Prologue

Ty shivered in the cold night air as he gazed nervously into the dense fog around him. The woman at his side radiated confidence, as she always did, but he knew she was on edge too. How could she not be? The others would be here soon.

Ty huddled in his oversized coat as he thought back to the first night he’d met his new protector. He’d been sitting outside his uncle’s trailer, wondering how he was going to avoid starving out in the swamp. He’d moved in with his uncle a few years back after his mother had finally overdosed. She’d tried getting clean a handful of times when Ty had been younger, but her last relapse had ended when she had been found face down in a gutter just south of Mobile. Ty had never been out of Louisiana himself, but the thought hadn’t bothered him much. She hadn’t been a kind woman and life with Uncle Franklin had been better, even if it had been a major adjustment.

Uncle Frank had always lived out in the swamp, far from the public housing where Ty and his mother had lived, though Ty had never visited him until the day he’d moved in. Uncle Franklin had visited plenty though; he’d always looked after Ty’s mother when she was at her worst, but it had still been an odd feeling out process once the two had started sharing space day in and day out. His uncle hadn’t made him go back to school, but he had made him earn his keep. Together they’d fished and hunted their own food, selling whatever extra they could spare and making up the rest doing odd jobs for various people in the area. They’d gone into the small town near Franklin’s home maybe once a month for supplies, but besides that they stayed out in the swamp in a little trailer Uncle Franklin had bought when he was a much younger man.

The only problem with Uncle Franklin had been the drinking. He wasn’t an angry or sad drunk, he just drank too much. Most nights he drank himself to sleep and more than once Ty had scrambled to roll the man onto his side as he vomited in the night. Uncle Franklin always apologized after nights like that and Ty never held them against him.

Then, a few weeks ago, Ty had come home from checking some of the traps along their usual route to find that his uncle had died. Ty still didn’t know what had happened. The man was old, well into his sixties, and Ty had found him face down in the center of the trailer, no clues as to what may have happened to him.

Once he’d known for sure that his uncle was dead, he’d covered the body with a blanket and sat out on the short set of stairs leading into the trailer to think. He’d cried a little, not too much, and less for his uncle then for himself. He was only twelve and he knew that once someone found out about his uncle he’d be taken into the system. He’d heard both his mother and her brother railing against the horrors of the system many times before. It was to avoid these unspecified horrors that Uncle Franklin had taken him in in the first place. Despite his fears of being taken away, staying in the swamp alone was somehow more frightening. His uncle had taught him a lot, but not nearly enough to make it out here on his own. He’d need to go into town for supplies anyway and it was only a matter of time before someone who lived there caught on to what had happened. Then they would call the police to take him away. He had been running out of options quickly and the gravity of his situation had seemed to be crushing him from every angle.

Then, just as he’d felt himself becoming more overwhelmed then he could ever remember being in his life, she appeared.

He’d known from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her that she wasn’t human. She reminded him of one of those old sci-fi aliens that were supposed to resemble people, but with some minor or mild difference. Her eyes had been too sunken in, her mouth too wide, her neck and limbs too long, but it was her presence that had convinced him that she wasn’t anything like him or anyone else he had ever seen or met. She had radiated a feeling that was at once familiar and totally foreign. It was the warmth of a mother’s hug; true, all encompassing love. His own mother had never held him like this, but he knew it all the same. He longed for it. He always had.

“Who are you?” he’d asked as he wiped the tears from his cheeks.

She hadn’t answered him immediately. She had instead moved soundlessly towards him, stopping just shy of his spot on the stairs. Kneeling down in the mud at his feet, she had cupped his small dirty face in her left hand and stared straight into his dark brown eyes with her cat-like green ones. “Do you love me, Tyson?” she’d said in a low, calming voice that made him want to throw himself into her arms.

“I do,” was all he’d said.

“Did you love him?” she’d asked. He still didn’t understand how she’d known about the old man lying dead in the trailer behind him, but she had.

“No,” he’d said, a far away pang of guilt cutting through his new found bliss. “But he was good to me. Better than anyone else.”

“Would you have died for him?” she’d asked him, still clutching his face in her thin hand.

“No,” he’d responded honestly.

“Would you die for me?” The question came in the same calming voice as the others, but the weight had not been lost on him. Her eyes, deep within her skull to the degree that she almost seemed skeletal, bored into his own. He knew he could not answer this question incorrectly. Luckily, he hadn’t.

“A thousand times,” he’d said.

