Prodigies of Young Adult: Limited Edition II

By N.W. Harris, Margaret Fieland, Christina Weigand and 2 more

4 YA novels in 1: Joshua's Tree by N.W. Harris...Chased by flesh-eating mutants and aided by an overbearing warrior princess, brainy Joshua must save the future—from himself.
Relocated by Margaret Fieland...On planet Aleyne, a teenage boy discovers a terrorist plot and learns more than his own life is at risk.
Palace of the Twelve Pillars by Christina Weigand...When Prince Joachim is kidnapped and twin Brandan attempts a rescue, both will search their faith and familial loyalty.
Wakefield by Erin Callahan and Troy H. Gardner...Troubled teens Max and Astrid bond while questioning the true nature of the psychiatric treatment facility where they are forced to live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
• Release date: Sep 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781771275880

N.W. Harris

Born at the end of the Vietnam war and raised on a horse farm near small town north Georgia, his imagination evolved under the swaying pines surrounding his family's log home. On summer days that were too hot, winter days that were too cold, and every night into the wee morning hours, he read books. He lives in sunny southern California with his beautiful wife and two perfect children.

Book preview

MuseItUp Publishing Presents

Prodigies of YA: Limited Edition II

4 novels in 1

Joshua’s Tree

by NW Harris

Relocated

by Margaret Fieland

Palace of the Twelve Pillars

by Christina Weigand

Wakefield

by Erin Callahan and Troy H. Gardner

Prodigies of YA: Limited Edition II © 2014 NW Harris, Margaret Fieland,

Christina Weigand, Erin Callahan and Troy H. Gardner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

MuseItUp Publishing

14878 James, Pierrefonds, Quebec, Canada, H9H 1P5

Cover Art © 2014 by Charlotte Volnek

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-77127-588-0

Layout and Book Production by Lea Schizas

Joshua’s Tree

YA Sci-Fi Fantasy by N.W. Harris

When a skateboarding accident hurls 17-year-old Joshua Tyler into a dismal future overrun by flesh-eating mutants, he taps into the strength and courage hidden within him and manages to stay alive, only to discover his horrifying relationship to the scientific genius who brought all life on Earth to the brink of annihilation.

Aided by Nadia, a beautiful warrior student who believes he may be the prophesized savior sent to rescue her people, Josh learns to fight for survival. Terrified by the constant threat of a violent death, Josh wants nothing more than to get back to his own life. But the longer he survives in this strange place, the more he learns about its creation. Charged with the job of assassinating the enemy’s leader, Josh begins to uncover his connection to the army of cannibalistic monsters—a nightmarish truth that could prevent him from ever finding his way home.

Chapter One

Joshua

Some seventeenth birthday. Josh jerked his head toward a crunching sound on his left. Things might be about to get much worse. His eyes found nothing but inky darkness. He prayed his ears were just playing tricks on him. How on earth had he gone from bombing Cliff Drive on a skateboard to being naked and coated in slime in this strange forest?

The creepy feeling he was being watched made him too nervous to think of a remotely plausible answer. His skin crawled, and the back of his neck tingled. Try as he might to blame his imagination, Josh couldn’t shake the horrible feeling that something was stalking him. Sweat beaded on his forehead, even as he shivered from the cold. He didn’t have his cellphone or any clothes, and not a clue where he was. This must be all just a crazy nightmare, except it seemed way too real, like no dream he’d ever had.

The skyscraper-tall trees surrounding him looked like they were from another world. The trunks were four times bigger than a mature giant sequoia—big enough for a lot of hungry predators to hide behind. Josh’s only company, and outdated mode of transportation, was a spotted horse he’d found nosing around in the leaves when he came to. The mare acted like she sensed danger, snorting and scanning the dark with her hyperactive ears. When he was little, he was forced to ride horses many times on his uncle’s farm. Ever since seeing his cousin break her arm after getting thrown, he’d never been able to overcome his fear of the large and unpredictable animals. With the skittish way the horse pranced and jumped at every noise, he began to regret climbing on her back in the first place. And if he was dreaming, why would his mind conjure up a horse of all things? Couldn’t it be a motorbike or an ATV or something a bit more modern? Not that he was any better at riding any of those.

A stick broke with a loud snap, and the mare reared. Adrenaline flooding his veins, Josh clawed desperately at her mane and squeezed his legs as hard as he could. In spite of his best efforts, he couldn’t stop himself from sliding off her back. He landed hard on his butt. The force of the impact jarred him from his tailbone to the top of his skull. His teeth slammed together with such violence it felt like they might shatter. Josh’s vision blurring from the pain, he sat stunned, his mouth gaping as he tried to suck air into his paralyzed lungs. Coming back down on her front feet, the mare threw her rear hooves out behind her. Josh got his hands up just in time to protect his skull, catching the full force of the kick with his forearms. After knocking him onto his back, the horse neighed and galloped away, vanishing into the night.

Fear drowning out his pain, Josh lay silent, struggling to breathe. When he could finally pull a shallow breath through his nose, a rotten smell assailed him, like road kill baking in the sun. It was pitch black, so he couldn’t find the source. He only hoped that whatever lurked in the darkness couldn’t see him either.

The clouds moved off the moon, and silvery beams of light filtered through the forest canopy. The sudden illumination exposed an eight-foot-tall creature with the muscular arms and legs of a steroid-addicted bodybuilder. It stood thirty feet away, face shrouded in the swirling fog created by its breath. Josh’s throat tightened and he was overcome with a sinking sensation.

It was dressed like a giant evil Spartan warrior, with a glossy black metal breastplate covering its wide chest and a matching skirt made from strips of oily leather around its waist. A five-foot-long sword hung from its belt, along with a gruesome collection of skulls appearing to be human. The tear-inducing smell of decaying flesh thickened when the creature stepped closer. Moonlight revealed the massive lumpy face, which looked similar to a gorilla’s but with a longer snout. Dreadlocks tipped with black metal spikes hung to its broad round shoulders.

