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Kingmaker [MultiFormat]
eBook by Rob Preece
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$3.99 |
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$3.39 |
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eBook Category: Fantasy/Science Fiction
eBook Description:  When her parents are murdered, Ellie Winters follows the killers across dimensions to a world where magic works, but where injustice goes far beyond what happened to her. With the help of a mall security guard and her own martial arts training, she's got to stay alive--and help determine how to end a civil war--by making a King.
eBook Publisher: BooksForABuck, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2005
52 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [333 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [313 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [296 KB]
, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.8 MB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [333 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [271 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [318 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [794 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [421 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [273 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [341 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [388 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [430 KB]
Words: 100806
Reading time: 288-403 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
Chapter 1Ellie Winters shifted to the right, bringing up her bamboo shinai to block and then counter the attack. Typically for her parents, they'd assigned her the biggest, ugliest man from the opposing team as her opponent. The seventh-degree black belt easily evaded her practice sword's cut, and whipped a kick into her helmet. "Point and match." Ellie yanked off her mask, barely resisting the urge to throw it in the corner. Her opponent grinned at her, his smile revealing a mouth missing about half its teeth. She forced herself to bow. He had beaten her fair and square. Now she was going to get a lecture from her parents and would get to spend the evening running through her sword kata rather than chatting with her girlfriends on-line. "Ellie, can I have a word?" She knew her father loved her, but he treated her more like a student than a daughter. "Sorry. I got distracted." He nodded slowly. "I saw that." "It won't happen again." "It always happens again. Don't you understand, Ellie, that a moment's loss of focus could get you killed?" Oh, yeah. As if every self-respecting hood cruises around L.A. with a sword stuck in his back pocket. Sometimes she wondered what world her parents lived in because they seemed to think this stuff really mattered. "I said I was sorry." He gazed into her eyes, and then nodded. "Go get changed. Your mother and I have something planned for your birthday." Ellie's heart pounded for an irrational second. Most of her friends already had cars. Since her parents kept her busy in their Dojo, she hadn't ever had a chance to get a paying job. Maybe they'd bought a car for her eighteenth. She'd stashed her schoolbooks in a closet behind the office and she went there to catch up on her classes rather than watch her father finish judging his tournament, hand out the oversized trophies that testosterone-laden martial artists coveted, and announce the promotions. There wouldn't be a promotion for her, of course. She'd needed to win her event, not get humiliated in the first round. Besides, she was really too young for fourth-degree Kendo black belt anyway. She was so engrossed in Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich that her mind dismissed the bell that rang whenever the Dojo door opened. The dull crack of multiple gunshots wasn't so easy to ignore. Martial artists practice with guns a lot, but real gunshot was different. Something was very wrong. Her stomach felt queasy as she reached for her shinai and started for the door. A second barrage of gunshots stopped her. Someone was shooting up the place and the only thing she could do by coming out was add herself to the victim list. She turned off the light and huddled deep in the closet, doing her best to become completely silent. Only seconds after the gunfire stopped, the office door slammed open and she heard harsh breathing. "There's nobody here." Her heart almost stopped. She recognized the words, but they weren't in English. The gunman had used the secret language she'd thought her parents had made up because it wasn't anything like any other language she'd heard. So why was some stranger using it? "Finish, then, and go." A gunshot punctuated the second killer's words. Another followed moments later. Ellie knew she should do something heroic. From when she'd been a baby, her parents had drilled her in self-defense. Years before, when she'd been six, they'd picked up from Chicago and moved to California, changing her name and their own in the process and letting her know that her life was in danger. But this was beyond anything she'd imagined. Her muscles seemed frozen in place. Only when she heard the chimes from the Dojo door closing did she free herself from the mass of old uniforms and retired pads at the bottom of the closet and find the strength to emerge. She wished she hadn't. Her parents' Dojo had been destroyed. Bullets had fractured mirrors and shredded Japanese art and bodies. The bodies of a dozen martial artists lay scattered like the detritus from a tornado. Each, she noticed, had a darkened hole in his or her forehead. They'd been shot, then executed. She stifled a sob when she saw the sleeve of a red and blue kimono--the one she'd given her father for Christmas just two months earlier. He lay close to the door, his antique Samurai katana lightly grasped in his dead hands. A trace of blood on the edge of the sword let her know that he had struck before he had died. Maybe the sword against gun wasn't quite as impractical as she'd thought. But it hadn't saved her father. A grim premonition sent a trickle of fear down her back. She punched the speed-dial on her cell and listened to the phone ring. Her mother should have answered in seconds. She'd left the tournament early to prepare for Ellie's birthday, but she never strayed far from her phone. Ellie couldn't think of a single time she'd called and her mother hadn't answered. To hell with staying around and waiting for the cops. Ellie needed to check on her mother. She stared out the Dojo door, then stopped and scooped up her father's katana, slung it over her shoulder, and hopped on her bicycle. He didn't need the sword any more and she'd need a weapon if she were going to confront his killers. Police sirens quavered through the smoggy evening air. Too late. The cops hadn't helped her father and Ellie felt a grim certainty that they would be too late to help her mother as well. * * * *Her house's front door hung open. Chilled fingers crawled down her back. Her parents were obsessed with privacy and her mother would never have left their door open like that. Ellie threw her bike against the porch and galloped into the house. The acrid stench of black powder mingled with the bittersweet scent of fresh blood. Shattered glass over the kitchen window told the story. They'd shot her mother through the window, then smashed through the front door to make sure they'd finished the job. She knelt by her mother's body and felt for the pulse she knew she wouldn't find. But there was something. A surge of hope, relief, washed over her like a wave over a surfer. Could she be alive? She pressed her lips to her mother's and breathed--and heard the gurgle of air through ruptured lungs. She'd only sensed her own pulse, not her mother's. Her mother had been shot down like an animal. And Ellie had no idea who had done it, or why. What she did know was that, once they learned they'd left a witness alive, her parents' killers would come looking for her. Her blood-covered hands shook so badly it took her three tries before she could open the hiding place her father had carved under the stairwell. She'd thought her parents were being paranoid when they'd drilled her on the routine, but now she realized that they hadn't been crazy. She'd been the one living in a dream world. It seemed that there really were people out to get them. When she finally opened the cache under the stairs, she found thought she understood. Her parents must have been criminals on the run. Either fellow criminals, or some foreign government, had finally caught up with them. Although her parents had been anything but rich, they'd hid a fat heap of hundred-dollar bills, drivers' licenses and multiple passports for herself and her parents documenting several nations of origin and several names, a hand-written book lettered in the strange calligraphy her parents had used as their secret code, and a small bag of what felt like jewels. They'd been thieves, or spies. A dusty note in her father's handwriting was taped to the wall. If you're reading this, Ellie, it means that we've been found. Hide, read the book, learn your destiny, trust no one. All in all, it was less informative than she could have wished. She ignored the tears streaming down her face as she dumped her schoolbooks out of her backpack and filled it with the cash, passports, book, jewels, and note from her parents' stash. With pretty clear evidence her parents were involved in something illegal, and with her father's warning note, she didn't dare go to the police. But Ellie wasn't going to just run. Somehow, no matter how long it took, she was going to find out who had killed her parents--find them and make them pay.
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