Tethered (The Avenlore Series), Page 2

Chapter 2

  I was at a full out run by the time I hit the tree line some 20 yards in. I heard the door slam shut as Jones climbed out of his vehicle. Fortunately, tonight was a full moon and it was easy to miss the low bushes and fallen branches. I booked for a willow oak nearby and hid myself beneath the low hanging branches, my back against the trunk of the tree.

  I heard twigs snapping beneath his footfalls as he came closer to my hiding spot. “Danielle?” He called softly. I pressed my back harder against the tree and absently traced my fingers over my birthmark.

  “Dani, come on, I know you can hear me! Where are you? Don’t you think this is a little dramatic?” His voice was louder and I could hear him blowing out a long breath, picture him raking his fingers through his short, sandy blonde locks. “Dani, this is insane!”

  He knew me well enough to realize that he could walk these woods until daylight and I would never emerge for him.

  I concentrated on making no sound, biting back tears as my index finger nervously worked in circles over my birthmark. Nearby, Jones was still unaware of my presence and angrily took it out on an unsuspecting tree. I heard his boot strike repeatedly against the bark as he let out an angry growl and cursed under his breath. He paced for maybe ten or fifteen minutes more, alternating between cursing under his breath and calling out my name. His defeated huff sounded and then his footsteps retreated toward the direction of the road. I waited silently until I heard the engine turn over and rev as he drove off into the darkness.

  My body went limp against the tree as I succumbed to the painful emotions inside. Drawing my knees to my chest, I let the sobs ripple through me as I tried to figure out what I had done wrong. I’d had it bad for him since I’d first laid eyes on him in the fourth grade.

  If you placed us side by side and were told we were a couple it would laughable. He was tall with short, stylishly spikey sandy blonde hair and chocolate brown eyes set in a classically handsome face and with a nice body. I had auburn hair that I had to keep down to the middle of my back. This kept the natural ringlets weighted down enough to convert them to loose curls, it was my best feature, my only feature really. At least when it wasn’t raining or humid. My eyes were a boring greyish blue and my nose had a lovely bump in the middle of it and my lips were a little too big. And I came in at a whopping five foot four, one hundred and twenty pounds. I know, try and contain yourself. On my best day, I was only barely pretty.

  The product of exposure to too many fairytales, I had an overly romantic heart. I thought he was my prince, I thought this was my happily ever after. But, I was no princess.

  I stayed huddled against the tree in the cold for a while wallowing in my sadness, the only attendant to my pity party.

  By where the moon hung in the sky, it was very late. My aunt, Vera Deveroe, who I lived with, was probably unaware of my absence. She’d long ago given me a generous amount of freedom, not because she had so much trust in me…it was more like she was glad to be rid of me when I started to want independence. She spent the better part of her life going for cocktails with friends after work or shopping. The only sister of my dad who had been killed along with my mother in a car accident when I was 8 months old had been my caretaker for these past 17 years. She wasn’t really a bad person, but she wasn’t particularly interested in me.

  Running my fingers through my hair, I blew out a shaky breath. I stood and brushed myself off, readying myself for the hike to my home, about three miles from here. Without warning, the earth beneath me began to tremble and the faint sound of hoof beats started to sound. It sounded like a stampede, at least I guess it did, though I’d never been present for one before. My knees locked and my heart jumped into my throat. I couldn’t move. I just stood there staring wide eyed in the direction of the sound.

  Slowly, in the distance I began to make out what appeared to be billowing black clouds too close to the ground in the distance maybe 100 yards out. I tried to will my body to move, but to no avail. As the cloud barreled closer, it took on a more defined shape. It was not a cloud at all, but many black cloaks whipping behind their riders in the night. The hoof beats I thought I’d heard were indeed that, created by no less than ten horses beneath the figures in black cloaks. I could feel the adrenaline as it began pumping madly through my body at this realization, calling upon a basic human response. Fight or flight.

  No question here.

  Flight.

  I turned on the spot and threw myself into a manic run, not towards the road, but deeper into the woods away from the riders. My legs worked furiously beneath me, arms pumped back and forth at my sides. Wait! Arms? Coat sleeve still pushed back, in the darkness it was easy to make out my birthmark which was now glowing a faint blue on the inside of my wrist. I could see it flash in and out of view as my arms swung back and forth.

  No time to muddle over that now though, as the calls from the riders became audible behind me. They were of course gaining on me. I couldn’t outrun a horse, but I would damn well try.

  “There she is!” A gruff male voice yelled in the chaos in some accent that screamed he was not from around here.

  My panicked mind tried to coax more speed from my body, but there was none to be had. Then, up ahead in my path, strange lights began to crackle and spark like so many sparklers on the Fourth of July. Starting many feet above the ground and tracing a symmetrical curve outward to either side quickly shaping into an arched doorway. It glowed the same faint blue as the mark on my arm.

  I heard an angry “NO!” sound from behind provided by the same gruff voice I’d heard previously. Then, “DO NOT LET HER PASS!”

  If Gruff Voice intended that I not pass through the weird door, then that was exactly where I meant to go. It was so close now, maybe ten feet away. But the riders were drawing closer; I could almost feel the steamy breath of the horses at my back. No! I could actually feel the steam and smell the distinct aroma of decay. My stomach roiled. I chanced a glance back to verify. Yes, they were that close. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see them filing out to flank me.

  The door beckoned me, like, it was actually beckoning me. A sweet feminine voice called, “Come, my child.”

  My body jerked slightly backward as a rider grabbed the hood of my favorite down filled coat. Fortunately for me, it was still unzipped. I lurched forward pulling my arms from the sleeves and dove for the doorway just in front of me now.

  As my fingertips touched the glowing blue light, I heard a muffled, angry scream from somewhere, but which direction I could not know for sure. I was being actively pulled in by the doorway, up was down and down was up and I could not make sense of it as I spun in darkness.

  Suddenly, bright daylight blinded me and I landed with a soft thud on lush, green moss. I stood immediately, body still in flight mode. But the world around me continued to spin violently in circles from the trip I’d just taken. I lost my footing, stumbled backward over something and a sharp pain pricked the back of my skull.

  And then, the world went black.