With the sound of a bull snorting, nostrils big enough to put a fist in sniffed the cold night air. Beady red eyes scanned the forest. Joshua was sure the creature was searching for him. The small eyes had a demonic glow in the faint light, like windows into an inferno of burning souls. It didn’t seem to have spotted Josh. He blinked to clear his vision and flattened himself on the ground, willing the monster to move on with every fiber of his being.

It gave a final snort, and then held its breath, cocking its head as if to listen. That dormant part of Josh’s brain, the part humans share with lizards, came to life and took over. His instincts deciding for him the best thing to do was to freeze and hope he wouldn’t be discovered. A ghoulish smile formed on the monster’s face, revealing jagged teeth and canines the length of Josh’s fingers. It growled, and a string of drool stretched from the corner of its mouth. The beast lumbered toward him.

Hide didn’t work, Josh’s lizard-brain prompted him. Now run!

He pushed up off the ground and stumbled backward. Before he could get out of its reach, the monster raised its thick left arm and punched Josh square in the face with a hairy fist the size and consistency of a bowling ball.

The force of the blow sent Josh to the ground, the rusty taste of blood erupting in his nose and mouth. The beast tilted back its ugly head and made a guttural sound that could only be laughter. Josh clambered to all fours and made it to his feet, exploding into a run. After five strides, he collided with a wall of cold metal. Bouncing off a second monster’s chest, he fell to the ground and squirmed the other way.

The first beast reached down and grabbed Josh by the neck, lifting him into the air. He swung at the monster’s thick hairy arm with his fists and kicked as hard as he could but couldn’t break loose. The monster revealed its fangs with another horrible smile and then delivered a blow to the top of Josh’s head with its free hand. Red eyes gleaming with pleasure, it set Josh on his feet, let go of his neck and stood back to watch. Josh’s vision blurred with pain, his body refused to obey his commands, and he collapsed.

Chapter Two

Nadia

Nadia leaned forward on Azul’s broad back and clucked her tongue. The ceradel’s strides lengthened, his claws kicking up clumps of fertile black earth from the savannah. He accelerated until the wind roared in Nadia’s ears, and the dry bent grass of the Great Plain became a golden blur. Sunset was less than an hour away, but at this pace she expected to make it home before her baby brother bedded down.

The wind blasting Nadia’s eyes made it hard to see, but she was suddenly overcome with a feeling that something was wrong. She squinted and leaned lower so Azul shielded her face. Her eyes found reprieve in an eddy of air behind the ceradel’s thick neck, allowing her to see a plume of smoke interrupting the orange glow of the late afternoon horizon. An ominous dark cloud swirled up from where her village should be. Nadia’s heart dropped into her stomach, icicles of dread forming in her blood.

Ha ya! she shouted and drove her heels into the ceradel’s ribs.

Grunting with effort, Azul ran even faster. Nadia drew her katana and held it ready at her side. She leaped off the ceradel before he stopped and sprinted toward the front wall of her village. It was twenty feet tall and six feet thick, composed of two rows of massive posts with dirt and stone filling the space between them. It should’ve been impenetrable. But no guards stood atop the wall to greet her, and the air was thick with the smell of smoke and blood. The front gate hung open, the ground marred with the tracks of sweepers.

Nadia’s warrior training took over. She slowed her breathing and listened. Everything was deadly quiet—the eerie peace that follows battle. She slipped up to the gate and passed through sideways with her weapon raised.

What greeted her made her legs weak and her chest felt like it was going to implode. Most of the wooden huts were burned to the ground. The wall facing the forest had a large section missing. Dirt paths between the smoldering buildings were muddy and wet with blood—she prayed the blood of sweepers and not her people. How could this happen while she was away? Nadia wanted to run through the village yelling for her family, but she maintained her discipline. Getting herself killed wouldn’t help anyone. Heading across the village, she searched for survivors, or the enemy. There was little solace in not seeing any bodies. The sweepers would have eaten them all.

Stopping next to the burned ring of stumps that had been her home, Nadia fought the despair that threatened to overcome her. It was as if a rusty spear had run her through and she waited for a slow and painful death. A warrior’s training should bring inner peace regardless of the circumstance. The mind needed to be controlled so the body could become the ultimate weapon. But her self control was stretched to the limit. A tear escaping from the corner of her eye, she fought the urge to crumble to the ground and weep like a child.

She glared at the last sliver of the sun. Why did it have to happen when I wasn’t here to help them? She could barely muster more than a whisper. Why are you so cruel, Ra?

Collapsing to her knees, she could no longer hold back the sobs. Her windblown black hair fell like blinders so her eyes only focused on a charred wooden baby rattle. A solitary teardrop slid off her nose and landed on the rattle, clearing a spot of soot from its dinged red finish. Nadia’s father made it for her older brother, Duron, and passed it down to her, and then to her baby brother. Each chip in the paint and dent in the wood, once a pleasant memory, now reminded her she’d never hear her little brother’s laughter again. Nor would she have a chance to tell Duron she loved him even though she fought with him so much of the time.

A growl jarred Nadia alert. Her senses heightened, eyes jerking toward the disturbance.

Several huts away, a lone sweeper gnawed on an arm. Likely sedate after having gorged on the flesh of her friends and family, it seemed oblivious to Nadia’s presence. A silver bracelet with a large red stone set in it adorned the lifeless wrist. Her father made the bracelet for her mother after Nadia’s baby brother was born. Bile rose in the back of her throat, a pained gasp hissed through her clenched teeth.

Her discipline snapped. She rose to her feet and charged. A blood-curdling scream warned the beast, it dropped her mother’s arm and reached for its sword, but too late.

Nadia didn’t kill the sweeper with a well-placed slash as she’d been taught. Her spirit didn’t have the calmness every warrior needed during battle. Hate and vengeful rage fueled her attack. Her blade came down with the precision of a butcher carving a rare hunk of meat. She hacked off its hand first, its long grimy fingers still clasped around the black sword’s hilt. Nadia severed its other hand, and then its clawed feet; her weapon never slowing after its first taste.

The shrieking monster fell onto its back. Blood splattering her face, Nadia plunged her sword through the sweeper’s heart, pinning what remained of its quivering body to the ground. She tilted her head toward the sky, and all the pain of losing her family and her people came out in a furious scream. When there was no more air in her lungs, her head rolled forward, and she wept.

