The Lost Bloodline 1 - Chapter 1

HEY ALL! So these chapters will run Sun/Wed and stay up till the 17th when I have to pull them to remain KU Compliant. Hope you all enjoy!

Chapter 1

There was something so very soothing about being out in nature. Above him, the trees spread welcoming shade as shelter from the harsh sun. It was something to relish after long days spent working outside.

The clean scent of the mountain air combined with the occasional whiff of wildflowers or the scent of hot stone was such a bracing change from the rank scent of the city. The smell of green things replaced the stink of exhaust, and the air itself felt lighter against his skin.

Koda took a deep breath of the warm air and let it out slowly in a sigh. It was good to be away from the city for a while.

Finding time to get away from it all and just relax was getting harder and harder. It wasn’t that his life was changing. The lack of change was actually part of the issue. Instead, it was that he was slowly wearing down to a nub from exhaustion.

Construction was not an easy sort of job, but it paid the bills. Only having a GED prevented him from getting into a better-paying field, but at least he didn’t have student loan debt to deal with.

“Small mercy,” Koda muttered, rolling his shoulders and turning back to the trail now that he had caught his breath.

The path he was following was a well-maintained trail that wound amongst the evergreens of the Rocky Mountains. It was one of his favorites to take on the rare afternoons that he had the time and energy for hiking anymore, but that wasn’t saying much. There were a lot of trails that Koda thought of as favorites. 

Focusing on the stone-studded earth in front of him, Koda let the scent of spruce trees wrap around him and fill his senses.

The chirp and buzz of insects swirled around him like a cloak, carried by the steady breeze that trickled down into the canyon from the ridge above. A breeze that helped the dappled shade of the trees keep him cool.

Wonder if the foreman is going to swap me over to another group or not? Been getting on well with the framing guys. They are at least letting me help, rather than just carry shit, Koda thought with a sigh.

Despite the splendor of the world around him, full of rich green and brown hues, and a blue sky free of clouds overhead, thoughts of his problems would not fade.

Before it was the plumbing guys, and then before that it was the electricians. What’s he going to do now? Put me back with the concrete guys?

Koda had signed on with Dockett Construction under the premise that he’d work as general labor and a gopher until a slot opened up for an apprentice with a team, and then he’d move into that.

It had been nearly three years now, and he’d yet to be given a slot. Koda had a sinking sensation that the foreman was just keeping him around as cheap general labor at this point. Even some of the old hands had pointed it out to him.

There wasn’t much to do, though. He just had to keep plugging away. It wasn’t as if he could move back in with his parents at this point.

It’d been most of a decade since he’d talked to either of his parents, after finally giving up and walking out of his father’s house after a last-straw argument to try to guilt him into siding with the other man against Koda’s mother.

His parents had divorced when he was eight and then proceeded to use custody of him as a club to beat each other. Koda’d had enough and just left the entire thing.

Living on the street for a year until he got the emancipation sorted and found work was rough, but he’d done it. Focusing on trying to find his own way in the world helped get him out of that situation.

The sudden cessation of noise from the bugs and the birds twigged Koda’s danger sense and drew him out of his melancholy thoughts. Glancing around, he looked for something that might have caused the sudden drop in noise.

The undergrowth beneath the trees was all the sort of greenery that clung low to the rocks, with the occasional patch of spiky yucca or fuzzy mullein that sprouted up where the sun snuck through the trees. So, there wasn’t anywhere for a predator to hide. It wasn’t as if this ravine that the trail followed was very large either, and steep stone cliffs rose on either side.

Scanning the upper branches of the trees as well, just to make sure that there wasn’t something like a mountain lion watching him from above, Koda sighed and shook his head.

“Whatev—” Koda started, about to brush the sensation off, when a loud crack of breaking stone echoed down the ravine from farther along the cliff wall. “What the fuck?” he swore, head whipping around to peer between the trees toward the sound.