From that moment on they had been inseparable. At first everything had seemed hazy. For maybe a week or so, he’d had a hard time remembering what he’d done or where they’d gone. The only solid memories from that early time with the woman were the nights. Each night they had returned to the little trailer he had shared with his uncle and the woman had held him close, rocking him gently until he fell into blissful sleep. These were the moments he longed for even now, the moments that made his life worth living.

After a few weeks though, things began to change. The distortion of time and space around him lessened and soon he was very aware that something was wrong. The woman was afraid. He could feel it just as powerfully as he could feel her love and care for him. He couldn’t figure out when this change had happened exactly, but the two of them had ended up leaving the trailer one morning to never return. From then on they spent most nights out in the swamp, curled up in the hollows of old trees, hidden inside abandoned buildings or sheltered in derelict shacks, but every so often they ventured into more populated areas. At first it had merely been for supplies, but soon it had been for something else.

The first time he’d seen her kill had been during one of these latter excursions. Charlie had been a friend of Uncle Franklin’s, but that hadn’t saved him when he’d come face to face with Ty’s new protector. The woman had led Ty into the older man’s home and the two of them had found him fast asleep in his bed. Ty had watched with only mild concern as the woman had drawn a long curved dagger from her flowing robes.

“Do you have to?” Ty had asked calmly.

“Yes,” was all she had said as she’d cut the sleeping man’s throat from ear to ear. As he died, she’d laid her weaponless hand on his forehead. Old Charlie had died with a smile on his face.

That night they’d stayed in Charlie’s little house on the outskirts of town. When the knock at the door came, Ty hadn’t been alarmed at all. He’d simply watched the woman answer it from his place on the old sofa where she had been cradling him moments before. Even when the visitor appeared to be a policeman, a policeman who could clearly see Charlie’s body from the front door of the small house, Ty had not been worried.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“The Baron has called for you, mistress,” the policeman had said in an oddly deferential voice. His eyes had never left the woman’s and he had seemed wholly uninterested in the scene just behind her.

“Tell the Baron…”

“It is not a request, it is a summons,” the policeman had said, cutting her off.

Ty had felt the woman’s rage, white hot and roiling, disrupt the bond of calm between them. That had been the first time she’d truly frightened him. “Where?” she’d hissed at the blank faced man.

“Where it all began,” the man had said and then he’d left as if nothing else needed to be said.

Now they were here, in the middle of the swamp in the dead of night, waiting. Ty pulled Charlie’s coat around him as he waited patiently at the woman’s side. Normally she would have kept the cold from reaching his small body, but she seemed to be redirecting that focus elsewhere now. The bond between them still seemed strong, but the familiar sensations were currently tinted with more fear and anger than Ty had ever felt before.

“Sweet boy,” she cooed from his left, “when they arrive you must not show them your fear. I will protect you, but they will test you. Make me proud.”

“Of course, Mother,” Ty murmured. He wasn’t sure when he had started calling the woman this, her real name was still a mystery to him, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she encouraged it.

No sooner had they finished this brief exchange then the fog before them parted. The man who emerged was not what Ty had expected. He shared the woman’s strange, human-like build and facial structure, but he dressed in a way that was almost comical. His feet were bare, but the rest of him was covered in a worn and tattered suit. His mouth shone with a few gold teeth and on his head sat a short top hat. His face was bearded and in his hand was a long walking stick with some sort of silver creature’s head at the top.

“Zulie,” he said as he walked towards them.

“Brother,” she hissed back.

“And who is this?” the man said, removing his odd hat and squatting down in front of Ty. The second the man locked eyes with him, Ty felt something encroaching in on his connection with the woman beside him. Now he felt a mix of her love, fear and anger, as well as something entirely new. Something that must be coming from the man before him. It wasn’t like the feeling the woman gave him, though it had its own appeal. It was as if everything and anything he’d ever wanted could be his. It was hard to explain, but somehow he felt that if he left the woman to join this man, he could have whatever his heart and soul desired.

But for Ty, the woman was all he’d ever wanted, so this man’s promise held nothing for him.

“Stay back,” the woman said. “He is mine.”

“That he is,” the man said as he rose and stepped back from Ty. “A good find, sister. He’ll be with you til the end. Pity really. He’s such a young one.”

Ty didn’t say a word, but felt begrudging pride flow into him from the woman. The feeling was blissful enough to drive the man’s influence away entirely. Whether that was her doing or the man’s, Ty didn’t know, but he was glad to have the man away from him. He hadn’t missed the implication that his ties to this woman may have damned him.

“Where is Baku?” the woman said and fear swelled along their bond.

“I am here, girl” a voice whispered from behind them.

