The Halloween Collection (2 page)

“Ever been camping?” he asked.

“If you consider trekking across the country
with Vala camping, then yes.”

He snickered. “I’m sure that was fun.”

I rolled my eyes. “Tons.”

He sat down on the ground and opened his
arms. I snuggled into them. The night had brought on a chill. My
thin shirt wasn’t going to cut it. I shivered.

Daxton wrapped his arms around me tighter.
“I’ll keep you warm.” He put his finger on my chin and lifted it
up. Our noses touched, and I could feel his breath on my lips.
Gently, he brushed my lips with his. The soft kiss quickly became
more intense, and I found myself heating up.

Pulling away, Daxton asked, “Is that
better?”

“Mhmm.” I smiled lovingly.

He stroked my hair until I fell asleep in
his arms.

* * *

A few hours later, a snort woke me up.
Standing in front of us was a black demon bull with narrow red
eyes. The stench coming from him was overwhelming. When our eyes
met, chills ran through me. Silently, I squeezed Daxton’s hand. I
felt him tense behind me.

I concentrated on the demon, and he let out
a terrifying sound. My power rose again and I released it at him.
Before I could finish him off, something cold and bony grabbed my
wrist. My head snapped to the side and I gasped when I saw little
demons all around us. “They’re everywhere,” I whispered, kicking
one away from my foot. He was fast and came right back, digging his
teeth into my leg. I yelled out as the sharp pain shot up my
calf.

Daxton quietly reached down to where he kept
his dagger. “Kill the big one. I’ll take care of the one biting
you.”

I looked back at the demon bull. He was
standing up straight again and getting ready to charge. I knew I
only had seconds. And that was all I needed. I focused and my body
started to shake as the power took over again.
Die!
Two seconds later he was
on the ground, this time for good.

I turned to see Daxton shoving the dagger
into the demon that was chewing on my skin. He flung backwards and
melted into the ground. The other little demons around him started
chattering. Even though I couldn’t understand their language, I
knew they were angry.

Focusing on the demons, I let my power rise
once again, and took them down. “Where are they coming from?” I
asked.

“I don’t know.”

“We need to get out of here.”

“I know.”

I squinted into the darkness as a soft
glowing light appeared up ahead. I couldn’t look away from the
warm, calming, light blue glow. The hazy ball seemed to be pulsing.
Somehow, I knew it was nothing to be afraid of.

“What is that?”

When he didn’t answer, I looked back at him.
He was staring at the light, too.

It grew brighter and floated closer until it
was within arms’ reach. Then the light morphed into a beautiful
faery with translucent wings fluttering quickly. She had long brown
hair, which reached halfway down her back and big, green eyes. “I’m
Laurel. Noe sent me.”

“Noe?”

“Yes. She said you were lost.”

Oh that Noe. I could have just kissed her.
Noe was a predictor. She could see the future. She had trouble
seeing things when demons were involved, but she must have been
able to see us getting lost. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiled. “Now, let’s
get you out of here.”

Nodding, I stood up. “Ow!” I yelled and fell
back to the ground. I had forgotten the demons had chewed off a
piece of my leg for dinner.

“What’s wrong?” Daxton asked.

Laurel turned back around and flew closer. I
pulled up my pant leg a little higher exposing the nasty wound.

“Demon bite?” Laurel asked.

“Yes.”

She put her tiny hand in her pocket and
pulled out a vial. “I have some faery salve. It’ll help.” I knew it
would help. I had used it many times when demons had gotten a hold
of me. I could hardly feel her touch as she smeared the salve over
the wounds. “There. Give it a few minutes, and you should be able
to walk on it.”

She flew a circle around us. I assumed she
needed to make sure the area was still demon free. My leg started
tingling. I leaned on Daxton and stood up again. Very carefully, I
put pressure on my leg. It felt a little weird, but it wasn’t
painful. “I think I’m ready now.”

“Follow me,” Laurel said, her bell-like
voice sounding urgent.

Her glow brightened again, and she flew
ahead of us. We followed. By the time we got back to the car a
couple of hours later, the dark sky had started to turn to a
lighter shade of blue.

