Hellborn

By Ashley Roland

Out in the newly-settled wilds of central Florida, supernatural forces have descended on a small town. Summoned by Jeremiah, a young man with a mystical connection to the monsters, the living nightmares stalk and torment the citizens of Holbrecht.
He has one goal in mind: prepare the world for the arrival of a vicious new god, one he believes he is meant to serve.
Jem’s brother Jhared, sheriff of Holbrecht, possess his own supernatural abilities. It’s been his duty to keep Holbrecht safe from the Hellborn creatures Jem calls down upon the town. As more and more folks turn to Jem’s bizarre rituals for protection against the ravaging monsters, Jhared loses faith in his calling.
When Cherish, arrives in town, claiming to be sent by a man long dead, Jhared is at first suspicious. She seems lost and frightened, but as her true nature becomes clear, both brothers charge into battle against one another. Cherish’s unique heritage makes her either the catalyst for the apocalypse, or the only one who can prevent it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashley Roland
• Release date: Aug 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370261222

Book preview

Hellborn

A.D. Roland

Hellborn by A.D. Roland

Copyright © 2016 A.D. Roland

ISBN13: 978-1535409629 

ISBN-10: 1535409622 

Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced 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 author.

Editor: Chelly Peeler

Cover Art: Ash Arceneaux

Other books by A.D. Roland

Fantasy

Dark Consort

The Carrion King’s Consort (coming soon!)

Horror

Wraithborne

Congenital Defects

The Swamp Song Series

Swamp Baby

Spirit-Mother: Devotion

Spirit-Mother: Redemption

#Hater (coming soon!)

Romance

Bearskin

A Year of You

Muse (coming soon!)

If you enjoy Hellborn, please get professional help.

Kidding! Check out Wraithborne and Congenital Defects. All three stories are loosely related, but they are standalones. You can read Congenital Defects without reading either of the other two books, but it’s always fun to meet a character and have that, Hey, I know that guy! feeling.

Please remember to leave a review on the book’s Amazon page! It means a lot to the author!

Keep reading for a previously unpublished short story by the author!

Prologue

Jem, what’s that knife for?

Hush for a minute, okay?

Jeremiah touched the pad of his thumb to the razor-sharp blade of the knife. Yep, it was definitely sharp enough.

Jem, that’s a real big knife. What are you going to do with it?

Irritation built up in the back of his skull every time Lisa opened her mouth. All her questions were driving him mad.

When she talked, he couldn’t hear the voices he needed to hear. The ones that came from inside. When she yammered on, he couldn’t feel the heat.

Outside the tiny dark cracker house, the pine trees whipped in the strong winds. It hadn’t rained in months. After he shed Lisa’s blood, the rain would come again. It would wash away the unworthy ones, the ones with the lesser gods’ blood in their veins. Those that remained would be of noble blood and fit to be in his royal court.

They all thought he was crazy. Just some dumb cracker, come in off one too many cattle drives. Crazy like his daddy. Jem knew the truth. We’re not crazy.

The Eastern mystic, Shalmoud, who’d befriended the family long ago, had told him the real truth. Before the preacher had led the neck-stretching party and killed him anyway. Those ignorant bastards.

Shalmoud told him he was special. He’d been born special. Nobody could take that away from him. People always thought he was a little strange. They just didn’t understand what he really was. Mr. Shalmoud, he knew, though. He offered him a choice, one Mr. Shalmoud said had been offered to all the men in his family for thousands of years.

A sense of power eased into his veins. So what if he was only fourteen. Maybe he hadn’t tapped into his own powers yet, but when he killed thirteen-year-old Lisa and baptized himself in her virgin blood, he would be able to become god of all.

Jem, I-I want to go.

Lisa’s voice drilled into his brain. Jem, please take me home. I got chores to do. I came out here cuz I thought you wanted to— her voice dropped. To kiss.

Jem took her slim little hand and led her to the middle of the cabin. The old homestead had been empty for a long, long time.

What’s that on the floor, Jem?

The chalk symbol looked bright white in the gloom. He wasn’t real sure what it was and what it meant, but the voices always got stronger and told him more secrets when he sat inside it. It was another thing Shalmoud had told him all about.

I don’t like this, Jemmy. Lisa wrapped her arms around herself. I want to go home.

