Authors: DelSheree Gladden
Tags: #romance, #soul mate, #destiny, #fantasy, #magic, #myth, #native american, #legend, #fate, #hero, #soul mates, #native american mythology, #claire, #twin souls, #twin soul, #tewa indian, #matwau, #uriah, #tewa
Qaletaqa
Book Three of the Twin Souls Saga
by
DelSheree Gladden
Smashwords Edition
*****
Published by
DelSheree Gladden on Smashwords
Qaletaqa
Book Three of the Twin Souls Saga
Copyright 2011 DelSheree Gladden
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Also by DelSheree Gladden:
Escaping Fate
Twin Souls
Book One of the Twin Souls Saga
Qaletaqa
Book Three of the Twin Souls Saga
Inquest
Book One of the Destroyer Trilogy
Coming September 2012
For Everett and Abbey
Sneak Peek of INQUEST: Book One of The Destroyer
Trilogy
I knew I was screaming. I could hear everyone
else screaming, but my body kept moving, hurtling me to the
Matwau’s side. My legs felt nothing. They pumped underneath me.
Independent of any thought, they carried me toward her. I felt her
heart beating in time with mine. Our eyes locked as she tried to
run, but a great clawed hand swept in between us. Pain exploded
across my chest and arm, but it was not mine. My legs wobbled as I
saw her fall.
“Uriah, she’s dying! You have to help
her.”
My breathing became labored as I tried to
crawl over to her. I was shaking so hard I could barely form the
word. “How?”
“You have to form the bond,” Claire said.
“You have to touch her. The bond can heal anything. You know it
can. You saw it happen with Daniel.”
“No, not that. Please. I can’t,” I cried. I
had come so far. I had saved Claire’s life by finding her Twin
Soul. I had given my own blood in an attempt to save her again, and
save myself from a life of despair. I had given so much already. It
was just too much to ask me to do this too. I wanted to go home.
With Claire. Go home to my mom and my ranch and live my life. I
didn’t want to touch her and seal my fate. There had to be another
way.
As she watched her mother’s maroon sedan
drive away from her home, she waved, completely unaware of the
monster lurking in the woods. He could have kept it that way,
attacked her without ever giving her a hint of his intentions, but
that wouldn’t have been any fun for him. The Matwau purposely
planted his foot on a fallen twig. His weight snapped it easily. As
he hoped, the noise caught the girl’s attention and she turned to
look in his direction.
The smile that spread across his mouth was in
direct contradiction to the growl that rose in his throat. It was a
deep sound, the kind that slipped under the skin and burrowed into
the bone in a disquieting invasion. The girl felt it, flinching and
taking a step back toward her house. The Matwau took another step,
and another, the noises widening her eyes and harrying her retreat.
He couldn’t let her get too far away, though. Just as her hand
touched the door, he stepped out of the trees and into plain
view.
Her hand paused in the middle of turning the
doorknob. Confusion mingled with her fear at the sight of a
well-dressed man standing in her driveway. For a moment that was
all he did. His eyes held hers in a way that made her shiver.
“Can I…help you?” she asked. The slight
tremor of fear in her voice was delicious. The Matwau’s skin
tingled with excitement. He did not respond. Instead, he started
taking slow steps toward her. Her green eyes grew even wider as she
fumbled with the door. He let her open it a few inches before
turning his measured approach into an all-out sprint.
Her crystalline voice cried out in shock when
he was suddenly right next to her, pressing her against the
doorframe and smiling as he savored the taste of capturing his
greatest victim yet. Her lips quivered in terror and he loved it.
He slid a hand up to her throat and squeezed. The girl’s scream
pierced the air and the Matwau laughed because he knew there was no
one around to hear her. He saw the realization dawn in her eyes,
and took great pleasure in hearing her scream turn into a
whimper.
It was a moment so sweet and satisfying that
he could barely control his desire to take her life one bit at a
time right there on the doorstep. Her luscious skin would melt like
warm chocolate under his torture. The Matwau’s eyes closed, both to
calm his desires and mentally indulge in them for a brief
second.
Pain suddenly blossomed across his jaw,
stabbing deep into wounds that had yet to heal. His vision
blackened under the onslaught. He could not control the sudden
weakness in his body. His fingers lost their hold and the girl spun
away from him and into the house. The Matwau could hear her running
from him, crashing through the rooms. She was clearly panicked, but
the Matwau simply took a moment to stifle the pain and regain his
control before stalking after her.