Tears blurring her vision, she picked up her mother’s limp arm. The warmth and life were gone from it. The soft brown skin was like cold clay in Nadia’s hands. She held it against her chest, dropped to her knees and rocked back and forth cradling the arm. A silvery moon rose behind her before she stopped crying and sat still.

Her eyes locked onto the red stone, her mind awash with memories of her mother—doing her hair, holding her baby brother, and teaching her to wield a sword. Nadia imagined the brave warrior’s last moments, fighting to save the people she loved. It was an honorable way to go, but grief ripped through Nadia, not allowing her to feel proud. And as shameful as it was, in that moment with agony at its peak, she wanted nothing more than to die.

A sudden, unnatural blast of wind tore through the village. Nadia squinted through the blowing dust and smoke toward a loud cracking sound. A bit of the railing from a smoldering guard tower broke loose with a shower of sparks and crashed down on her. A little too slow to react as she dove to get out of the way, pain ripped through her skull. The falling log bashed Nadia into darkness.

The distant feathery sound corrupted the absolute silence. It took her a second to identify it, but it was at once familiar and soothing. As if she rose out of murky water, the muffling darkness cleared away. Mother stood over her laughing. Five years old again, Nadia moved clumsily in an oversized suit of armor. She stepped on the crumpled cuff of a pant leg and toppled forward. Mother caught her and scooped her up in a hug. Nadia was so happy she felt she would burst. Her mother was her idol, the reason she became a warrior.

Dense fog rolled in and blinded Nadia so she could no longer see. In the next instant, the air cleared and the armor fit her. Mother was gone. Nadia was grown up, riding Azul away from the remains of her village, the red stone bracelet glistening on her wrist.

Moving much faster than they could in reality, they passed through the forest growing along the edge of the Great Plain. She blinked again and stood face to face with a strange brown-eyed boy. Both naked, they stood so close to each other that Nadia could feel the warmth radiating off his slender body. With loud cracking sounds, the ground pushed up beneath them, and the trees fell away. Nadia and the boy rose so fast the world became a blur. When they stopped, they were high in a rugged mountain range with thin patches of dry powdery snow and ice barely covering the rocky ground. Immune to the cold, they held hands and climbed higher. Their journey ended at a massive granite fortress with cold black ramparts dominated by a large central tower.

Wet bristles scratched Nadia’s cheek. She swatted at the irritant and opened her eyes. Azul stood over her, nuzzling her with concern. Ra peeked above the edge of the plain, his first light warming Nadia’s face. The horrible reality of her destroyed village came back in a painful rush. She still cradled her mother’s arm. Although she didn’t want to move, Nadia knew she had to take care of the ceradel. Azul was all she had left. The nasty lump on her head throbbed when she stumbled to her feet. She welcomed the pain, anything to pull her attention from the rotten feeling in her chest.

Hands trembling, she slipped the bracelet off her mother’s wrist and put it on her own. Nadia dug a shallow grave amidst the ashes of her roundhouse and laid the arm in it, along with the charred baby rattle. Still angry with Ra for allowing her people to be destroyed, she reluctantly offered a prayer out of respect for her family.

Memories of the dream about the pale boy and the mountaintop fortress made her reflect back on the ancient prophecy which had always been a source of hope for her people. It spoke of a lone survivor rescuing the one who would kill the Father and help liberate the land from the sweepers. Maybe it wasn’t just a dream. It could have been a vision. Was Nadia supposed to find the savior?

But the prophecy said after the sweepers were defeated, her people would thrive again. With her village destroyed and everyone dead, how could the prediction come true?

Heavy with grief and confusion, Nadia searched one last time for survivors. Even the underground hiding shelters had been penetrated. Blood saturated their earthen floors and walls, and the food stores were pillaged. Everything was picked clean—typical sweeper behavior. Her people were fierce warriors who could easily defeat most sweeper attacks. It must’ve taken an army of the beasts to destroy the entire fortified village. The elders had foretold that such an assault was possible, but the warnings weren’t given much credence because a large enough group of organized sweepers hadn’t been seen in several generations.

Nadia mounted Azul and rode out of the open front gate. Circling the village, she couldn’t find ceradel tracks or any other sign of her people’s flight. There were only the large footprints of hundreds, if not thousands, of sweepers leading to and from the village in several directions. The smoldering ruins seemed to echo with the hungry howls of an army of monsters, the courageous shouts of doomed warriors, and the terrified screams of murdered children. A fog of loneliness and grief pressed in on Nadia, dampening her senses. She turned Azul west into the massive forest bordering the back side of the village, deciding to treat her dream as a vision and see where it led. Nadia doubted a pale skinned, brown-eyed boy or a granite fortress awaited her, but what else could she do to avoid letting the pain slowly rot her insides?

Quitting, even when she should, was something Nadia wasn’t good at. She cupped the red stone on her wrist with her right hand, trying to glean strength from it. If her mother were in her shoes, she would at least go down fighting and take a hundred sweepers with her.

Chapter Three

The Beauty and Her Beast

Josh remembered having a horrific nightmare, which seemed to end in his death at the hands of some demonic looking creatures. His head seemed swollen like a balloon, and the veins in his neck distended to the point of bursting. He attempted to rub his eyes but realized, to his horror, his wrists were tied behind his back.

Panicking, he blinked in an attempt to focus but saw only darkness. Josh’s feet were bound as well. Something pulled at his ankles, stretching his body. All the bits of information came together to produce a terrifying conclusion.

He was hanging upside down!

Every muscle in his body made a concerted attempt to break loose. Josh bounced like a hooked fish lifted out of the water. He was trapped in a large bag made of scratchy cloth. Through his panic, familiar guttural laughter sounded from somewhere nearby. Terror mounted as he realized the horrid sound came from the creatures that had attacked him.

The idea of being eaten doubled Josh’s convulsive efforts to escape. The creatures grunted louder. Another sound pierced his ears—a scream full of rage and pain. One of the monsters squealed, and then was silent. The rope suspending Josh went slack, and he fell headfirst to the ground. Pain blazed through his skull and neck.

