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Monster Born (Northern Creatures Book 1)
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Table of Contents
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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Monster Born
Northern Creatures Book One
Kris Austen Radcliffe
Copyright 2017 Kris Austen Radcliffe
All rights reserved.
Published by
Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance
Edited by Annetta Ribken
Copyedited by Juli Lilly
“Northern Creatures” artwork created by Christina Rausch
Cover to be designed by Lou Harper
Plus a special thanks to my Proofing Crew.
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, programs, services, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
For requests, please e-mail: [email protected].
First electronic edition, August 2017
Version: 7.24.2017
ISBN: 978-1-939730-45-9
Contents
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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
31. Chapter 1
The Worlds of Kris Austen Radcliffe
About the Author
Chapter 1
I am an unsettled soul. I lumber through the accumulation of my two-hundred-plus years and yet somehow, under my thick fingers, the delicate stones of a precious grave marker did not wobble.
Lizzy’s cairn held its shape.
The stones, each individually lifted from the pebbled lakeshore behind me, continued their duty. Each locked to the ones above and below, and each held steadfast.
Two centuries ago, I set the first stone, a flat, cracked wedge of granite I’d found up the hill. Cold soil had folded around my equally cold hands as I’d dug it out. Dark soil full of bits of life—beetles and ants and the parts of leaves rendered into grains—squished between my fingers. I carried the stone to the cairn’s site and pressed it into the moss under what had been, at the time, an oak sapling. Another two rocks—one a purplish-red, semi-smooth lake stone, and the other a gray, boxy, small boulder—set the cairn’s foundation.
To this day, I still tended the grave marker. I still visited.
“Lizzy,” I whispered. She had run the Arctic with me. She had kept me alive. If it hadn’t been for her and the other hounds of my sled team, I would have sunk below the ice long before we found new land.
My trek had started with one blazing moment of rage. One singular need to make my father pay for his trespasses against not only me, but life itself.
He escaped. I rode my fury into the midnight sun, a modern Prometheus on the back of a sled pulled by hounds with souls stronger than my own.
I hunted seal. The dogs ran until only Lizzy remained. And one day, she and I wandered into magic.
She died shortly after the elves found us. They thought me a jotunn—a giant. Many of them still do. I no longer argue.
The werewolves understood Lizzy’s soul. They helped me choose the sapling that marked her grave. The two loup-garou pack founders, Gerard and Remy Geroux, went so far as to declare the oak sacred to their kind. And slowly, over the years and decades, I slotted into Lizzy’s cairn a new quartz chip here, an open agate geode there. I fitted the smooth and the pockmarked. With the wolves’ help, I built for Lizzy a marker worthy of her bright light.
The sapling became one of the many grand oaks circling my lake. Above my head, a squirrel ran the branches chattering like Ratatoskr filling the eagle Vedrfolnir’s head with gossip. The lake lapped its shore. The sun warmed my skin and I wondered about my unsettled soul. I wondered how it was that a hound always knew with certainty the reality of her world.
I set a new stone, one with a rounded edge perfect for the tree-side of the cairn, and stepped back.
I am large by both mundane human and elf standards. I duck and twist my shoulders when crossing most thresholds, and stand a good nine inches taller than Arne Odinsson, the elf who oversees this land. My eyes, though dark, shimmer with a deep red fire. I wear my black hair in the Old Norse style the elves prefer—naked above my ears and twisted into a knot at the back of my head. But unlike the natural pattern of the elves, I must shave my scalp where my scars do not already inhibit my hair’s growth.
The scars have faded over my two centuries, and the slow rebuilding of my epidermis has replaced my original sallowness with a warm, if ashen, demi-health. I was built from parts of others, after all, and modeled out of clay polluted with death. My health is not my own.
I am the abandoned son of a mad scientist. I am a man who walked the Arctic into a new continent, and a monster adopted by Nordic New World elves. I am friend to werewolves, witches, and vampires.
I am Victorsson, son of Victor—son of the abandoning father who called himself Frankenstein. I am an unsettled soul.
The elves call me Frank.
Chapter 2
I liked my home. I’d added and subtracted over the years, including modernizing with argon-filled, insulating windows, the latest in solar and battery technology, and new plumbing with a reverse-osmosis water filtration system. The cabin wasn’t too big or too small, and even though it was now two centuries old, it continued to work well for me.
