Shadows In A Timeless Myth Excerpt
Modern Trials & Ancient Horrors
By
Teresa Thomas Bohannon
And In Large Print Paperback.
All Rights Reserved & Copyrighted 2011 Teresa Thomas Bohannon
CONFRONTATIONS
A sigh of relief escaped Bellina’s lips as she watched Mark
disappear down the drive. As much as she hated to let him out of her
sight, she needed more, at this moment in time, to be free of his
presence. Fingers, grown skillful with long experience, moved quickly
over her face to confirm her suspicion—the stress created by
his ardent questioning had taken a harsh toll. The skin was
paper-thin and dry to the touch. She did not need a mirror to tell
her that the aging process was hard upon her.
She wondered briefly if Mark had noticed the change. Her FenMaric
would have noticed immediately and been filled with his own brand of
brusquely tender concern; but then she gently chided herself for her
foolishness. The man had been, and rightly so, preoccupied with
unraveling the truth behind immediate, life-threatening concerns. He
could hardly be blamed for a lack of compassion for a condition whose
existence was unknown to him.
“And how will he react when I tell him? With only vague
dreams to remind him of the man he was, he is for all practical
purposes a creature of this new age. Will he even be able to accept
the truths that lie buried within? Do I even have the right to tell
him? Is he happier not knowing?” Almost, she thought of
leaving, but something deep within beat the idea into cowed
submission before it could grow to any serious form of maturity.
She glanced up at the bright summer sun with a longing eye. She
loved the feel of its caressing warmth upon her bare skin, but it
would only hasten the ravages if she allowed herself the luxury of a
sunbath.
She turned to go into the house, and then turned back again,
standing stock-still and frozen, concentrating intently on the
surrounding landscape. Someone or something was searching, and in her
heart she knew it was the demon. He swept the morning air with dark,
probing, tendrils. She could feel the unholy evil of his mental touch
as it slithered through the sunlit warmth, cutting at her gut with
the same dull-blade stench as maggot-ridden decay.
She came close to lashing out in challenge, but at the last moment
she pulled back. Instead, she sought and found a point on the far
side of the lake—a rough stretch of shoreline where limestone
cliffs rose from the water in a sheer and barren wall. Filling her
mind with the distant vision, she allowed nothing else to intrude.
Holding it before her like a shield, she felt his probing touch fade
into the distance.
His search had been random, unfocused, and Bellina had every
intention of keeping it so—at least, for the moment. Sooner or
later, he would discover her presence here in this time and place.
She could not prevent it. Maintaining a constant barrier against him
would drain her strength beyond bearing; but she could stall for
time.
Never throw away even the smallest advantage, she thought as she
stepped into the house. Choose your battleground, and ‘then’
make them taste hell! How often had she fought to pound that same bit
of wisdom into the hot-tempered and headstrong AraBestla?
...And FenMaric? She could not help but laugh. If possible,
FenMaric was even worse than AraBestla ever thought of being. She at
least had been known to give unfair odds their due consideration.
Over the years, the subject of his aggressive tendencies had been
reduced to the status of standing jest between them. How many, many
times had he protested his innocence with such mocking responses as
‘But Bellina. They started it. Surely, you’d not expect
me to turn my back and walk away?’
‘And besides,’ she would always counter with a sigh,
‘they numbered no more than a legion or so’.
“Oh Fen. My precious, precious FenMaric,” she murmured
aloud as she opened a traveling case filled with bottles, each filled
to the brim and a perfect duplicate of the other. “Please don’t
have lost too much of yourself, along with all our lost yesterdays.”
She picked a bottle at random, stripped it of its plastic security
seal, yanked out the cotton, and tapped out a dozen large, granular
pills. “Enough to choke a horse, or poison a mortal,” she
said aloud in traditional salute, before popping them, three at a
time, in her mouth to dry-swallow with an ease born of much practice.
The housekeeper found her curled up on the bed, cuddled up to the
extra pillow, fast asleep, and looking for all the world like a
pretty half-woman-child. She covered her with the sheet and closed
the window and heavy drapes against the brewing thunderstorm. As for
the bottle of enzyme-laced, iron enriched mega-vitamins that she
found lying on the floor, she examined the private label with a
puzzled shake of her head and placed it on the nightstand.
The storm, when it came, was typical for the area—a
toad-strangling, late-afternoon cloudburst, with thunder and
lightning raging majestically over the mountains as if in primitive
tribute to the gods Zeus and Thor. Bellina slept through it
with only vague dreams of the war-drums and flashing-swords of a
thousand by-gone battlefields to disturb her rest.
The storm faded into the distance, and from the kitchen, the
delicious aroma of fresh baking, and the haunting strains of an
ancient ballad floated up the back stairs. Dreams of war slipped by
the wayside—replaced by visions of cozy firesides in
shadow-shrouded taverns where wandering troubadours sang for their
suppers, and cutthroats drank dark ale side by side with honest
farmers. Taverns where you slept, if you dared sleep at all, with one
eye open, and a favored weapon close to hand.
When I was but a young sweet lass
I met a man and it came to pass
I learned to love and so did he
And he pledged his heart to marry me.
Love, love, my own sweet love
My heart can ne’er say goodbye
Love, love, my own sweet love
I’ll love him til I die.
The voice was true, and held a sweet lilting, but still, it was
not the voice of a buxom young barmaid, or even the cherished virgin
daughter of a manor lord. Age sheltered within its weak timbre, age,
and a special sadness that can only come with a life lived long and
hard.
