Lost In Flames
Book Two
A Goddess Within Series
Cali has lived for thousands of years and guarded her heart for her entire life. There has never been a man Demon or otherwise in three thousand years that could brave her rage and conquer her soul. Until she meets Erenkai. Dedicated to peace he wages a war she has no way to understand, or withstand. A war for her heart. A war she finds she wants him to win.
Excerpt From Book
Chapter One
Erenkai sank beneath the hot water of the pool and let it drain away the tension he had felt building up in his muscles over the last two days. Rising to the surface he slicked his hands over the angular planes of his face, the knuckles abraded and sore. He gingerly touched the shallow cut ran along the top of his cheek and grimaced ruefully. He was getting slow. It had been years since any that had come to challenge him had drawn blood. As he rinsed the demon’s blood from his arms and chest he tried to believe it was because this one had been fiercer than most, more adept with blade and mace. But he knew better. His eyes saw deeper into his own soul then the souls that came to challenge him. He had fought too many battles over a concept that no one believed in anymore - unless he made them believe. He’d been trying to fight a deathless war for as long as he had been a man – close to three hundred years, a war that had become increasingly difficult to continue - given the circumstances. So he had become thoughtful and meticulous, for it is said that peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict, and since he was neither passive nor insanely aggressive, he had become very creative indeed.
The fact that he was a lodestone for the most violent and terrifying members of society at large helped create the urgency to innovate. Because frankly getting cut to ribbons or dying would truly suck. And the time was long since past where he had to seek them out, even if he had wanted to anymore. As his power had grown they had begun to come to him, either unable to resist the lure of destroying a being counted as unassailable or as if some of them longed deep within their souls for the absolution they thought he would grant them.
Absolution wasn’t quite what they all seemed to think it was though.
If they could stand against him and prevail for at least a time, he would grant them destruction – of a kind.
They might even thank him for it later. Some did.
Even coming here was a trial of it’s own, as the mountain ate the weak, unwary or undetermined. The traps and pitfalls felled the stupid. And as the mountain's victims were just that - their deaths did not haunt his consciousness, nor count against his soul. The spirit of the mountain had it’s own way of keeping the balance, as did he.
In the meantime he had to pick a name for the latest convert. Fingering his sore cheekbone for a moment he entertained the possibility of saddling him with something truly horrendous like Dilbert or Dickhead, but he’d grown out of that phase years ago, mainly because of the sorrowful looks he had been subjected to on the few occasions that he had been unable to resist the impulse. A name once given could not be revoked, and should bespeak how the Converted would live their lives from hence forward. Assh, one of his earlier members, had determined to live up to his name, at least as far as being a pain in his.
Absalom would do nicely for this one, for his soul had been seeking absolution rather than conquest and glory. You could always tell the ones that actually wanted to be stopped. They tried the hardest to kill you, quietly determined to make it count and to make you work for it - thinking perhaps the harder they were to kill the likelier it was that their souls would find peace from the violence of their actions while they had lived. But death is not what he had to give, and forgetting was something he would not allow. The creatures that came here should always remember the faces of those that had died by their hands.
They would always remember for with Peace comes Sorrow.
Part of what he changed was the reactions and feelings invoked by those memories, so that the path they walked was a purer state of mind, with a greater disposition towards benevolence, calmness and justice. There had been a holy man named Gandhi before The Fall who had eloquently portrayed his feelings almost dead on.
Like him he refused to accept the conclusion that man is mere flotsam and trash on the river of life, unable to influence the enfolding of the events that surround him. The idea that man was so tragically bound into the endless starless night of war and hatred that the bright light of peace and brotherhood might never come to be caused him to continue his fruitless quest. The knowledge that even a few of those who came here would go on to influence the world around them with open souls and fierce hearts gave him hope for the future. Just not for his.
His future had been laid out for him in the first dream more than two hundred years ago. He didn’t know whether he longed for them or dreaded them anymore. With each new Convert, each battle won – he was cursed or blessed with a glimpse of the one who haunted him. As each symbol carved itself onto the muscular length of his arms in fiery pain, so was his mind engraved with the image of a raging she-demon bathed in blood and steeped in sensuality. The glimpses were only made more tantalizing and horrifying by their ambiguity. The violence of the scenes caused his brain to trample towards search and destroy mode. But the shear heat of her all too knowing gaze and the overwhelmingly luscious curves of her body had a totally different reaction raging through his body. Thus, he was very careful not to convert more than one or two challengers in a day. The resulting visions were both physically demanding and psychically overwhelming.
