The Wild's Call

By Jeri Smith-Ready

The Wild's Call by Jeri Smith-Ready released on Mar 1, 2009 is available now for purchase.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harlequin Luna
• Release date: Mar 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781426835209

Jeri Smith-Ready

Award-winning author Jeri Smith-Ready lives in Maryland with her husband, two cats, and the world's goofiest greyhound. Jeri's plans to save the earth were ruined when she realized she was more of a problem maker than a problem solver. To stay out of trouble, she keeps her Drama Drive strictly fictional. Her friends and family appreciate that. When not writing, Jeri she can usually be found-well, thinking about writing, or on Twitter. Like her characters, she loves music, movies, and staying up very, very late.

Book preview

Twenty

Chapter One

Year Seven A.C. (After Collapse)

No one without a gun was getting food that day.

What Elysia lacked in firepower, however, she made up for in stealth. Winding her way around the edge of Baltimore’s crumbling Fells Point Market, she hid in the shadows and waited for the goods to fall. Her tiny frame, as well as some extra quality she didn’t want to examine, made her invisible to the Uzi-toting warlords and the vendors who feared their threats.

The transactions around her created a surreal tableau. The gangsters calmly pointed their weapons at the farmers, sparing their lives in exchange for meats and vegetables. Once upon a time there was money, she reminded herself.

Dollars were worthless these days, so everyone bartered. A week ago, Elysia had traded her last carton of cigarettes for a salami roll and a bag of potatoes. Two career options remained: prostitute or thief. Her strange new attributes made it an easy choice.

She wasn’t the only scavenger today. A familiar form sidled along on the opposite edge of the dingy pavilion.

Darien.

The late afternoon sunlight glinted off his nape-length wavy hair, the color of dark chocolate, something she hadn’t tasted in months. He entered the pavilion and slid through the crowd. His gaze shifted from side to side, maybe searching for someone. Nothing but muscles bulged beneath his tight black T-shirt, vest and jeans, so he probably wasn’t armed. Yet no one dared bother him and his six-foot-four, gunmetal-gray-eyed self.

Including Elysia. Darien’s grudges were as notorious as his fourth-degree black belt, and she’d earned the mother of all vendettas by leaving his bed without so much as a note. They’d been friends for almost ten years, since college, a world that lay just a few miles north but might as well have been on Mars, as lost as it was to them now.

Just then, a struggle broke out at a nearby produce stand. One of the gang lieutenants—a skinny guy with straggly blond hair known as Chump—reached for the throat of the diminutive farmer, who protested in broken Spanglish. As Chump leaned over the cart, it wiggled beneath his weight.

Elysia slipped into the adjoining stall, which was dark and empty, like most of the market. Few vendors were desperate or greedy enough to sell their wares in the city, and now with this mass robbery, even these would probably never return. The end of food would soon be upon them.

She hid behind the vinyl drapery covering the empty cart and hoped no one saw her tattered brown boots underneath.

What did you call me?! Chump lunged for the babbling farmer, and the cart spilled.

Elysia whipped out a burlap sack from her back pocket. Come to Mama, she whispered. A mesh bag of apples bounced past. She snatched it up and shoved it into her sack without leaving her shelter. Score. What she couldn’t eat right away she could slice and dry in the stifling summer heat.

The scuffle continued, and Elysia heard the shouts of approaching robbers. She frowned. If she stole any more, they’d catch her.

That’s when it spilled a few feet away. Corn.

They said this would be the last year for corn. It needed too many fertilizers, and the oil to make them—the oil to make anything—was long gone, or at least so expensive it might as well not exist.

She wanted to taste corn one more time. On the cob, slathered in butter, ground into meal and baked into a muffin, simmered with those tedious potatoes into a creamy chowder.

Her hand reached out from under the flap. Too late, she realized she hadn’t summoned whatever weird power allowed her to move unnoticed.

A hand grabbed her wrist and yanked Elysia forward into the light. Her face hit the rough wooden floor, sending a bolt of pain up her nose and branching out over her eyes.

A click sounded near her head, and she felt steel press against her temple.

A rumbling voice said, Looks like we caught us a thief.

Chapter Two

Darien heard the commotion at Federico’s produce stand and realized the Fells