His senses faded momentarily, but Josh managed to keep from passing out. The rope jerked at his ankles, one of the grunting beasts must be dragging him. Josh bounced like a toy being pulled along by a child. A sharp rock ripped the sack open, and his head slipped out through the hole. Between winces, he glimpsed a beautiful girl dressed in silvery clothes and holding a sword above her head. Murderous hate such as Josh had never seen contorted her face. His head bounced off another rock, and a wave of blankness swallowed him.

* * * *

When he regained his senses, the tops of trees danced high above him. Shaken by the nightmare, he vaguely recalled green eyes the size of silver dollars looking down at him through the red haze of a massive headache. The eyes were so large they looked alien, but were kind and filled with concern. It was the sword-wielding girl. Luckily, her murderous expression had softened into one of curiosity.

Was she an angel? Maybe the devilish creatures were his mind’s representation of his body’s last struggle against death. Josh clung to the idea that everything since his skateboarding accident was a dream and his body lay comatose in the hospital. But maybe now he was really dead.

His hands found bandages wrapped around his head. Odd. Why dress a dead man’s wounds? Although no less confused, at least he wasn’t bound and hanging upside down like a pig at a slaughterhouse. Josh pushed onto his side, and spots swam in his vision.

The caramel-skinned girl sat on the other side of a strange glowing rock. She wore her hair pulled into a thick braid resting on her shoulder. She looked exotic, maybe Native American, or Asian, or a mix of several different ethnicities.

Her oversized almond-shaped eyes were unlike any he had ever seen. Bright green, they looked at him—through him—and a thousand miles away at the same time. Her emerald irises eddied with swirls of darker green moving around her pupils like turbulent storms.

Her stoic expression didn’t give away her thoughts. A thin metallic long-sleeve sweater hugged her arms and torso, reflecting the early morning light. She had the lean muscular body of a gymnast. Her hands rested clasped in her cross-legged lap, like she had been sitting and watching him while he slept.

A sword lay on the ground next to her. Josh hesitated to break the silence, but mustered the courage to speak.

Did you kill those monsters? His voice sounded weak, and the effort made his head throb.

She furrowed her brow and responded in a language he didn’t understand.

Great. You don’t speak English. Josh said and tried to think of another way to communicate. His throat was parched, and his stomach growled. He made a gesture mimicking drinking from an imaginary cup. Water?

The girl nodded and passed him a crescent-shaped bag with a spout on one end. Josh unscrewed the cap and drank a mouthful, but had a hard time swallowing. He rubbed his neck and remembered how the monster had lifted him.

Josh put his pinched fingers to his mouth. Food?

She nodded again and ladled stew from a small pot near the glowing rock between them, repeating, Wad-er, faoood.

The sudden company, even with only basic communication, lifted Josh’s mood. But the odorless stew tasted horrendous. Josh tried not to grimace, shoveling spoonfuls in his mouth. The warmth soothed his throat, but the bitterness made his teeth feel fuzzy. He forced a smile after he swallowed. Good—thank you, he choked out.

Josh’s polite smiles and gestures of satisfaction backfired. The girl chuckled, shaking her head, and then fixed him another bowl. Not wanting to offend her, Josh forced down the seconds. Then he groaned and rubbed his belly, grateful when she got the hint. The girl cleaned the eating utensils and stowed them in her pack.

The blanket wrapped around him was made of some high-tech material. The fabric seemed alive, its weave relaxing as the day grew warmer, like it could adjust to the temperature. The silvery cloth, which appeared to be made with nanotechnology, would put NASA to shame. It had to be futuristic, maybe even alien. But why was the girl’s weapon a sword, and not as technologically advanced as the cloth? It had to be because Josh was dreaming, and a girl with swords was sexier than one with guns. What other explanation could there be?

Josh thought of the horse that abandoned him, the demons that tried to eat him, and now the gorgeous girl who had saved him, wondering what he would dream up next. The answer came in the form of a rustle to his left. He glanced toward the sound and scrambled to his feet, heart racing with fear. The blood rushed from his brain with the sudden movement, and the world spun and faded.

The girl raced to his side in an instant, helping to steady him. He took slow deep breaths and recovered. The blanket fell away—he was naked. Crap! He snatched the blanket up and draped it around his waist.

Too embarrassed to look at the girl and trying not to think about how much of him she saw when he was unconscious, Josh studied the massive beast grazing nearby. It looked bigger than a Clydesdale, yet sleek like the majestic Arabian horses on his uncle’s farm. The tailless animal faced away from them, and when it turned its head to the side, two large horns were visible at its temples. The shafts were twisted like a narwhale’s and seemed luminous, almost fluid under the surface. They curved forward around its skull and straightened into three-foot-long spikes.

The animal had clawed feet like a tiger, glistening blond fur, and a matching spiked mane. Acting less impressed with Josh than he was with it, the creature returned its attention to the ferns and continued grazing. Had he woken up on the Isle of Dr. Moreau, surrounded by the result of genetic engineering experiments gone mad?

Azul, the girl said in response to Josh’s slack-jawed expression. Ceradel.

Azul, Josh said, then touched his chest. Joshua.

Joshua. She repeated the name with ease, like she had heard it before. She put her fingers between her breasts. Nadia.

Nadia. Strange name for an angel. He was becoming less and less convinced that this was the afterlife. He tucked the blanket so it would stay on him and contemplated the new characters in his dream. Without a doubt, he preferred them to the monsters from earlier. And even with her big weird eyes, the girl was smoking hot.

Thank goodness he didn’t have to compete with Jake. As soon as his brother found out she didn’t speak English, Jake would have gotten even more excited, flexing his biceps to reel her in. Josh witnessed it earlier in the summer when his family vacationed in Spain. Being unable to talk with Nadia was bad news for Josh. Intelligence and wit were all he had at his disposal. His muscles might be good for a laugh, but not the hair-tossing kind he wanted.