You can’t go home, Lisa. He left her standing in the middle of the room and hurried over to his pack. He pulled out a long coil of rope. You gotta help me do something special.

Lisa looked uncertain. I don’t know. My ma’s gonna be wanting me home pretty soon. It’s about time to start supper.

He dropped the rope at her feet. She glanced up, her eyes wide. A tiny little whimper worked its way out of her throat.

Her fear made him grin. I ain’t gonna let none of them monsters hurt you.

Monsters? What are you talking about, Jemmy? Ain’t no such things as monsters.

Might not be monsters, but there are demons. You remember Brother Michael talking about them.

But they ain’t really real.

Jeremiah closed his eyes and shuddered when he felt the veil shifting. Shalmoud called it a veil. When the dark things came through, from their world to his.

Outside, something huge bellowed and brushed up against the cabin. Whatever it was, it was big enough to make the wall creak. Lisa gasped and whirled around.

Jemmy! There’s a man in here!

He ain’t no man, honey.

The figure in the corner levered itself up. Rags covered its bone-thin, extra-long limbs. Eye holes, black as ink, stood out against the stained white muslin of its face.

Lisa whimpered and tried to scamper out of the circle around the pentagram. Jeremiah caught her by the shoulders.

You gotta help me, Lisa. You’re special, you know that? You’re the one, I think.

What are you talking about? I just wanna go home!

She fought, kicking and screaming. But being bigger and stronger than the girl, he wrestled her to the ground and hog-tied her with a length of rough rope. His hands moved fast and sure, thanks to years of working out in the scrub with his pa.

Her screams pierced the stillness of the Florida scrub. He slapped a hand over her mouth. Neighbors were miles away, but the road ran pretty close. Anybody traveling along it might hear her. Aunt May lived down the river a ways, and sound carried over the water like magic sometimes.

Thinking fast, he crammed his handkerchief into her mouth and wrapped his belt around her head.

Shadows gathered around him, thick and cold. The whispers in his head got louder and louder, until they rattled his skull.

The figure from the corner limped past him and out into the blazing sunlight.

Dang it, I forgot I gotta take your clothes off.

Her eyes widened and she hollered around the gag.

The knife cut through her clothes like they were made of butter. In no time at all she lay before him, naked and as pale as a grub, wriggling and crying.

At thirteen, she was just beginning to develop curves.

You’d be a beautiful woman, you know, he said softly. Something to make a man’s blood race.

He was too busy with his task to think about how naked she was, how vulnerable.

Quickly, he untied one hand at a time and secured each limb to a stake wedged into the floorboards at each of the points of the star. The fifth point, the center one, extended between her spread legs.

Jeremiah wasn’t real sure if she was supposed to go this way, or the other way, with her head on the fifth point.

Maybe it wouldn’t matter.

Outside, thunder rumbled. His heart jolted with joy and excitement. After the ceremony, he’d be able to control the storms. The clouds, the rain, would bow to him. Shalmoud promised him that every few years, when he made a worthy sacrifice, his power would grow. Instead of everybody in town thinking he was crazy, they would love him. Worship him. He would be their hero, instead of his brother.

Lisa sobbed. The whiny sounds threatened to disrupt his concentration.

He kicked aside her dress and petticoats and knelt by her side. He lowered the knife until it touched her pale belly. He bore down on the blade until it broke the skin. Her flesh rose up to embrace the knife, greeting it with her crimson life’s flow.

Her kicks and screams only made the blood flow faster. He sawed through her belly and fought through yards of hot intestines. He guessed she died about the time he cut her womb from its secure net of muscle and fat and veins.

****

Two hours later, Lisa wasn’t anything but a meaty husk on the floor.

He had her insides laid out around her, in the design Shalmoud had drawn for him long ago. He’d cut her in half and laid her upper body at the top of the circle and her bottom half at the bottom. The spine had caused him problems, but in the end, he ended up stomping on the column of bone until the bones broke and he could saw through the connective tissue with the dulling knife. He had her liver and her kidneys in the right places. Her blood coated him like a second skin, stiffening, stinking. Flies buzzed around his head and landed on his hands.

He prayed the prayer Shalmoud taught him. The veil bulged. Tiny rips formed and a few lesser beings slipped into the world. The army of gods sworn to his service didn’t break through.

