Junkyard Dogma (The Elven Prophecy Book 4) Read online

  Junkyard Dogma

  The Elven Prophecy™ Book Four

  Theophilus Monroe

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2021 LMBPN Publishing

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  Version 1.00, July 2021

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-888-4

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-889-1

  The Junkyard Dogma Team

  Thanks to our Beta Team

  John Ashmore, Rachel Beckford, Kelly O’Donnell

  Thanks to our JIT Readers

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  Dave Hicks

  Zacc Pelter

  Dorothy Lloyd

  Peter Manis

  If We’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Author Notes - Theophilus Monroe

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Other Books by Theophilus Monroe

  Books By Michael Anderle

  Connect with The Authors

  Chapter One

  I didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe, if we just got in the car and drove, the situation would change.

  Layla pulled Agnus onto her lap after she’d buckled up in the backseat of my Mitsubishi Eclipse. It was Aerin’s turn to ride shotgun. Who would have thought having two wives would be as infuriating, at times, as I imagine it would be like to have two children?

  Not like I was the mature one in the relationship.

  Based on the rings that bound our souls together, we were all three equally mated. At least that was the significance of our “bonding” according to drow custom. Layla was the one I loved.

  “So what happened, Casp?” Layla asked as I pulled out of the parking lot at St. Ensley’s. Never heard of St. Ensley, patron saint of practical jokes? It was the old church that the cult formerly known as the Order of the Elven Gate purchased for their gatherings. Now, with the cult divided between those who sided with the elves and the few who backed me as the “chosen one,” they’d named their quasi-church after the trickster fairy and king of the fae, who’d given his life helping us escape Brightborn and his legions.

  After that night, we hadn’t heard a thing about Brightborn and the elven legion’s whereabouts. We didn’t have a clue what they were up to. Not until our little “cult” gathering at St. Ensley’s was interrupted by a visit from the President, and of course, a cadre of Secret Service agents.

  I grunted as I pulled my Eclipse onto the Interstate, switching the transmission into Sportronic mode, which allowed me to manually shift gears with two little paddles on the back of the steering wheel instead of the clutch. A gimmick, perhaps. I didn’t use it much. But I wanted to accelerate faster than the usual automatic shifting allowed. Get as far from the city and where the President was, as I could, as fast as I could.

  “You didn’t answer me,” Layla said. “What did the President have to say?”

  I snorted. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet.”

  “That bad?” Aerin asked, raising one eyebrow.

  I sighed. “Yeah, it was bad. Just give me a minute to gather my thoughts.” I touched my pocket and felt the faint outline of the card the President had given me. The one with a direct line to his phone. When I was ready to make my choice, to decide which side I’d take, I was supposed to give him a call.

  “I don’t understand what he could possibly have to say that you couldn’t repeat,” Layla interjected.

  I shook my head and turned on the radio, dialing to the satellite channel that played nineties alternative twenty-four hours a day.

  Agnus was used to my steady stream of music from my youth. He knew the words to most of the songs.

  “I love thee, like Walter,” Agnus sang, botching the lyrics of All Over You by Live.

  I chuckled, turning down the volume a notch. “It’s ‘our love is like water,’ you got the words wrong.”

  “No it isn’t!” Agnus protested. “That makes no sense. After that, he sings, ‘pinned down and abused for being strange.’ You can’t pin down and abuse water, Caspar.”

  I shook my head. “And you think it makes sense concerning some random dude named Walter?”

  “You never know,” Agnus said. “Maybe Walter likes being pinned down and abused.”

  “My vote is with Agnus,” Aerin said. “Most of the men I’ve courted were like that.”

  I bit my lip. “That’s because the drow culture is matriarchal. It doesn’t matter. I’m telling you, that’s not the lyric.”

  “Does it really matter, Casp?” Layla asked.

  “Yes!” I shouted, tapping another preset on my radio. Classic Rock. My usual backup station was saved to the second preset, reserved for when the nineties alternative station decided to play Ace of Base.

  I smiled. Creedence Clearwater Revival. One of my favorites.

