Lucien's Khamsin

LUCIEN’S KHAMSIN

An Ellora’s Cave Publication, July 2005

Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

1056 Home Ave.

Akron, OH  44310

ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-4199-0166-4

Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

LUCIEN’S KHAMSIN Copyright © 2005 CHARLOTTE BOYETT-COMPO

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Edited by
Mary Moran.

Cover art by
Syneca.

Warning:

The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers.
Lucien’s Khamsin
has been rated E–roti
c by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

S-
ensuous
love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

E-
rotic
love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated
titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as “fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

X-
treme
titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline
execution. Unlike E-rated titles, stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

Prologue

13
^th
Century Hungary

Lucien Korvina’s dreams were crimson-filled—the color streaking down walls, splashing upon doors and windows and floors, pooling upon the cobblestones, seeping into the earth.

Scenes from the village where he had been born and had lived the first thirty-two years of his life passed before him in a collage of painful memories—the bell in the church tower slowly ringing soundlessly for Sunday Mass, a kindly priest leading a quartet of alb-clad altar boys, little girls in white dresses and veils marching behind little boys dressed in ties and suits handed down from older brothers, parishioners silently laughing as they brought up the rear of the procession.

In his dreams he relived the entire Mass in which First Communion had been bestowed upon his daughter Lilly, his only child. He attended once more the all-day parties held at the homes of his cousins, his friends, his fellow workers whose children had partaken of the Holy Bread and Wine for the first time in their young lives. And into the early evening, he rejoiced once more with his wife Magdalena as they stood over Lilly’s bed and watched the pretty one sleep.

But then sound had returned with a roar of wind, a shriek of lightning, the thundering of horse hooves in the night. The ground trembled and the sound of breaking glass filled the night.

His dreams became prolonged with sound—a piercing scream here, a gurgling moan there, somewhere a pitiful cry of horror cut off in mid-vibrato, a frightened child’s whimper as her life was taken.

With hands arched into claws, Lucien grasped the blanket covering him and rent the fabric as his hateful dreams continued on unabated. It wasn’t until his own scream reverberated through the stone chamber that he woke with eyes flared, nostrils distended and mouth opened wide as he fought for breath, sucking in gasps that were loud and fluid-filled.

Throwing aside the blanket, Lucien rose and went to the window where thick drapes covered the small opening. He put trembling hands upon the fabric with the intention of throwing the panels aside, but a violent tremor overtook him so that all he could do was fall to his knees, the draperies closed tightly in his fists.

“Why won’t you let me die?” he whispered. “Why must I relive the horror every day?”

Off in the distance the angelus bell began to chime. The old priest would be up in his tower bidding what was left of his flock to repeat the trio of Hail Marys that would hopefully help to save their souls. The only trouble was there were no parishioners left in the village and certainly none in the mountain abode where Lucien resided. They were all long gone with only the feeble old priest to genuflect before the altar on arthritic knee, his mournful entreaties to his god unheard by any human ear save his own.

Lucien hated the sound of the bell and slapped his hands over his ears to block out the lonesome tolling. Three times a day the angelus rang—at six of the morning, at noon and at six of the evening. Though Lucien never heard the morning and midday tolling, his body—and what was left of his soul—absorbed it where he lay and the pain was nearly unbearable.

“Stop!” he shouted and bloody tears filled his eyes. Sinking to the floor in a fetal position, he writhed in agony until the last echo of the silver bell stilled over the valley.

Sunset was yet an hour away but already many of the inhabitants of Modartha Keep were rousing from their day-enforced slumber. The encroaching night beckoned like a sultry lover as the wind died down and nocturnal creatures ventured from their dens to scrounge. Soon, the thick draperies that covered the keep’s small windows would be thrown aside and the night air breathed in deeply.

And death on black-clad wings would streak across the land once more.

* * * * *

21
^st
Century America

The missiles hit New York City on June 21, 2045 decimating the entire city and the entire eastern seaboard from Maine to South Carolina. Simultaneously, bombs exploded all over Europe, completely destroying England, France, Germany and Spain before the first retaliatory strike was launched into the Middle East from whence the destruction had rained.

Within a matter of hours, the world as it was known at that time was no more. Millions of people lay dead or dying, wondrous landmarks lay toppled in ruins or had been disintegrated upon impact. Rivers and reservoirs were contaminated with bodies and chemicals. Power stations had simply vanished with a push of a button. Those lucky people aboard airplanes or taking their ease upon cruise ships were spared the first wave of terror only to land at their destination and find their world destroyed by power-hungry men with no thought to the future.

Left homeless, the remains of humanity wandered from seaport to seaport, town to town in search of uncontaminated water and food. Many starved, many committed suicide for they could not endure the hardships facing them, and many simply vanished never to be seen again. Disease was rampant and one horrible, deadly virus sprang up to infect a third of the world’s remaining population. Simply called the plague, the disease spread from continent to continent and in its wake, bodies were left to rot where they fell.

There were amid the chaos of wandering survivors, those who had hidden for centuries—keeping to themselves lest their own sub-world be discovered and destroyed. They came slowly from their hiding places and ventured out to eke out their own existence.

Among those who made themselves known after the world had been thrust into nuclear winter and worse were the Revenants, a race of people who needed to consume blood to survive. Unlike their vicious counterpart—the vampires—the Revenants looked after their human herds, keeping them safe, taking only enough blood to keep themselves alive, providing food and shelter and food so the humans would—if not thrive—at least go on.