Journeyman’s Ride Read online

  Journeyman’s Ride

  By Marie Harte

  Miranda is duty-bound to journey across the Damned Plains to rescue the Princess of York from ruination. Her selfish cousin doesn’t deserve her help, but the mission offers an opportunity to escape the smothering confines of life as an indentured companion to a spoiled princess.

  Danner is a journeyman, a traveler with an extraordinary gift: the ability to withstand the deadly lightning bolts sent by moody gods. Drawn by her lush beauty, he agrees to guide Miranda across the Plains if she’ll let him explore her body each night.

  They face danger—blood ravens, cannibals, mechanical spyders—but Danner never anticipated that the bigger risk would be from Miranda and the things she makes him feel. A journeyman’s life doesn’t lend itself to commitment, but if they can rescue the princess and make it out of the Plains without getting zapped or eaten, Danner might have to make an exception for one amazing woman. If she’ll have him.

  36,220 words

  Dear Reader,

  A new year always brings with it a sense of expectation and promise (and maybe a vague sense of guilt). Expectation because we don’t know what the year will bring exactly, but promise because we always hope it will be good things. The guilt is due to all of the New Year’s resolutions we make with such good intentions.

  This year, Carina Press is making a New Year’s resolution we know we won’t have any reason to feel guilty about: we’re going to bring our readers a year of fantastic editorial and diverse genre content. So far, our plans for 2011 include staff and author appearances at reader-focused conferences such as the RT Booklovers Convention in April, where we’ll be offering up goodies, appearing on panels, giving workshops and hosting a few fun activities for readers. We’re also cooking up several genre-specific release weeks, during which we’ll highlight individual genres. So far we have plans for steampunk week and unusual fantasy week. Readers will have access to free reads, discounts, contests and more as part of our week-long promotions!

  But even when we’re not doing special promotions, we’re still offering something special to our readers in the form of the stories authors are delivering to Carina Press that we’re passing on to you. From sweet romance to sexy, and military science fiction to fairy-tale fantasy, from mysteries to romantic suspense, we’re proud to be offering a wide variety of genres and tales of escapism to our customers in this new year. Every week is a new adventure, and we want to bring our readers along on the journey. Be daring, be brave and try something new with Carina Press in 2011!

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  To Cat, for making me take a chance.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “Shut it down! Shut it down!” Parker shouted over the awkward shriek of metal gears that shouldn’t have been grinding so loudly.

  Activity in the workroom ceased. Steam hissed as the presses stopped rolling. A rumble overhead magnified the sudden stillness everywhere. Outside, the jarring caws of blood ravens quieted. As if the Western god himself had shuttered the sunlight, darkness shadowed the once-bright sky. Danner could count on one hand the number of times the godbolts hadn’t killed. “Oh hell. Here we go again.”

  “Danner, shut up.” Parker waved at the others to be silent, oblivious to everything but his precious machine. “I thought I heard a rattle in the underpending gearshift. Hank, can you look at it again?”

  Hank scratched his thinning hair. “I reckon. Hold on.”

  Half the time Danner didn’t know why Parker bothered to keep the damned presses rolling. As he stepped outside the small workroom, he glanced around the desolate area, wondering if he’d overstayed his time here. Lately, everywhere he moved, he felt eyes tracking him. In the distance where the empty woods buffered the town from the East, where he liked to walk. Across the dusty street at the mercantile. Or past it to the most popular building in town, the bar.

  “Parker, I’ll be back.”

  Parker nodded, more concerned with his mechanical problem.

  “But Danner, them godbolts is out there.” Nunny, another of their press workers, darted a nervous glance out the window. Parker looked up from the press and angled a speculative look Danner’s way. Shit.

  “I’m not worried.” Just resigned. He exited the building, walked along the wooden porch and then crossed the street to the bar. He entered through swinging doors and forced himself not to react to the stale smell of hopelessness, piss and rotgut. The place consisted of a wooden floor, several scarred tables and chairs, a counter and behind it shelves holding all manner of libation. A second floor boasted rooms for the whores who made a living servicing customers for what few scraps could be had in town. A couple of patrons spent their afternoons drinking, probably the miners who hadn’t found jack shit since Danner had first arrived in town.

  The folks in Endville had a lot of work to do to make their town resemble even the smallest hamlet east of the border. Though the West’s natural predators kept a respectful distance from the more populated area, attempts at civilization didn’t mean so much on the outskirts of nothingness.

  Beyond Endville to the west lay the Damned Plains, a sandy mass of death and danger that had killed more than one stupid prospector hoping to make it to the fabled Crystal Palace and beyond, eager for a chance at a better life. A smarter man would head East and scrap the idea of freedom from oppressive monarchs. Deal with asshole royals and live an easier life with Eastern amenities. But apparently, men weren’t that smart out here. The sun beat the common sense right out of them.

  Hell, it had out of him.