  Agnus immediately piped up and started singing, “There’s a bathroom on the right!”

  I shook my head and turned down the music again. “There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

  “I think I’m siding with Agnus again,” Aerin said. “I’m pretty sure he said that there’s a bathroom on the right.”

  “I agree,” Layla added. “Why would the moon be bad? I mean, it’s the moon, right? It’s not really good or bad. Sort of morally neutral.”

  I gripped my steering wheel tightly. “He’s not singing about trying to find the damn restroom! Why would anyone write a song about that? It’s not exactly an inspiring experience.”

  “Could be,” Layla said. “If you’ve really got to go.”

  “The name of
the song is Bad Moon Rising,” I shouted. “I know I’m right about this!”

  Aerin looked at me, cocking her head. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fucking fine! Why wouldn't I be fine?”

  “Caspar…” Something about the tone of Layla’s voice calmed me. She was the love of my life. Probably the only one who could console me at the moment. “Just turn off the music. Let’s talk about it.”

  I took a deep breath and released it before turning off the radio. “The President considers them refugees.”

  “He’s giving my dad’s legion asylum?” Layla asked. “After they killed all those soldiers?”

  “The elves are invading this planet and this country,” Aerin said. “They didn’t come here looking for asylum.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not how he sees it. They came from a world devastated by war. Destroyed to the point that it is no longer inhabitable. The President believes the only reason they attacked was that we greeted them with hostility.”

  “What a pussy!” Layla blurted.

  I raised my eyebrow. I’d expect something like that from Jag, but I don’t think I’d ever heard Layla refer to someone with the p-word. “That’s not the worst of it,” I said, shifting gears and accelerating past someone driving below the speed limit in the fast lane. “He said if I try to fight them, if I attack them at all, they’ll arrest me.”

  “On what grounds?” Layla asked, raising her voice.

  “Because I murdered Fred.”

  “Murder?” Layla asked. “My dad basically forced you to do it!”

  I nodded. “I tried to explain that. He just said that every one of the King’s legionnaires witnessed it.”

  “But they aren’t citizens!” Aerin protested. “Not even of this world, much less the United States of America.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be a citizen to be called to testify in court.”

  “Then why did the President come talk to you?” Layla asked. “That sounds like something the FBI, or maybe the police would be involved in.”

  “Because he hopes it won’t come to that. He wants me to support this so-called alliance. To speak up on behalf of the elves. Apparently, after my performance at the trials went viral, there are some in Washington who don’t support the President’s position.”

  “An alliance?” Layla asked. “Granting them asylum is one thing, but…”

  “I’m guessing that your father made an offer he couldn’t refuse,” I said, cocking my head, realizing I’d inadvertently quoted Marlon Brando from The Godfather.

  “What kind of offer?” Layla asked.

  “Military aid,” Aerin said. “Think about it. What else could the elves offer the US government that would merit an alliance? If the military could wield their power to control the weather, think of what they could do. No need for missiles. No loss of human life. If they can just send massive storms and earthquakes on their enemies.”

  “And it wouldn’t cost billions of dollars,” I said. “For now, it seems that Brightborn isn’t trying to convince the government to cede him power, at least.”

  Aerin scratched the back of her head. “Power like that could be more devastating than nuclear weapons. If the elves are controlling it, but doing it in the name of the US government…”

  “It would start a world war,” Layla finished, shaking her head as I glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

  “They’ve got me by the balls,” I said. “If I don’t speak up to try and convince Congress to support the alliance, to authorize the use of power…”

  “They’ll charge you with murder,” Layla said. “Even if you don’t convince Congress like he wants, what are the chances they’d support you once you’re a convicted killer?”

  “How much time did he give you to decide?” Aerin asked.

  “One week,” I said.

  “There’s one option,” Layla said. “From what I’ve studied of this society, there’s one thing that might complicate this matter for the President.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Politics,” Layla said. “What if you were so popular, if you had so much support, that your arrest would be political suicide?”