Hence the downtime spent soaking in the hot springs located in the central courtyard of the renovated and modernized monastery, despite the ribbing he took from the older and more confident members of the all male community. Assh especially. While some of the men respected his need for solitude and relaxation after a battle Assh had always been determined to display his stellar personality in grating and often scathing ways – a trait that both secretly amused and exasperated Erenkai.
He won’t acknowledge it to his face, but he counted Assh as his friend, although he had never been truly sure if Assh felt the same way, or just hated him enough to find little ways to tear him up. He'd probably never figure it out. But until then he’d soak up the tranquil sanctuary provided by the spring. Leaning his head back against the rounded side of the pool he watched the steam rise up into the air and veil the brilliant stars in a diaphanous veil. Taking a deep breath he centered himself and truly relaxed,
When he heard the first sound of a stealthily placed footfall on the cedar decking he sighed as he kissed goodbye to the quiet. But the sound wasn’t repeated. Instead an expectant and malignant hush crept into the night air. A taint entered the water and slithered along the surface like a viscous oil slick. It was a feeling only he could detect. A warning he had never been fool enough to ignore more than once. He slid his hand casually along the side of the pool until his fingers rested on the ever-present stave. A mock sword made of tightly bundled bamboo; it was hard as iron and capable of inflicting significant damage. But without a killing edge at hand he was also less likely to accidentally kill his foes. An attitude he was sure the assassins who had silently slipped into the large pool did not share or appreciate.
There were two of them. He could feel the ebb and floe of the ripples in the water hit against his skin in a contradictory pattern. The hatred and anticipation felt by the assassins bathed the shields he had placed on his mind with a ruddy and malicious glare. Slitting his eyes open a fraction he scanned the surface of the water studiously, only to find it empty. They were under the surface then, and very, very good. Had he not been tired and cranky he might have relished the challenge his attackers presented and anticipated the impending arrival of such talent into his community. As it stood, he was biting back his impatience ruthlessly. An impatient man tends to make fatal mistakes and he had found that his patience level was directly proportional to how much blood he shed in battle.
His challengers might thank him for that later, besides blood and gore is so hard to fish out of the spring and he wanted to get back to his bath.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he found himself disturbed that that was the most important thing to him right now. Not fear for his life, or satisfaction of being able to bring two more into the fold - but annoyance that his bath time had been interrupted. A sad and sorry statement of how little he had in his life that was purely for him and not tied into his endless quest. And how precious these few moments had become in the battle to retain his focus and determination.
Off to his left in the lea of a rock outcropping a low profile shape broached the surface for the barest instant and since he was tuned for it, he could barely hear the fugitive inhalation before the shape once more disappeared below the surface. Not a water breather then, not that he had expected one of those this high in the mountains. The altitude and thin air played havoc with their lungs. Off to his right the same action was repeated a couple of seconds later. They were trying to flank him. The second would be positioned to take him out a few seconds after the first revealed himself. He doubted either of them was stupid enough to think they could take him in a standup fight. Not even with two of them. His reputation as being undefeatable had been earned the hard way.
Deciding to confuse matters a little and bring this to a quicker resolution, Erenkai eased his stave into the water and disappeared beneath its steamy surface without a splash or ripple to betray his movement. In the still night air only water vapor rose to the surface, creating ghostly fingers of steam that rose into the air as if reaching for the full moon. Eeling across the bottom of the pool with sensuous grace, Erenkai arrowed towards the first attacker - a barely discernible presence in the dark water. On home ground, he knew every contour of the pool bottom and used the natural rock formations to break up the lines of his silloutte, effectively blinding his target to his presence. It was only a matter of seconds before he was on him. Planting his feet on the bottom he surged towards the surface, using the momentum and the force of his own body weight to lend a blow of incredible force propelled directly into the man’s solar plexis. While the target tried twisting to one side at the last moment as he caught the updraft of displaced water caused my Erenkai’s sudden movement, it did him no good. The blow landed solidly enough to crack his ribs and force all the air from his lungs with concussive force. Even still the knife that sliced through the water in Erenkai’s direction passed within a hair length of his face as the assailant struggled to both fend of further blows and to get his head above the surface to refill his lungs. Instead he found himself yanked to the very bottom of the pool as a rock hard grip grasped his knife hand, and twisted his body below the surface. Already suffering, the closed fist blow to his temple knocked him out cold.