  From somewhere upstairs, a man cried out and a woman—Bertha by the sound of her—screeched as they engaged in some rip-roaring sex. Danner didn’t feel even the slightest twinge of lust. As Bertha sweated beneath some drunken partner, her daughter no doubt waited for her several doors down, praying her momma would make enough to feed her for the night.

  In most towns this far West, innocence starved while the harsh hungers of reality thrived. Prayers to the journeymen of the region often went unanswered. They should’ve been present in these parts, should’ve been the go-betweens linking men to the silent gods. But the journeymen out here were either too busy or too arrogant to deal with the common man in the godsforsaken drylands. He shook his head and motioned for Otis to stop wiping down the bar and approach.

  Danner ordered a drink and subtly palmed a gold coin across the scarred wooden counter. He leaned closer to Otis, a fairly honest man with a decent heart. “Give the change to Bertha’s kid. Make sure she eats.”

  The barkeep nodded. “Sure thing, Danner.”

  “And for fuck’s sake, don’t tell her I gave you the money.” He needed Bertha’s thanks like he needed a hole in the head. Seemed like every time he helped someone out, there was a chatty witness to tell the tale.

  After downing a shot of Otis’s finest, he left the bar and returned to the street, knowing he should be more thankful Parker had
taken him in. A drifter arriving in town with no more than an automated wagon and what he could carry wouldn’t be seen as trustworthy to folks who could ill afford to part with even a grain of gold dust.

  Yet Parker had immediately offered him a room and a job, and all for the promise of some help when Danner mentioned his knowledge of the mechanical presses he’d once seen during his travels. For the past six months, Danner had come and gone, occasionally helping Parker with his press but more often guiding the lost and the clueless across the plains while steering clear of the gods.

  As best he could, anyway.

  A godbolt thundered in the distance across the too-still indigo sky, and he tried not to flinch. Pain, pleasure and the knowledge of all he’d lost flared in the gleaming bolts that descended from the sky in random bursts. Jolts of punishment doled out by vengeful gods no better than men.

  Danner passed by Tina, Parker’s young daughter, on the way inside. Parker always smiled when he spoke of her, calling the dirty little urchin with gaps in her front teeth and dimples in her drawn cheeks his bright light.

  She grinned up at him, and Danner couldn’t stop himself from grinning back.

  “Stay outta trouble, you hear?”

  Sky blue eyes stared at him in awe as she nodded. Then she laughed and flounced away, her golden curls bouncing as she looked for something to play with. The little girl liked to stay under the shade of the few trees in Endville. The small copse of scraggled branches and brown-leafed saplings continued to flourish, no matter how dry the area grew.

  Danner glanced at Tina and saw her settle down under the trees to study something on the ground. He would let Parker know his daughter remained where he’d told her to be, near the pressroom. Danner had no idea what she did all day while her daddy tried to connect Endville with the rest of the West.

  As if a local newsprint might connect folks who could barely read. But Parker never quit. The man was like a longtooth going after a kill. Tenacious, stubborn and downright dangerous about spreading the good word of faith.

  Danner snorted and stepped back onto the wooden porch in front of the pressroom. But before he entered the building he caught sight of a ragged woman kneeling before a familiar statue in the very center of town. A blood raven landed on the stone arms of a god who’d long forgotten mankind.

  She touched her head, her lips and her heart nine times, then dumped a bag of runes on the ceremonial spot before the statue and chose three. She picked each up slowly and chanted in a low, cracked voice.

  Afterward, she gathered up her runes and turned to look directly at him. Crazy Letty. Danner swore under his breath. He didn’t need this today.

  The old woman nodded at him and bowed her head with respect before she hobbled away. Gritting his teeth, he reminded himself that it wasn’t his place to correct her. He did his best to ignore the whispered excitement of the group huddled together at the mercantile pointing from him to the statue to the godbolts crackling in the sky.

  Danner stomped back into the press building. Hank lay under the press while Parker hovered by the window with a frown on his face.

  “Tina’s fine, Parker.” Danner wiped a hand over his face. “I just saw her. She’s over by the trees.”

  At that moment, an odd silence hushed over the room and the town once more, as if time stood still.

  “What—” Hank began.

  “Shh. I see something…Tina?” Parker’s eyes widened, and he tore through the front door. The familiar crackle in the sky made Hank scoot out from under the machine and huddle in the corner muttering prayers next to Nunny.

  “Fuck, this is not my day.” Danner raced after Parker and knocked him to the ground moments before a godbolt would have fried him to a crisp.

  Six months of stability, longer than any time he’d stayed since he’d reached Endville, hell, in all the years since he’d left home. Was it too much to ask he settle his tired feet for a time? Too much to find some respite in a world coiled to collide with the gods at any given moment?

  “Oh, honey, no,” Parker whispered in terror as he stared at his daughter.

  Four-year-old Tina sat on the ground, her pretty dress stained with dirt as she toyed with an ancient device, one that shouldn’t have existed after all this time. One that shouldn’t have been here.

