WyndStones Read online

  Book Two: Hellwind Trilogy

  WyndStones

  By

  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  © copyright by Charlotte Boyett-Compo, June 2009

  Cover Art by Alex DeShanks, June 2009

  ISBN 978-1-60394-328-4

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Dedication:

  To Madris, Andrea, and Megan

  With thanks and gratitude for all you do.

  I appreciate your hard work on my behalf.

  Prologue

  Alinor Tabor watched her lord and master, her husband of ten years as he strutted across the courtyard of their keep and wished a bolt of lightning would stairstep down from the roiling heavens to fry him where he walked. She longed to look down on his smoldering ashes, so she could hawk a goodly wad of phlegm on the mess and curse him as he deserved to be cursed. If ever a man had earned a place in hell it was Reynolds Tabor and with any luck at all, he’d find his way there sooner or later.

  “Sooner if I had my druthers,” she mumbled, rubbing the bruises that ran up and down her left arm—bruises that went with the other purple and blue shadows that littered her body.

  Every woman at the keep had reason to hate and fear the laird. Not a one from the age of twelve on up had been spared his rutting or his brutal hand. Seven were pregnant with his seed and another two had just delivered bairns. It was neither a safe nor easy place for the females of County Wicklow to live.

  “Janey died this morn, Lady Alinor.”

  Turning to confront the servant who brought the news, Alinor sighed. It was not unexpected. The child had been little more than a wisp of a thing when Reynolds had forced himself on her a week past, breaking a thin little leg in the process. As undernourished and anemic as the poor thing had been, the lady of the keep was surprised Janey Reid had lasted this long. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise for the fourteen year-old waif. She would join Betta Shaw in the servant’s cemetery.

  “Well, see to her burial,” she told the servant and at the man’s respectful nod, Alinor turned toward the kitchen door. She took stock of the staff as she made her way through the hot room.

  A broken nose for Jenny Regis.

  A black eye for Lila Deal.

  A split lip for Maire Dunlop.

  A concussion for Lizzie MacLeod.

  An arm in a sling for Jessie McFadden.

  Three rounded bellies for Nanceen McKenna and Wilma Gilmore.

  All compliments of the vicious bastard whose bed Alinor had not shared in over three years but who had placed the marks of his drunken abuse upon her two days before. It was not wise—as well she knew—to argue with her husband. He was not of a mind to be challenged, debated, or told he was ever wrong—especially by a woman. Nor did he forgive or forget and because she had dared question his mistreatment of young Kitty Kirkpatrick, his lady-wife had borne heavy fists and vicious feet for her trouble.

  “My lady, will you be breaking your fast this morn?” Ethel McGregor, the chief cook, inquired.

  “Nay,” Alinor said listlessly. “I’ve no stomach for it.” At Ethel’s concerned sigh, the lady of the keep stopped long enough to bestow a brittle smile—the only kind of which she seemed capable of late. “I’ll take soup and a thick slice of your sautéed beef between sourdough bread, though, for the noon meal. Have a glass of milk sent with it and an apple, mayhap a bunch of grapes to tied me over until the evening meal.”

  “Aye, my lady,” Ethel agreed in a relieved voice.

  “And send a basket to Janey’s grandfather. She went on to her reward this day,” Alinor ordered.

  Ethel’s shoulders slumped. “The goddess be good to her,” she said then slapped both flour-caked hands over her mouth, her eyes wide.

  Every hand stilled in the kitchen. Every eye flew to the lady of the keep. Breaths were held. Hearts skipped a beat.

  “I did not hear you say that, Ethel Mae,” Alinor said. “And you had best be grateful he didn’t.”

  Ethel nodded silently, trembling violently, for the mistake she’d just made could have cost her life had it been overheard by one of the keep’s menfolk then reported—as surely would have been—to the laird.

  “Be more careful,” Alinor cautioned. She looked at each woman and girl there. “Each of you. Be very careful.”

  She left the kitchen and slowly, painfully took the servants stairs to the third floor where her personal chambers were located. Reynolds rarely intruded there so she spent as many hours as possible where she neither saw his ugly face nor heard his sarcastic voice. His chambers were on the floor above her so thankfully the thick stone walls and wooden beams kept all but the occasional piercing scream from interfering with her solitude.

  Closing her door—but daring not shoot the bolt for fear Reynolds would take it in his mind to come calling—she went to the fireplace, pushed aside the tapestry hanging beside it and dug her short nails into the borders of a loose stone. Removing the stone, she reached inside the hidey-hole and took out the diary she had been keeping since being brought to Tabor Hill Keep the day after her seventeenth birthday. Replacing the stone, she went to the desk, picked up the inkwell and quill then took the diary with her to the window seat. Setting the inkwell on the window ledge, she slid onto the seat’s thick cushion, drawing her knees up to brace the diary as she wrote.

  “Well, today the poor little sweeting left this ugly world behind. I pray she has found a much better garden in which to work than the one she toiled in here at Tabor Hill. Only She knows all the travails Jenny suffered in this life but at last the wee lass is beyond his reach,” she wrote in her secret language no one save she could decipher. Dipping the quill repeatedly into the black ink of the well, she finished the page relating the poor girl’s demise then lifted the book to her lips to blow the ink dry.