The noise had been thunderous but singular. Just a loud crack of rock breaking and nothing else. No rumble of falling stone or scatter of pebbles tumbling down the steep slope.

Overwhelmed with a curiosity that banished his previous melancholy, Koda started up the path at a trot. He only had the bare basics in a small pack on his back, so there wasn’t all that much to weigh him down as he jogged up the uneven trail.

Koda had made it almost a quarter-mile up the slope before he spotted what he guessed was the source of the sound from earlier.

Because the ravine was so steep-sided, there were a fair number of large boulders scattered around the base of the cliffs. Boulders that had laid where they rested for a very long time, just baking in the blistering sun. But one, apparently, had baked for a bit too long.

The boulder, which looked easily as large as a queen-sized bed leaned upright, had split in half right down the middle.

It was the fresh, dark interior of the rock that caught his eye and Koda slid to a stop, peering through the trees at the broken boulder. He thought he could see something in the shadows of the cliff just behind the split boulder.

So, with a shrug, Koda stepped off the trail and around a cluster of low, ball-shaped cacti, then headed up between the trees to inspect the boulder.

His estimations of the size of the thing were a bit off. The boulder turned out to be more like the size of his old pickup as he got closer. The rock had been roughly oval-shaped before the split and was now sitting on its side. The split had caused it to fall into nearly equal halves.

Stepping closer, Koda was now sure that he could see a shadow behind the rock. A shadow that looked like the entrance of a cave.

“Wonder what’s in there?” Koda muttered, stepping closer to the broken stone and peering into the deep shadows that pooled there.

The rock itself radiated heat from having sat in the sun, enough that he did not want to touch the stone if he could help it. It honestly felt far hotter than it should have for the cool morning despite being in direct sunlight. It felt more like the rock had been baking all day in the middle of summer.

Around him, the air remained still. The sound of the bugs and the birds had not yet returned. That was making Koda more nervous as the moments slipped by.

However, the more he looked at the cave behind the split stone, the surer he was that there was no way that anything had been living in it. The opening was narrow, barely wider than the split from the boulder. It had been totally blocked until the rock had broken.

Fishing his phone out of his jeans, Koda flicked on the flashlight app and crawled into the split in the hot rock, careful not to touch it with his bare skin.

The fissure was narrow enough that he had to shrug off his backpack in order to fit into the split without brushing the sides. The heat from the rock roasted him like standing in front of an open oven.

When Koda emerged on the other side, the temperature dropped abruptly as soon as he stepped into the cool shade of the cave.

Playing the light from his phone around, it surprised him to find that the cave quickly wound deeper into the cliffside, angling slightly down and away from him.

The tunnel widened enough after a few feet that he could stretch his arms out to either side and not touch the edges. Overhead, he had a good foot of clearance as well.

An overwhelming desire to explore rose in his gut, and Koda had to ruthlessly stomp on it as his common sense asserted itself.

“Running off into a random cave is dumb and definitely not safe. There is no telling if this is stable, especially after whatever happened that broke the rock at the front,” Koda grumbled, preparing to turn back.

As he was turning his back on the tunnel, the distant echo of a feminine shout rolled out of the darkness, and he felt every hair on his body stand up and dance.

The noise hadn’t been an excited shout or a playful one done to listen to the echoes. It had been a fearful shout of surprise. A wordless exclamation of fear.

Without hesitating, Koda wheeled back to the tunnel and hurried down it, phone held high to shed light as far as he could.

“Hello? Are you okay?” he called down the tunnel, his voice echoing oddly at the words. “Even if you are, please call out so I know!”

He listened as he shuffled down the rapidly steepening slope of the tunnel, his mind whirling. Had someone else been on the trail ahead of him and already delved into the cave? Had someone gotten lost or hurt? He knew that it would have been far smarter to step out of the cave and try to call the local ranger station for help, especially as this was an unexplored cave.

No guarantee I’d get a signal in that ravine. The mountains play hell with cell phones, he reminded himself, heart racing as he worried about whoever was also in here with him.

