Crimson Dahlia
CRIMSON DAHLIA
Book # 3 of the Svatura Series
by Abigail Owen
Copyright
© 2013 by Abigail Owen
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or
used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN
978-0-9882272-2-4
DEDICATION
To
Wendy, Mom, my critique group, and my beta readers. You guys are awesome.
Couldn’t
do this without you.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE
SAYING ABOUT THE SVATURA SERIES!
“HYACINTH is an
exciting, romantic, engaging novel with a unique and rich perspective….
As with the
first novel, HYACINTH's greatest strength lies in Owen's portrayal of women.
Her heroines are both strong and capable, and they are fully able to lead their
people as equals with their male counterparts.”
-K.
Cunning, Amazon Top 500 Reviewer
“I find that
Hyacinth is one of the few out there that the second book is better than the
first book in a series.”
-Chantale,
Geeky Girl Reviews Blog
“[Hyacinth]
contains an excellent blend of romance, close friendship, and my favorite kind
of action sequences in which success depends on a whole group of characters
acting closely together to defeat a common enemy. The climax of the book is a
battle scene as magically fast and furious as in [Blue Violet], which will
satisfy fans of action as well as romance in an urban fantasy book.”
-Kate
McMurry, Amazon Top 500 Reviewer
“I loved [the
plot], i thought again really well paced, nice amount of action and suspense to
keep the reader going.”
-Becca,
The Violet Hour Book Reviews Blog
“The plot of
‘Hyacinth’ takes its reader from the heights of engaging with our favorite
characters again to apprehension and fear to anticipation and then more fear
and then highs and happiness and then back down with a bump! Abigail Owen makes
reading, even reviewing, such a happy chore!”
-Kirsty
Vizard, All In One Place Blog
“Abigail Owen
has created a stunning world of supernatural people trying to survive hidden
from mankind and those that hunt them. I can't wait to start the next book.”
-K.
Dunst, Amazon Reviewer
“I really
enjoyed this first book and immediately had to read the second one as well,
can't wait for the third one coming soon…Nice job Ms Owen!”
-Cyndy,
Amazon Reviewer
All
flowers have a meaning. In the Victorian era, people used flowers as symbols to
express their feelings.
dahlia:
a warning,
change, betrayal, dignity, elegance
crimson:
passion, the
heart, emotions
Lila
couldn’t get warm. Wherever their captors were holding them was damp and cold
and seemed to be underground, given the rough stone walls surrounding them. A
harsh fluorescent light in the hallway filtered into their cell through the
small window in the door. The constant hum of the bulb was a minor form of
torture.
“Ugh,”
a male voice groaned beside her. “I can hear your teeth rattling in your head.
If I promise not to think impure thoughts, will you swallow your darn pride and
get over here and snuggle with me?”
“F-f-f-fine,”
Lila said. It would have come out grudgingly if she could speak around her
chattering.
She
scooted across several inches of floor and sidled up to Marcus, the leader of
the Louisiana tribe of Svatura. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her
in closer. After a few moments, the heat from his body started seeping in, and
her shivers lessened.
“Thanks,”
she said when she could finally form words again.
“It’s
a miracle. You actually know how to say thank you,” Marcus teased. His gruff
voice was laced with a Cajun accent.
“Hardy.
Har. Har.” Lila inwardly cringed at such a lame response. She was just too
tired and cold to think of anything wittier.
“Ha.
It took us a whole year to get you to warm up to us. And when you finally do,
we find out that you’re a sarcastic little thing. Even when you’re stuck in a
hole in the ground.”
“I
don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a beacon of sweetness and light,”
Lila deadpanned.
She
practically felt Marcus roll his eyes. “How’s the head?” he asked. He brushed
her matted honey-blond hair away from the gash at her temple.
“It’s
all healed. I’m still pissed that guy bashed me like that when I wasn’t looking.”
“Well,
you did bite him, chère.” Marcus chuckled at the memory.
“He
deserved it. No one tries to kidnap my friends - or me for that matter -
without a fight. My powers may be fairly passive, but that doesn’t mean I can’t
kick some serious butt.”
Lila,
Marcus, and several other members of his Louisiana tribe had been attacked in
the middle of the night and captured. Maddox, their captor, had once been a
part of the Vyusher, a clan of powerful people who all had the ability to morph
in wolves. But then he’d turned against his own, attempting to turn all the
other gifted people in the world against his former people.
“How
long do you think they can hold us here? It has to have been at least a month
by now,” Lila wondered out loud.
“Fairly
indefinitely, I’d say,” Marcus answered. “With that blocker they’ve got keeping
all of our powers in check, there’s not a ton we can do. Not that we’ll stop
trying.”
“I
don’t know how Selene fought her way through that blocker when she was held,”
Lila murmured.