Laurel turned to us. “Here you are.”

“Thank you so much Laurel.” I smiled at
her.

“Yes, thank you,” Daxton added.

“You’re very welcome. I’m glad I could help,
child of the angels.” Our eyes met and she smiled back. Then she
flew away.

Daxton laughed. “Child of the angels,
huh?”

“It has a nice ring to it.”

“How’s your leg?”

“It’ll be fine. Are you okay?” I realized I
hadn’t asked him if he had gotten hurt.

I lifted up his shirt and examined his back
and chest before he could even answer. He laughed. “I’m okay. I
guess you’re tastier than I am.”

I smiled and threw my arms around him. “I
love you.” I pulled him closer and kissed him.

A shudder ran down my back. It felt like we
were being watched. “Let’s go home.”

We hurried into the safety of the car, but
as we pulled away, I could see a pair of red eyes in a bush. I knew
they were always watching…waiting for their chance to get us.

* * *

“The Gifted Teens” Series by Talia Jager

Book One:
The Ultimate
Sacrifice

Book Two due to be released at the end of 2011

Talia Jager spends most of her time writing in the
bathroom with a steady supply of chocolate, counting the days until
her hormonal teenage daughter leaves for college…

http://taliajager.blogspot.com/

Yu Pao Long was not much of a horseman. He
was a man of back alleys and twisting lanes, and so had never had
much cause to climb up on an animal’s back. It felt unnatural, but
thankfully the spare horse brought by the village boy proved a
docile beast. The boy led the way on a pony and the horse followed
without Yu Pao having to convince it to do so.

They passed beneath the great Jade Gate of
Tsheh and out of the port city to the desolate countryside
stretching south. Polished brass cannons on the ramparts behind
them pointed the way, but the guns were only ornamental. No invader
would ever approach the city from the south, for the terrain there
was unsuitable for an army. Centuries ago the lowlands had been
drained, and a wide stone road on arches had been built by some
Duke or Prefect who wished both a monument to his own practicality,
and employment for the people of the city. In time the area around
the sublime bridge had become a fashionable place for the wealthy
of Tsheh to raise funerary monuments to both their ancestral and
newly dead, and a vast network of graveyards and gardens came to
fill the lowlands. It had been a beautiful place of tranquility and
repose, as Yu Pao understood it, but such things never last.

A generation ago a typhoon off the bay had
breached the coastal berms and dykes, inundating the lowlands and
leaving the grand stone road as a muddy causeway that bisected what
was now a shallow, dismal swamp. Twisting trees and stone memorials
to the long-since dead stretched to the horizon. The taller
monuments jutting above the brackish water were choked with vines
and creepers that seemed to be trying to strangle the stone, with
the patience of eons.

The place was not pleasant and it had an
evil reputation, so while the causeway still rose above the morass
few people cared to use it after dark. There was heavy traffic even
in the late morning, and the two riders moved around groaning
wagons bound for the great port that acted as a magnet for the
produce of the whole province. The sun was bright but the autumn
day cold, and while the brambly swamp to either side did not look
quite so miserable by daylight, Yu Pao’s mood as he rode in silence
remained dark.

They were not going far. After only three
miles the ground rose as the area of the flood was behind them. A
cluster of inns and freight yards lined dry ground by the road, but
the boy on the pony led Yu Pao around them and up a modest hill
along a well-worn path. A small village was nestled just beyond the
rise, facing out over the swamps and the obscured monuments. When
the necropolis had enjoyed its time of fashion, this village and
its people had enacted the funerary rites observed there. They were
made to do so well outside of Tsheh’s walls, for the mortuary
profession was among the most Unclean of callings. Though that time
was over and the village of today was little different than any
other around the port, it still retained an old name in the rustic
dialect of the peasants. They called it the Village of Those Who
Touch the Dead.