Koda was getting ready to call out again as he came around a curve in the tunnel when his foot slipped on something, and he fell backwards.

Yelping in surprise, Koda landed hard before the steep slope sent him tumbling into a roll.

In an effort to shield his skull and neck, he threw his arms up and tried to wrap them around his head as he skittered down the sloped tunnel.

Several times, Koda rebounded off a wall or bounced around a corner in the headlong fall. He fought the urge to try to grab onto something to stop his descent, knowing that it would likely end up giving him a broken arm rather than actually helping.

Finally, the slope lessened. Moments later, Koda rolled to a stop, head pounding and ears roaring from the adrenaline.

While he’d kept hold of his cell phone during the tumble, his backpack had gotten hooked on something and yanked off his shoulder, leaving him with just the dimly lit cell phone and what he had in his pockets.

“God damn it,” Koda cursed, hissing in pain as he gingerly got to his knees.

His entire body hurt more than it had in several years, ever since one of the concrete guys had talked him into unloading a flatbed full of bagged concrete by hand. The asshole had lied about the forklift being broken, wanting to just get him in trouble and slack off instead of helping.

Stretching slowly, Koda took in his surroundings.

Behind him, the sloped length of the tunnel wound away into the darkness. He was fairly certain that he could scramble back up if he had to. The walls crowded close in around him, looming like a threat held close.

Turning to check the other half of the room, the last thing that he expected to find himself in was the entrance to a large limestone cave. The native rock of the mountains was granite, so finding the yellow-white rock here was surprising.

Long stalactites hung from the ceiling, while stalagmites mounded up around the back half of the cave. A pool of pitch-black water sat in front of him, easily a good six feet across and deep enough that his flashlight could not find the bottom. He’d tumbled down the slope and slid to a stop only a couple feet away from ending up directly in that pool.

Staring at the water in surprise, Koda abruptly remembered the feminine scream that had drawn him deeper into the cave. He immediately scanned the room again to see if someone had possibly tumbled down ahead of him but couldn’t see any signs. Even the floor underfoot was pristine, except where his boots were leaving dusty prints on the yellow-white stone. The air in the cave was heavy and oppressive, and Koda swore he could feel the weight of the tons of stone hanging above him.

“This is just way too creepy…” he muttered.

Koda glanced around the cave again before the shimmer of light on the water drew his attention to the pool once more.

Something urged him closer to the edge, and he peered toward the dark water curiously. Koda didn’t know what it was, but something told him to approach and wait, to be patient for just a moment longer despite his racing heart.

The edge of the pool was slick with moisture. Koda had to be careful not to slip and fall into the water as he approached. Once he was close enough to lean over it, Koda stared down into the darkness.

The edge of the pool sloped sharply under the water before abruptly cutting away, and the center of the pool was dark.

Playing his phone’s light over it, Koda wrinkled his forehead for a long moment as he concentrated. Again, he felt that tugging sensation that was drawing him forward, but he refused to do something as dumb as step into the water. Especially after ignoring his instincts and coming into the cave, which led to his fall.

The depths of the pool seemed to ripple, and suddenly, the water was not depthless anymore.

Koda blinked in surprise when he could see the bottom and squinted. It looked like the water had abruptly decided to show a reflection of the ceiling of the cave, when before it had simply been a pool of darkness.

Glancing up, he checked before looking down once more into the pool. It looked roughly the same, but not exactly. Maybe he was seeing the bottom of the pool instead?

It looked like someone had been here before. Because, as he studied the depths of the subterranean well, he saw what looked like a statue of a woman standing directly across from him, but reversed as if the pool was a mirror.

“Huh… that is cool. I wonder what tribe built this?” he muttered while thinking.

The most likely source was an indigenous tribe back before ‘civilization’ had come to the land. Koda was just talking out loud to reassure himself. It wasn’t as if he expected anyone to respond.

He sure as hell did not expect the statue to shift, let alone speak.

