Annie Windsor - Earthwork

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Annie Windsor - Earthwork, ELLORA'S CAVE (Maykelll)
 
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Earthwork
Annie Windsor
Prologue
Northwestland, Post-Uprising
Year 2800
“It goes poorly on the Volcanic Rim.” Kiko Lesia quickened her stride toward the Council chamber as
the sun sank behind the capitol city of the former North American continent, now called Northwestland.
Dram Wolfel easily kept up with Council Chair Lesia. Kik was a small woman, but her speed and fluid
grace were legendary, like her skills with the bow and blade. Her intelligence and foresight impressed the
leaders of coven and tribe alike, and there was talk of Southwestland asking for her leadership as well.
Wytch-Native hybrids were rare, but Kik had a powerful Wiccan mother and an equally formidable
father from the central tribes. Just like Dram Wolfel. Just like most of the Warriors of Áis, who led the
defeat of the Technocrats in the last uprising.
“The Northeastlanders can’t take care of this?” he asked respectfully but forcefully. “Or the
Southeastlanders?”
Kik shook her head, her long black hair falling loose about her shoulders. “The Rim is too remote, and
too well-fortified. There’s something unusual about the facility there. Akaroa is a military compound, I’m
certain, much like the others we’ve destroyed, but this one…”
She trailed off, leaving Wolfel with distinct unease. He waited, still matching her stride without effort, a
feat most could not accomplish. Finally she took a breath and continued. “There’s an energy to it. I’ve
tried to scan it with my mind. Hell, we’ve even tried as a group. The shamans, the high priests and
priestesses—from a distance or right up close—we can’t break through.”
Now Wolfel felt the familiar cold pain in his gut.
Dark magik. There was no other explanation. No amount of science could stand against the energies of
the Earth and the combined talents of the Earthworkers. The Rim had to be infested with a perversion of
the natural, headed by a shaman or priest familiar with the twisted workings of disease and necromancy.
The scars crisscrossing Wolfel’s chest and back began to throb.
Not again. But he knew he would be called to go. And he would go, without question or hesitation.
Gods. Goddess. Please, not again.
His jaw clenched against the pain even as Kik said, almost conversationally, “Of course we need you.
We need all the Warriors, but I think we need something more, too.”
 Wolfel’s unease increased tenfold even as his over-alert mind guessed at her next words.
“We need the woman, I think. Keli Dunkirk. She is very powerful.”
“She isn’t trained in fighting.” Wolfel stiffened, realizing he was talking through his teeth, unable to relax
enough to stop it. “She’s a healer by nature.”
“She’s powerful. Far beyond anything we’ve dealt with before.” Kik stopped short in front of the
wooden Council chamber door. “If the two of you were bonded, if you could work as a unit—”
“Don’t ask me to bed her just to use her, Kik.” Gods, but his jaws hurt now. His temples throbbed in
time with his scars.
Kik laughed, making Wolfel clench his jaws even harder. “I’m asking you to bed her because you want
her. And then I’ll ask the two of you to go to the Rim.”
“She’s a student.”
“She’s a woman, and next moon, she’ll have completed her graduate studies.”
“Who says I want her?” he growled, hating the telltale husk in his voice—and his rapidly stiffening cock.
Just the thought of Keli Dunkirk could do that to him, which made him almost as furious as Kik’s flippant
attitude.
“Don’t make me laugh again.” Kik patted Wolfel’s shoulder like an older sister. “And don’t keep me
waiting long. There’s something wicked on that Rim, something foul and dangerous. We need to put an
end to it.”
And with that, Kik turned and headed into the Council chamber, leaving Dram Wolfel to grind his teeth.
Chapter One
Sun came to Midnight Bayou mostly in the afternoon, but it always came hard. Even in summer’s trailing
days, in the weeks leading up to Lammas and the Graduation Festival, the hand-hewn rooms of Stonefall
felt more like slow cookers than classrooms. Outside the academy’s sturdy walls, natural shade gardens
sloped into clutches of pine and cypress surrounded by endless pools of oil-blackened water.
Mosquitoes set up a constant thrum, kept at bay by a thick curtain of mosquito bane and ever-smoking
oil pots—rosemary, lemongrass, peppermint, cedar, clove, and geranium.
