter 1
It was sunset on the evening of my ninth birthday, a beautiful time to walk the castle gardens. I was between my parents, the king and queen, smiling up at them as we walked. My father’s hand was impossibly large and strong as he held onto my own, and my mother was so lovely in the golden light. My father stopped and plucked two perfect roses. I gasped; picking flowers from the garden was absolutely forbidden.
“Father!” I cried, “you’ve broken your own rule!”
“Ahhh,” he said sagely, “sometimes rules must be broken for love. My ladies…” he bowed deeply and offered the flowers to my mother and me.
In my real life, I had giggled as I accepted the rose. I remember feeling so grown up as my mother pinned it into my hair; I felt so beautiful, and so lucky to have the attention of both my parents that night. It was one of my favorite memories. I traveled back to that day over and over during my exile, but I found that while every detail was perfectly preserved, something was very wrong. I could remember the pale, blushing pink of the rose and its sweet scent; I could remember the cool breeze that breathed through the garden, teasing my wild hair; I could remember my mother’s indulgent smile as she watched me play. I could remember everything, but feel nothing. There was no joy and no laughter in the shadowy realm of my realm of my dreams.
It was the same with every memory I revisited while I was trapped in the darkness of my mind; they were nothing but hollow reflections of what had once been. For years, perhaps centuries, I struggled with myself, uselessly trying to reclaim the emotion I had once known, but it was all lost to me. I began to think that I would never feel happiness again, but at some point, a certainty took hold of me. Those once-happy childhood memories held nothing for me because they meant nothing to me. It was fear and anger that had sculpted me into the warrior I had become.
My innocent childhood had burned away when my parents both died shortly after that garden walk celebrating my ninth birthday. The heavy crown had been placed on my small brow, and although I had the guidance of many advisors, I knew tha
t ultimately, I was alone. They cared about my position, about grooming me to be what they wanted in a queen, but they did not love me. What started as loneliness at the loss of my parents festered deep within me, gnawing and twisting and forming a deep anger that became so much a part of me I didn’t even know it was there; not until the day of my seventeenth birthday. It was on that night that everything changed. The rage that I had kept tamed and tucked away finally spilled out in a violent burst. The girl I had been before that night ceased to exist from that moment forward, and the woman I was to become was born in the blood.
I felt a special fondness for living through the night of my first kill again and again. I discovered that I could still feel the fear, the loss, and the rage, but the original terror was gone. It was replaced by the righteous vindication of knowing that I was setting myself on the path of rectifying the world’s wrongs. I chose to spend my exile reveling in the memory of that kill and the many that followed, bathing in the bloodlust and feeding it. It had created me, and it would sustain me through my imprisonment.
At seventeen, I had every material possession I could desire, but happiness eluded me still. I longed for the affection that I’d lost along with my parents. Clarissa, my childhood nanny who had become something of a mother-figure to me, sensed my feelings and arranged for a young prince to come for a ball at the castle. I had never looked forward to anything the way I looked forward to that night. Despite the flurry of preparations, the days dragged by slowly. When the evening of the ball finally arrived, I was sick with anxiety. I stood silently, staring into the mirror as my attendants fussed over my hair and dress. I was nearly oblivious to them as a hundred uncertainties swirled through my mind. Suddenly, I noticed that the room had calmed; only Clarissa remained. She stood by my side, an arm around me as she met my eyes in the mirror.
“Never have you looked more beautiful, child,” she said, a proud smile creasing her eyes, “and yet, I fear you have never been more quiet.”
Evil Unbound- Death's Mistress Returns Page 1