“The Ivory Spear clan carved out this cave initially. At least the half that I stand in.”

The voice was throaty, feminine, and a bit hoarse. Like someone who had not spoken in a long time.

The statue of the woman shifted, her bone-pale skin shimmering as she kneeled to stare up at him in reverse, as if the water was nothing more than a bit of glass, and the forces of gravity were reversed on the far side.

What he had taken as shadows around her head turned out to be a mass of lustrous, black curls that hung about her shoulders in defiance of her orientation and gravity. Koda couldn’t help but be envious of that mane of curls.

His own black hair was straight as a rod, and he’d given up on doing anything with it other than tying it back.

The woman watched him curiously with eyes that glinted silver in the light of his phone.

“Who? What?” Koda stumbled through the words as he fought to figure out what had just happened while swaying and nearly falling over in surprise.

His mind flashed over different possibilities in rapid succession. Had he hit his head on the fall, and this was a hallucination? A gas pocket in the long-sealed cave? Was he losing his mind?

“You are not losing your mind, Koda Burke,” the woman said gently, peering up at him without blinking.

Koda swore he saw a faint, spotted pattern in the silky mass of curls that hung about her pale face.

“I think I am. I’m talking to a beautiful woman who is hiding in a pool of water.”

The woman’s full lips twisted into a broad smile that revealed pearl-white teeth. Pearl-white teeth that were pointed like a hunting cat’s, rather than those of a normal human. 

Okay, definitely crazy, he thought, heart racing.

“No, you are not crazy. I promise that much,” the woman reassured him, laughing low in her throat.

The motion sent a ripple through her body that dragged Koda’s attention away from her teeth to more interesting parts of her anatomy, and he took in her outfit again.

Kneeling before him, the dark-haired stranger wore a short, wrap-style skirt made of fur-on leather in a dark brown that fell to mid-thigh. The angle and reversed position showed a great deal of her creamy inner thigh, but no more than that. A simple chest wrap also made of fur hugged full breasts that looked like they were at that delicious point where they were just over a handful. Around her shoulders was a cape of leather lined with dark-brown fur as well.

“Well, if I am not crazy? What the hell is happening right now?” Koda demanded, his voice growing higher in pitch as he took a tentative step back from the pool.

The woman’s amused look immediately shifted to one of fear, and she held out a hand towards him, beckoning him to stop.

The sight of her beautiful features twisting in fear punched Koda in the gut, and a wave of guilt immediately washed over him. This gave him a handle to get a hold of his rising panic, though, and he reined it in.

“I am sorry for scaring you, Koda. It was—” the woman started, but he interrupted her.

“How do you know my name?”

The black-haired woman frowned for a moment and glanced to one side as if checking something in her version of the cave. After a moment, she looked back at him. Her gaze was distant as if she could see right through him.

“I know it because I know you. Or I know… of you. Your blood calls to me, and I recognize its line. It is why I drew you here, so I could ask something of you,” the woman spoke slowly, weighing her words carefully.

“How?”

“How do I know you?” The woman tilted her head to one side in a fashion that reminded him of a curious dog.

The gesture oddly reassured him. Koda felt his racing heart slow a bit as he studied the beautiful woman speaking from the other side of a pool of water.

“An ancestor of yours was once a follower of mine. I had thought calamity had taken her bloodline from me forever. Like so many others. But it appears she escaped the ruination of my world.”

A glimmer that Koda thought might have been a tear formed at the corner of one of her silver eyes, but the woman rubbed it away quickly.

“Your world? Ruination?” 

Koda couldn’t look away from the beautiful woman. He was now sure that there was some sort of spotted pattern to her curly hair as the shimmer of the light reflected on it showed differently.

Before he realized it, Koda was kneeling by the side of the pool again, leaning over so that he looked directly down at the woman.

The woman’s features darkened, and her concerned expression morphed into one of barely restrained rage that Koda was thankful wasn’t directed at him.

