** Today on Dark Faerie Tales Read Kelly Gay’s take on the Three Little Pigs and win The Hour of Dust and Ashes**
Adam Bruno, the hero in THE LOST, is the heir to a lost race with the ability to gather energy and use it for a host of different powers. Shapeshifting, healing or killing with just a touch are just some of things of which Adam is capable. There is only one problem: Adam is unaware of the extent of his powers and the history of his people since he was abducted nearly twenty years earlier during a battle in the dessert. Adam has little recollection of that conflict or his real family and is only just beginning to explore his powers when he meets a unique woman. Bobbie Carrera is an injured Marine veteran who is home from war. The last thing she wants is to face combat once again, but her involvement with Adam may bring just that-more war and death. THE LOST is an action-packed ride as Adam and Bobbie discover love and fight for their existence.
This is my take on what would happen if Adam and Bobbie were thrust into the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.
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Her urgent grip communicated fear and determination.
He held on tight to the woman’s hand, his mother’s hand, as they raced through the night, chased by one explosion after another that tore up the ground behind them.
A shot suddenly landed a few feet before them. He stumbled over the raw gouge torn into the hard-packed desert surface from the blast and fell, breaking her hold on him.
She turned to him and he popped up onto his feet, but then suddenly found himself flying through the air, as if shoved along by an unseen hand.
Dark circles of light danced before his eyes. He fought them back, searching for his mother. She was moving toward him, but then the world exploded into a shock of light, blinding him and driving the last remnants of consciousness from his mind.
He woke slowly, his brain fuzzy and filled with static as if he was too close to a high voltage line. Shaking his head, he drove away the noise and rose and rose and rose.
Glancing down, he realized he was no longer that lost little boy. He was . . . Adam.
Adam, he repeated and glanced around at the beachscape which was both familiar and yet different. To his left the waves washed gently against the shore, but to his right rose up a jagged tumble of rocks and boulders along a steep slope. A slope that rose ever upward toward a beautifully constructed shingle-clad home in the distance.
Something called to him about the homey structure. Something which had him trying to scramble up the rocks, but no matter how far he climbed, the house continued to stay out of reach. With only a short tumble down the incline, he was on the wet sands of the shore once more, but then the screech of a seagull filtered into his brain.
“Touch me. Touch me,” came the bird’s raucous cry in his brain as it strutted just a few feet away from him, eyeing him slyly.
Adam raised his hands and suddenly a vortex of light appeared between his two outstretched palms. The vortex grew, piercing the air to snare the bird and drag it to him. Within seconds of the seagull landing in his hands, a weird sensation sprouted all around him.
Pain erupted across his body as once smooth skin broke apart as feathers poked out of his skin. In the space of a breath, a tightening gripped his core as bones popped and muscles rearranged themselves while his body condensed in volume to the bird’s smaller size.
The pain was such that Adam released his hold on the seagull which fell away from him as Adam scrambled back on unsteady and scrawny bird legs. He tossed out his arms to steady himself and a breeze from the ocean slipped beneath his outstretched wings and lifted him upward.
Freedom such as he had never known gripped him as he rode the current up over the steep hillside of slippery rocks that had challenged him before. Ever higher he rose, swooping close to the rough edges of the boulders until he landed on the wrap-around porch of the building he had spied earlier.
At the front door a large man slumped in a chair, sound asleep. A warrior for sure judging from his size and the scars marring the skin along his neck and the side of his jaw. Not that he was providing much security as he slumbered on the front porch of the home.
Adam paused and pecked at the man’s shoe with his beak, but the guard did not stir.
With a confused shake of his head, Adam sensed another transformation coming over him as deep in his center, a lightness began and spread out over his body. That weightlessness evaporated quickly, soon replaced by agony once more as the feathers retracted and his form rearranged itself back to that of a normal man.
Breathing heavily and slightly lightheaded from the energy it had taken to make the changes, Adam laid a hand on one of the columns on the porch. He raised his face to the sun and its kiss warmed his skin and inched into his core. The sun’s power restored some of the energy he had expended to shapeshift.
