The Sentinel Keeper (Forest Series)

CHAPTER 1
             

CHAPTER 2
             

CHAPTER 3
             

CHAPTER 4
             

CHAPTER 5
             

CHAPTER 6
             

CHAPTER 7
             

CHAPTER 8
             

CHAPTER 9
             

CHAPTER 10
             

CHAPTER 11
             

CHAPTER 12
             

CHAPTER 13
             

CHAPTER 14
             

CHAPTER 15
             

CHAPTER 16
             

CHAPTER 17
             

The last of the bone-wracking nausea had finally eased off by the time Beth had clocked seven miles and she turned up the hill pushing to the top of the final curve in the road. Her heart was pounding and her skin slick with sweat. Every muscle was burning, screaming for her to stop.

But she knew that you could push past that point of pain. Had to.

Without easing off the pace for a second, she checked her Polar watch. She had been running for over an hour since she had left the hotel and turned off the tar road and headed up the dirt track into the forest. She didn’t know how far she had gone, but she would download her run and load it up on her computer to track her distance. She knew her body was exhausted but still she pushed even faster to the top of the furthest tree before the path snaked to the right.

Only then did she stop.

Her breath was coming fast and white in the freezing air as she yanked off her track top and pulled the screaming tracks from her earphones out of her ears. Sweat had drenched straight through her tight white training vest and the biting cold in the forest was a welcome relief, stinging her skin.  It was bone cold up here but at least there was no wind. Far colder than in the streets where she had started and her breath iced against the fresh air. But the silence was complete, and blissful. Beth stood for a second drinking it in.

Peace.

She stood still, swaying in the silence and offering up a silent prayer of thanks as she watched her heart rate drop back down. She paused the music on her phone and quickly checked if there were any messages.

Nothing.

Why would there be? She had no family, never had. Not unless you counted three foster homes. And now she was on enforced leave from the newspaper. The last text message was the one from her news editor Jackson she had picked up as she checked into the empty hotel.

“Get some sleep’ it read.

Words were an essential economy when it came to Jackson, and he pretty much lived his editorial mantra that he had pasted above her desk on the first day she joined his team on the paper:
Short and sweet. Make ‘em weep.
His idea of literature was his prize collection of graphic novels.

Sleep.

Fat chance of that.  Even the word brought a tremor of longing to her lips. Now that would be nice. But for the last year it seemed that sleep brought the only enemy Beth couldn’t beat.

Night after night she fought battles drenched in blood and pain – nightmares so hauntingly real that her body woke bruised and her soul aching. She hadn’t slept in weeks. Just snatches of drugged rest were all she allowed herself now.

But even then the visions were coming stronger and stronger.  The visions were the curse she had carried around for her entire 26 years. No longer content to haunt her at night while she slept, now they were assaulting her even during her waking hours. In fact she was scared even to close her eyes. For the second she was engulfed in the dark the violent visions assaulted her. It felt as if she was losing control. Of everything.

She raked a hand through her short tousled black hair.

But something felt different up here. Somehow up here, at the very top of this forest, she felt the hardest edge of the deep restlessness that had been driving her forward for the past few days. The quiet surrounded her.

For the first time in days she felt safe. If she could just close her eyes for a few blessed minutes…

As she stood swaying in the freezing air Beth let her eyelids drop as she braced for the onslaught.

Nothing.

She wanted to cry out, partly out of relief and partly out of the strangest feeling of belonging. She had felt it the second she had turned off the path and snaked through the tall trees. That was why she had driven through the night to get to this small holiday town of Sentinel Heights on the half-forgotten East Coast. It wasn’t the town that she dreamed of, but this silent dark forest.

Perhaps Jackson is right and I am really going mad, Beth thought, swaying in the icy wind as she held onto the dark silence for moment longer. She could see his face in front of her, pale and worried with his brow furrowed under his glasses. He was the only father she had ever had. Even if he had been her boss. She knew that sending her on an enforced leave had been hard for him. But he thought he was doing it for her. Beth knew that. He just didn’t realize that the newspaper was the only real home she had ever had.

A clash broke through the air like a whiplash, seeming to split the air with its force. It was the sound of steel on steel. 

Beth’s eyes flew open.

With the instinct of a street fighter, she dropped into a crouch, her hand slipping to the knife strapped to her lower leg below her running pants.