Keli Dunkirk, born and raised in the bustling mid-continent region, always thought the Bayou was too
quiet in the day and too noisy at night. And given that her former home was located in what used to be
Colorado, she found Midnight Bayou much too hot for her tastes.
The weather, at least.
The instructors were a different story.
She shifted in her desk and gazed at the front of the empty classroom. Dram Wolfel looked like a carved
 statue behind his desk. He sat, head down, studying examination slates as if they contained the mysteries
of the universe. The scratches of his chalk filled the empty history classroom. To Keli, the last wytch yet
working on her instructor’s certification exam, each noise sparked like lightning across a heat-stilled
meadow. Each motion echoed like thunder against rock floors and stone walls.
It
was
hot. Goddess, was it ever hot in Midnight Bayou. Keli imagined the entire state felt like a high
plateau in hell—and staring at Dram Wolfel didn’t help the situation.
Hades. She tugged at the collar of her blue robe. Of course, true wytches don’t believe in Hades…
but
there are those who would argue that I’m anything but a true wytch
.
The Council had approved her over heavy objections, with a nearly balanced vote only one yea in her
favor. She was the oldest novitiate ever called to practice Earthwork, and many Council members still
believed she should have been excluded from training despite the strength of her late-emerging healer’s
gift.
Keli stared at the long-finished questions on her test slate. No one in her family had ever shown enough
elemental talent to be summoned for Earthwork, and she had been ten years past the usual age, fifteen
instead of five. Years, confined in classrooms with children a third her age or younger. And she always
had to be better than everyone else, perfect and beyond reproach. Even after she rocketed through basic
levels of training, secondary and tertiary instruction, and qualified for graduate studies. Even after she
completed those studies with a perfect average and stellar performance on each practicum.
A fully-vested and skilled healer, she had then won her way here, to Midnight Bayou. To Stonefall, the
only teachers’ academy staffed by the world-renown Warriors of Áis. At thirty years of age, she would
soon be an instructor herself, capable of teaching novitiates. Capable of going to battle if the Volcanic
Rim kept making trouble.
Had all the time and humiliation been worth it?
Oh, yes. Keli smiled despite her growing inner turmoil. The dissenters at Council would at last be
silenced, and she would have her pick of challenging positions all over the planet—at least the parts of
the planet not rendered uninhabitable by the now-defeated Technocrats.
Still, on this day that should have brought her the greatest joy, she felt only conflict.
When she surrendered her slate, it would be time to leave Stonefall. She would be free to find her own
destiny. Perhaps even achieve enough greatness to be deemed a Crone. She could end up robed in
white, respected in every land by every people—but most Crones were virgins, or lovers of women.
Keli was no virgin, and she had little sexual interest in women. Moreover, she couldn’t imagine herself in
white robes. When she allowed herself to imagine, there was nothing selfless or sacrosanct in her
fantasies. They were all about pleasure, passion—and unmentionable dark desires. They were all about
one man, a man she might never see again after this longest of days.
She placed her chalk quietly on her slate and willed it not to roll as she studied the top of Dram Wolfel’s
ink-black hair. As always, his silken locks were pulled tight against his neck, fastened by a Celtic clasp.
Not a strand out of place. Wolfel would tolerate no disorder, least of all from his own body. He was a
Warrior of Áis, after all. One of the chosen, one of the Goddess-blessed Uprising heroes who finally
defeated the Technocrats.
 And the Warriors of Áis, male and female alike, were rumored to have the sexual appetites of wild
beasts. Most were unmated and unpledged. They had fought too long and seen too much. They had
walked through black fires, felt the cold of sinister magik, and lived to tell the story. They had too many
scars on their souls to love.
They possess. They dominate. They know no other way. That’s why they stay at Stonefall. To keep the
rest of the planet safe from their dark desires.
In the two years Keli had studied with the stoic, stern Warriors, she had come to believe this might be
accurate.
Her breath caught painfully in her throat. Part of her wanted to reject the very idea that Dram Wolfel
might have to dominate a sexual partner to find release. The other part of her longed to discover truth in
each whispered rumor about the Warriors of Áis.
At least one of those Warriors.
She could well imagine herself on her knees, serving Dram Wolfel’s every whim. No matter how dark.
No matter how painful.
