The Golden Bell Page 13

  There were times when she really, really loved that man.

  Six months later

  Rain took off at the sound of the shot, racing for her life. The Haunt fell behind her; one beat, two. The dirt path was smooth and even under her shoes, giving speed to her flying feet. Redemption was just ahead, the scarlet ribbon a promise of relief to her burning lungs. With a lunge, she broke through the line, slowing gradually into an easy lope, a walk, then a stop.

  Fallon, now changed back to normal, finally caught up and swung her into his arms for a panting kiss. “You did it!”

  She laughed breathlessly. “You’re not supposed to celebrate losing, you know.”

  He smirked and kissed her again. “Hey, at least I’m still on my feet. Look at them.”

  Rain looked back and saw the other eight Haunt in the race, some changed back, some not. Most were bent over, panting. One was lying in the middle of the track, spread eagled.

  She laughed. “Well, you have been training with me.”

  Fallon gave her another bear hug, then grunted as two little missiles slammed into them. Malix and DJ almost knocked them over.

  “Wow! I’ve never seen anyone run so fast,” Malix exclaimed.

  “I’m going to run that fast when I grow up,” DJ promised.

  “Looks like they have a new hero,” their mother Jasmine said. She put an arm around her husband Keilor’s waist, giving him a smile.

  Keilor kissed the top of her head. “I’m not worried.”

  Rain looked at her sweaty husband and had to laugh. Finally, for the first time in years, neither was she.

  The End

  About the author:

  I'm a stay at home mom with three kids, a dog and an active imagination. I spent the first 34 years of my life in Alaska, land of the midnight sun, but these days I'm located in Washington, and am enjoying a much warmer sun :)

  I'm married to my high school sweetheart, John, who is known to bring me flowers "just because". My leisure time is filled with gardening, crochet, knitting, sewing, art and reading.

  Connect with me online at:

  www.autumndawnbooks.com

  http://authorautumndawn.blogspot.com

  Bibliography:

  Spark Series:

  When Sparks Fly Dorchester

  No Words Alone Dorchester

  Solar Flare

  Anthology for the Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance:

  Hemlock & Iron

  Indie books:

  Dark Lands Series in order:

  The Charmer

  Dark Lands: Homecoming

  Scent of Danger

  The Golden Bell

  Ghost in Her Heart

  Beast Wars

  Dark Lovers (G.Bell & Homecoming combo)

  Dark Warriors (Ghost IH & Beast Wars combo)

  The Woman Inside

  The Other Woman

  Through the Looking Glass

  Ride The Stars

  Careful, He Bites

  Interstellar Lover

  Under the Bridge

  * * *

  Excerpt from The Charmer

  CHAPTER 1

  “Wait a minute, Lemming! Let me catch my breath,” Jasmine gasped as she clutched a slender poplar for balance. A shower of bright leaves and water peppered her head and shoulders as the tree swayed. For a moment, her vision blurred and her legs trembled, but she stiffened them to wait out the asthma attack. The painful tightness in her chest nagged at her.

  Grumbling, she dug out her inhaler and took a couple puffs. She hated resorting to medicine. Every couple of days it seemed, the TV would announce that people were getting cancer from some drug or another. Her favorite ads were the ones for male impotence that announced in fine print that the side effects included impotence. Next they’d announce that inhalers caused black lung.

  She shook her head at her imagination and shoved the inhaler deep in her pocket. There was no sense being morbid.

  Lemming trotted over to her, tail wagging, and sat gracefully at her feet. The black and white Border collie was used to such stops, but unlike her companion, she still had energy to burn.

  Jasmine inspected a large rock that had washed free of the sticky clay, looking for ants. Satisfied, she shifted the holstered pistol on her hip and sat down gingerly. Cold seeped into her jeans from the lichen covered stone, even with the extra layer of long johns underneath. She ignored it and took in the view.