  Danner remembered, from the time before, when those living in these lands had experimented with the forbidden. When a passel of arrogant Northerners, too good for the king and his minions, had relocated and tapped the gods’ fire and claimed it as their own. The beginning of their own end. Unable to understand what they’d never been meant to, they’d unleashed steam and spark and created a plague of weapons not fit for greedy hands. Mankind’s constant need for more had resulted in the sands of the plains, the mutation of the few animals left alive, and ruination of the once-plentiful lakes in this area.

  A blood raven cackled above them, swirling overhead with sickening laughter. The thing Tina held could only have come from one place, accessible only by those like him. Danner prayed the damned thing would refuse to work as Tina caressed the tiny buttons.

  Instead, it spoke to her, the odd tin of artifice there in the metallic cadence of its voice. “Welcome, User. Accessing network…”

  Danner knew the kid didn’t have a prayer of making it back inside without his help. Playing with the forbidden gadgets pissed off the gods even better than he did. And Vi, the least patient of them all, loved nothing better than an excuse to screw with him, which was why the bastard had left this thing in the little girl’s favorite play spot. Danner liked Tina, and the asshole above knew it.

  He sighed. “Grab her and go. I’ll hold it back.” So much for his recent pretense as a guide hard on his luck seeking a home.

  Another godbolt struck near enough to let Danner feel the spark of energy wash over his skin. So much pain. So much pleasure…

  Parker fiddled with a geared apparatus on his belt. “It’s suicide. No. I’ll attract the lightning with my charger. Just save Tina.”

  “Go on, I said.” Danner raised his voice and glared at Parker with eyes that had seen what no normal human ever would.

  Parker gasped, but he didn’t argue again, too focused on getting his daughter to safety. He picked up the little girl and tossed the small device she’d been holding far into the woods, where it exploded under a searing shock of purple lightning. He ran back into the covered shelter of the pressroom, leaving Danner alone to do what he did best.

  He yelled at the nightmare in the sky, “Damn it, Vi, cut that shit out!”

  As if in answer, a neon bolt struck him between the eyes and coursed through his blood like an overeager parasite. It feasted on Danner. The power behind Vi’s temper set his blood afire, burning him from the inside out. His bones melted, his blood boiled and, just when he thought this time would be the last, the unendurable agony of the godbolt receded.

  Streaks of pleasure soothed the hurt. Shards of ecstasy pierced his brain and fused the whole of him together, making him so much more, a part of everything and everyone. No more loneliness, only the acceptance and utter joy of being. The need to create stirred, and his entire body lit up with emotional and carnal rapture.

  The raw static heated his veins and gave him one hell of a high.

  “Oh yeah. Go on, give me whatcha got.”

  Three more godbolts sizzled through his scalp and jolted every muscle, bone and cell in his body. But at this point, the painful bite of godly displeasure couldn’t touch the bliss crowding his senses. A distant part of him knew he’d be thoroughly screwed once everyone witnessed what happened. Parker would never keep his mouth shut. The others in town would be all over him with prayers, demands, desperation…

  Dammit. He’d have to move on.

  A hiss of steam split the sudden silence and warned of a new arrival. Terrific. Some dumbass conductor who didn’t know better than to stop the locomotive during a godstorm had condemned his passengers to death.

  Yep. There
it went. A massive bolt sizzling through the blackened sky veered from its course toward Danner and hit the train instead. The locomotive radiated enough energy to knock Danner down. A white web of storm snaked around the black, snorting beast made of iron and steel. As the web of blazing light faded, the train stopped hissing steam and leaked rust-colored tears.

  Danner slowly rose and took a few wobbly steps forward. He tried to lose the stupid-ass grin he could feel stretching his face. The damned burn was so good. So thick and greedy that his cock rose thanks to the pleasure leeching his common sense.

  From the direction of the locomotive, the stench of smoldering flesh and fried intestines filled the air, which wasn’t that pleasant on a good day, and he started to come down.

  With the rush of storm suddenly over, Endville’s residents poured across the town by the dozens, skittering around and past him toward the train like sand fleas. They pulled one or two passengers free, but from all the crying and goings-on, he fully expected the need to organize a burial detail. Trying to figure out who would take charge of it, Parker or the mayor, Danner tried to gather his wits and glanced around. Already folks looked at him different, full of expectation and trust.

  Crazy Letty knelt in front of the statue again, glancing from it to him, praying and smiling. Several folks tossed meager bits of gold at his feet and then raced away. And then Big Al, a huge bastard with a chip on his shoulder a mountain wide for anyone not born in this hellhole, nodded and tipped his hat in respect.

  Shee-it. Time to go.

  Danner took a step back and froze as a tall female exited the train, looking as if she’d just stepped out of an airship, untouched, unfazed. Those around her gave her a wide berth and glanced back at the statue in the middle of town. Was she godsent or just the luckiest passenger on the locomotive?

  The woman wore jet-black pants tucked into black preacher boots, a leather town coat and a slouch hat that looked a size too large for her but which effectively shielded her eyes. She started walking in his direction.