Marcus
shifted into a more comfortable position. “Yeah. If it’s the same guy holding
us prisoner now, he’s one of the strongest blockers I’ve ever run up against. The
bastard has the nine of us in this cell plus the other two they took. And
that’s just who we know about. All of us are still trying to use our powers.
How just one person managed to thwart him is mind-blowing.”
Over
a year ago, Selene, the new Queen of the Vyusher and now one of Lila’s good
friends, had been captured by Maddox. He’d tried to hold her with the blocker,
but Selene’s own ability to turn off others’ powers had won out in the end and
she’d escaped.
“By
now my family has to know that Maddox has us. They’ll be using every single ability
they’ve got at their disposal, and Selene will have all the Vyusher looking for
us. She’ll keep her promise to you, Marcus.”
“I
hope you’re right.”
Lila
didn’t say anything. Thinking about Selene meant thinking about Ramsey. And she
didn’t want to think about Ramsey.
Suddenly
the locks slid back in the door, and everyone in the room immediately changed
positions. Lila now had eight Svatura sitting in front of her blocking her from
whatever was about to come through that door.
Lila
narrowed her eyes at Marcus’s back.
“I
can feel you glaring at me,” he whispered over his shoulder. “But we’re not
going to stop. If Maddox gets his hands on you—”
He
didn’t finish the thought. The door swung open and, just as it had every other
time, immediate pain washed through all of the occupants of the room. Lila felt
as if razors were slashing over her skin. Forcing herself to keep her eyes
open, she looked down and was shocked that blood wasn’t pouring out of her.
The
sensation was completely debilitating, and that was the point. While they were
all prostrate on the floor in pain, one of them would be dragged away with little
resistance. Lila vaguely registered the sound of a brief struggle to her right.
Then the door closed and a locking noise sounded. Then the pain disappeared as
quickly as it had arrived.
Marcus
jumped up. “Who’d they take?”
There
was a moment of confusion as everyone looked around, checking to see who was
missing from their ranks.
“Dane,”
a voice cried out. “They took Dane!”
Lila
felt sick to her stomach. She’d come to like Dane over the last year that she’d
been traveling with the Louisiana clan. He had the ability to morph into a
massive grizzly bear, but with her he’d always been a big softy.
He
was the third of their group that Maddox’s people had taken away. Now only eight
of them were left in the cell. They had no clue what’d happened to those taken.
But Lila had a pretty good guess, and she tried to not let her panic show. Survival
was the name of the game. She knew her family would be desperately trying to
find her, so she pushed her fears down deep inside and waited for rescue… or
for her chance to fight back.
Marcus
returned to her side and wrapped his arm around her again. They leaned against
the wall silently, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Marcus?”
Lila whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Have
you noticed that the three they’ve taken so far are some of our strongest?”
Marcus
was quiet for a moment. “Jeez. You’re right. Dane – our biggest, strongest
metamorph. Seamus – with his lava bombs. And Ariel’s nerve control. And now
that I think about it, they took her first, and that’s when the pain started.”
“Right?
So they’re already using her nerve control. If they’re taking out the strongest
of us first, who’s next?”
“Either
James or Sylvie,” Marcus said after another thoughtful pause.
Lila
nodded her agreement. James was a particularly talented telepath, and Sylvie
could conjure tornadoes out of thin air.
“Don’t
mention this to anyone yet,” Marcus whispered. “They can’t do anything about it,
and it’ll just make their terror worse.”
“Okay.
Um, Marcus?”
“My,
you’re chatty today,” he murmured.
Lila
rolled her eyes. “What do you think they’re doing with them?”
She
felt Marcus’s chest rise and fall in a silent exhale. “Well, if they’re not
dead, then it’s something much worse.”
2
Ramsey
Pierce sat on the ground, his elbows resting on his drawn up knees as he used a
stick to poke at the fire blazing in front of him. Sometimes being a
firestarter was a handy thing, especially when camped out in the middle of the
woods in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
He’d
started his journey closer to Lake Tahoe but wasn’t quite sure where he was now
or how far he’d come. Somewhere in the western foothills maybe. Over the last
few days the terrain had changed from primarily rock and pine trees with
steeper inclines to rolling hills covered with dry golden grass and tall black
oaks.
Ramsey
was trying to track Lila through the inexplicable connection they shared. He
had no idea why he could feel her. It wasn’t a power that either one of them
claimed. But he’d known the moment she’d disappeared.
Was
it only a month ago? The pain of the violent shudder that had woken him in the
dead of night still lingered. He’d just
known
. Without a second thought,
Ramsey had leapt from his bed and rushed to get help, heading straight to Lila’s
sister Adelaide’s room. He’d barely bothered to knock before barging in.
“Something’s
wrong with Lila,” he practically shouted.
“What?”