Settling on the velvety bark of a fallen tree limb, Josh inspected the all-too-real bruises, scrapes and bumps all over his arms and legs. His headache told him he suffered from a concussion, but it seemed he somehow escaped major injury. Nadia packed up the campsite. Josh’s face flushed when she caught him staring. The gorgeous Amazonian warrior princess had seen him completely nude, maybe stood over his unconscious body pointing and laughing. So wrong.

When Nadia finished, she spread two of her fingers and placed them over the side of her other hand. Then she pointed to herself and Josh, then to Azul.

Her gestures seemed to mean she wanted him to ride with her on the strange beast. She was inviting him to go with her. Thank goodness, because Josh didn’t want to be alone in this hellish place. Jake would get a real kick out of this—Josh needing a girl’s protection. He struggled to his feet and fought off another wave of dizziness. Azul’s back stood level with the top of Josh’s head. There was no way he would be able to get up there.

The girl stepped in front of him and jumped eight feet up like it was nothing, landing astride the giant steed. She looked down at Josh, beckoning him to do the same.

Uh, yeah, he stammered. No problem. I ride horse-bear-cat-things all the time.

She offered her hand.

No thanks, Josh scoffed. I think I can handle it.

He grabbed a fistful of the beast’s thick fur in one hand and the blanket Nadia sat on in the other. He jumped and tried to pull himself up. Josh got his chest on the big animal’s back, but not high enough. As he slid toward the ground, Azul groaned and twisted his head back, apparently unhappy about having his fur pulled and ribs kneed.

Nadia smirked, like she tried to keep from laughing.

Oops—that never happens, he said with all the poise he could muster. Girls love confidence. Be confident and get your butt up there.

This time, he backed away to make room for a running jump. Josh charged the beast and launched himself off the ground, latching onto Azul’s pelt. He almost made it, but Azul snorted, raised his hind leg and kicked Josh off.

The bottom of the ceradel’s foot was padded, and he didn’t kick hard. Josh landed on his back, slightly stunned, but uninjured. Nadia had a full view of everything he intended the blanket to cover. Lips pulled to one side and head tilted, she looked bored and frustrated. Josh scrambled to his feet cursing. He pushed the blanket down, feeling like a total idiot.

What the— Josh protested, surprised.

Without making a sound, Nadia had dismounted and stepped behind him. Her warm hands on his bare ribs, she lifted him like a child and pushed him onto Azul. She then mounted and put her arm around his waist, like Josh rode with his father as a little boy.

He felt pathetic, humiliated, and less a man than ever before. Not only was this girl an inch taller than he, she was also much stronger. If the monsters holding him captive before didn’t qualify as a nightmare, being helpless and needing the protection of a hot girl definitely did.

Azul ran fast. Josh’s blanket flapped in the wind, and the forest blurred in his vision. The way horses bounced when they trotted or galloped always frustrated him. He never mastered moving with them and hated the constant risk of being jolted off. But the ceradel felt more like riding on wheels than four legs. The big animal glided along, making very little noise. He imagined a bystander would think they were ghosts blowing between the trees.

In denser groves, where the ceradel had to slow, Nadia pointed at things around them and made a questioning sound. Feeling slightly patronized, Josh answered, Trees, stream, leaves, rocks. Nadia repeated each of the words. Her soft feminine voice held a pleasant breathiness, belying Nadia’s strength and probable deadliness.

Although this world and his new protector seemed unbelievable, he questioned more and more that this could be a dream. Maybe somehow he had woken in an alternate reality, or a different dimension. Where were they headed? Some place where there would be more creatures like Nadia and Azul? They might be unimpressed with him, but it had to be safer than being alone in the forest. And maybe he could be like Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, the common knowledge from his world giving him an advantage in this one.

Chapter Four

Confused

Nadia sat on the cool ground near the heat crystal, taking advantage of Joshua’s need for rest, to try and clear her mind. So much had happened in the last day and a half that she hadn’t had a chance to process.

This was the brown-eyed boy from her vision—no doubt about it. How she felt about him baffled her. There had been a sudden and overwhelming urge to take the sack from the sweepers before she even knew its contents—the kind of protective instinct she would have experienced if they captured someone in her family.

Questions stampeded through her mind. Why did the super sweepers keep him alive? They never did that. Why didn’t they eat Joshua? And what was the source of this deep fundamental need to protect him? Was it Ra’s gift because she was the chosen warrior?

Joshua appeared skinny and weak, curled up in her blanket and sleeping like the dead. She found the strange coloring of his eyes interesting, but they seemed too small. His pale skin would likely get burned if he spent too much time out in the sun. He looked kind of sickly. Nadia couldn’t imagine how he could be the savior.

Nadia realized she lost her self control again when she rescued Joshua, like when she saw the lone beast in the village with her mother’s arm in its mouth. She attacked the two super sweepers full of rage, this time ending up with one of their blade tips at her throat. If not for Azul, Nadia would be dead right now.

Her behavior troubled her. Emotions had no place in combat. The simple lesson she’d learned long ago had given her the ability to beat Nordoff, her sparring partner, nine times out of ten. The forest seemed to darken when she realized he must be dead now. Her brothers and her father—had they suffered at the end? She tried to push aside the daggers of pain. She needed to focus now.

The inner calm Nadia nurtured since she first started her warrior training was crumbling. But it seemed she really was the hero mentioned in the prophecy which her people had placed so much faith in. The prophecy which she had stopped believing. Was Ra laughing? Perhaps this was some kind of a joke or punishment for her and her people. The chosen protector should be a well-seasoned warrior, one that would be at peace now, even with all the horrible and strange things happening. Not her.

However painful the reality of it, she appeared to be the lone survivor from her village. She had found Joshua shortly afterward, as predicted by the prophecy. It reminded her of another lesson she’d learned long ago—coincidences shouldn’t be ignored.

At first, Nadia assumed Joshua might be from another tribe her people didn’t know about. But he seemed too helpless to have been in the wilderness alone for very long. Almost as if he was plucked from a much safer world and tossed into hers.