My own true, he swore to leave
Our fortune for to seek
He gave silk ribbons for my hair
And a silver ‘trothing ring
Love, love, my own sweet love
My heart can ne’er say goodbye
Love, love, my own sweet love
I’ll love him til I die.
The voice faltered as if the singer had been distracted. The song
continued, but something was different, and in the room above Bellina
stirred in her sleep. The rendition had escalated from sweet
sincerity, to the loud brass of a false bravado heavily laden with
fear.
I begged and prayed and wept that day
But my tears he would not heed.
I pleaded for my love to stay
Silk and silver I ne’er did need.
Love, love, my own sweet love
My heart can ne’er say goodbye
Love, love, my own sweet love
I’ll love him til I die.
The singer was moving, swiftly-not-slowly, through the house, and
the voice began to tremble as the fear grew into heart-pounding
terror. Heartbeat. Keys jangled in a lock. Heartbeat. A glass paneled
door banged against a wall. Heartbeat. A box of brass jacketed shells
crashed to the floor and rolled about as fingers laced with arthritis
scrabbled among them. Heartbeat. A rifle bolt slammed home.
A moonless night, and a lonely road
A highwayman on a dark swift roan
A coach twas robbed, twas a kingsman’s own
Royal soldiers hunted him down.
Love, love, my own sweet love
My heart can ne’er say goodbye
Love, love, my own sweet love
I’ll love him til I die.
Asleep. Awake. Bellina leapt the split second gulf that lay
between, and hit the floor with an acrobat’s cat-quick
rolling-flip that carried her half-way out the door, and landed her
feet-down and running for the staircase.
They hung him from the crossroads oak
With a braided hank of black silk rope
A hangman’s noose for a highwayman
Who pledged his love to me.
Love, love, my own sweet love
My heart can ne’er say goodbye
Love, love, my own sweet love
I’ll love him til I die.
Love, love, my own sweet love
My tears will never dry.
VamBellina burst into the gentleman’s parlor just as the
last trebling notes of the ballad sounded on the air. For the barest
of moments, silence ruled as completely as if the house itself held
its breath in anticipation.
The housekeeper had once been a tall, full-masted sailing ship of
a big woman. Born of the large-boned peasant stock produced by
generations of hard labor; she now stood stoop-shouldered and
withered, heavily beset with a myriad frailties of old age. Her faded
blue eyes were brightly lit with courage, and her bearing spoke of
all the will in the world; but still her hands trembled with the
weight of the Weatherby Express she held braced against her shoulder
and trained on the etched glass panels of the French doors.
Bellina moved quickly to take the gun—but not quickly
enough. Glistening shards of glass imploded into the room, driven
before the body of a horrifying beast as he crashed through the doors
with a raging force that shattered both lock and hinges.
A deafening explosion shook the house as Maggie Wyvern fired the
heavy bolt-action antique rifle. The discharge caught the
beast—barely so—but with enough force to slam him back
through the ragged entrance. The kick spun Maggie into the wall in a
stunned slump. Her second shot was pure knee-jerk reaction, blasting
a fist-sized hole in the room’s ceiling that rained plaster
down upon the beast as he charged back into the room.
Bellina made a rolling dive for the rifle, wrenched
it—barrel-first—none too carefully from Maggie’s
grip, and came to her feet just as the beast leapt across the room in
fangs-bared, snarling, wounded rage. With no time to chamber a shell,
she instead, spun out of his path, and used the stock to deliver a
clothesline blow to his throat. His claws raked her face and shoulder
as he passed. Gun, beast, and Bellina crashed to the floor to in a
pile, with Bellina pinned face-down beneath his weight.
Maggie skittered across the floor, grabbing for the gun. He went
for her with fangs bared, but Bellina slammed her elbow into his
snout. Her forearm slipped past the teeth into the salivating maw.
The beast clamped down with bone-cracking force, and scrabbled,
rising with her weight, tearing gouges in the gloss-waxed teak floor
with his claws.
Maggie yanked the gun free from beneath Bellina. Unable to shoot
for fear of hitting his prey, she used the stock to club repeatedly
at the beast’s skull. He loosened his grip, and Bellina,
ripping blood-spurting gashes in her flesh, tore free and rolled
aside.
Maggie fired.
Nothing happened.
She threw the bolt, chambering a shell, and the beast went for the
kill.
Bellina tackled from behind and mostly missed, but did manage to
throw him off balance. He skidded on the bloodied floor and careened
into the wall.
Maggie fired.
There was a dull click as the hammer fell on another shell long
dead with age.
She threw the bolt, ejecting the dud and chambering another.
The beast shivered and trembled in terror, and bloodcurdling
screaming howls filled the room as he clawed at the wall behind him,
desperately trying to tear a path through it.
The room had erupted into a raging holocaust of flame that licked
at his flesh and seared his lungs.
“Maggie,” Bellina’s voice was soft and
hypnotically soothing, but held a note of deep strain as she slipped
gently backwards, sliding over the floor towards the distant wall.
“Ease back towards the fireplace. Slowly, drop to the floor.
Make yourself as small and inconspicuous as possible. Do nothing to
draw his attention, and be ready to fire if he charges at either of
us.”
Once she and Maggie were as far from line-sight as the confines of
the room would permit, Bellina altered the fiery illusion that held
sway over the beast’s senses. The raging wall of flame parted
in the center, providing a clear path to the shattered French doors.
The beast fled into the falling night, and the flaming illusion
abruptly died.
All Rights Reserved & Copyrighted 2011 Teresa Thomas Bohannon
Shadows In A Timeless Myth Excerpt
Modern Trials & Ancient Horrors
By
Teresa Thomas Bohannon
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