Recharged, he entered the home only to find yet more people asleep inside a parlor. At least half a dozen or more including an older couple who seemed familiar. He wanted to touch them, but something held him back and pulled him deeper into the house as if there was a greater calling waiting for him.
He continued onward, tiptoeing past other sleeping warriors until he reached the open door to a bedroom.
But unlike all the people he had bypassed, he could not resist touching this woman. He had to feel the smoothness of her skin beneath his hand. Discover for himself if it was as soft as it seemed.
He passed the back of his hand along the satiny skin of her cheek and as he did so, the chill of her body and the stillness of her form registered.
Was she even breathing? he wondered and stroked her cheek again. In slow degrees the chill dissipated with each pass of his hand. With a stronger caress, glimmers of silver-blue light shimmered where skin met skin, wrapping themselves around his hand and dancing along her flesh, bringing a flush of peachy color.
He passed his hand along her skin tenderly and the warmth and light grew with his actions. Within him the buzz of a current came as energy slipped from him and into her, increasing the swirl of lights and silver-blue tendrils passing between them.
With that kiss of power, a soft sigh escaped her. Her eyelids fluttered open, unfocused at first until with a slight shift of her head, her whiskey-colored gaze settled on him.
“Adam,” she said, the silken tones of her voice stirring alive desire and recognition as image after image flashed before his eyes, awakening memories of the moments they had shared in another life.
He breathed her name as if in prayer. “Bobbie.”
A sexy smile slipped across her lips. “You came for me.”
“I will always come for you,” he said, now understanding that his love for her was what had driven him up that hillside. Love was what had claimed him from the moment he had first laid eyes on her lying almost deathlike on the bed.
He stroked his hand down the center of her body and everywhere he touched, her body came alive with flares of light and heat. Beneath the shift he noted the tight peaks of her nipples and he so wanted to touch them. Taste their sweetness, but she took hold of his hand, her grip strong.
“Later, my love. First there are some you must meet,” she said and with his help, she rose from the bed, her gait slightly uncertain as he had expected from the cane.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and tucked her close to him, offering support as they walked back past the warriors guarding her room and to the older couple asleep in the parlor.
Adam glanced at Bobbie, his gaze questioning.
“They are your parents, Adam. You’re no longer alone,” she said and urged his hand forward to touch the sleeping couple.
As Adam stroked his hand across the woman’s face, the buzz of power came again and a pale blue aura came to life beneath his hand. Then her eyelids fluttered open. When she focused on him, he found himself staring at emerald eyes that were so similar to his own.
The woman moved her hand then and gripped that of the man asleep beside her. From inside him Adam experienced the pull of energy flowing between them, vibrating with a sympathetic hum. As the man roused and glanced from his wife and then to Adam, it was like staring at an older version of himself.
Bobbie gripped his hand tightly and leaned into him, her touch loving and supportive. Within him, the energy grew, filling the emptiness within him. He knew the truth of it then.
He was finally home. No longer lost.
* * * * *
I hope you enjoyed this variation on the fairy tale. In my paranormal romance THE LOST, the first book in the exciting new SIN HUNTERS series, it takes some time and risk for Adam to finally discover his true origins as well as to find love and peace beside Bobbie. If you’d like to find out more about THE LOST, please visit my website at www.caridad.com.
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Adam Bruno is no ordinary millionaire. The heir to an ancient race possessing a dark, powerful magic, he can shapeshift and create energy. His gifts make him a living weapon and have forced him to live in seclusion. But now an inhuman force hunts down Adam-just when he finds someone who makes him feel more human than he ever imagined possible . . . Home from combat in Iraq, Bobbie Carerra wants only peace, yet soon joins Adam in a terrifying battle against paranormal enemies who hide in plain sight. She's drawn to his strength of mind and body; he's attracted to her courage and intoxicating energy. Their scorching passion can either transport them to the heights of ecstasy or-if Adam's powers rage out of control-destroy them. But when an invisible brotherhood tightens its nets and someone Adam trusts betrays him, only a heartrending decision can save them.
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Ends September 7th, 2011.
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Caridad Piñeiro® is a multi-published and award-winning author whose love of the written word developed when her fifth grade teacher assigned a project – to write a book that would be placed in a class lending library. She has been hooked on writing ever since.
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