Adelaide sat up and rubbed her eyes, groggy from sleep. “Why do you—?”
“I
can feel it.”
Adelaide
looked confused. “How—?”
“I
don’t know. But it’s not important right now. I think she’s hurt.”
Adelaide
closed her eyes for a moment, thinking, and then reopened them and looked at
him blankly.
“Have
you talked to her lately? Do you know where she is, or was?” he asked.
“I
just talked to her yesterday. She was in Brazil,” Adelaide answered. She quickly
hopped out of bed and grabbed a robe, fumbling to get her arms into the sleeves.
They hustled down the hall to gather the others.
Ramsey
barely remembered the conversation the family’d had that night. All he’d been
able to think about was Lila. He did remember Lucy, though. Lila’s mother had
been frantic with fear for her child. Ramsey said that he could find Lila using
their psychic link. And Lucy stood before him, her face pinched with worry.
“I
don’t know why you think you can, but if you really can feel my little girl,
you bring her home,” Lucy pleaded. “Do you hear me? Bring her home to me!”
Now,
a month later, he was no closer to finding Lila than he’d been that night. Ramsey
tilted his head back, leaning against the rough bark of a tree, tired in a bone-deep
way that went beyond the physical. He’d meant the promise he’d made Lucy… he
owed her that much. She’d become like a mother to him when he’d had no one
else. She’d opened her heart and her home to him, despite the risks of bringing
a firestarter into the family. She trusted him to find Lila, and he wouldn’t
let her down now.
Ramsey
ran a weary hand over the dark red stubble covering his jaw. He stared,
unseeing, into the flames in front of him. As much as he loved Lucy, and as
much as he’d meant every word of his promise to her, his oath had come from a
deeper place. There was a sick feeling inside him that sat like a rock in his chest
at the thought of Lila being hurt.
Ramsey
thought about the first time he’d ever seen Lila. He’d been alone for a very
long time before Lucy had found him. His power had started to manifest early, when
he was only six. By the time he left his birth family at age nine, he’d already
inadvertently started several blazes, though nothing fatal. But two events had
triggered his leaving: His mother had discovered she was going to have a baby,
and then he’d discovered his grandfather’s diary. If Ramsey closed his eyes, he
could still see the words on the pages—
I
take my pen in hand to put my pain to paper.
Lest our daughter, Mary, has
questions about this day, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under
her eye when I shall be no more. I laid my precious wife, Elizabeth, in the
ground today. We found her a right pretty place on the top of hill overlooking
the valley she so loved. To know that she lies there, still and cold, at the
actions of my own hands, at the fire that springs from me, brings me the
keenest agony I have ever known. Thank God that this terrible gift seems to
have passed Mary by. She’ll never have to know the torture of having killed the
one you love. And, for my part, I will not risk my daughter’s own life the way
I did my wife’s. For her sake I am willing – more than willing - to lay down my
own life, to protect my only remaining family, and to pay the debt I owe for
the life I took.
Reading
those words, Ramsey had realized that he wasn’t safe to be around and worried
for his unborn baby brother or sister. So he’d run away to protect his family.
Much like his grandfather had many years before when he’d taken his own life… by
the same fire inside him that had accidentally killed his wife.
Ramsey’d
left his family in 1884. Svatura aged much more slowly than normal humans, an
odd phenomenon which started around puberty. Time seemed to slow down for them
more and more and then speed back up again much later in life. If Svatura
survived to live into old age, they could live as long as two thousand years.
So while Ramsey looked as though he was only nineteen or twenty, he was
actually closing in on one-hundred-and-forty.
His
family had lived on the frontier, so he knew how to live off the land. And for
many, many years, he’d been able to remain on his own, fending for himself.
He’d wandered the wildernesses of America, a witness as the vast, untamed land
slowly shrunk, closing in on him inexorably. It wasn’t until 1952 that Lucy’d found
him and introduced him to her family.
Ramsey
jumped up, haunted by the memories that wouldn’t leave him alone. He went about
cleaning up the campsite, washing his plates, hanging his bags of food up in a
tree far away, and tamping down the fire. Finally he got into his one-man tent
and wrapped up in his sleeping bag. Although the temperature was still hot in
the daytime, the mountains got chilly at night. But the second his eyes closed,
those haunting thoughts he kept running from took over.
Ramsey
had been in a small town in Illinois, sitting on a bench at a bus stop with a
book in his lap. He’d managed to earn a little money working odd jobs for a
nearby farmer and was on his way to wherever his bus ticket would take him. He
never stayed in the same place long.
“Hello,”
a soft female voice interrupted.
Ramsey
raised his eyes from the book he was reading – a beat up old copy of
Huckleberry
Finn
. “Can I help you?”
The
woman smiled kindly. “I think
I
can help
you
.”
