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eBook Category: Fantasy/Dark Fantasy
eBook Description: The strangest day in T.K. Mitchell's life began with the former marine on the run for his life in North Dakota and ended with him on the run for his life from an entire empire on the strange world of Altiva. Would the Evil emperor who thought T.K. was after his job get to kill him? The Nightmare from his mysterious past do him in? Or the strange Shadowbeast that seemed unstoppable and had an insatiable appetite for blood? Then again, would T.K. give into the seductive clutches of the six foot eight blue furred warrior woman? What a way to die

eBook Publisher: epress-online, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2006

14 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB], eReader (PDB) [201 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [183 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [163 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [189 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [221 KB], hiebook (KML) [448 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [271 KB], iSilo (PDB) [151 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [190 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [245 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [240 KB]
Words: 54558
Reading time: 155-218 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The strangest day in T.K. Mitchell's life began as so many others had, pleasantly, with a slight hangover and a woman beside him.

By nightfall, he was running for his life with the woman's brothers trying to blow his brains out. Fortunately for all concerned, they were terrible shots.

Sometime later Mitchell was seated in the rear-facing seat on a passenger train, his sneakered feet resting on the seat opposite him and his well-worn backpack and frame on the seat beside him. He reflected on his luck to a fellow passenger.

"Whitefawn and I headed out cross-country 'til I hit that whistle stop this train came through. Damn lucky I made it."

"It all seems so very sordid," the woman passenger said.

"Well, not really," Mitchell said. "Her brothers were bigots who took a dislike to me, my pretensions of being an equal. I speak the Lacota Sioux language better than most of them." He winced at a thought. "Six brothers," he said aloud. "Do you believe it? Story of my life!"

The old woman made a disapproving face.

Mitchell produced a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey and offered a sip to her. She was a small, gray-haired, grandmotherly type, with a hawkish face and intense eyes, who hadn't been there when he sat down. He had woken from a nap to see her staring at him. She wore an odd but simple silk dress of dark grey with a light grey over-robe covered with hand-embroidered symbols that Mitchell did not recognize.

"No, thank you, young man, I can do without spirits." The train chose that moment to suddenly lurch, and Mitchell spilled whiskey down the front of his denim shirt.

T.K. ignored the spill, shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Sleep and I just don't get along, ma'am. And sometimes this helps." Mitchell slumped against his seat studying his reflection in the train window. He realized that he was not so much tired from the four hours of relentless pursuit through the worst terrain on the Black Hills Indian reservation, as from the annoying frequency with which siblings, spouses and outraged parents were doing that sort of thing to him of late. "I'm getting too old for this sort of nonsense," he said, taking a drink.. "Though, I don't know what nonsense to replace it with."

At forty-three, Teel Kantos Mitchell had a handsome face, weathered by many nights on park benches across the country; his once brown hair was streaked with flecks of grey, as was his neatly trimmed beard. He wore a gold hoop through the lobe of his left ear. In a happier age he would have been called a hippie. Now the word bum came first to his mind.

"Have you no more respect for your family than to dress and live like that?" the old woman across from him asked in a quiet but commanding tone that put Mitchell in mind of a Sunday school teacher.

"I've got nobody but me, lady."

"No mother; father?" she asked.

"Dead," he said quietly, aware of his own voice in the silence of the passenger car. "Got a no good brother floating around somewhere, and a sponge of an ex-wife in New York, if you can call them family. I like to call them history. Ancient history. All I got in this world and the next is sitting in this backpack, ma'am," he continued.

"Surely you feel responsibility for some...."

"'Scuse my rudeness, ma'am, but you got no right to lecture me on anything. So hows about you just let me sleep so I can dream of Lacota princesses and cross-eyed brothers, okay? It hasn't been one of my best days; I'm gonna miss Whitefawn." To cut off further conversation he hunkered down on the seat next to his pack and closed his eyes, hoping he was buzzed enough to sleep.

Suddenly, the train lurched to a stop, and T.K. was thrown to the floor with his pack on top of him.

"What the hell?" he clichéd, as did half the train car of passengers sprawled in the same position. He righted himself and noticed that the old woman was nowhere in sight. Odd duck, he thought.

"Hey, conductor," somebody else in the car yelled. "What's going on?"

The conductor struggled down the aisle, fighting for his own dignity after being dumped on the carpet. "I'll let you know as soon as I know, but it feels like somebody pulled the emergency cord." He hurried out of the car heading toward the engine room.

Mitchell had barely enough time (and consciousness) to notice that the train had stopped in a tunnel before the conductor came swiftly back into the car muttering curses.

"What's wrong?" someone up front yelled.

"Some crazy Indians have stopped the train," the conductor said in an annoyed tone. "Claim there's a thief on board, and they have jurisdiction since the crime happened on their reservation."

