The Indie Collaboration Presents: Tales From Darker Places Read online

Terra felt his eyes upon her back as she went, trying to appear casual, letting the warming rays of Sol ward away the destruction of dusk, the haunt of the insidious Luna. All through it, she had wanted to run. Her leg would not permit it. The hunt had taken a hunk of it, and it was only through iron, heated to an ember red and placed on her unwitting flesh that she still did not bleed. Too many years had transposed themselves over the sense of impending doom she felt for her simply to let them go. She had checked the stars, read her charts- Freddy’s. She saw his secrets there… She hoped that she had done enough, that his curiosity would keep. His path, hers, well those depended on this trek.

  Under the canopy of the oaken forest, Terra felt the physical omen of her enemy. A shadow lingered cold and unrepentant over the veil of reality. She saw the ritual she performed, the rites desperate and defiant. She felt her presence, the cloaked one, and Terra felt the hold the maiden held over the land. Jezebel swayed many away from the shadows of the great beasts that reigned this expansive forest and the swards beyond. There was not much in the way of hope, she sensed the wound festering. Little time remained. She had no other choice; she must go to the shaman, though they had never met eye to eye.

  Perhaps, even if old Blayock would not heal her, then at least he would send one of his ravens to Van, whom a winged messenger might still find in this realm. Storms were brewing, the order must know of them.

  Some miles off from the homestead, she no longer felt Freddy’s penetrative mind. There she sat, against a tall oak, whom she knew as Maggie, glad for Sol’s rays cutting like a magical sword through the clouds and treetops to lie upon her chest. The lovely caress of the sun warmed her heart, and Terra found hope for her kind, the Galendiers, whom the one god forsook. She pulled out the napkin and ate the bacon she brought along, knowing that as she chewed slowly she would not dine on cooked flesh after that instance. It would be some time off when this form would contain her spirit again. She drank deeply from the water jug she held, as she savored the meat, praying within her mind to the god of balance, asking for courage in the face of adversity, for cleverness in low odds.

  Her lunch was the last act she languished over on the jaunt, and the last time she donned her mortal disguise. Finishing the meal brought back the burden the restful nourishing had granted, and her beloved Sol, the sun god who brought all life and watched all deaths indifferently in his solar dominion became obscured by clouds. Herein, as she sensed an angry storm brewing, she felt Dagon’s eye upon her, and she cursed him as she had always.

  Terra emptied her pack into the soil, procuring first the jewel of Isis, secured on a golden rope, which she hung over her neck, to ward away the unwanted. This necklace was a gift from a vampire Terra once knew, whom had found it in a tomb near the burial place of Ra… it blinded Dagon. In response, the god of storms gave protest, and rain pelted suddenly through the trees as lightning cracked and thunder clapped. This did not dissuade Terra from her task, as she bent over a bowl, swirling her sacramental potion, which would ease her transformative flesh and sooth the aches of growing bones as she shifted…

  Blayock was long off, an arduous run.