Tricks or Treats: An Anthology for Charity

by Tiffany Carby

  TRICKS OR TREATS

  Toni Bolton

  Roux Cantrell

  Tiffany Carby

  T. Elizabeth Guthrie

  Chandra Trulove Fry

  Lorah Jaiyn

  Cassandra Jones

  Alice La Roux

  J.C. Madison

  MK Moore

  Samantha Rae

  Laurie Treacy

  Thea Valentine

  © 2018 Vision Anthologies

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at visionanthologies@gmail.com.

  Cover Design: Kayla Reese

  Editing: Various

  Formatting: Amanda Ruehle

  DEDICATION

  To those who rescue and give lives a second chance.

  ABOUT OUR CHARITY

  The Independent Cat Society (ICS) is a no-kill cat shelter located in Westville, Indiana. Established in 1977, ICS has continuously maintained its vision to serve as many cats, pet owners, and community members in the Northwest Indiana and neighboring Chicago area and Southwest Michigan area as possible. To accomplish this, ICS:

  ● Provides a sanctuary for homeless felines in their transition to adoption

  ● Strives to provide for the healthcare and socialization needs of the shelter population.

  ● Promotes responsible feline ownership through educating the public.

  ● Addresses feline overpopulation through various programs, including Low Cost Spay/Neuter options to the public in partnership with local veterinarians and a TNR program for feral/community cats.

  Every cat admitted to our shelter is examined by a vet, is spayed or neutered, and is up-to-date on vaccines and necessary medical treatment. Our no-kill policy means that we do not euthanize cats unless a veterinarian advises it to relieve suffering, nor do we supply cats to any facility for research purposes.

  As a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization, the Independent Cat Society is funded almost entirely through membership fees, adoption fees, fundraising events, and the generous tax-deductible gifts of caring individuals, like you. We do not receive any government funding. Although we have a small cleaning and medicating staff, the shelter is operated primarily by volunteers. All volunteers and employees work hard to maintain the comfort and well-being of every cat in the shelter, as they would their own pets.

  For more information, please visit our website www.catsociety.org, or follow us on Facebook, www.facebook.com/INCatSociety.

  We are pleased all proceeds from this anthology will go to ICS.

  THE SEEDS OF VENGEANCE

  THE AVENGED: BOOK ONE

  Toni Bolton

  Blake knows little of his past. His slender stature belies a strong, resolute nature. He has lived with his stepmother and harsh stepfather, working in the family inn, where he is treated worse than the servants. His stepmother dies, and he is rescued by a stranger when his drunken step-father beats him brutally. Little does he know; this meeting will change his life forever.

  Chapter One

  ‘You, boy!’

  He ducked to avoid the punch he knew was coming. Too late! His ears sang as the fist made contact with his neck. He crouched, covering his head with his hands to avoid the next slap. No good. Blows rained around his ears. At last they ended. He was pulled up by his collar until he swayed a few inches off the ground, almost face to face with his worst enemy, James or ‘Bloody James’ as he was called by those who feared his wrath. Blake did not fear him. He had faced his anger many times and no longer defied him, obeying him sullenly. He stared into the man’s heavy-lidded coal black eyes. James let him hang there for a moment longer and then let him down.

  He tidied himself up before asking him calmly, ‘How may I help you, Sir?’ refusing to allow this brute to take away the last thing he had left, his dignity and manners. Somehow, he knew this passive insolence annoyed James more than if he shouted back.

  ‘Listening are you, now?’

  ‘I could not hear you above the merry-making, Sir.’

  ‘Take the baggage in for the guests and then retire to the kitchen where you belong.’ He nodded and moved quickly to the hall where the groom had deposited the heavy bags. A small and slender boy for his age, he struggled with the baggage but dragged it slowly up to the first floor, unwilling to give his tormentor reason to beat him for his slowness.

  He was starting to grow taller at last. His birthday had passed recently. No-one had celebrated it. He only knew his birthday because he had found his step-mother’s diaries which mentioned his second birthday. He had not known his ‘real’ mother, nor did he know his last name.

  Marie was her maid and had told him she had died in childbirth bearing him. His father had married her in her stead. When he died she had worked in this inn and later married the owner James for security. He was now his guardian until he attained his majority or could find work away from this hell-hole and the people he despised so much. His step-mother had herself died. Blake believed it was not from the malady James had described but from the beating she had received a few days before at the hands of her violent husband.

  He intended to escape this misery as soon as he could. Marie had taught him to read and write and basic arithmetic, admiring his quick mind and ability to calculate the entries in the inn’s ledger. James had found him sitting before the ledgers but had let him carry on as he was better at the sums than Marie and himself. It gave Blake time away from the heavy work he had otherwise been given at the inn. He also tended the horses and could act as groom if he could find a household who would employ ‘a weakling’ as he had been described by James in one of his drunken moods.