“Back!”

A hard voice boomed out, muffled by the thick trees.

Another sharp clang of metal on metal cut the air, followed by a deep grunt, then a deathly roar and another clash of steel.

Beth froze in her crouch then, silent as the woods, she raced off the path using the cover of the forest to slip back against a tree.

“Get up.”

A deeper voice shouted, a guttural battle cry, so close it felt as if her eardrums would burst.

Beth started moving between the trees. Her plan was to move away, to slip back down the path and then to run like hell down the hill until she got out of the deserted woods and found the tar road that would take her back into the town.

But her feet had another plan altogether. They were moving closer to the sound - now a series of low grunts. It was the instinct that had made her an award-winning journalist, and a dangerous liability to herself.  Just one peek and she would bail.

She slipped in behind a huge pine tree and she was standing at the edge of a deep shaded clearing.

The sight before her eyes stopped her dead in her tracks. Two men stood in the middle of the clearing. Both were stripped to their waists and a mixture of blood, sweat and mud caked their chiseled torsos. They were locked – head to head – in a grapple to the ground.  One black head beside a blonde one. Each was holding a massive sword.

What. The. Hell?

Beth shrank back, peeling herself deeper into a tree as the blond man stood up, huge as a giant as he circled the darker one. He must have been at least six-four, and he moved like a street fighter – fast and lethal. His dark blonde hair was cropped short against his skull and Beth could see a series of crisscross marks shaved into the short hair. His lip was bleeding, but a taunting grin spread out across his chiseled face. The darker one was in a crouch; his massive muscled back to Beth. But she could see his was leaner and more powerful. His movements were sleep like a panther and a cold air of menace flew off him like a thick mist that screamed – get away.

Beth eyed the massive swords each man was swinging.

This was the 21
st
Century for heaven’s sake. What were two warriors that looked as if they had just stepped off a period film doing sword fighting in the woods?

Beth knew that if she had any sense at all she would slip away before either of them saw her. That would be the right thing to do. 

Instead she slipped her phone out of her pocket, quickly checked it was on silent, pointed it at the remarkable scene before her eyes and and hit ‘record’.

Her hand was shaking as she zoomed in closer on the two men as they fought each other, spinning and grappling - each throwing blows that would kill a normal man.
C’mon Beth,
she muttered under her breath.
Wrap this up and get out of here.

The blonde giant roared and lunged forward – his sword scoring a deep cut along the side of the black-haired one. Beth gasped as she watched the blade slice into his flesh.  Blood pumped out of the deep cut, running down his flank and mixing with the rest of the dirt that was streaked along the hard muscle of his side.

It was a deep wound, but the warrior didn’t stop for a second. He rolled with the blow, then crouching again like a wild beast he got ready to leap.

Beth inched forward to zoom in closer. She didn’t see the twig under her foot. The snap was barely audible, little more than a click under her trainer. But both men froze as if it had been a gunshot.

“Oh hell,” Beth breathed.

“
Someone’s here.”

Did one of them just speak?

The voice was as clear as if it had been spoken right into her ear. 

Beth knew two things with absolute certainty. They knew she was there, and she knew that there was little chance she was going to be able to talk her way out of this one.

Quiet. It’s listening.

Beth shrunk back, deeper into the rough bark of the tree but she kept the phone camera rolling. But she knew her white shirt was like a beacon in the dark woods calling out her position. She may as well have been wearing a Santa hat with flashing lights on it for all the camouflage it gave her. If she could have crawled inside the tree she would have.

Her breath had stopped now. Not a sound nor a mummer of air broke the stillness of the glade. She could see the both standing stock still, listening.
Not good,
Beth thought.

Then the darker man turned and faced her. Beth gasped. It felt as if a bolt of pure electricity hit her straight in the chest.  She had never seen a man like this before. Not in the flesh. But she had seen him in her dreams. His eyes crossed the clearing, cut through the low-lying foliage and his hard green eyes met hers. She saw his eyes drop to the phone in her hand.

His hair was as black as the night; his scowling face was one of bitter perfection, marred only by three livid red scars running down each cheek. His cheeks looked cut in granite and his eyes glowing like two burning fires in his head, straight from hell.  And they were staring straight into hers.