Miami Days and Truscan

Back Cover

A Fantasy Romance Novel by Gail Roughton

Over the hills and far away, somewhere over the rainbow, beyond the yellow brick road…

Three clichés—and a story that is fantastic in every sense of the word. 

Dedicated career girl Tess Ames was on her way to a working holiday in Jamaica. But instead of eating salt-fish and dancing reggae, she ends up in a quaintly parallel world where things are almost the same as here, but not quite.  

For this world runs on magic, portents, omens, and the all-important Stones of Power—she ain’t in Kansas anymore!    

Has Tess been thrown to the wolves?  Ah! That would be telling…

For my girls—Becca, Kim, Diane, Melody, Lori, Liz, Kate, Joyce, and Miss Louise.

You believed even when I didn’t.

Miami Days & Truscan (K)nights

Gail Roughton

MuseItUp Publishing

www.museituppublishing.com

Chapter One

“Jamaica Unicom, this is Alpha Delta Charlie…”

I was beginning to think there were no other words in the English language. Certainly, it didn’t appear there were ever going to be more by way of a reply.

This was supposed to be a combined business-pleasure trip; a short junket from Miami to Jamaica during which I would add “hostess” to my job description of personal troubleshooter to the CEO. I’d made similar trips at least ten times in this little Piper Cub during the last two years of my employment with Ramos International, with pilot Ken Hanslett at the controls. We’d become big buddies and I’d always had absolute confidence in him. I still did. It was the gray, clinging, swirling, never-ending fog I didn’t have any confidence in.

“Ken, give it a rest. You’re getting hoarse. Nobody’s answering.”

“Yeah, but you never know, Tess. We need to keep on trying.”

We’d been flying in this peasouper for over an hour, all instrument gauges oscillating wildly from one side of their respective circles to the other. I’d almost given up looking at them on purpose as the force of my stare obviously wasn’t effective in making them behave. But I glanced back down frequently anyway, in the manner of a passer-by who just couldn’t stop looking at a traffic accident.

“Ken! Look!”

I couldn’t believe it. The needles were no longer swinging crazily. And the fog—the fog was lifting and then, almost instantaneously, we were back in the blue, rushing rapidly into flashes of green and brown. I saw thick treetops and rolling hillsides. The plane seemed to skim the tops of the trees on its way down to rolling meadow and my brain screamed in protest. No way. We were supposed to be over ocean, not land. We were supposed to be cruising at 8,000 feet, not tree level.

“Ken
?
”

His hands flashed out to the controls and I heard the engines cut out. Kaleidoscopic colors rushed past. I felt the horrendous jolts of impact before my ears registered the noise, and then there was only the slow swishing sound of the propellers as they revolved ever more slowly into stillness.

I don’t think I was completely knocked out, and fought back to the light through dancing motes of black, wrenching nausea. The plane was at an angle and the impact had been on the pilot side—the pilot side! Oh my God!

I was lodged far back in the seat and tried to struggle up, panicking at the bonds that held me. I had visions of the plane exploding while we were trapped inside. Then I realized I wasn’t trapped at all, but still securely harnessed in. I brought my hands down to locate the release on the seat belt buckle. I rose and turned my head.

“Ken?”

The pilot side had, indeed, taken the impact. His seat was pushed forward, and he lay slumped over the wheel. My mind tried to shut it out, to deny the obvious, but I couldn’t let it. His chest was crushed. Blood trickled from his lip. No, that wasn’t right. Not from his lip. Down his lip, coming from his mouth. I lurched forward, moving too fast, and the body of the plane shifted its balance. I sat still.

“I won’t think,” I told myself. “That’s easier. Much easier. Just for a minute.” And I lay back against the seat and let my eyes shift out the window and look out at a vista that couldn’t possibly exist on any island in the Caribbean Ocean. I was looking at trees native to the deep hardwood forests of the Northern Hemisphere. The sunlight was wrong; subtly different, redder, rawer, newer.

Then my eyes shifted to Ken and I knew I couldn’t avoid thinking about it, the very thing Ken and I had joked about on different flights across this same stretch of ocean, flights ending with normal, happy landings.

I’d flown through the Bermuda Triangle and come out alive on the other side, with a dying pilot and a wrecked plane.

The riders came out of the tree shadows slowly. They were big men, all of them; broad shouldered, dressed in rough trousers and fur tunics. They were on horseback, carrying shields and swords. I shook my head to clear my eyes but the vision stayed the same, except for the rider who pulled out of the circle and moved forward.

He was bigger than the others, with dark shoulder-length hair and tanned skin, mounted on an animal that
couldn’t
be a horse. The other animals were horses, but this one? It
looked
like a horse, a beautiful solid black mount, a stallion that should have been leading a pack of wild horses on the western plains. But it had…
horns
! Curving, deadly horns growing out of its head, on either side of its ears, like a bull.

