Captured: Warriors of Hir, Book 1

Captured

Willow Danes

Captured

by Willow Danes

©2014 Here be Dragons

Captured
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be produced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Kindle Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Please respect the author's work.

Cover Design:
Steven James Catizone

Published by Here Be Dragons

Also available in
paperback publication

One

The screaming came from overhead, like metal ripping through the sky.

In the next instant Jenna stumbled, falling onto her hands and knees as the cabin itself seemed to be lifted up a bit before being slammed back down in a puff of dust, the books and boxes and Pap’s many doohickeys rattling around her.

She was gasping, her ears still ringing as the cabin settled into quiet again. Shaking, Jenna eased back onto her haunches, her hand going to the little golden bird charm that hung on a chain around her neck.

Earthquake?

Quakes were rare in this part of North Carolina, and besides, she’d felt that tremble, that rumbling, beneath her feet a few times out west and this was
nothing
like that.

Jenna’s glance darted about the room—the half-packed boxes, the groupings she’d made as she sorted her grandfather’s things into piles of stuff to keep or give away or throw out. Through the cabin’s front window, she caught sight of a far-off spray of snow thrown high into the air and now falling rapidly to the ground. 

When she’d fallen, she’d dropped the framed photo of her and Pap standing in front of The Sweet Tooth on opening day. Thankfully it hadn’t broken, but the faded oval rag rug had done little to protect her knees from the fall and her palms felt raw and scraped.

Shakily Jenna placed the picture on the coffee table, put a hand on the worn red and black plaid sofa, and, wincing, got to her feet. Her right knee was likely going to sport a nasty bruise tomorrow but the couple steps across the living room to the window assured her that would be the worst of it. She frowned out at the sunny, snow-covered landscape, her breath fogging up the windowpane.

Plane crash, maybe?

There was a tiny airport not far from here. Recently built and meant for small craft—a few of the new, wealthy residents of Brittle Bridge used it when they didn’t want to go to Six Oaks—it was little more than a runway and a couple hangars.

Jenna scanned the woods, looking for smoke, but even the snow had settled now and the mountain seemed peaceful as ever. It took her a moment to realize that the TV that she’d had on to keep her company while she tended to the heartrending task of packing up Pap’s things had gone dark. A quick look at the blinking red light showed the Wi-Fi was out too.

No satellite, no Internet.

“Great,” she muttered, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. Thinking she could get by fine with just her cell she’d made the mistake of having the landline cut off last week before she realized her fancy—and expensive—new phone didn’t work inside the cabin. Outside, sure. Go twenty feet or sit in the SUV and the damned thing worked perfectly.

Jenna chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. She hadn’t seen anything except the now-resettled spray of snow but if it
were
a downed plane then someone could be hurt out there. It got dark around five this time of year so there were a few hours of daylight left at least and she knew these woods better than anyone—excepting her grandfather, of course. 

She grabbed her cell off the coffee table and in a few moments had her white down jacket zipped, the hood yanked up, and her gloves on. She was already wearing her sheepskin boots; the cabin floor sometimes felt cold to her even in the summer and now in January it was bitterly so.

Jenna drew in the bracing smell of snow and pine as she stepped onto the porch and shut the front door behind her. She was careful going down the cabin’s front steps; she’d slipped often enough on them over the years to remember to hold the handrail in winter. The soft powdery snow crunched under her boots as she walked and, as expected, three steps past her SUV the cell had reception again.

She scrolled through the numbers to the right one and hit “Dial” as she headed in the direction where she’d seen the snow spray.

“Sheriff’s Department.”

“Sarah Jane? It’s Jenna McNally.”

“Hey there, Jenna, you okay?” Sarah Jane had once been a model, or so Pap had said. Got her heart broke by a famous artist in New York and fled to Brittle Bridge to escape it all.

But then again, he’d made up stories about everyone with Jenna—the mayor was in the witness protection program, her teacher was a secret agent. She’d been labeled a “sensitive child” by the social worker who had handled the transfer of custody to him. Of course to Pap “sensitive” meant “creative” so he’d gone all out in encouraging her in all of it—the arts and music, crafting, baking—anything she wanted to try, and he was proud as punch to let her.

But if Sarah Jane had been a model, it was thirty-five years ago or more now and twenty since she joined the sheriff’s department. “You up at Pap’s still?”

Her grandfather’s name was William James McNally. But it had probably been since before Sarah Jane’s supposed model-artist affair days that he had been called anything other than “Pap” in the vicinity of Brittle Bridge—at least never in the twenty-six years Jenna had known him.

Well, excepting that social worker.

“Yeah, I’ll be here for a couple more days,” Jenna said, already past the clearing around the house and into the forest. “Listen, I think a plane crashed up here on our”—she swallowed hard—“my land.”

“A plane?” Sarah Jane’s voice went from neighborly to official. “Where did it come down?”

“Not sure.” Jenna ducked under a branch as she headed deeper into the woods. “I heard something real loud and then it was like ‘bam,’ something hitting the ground hard. Shook the whole place.”