Regardless of his lack of strength or relevance to the prophecy, she was sworn to defend anyone threatened by the sweepers. And, no matter how crazy it sounded, she had an incredible need to protect Joshua. A raw and primitive emotion—the furthest thing from control and inner peace she could imagine.

Her training brought Nadia to a level where she could be starving or dying from thirst and still maintain focus, ignoring the discomfort right up until death. Master warriors could continue fighting, even after losing a limb, tuning out the pain and remaining effective. That level of control was Nadia’s goal. This whirlwind of emotions and confusion sweeping her up dampened her senses, reducing her attention to danger that might be lurking around them.

Nadia packed her camping gear a few hours before sunrise. After several quieter attempts, she shouted Joshua’s name to get him to awaken. A sweeper could chew his legs off, and he would sleep right through it.

Where are you from that you can sleep like that? Nadia couldn’t contain her annoyance. She lifted Joshua onto Azul, taking note of how the bones protruded through his skin. His body lacked the covering of lean hard muscle typical of both the men and women in her village.

Surely no sweepers linger outside your gates, or your people would have perished long ago.

Joshua grumbled something in response and pulled the blanket tight around him.

The grade steepened as they rode, and the trees became short and sparse. By noon, only a rare shrub decorated the landscape dominated by large jagged rocks which looked like they rolled from the peaks above.

The dark green forest canopy stretched out below them and extended to the north, south, and eastern horizon. A bird floated above the treetops, making the dangerous woods appear all too peaceful. An opening cut through the trees marked the stream along which they traveled. From where they were now, it was little more than a shallow brook. The crisp, cold water babbled over polished stones, draining the snowpack from high above.

Josh rode in front of her, leaning forward on Azul’s thick neck and sleeping the entire day. Nadia didn’t mind—she needed the quiet to think. The barren terrain comforted her. Like on the open savannah, she could see forever. From up here, the burned summer village seemed a thousand miles away. She tried to guess where it was, somewhere over the horizon. The faces of her family drifted through her thoughts, bringing with them an onslaught of memories and regrets. It stung that her last conversation with her brother Duron was heated, and over something so trivial that she couldn’t even remember the reason now.

Ahead lay a steep climb on slick gray stone stripped of soil and smoothed by millennia of wind and rain. Thick white clouds, trapped against the mountainside, hid the upper reaches of the peaks. In the burned remains of her village, Nadia’s vision promised there would be a granite fortress ahead, but she struggled to believe it.

Who would they encounter when they arrived at this fortress? Perhaps Joshua’s people? Maybe they lived out of the reach of the sweepers—it would explain his physical weakness. But then, how did he get so far from home without being eaten, and where were his clothes and equipment? Was he a criminal, exiled from his village? Nadia glanced at the overcast sky. Ra knows a handful of answers would make this journey a lot easier.

In her vision, a rocky trail was the last thing Nadia saw before encountering the granite fortress. The terrain did become more rugged, though finding the route became harder with each step. She searched for a stone, or a group of rocks that appeared familiar, and then guided Azul in the right direction. Several times during the evening, they stopped, and Nadia dismounted to search for a marker before continuing the slow ascent.

Joshua dozed most of the time, awaking briefly every few hours to shift his weight. They pushed on until it became too dark. Nadia found a place shielded by a cluster of boulders and set camp for the evening. Joshua made an obvious effort to help her, unpacking the heat crystal and passing his hand over it. It pushed back the cold mountain air and gave the camp a cheery glow. After rolling out the sleeping mat, he studied the crystal like a child fascinated by a new toy.

Nadia, Joshua said, hand open toward the mat, his brown eyebrows raised and questioning.

She forced a grateful smile and shook her head, encouraging him to take the mat. He needed it more than she did. Nadia wished she had more clothing to offer him, but he would have to survive with just the blanket and her socks. Traveling light, she planned on being away from her home for just a day. The only thing of any value left in the village after the attack was Mother’s bracelet. Nadia glanced at it, realizing she needed to come to terms with the pain gnawing at her inner peace. Anger coursed through her, she wanted to hit something—hard. She drew a long slow breath and turned her attention to brushing Azul, trying to stop thinking.

Joshua plopped on the sleeping mat and crunched on crackers Nadia had made with her food press. He sure seemed to need to eat a lot. She worried they might run out of provisions before reaching the fortress. If that happened, they would have to return to the forest and find more. The delay might make climbing the mountains impossible as the winter weather became more severe.

They sat in silence. Joshua stared into the heat crystal, his brow furrowed and his arms hooked around his knees. His eyes twitched like he stumbled through painful memories. Maybe he lost his people, too. Although they were very different, Nadia felt a sudden connection to him. Pain was the one thing they could share even without speaking. She wondered if he could read the suffering on her face as easily.

Early in the morning, Nadia tried to wake Joshua, irritated by the effort it took. She wasn’t very sociable before sunrise—it was a time to get up and get things done. The boy had different ideas. Even though she felt an overwhelming need to protect him, Nadia also resented Joshua. If he was the prophesized savior, then it meant her mother, father, brothers, Nordoff and everyone else in her village were dead. The prophecy said a lone survivor would be the protector.

The rhythmic sound of his breathing reminded Nadia of the morning she stood at the threshold and listened to her brothers and father sleeping.

Joshua! she yelled, her voice cracking with grief so it came out sounding more like anger.

He popped up, eyes wide with surprise. Grumbling, he headed away from the heat crystal, hunched over a little like he needed to go to relieve himself. She followed him around a boulder, frustrated when he went so far from the camp. Stopping, he looked back at her, his brow crinkled. He said something she couldn’t understand.

It’s not safe here, she explained. I cannot let you out of my sight. Now hurry up.

He mumbled something else, and she shrugged in response. Huffing, he spun away and peed. When he turned back, his face was bright red, his lips pressed together in annoyance. Nadia was more confused than ever, but she couldn’t be bothered with his weird behavior. They had to get up the mountain.

The foggy dawn sky glowed a soft ginger color, backlit by an unseen sun. Looking uphill, Nadia noticed a rock shaped like a spearhead. She recognized it from her dream, though as with most of the signs, she didn’t remember it until now. It beckoned her one step closer to her destination and maybe, though she doubted it, her destiny.