He never even felt the helping hand that dragged him to the edge and turned him over to wedge his head into a crack to keep him from sinking back below the surface and drowning. However that consideration cost Erenkai valuable seconds, and the second attacker was not taken unaware. Tipped off by the turbulence in the water, he had surged across the pool and was closing in on Erenkai’s exposed back, when an arrow hummed though the air, taking him high in the shoulder and arresting his motion decisively. As Erenkai turned to assess the new threat he barked a laugh to see Assh standing at the side of the pool naked as the day his was born, with his bow already strung with the next arrow, aimed right for his chest.
“You could have saved yourself the trouble and just let him gut me. Geez man - my eyes are bleeding … couldn’t you have put something on? …. Anything!” he asked mock plaintively.
“Then I’d have to drag three bodies from the pool – now I don’t have to do shit. You can clean up after yourself.”
“Asshole.” Erenkai stated ruefully, shaking his head as he cold-cocked the gasping and swearing man writhing in the pool with an arrow imbedded deep into his chest. In the welcomed silence that followed. Assh’s sarcastic reply echoed across the claming waters of the pool.
“So you have named me, I just strive to follow the path such a name bequeaths.”
“Believe me, your naming has been a source of much regret, mainly for the grief I have had to listen to for years as a result. But still … I have found the name to be rather apt.”
“I live to please. And as for regret – well I believe I have definitely come to regret pissing you off enough to cause its bestowal.”
Assh slowly lowered his weapon and relaxed out of battle stance, which of course only served to bring all of his bod out for display. A fact that Erenkai was studiously ignoring. It never paid to let Assh know you were uncomfortable in any way. He'd be walking around naked all the time if he thought is would put a burr up Erenkai's ass. He was thoughtful that way.
“Hey – you reap what you sow. Are you going to help me drag these guys out of the water?” Erenkai was tired of cleaning up after challenges today and this evenings new double whammy was going to come at a hell of a cost.
“Nope – I’m naked. I ain’t getting into a pool with three men with no clothes on. Clean up your own mess. I’m going to bed.”
“You’re all heart Assh – you know that.”
As the big man slung the bow across a shoulder nonchalantly and turned to head back towards his room, he fired a final parting remark over his shoulder that had Erenkai laughing ruefully.
“Saved your ass didn’t I? Only one good deed a day bro. I’m all out! Oh and by the way… You’re welcome!”
Erenkai sank beneath the hot water of the pool and let it drain away the tension he had felt building up in his muscles over the last two days. Rising to the surface he slicked his hands over the angular planes of his face, the knuckles abraded and sore. He gingerly touched the shallow cut ran along the top of his cheek and grimaced ruefully. He was getting slow. It had been years since any that had come to challenge him had drawn blood. As he rinsed the demon’s blood from his arms and chest he tried to believe it was because this one had been fiercer than most, more adept with blade and mace. But he knew better. His eyes saw deeper into his own soul then the souls that came to challenge him. He had fought too many battles over a concept that no one believed in anymore - unless he made them believe. He’d been trying to fight a deathless war for as long as he had been a man – close to three hundred years, a war that had become increasingly difficult to continue - given the circumstances. So he had become thoughtful and meticulous, for it is said that peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict, and since he was neither passive nor insanely aggressive, he had become very creative indeed.
The fact that he was a lodestone for the most violent and terrifying members of society at large helped create the urgency to innovate. Because frankly getting cut to ribbons or dying would truly suck. And the time was long since past where he had to seek them out, even if he had wanted to anymore. As his power had grown they had begun to come to him, either unable to resist the lure of destroying a being counted as unassailable or as if some of them longed deep within their souls for the absolution they thought he would grant them.
Absolution wasn’t quite what they all seemed to think it was though.
If they could stand against him and prevail for at least a time, he would grant them destruction – of a kind.
They might even thank him for it later. Some did.
Even coming here was a trial of it’s own, as the mountain ate the weak, unwary or undetermined. The traps and pitfalls felled the stupid. And as the mountain's victims were just that - their deaths did not haunt his consciousness, nor count against his soul. The spirit of the mountain had it’s own way of keeping the balance, as did he.
In the meantime he had to pick a name for the latest convert. Fingering his sore cheekbone for a moment he entertained the possibility of saddling him with something truly horrendous like Dilbert or Dickhead, but he’d grown out of that phase years ago, mainly because of the sorrowful looks he had been subjected to on the few occasions that he had been unable to resist the impulse. A name once given could not be revoked, and should bespeak how the Converted would live their lives from hence forward. Assh, one of his earlier members, had determined to live up to his name, at least as far as being a pain in his.