Ramsey
frowned and glanced around. “I don’t think so. Thanks.” He lowered his gaze
back to his book.
The
woman ignored his obvious hint to leave him alone and sat down beside him. “I
know what you are,” she said.
That
got his attention. Careful not to overreact, Ramsey looked at her and feigned
ignorance. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll
make this easy on you. My name is Lucy, and I know what you are because I have powers
too. I can see the essence of people—if they’re good or bad. In the case of
people like us, I can see that they have powers.”
Ramsey
glanced around again. In the almost seventy years that he’d been roaming the earth
alone, he’d occasionally run into others like him. But none quite as direct as
this woman.
He
decided to be direct in return. “Then I should tell you I’m a firestarter. You
don’t want to be around me.”
Lucy
pursed her lips. “That is unfortunate. I’ve only heard rumors about that gift.”
Ramsey
nodded and returned to his reading, expecting her to get up and walk away. Every
other gifted person he’d run across had left so fast you’d have thought he’d
actually lit a fire under their feet. Firestarters were like lepers among their
kind.
When
she didn’t go, he looked up again, eyebrows raised. Lucy smiled. “I’ve felt you
coming for weeks. That usually means you’ll be joining my family.”
Ramsey
leaned back and studied the older woman. “Should I know what you’re talking
about?”
“It’s
a feeling I sometimes get,” she explained. “Whenever I’ve had this feeling in
the past, it has meant that a new member was about to join our family.”
Ramsey
frowned. “I can’t be a part of anyone’s family, lady.”
“Lucy.”
She held out her hand.
He
ignored it. “All right, Lucy. I’m Ramsey. And I can’t be around people.”
Lucy
gave him a look that was part stubborn, part motherly. “Why don’t you at least
come meet my family? Stay with us a few days. We’re always interested in
hearing from people like us. Unless you have somewhere important to be.”
Ramsey
was on the verge of saying ‘no’. But the thought of meeting others who
understood who and what he was tempted him. He’d been alone for a very long
time. It might be nice to be around other people, if only for a day or two. And
lately he’d gotten better at controlling his power.
Ramsey
nodded, silently deciding to leave if there was even a hint of a blow up. He
followed Lucy to her car, and together they rode in silence to her house just
outside of town.
After
Lucy parked in the driveway, two teenage girls came rushing out of the house,
only to stop short at the sight of the stranger with their mother. Ramsey’s
gaze was drawn to the taller of the two.
“Girls,”
Lucy called. “Come meet our guest.”
“Ramsey,
these are our daughters, Liliana and Adelaide,” Lucy indicated each girl in
turn.
Clearly
the two girls got their looks from their mother. All three ladies were honey
blondes with green eyes. The older of the two sisters, Adelaide, offered him a
shy smile. But the other one was who commanded Ramsey’s attention. She regarded
him quizzically for a moment before grinning and holding out a hand to shake.
“Everyone
calls me Lila,” she said.
Ramsey
stiffened. He couldn’t touch her. Even if he was a little tempted. Too risky.
Her
eyebrows beetled in a small frown as he just stood there. Lila glanced at Lucy
quizzically.
“Ramsey’s
a firestarter,” Lucy explained. Understanding flashed in the girl’s eyes. But
instead of looking at him with fear, or worse, pity, Lila just shrugged.
“I’ll
risk it,” she said.
Before
he could stop her or step back, she reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it
a firm shake. “Welcome to the family.”
Irritated
with his slow reaction, Ramsey scowled and jerked his hand from her grasp. “I’m
not staying.”
“Bit
touchy, aren’t’ you?” she asked, unfazed.
“Lila!”
Lucy scolded her daughter with a stern look.
“Sorry.”
Lila grimaced and returned her gaze to Ramsey. She shrugged. “You’re not the
first person Mom’s found.”
“Come
on, Ramsey.” Lucy ushered him deeper into the house. “Come meet the others.”
Lila
turned to lead the way down the hall. Ignoring the oddly speculative look he
received from Adelaide, Ramsey followed. As he walked, he surreptitiously
enjoyed the view of Lila’s tall, curvy figure but was immediately irritated
with himself. Staring at a cute girl wasn’t a good idea in any way, shape, or
form. He forced his gaze higher and was glad he had as she suddenly looked over
her shoulder at him. As she faced forward again, Ramsey’s lips compressed. He’d
have to stay away from her while visiting these people. He felt an odd
connection to her, even after only a few minutes. And he didn’t do connections.
He
couldn’t.
Ramsey
pulled his thoughts back to the present. He’d followed that cute blonde into
the house that day. And instead of leaving as he’d intended, he’d never stopped
following her. Never too close. Never close enough. And now here he was, in the
middle of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, still following her.
As
sleep claimed him, he mumbled, “Lila… Lila, where are you?”