Joshua avoided eye contact, and she still couldn’t understand what she did to offend him. Savior or not, Ra threw them together—she prayed for the patience and calmness of spirit to understand why.

Making an effort to be kind, Nadia led the ceradel next to a large rock. Joshua adjusted the blanket around his waist and used the stone to boost himself onto the ceradel’s back. Seeming less humiliated than before, he smiled as if to say, told you I could to it, then moved forward to make room for her. Nadia chuckled, which surprised her, because she expected, after the death of her entire village, never to laugh again.

Chapter Five

Cold and Colder

Frigid shadows engulfed the steep mountainside for more than half of the day. Josh’s head bobbed from exhaustion. He was miserable, weak from his injuries and sick from not knowing how much further they had to go. He couldn’t get a moment’s peace. Nadia always watched him, not even leaving him alone long enough to go to the bathroom. He wasn’t a five-year-old who needed an overprotective mother.

Vibrant and beautiful all the time, Nadia seemed in her element. She sat tall behind Josh on Azul, shoulders back, radiating confidence. Her lean muscled arm stayed locked around Josh’s waist as they rode, reminding him that she didn’t think he was strong enough to stay on by himself.

He looked down at her narrow and delicate fingers. Her palms were callused, he guessed from the hilts of her swords. A silver coating on her nails held tiny streams which flowed clockwise under the finish. It was as if they were alive, like the threads that made up the blanket and her clothing. Nadia’s nails were hard and cold, like they were made of metal, when they grazed his forearm. Josh guessed they would serve as effective weapons if the need arose.

Just as he drifted off to sleep the night before, Josh saw her staring at the red stone on her wrist; the sides of her black eyebrows pulled down in deep sadness, like she was lost in a painful memory. When she caught him watching, her face went blank again. At no other time did her steely expression show any softness.

She usually acted annoyed with him, snapping, Wake up, and, We go, or, Pee now, Joshua, and other humiliating orders with the few English words she learned. She spat acid in her language when she woke him in the morning or when he ate more than half of one of her disgusting, splintery crackers.

Nadia didn’t sleep or eat. And she lifted him onto the strange creature called Azul like he was stuffed with straw. Not wanting this girl to think he was a total wuss, Josh tried to act tough. He told himself a warm bath and a bed awaited him at the end of this journey. Hollow motivations; for all he knew, the warrior princess didn’t have a home. They might just wander through the wilderness indefinitely. Or maybe she was a sadist who rescued him just to drag him through hell for her amusement.

As much as he hated needing the girl’s protection, Josh felt safe with Nadia—in a duct-taped-and-locked-in-the-trunk-of-a-car sort of way.

The strange girl wasn’t short on weapons. Josh’s fascination with swords stemmed from his addiction to fantasy video games, and he recognized most of them. Loops on the thick metallic blanket on which Nadia and Josh sat held a pair of sais, a long sword similar to those used by the medieval English knights, a curved katana, and an eight-foot-long wooden staff with double-edged knives on either end.

But oddly, she carried no guns, bow and arrow, or any other device that could be used to attack from a distance. It made Nadia all the more intimidating, a warrior who fought her battles at close quarters. She couldn’t weigh more than a buck forty, yet she must’ve killed the eight-foot-tall three-hundred-pound beasts that batted Josh around like a toy mouse. And judging by the apparent lack of injuries, she disposed of them with relative ease.

It all reinforced his belief that he was dreaming. But the continuity of time, and the way Josh experienced the world—with so much discomfort—made it seem too real. He couldn’t accept his imagination was capable of creating such things.

Josh lay forward on Azul’s broad neck, trying to sleep while they rode. His life as a non-adventurous high school student in sunny Santa Barbara seemed a million miles away. Things he always took for granted—hot food, shelter, and safety—he would cut off a toe for now, maybe even more. Josh’s complaints about his life before were nothing compared to trying to stay alive and not freeze to death.

The wind became colder, and Azul galloped twice as fast as he did in the forest. Josh couldn’t sleep, so he lay with his eyes half-open and watched the barren terrain pass. At midnight, the moon rose behind them and bathed the travelers in soft light, reflecting silver on small patches of ice he guessed never melted at this altitude.

Clouds below looked like rolling hills covered in powdery snow. The effort it took for Josh to sit up and look back left him panting. The thin air starved him of oxygen. Aside from being in an airplane, with a pressurized cabin and so it didn’t count, he never experienced such high altitudes. Within an hour, his head throbbed, and his stomach knotted. Weakness and nausea plagued him and Josh worried he was closer to dying than living.

The moon drifted toward the horizon, and the temperature plummeted. Josh shivered violently. Nadia unzipped the front of her metallic outer shirt and pressed her chest against him, and then pulled the blanket around them both to hold in the warmth.

He knew it would stave off hypothermia if they shared body heat, trying like hell not to squirm with shock when their skin met. Not only did her body press into his bare back, she was scalding hot, like she was running a fever. Maybe she could generate extra heat for protection against the elements. One more super human quality thrown into the mix—why not?

Although Josh appreciated her protection, Nadia’s rudeness and lack of respect for his privacy frustrated him. He couldn’t decide if he liked or hated the girl. Now her breasts stabbed into his back and just a thin layer of silky material separated their bare skin. His pulse raced, and his face burned. Focusing on the things he didn’t like about her barely suppressed Josh’s involuntary reaction to the electrified places where they made contact. Good thing his butt, legs and back ached from riding for so long—anything for a distraction.

Chapter Six

The Vanishing Trail

She wasn’t sure why, but Nadia felt safer in the inhospitable mountains than anywhere else, including within the walls of her own village. Azul appeared to let his guard down as well, though he breathed hard in the thin air. Dawn broke behind them, and the path became steeper. Joshua woke up and stretched. When he saw where they were, he gasped, and Nadia wrapped both arms around him so he didn’t slide off Azul. The ceradel walked on a narrow trail cut into the side of a cliff. The right side of the path was a vertical wall of cold stone, and the left side dropped into an abyss, the bottom hidden in the clouds below.