  He entered the chamber and dumped the bags on the floor. As usual the chamber had not been aired and he opened the windows to breath fresh air and remove the musty smell from there. The inn’s clients rarely rested there more than one night and were more interested in taking advantage of the village girls who would service them for a few pennies than clean sheets. Blake was just beginning to appreciate the attributes and virtues of these young girls, but they still treated him like a child to his disgust.

  A figure appeared out of the shadows. Tall but slight it moved swiftly through the path around the inn to the forest. Carrying a bow and arrow, the person clearly intended trespassing and poaching as the forest and land around here belonged to the lord of the manor. Woe betide the person if the gamekeeper found him poaching. Fleet of foot he may be, but he could not outrun the hounds Bloody James had trained to catch any foolhardy or desperate trespassers.

  He would be strung up and allowed to be pecked to death by the vultures who swept around the inn, waiting for and fighting off the other predators for access to the leftovers from the bins in this mountain resting place. James had warned him if he tried to escape he would also suffer the same fate. The lord favoured James who provided women to sate his peculiar appetite and his web extended further than this small hamlet.

  A heavy hand on his shoulder brought him
back to reality. ‘Are you day-dreaming again Boy?’ demanded James.

  ‘No Sir, I thought I saw someone moving in the forest.’

  ‘A trespasser?’ James released his grip on Blake’s shoulder and peered out the window, squinting in the poor light. ‘I see no-one. You must be imagining it. Get on with your work.’

  Blake moved swiftly before he could receive another cuff from this brute. He rubbed his shoulder where James had gripped him cruelly. Little muscle yet, but David one of the grooms said he would fill out soon and one day he would dish James what he had given to him; give him a beating he would not forget.

  He had feared James would release the dogs and capture the poacher in the forest but luckily James had disbelieved him. He would not want the death of a trespasser on his conscience. The poor fellow was probably trying to feed his starving family. Yields from the fields were poor in this mountainous region. In the winter the people relied for their sustenance on potatoes and onions and root crops stored and eaten with goat cheese and bread. Meat was a luxury when their pigs were killed, and the meat used up.

  He carried on bringing bags in until he fell into his bed exhausted, fast asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He would have to build the fires at dawn and start the range. He needed all his energy for the hard work the next day.

  Hell! There was a face at the window, a head looking out for trespassers. There were ten hungry children in the mountains waiting for the game that could be killed. They could eat off the land in the summer; berries, herbs, rabbits, birds and small deer. They often swopped these in the villages for a flagon of milk and chunk of bread and cheese, but the birds had migrated during winter and the game had moved down to the forest for food. Hunters were forced to follow the animals down and hunt them there when it was more difficult to find game. A good marksman could shoot many a deer and wild boar with his bow and arrow if too scared to use scarce bullets in case he was overheard and captured by my lord’s men.

  The children were hungry, irritable and argumentative. They needed good foster or adoptive parents, but who would want raggedly dressed, underfed, dirty faced ragamuffins. None of them could read or do their sums. They had been picked up when their parents had died but as their numbers increased it was becoming more difficult to feed them. Soon they would need to be taken to the next big city and found places in the poorhouse.

  The haul was good that evening, two deer and several hares. It looked safe to bring them down the path around the inn. The boy hauled wood and coal in to the hostelry. Clearly underfed, he was small with bones sticking through his flimsy shirt as he shivered in the cold. He would not have been conspicuous but for his piercing blue eyes which looked as if they were burning under sleepy lids, standing out in his thin face with its sharp cheekbones and roman nose. For a small boy he was very strong. If he was fed and grown up he would become a well-built man. This boy Blake was not of the kin of the inn-keeper but had been born to another mother elsewhere. His features were finer than those of the pockmarked Bloody James.

  He turned around as a lumbering giant came toward him, the fiery red-haired innkeeper himself. The brute swayed from side to side in the narrow alley cursing as he grazed himself. He pushed the boy against the wall making him drop his fuel, grabbing him by the collar.

  ‘A guest has said two sovereigns have been stolen from room three. Where have you put them, you thieving little rat?’ He shook him. Blake yelled, ‘I didn’t touch them Sir.’ He bashed his head against the wall. Blood ran down the boy’s forehead as the graze opened up. He blinked trying to clear his eyes. Bloody James was in one of his tempers, out for his blood. If he didn’t escape he would kill him.

  ‘It must have been Alicia Sir, I didn’t go into the room after I put the baggage in.’

  ‘You liar!’ He would not be believed. The girl, a comely wench was warming Bloody James’s bed although Blake believed she was a thief seducing James, so she could lighten the pockets of unwary travellers until she decided it was too dangerous to stay and found another innkeeper she could charm.

  He pushed the boy hard against the wall again. One could hear the head crack against the bricks. He would kill him if he carried on like this. Bloody James had killed the parents of two of the children and had tricked young girls into attending the lord at the castle. He said they would be trained as lady’s maids, but they ended up being at the mercy of his lordship, imprisoned, violated and used until he tired of them and they were passed on to his less-discriminating friends and servants, their lives ruined. The man who killed Bloody James would be doing the hamlet’s people a favour although his Lordship would find another man to do his dirty work for him.