My lake spanned several hectares and curved around a peninsula. I built my cabin shortly after Arne found me, and the tree that gave its life to become the log walls of my home might very well have been the father of the grand oak that now shade
d Lizzy’s cairn.
The lake and the land around it were part of the Red River Colony when I arrived. The people here were Scots, French, and English, except for the elves. They were of the magical Scandinavian cultures, Norwegians mostly, and had crossed the Atlantic with their mundane human explorers a good seven centuries before other Europeans entered the area. Unlike their Norse, the elves never abandoned their toehold on the new continent, and instead used their magic to sail the waterways inland, to the Great Lakes and to the forests surrounding the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
The elves kept to themselves, and even though they traded with the local tribes, they bothered no one, nor did they share their magic, demand tributes, or steal anyone’s children.
They built houses of wood and they fished the streams. They listened to the wind and they walked with the natural world of North America. They lived in their village and they glamoured only to trade.
Now they controlled not only the town of Alfheim, Minnesota, but also the county territory around it, including my lake.
Plots were mapped, and utilities routed. Lake homes designed. “Tourism brings in money,” Arne liked to say.
Tourists, who came into town looking for rental cabins or property to buy. Mundane, normal people wanting a weekend up north, near the Boundary Waters, where they might—just might—see a timber wolf.
Or a werewolf, if they weren’t careful during the full moon. Or, if they needed to check a book out of our library, or place a bet with a bookie, one of our two vampires.
Or an elf with a bow or staff.
Or me, the abominable son of a long-dead mad man, the local “giant” named Frank Victorsson.
Not that the mundanes noticed. Or at least I hoped they didn’t notice. The new construction on the opposite side of my lake had me wondering.
Three connected sections. One building. Lots of reflective glass. Some rich person from Minneapolis wanted a getaway lake home and had decided that he preferred Alfheim’s economy and tourist amenities over the other local small cities. Bemidji had its charms, as did Ely, but the elves loved artists—glass blowers, painters, sculptors—which people from The Cities seemed to enjoy.
So other than my current houseguests, I was about to have neighbors for the first time in my two centuries living in Alfheim, Minnesota. Wealthy neighbors who were likely to spend a lot of money on local color.
The sun hit one of the pointy window protrusions. I shifted on my mat where I sat on my deck, and squinted. So much for my morning lakeside meditation.
I learned long ago to be mindful of my inner workings. Bad outcomes happened when I lumbered about raging against a bitter universe.
I was no longer that man. Two hundred years of watching humanity pass by had taught me that no matter the injustice or the slight suffered, it too shall pass. Besides, a giant raging maniac did not make a good host, and when one hosts elves, one needed to be on point.
So I breathed in the late summer lake air. I cleared my mind of my body’s need to attend to the parts of the world that did not need attending. Waves lapped. Trees rustled. The sun beat down on my face and my dog chased salamanders. At least for one morning, all was right.
Until the saws and the pounding started.
I wrapped my cold fingers around my tea. Meditating in the sun helped warm my cold flesh; otherwise, sitting on a pillow and thinking about nothing cooled down my body, which only serves to highlight my more corpse-like traits.
Women do not enjoy waking up next to a man who needed to sunbathe on a rock like a damned lizard in order to feel touchable. Winter, summer, northern forests or tropical climates, it doesn’t matter. My mad father built me to sleep like the dead. At least my dogs never minded.
With my new neighbors, it seemed as if I would no longer have the option of peacefully sunning my tired bones. I sipped my tea, then pulled my t-shirt over my head.
Hammering echoed across my lake. The coming autumn-crisped the air and the changing leaves were a week or so from fiery reds and golds. Sounds travel better in cold air, and soon I would be listening to laughter and loud parties.
Samhain was a month away but had begun flavoring the universe. Festivals and parties bounced through town and the lakes like dancing clowns. Apples this week. Next week, water fowl. The tourists loved it and the parties all led up to an elven week of hidden Samhain mystery which I did my best to ignore.
I hauled my bulk to its full, noticeable-across-the-lake height. My neighbors were not shaping up into anything I would label as “tolerable.”
A boom ricocheted over the lake. Swearing followed. A saw started up.