She sat on the couch a few minutes later,
pitched slightly forward with her hands tied behind her back. Her
auburn hair had slipped over her shoulders, hanging against the
sides of her pale face. The duct tape stood out sharply against her
skin. Glowering at her captor, she never took her eyes off him. The
Matwau smirked at her defiance. The girl had surprised him with her
attack and even managed to elude him for several minutes. It
shouldn’t have surprised him, given whose Twin Soul she was, but in
the end it did not matter. Even her surprising strength and
tenacity was not enough to beat him.
She had shouted questions at him as he
secured her, trying to draw out useful information. He refused to
speak even a single word to her. She finally gave up, settling her
angry glare on him instead. The Matwau watched her carefully. It
was a new experience for him, holding a captive. He was not
entirely sure how to proceed. That was also new. For centuries the
Matwau had been the ultimate weapon, the infinite hunter. Weakness,
fear, and indecision had never before been a part of his
existence.
First to reach him had been the fear, and
then he found out he was indeed capable of experiencing weakness.
Staring at the girl, he now knew indecision. Should he hold her in
the little house, or move her? He was not worried about Uriah
showing up unannounced, he knew exactly how far away Uriah was, but
any other human could walk up to the house at any moment. The
Matwau could feel the link that formed between Uriah and the girl,
but he did not understand exactly how it would work in such a
strange situation.
The exact location for his last battle with
Uriah had already been chosen. All the Matwau needed was to lead
Uriah to that spot. Slowly. Moving slowly was the key. If the
Matwau raced ahead too quickly, Uriah might follow at his usual
furious pace and reach the meeting place before everything was
prepared. The Matwau would wait. He would wait long enough to make
sure Uriah found the little house. If Uriah found the little house,
he would be drawn in by the chance to learn about the girl. That
would give the Matwau the chance to move along his path unheeded
and make the necessary preparations.
Glancing back at the girl, he smiled
pleasantly. The shock on her face lasted only a brief second before
her anger settled back in, deeper than before.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
His smile widened. “Nothing.”
Confusion swept over her face.
It was true, in a way. If everything went as
planned, he would require nothing more of the girl than her
presence. Killing her was a last resort.
“Why are you doing this?” the girl asked. “I
have nothing, no money, no jewelry. Please just leave me
alone.”
The Matwau almost laughed. He had tied her up
and left her sitting on the couch while he thought. Why would she
think that he was trying to rob her? He could have taken her
possessions long ago and been far away from policing eyes. No sane
burglar would simply sit around waiting for the cops, or some poor
passerby, to find him. The girl was most likely very intelligent,
but her assumption made no sense. The human mind had always been a
puzzle to him.
“Why are you doing this?” the girl asked. Her
voice was rising in pitch with every question. She was struggling
to hold onto her anger, the only thing keeping away her fear.
“I am not here to steal your
possessions.”
“Then what do you want?” she pleaded.
“I want you, nothing more.”
Her anger was gone. Terror oozed from every
inch of her body as the implications of the Matwau’s words swam
through her mind. At last, he thought. Terror was something he knew
all too well. The Matwau could exploit fear in all its forms, the
stronger, the better. Perhaps she would not be as difficult to
control as he had thought.
The farthest I had ever been into Colorado
was to the San Juan Mountain range near Durango. I had visited
those mountains once to go elk hunting with my dad when I was
fourteen. I was hours, and hundreds of miles, past that mountain
range. The white on green highway sign spelled out the mileage to
the next four towns. Salida was the closest, and only thirty-five
miles away.
It had taken much longer for the landscape to
turn into what I thought Colorado should have looked like, but
eventually the desert sands and low scrub brush had given way to
the lush green ground cover and towering pines of the forest. The
change in scenery was a relief. I loved the deserts of New Mexico,
the land where I had spent my childhood, but a change in scenery
meant progress. I was moving closer to her.
It was painful to even think about the woman
I was moving toward when the woman I was desperate to be with,
Claire Brant, was left behind in my home town of San Juan Pueblo.
The woman I was desperate to save was my Twin Soul, the other half
of my true soul, separated from me before birth. For days I had
tried to keep this woman from my thoughts, succeeding until the
stab of pain and fear had told me that she had been captured by the
Matwau. Ever since, I couldn’t force her out of my head no matter
how hard I tried. The incessant pulse of the Twin Soul bond pulled
me toward her.