Thunder crashed outside and the cabin lit up from a sudden bolt of lightning. Rain pecked at the cypress-shingled roof. Rain, so he must have done part of it right.

For two hours he sat in the middle of the symbol, waiting for something to happen. Lisa’s eyes, separated from her skull, stared at him.

Shalmoud told him sweet water was supposed to flow from her eyes, to form rivers.

So far, not even a drop.

The veil drew further and further away, and the beasts that came through vanished into the thick woods.

When the last of the demons disappeared back into the void, Jeremiah’s blood rushed in his ears. The voices in his head fell silent, the whirlwinds of thought and power and evil ceased.  

Disgusted, Jeremiah got to his feet and kicked Lisa’s remains, until the symbolic design was destroyed.

He stood in the far corner by a pile of old kindling, concentrating for a long time. When the heat built up in his hands, he knelt and gripped the bits of dry straw and cloth and wood. Lighting his own hands on fire hurt, unlike with Jhared, who could spit fire and snap it out from under his fingernails with no problems.

Sometimes, Jem thought maybe the dark ones had made a mistake when they chose him. Jhared’s natural, freakish abilities far surpassed his own. What terrible thing had Jhared had to do to earn his power? He never said, not even when Jem begged and begged.

It's between me and God, he said when Jem begged so much he cried.

At last the kindling caught, the flames washing over his hands and forearms. He cried out from the pain and jumped backwards in a panic. When he’d beat the flames off of his hands, he waited until the fire licked across the dry warped floorboards before he ran out of the old home place.

In these dry times, the fire would devour the cabin and probably half the town of Holbrecht.

Good.

If he couldn’t be what the dark ones promised him, then at least he could hurt a bunch of people.

Chapter 1

Beautiful, Cherish murmured to her two traveling companions.

Primitive, Helena replied.

I feel sick, Marianna chimed in. "I was expecting at least a town. Not a…this."

Cherish looked around. The raised train platform appeared to be the only structure around. A wide dirt road ran by, leading deep into shadowy woods one way and around a bend the other way.

Helena plopped down on her trunk. I knew I shouldn’t have left St. Margaret’s. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but it was a job with room and board.

She pointed her finger at Cherish. In a sing-song voice she mocked, "Oh, let’s go to Florida and get married. We’ll meet rich orange growers and cattlemen."

You don’t have to poke fun at me. Besides, we’re not sure this is as bad as it seems. Cherish glanced at Marianna.

Marianna, tiny and petite in her black traveling dress, wrapped her arms around herself. Cherish, maybe this wasn’t the best idea. We’re stuck here in the middle of the woods. We don’t even know which way to go to get to Holbrecht.

It’s too late to go back now. The train’s gone and there won’t be another one for two weeks. You heard the conductor. We just have to grin and bear this. Cherish took Helena’s hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze. I promise, if this doesn’t turn out as we thought, I’ll find a way to pay your way home again. Yours, too, Marianna. She flashed her friends a crooked grin. I’ve always taken care of you, haven’t I?

Helena glanced away, but Marianna smiled and nodded.

All right then. I guess we should choose a direction and start walking. I’m going to step into these bushes over here and relieve myself, first. Cherish gestured to a clump of brush to the left of the platform.

Marianna choked and blushed bright red. Helena gasped, then groaned. Heavens above, Cherish. No man’s going to want you, as immodest as you are!

Darling, I doubt there’s a man within five miles of us right now.

Cherish hurried down the steps and into the tangle of vines and underbrush, skirt and petticoats held high. Anxiety twisted her gut, making her bowels feel weak and watery. She needed a moment to think away from the other women. Their panic fueled her own. She swabbed at the sweat on her brow.

The man in the newspaper office in Savannah had been there to place an ad in the paper for unmarried young women to travel to Florida. ‘Lots of eligible, handsome bachelors seeking helpmates and companions,’ he’d said to her.  

A few hours later, she and Helena and Marianna had quit their jobs as teachers at the prestigious boarding school and hopped on a train headed south, their fare paid for by the mysterious, dark stranger.

The journey had been nearly unbearable, between the building heat, the suffocating humidity, and the stink of the general population in the train. At some point their host had vanished from the train, leaving them utterly alone as more and more people disembarked.

When they got