Absalom would do nicely for this one, for his soul had been seeking absolution rather than conquest and glory. You could always tell the ones that actually wanted to be stopped. They tried the hardest to kill you, quietly determined to make it count and to make you work for it - thinking perhaps the harder they were to kill the likelier it was that their souls would find peace from the violence of their actions while they had lived. But death is not what he had to give, and forgetting was something he would not allow. The creatures that came here should always remember the faces of those that had died by their hands.
They would always remember for with Peace comes Sorrow.
Part of what he changed was the reactions and feelings invoked by those memories, so that the path they walked was a purer state of mind, with a greater disposition towards benevolence, calmness and justice. There had been a holy man named Gandhi before The Fall who had eloquently portrayed his feelings almost dead on.
Like him he refused to accept the conclusion that man is mere flotsam and trash on the river of life, unable to influence the enfolding of the events that surround him. The idea that man was so tragically bound into the endless starless night of war and hatred that the bright light of peace and brotherhood might never come to be caused him to continue his fruitless quest. The knowledge that even a few of those who came here would go on to influence the world around them with open souls and fierce hearts gave him hope for the future. Just not for his.
His future had been laid out for him in the first dream more than two hundred years ago. He didn’t know whether he longed for them or dreaded them anymore. With each new Convert, each battle won – he was cursed or blessed with a glimpse of the one who haunted him. As each symbol carved itself onto the muscular length of his arms in fiery pain, so was his mind engraved with the image of a raging she-demon bathed in blood and steeped in sensuality. The glimpses were only made more tantalizing and horrifying by their ambiguity. The violence of the scenes caused his brain to trample towards search and destroy mode. But the shear heat of her all too knowing gaze and the overwhelmingly luscious curves of her body had a totally different reaction raging through his body. Thus, he was very careful not to convert more than one or two challengers in a day. The resulting visions were both physically demanding and psychically overwhelming.
Hence the downtime spent soaking in the hot springs located in the central courtyard of the renovated and modernized monastery, despite the ribbing he took from the older and more confident members of the all male community. Assh especially. While some of the men respected his need for solitude and relaxation after a battle Assh had always been determined to display his stellar personality in grating and often scathing ways – a trait that both secretly amused and exasperated Erenkai.
He won’t acknowledge it to his face, but he counted Assh as his friend, although he had never been truly sure if Assh felt the same way, or just hated him enough to find little ways to tear him up. He'd probably never figure it out. But until then he’d soak up the tranquil sanctuary provided by the spring. Leaning his head back against the rounded side of the pool he watched the steam rise up into the air and veil the brilliant stars in a diaphanous veil. Taking a deep breath he centered himself and truly relaxed,
When he heard the first sound of a stealthily placed footfall on the cedar decking he sighed as he kissed goodbye to the quiet. But the sound wasn’t repeated. Instead an expectant and malignant hush crept into the night air. A taint entered the water and slithered along the surface like a viscous oil slick. It was a feeling only he could detect. A warning he had never been fool enough to ignore more than once. He slid his hand casually along the side of the pool until his fingers rested on the ever-present stave. A mock sword made of tightly bundled bamboo; it was hard as iron and capable of inflicting significant damage. But without a killing edge at hand he was also less likely to accidentally kill his foes. An attitude he was sure the assassins who had silently slipped into the large pool did not share or appreciate.
There were two of them. He could feel the ebb and floe of the ripples in the water hit against his skin in a contradictory pattern. The hatred and anticipation felt by the assassins bathed the shields he had placed on his mind with a ruddy and malicious glare. Slitting his eyes open a fraction he scanned the surface of the water studiously, only to find it empty. They were under the surface then, and very, very good. Had he not been tired and cranky he might have relished the challenge his attackers presented and anticipated the impending arrival of such talent into his community. As it stood, he was biting back his impatience ruthlessly. An impatient man tends to make fatal mistakes and he had found that his patience level was directly proportional to how much blood he shed in battle.
His challengers might thank him for that later, besides blood and gore is so hard to fish out of the spring and he wanted to get back to his bath.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he found himself disturbed that that was the most important thing to him right now. Not fear for his life, or satisfaction of being able to bring two more into the fold - but annoyance that his bath time had been interrupted. A sad and sorry statement of how little he had in his life that was purely for him and not tied into his endless quest. And how precious these few moments had become in the battle to retain his focus and determination.
