The Ballad of Aramei Read online

  Copyright © 2012 J.A. Redmerski

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1480264526

  ISBN-10: 1480264520

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, historical events, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Michelle Monique Photography

  Models: Amber Coney & Yuriy Platoshyn

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part and in any form.

  This book is dedicated to all of the book bloggers/reviewers and the many readers out there who embraced The Darkwoods Trilogy with more love than I ever thought it would have. Without all of you, Darkwoods would never have gotten as far as it has.

  Also, to my dear friend, Kristen Dome, who runs my Facebook page because I simply can’t do it myself! *Muah!* She is an awesome friend who has stuck around for me since the ‘MSN Days’, and believe me, that’s saying a lot!

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Chapter 1

  I WAKE UP TO an earthy smell rising headily into my nostrils, and the cool, prickly feel of grass blades cushioning my naked body. At first, I think I’m dreaming, but as my heavy eyelids slowly break apart I realize the warm slivers of light crisscrossing my skin are the sun’s rays beaming down through the tree branches above me.

  A few black dots move through the blue sky, followed by the caw of a crow. My sight is blurry, my eyes glazed over by moisture and a very fine amount of sentience.

  I smell blood. A lot of blood. And it’s so potent, almost chemical. I taste it in my mouth, lingering heavily on my tongue in a thick, briny layer of copper and salt and bile.

  Gross.

  I doubt I’ll ever get used to this.

  The realization hits me in this moment and I jerk my body upward, my eyes popping open wide. Where the hell am I and what exactly did I eat last night?

  Oh God, please let it have been animal, or better yet, something already dead from the grocery store. Yeah, that’s not likely. The image of me busting into Finch’s Grocery in full-fledged werewolf form and tearing my way straight to the meat aisle makes me laugh a little. But the humor of the moment quickly fades and I’m back to pulling the pieces of my mind together.

  My sight comes into focus; the view of the mountain covered by fog and thick clouds only looks like a backdrop. It’s too far away to seem absolutely real. I’m surrounded by trees and grass and soil. The sunlight glistens on the tiny stream of water out ahead and on a spider’s web dangling precariously between the branches of a low-lining tree. Everything is deep green and full of life.

  I really am naked…

  Instinct causes my arms to come up across my chest, covering what I can of my breasts. I pull my legs toward me, closing them tight and letting my knees fall to the side. I should be cold, but I’m not. My body temperature is very warm, but not uncomfortably. In fact, I feel better than I have ever felt. Last night was only my second time shifting and much in the way after the first time, my body feels new and revived, as if I have been reborn. But this time, I feel even better than the first. I wonder if it might feel better each time. Something tells me that it will, that each transformation is destined to make me stronger.

  I hear everything. The song of early morning birds and the water moving in that seemingly calm stream are amplified in my ears. I hear the heartbeats of animals and the soft padding of movement on the forest bed all around me. I even hear insects burrowing through the earth and the wispy fluttering of butterfly wings that no human would ever be able to hear. The butterfly lands on a leaf nearby and I watch it for a long time before it feels strong enough to flutter away toward the small sunlit clearing out ahead.

  The scent of pine trees and maple trees and wildflowers is so strong that I feel like it could easily intoxicate me.

  The insistent smell of blood raises the hairs on my arms.

  Finally, I look down at my naked body, allowing my mind to grasp the true measure of the situation. Fresh blood is moist in my hair, weighing it down and sticking to the skin on my chest and arms. Blood is smeared down the length of my ribs and across my left leg. My hands are absolutely covered in crimson, darker underneath the bed of all ten fingernails. I can only imagine how my face looks. I feel it all around my mouth, the blood, and along my cheek toward my ear where it’s already starting to dry and crust.

  I visibly shudder at the thought of what, or who I might have killed last night, what or who I might have…eaten.

  My heart is heavy with remorse and guilt. I can live with killing an animal—though I don’t particularly like the thought of that either—but I could never forgive myself for killing a human being.

  How did I get out here?

  Panic envelops me from the inside out. The last thing I remember was being in the basement with Isaac at my side. I remember several days of hell and pain and burning and delusions. I remember Isaac’s face, looking down at me with tortured, loving eyes as he swabbed the cold, wet cloth across my forehead and my face and my neck and my chest.

  I remember seducing him.

  And he never hesitated to give in to me. Never. He wanted me as badly as I wanted him.

  But he was supposed to keep me restrained down there. I wasn’t supposed to be able to get out. I vaguely recall when he unlocked the shackles around my wrists and ankles on the night of the full moon so that there would be minimal damage to my body as I transformed. So that my transformation wouldn’t rip the shackles completely from the old dank stone wall, but I wasn’t supposed to break free from the basement.

  I’m not supposed to be out here.

  Where is Isaac?