Nadia remembered the greeting Joshua used the previous day. Goood moaning. She spoke loud to be heard over the gusting wind.

Good morning, Joshua corrected with a weak laugh, his knuckles white from clenching Azul’s spiked mane.

She unlatched the water bag from under her thigh and swung it in front of him.

Drink?

She blamed herself for the tension between them, deciding Joshua must be confused by the way she spoke kindly to him in one breath, and then snapped at him in the next.

Joshua twisted an extra bit of mane around one hand and took the water with the other. Nadia knew he needed a break soon. His breathing was irregular, and he kept rubbing his head and groaning. His skin was ice cold. Fearing that he would freeze to death during the night, Nadia had opened her shirt and pressed against him to share her warmth.

Joshua stiffened when she touched him. He must hate her.

It was frustrating being unable to communicate with him, unable to explain why she seemed so short-tempered at times. Regardless, she had to regain her inner peace. Each moment she lived with this turmoil of grief and rage boiling inside her insulted her dead family and Ra. Nadia struggled to reel in her emotions and re-establish the limited control and calmness she possessed before the attack on her village. But Ra abandoned her people in their time of greatest need. Peace flowed from faith, and Nadia’s faith crumbled more with each passing moment.

The path widened and leveled off for a few yards, as if designed to be a stopping area. Joshua slid to the ground and rushed to the downhill side of the clearing where he dropped to his knees and vomited. She prepared some of the soup he seemed to like so much and offered it to him when he sat next to the heat crystal. His face was still very green. Cheeks sunken and eyes half closed, he mumbled something and took the bowl.

After one bite, he ran back to the edge of the trail and heaved again. His weakness made her wonder if he might not be the savior. It could mean that some of her people were still alive.

The sky was clear, and the mountainside down to where the clouds began was visible. Something unnerving caught her attention. The narrow trail they traveled up vanished, blending into the cliff. Worried the escape route was being cut off, Nadia took a few steps down, and the trail stopped disappearing. She jogged a couple of hundred feet further, and the path reformed. It was as if the trail created itself as needed and then disappeared when they left it behind.

She didn’t believe in magic and was taught there was a sensible explanation for everything. But this, along with half of the other things, defied logic. Nadia wanted to tell Joshua about what she saw but did not know enough of his strange language.

Joshua, look, she said and pointed down the path.

Joshua squinted down the mountain. Yes, good, he said in a hoarse voice as though Nadia had asked him to take in the view.

His small brown eyes must not be as strong as hers. Nadia sighed. We go. There was nothing left to do—they had to keep moving.

Head and shoulders slumped forward, Joshua walked to Azul. Nadia boosted him up onto the ceradel and then mounted again. He didn’t seem to care that she helped him this time. If they didn’t find the fortress soon, they’d have to turn back. She couldn’t kill this poor guy just to follow a dream potentially caused by childish hope.

In three steps, Azul entered the mouth of the narrow trail with the cliff dropping off to their left, and Nadia felt Joshua’s body go rigid. He clung to Azul’s mane so tight, she was sure he would pull some of it out. Nadia looked back down at the next switchback, the mountain swallowed the clearing they just left.

Chapter Seven

The Granite Fortress

Josh lay forward on the ceradel’s broad neck. Gritting his teeth together and taking shallow breaths, it took every bit of his focus just to keep from puking. The lack of oxygen in the air wreaked havoc on his body. His head hurt so bad he could barely open his eyes, but if he closed them he wanted to hurl even more. He’d experienced more fear and suffering in a few days than in his entire life combined. Exhaustion seeped down into his bone marrow, and he hurt all over. Thank goodness for the exhaustion. It finally won over the nausea and discomfort, and he managed to drift into sleep.

He was suddenly in a laboratory, wearing a surgical facemask, goggles, gloves and white papery scrubs. A wall of freezers filled with thousands of tiny vials, the little plastic kind with flip caps he’d used in biology class, stood to his left.

Josh could not control his arms and legs and couldn’t feel them moving, like he was a visitor in someone else’s body. He shuffled closer to a door, and in the split second before the freezer was opened, he caught his reflection in the glass. A wisp of gray hair peeked out from under the white hood, and the skin around his eyes showing inside the goggles looked wrinkled, much older than it should.

After selecting a tray filled with plastic vials from the freezer, Josh—or the body he inhabited—used a pipette to transfer their contents to a test tube. His latex-gloved hands moved fast, like the task was routine. He swirled the test tube, passed the open end through a Bunsen burner flame, and then plugged it into a port on a machine that looked like a silver beach ball with three long skinny legs. It reminded Josh of the early Russian satellite called Sputnik that he learned about in world history. Squinting into eyepieces similar to a microscope’s, Josh viewed what appeared to be a single cell.

His hands manipulated joysticks below the eyepieces. A long needle appeared and pierced the cell, injecting a tiny cloud of fluid. The needle pulled out, and moments later, the cell replicated.

It turned into two, then four, then eight cells. Like in a time-lapse movie, the new creation’s development was accelerated, becoming an embryo and then an infant. What appeared to be a tiny version of the monsters that captured Josh formed—dreadlocks on its head and all. He expected it would continue growing until it was big enough to attack him, but his body refused to pull away from the machine. The newborn monster turned toward Josh. Its beady red eyes opened, and it reached out for him with its little arms.

Josh woke up with a gasp, his skin crawling. He lay on Azul’s neck, and his head still felt crushed in a vice. The ceradel’s back was at such a steep angle, if it weren’t for Nadia sitting behind him, there’d be no way Josh could’ve stayed on.

Azul’s claws dug into the barren rock and slipped with earsplitting screeches as he tried to maintain traction. They were off the narrow path with the drop on one side, but this wasn’t any better.

Nadia tapped Josh’s shoulder. Look.

Nausea returning full force, he clenched his hands in a death grip on Azul’s mane. Josh eased himself up. Nadia wrapped her arm around his chest, and he choked when she forced him back further.

Look! she repeated.

The mountaintop above was crowned by a massive structure. Its walls were shiny and black, like it was made from polished granite.

Civilization at last, Josh whispered, forgetting the