  The first fat drops of water hit the mullioned panes beside her and Alinor turned her face toward the bleak gray light. Closing the diary, she laid her head on the mound of pillows behind her and stared at the water that began to cascade down the glass. She put a finger to one drop and traced its way down the pane until it disappeared.

  “How I wish I were a drop of rain,” she mused aloud. “I could go where I pleased, when I pleased.”

  Being allowed beyond the walls of Tabor Hill was something about which Alinor could only dream. She had not stepped one foot beyond the plank bridge that ended at the portcullis since her wretched Joining to Reynolds Tabor. She had not traveled to the first fair, enjoyed the first outing, nor returned to her family home since that terrible day. She was a virtual prisoner in her husband’s domain and could only be thankful he had yet to see the need to apply the shackles that would make her captivity complete.

  A commotion in the courtyard drew her attention and she leaned forward, placing her forehead on the cold glass so she could see what was happening below. Her forehead creased for there was a massive coach and four sitting in the turnaround before the massive front steps of the keep. Four beautiful black horses were harnessed to a most impressive black coach with two liveried men in black sitting in the driver’s seat. The sight of the unrelieved color sent a shiver down Alinor’s back.

  “Who could it be coming to call upon Lord Tabor?” she asked quietly.

  Visitors were rare at the keep. Personages of importance—and whomever it was inside the coach surely possessed vast wealth from the look of the conveyance and horseflesh—never darkened the door. The laird’s lack of manners and reluctance to offer hospitality played
a great part in the isolation of Tabor Hill.

  Scurrying to her knees for a better look, Alinor dragged her skirts out of the way, laid the diary on the seat and cracked the casement window, pushing it out just enough so she could hear. The cool wash of the cool wind misting her face with droplets of water did not dissuade her from pushing the window open a bit more.

  “Oh, my!” she said as she spied her husband standing beside the coach. The monster was getting soaking wet in the downpour but even so, he had his hat in his hand, bobbing his head of sparse gray hair up and down as he conversed with whoever was inside the coach. Peering closely through the rain, Alinor could see the window of the coach was cracked open.

  “I will see to it, Your Grace! Ye have my word on it!” she heard her husband agree then the coach’s window was closed and the driver snapped the reins to set the perfectly matched animals into motion.

  As the elegant coach arced around the oyster shell drive, the laird of the keep remained where he was until the vehicle had cleared the plank bridge. Slamming his hat atop his head, he strode toward the stables with a heavy tread and drooping shoulders. Whatever task he had been set to accomplish must be important, indeed, if Reynolds intended to ride out in the deluge.

  “May your horse pitch you into a fast-moving stream and the devil drags you under,” Alinor said, sticking her tongue out at her husband’s retreating back as though she was still a teenage miss. When he stopped and spun around—no doubt feeling the hatred she flung his way—she scrambled back lest he see her spying on him.

  Trembling as she stood just beyond the window seat, for the window was still ajar and she knew he could not help but have seen it so, she twisted her hands together, whimpering at the surety of another beating at the hands of her enraged spouse. The last time he’d caught her spying on him, he had taken a quirt to her bare ass and legs and lashed her ‘til the blood ran down her quivering legs.

  “Please, Lady!” she whispered to the only deity she knew might be listening. “Please don’t let him beat me again!”

  A bolt of lightning sizzled through the bleak gray heavens and the crack was loud enough to make Alinor shriek. She covered her ears and ran to her bed, flinging herself upon the satin coverlet as the rumble of thunder that followed shook the windows in their frames. She drew her slender body into a fetal position, burying her face into the softness of the pillow. Shuddering, terrified that at any moment her husband would throw open the door and snatch her up by her long red hair, she laid there barely breathing lest she miss the sound of his plodding steps on the stairs. The moment she heard the loud thumps, she began to whimper.

  The door was thrown open—banging against the wall as the laird of the keep strode into the room.

  “Spying, were ye, ye worthless cunt?” he snarled. “What did I tell ye about that?”

  Alinor heard the tink of metal and knew he was unbuckling his belt. She prayed that meant he would use it on her and not that it signaled he was releasing the monster he kept penned in his britches. The moment his hand closed cruelly on her ankle, and he jerked her half-off the bed—flinging her skirt over her back—she went as cold as stone.

  “I’ll teach ye to disrespect me, ye ugly hag!”

  As she always did, Alinor went somewhere else in her mind as his fingers snagged in her bloomers to rip them from her hips. She grunted as he wedged his loathsome body between her thighs but barely batted an eye as he rammed his filthy, disgusting flesh into her dry sheath. She had learned long ago to distance herself from his rutting. With her hands buried in the coverlet, she endured the painful process and when he was through with her, removed his heavy, rain-soaked body from hers, she stayed where she was until he was at the door.

  “I’ll be gone from the keep for nigh on a week,” he snapped as he readjusted his clothing. “On the prince’s business. My brother, Nigel, will be here in my stead.”

  Alinor cringed at the news for if there was any man she hated more than her husband, it was his younger brother Nigel who used her, as though she was his own.