The center of the village was made up of old
stone buildings that had once been workshops—of a kind—or
crematoriums. All were now homes. Around them in a circle stretched
ruder hovels, and the boy on his pony led Yu Pao to one on the
northern outskirts, with the swamps immediately below at the back
end of the hill. Yu Pao had never seen the cottage, but he knew it
from Jing-Sheng’s fond description: Humble but scrupulously
maintained with a swept walk and bright red shutters under the
sweeping eaves of old, mismatched tiles. The village was largely
empty with the peasants out in the fields, but a cluster of old men
waited by the front walk, keeping their distance from the dark,
open door.

The boy dismounted first and held the
horse’s bridle. Yu Pao swung out of the saddle, long hair in a
top-knot swishing across the iron-shod
tetsubo
club strapped to his back.
The weapon, along with his crisp civilian clothes, was enough to
identify the man from Tsheh to the old villagers. They knew what he
was, and they gave polite bows.

Yu Pao ignored them for now as he marched
down the path to the front door, and inside. The place was small,
having only two rooms, and the door allowed in just enough light to
hint at a clean kitchen of modest furnishings, countertops and an
old plank table. The second room was separated by a painted screen
before the doorway, and the smell made Yu Pao jerk his head even as
he entered.

The back shutters were open, allowing in
light and more than a few fat, black flies from the swamp below.
The room was a sleeping chamber with mats on the floor, and
Jing-Sheng was sprawled across the larger of the two. Yu Pao knew
him mostly by the intricate tattoos from his left wrist to elbow:
Images of choppy waves, a sea dragon, square coins with hollow
centers. Jing-Sheng’s face was mauled, the blood already congealed
in his long hair on the floor around his head like a dark corona.
His abdomen was dug out like a half-made canoe, and the flies
trundled busily about on exposed entrails.

Yu Pao looked down at his old friend and
Clan brother only briefly before spreading a blanket over the
remains. Flies trapped under it buzzed angrily. He turned away and
marched back outside.

The boy with the horses and the village
elders had found somewhere else to be. One man waited in the
packed-dirt street, leaning on a staff. His face was so wizened it
seemed to be shriveling into itself beneath a sparse beard of long
gray and black hairs intermixed. The shapeless old robes draping
him may have started as white long ago, but they were now a grimy
yellow. One eye was milky and sightless, the other was sharp and
steel gray. It was that one he focused on Yu Pao before bowing.

“Gentleman of the city,” the old man
said.

Yu Pao had no interest in pleasantries.
“What happened here?” he demanded, hands in fists at his sides.
Besides his tetsubo, Yu Pao wore a long
tantu
dagger in a sheath on his
hip. The shorter blade of a throwing
uchni-ne
rode within his right sleeve.

The old man straightened as much as he was
able and got quickly to the point.

“None know for certain. The woman Baojia
awoke and found your friend as you see him now. She has no memory
of anything that happened in the night.”

“That seems unlikely,” Yu Pao said, voice as
ever polite, but unmistakably hard. “It would not have been
quiet.”

“No,” the old man agreed. He had plainly
seen Jing-Sheng’s body, the lower ribs snapped and wrenched open.
“Yet what happened in that room may have occurred without the woman
knowing, for she may not have been there. Not as herself.”

Yu Pao looked more carefully at the old
man’s robes: Voluminous and of a cut that had once been in style,
long ago. The feet poking from beneath the hem were in worn cloth
shoes with pointed toes.

“You are no sort of mayor of this village,”
Yu Pao said, and the old fellow shook his head once.

“I am not. My name is Da-An, and for a time
I was court
wujen
in the Emperor’s service.”

“A wizard,” Yu Pao said, though without much
enthusiasm. As a native of the cosmopolitan city of Tsheh he was
not burdened by any superstitions regarding the practitioners of
magic. He did, however, know that their craft was often about as
reliable as a wet matchlock pistol. Yu Pao was a man who
appreciated the sureness of a tempered steel blade.

“So I was,” Da-An said. “And though it has
been many years now since I walked that path, I still know the
shadow left behind by the visit of a dark spirit.” The man’s single
eye focused on Yu Pao’s. “It is something that is easier to show,
than it is to tell.”