“Monsters, foes greater than any could have suspected, ravaged my world. They drove my people from their homes—those they did not outright slaughter. Your forebears were driven from their homes.”

Spitting out that last statement, the woman mastered her anger, but Koda could see it still boiling behind her silver eyes like faint embers in a low-burning fire.

“Those who promised me aid declined to give it. They did not think the threat was grave enough to waste the resources.” Her lips twisted in a snarl now that revealed those sharp teeth once more, but Koda was not afraid. Instead, he felt an echo of her righteous fury in his heart.

“What became of them?” The question fell from his lips before Koda could think, but the woman did not take offense.

“My people… your people, fled. Those who could escape scattered to the other worlds. Some fought and lived on, but most all of them died. I was carried by the few remaining of my faithful to a place of safety, after using all but the last dregs of my power to strike down those who betrayed us.”

A leonine growl emanated from the woman’s slender throat, and Koda felt a thrill run up his spine. Not of fear, but of awe.

“What then?” 

The woman deflated at his question, slumping forward onto her hands, her long hair falling to shade her face. “By the time I woke, those of my clergy were gone. Either dead to threats in the new world or murdered by our enemies.” 

Koda felt the word ‘clergy’ ring in his head. His senses felt distorted as he stared into the pond, and idly, the thought that this might just be a hallucination while he died of a head injury ran through his mind. 

“Or so I thought. I hadn’t expected to find one of the bloodline so close to one of the old speaking wells. Let alone one that was connected to my hiding place.”

“Why are you hiding?” Koda wanted to ask for more about the bloodlines, about the history that this strange woman seemed to know of his family, but a strange concern was filling him for her safety.

“Because I am not welcome in the lands I live in now. The powers tolerate my former people because they give lip service to new gods, but this leaves my faithful without the proper protections I should be able to offer them. Without a priest or a champion to claim sites of power for me, I am a mere shadow of what I could be.” The woman scowled again, and Koda swore her silver eyes took on a hint of madness for just a moment.

“Why did you speak to me? Why call to me? What does this ‘bloodline’ you mentioned mean?” The questions poured out of Koda like water from a cracked bowl the second she paused to breathe.

The woman stared at him for a long moment, her raven-dark eyebrows furrowing as she studied him. It took the better part of a minute before she responded.

“I need you, Koda Burke. I need a priest. A champion. In my despair, I had given up hope until this moment. I peered into this ancient well in hopes of glimpsing my ancient domain one last time before the returning calamity wiped my people out. When I saw you…” She trailed off and studied him before nodding once, resolve firming her features. 

“I can offer you power, riches, immortality, and more. Women or men to sate your appetites, and all the luxuries of life. I need you to help me save my people. If they vanish, then so will I. It may take time to gather the power to give you everything, but I will make good on it.”

The woman’s voice took on a hint of desperation as she continued, rambling as she explained herself. People in danger, places of power that she needed help to reclaim, and all of it being possible because of some ancient ties to an ancestor he didn’t even know of.

The entire idea sounded so bizarre to Koda. This felt like something that would happen in a movie or a storybook. But he felt something in his body, his very blood, responding to the request this woman was making—nearly begging—of him. If her earlier words meant what he thought, the request that this goddess was making of him.

“Revenge is not my only motivator. I truly want to help my people. And, if you accept and help them, I am sure my faithful will shower you with riches and honor as well.” The goddess had continued with trying to sway him as thoughts drifted through Koda’s cloudy mind. If anything, her desperation made his decisions easy.

“No.”

The one-word statement from Koda caused all the hope to fall from the woman’s face. The distraught expression tore at his heart like a physical blow. Koda raced to explain, trying to bring back that hope he’d seen shining in her silver eyes as resignation took its place.

“No, I don’t need to be showered in riches, women, or whatever.” Koda shook his head fiercely to clear it of the distracting fog and grimaced before punching his own thigh sharply, grunting in pain at the sensation.