  Densely wooded Alaskan hills rolled away in the distance without a sign of civilization. Autumn had hung her gold coins from every birch and cottonwood as far as the eye could see, and the golden wash of late evening sunlight showed them to their best advantage. Even the dark spruce covering the gentle slopes were sprinkled with the bright leaves.

  She glanced at her watch, her breath frosting in the chill air. It was 7:44 P.M, and it would start getting dark soon. This late in September, it could snow at any time. Too bad it wasn’t June. If it were then she wouldn’t have to worry about the darkness at all, since the sun never set during the height of summer.

  She stood and hefted her pack, her lungs giving a tired protest. To cheer herself, she counted her blessings. She could have been born allergic to chocolate, or dogs. She glanced at Lemming affectionately.

  Come to think of it, if she’d been allergic to dogs, she wouldn’t have to be out here.

  Suppressing a groan, she pushed herself to her feet and started out again. Wiley better have something hot on the fire, or there would be war. The least her friend could do after coaxing her into the boonies was to make camp.

  Rapidly losing steam, she trudged up the trail, really little more than a brushy track, noting the moose nuggets and cloven hoof prints in the soft turf without enthusiasm. She didn’t fancy running into an irate cow with a calf. She didn’t want to spend the evening stuck in a Mexican standoff while the cow tried to decide if she was worth trampling or better off ignored.

  While she was looking down she noticed the bounty of cranberry bushes. It really was a shame she didn’t have the energy to stop and pick some. They were plentiful this year and she could use a good batch of cranberry bars.

  Hey, while she was dreaming, how about a hot date, an end cut of the Turtle Club’s prime rib and a dry pair of socks?

  Maybe she should be dreaming about a hot date for Wiley, she thought with disgust. If her friend and roommate paid more attention to her love life, maybe she wouldn’t feel the need to run off to the woods at a moment’s notice. It was all great and well if Wiley had the itch to commune with nature, as long as she didn’t drag her friends into it.

  The only itch Jasmine felt were the ones left by the hordes of gnats and mosquitoes. It was almost pointless using repellent—the mosquitoes mistook it for ketchup and came back for seconds.

  Lemming barked from somewhere up ahead, signaling that she’d found Wiley’s camp. Jasmine’s head came up and she eagerly picked up her pace. In a minute she’d be sipping hot cocoa and roasting herself in front of a fire. Wiley would sweet talk her with chili and she’d forget she’d just spent the last hour stomping through the woods.

  She entered the mossy clearing where Lemming waited and stopped, confused. It was empty.

  Later, as Jasmine nursed a cup of cocoa by a fire she’d had to make herself, she tried to figure out what could have happened. At first she’d circled the area, calling Wiley’s name and trying to find evidence as to her recent occupation. It occurred to Jasmine that her friend had played a trick, maybe hid higher on the hill and grinned as she watched Jasmine wade through stickers and brush. It wasn’t like her to make Jas worry, though.

  As full dark descended, she had known Wiley wasn’t playing a game. Something had happened to her friend, and it was too dark to make her way back to the Jeep to get help. If Wiley had tumbled down a hill, it would be no help to her if Jasmine got lost herself. Instead she tried to reason out what might have happened.

  Wiley might take off at a moment’s notice on her pervers
e games of hide and seek, but she always left a map, and she never strayed from it. If she said she was going to be forty-five minutes east of the Dalton Highway that’s where they’d find her. Or rather, Lemming would find her, and Lemming always found her quarry.

  She glanced at the search and rescue dog Wiley had trained from a pup. Lemming rested quietly at Jasmine’s side with her chin on her paws, content with a job well done. Jasmine had tried to get her to keep tracking, but she’d only sat down, looked at her in confusion, and thumped her tail once. As far as she was concerned, her job was over.

  Jasmine sighed and scratched an itch under her black Road Runner stocking cap. She was worried, but tried not to dwell on it. It wouldn’t help the situation. Besides, there might be a good explanation for this.