Ty almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of the voice, but feeling the icy claw grab his shoulder from behind was too much. Screaming, he fell to his knees as all hope drained from him and images of the worst things he could have ever imagined ran before his eyes in rapid succession. It felt like an eternity, but must have ended as quickly as it had begun. Gasping into the mud that now clung to his face, he heard a commotion behind him. Pushing himself out of the muck he seemed to have face planted into, he turned his head to see a truly frightening site.

The woman and the man with the walking stick were now facing what did not resemble a man in any but the most superficial ways. The figure was wrapped almost entirely in bandages, though the effect did not give him the mummy-like appearance this description suggested. From head to toe the bandages were marred by dark red and yellow splotches that hinted that the worst types of wounds and infections might be festering under all of that dirty cloth. Only the hands and parts of the face remained uncovered, though neither were less horrifying because of it. The hands looked as claw-like as the one on his shoulder had felt. They were long, curved and black, and the fingers looked more like bone than nails now that he was getting a good look at them. The face was the worst though; bloodshot, lidless eyes stared hatefully out of the mass of wet and spoiled bandages and a mouth of jagged, broken teeth drooled continuously just below them.

The woman had her dagger drawn and the man with the top hat had his cane out before him like a sword. This did not seem to disturb the bandaged horror, but it had stopped the thing from tormenting Ty.

“I will gut you for that, worm,” the woman hissed and now Ty’s confusion and fear turned to pure, white-hot, anger.  Leaping to his feet, he rushed forward to kill the thing that had angered his mother. My mother?, said a far off voice in his head, but the rage coursing through him pushed it down as he drove his small feet through the mud.

“Simmer there, little bug,” the man with the cane said as he grabbed Ty forcefully by the back of the jacket, stopping him in his tracks. “Control your pet, sister.”

“He does what he should,” the woman said, but Ty felt her rage subsiding as she spoke. It gradually gave way to a degree of calm as the four of them stood there in their awkward standoff. “Come here my son,” she said finally, and Ty obeyed, taking a seat behind her in the wet mud.

“Son, eh,” the bandaged man whispered. “Already getting attached to the wretches, are we? A bad idea, girl. War is coming. If you do not leave this place, any who join you will perish at my hand.”

“You will not be the one deciding who stays and goes, Baku,” the man with the cane growled in a deep, dangerous sounding voice. “You forget your place.”

“I did not come here to serve you, Baron,” the bandaged form said. “I came to reclaim what has been lost. I will not live in fear of the prey. If you do not leave this place, I will destroy you. Both of you.”

The woman said nothing as the two men locked eyes and seemed on the verge of blows. Both were far taller than anyone Ty had ever seen, and far more frightening, but the woman’s sense of calm enveloped him even as concerns mounted in his mind.

“You have ten days,” the bandaged man said after a few minutes of dead silence. Without another word he was gone, vanishing quickly into the thick fog that surrounded them.

“You should have killed him brother,” the woman said.

“He is stronger here,” the man said angrily. “Something about this place or the journey...has drained me.”

“Admitting weakness, Baron?” she chided him. “Very unlike you.”

“Avoiding the obvious, sister,” he responded, rounding on her, “disappointingly predictable. If I am too weak to face him, what chance do you have?”

“Brute force is not the only path to power, brother.”

“So you won’t join me then?”

“If I did what would happen?” she scoffed. “You would use me like any other tool you possess and then discard me when my use is through. No, I think I will make my own way in this new world. If you and Baku want to fight to the death, do so, I will not interfere.”

“You best not,” the man growled at her as he turned his back on them. “I won’t force you into my service, yet, but I will not tolerate your meddling. This is your only warning Zulie. My love for you will only go so far.”

Once they were alone, Ty looked up at the woman at his side, “May I speak?”

“Of course, dear boy,” she said, her eyes not leaving the place where her brother had disappeared into the fog.

“Who were those men?”

“Bad men. Weak men.”

“Will they try to kill us?”

“They most certainly will.”

“How do I stop them?” Ty meant what he said. Those men put the fear of God in him, but he would never let them hurt his mother. He had said he would die a thousand times for her and he was ready to live up to that promise.

In an instant she was crouched down beside him, holding him close. “We, my son, we. We will find a way to destroy them, but we will need help. Do you know where we can find more people like you, Tyson? Good people. Loyal people.”

“Maybe…” Ty said.

“You will never have to share me with them, my son,” she said, gently caressing his cheek and smoothing his curly hair, “but we need help. We need to survive.”

“I know where we can find more people,” Tyson said, leaning into her embrace. “I’ll help you. I won’t let them hurt you.”

“I know you won’t,” she cooed as she lifted him easily and began rocking him to sleep.