This was obviously the guy in charge. He raised his hand, giving a gesture, and the other riders wheeled their mounts around in a semi-circle so that they were facing away from the plane. Then he motioned to the man beside him, who dismounted and walked toward me and the wreckage of the plane. I made a conscious effort to concentrate as he drew closer. He was smaller than the others. Older, too, I thought, probably in his early to mid-fifties. He was dressed the same though, and the expression on his face was a blend of amazement and regret.

He touched the letters on the wing almost reverently, and carefully, very carefully, positioned his foot at the point where the wing joined the body of the plane, raising himself up. I felt the plane shift again and gave a small cry. I’d thought I couldn’t be any more frightened than I already was, but I’d been wrong.

He opened the door, and I pulled back away from him. He smiled and held his hand out. “American, huh? ADC 519. Been a long time since I’ve seen one of these.”

My breath exploded with the force of relief. “Oh God, you speak English! You’re American? Where is this, who
are
you?”

“Yeah, I’m American. Name’s Johnny and we’ll save the rest for later, no time now.” He looked over at Ken. “Your pilot?”

“He’s really bad. We have to get him out of here.”

He leaned over me and moved his hands carefully over Ken’s shoulders and arms. “Hate to tell you this, but I don’t think—” He broke off as a voice came from behind him.

“Magna se mortuus?” I hadn’t seen the leader of the group following my new American hero as he approached, but he was standing on the ground outside the door. The man must move like a cat.

“Damn, I hate this,” the man who’d identified himself as Johnny said softly. He turned his head to the door and spoke over his shoulder.

“Mortuus,” he confirmed. He turned back to me. “That’s Dalph, formal introductions to follow. C’mon, got to get you out of here. Raise your arms for me.” I complied and my new hero pulled me free of the clinging seat belts, maneuvering me over to the plane door where he passed me along to the waiting arms of the man below. His truly strapping proportions seemed more terrifying than heroic at the moment. I was sure I was in some state of shock but even so, he was well over six feet tall, maybe even six-six or six-seven. His shoulders seemed massive, though I supposed the fur tunic had something to do with that, too.

Johnny jumped down and spoke rapidly in a language that sounded like no other I’d ever heard. The giant identified as Dalph passed me back to Johnny and hoisted himself into the plane as Johnny hustled me back toward the horses. I stumbled, trying to keep both the plane and Ken in my sight. These people seemed as though they wanted to help but I wasn’t the trusting sort by nature or profession. A huge shadow covered my view as Dalph leaned forward and I almost allowed relief to flood over me. He was obviously about to lift Ken and get him out of the plane and they’d take us somewhere safe and—

And then I heard the sickeningly sharp crack of snapping bone. I saw Ken’s head fall, twisted at an impossible angle, as the shadow backed away.

I jerked free of Johnny’s supporting hands and started running back.

“He killed him! He just
killed
him—”

Johnny’s hands pulled me back against him. “No choice. No way he’d survive if we tried to move him and believe me, it’s for the best.”

Dalph called out to Johnny again in that strange language. Johnny pointed to the fuel tanks and Dalph nodded as Johnny shoved me forward.

“Get to the horses,” he said.

“No!”

“Don’t fight with me. You don’t know how lucky you are we were out here.”

“Lucky?”

The giant held up his hand to catch the small bag one of the mounted riders tossed him. The bag opened; I saw him pull something out and realized the bag was a tinderbox. Hadn’t anybody here ever heard of Bic lighters? Or even matches? Or cars, or ambulances, or 911? I fought off the rising waves of hysteria and saw a flash as a small strip of cloth ignited.

“Stop him! He’ll blow the plane!”

“Yeah, he plans to. Your pilot’s funeral pyre, he’d like that. I would have.”

The giant backed even further away and then tossed the torch at the back of the plane.

He might be big, but he wasn’t stupid. He dived forward and hit the ground as he made his toss, and now he jumped to his feet as the roar of rushing flames drowned out my continuing protests. He shouted over the roar and Johnny tugged me toward the horse-like creature sporting horns as Dalph ran forward and grabbed the reins.

“Get on Dalph’s horse. He’s stronger. An extra rider won’t slow him down much.”

“Like
hell
I will! He just killed my pilot!”

“Like hell you won’t! I know this ain’t exactly anybody’s idea of over the rainbow, but darlin’, believe me when I tell you this. You ain’t in Kansas anymore!”

“I
will not
!
”

Dalph spoke again, but I doubted it was a literal translation since Johnny was talking at pretty much the same time.

“He says you got exactly ten seconds to move toward that horse.”

“Or
what
?”

“Or he’ll knock you out and put you on it.”

I glared at them both.

“
No
.”

I guess my actions or lack thereof spoke louder than words and, needing no interpreter, Dalph shrugged, moved forward, and I felt the force of his fist for only a split second before the world turned black.