  I crawl across the forest bed just a few feet until I realize that I don’t need to crawl at all. My legs feel strong and powerful. I rise to my feet, pressing my palm against the nearest towering tree and look all around me, searching for any sign of Isaac, while at the same time trying to hide my nakedness with my hands and my moist, dark hair. Maybe he hasn’t awoken yet. He could be around here anywhere, asleep in the high grass in the clearing, or under any one of a thousand trees.

  And I still have no idea where I am. I sense that I know which direction to follow that will take me home and that I could never really be lost, but I still don’t know where here is.

  I’ve never seen that mountain in the background this close before.

  Wow…I have to be far away from Hallowell. Somewhere north.

  My panic levels are rising higher. I’m completely naked, covered in blood and dirt and my hair is a tangled rat’s nest. I don’t need a mirror to know that I look like a crazed girl, even like some psycho backwoods cannibal straight out of a Rob Zombie film. My animal instinct tells me I can find my way home, sure, but that doesn’t mean no one will see me on the way there and call the police to pick me up. How would I explain that one to Uncle Carl and A
unt Bev?

  “Isaac?” I say just above a whisper. If anyone out here hears me, I only want it to be him. “Isaac!” I whisper harshly, looking all around me in every direction.

  I step softly over the debris in the forest bed and practically tiptoe around tree after tree, using each one as a shield and avoiding going anywhere near that small clearing which has nothing to shield my nakedness.

  But then it hits me: with these new animal senses, it should be nearly effortless to hear his footsteps, no matter how quietly through the woods. I should be able to detect his heartbeat, hear the blood pumping through his veins. I should be able to hear his thoughts, smell his toothpaste and the natural scent of his skin.

  I stop behind another tree and shut my eyes, trying to take it all in, to block out the obvious and let my senses guide me to something farther away. I inhale deeply of the cool, morning air and open my ears to the sounds that had lain buried underneath everything else so close to me.

  Isaac taught me how to control my thoughts and how to block out the uninvited intrusion of others, but I still have a lot to learn. The time he spent teaching me was all devoted to this; because of a traitor, a Praverian gone Dark that lives among us. There wasn’t time to teach me much about how to block out the things around me, to tame the voices that I hear or to turn the volume down on all of the noise. I don’t yet know how to do these things to full capacity. Unlike him, I can’t just do it. I have to concentrate. I have to focus. And it’s not easy.

  I hear something rustling far off in the distance behind me and I hold my breath for a moment to keep it from drowning out the sound. With my eyes still closed, I take a step backward and then turn around. I listen closely and hear it again. Something is moving on the ground, the distinct sound of leaves shuffling underneath movement is heavy and localized to the same spot. I hear a heartbeat but I can’t tell if it’s human. I try to reach out to Isaac telepathically, but I get no response.

  Hunched over slightly, still trying to cover my nakedness, I pick up my pace and move quickly through the forest in the direction of the noise. My human instinct compels me to watch my footing, to step over sharp twigs and small branches and rocks that may shred my feet, but my animal instinct is what helps me to actually avoid these things. As my pace quickens I realize how easily I miss everything without even thinking about it. And when I start to run, I begin to leap over objects that somehow my animal mind knows are out in front of me before my human mind is aware of it.

  As the noise gets closer I slow down. But I’m confused because I’m having trouble blocking out the noises all around me to be able to focus solely on it. Trickling water somewhere to my left is so magnified that I feel like an insect next to a waterfall. The birds flying overhead sound as though they have enormous wingspans flapping with heavy force. Everything is amplified times ten and I can’t block any of it out. I press my hands against my ears and don’t even notice that I’m walking backwards.

  I fall over something and when I land in an upright sitting position my back is pressed against something firm and warm. Blood seeps from underneath my butt and my thighs, and my hands are planted in a mound of disgusting, squishy, rubbery entrails.

  My breath catches and my arms come up quickly and I practically slip on the entrails as I try to pull my body out of the cavity of the carcass.

  I finally get away and stumble backward, falling yet again, but this time against the cleaner ground a couple feet away. The dead moose’s elongated head lays haphazardly, the long, grayish tongue lolled out of its opened mouth. Its giant antlers are still in-tact, jutting up from its massive head, but its stomach has been completely torn apart. The ribcage shows through underneath the ravaged fur; most of the ribs have been broken and some lie in the pile of innards spilling out from the body and onto the ground.

  Bile rises up in my throat.

  I pick myself up, bracing a hand against a small tree and cup the other over my mouth and nose in an attempt to cover the smell. Flies and maggots are already starting to gather, but this is a fresh kill. It was my kill. I know because as I gaze across at the endless depths of its glazed-over black eyes, I glimpse little pieces of memory from when I took it down last night. I try to block it out, but when I shut my eyes, the blackness only gives way to a more vivid visual.

  A branch snapping behind me and the sound of a low, guttural growl is what pulls my head out of the hunting visual.