  She noticed a sticker bush twig in Lemming’s fur. Gently, she removed it and flicked it into the coals. So now what? She didn’t plan to stay in grizzly and wolf infested woods any longer then she had to. At first light she’d pack up and go for help. Maybe if she kept her eyes open she’d see signs of her friend.

  She coughed as smoke suddenly blew into her face and moved around the fire.

  Well, there was nothing more she could do right now, and she was tired of having the fire roast her front end while the cold air behind froze her rear. Time to crawl into her tent, shuck down to her long johns and hope she wouldn’t have to shiver too long before the down sleeping bag warmed up. Though come to think of it, the night almost seemed to be getting warmer.

  Scoffing at her wishful thinking, she stood and kicked dirt over the fire. That’s when she saw them.

  Eyes.

  Freaky, glowing golden eyes. Lots of them.

  Lemming growled and pressed so tightly against her that she nearly tripped as the eyes evolved into wolves with eerie, alien faces.

  Slowly she reached for the 357 Smith and Wesson revolver strapped to her hip. She’d brought the thing as a bear deterrent, but there was no reason it couldn’t take down a wolf.

  The fur on the creature directly in front of her hackled and it snarled a warning that made her own hair stand on end. Lemming responded with a vicious bark that made her jump.

  “Touch it and they’ll rip your throat out,” a man’s voice said mildly. It came from the dark, behind the wolves.

  Jasmine emitted a strangled yell. Her nerves were on the crawl as she thought of someone watching her. She searched the darkness, but couldn’t see beyond the animals. “Who’s there?”

  As if in a nightmare, a man stepped away from the camouflage of dark trees. He stood less than ten feet from her and seemed to study her with faint distaste. Maybe she didn’t measure up to his twisted fantasies. Maybe he liked tall girls, like Wiley. What were the odds he knew where she was?

  Her jaw hardened. She itched to draw and cock the gun, but the slight movement of her hand brought the snarling beast before her a step closer.

  “Call off your dogs,” she demanded hoarsely. All the moisture that should have been in her mouth decided to run down her back instead. Who’d turned up the heat?

  “Give up your weapon,” the stranger ordered, and his words were brushed with an odd accent. “They don’t trust you.”

  “The feeling is mutual, pal, but I’m not doing it. They’ll eat me alive if I do.” She’d watched TV. She knew what happened to the idiots who dropped the gun.

  He glanced at the creatures. “Your choice.”

  Long moments passed while she held his gaze. Sweat plastered the hair under her hat to her scalp. For all she knew this guy had kidnapped Wiley and was keeping her somewhere nearby…if she was still alive.

  It was that thought more than anything that made her give in. Swearing one of Wiley’s favorite words, she gave a curt nod. Careful not to make any sudden moves that might set the wolves off, she unfastened the safety strap of the holster and eased the gun out. Surprisingly, she wasn’t snarled at until she hesitated at the last moment.

  “You’ll never kill them all,” the stranger said with a trace of impatience.

  Reluctantly, she tossed down the gun.

  While she’d been stalling, the heat had turned killer. That was one heck of Chinook blowing, or he’d done something to cause it. There was a faint shimmer in the night behind him, an odd pressure in the air. She’d swear she smelled ozone.

  Fearful she’d die of heatstroke at any moment, she yanked off her hat, then unzipped her heavy coat and shrugged it off. If she had to die, at least it wouldn’t be from the sudden thaw.

  She glanced at the wolves, but they were no longer snarling. In fact, the one she thought of as the leader had backed off. He kept his eyes on her while the others wove in and out of the huge trees.

  Huge trees?

  Jasmine paused in the act of stripping off her Norwegian sweater, all the fine hairs on her body standing on end. Huge trees? There were no trees like that in Alaska. But there they were, gleaming in the light of the triple moons….