“Can you see smoke from where you are now?”

“No,” Jenna admitted, trotting along as fast as the snow would allow her. Some of the drifts were deep and she had to mind where she stepped. She wouldn’t be doing anyone any good if she broke her ankle. “I’m heading out to take a look now.”

“But you
saw
the plane go down?”

“Uh, no.” Sarah Jane’s too-patient tone was starting make her feel a little embarrassed for calling when she hadn’t actually seen anything. Maybe it
was
something else: a really big tree falling or a damn meteorite or something.

“Huh,” Sarah Jane said. “Lemme call around and see if anybody’s gone missing. But you call me straight off if you find anything, ’kay?”

“Sure thing.” Jenna ended the call and slipped the phone into her jacket pocket. Whatever crashed couldn’t be far from where she’d seen the snow spray up.

Forced by the lack of schools and friends for his young granddaughter, Pap had kept the house in Asheville, but they’d come to Brittle Bridge at every opportunity. Pap’s heart was here and she’d happily spent the summer days running barefooted in these woods clad in overalls, her chestnut hair in pigtails at first, then tied back in a ponytail as she got older.

Her stride faltered and she steadied herself against a pine, the rough trunk pulling on her knitted glove. Pap’s beloved woods were quiet and bright around her but Jenna suddenly had a strong urge to run back to the cabin.

She set her jaw and pressed on. Pap hadn’t raised her to be a coward and this was
her
land now. He’d left her five hundred acres and anyone on it without her say-so was trespassing, even if it was about to go up for sale.

Still, she wished she’d thought to grab Pap’s revolver or rifle or even his hunting knife before she’d come racing down here.

I’ll go as far as the creek and if I don’t find anything I’ll head on back.

But all was quiet at the creek too, the crystal clear water moving placidly between the banks—

Jenna stopped short. There was tang to the air, a burned smell that wrinkled her nose. It reminded her a little bit of the inside of a mechanic’s garage, out of place in such pristine woods.

It smelled
wrong
. Not only that…

There’s no snow here.

There was snow all around, covering the ground, hanging heavy in the tree limbs above, but
here
there was just a long patch of mud and broken sticks.

The sudden sick feeling of being watched raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. With a shock of awareness she realized just how very vulnerable she was out here, alone and unarmed.

Pap hadn’t raised her to be an idiot either. With trembling fingers she pulled her phone out and hit redial to the Sheriff’s office.

In horrified disbelief she watched the screen flash “
Connection failed
.”

She took a step back and searched the silent, still forest.

All I have to do is make it back up to the house. I can get the gun, get my car keys, call for help, get the hell out of here!

Her quickened breath was visible as she headed uphill back toward the cabin, the drifts and her fear slowing her down. She couldn’t remember if the ammunition was still in the kitchen cabinet or if she’d moved it when—

Something off to her right gave a soft, deep growl.

Jenna skidded to a halt, scanning the woods again, but the growling had already stopped. She pulled off her hood to see—and hear—better, yanking a bit of her long hair painfully in the process.

Black bears didn’t growl; that only happened in the movies. They would huff sometimes or moan but they absolutely
didn’t
growl.

Oh, God, it’s a fucking wolf!

Jenna wet her lips. There was a broken tree limb near her right foot and she fumbled for it, dropping her cell in her hurry, her gloved fingers digging in the snow to get hold of the branch.

She brought the limb up, wielding it like a baseball bat. Her glance darted about, her rough weapon gripped tightly in her hands.

A startled scream tore from her throat at the rush of movement.

Two deer burst from the tree line, their hooves kicking up snow and dirt as they bounded away. Jenna stood still, her heart hammering even as the hoof beats of the retreating deer grew fainter.

Then the forest was peaceful again, the sun sparkling on the snow.

Standing in the woods where she’d spent every summer, school break, and holiday, she started to wonder if she’d imagined that growl in the first place.

The strain of losing Pap, then the funeral and having to come back here where he had warmly made room for her in his life, was more than enough already. And now, readying the place for sale had worn her nerves raw. Remembering how it had often been just the two of them fishing and reading and talking, having to pack all those wonderful sunlit days up into cardboard boxes and know they were gone forever left her feeling like she was standing at the top of a staircase and the stairs behind her had just vanished.

Jenna took a deep breath and let it out slowly, lowering the branch. She’d gotten spooked was all. Best just head back to the cabin, check in with Sarah Jane, and get to packing.

Her pricy phone was still lying in the snow where she’d dropped it. She sighed. Praying it had survived the fall and the snow, Jenna shifted the branch to her left hand and bent down to get it.

A shadow rose up in front of her.

He—definitely male—was huge. Easily seven feet tall, broad as a linebacker, he had long, shaggy blue-black hair that skimmed his shoulders and hung down his back. His skin was tanned in tone, and his clothing looked like dark brown leather wrapped around him, but it was neither his size nor his odd attire that kept her frozen in place—it was his face.