  The boy crumpled to the ground and Bloody James kicked him in the back. Agonised, Blake coughed and doubled up. He could not take much more. He would not need to. The poacher put the game down and took a bow out. Carefully, the archer stood back and took aim, muscles tensing as the bow was pulled back and then let it go. James was so drunk he could barely stand upright. A fine shot, his rescuer hit him in the neck and he fell against the wall as he slid to the ground.

  The archer ran to the boy and tugged him. ‘Quick while you have the chance to get away.’ The dead man’s pockets were rifled for his coins. He no longer needed them. It would appear he had been murdered for his monies. Blake pushed himself up against the wall and took the offered arm as he was dragged across the path to the forest and behind the trees and laid down. With water from a flagon, the blood was wiped away

  ‘Drink this and don’t argue, Boy. I need to sew your wound.’ He drank whilst resenting this person who was only a boy himself addressing him this way. He had had enough of that with the inn-folk. He was unused to hard liquor and his throat burned and he coughed; but it warmed him and took some of the pain away when his rescuer with a sharp needle sewed the fraying skin together.

  ‘By Christ Boy, what are you doing to me?’ he asked as he dug his hands into the boy’s thin arms.

  ‘I am quite finished,’ said his rescuer and moved away. ‘You can get up now and we had better move before his Lordship finds us or you will be hung up on a tree with me and I have no desire to be the vultures’ breakfast.’

  ‘Follow me, young Sir, if you want to live to see tomorrow.’ He gave him a dark look. Despite the pain he resented being given orders. He was an arrogant, self-assured young boy for his age and would grow into a confident man if he lived.

  Blake followed the boy as he swiftly moved through the trees. He was taller than himself but rake thin. Blond hair was tidied under a cap, but a curl showed its colour. Green eyes assessed him and found him wanting. His blood boiled. Who was this boy? He had saved his life but need not treat him like a dolt. He grabbed his arm and stopped him turning him round to face him.

  ‘I thank you for saving me. James would have killed me in his drunken rage.’

  ‘You are welcome Blake. It is good he is dead. He has hurt too many people in the past. You must find your way out of the forest and search for a post. I hear Lord Brunskire wants pages and grooms. He is a fair employer and you would get good food and lodging.’

  ‘If you give me his directions I will go to him and ask him.’ He surprised him by taking out some skin and drawing a map on it. He could clearly read and write, a puzzle, given his poor clothing and boots suitable for mountain terrain.

  ‘Now we must go. I will take you to the road and then you must make your own way. If you stay at the Farquar Inn, you will be safe. He gave him some coins and a small talisman.

  ‘Show this to the owner and he will help you. He is a friend of mine.’ He went to leave but Blake tugged him back.

  ‘Who do I say gave me this?’ he demanded. The lad knew his name, but he knew nothing about him except for he was a fine shot and very fit for a young boy. For some reason the boy’s attitude and self-confidence annoyed him.

  A moment later he was on the ground with
a dagger at his throat.

  ‘Touch me again and I will kill you,’ the boy threatened. A second surprise. As he had fallen to the ground he had tugged the boy’s jacket and torn the buttons which sprung open leaving him with a clear view of his shirted body. The shirt was partially undone and a pair of fine bosoms, clearly bound to keep them confined, pushed through the fine lawn shirt. He had been tricked. The boy was a wench.

  Blake backed away. ‘I have no intention of touching you. I just wanted to know how to address you.’ She did her buttons up quickly but not before he had seen a small star-shaped birthmark between her breasts.

  ‘My name is Alex Deverne.’ She motioned him to get up. ‘Move ahead of me I don’t want you behind me.’

  They walked two miles to the road. ‘You can make your own way now, due North.’

  ‘Thank you, Alex.’ He bent forward and took her hand, kissing it as he had seen gentlemen do in the inn. ‘I hope one day I can aid you.’ She tore her hand away as if it had been burnt but he strode off down the road.

  ‘Goodbye Blake,’ she whispered. ‘I doubt if I will see you again, but I hope you get what you want in life.’

  Chapter Two

  Blake followed the road which eventually passed a roadside inn. He was wary of entering it and asking for directions. James’s body may have been discovered and the lord’s hounds and henchmen could already be hunting him. He was not a pathetic coward, but he shivered when he thought of the fate that would meet him if he were found and taken back to the castle. He had seen men hung in chains to rot until first their eyesight and then their kidneys failed. Brave warriors captured had cried and begged for mercy when they were measured and fitted into their chains. Which was worse the chains or being left for the vultures? He would not want to choose.

  Plucking up his courage he opened the door and slid in. Two men sitting at the bar stared at him. He felt their hostility toward a stranger. Walking confidently to the bar he ordered an ale.