  I shook my head. “The President wouldn’t arrest me himself. He doesn’t have that power. He’d have some US attorney indict me. The FBI would arrest me. He’d play it cool politically. Separate himself from the issue as much as possible. Probably urge people to allow the justice system to do its job.”

  “But he could pardon you,” Layla said, “if arresting you is so offensive. People would see through what’s happening. The facts are out there.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s like I’m damned either way. I can’t do what the President wants. That’s as good as surrendering to Brightborn. I don’t know, say we decide to challenge him and turn popular opinion against the elves? How do we even start to do that?”

  “If we use any magic at the ranch, the elves will know,” Aerin said.

  “If you use your magic, true,” Layla said. “But we already know that the fairies can’t detect my magic. I’m only starting to scratch the potential of what this angelic power I’ve been given might allow me to do. I don’t know what I could do that would help, but maybe there’s something.”

  “Then we’d be playing into your father’s hands. He’s already trying to sell the elven legion on the idea that you are the true chosen one.”

  “Still, if I come out against my father. Maybe that would sow some discord amongst the legion.”

  “Caspar, even if they do arrest you,” Aerin added. “It isn’t like there’s a prison that could hold you. Not with your power.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if I could do that. The book of Romans says we’re supposed to obey earthly authorities.”

  “Even if they’re unjust?” Aerin asked.

  I nodded. “Jesus even rebuked Peter for drawing his sword on the centurion when they came to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

  Layla snorted. “I’m not a Bible scholar, Caspar. But didn’t God send an angel, once, to break Paul out of prison in the New Testament?”

  I bit my lip. “Let's just hope it doesn’t come to that. In the end, I did kill Fred…”

  The car was silent for a few moments, so I turned up the volume on my radio and switched it back to my nineties alternative station.

  R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion was on. I chuckled to myself at the irony of the song, given everything I’d been through lately. What timing.

  Agnus piped up and started singing again. “Let’s pee in the corner! Let’s pee in the spotlight…”

  I wasn’t going to win the argument. Instead, I gripped my steering wheel and joined in. “Losing my religion!”

  Chapter Two

  The floorboards of the old farmhouse creaked and flexed louder than I was comfortable with as I stepped through the door. I don’t know how long it had been since someone had lived there before we arrived. It still smelled a little musty, but since we’d been leaving the doors and windows open as much as possible, the odor had improved to the point that it was tolerable.

  Of course, the pile of dirty laundry didn’t help. I half-suspected Agnus had peed in it to protest the lack of electricity at our off-grid ranch since his luxury self-cleaning litter box was no longer in operation.

  For at least a decade, the locals—I’m using that term loosely since there aren’t any other houses within three square miles—had been using the old ranch as a dumping ground. I’d never seen so many inoperable kitchen appliances in my life. That’s really saying something since I grew up in Missouri, and a good number of my home state’s residents typically use their defunct appliances as lawn ornaments.

  Waste not, want not. Why buy a flower pot when you have an old toilet bowl just sitting around?

  It was thrifty. Having been a Boy Scout in my youth, I could appreciate that. Thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. The last four comp
onents of the Scout Law. Someone would have to be brave following me in the bathroom, rounding out the Scout Law. I’d often knelt before the porcelain deity in reverence in my drinking days. It just made sense to be thrifty about the toilet bowl once it had outlived its usual purpose.

  Not the only way the Boy Scouts had prepared me for this new adventure. We’d purchased a bunch of tents, on Aerin’s dime, of course. There was a whole army of warrior drow motel-hopping while they waited for us to set up shelters for them at the junkyard ranch.

  We’d piled the tents up, still in their original boxes, just inside the farmhouse door. I grabbed three of them and headed out the door.

  “Going to go set those up?” Layla asked.

  I nodded. “Something to do. Not to mention, I could use the fresh air.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, why not? It’s usually easier to set these things up in twos anyway.”

  Layla grabbed two more tents and followed me out the door. We’d already cleared the weeds from a small area behind the farmhouse.

  “This is just temporary,” Layla said. “Aerin said she’s buying some old shipping containers that could be repurposed into little houses.”