The blow helped him to focus, driving away the clouds that hung around his mind and made it wander.

When he looked at her once more, the goddess’s silver eyes glimmered with tears, and the hope was back once more. The sight of it made his heart soar.

“You said people need help? My people?” Try as he might, Koda could not keep the desperate longing from his voice as he said: ‘my people’.

Ever since his parents’ marriage had collapsed, and doubly so after he fled to escape the toxic space that was their homes, Koda had wanted a real, loving family. He’d wanted to belong once more. The hope of starting his own family as soon as his income was stable had kept him going until now, seeing that as the first step toward reclaiming those familial bonds. But, with how the foreman at work was jerking him around, that hope was turning into a distant dream.

“Yes. My people are your people, Koda. They need my help, and I cannot give it without an agent. Long ago, I bound my power to the bloodline of my clergy. With that tie, and the power that flows in your veins, I can actually help them again.” Hope turned to determination. It glimmered in her eyes, rang in her voice, and trembled in the shoulders of the beautiful, fur-clad woman before him. “You’ll help?”

“Yes.”

The decision took less than a heartbeat to make. There was nothing left for him here but a dead-end job. Koda mused for just a moment that there were a few people on the worksite that he might miss, but with what this strange woman was offering him?

Well, he would be a fool to pass this up.

And if you are lying there with a broken skull in a cave, like the idiot you are, there is no harm in playing along and enjoying the distraction while you die, right? Koda thought with morbid amusement.

With his decision made, and the benefit of the focus that provided, both the vague fear and the last of the brain-fog from earlier vanished.

“Then I need you to come to me, quickly. I will empower you to be my agent, my champion, and the first of my new clergy. Help me save our people, Koda. Help us find our way back home.”

The raven-haired woman held her hand out and leaned forward like she was about to dive forward into the reversed surface of the pool.

Koda watched in astonishment as her hand touched the clear surface and sank into, then through the water’s surface.

A delicate, alabaster hand rose from within the pool, held out to him in supplication.

“Take my hand, Koda Burke. Though you are of the blood of my people, and your line served me once, you still have the freedom to choose. All creatures should run free beneath the open sky.”

 The last part of her sentence rang like the words were striking a glass bell within his skull.

A rush of sensations whirled past him. The sensation of wind on his face, soft grass under bare feet, the warmth of a fire against his side, and the soft touch of a mate tucked to his chest. They were there and gone in a single instant, and his heart ached with longing to feel them once more.

Without hesitation, Koda reached out and took the pale hand.

The goddess smiled at him, her fang-filled mouth curving into an expression of both affection and relief. Her eyes danced for a moment before her expression firmed into one of determination.

“Come to me, my champion. I will anoint you with a weapon, and then you must save our people from an imminent threat. They may not understand at first, but they will come to love you for the sacrifices you make.” As she spoke, the goddess pulled Koda forward and down into the pond.

When his hand touched the water of the pool, Koda felt something cool and hard wrap around his fingertips before flowing up his arm.

A gauntlet made of leather and bone, studded with teeth and sharp stones, slowly wrapped around his arm as the goddess drew him into the pool. Sharp talons made of carefully carved bones tipped the fingers, but he could still feel the soft warmth of her skin against his palm despite the presence of the gauntlet. The construct flowed over his skin as it passed through the surface of the water.

“What is your name?” Koda asked as he teetered on the edge of losing his balance and tipping fully into the water.

The raven-haired woman smiled at him, her back arching proudly in such a way that her breasts bounced in their fur wrap as she spoke with a flourish.

“When I was at the height of my power, my titles were the Pack Lady or Ivorycrown. But before even that, I was Thera, Queen of Beasts.”

Thera gave him one last tug, and Koda willingly fell forward into the pool.

His cell phone fell from his left hand to land on the limestone at the edge of the water with a clatter.

The light continued to illuminate the cave, even as the image in the pond faded, and the pool returned to a bottomless, black hole that vanished deep into the earth.