Off to his left in the lea of a rock outcropping a low profile shape broached the surface for the barest instant and since he was tuned for it, he could barely hear the fugitive inhalation before the shape once more disappeared below the surface. Not a water breather then, not that he had expected one of those this high in the mountains. The altitude and thin air played havoc with their lungs. Off to his right the same action was repeated a couple of seconds later. They were trying to flank him. The second would be positioned to take him out a few seconds after the first revealed himself. He doubted either of them was stupid enough to think they could take him in a standup fight. Not even with two of them. His reputation as being undefeatable had been earned the hard way.
Deciding to confuse matters a little and bring this to a quicker resolution, Erenkai eased his stave into the water and disappeared beneath its steamy surface without a splash or ripple to betray his movement. In the still night air only water vapor rose to the surface, creating ghostly fingers of steam that rose into the air as if reaching for the full moon. Eeling across the bottom of the pool with sensuous grace, Erenkai arrowed towards the first attacker - a barely discernible presence in the dark water. On home ground, he knew every contour of the pool bottom and used the natural rock formations to break up the lines of his silloutte, effectively blinding his target to his presence. It was only a matter of seconds before he was on him. Planting his feet on the bottom he surged towards the surface, using the momentum and the force of his own body weight to lend a blow of incredible force propelled directly into the man’s solar plexis. While the target tried twisting to one side at the last moment as he caught the updraft of displaced water caused my Erenkai’s sudden movement, it did him no good. The blow landed solidly enough to crack his ribs and force all the air from his lungs with concussive force. Even still the knife that sliced through the water in Erenkai’s direction passed within a hair length of his face as the assailant struggled to both fend of further blows and to get his head above the surface to refill his lungs. Instead he found himself yanked to the very bottom of the pool as a rock hard grip grasped his knife hand, and twisted his body below the surface. Already suffering, the closed fist blow to his temple knocked him out cold.
He never even felt the helping hand that dragged him to the edge and turned him over to wedge his head into a crack to keep him from sinking back below the surface and drowning. However that consideration cost Erenkai valuable seconds, and the second attacker was not taken unaware. Tipped off by the turbulence in the water, he had surged across the pool and was closing in on Erenkai’s exposed back, when an arrow hummed though the air, taking him high in the shoulder and arresting his motion decisively. As Erenkai turned to assess the new threat he barked a laugh to see Assh standing at the side of the pool naked as the day his was born, with his bow already strung with the next arrow, aimed right for his chest.
“You could have saved yourself the trouble and just let him gut me. Geez man - my eyes are bleeding … couldn’t you have put something on? …. Anything!” he asked mock plaintively.
“Then I’d have to drag three bodies from the pool – now I don’t have to do shit. You can clean up after yourself.”
“Asshole.” Erenkai stated ruefully, shaking his head as he cold-cocked the gasping and swearing man writhing in the pool with an arrow imbedded deep into his chest. In the welcomed silence that followed. Assh’s sarcastic reply echoed across the claming waters of the pool.
“So you have named me, I just strive to follow the path such a name bequeaths.”
“Believe me, your naming has been a source of much regret, mainly for the grief I have had to listen to for years as a result. But still … I have found the name to be rather apt.”
“I live to please. And as for regret – well I believe I have definitely come to regret pissing you off enough to cause its bestowal.”
Assh slowly lowered his weapon and relaxed out of battle stance, which of course only served to bring all of his bod out for display. A fact that Erenkai was studiously ignoring. It never paid to let Assh know you were uncomfortable in any way. He'd be walking around naked all the time if he thought is would put a burr up Erenkai's ass. He was thoughtful that way.
“Hey – you reap what you sow. Are you going to help me drag these guys out of the water?” Erenkai was tired of cleaning up after challenges today and this evenings new double whammy was going to come at a hell of a cost.
“Nope – I’m naked. I ain’t getting into a pool with three men with no clothes on. Clean up your own mess. I’m going to bed.”
“You’re all heart Assh – you know that.”
As the big man slung the bow across a shoulder nonchalantly and turned to head back towards his room, he fired a final parting remark over his shoulder that had Erenkai laughing ruefully.
“Saved your ass didn’t I? Only one good deed a day bro. I’m all out! Oh and by the way… You’re welcome!”
** Above material and ideas are copyrighted 2009. All rights reserved by Heather Beckett
***I do not own the image I have used for the cover - it is temporary until book is published. Leave me a note if this is your image. Thanks.
***I do not own the image I have used for the cover - it is temporary until book is published. Leave me a note if this is your image. Thanks.