  For a bad moment Jasmine’s world tilted, threatening the first faint of her life. Just in time, her innate good sense kicked in. Now was not the time for wilting.

  As she stared, ferns sprang from the undergrowth and the trees moved closer, as the shimmer behind the stranger seemed to grow, marching forward as if swallowing her world whole. She hadn’t moved, but that shimmer behind him, that otherworldly window, had grown to encompass them both. She was afraid to look behind her, afraid to see it consume all the earth.

  First things first. The heat was humid and tropical, murderous to blood thickened by a cold climate, and she was overdressed. With a deep breath to calm her jangled nerves, she sent the man a defiant look and pulled off the bulky sweater, tugging the black T-shirt underneath to keep it from riding up. Then she just stood there in the redwood-scented air and tried to make sense of the moment. Sweat rolled down her back, and she wished she could ditch her wool socks and the long underwear. Her feet were sweltering in her heavy boots.

  The man shifted restlessly. “Come,” he said, melting into the trees before she had a chance to argue.

  “Wait!” she called, but he ignored her. She hesitated, wondering if she could possibly retrieve the small flashlight inside her jacket. No way did she want to go blindly charging off through the night with a spooky stranger without at least being able to see what he was doing. She bent a little, and the lead wolf snarled. “Easy, fella, I just need to get a light.” His lips pulled even farther back and saliva flecked his muzzle. The other wolves took their cue from the pack master and stalked closer, showing hundreds of teeth.

  Stumbling through the darkness following a possibly vicious stranger suddenly held appeal. She picked up her feet and hurried after the man before she found out if the pack had a taste for sweaty hikers.

  Besides, who knew what else might come creeping out of the brush?

  There might have been three moons in the sky, but none of them were full, and she’d never had the best night vision. The second time she nearly went sprawling while jogging after the stranger, she decided to call a halt. If she didn’t slow down one of the branches hitting her in the face was going to put out an eye, and then where would she be? Besides, Lemming could always track him.

  The wolf things had other ideas.

  “Look,” she tried to explain to one of the creatures that inched slowly closer, growling, while Lemming nearly backed up her leg, “I’m trying, but I can’t see where I’m going. Just give me a minute, okay?”

  A hand shot out of the dark and gripped her upper arm, making her shriek.

  “This way.”

  She gasped for breath, trying to calm her frantic heart while the stranger hauled her through the woods. “Did you have to do that?” she demanded, but he didn’t answer and didn’t slow down. She tried again. “Where are we going?” Still no answer. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

  His grip on her arm tightened and he picked up speed. “I will return you to your place come morning.”

  She dug in her
heels and threw every ounce of her weight into it, jolting them to a stop. No way, pal. She didn’t know what he planned, but when a strange man without an ounce of courtesy told her he was going to keep her for the night, she panicked.

  As he spun to face her, she shot her fist into his nose, snapping his head back, then grabbed his shirt and rammed her knee into his groin with all her strength.

  Or tried to.

  The next moment he was holding her on her toes with two frighteningly controlled hands around her biceps.

  His voice, when it came, was rough with menace. “You think to deny me anything?” His body was very tense, as if he longed to either choke the life from her or hurl her from him. Even so, she tried to kick him. Swearing, he shook her, making Lemming snarl. The stranger snapped something in a language she didn’t know and Lemming subsided with a whine.

  His eyes bore into hers. “You’re fortunate you are a woman, or I would snap your neck and have done with it.” As suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he released her, causing her to stumble. “You go back come morning.”

  Jasmine trembled, not daring to move for a long, sick moment. Never before had she felt so threatened by a man, so completely aware of her inferior size and puny strength. He had her alone, completely at his mercy, and if he decided to hurt her there was nothing she could do to stop him.

  Lemming whined and slid up to her, seeking reassurance, and in that seeking, gave Jasmine a measure of strength. She wasn’t a coward, and she was smart. There had to be a way out of this. Wiley needed her.