Somehow she knew the reward would be beyond her imagination.
“I’m out of my mind,” she whispered to herself, then nearly fainted from fear that the man had heard her.
Wolfel kept his head down, obviously allowing no distractions. After all, he was renowned for his
single-minded pursuit of excellence. He was the Bastard of Stonefall, and one of the most powerful
wytches known to Earthwork society. And, he was…Wolf, only Wolf, in Keli’s endless nighttime
vision-play.
He would have scars beneath the sensible drape of his druid’s robes, from the Uprising. His hands
would be worn from helping lay stones in the walled cities where the remaining Technocrats were
contained—all but the Volcanic Rim, where they always evaded final capture. The rest of the destructive
maniacs had been isolated into compounds, and the world re-divided between native tribes and
Earthwork bastions. The planet’s healing had begun—but what of the healing of men like Dram Wolfel?
Each time Keli stood near him, her heart ached from the pain she sensed. And the rest of her ached from
his need.
The former soldier of the Goddess would smell like storms, and his flesh would feel like pliable rock. His
rumbling voice—ah, but that would be masterful and intoxicating, like his taste, like his firm, demanding
grasp…
Keli’s body contracted at the mere thought of touching him, and she nearly came at the image of him
ordering her to submit to his sweet tortures. With a sigh, she once more affirmed that she wasn’t Crone
material. She was far too interested in men, sex, and Dram Wolfel. Since coming to Stonefall, she had
known boys and men, but never an equal.
Never a master.
Could she know this one?
The Wolf. Her Wolf…
 If the stories were true…if he would have her. If she offered herself, and agreed to whatever he asked.
And, of course, if Wolf didn’t kill her and chuck her body into the Bayou, an offense most novitiates
believed him capable of committing.
Damn. It’s getting hotter in here.
As afternoon found the cypress swamp surrounding Stonefall, the sun blistered through the arched
windows. Keli’s cotton blouse clung to her trembling arms. Through the damp fabric, she could see her
own freckled skin. Her red hair spilled down, hiding her visible and aching nipples.
Am I enough for a man like him? Could I ever be enough?
She swallowed hard, wishing she had a glass of water.
But, surely Wolf had been approached by students before, especially students like her, who weren’t
really students any longer. He was young as professors went, perhaps thirty-five, perhaps forty. So
difficult to tell anymore, now that Earthwork science had advanced. He had given her signals, too. A
hard-won approving glance here and there, a few lingering stares. He’d made eye contact twice during
her advanced project hours. At Solstice, he had stood beside her on the ramparts, and she held her
ground during the entire ceremony even as all the other students fled in terror of his presence. Keli had to
admit that under starlight, Wolf seemed more like a warlock in children’s scary stories than a wytch. He
seemed one with darkness, too comfortable in night’s cloaking embrace.
Embrace…
Keli felt an undeniable throb between her legs, just has she had on Solstice, when his arm brushed hers.
In those few electric seconds, his glittering eyes had snared her, acknowledged the contact with the
slightest widening, then hardened before he stepped away.
“Ms. Dunkirk,” said a voice too low to be a growl and too solid to be a murmur.
Keli startled from her remembering, then flushed, trembling all the harder. She felt his voice at the base
of her spine, spreading up and out, tingling across her nerves. Her mouth opened to answer, but no
sound issued forth.
For a moment, Wolf stared at a point somewhere over her left shoulder, as was his habit. Then, with
what might have been a sigh, he met her gaze directly. His powerful hands stilled above the examination
slates and his jaw set with bored annoyance. “Have you finished?”
Not wanting to, Keli nodded, then felt a fist grip her heart. Tears threatened, but she battled them back.
Surely this man would have no woman who broke into tears over small things. Over anything. And yet,
this felt like no small thing. She would shortly be forced to surrender her slate, and perhaps her last
moment alone with this powerful, magnetic wytch.
Wolf said nothing for another few seconds—endless seconds—as his all-consuming eyes wandered
from her forehead to her shoulders, to the damp tips of her hair, to her arms, wrists, fingers…then back
to her face, lips to nose to eyes. “Do you plan to stay here all afternoon? I suppose your friends have
long since departed for New Orleans.”
His accent, more French than anything, brought a new round of chills, as did the harsh, exacting tone.
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