  “Be good to him, ye useless bitch,” Reynolds said and laughed, knowing full well what would happen when Nigel arrived.

  Waiting until she heard his boot heels thumping on the stairs, she rolled over, dragged herself into the bed and lay there with his slick seed running between her legs.

  “Merciful goddess, help me,” she whispered. “Please, help me. I cannot do this on my own.”

  Another brilliant flash of lightning pulsed at the window, lightning skirled, thunder punctuated the violent burst then the room turned dark as night around Alinor—the light leaching away as though being sucked from her chamber.

  Sitting up, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped her head around. There was nothing but darkness in the room. No light came from the door Reynolds had left standing open. It was as though all luminescence had fled the world.

  “Mo Regina?” she asked quietly for there was but one deity who had the power to turn day into night in an instant.

  A soft, sweet-smelling breeze drifted through the room. The scent of lavender hung in the air.

  “Mo Regina?” Alinor whispered again, her green eyes wide.

  A tiny spark of light blossomed in the heart of the dark hearth then flittered across the room like a firefly. Prism-like colors flashed across the ceiling in small diamond shapes, spun lazily along the crown molding then coalesced into a good-sized ball of slowly spinning light. The revolutions came to a halt. The ball began to elongate until it was a shaft of soft light over six feet in height.

  Mesmerized by the display, Alinor could not tear her gaze from the multi-colored light shaft that hovered just above the carpet. As it began to expand outwards, she drew in a breath and held it for it was fashioning a being with broad shoulders and narrow hips, long legs and powerful arms that lifted away from its body to extend toward her.

  “Alinor…”

  Her name came from the center of what was now a head forming on the torso of the beam of light. It was softly spoken with a deep timbre that made the hair on her arms stir.

  Slowly, the luminosity began to fade until she could see color in the column of light—long black hair woven into a thick braid that hung down a brawny chest; amber eyes that glowed with an inner fire that held her captive in its gaze; a black silk shirt and black leather pants.

  “Alinor,” he whispered again, one hand held out to her. “Come to me, dearling.”

  She did not question the command or the otherworldly nature of her unknown visitor. His face was the most handsome of any man she had ever seen and the gentle smile hovering on his lips put her at ease.

  “Aye, milord,” she said as she moved from the bed.

  Her eyes fused with his, she took the hand he offered—felt the warmth of his flesh—and was pulled into the safety of his strong arms. She closed her eyes as he cupped the back of her head to hold her to his chest.

  “I heard you, my lady,” he said and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head.

  “Protect me?” she pleaded.

  “With all that I am,” he answered. “You and yours for eternity. You were chosen for me.”

  She looked up into his chiseled features, the gleaming golden eyes.

  “Who are you?”

  “Who would you have me to be?” he asked.

  Alinor put a hand to his chest and felt giddy from the feel of hard, solid muscle beneath her palm. She thought of all the wistful dreams she’d had of a gallant rescuer coming to take her from Reynolds Tabor.

  “My savior,” she said without hesitation. “My friend. My lover.”

  “Your lover I will be,” he said. He crooked his index finger beneath her chin then lowered his head to touch his lips to hers. The kiss was soft, sweet, and fleeting before he raised his head. “There is but one small matter.”

  “Anything,” she swore.

  He brought her wrist to his mouth and nipped at the fle
sh, drawing blood. Alinor winced, looking down at the crimson stain on her flesh.

  “You must swear yourself and yours to me for all time,” he said. “I must have your seal in blood and when it is done, you will never again know the troubles of your past. I will right your wrongs. I will attend to your enemies. I will set your world to rights but you must join the Sisterhood, as all your serving women must. You must learn the ways of the Sisterhood and you must never deny me what is mine.”

  Alinor would have done anything to be free of her husband and those of his kin. She nodded eagerly, swearing to do whatever it took although she had no notion what the Sisterhood was.

  “I am yours,” she said, then shook her head. “We are yours. Tell me what we must do to remain so.”

  From the depths of the room a thick leather bound book appeared, floating toward them as though carried by unseen hands.

  “Sign your names in your own blood,” he instructed and when she did, he bit his own wrist, dipped a finger in the blood then scrawled his name in the Book. She looked down. His name was emblazoned in his own blood—Chrystian Brell—for just a moment before the Book dissolved.

  “What are you?” she asked. “Did the Triune goddess send you?”

  He smiled and the gleam of his white teeth looked predatory.

  “Nay, my lady, She did not. Another did. I have been indentured to the womenfolk of your family for as long as there is time in the megaverse. I was created just for you and yours and you will have the first use of me.”

  He backed her toward the bed—the evidence of a thick, hard erection pressing against her belly. Scooping her up in his arms, he laid her down and in the blink of an eye her clothes disappeared and his, as well, simply vanished. As he stretched out his muscled body atop her, nudged her thighs apart with his knees, Alinor wrapped her arms around him.

  “Love me, Chrysty,” she whispered against his ear.

  “Always,” he replied, sliding his cock deep inside her aching channel. “The Nightwind will always be here for you and yours. I ask but one thing of you.”