  I turn around briskly at the waist. A large black bear is making its way toward me about a hundred feet through the trees, probably attracted here by the scent of my kill.

  I suck in a sharp breath and start to panic, until I see another figure coming in behind it.

  It’s Isaac. Isaac!

  I want to be happy and relieved, but why is he walking so slowly? He clearly sees the bear and I sense that he knows I’m standing here even though it’s possible that from his angle my body might be obscured by the forest. Surely he knows. But why hasn’t he started running to help me?

  The bear draws closer and my body locks up out of fear. I don’t want to run. They always tell you never to run when you come face to face with a bear. But everything in me is screaming at me to run. I keep looking to and from Isaac and the bear, expecting him to pounce on it from behind any second now, but instead, Isaac falls back and keeps a still position near a tree, letting its massive trunk partially conceal his naked form. My heart is hammering against my ribcage. I’m hunched over slightly with my knees bent and hands out in front of me, arms bent at the elbows. Instinct now tells me to be ready to fight. Wait…fight a bear? This is insane.

  The bear rises up on its hind legs and begins to sniff the air, its clawed paws dangling down near its belly. It grunts and sniffs and grunts some more.

  And then it sees me.

  My preternatural eyes, shifting black of their own accord, catches the bear’s eyes boring into mine. I don’t know whether to be terrified, or…territorial. The moose’s blood rises up into my nostrils heavily, but for some reason unknown to my human mind, this time my throat doesn’t retch at the scent of it. My stomach doesn’t swim in a poisonous lake of bile. No, it smells good and my stomach aches for it.

  My black claws come out and the skin on my forearms begins to turn gray.

  I move toward the bear, my back arched over as my body molds itself into a battle-ready stance. The bear growls and jerks its head abrasively side to side. But it begins to back away and then it runs in the opposite direction. I watch as the mass of black fur bounds through the forest and out of sight.

  Isaac steps away from the safety of the tree and moves toward me, a grin spread across his beautiful face.

  I catch myself pushing my hair back down over my shoulders so that it covers my exposed breasts and I turn my body at a sideward angle and press my thighs together.

  “Like I haven’t already seen all of that before,” he says just a few feet away.

  He is right, after all, but it just feels weird. I mean really there’s nothing sexy to me about standing here in the nude, covered in blood and dirt with wild woman hair.

  “Actually there is,” he says having fished around inside my head, still grinning the grin of the Devil. I love that grin. It usually means he’s up to no good, and Isaac being up to no good usually means I’m going to like it.

  No! Not here like this! I cover myself even better, pushing my hands down below my pelvic area to hide as much as I can.

  “Thought you weren’t going to read my mind?” I snap, though there’s a trace of humor in my voice.

  His hands come up as if surrendering. “Closed off now. I swear.”

  “Okay,” I say looking at him more scoldingly, “what was that? That bear could’ve killed me, Isaac.”

  He smiles and looks downward for a brief moment. “Ummm, no it couldn’t have,” he says. “And I wanted to see how well you handled it—that’s why I was reading your thoughts.”

  “You were testing me?”

  He nods. “And
you did well,” he says. “You gave in to your animal side quicker than most newbies do.”

  Of course, I have not at all forgotten the fact that he is standing here talking to me butt naked. It doesn’t matter one bit that we’ve already seen each other in our birthday suits and that we’ve consummated our relationship; there’s just something uncomfortable about talking to anyone while completely nude. It’s not natural…well, I guess in a sense it sort of is, but I easily keep my eyes looking at everything above his waist.

  “And besides,” Isaac goes on, “a black bear would never attack a werewolf. A grizzly, on the other hand, would without hesitation. They never win, but they’re a formidable opponent.”

  “Well, what if that would’ve been a grizzly?” I say, now crossing my arms and tilting my head to one side. “Huh? Tell me that—would you still have left me to fend for myself?”

  Isaac laughs under his breath and moves to stand right in front of me. He presses his forehead against mine, cupping my arms in his hands below. “Good thing there are no grizzly’s in Maine,” he says and pecks me on the tip of my nose. “But yes, I’d still leave you to fend for yourself.”

  My mouth falls open. I playfully push him away and let out a spat of air. “Seriously! I can’t believe you!” I’m still sort of laughing through my poor attempt at being offended because he’s still sort of grinning behind his poor attempt to be serious.

  He grabs me and pulls me toward him, crushing his lips against mine. He kisses me long and hard and I press my naked body against his, grabbing his hair in my fists.

  The kiss breaks and the first thing I notice is that Isaac looks clean. I step back and look him up and down.

  “Why aren’t you gross like me?” I cross my arms to look reproachful, but really it’s more to cover my breasts. And I still stand at sort of an angle so that my thigh covers my private area below.

  He tugs his head back. “This way,” he says and reaches out his hand.

  I take his hand and walk alongside him toward the sound of water.