Page 1 of Queen Takes Knights
CHAPTER ONE
Shara
It sucked to be twenty two years old and still afraid of the dark.
Bad things always happened in the dark. I’d learned that at an early age, when my father was brutally murdered in front of me. My mother met the same fate when I was seventeen.
Waiting for the sun to set, monsters were real and they were always hungry. Always hunting.
Demons with pasty gray skin, wasted bodies down to skin and bones, with red, glowing eyes. Mom always said they were hunting her, but after she died, I kept seeing them.
They were still hunting… me.
I’d lose them for a few weeks at a time, but then I’d start to get that old familiar itch down my spine. I’d feel the eyes at dusk. Shadows crowded around my cheap room, testing the doors and windows, looking for a weak spot in paper-thin walls. It was always the same story, and at dawn, I’d head out to the bus stop and try to lose them again for a few days.
It didn’t matter how careful I was. They always found me again, because they hunted by the smell of my blood. Thanks to my very regular menstrual cycle, I could count on them always finding me in under a month. And if I cut my finger, I’d better leave on the next bus as quickly as possible, knowing the scent was like a beacon shining over my location.
I’d been in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for about two weeks. Only a week until Christmas, but I’d be gone by then. The thought made me sad, because I actually liked this town. It had a deep, resonant feeling, like a ringing bell that I could almost hear. Maybe it was all the caves, natural springs, and deep cliffs that funneled its inhabitants’ energy into a river I could almost touch.
I had a modest inheritance from my parents, but it wouldn’t last forever, so I always tried to find a temporary job to cover my expenses. If I was extremely lucky, I could find a job cleaning motel rooms that let me have a cheap room for free. Eureka Springs had lots of small ma-and-pop type motels for the wedding business, but with the holidays, pickings were light. Most motels had already closed for the season, and my boss said it’d be a ghost town after the Christmas shopping died down.
I only knew the owner as Hosea. He’d been pretty nice to me so far, even letting me eat meals out of the small kitchen (as long as I was willing to help out waitressing tables or delivering food to the cabins) so I didn’t have the heart to tell him I probably wouldn’t make it that long.
“Yo, Shara,” Hosea called, waving me toward the office. I started to tuck the cleaning cart into the storage closet, but he hollered, “No, bring it.”
My nerves were already starting to jangle a warning. It was almost five in the evening. This time of year, it’d be full-on dark pretty quickly. I’d feel a lot better once I was safely in my room for the night.
I dragged the cart over and he smiled apologetically. His bald head gleamed in the light, his face lined and worn. He had the nicest eyes, though. So kind and good-hearted. Almost like my father’s, from what I remembered. I hadn’t met too many people with nice eyes over the years. “I know it’s late, but we had an urgent clean-up call from the honeymoon cabin.”
I’d made it clear I’d do just about anything he asked as far as cleaning the rooms or working in the kitchen—as long as I stayed indoors after nightfall.
The main motel was a lodge building, with rooms off one main hall. Over the years, he’d added individual cabins spaced out on the property, away from the main building. The customers loved being able to have a room “out in the woods” where they couldn’t see anybody else, but still be minutes away from a hot meal or the main shopping strip.
The honeymoon cabin was bigger than the others with a giant heart-shaped Jacuzzi that I’d come to despise, and of course, it was the furthest from the main building. “The tub again?”
He nodded. “They put some bubbles in and lost track of how full it was getting.”
Crap. I so did not want to track out there and mop for an hour or two.
“Ellie’s home sick and Tom’s in the kitchen. I really need you to take it if at all possible. I’ll give you a bonus. ”
I could use the money, but my hands were already trembling. It was early. My period probably wouldn’t start for another day or two, so the monsters shouldn’t have tracked me this far. But that didn’t mean they weren’t out there, waiting for me to be stupid enough to walk around at night.
With a small nod, I turned around and headed down the hall to the back door. I’d stay inside as long as possible, take the shortest route there, and get back. I’d leave the cart and run if I had to. Pausing at the door, I crouched down and checked the bucket on the very bottom with my personal supplies. It wasn’t much, just a large container of salt and a strip of wood with a few rusty old nails I’d scrounged. Salt and iron were about the only thing I’d found to deter the monsters long enough for me to get to safety. If I could make one of them bleed, the rest of the pack would usually attack the wounded one, buying me more time.
I didn’t have much of a coat, just a pullover hoodie I now dragged over my head. The cold didn’t bother me much, but I got a lot of weird stares if I walked around in the middle of winter without at least some long sleeves on. I checked my pocket, making sure the small pocketknife hadn’t fallen out.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and tried to sense anything amiss. Was the trickle of ice down my spine my imagination brought about by fear? Or was there really something out there? I couldn’t tell, but it might be the faint white line of salt I’d spilled at the door when I first came here. So far, no one had noticed and swept it up. It helped that they put salt on the sidewalks to keep them from being slippery. Another thing that might keep me somewhat safe tonight if I stuck to the sidewalk.
I stepped outside, my shoulders tight, my eyes straight ahead, and I walked with a mission. Five minutes, and I’d be at the cabin. Ten at most. My heart thudded with anxiety, but the air smelled incredible. Clean and fresh, frosty with a hint of snow. Pine trees thickened around the sidewalk, providing coverage from the city lights. A light dusting of snow crunched under my feet. For a moment, I was away from the noise of the streets, surrounded by nature’s peace, and I relaxed despite my fears. I loved this place. It felt so… right. Natural. Maybe I could come back in a few months. I bet Hosea would take me on again, if he got as busy as he said in May and June.
The honeymoon cabin was constructed from logs of Arkansas pine and built up off the ground like a treehouse. It was actually really cool, though a lot of customers couldn’t do the stairs. Hosea hoped to build a couple of more next summer that were more accessible. Grabbing the mop and bucket out of the cart, I climbed the double flight of stairs and paused a moment to scan the surrounding woods. Opening my senses, I tried to find anything out of place.
I imagined the area around me like a soft, billowing fabric. Three dimensional trees, plants, and animals dotted the fabric, but they felt right. Natural. People were like blinking fireflies, floating here and there, or streaming in rivers that I knew were the highways downtown. Some areas glowed brighter, where more people gathered for dinner or work. The monsters always felt like a stain or small tear in that fabric. Nothing I could see with my eyes until it was too late, just a feeling of wrongness. But they were very good at hiding. Almost as good as me.
Something drew my attention to the south. Two warm spots glowed like tiny campfires, definitely red against the soft white fireflies of the people living around me. I’d never seen anything like that before. Monsters weren’t warm and they didn’t glow like this. The more I focused on those campfires, they hotter they burned. Molten fire, lava, thick and hot, bubbling up out of the earth. The glowing rivers of embers seemed to call me. I reached out slowly, listening, feeling, for anything bad. The red bubbled up higher, like it was seeking me too. So beautiful. I strained harder…
I about jumped out of my skin when someone touched me.