No, my new neighbors were not anything close to tolerable.
Inside, my refrigerator door slammed against the cabinets. The youngest of my two houseguests must be packing her school lunch.
I sipped my tea. My dog-emperor, Marcus Aurelius, barked and ran into the house, obviously questing for one last hug and pat from my adoptive niece.
Marcus Aurelius was a large, staunch dog, sized correctly for me, with golden, curly fur and a bright hound mind. I had no idea what his breed might be; I’d rescued him from the side of the road in the middle of a particularly brisk winter and he’d been my companion ever since.
I followed him toward the wide French doors that separate the deck area of my home from the kitchen.
Maura Dagsdottir walked in from the hallway at the same time I closed the doors. She glamoured down her radiance—and her ears—for the real world. To the mundane humans of Alfheim, she looked like many women of Scandinavian heritage—tall, nicely curved, gray-eyed, with angular features and a big brown ponytail. Today she wore a t-shirt and jeans much like my own, as did Akeyla.
This morning, Maura’s magic flickered.
I see magic. It manifests as auras and shimmers in my visual perception. None of the elves quite understand when I describe for them my sensations. Neither do the wolves. Arne frowns and says my “seeing” magic is akin to him tasting a color, or hearing a number.
It is what it is, and the elves occasionally find my gift useful.
“You okay?” I made a small gesture to indicate the sparking in her natural magic aura.
Maura stopped in the hallway’s threshold. Her eyes narrowed. I may be her adoptive brother, but I was not to speak of such things in front of Akeyla.
Maura threw me a small, consolatory smile, then dropped her glamour as she walked into the room. Her black hair glistened with the blues and shimmering purples of winter, and the protection enchantments tattooed around her scalp picked up those icy colors. She was, in many ways, the exact opposite of her ex. Maura was slow and steady, like an ice floe; and also like a floe, when she cracked, all hell broke loose.
“I’m good,” Maura said.
As good as she was going to admit, more like it. Sometimes I wished she would talk to me about the wounds in her magic. I’d offered help several times. Maura was as stubborn as every other elf in Alfheim, and wasn’t likely to seek support unless she was literally bleeding out.
But at least she had decided to stay with “Uncle Frank” until she and Akeyla could find a suitable place of their own. With elves, a “suitable” place had to be magically suitable as well as mundanely accessible, and Maura was particularly picky. Akeyla, being half fire spirit, had a uniqueness to her that required extra magical work.
I didn’t pretend to understand. I could, though, offer a safe place to live until all was magically correct.
I walked over and gave Maura a quick side-on shoulder hug. She looked up at my face and some of the morning pain seemed to fade.
Akeyla slammed the refrigerator door hard enough that the entire kitchen rattled.
I walked back toward the center island and set my mug on the granite counter. “Careful with that, pumpkin,” I said.
A wave of Akeyla’s fire elf warmth spread through the kitchen like a magical tsunami, all flickering and golden and flowing more like water than heat. She grinned and set
her lunch next to my mug.
“You warm, Uncle Frank?” she asked.
“I am.” I squatted and held out my arms for a hug.
The little elf I called niece burst forward all full of smiles and wild child energy, her own arms spread wide and her wavy black hair bundled into a poof on the back of her head.
“Yah!” she squealed, and jumped into my embrace.
I swung her up to my hip. Like her mother, Akeyla had the tall, pointed ears of an elf. She looked like Maura as well, with an oval face and a strong, curved set to her lips. But she also looked like her fire spirit father.
Which meant darker, warmer skin than the Nordic elves. She lacked the bald band around her scalp as well, which decreased her canvas area for enchantment and protection tattoos. And her eyes looked more like my own dark mahogany, reddish irises than her mother’s pale gray.
Akeyla’s glamour hid her ears from the mundanes, but not her elven and spirit features. Such intricate, delicate glamours were the domain of the adult elves like Maura, and not even all of them could handle appearing fully “normal.”
“Looks like it’s going to be a nice day,” Maura said as she reached up to rub a smudge off Akeyla’s cheek.
“Mom!” My little niece pulled away and buried her face in my shoulder.
Maura grinned. “You’re her favorite uncle, ya know.”
No, I didn’t mind one bit having house guests.
Maura tapped the counter. “We’ll pick up macadamia nuts on the way home.”