Shit! Mitchell thought. They just don't give up, and they're more inventive than I gave them credit for; they came up with a legal reason to beat me senseless. He quietly gathered up his pack and an intricately carved walking stick, doing his best to be invisible while he slithered to the rear door of the car. I hate doing this all the time, he thought.

Mitchell could hear a commotion ahead when he jumped down to the gravel bed from the train, so he headed back along the cars at a trot. The tunnel was inky black and warmer than one would expect from September. So warm, in fact, that he ran into clouds of steam.

Strange, he thought, this is supposed to be a diesel train. A sudden hiss from the brake made him half turn his head toward the sound, with no chance to see the hole he stepped into. He pitched forward with the velocity of his run and as his arms flung out behind him, he had the final thought. You were only worth this Whitefawn, honey, if they don't actually kill me.

And then his head hit the concrete wall of the tunnel.

WHITE LIGHT!

Sudden and intense, like a million flashbulbs popping at once. T.K. felt as if he had been thrown into a tub of gelatin, as if the world had gone cotton. His tumble forward slowed.

Man, this is the weirdest concussion dream, he thought.

A female voice called his attention left, and he found he could turn his head at normal speed.

"Teel," a translucent old woman, attired in a long grey robe said. She stood in a swirling cloud of yellow vapor. It was the old woman from the train. "I am Meegana Rakdon."

"Glad to meet you again," he said as politely as possible from his forty-five degree angle. He thought, Class A-One hallucination, T.K. old bean, keep up the good work.

"I have followed the progress of your life and that of your brother with both keen interest and disgust, Teel," the old woman called Meegana said, "though, regrettably, I must say I can find no trace of your brother."

"V.J. and I haven't spoken for eight years, lady," T.K. said. "When I told him to get lost, he took my advice to heart."

"Enough, Meegana," a rougher voice to his right said. "We need to see proof!"

"Patience, General Thorvanus," Meegana said. "The boy is a bit bewildered."

"Naw, I'm like this all the time."

"And must be made to understand," the grey crone continued as if T.K. had not spoken.

"You have been told, no doubt, by your mother that she was a refugee," Meegana began, "but she undoubtedly did not tell you from where or why." T.K., enjoying the sensation of floating slowly downward, said nothing.

"Sphona, your mother, was a princess of the Royal House of Mephistal on the island of Mephan to the west of the twin continents."

T.K. mouthed the word "Right," but did not vocalize it.

"She was the daughter of Emperor Kantos, the world's most powerful ruler," Meegana continued, "and as such was promised to wed the wizard Roosuf, a first cousin of considerable power. Though this alliance would strengthen the empire, Sphona was against it for ... personal reasons."

"Personal, ha!" A new voice laughed. "Roosuf is a gross and barbarous monster. Her personal reason was taste, dear."

T.K. listened to the exchange from his increasingly steep incline with only casual interest. Then the old woman spoke to the phantom voice. "Quiet, Duke Havros, time is short." Then she addressed T.K. again.

"The young princess compounded her father's wrath at her refusal to marry the wizard with the one Disease royalty should never contract: love of commoner. When she discovered she was with child by this court artisan, she sought the help of one who cared for her greatly, her court wizard, who spirited the two lovers to another plane, that which you call Earth, where they would be safe from pursuit." The old woman paused for breath and to let her words sink in. "I was that court wizard."

From his seventy-degree incline T.K. considered what the old woman had said and then sagely asked, "What's this got to do with me?"

Thorvanus cursed.

Meegana all but sputtered with frustration. "Roosuf inherited the throne when the young Emperor Meartus, brother to Sphona, after only two years reign, fell victim to a mysterious ailment and died. We are sure it was warpcraft!"

"But craft could not be proved and so Roosuf assumed the throne and has ruled with a merciless hand for three years."

"Sorry, but I'm not up on political science," T.K. said innocently.

"You are the key to Roosuf's downfall, for you are the rightful ruler of Mephistal and thus he must step down to you."

"If he has the mark," Thorvanus insisted.

"What mark?" The eighty-one degree suspended and confused T.K. asked.

"The birthmark of the line of Kantos, on your arm!"

"Oh, that." T.K. raised his left arm above his head, delighting in the liquid slow movement. Once raised, he indicated the inside of the left bicep, where one of the many rents in his denim shirt revealed a scarlet birthmark in the shape of three crescents. "I've always had that," T.K. said. "So do Mom and V.J."

"And so has every member of the Royal House since--" The old woman stopped talking abruptly. Then T.K. heard a distant pounding.

"The wizard has detected my warpcraft," Meegana said. "I cannot complete the process here."

"He must be brought through," another voice that T.K. could not identify said.

"Listen, Teel," the old woman said, "I must bring you into our world far from your goal of Mephistal, but I will find you within two ten-day. Until then, be the utmost cautious." The spectral shapes in front of T.K. began to blur. "An Emperor uncrowned had best always be cautious."

"But I don't want to be no damn--" Suddenly his nose touched earth.

WHITE LIGHT!