Betrayal's Shadow

Book Description

What would you do to save your people from extinction?

What if your race held the key to mankind’s future?

One Guardian will risk hell to change the future.

Descended from the race of Guardians, Turen’s people have survived the last two hundred years, quarantined and isolated. Living in secrecy with no mates and no offspring, they fail to deliver on their ability to replenish and heal human souls through the birth of their Guardian children. Risking his life, Turen chooses capture at the hands of a comrade-turned-enemy to seek answers to change the future.

Mia Bowman has no knowledge of the secret Guardian race. Yet, her uncontrollable, nocturnal summons to Turen’s prison cell and her strong sense of justice leave her with little choice but to help him. She can heed his warning and stay clear of his people’s problems or she can ferret out the lies and unravel an ancient tale of murder and deceit. It will take an ultimate sacrifice to stop the unexpected evil and reverse a fatal ending to the Guardian line.

THE GUARDIANS OF EDEN:

A race of beings created in a Sanctum at the far edge of Eden. Co-existing with mankind, they safeguarded human souls and the promise of eternity—until a virus killed all over the age of eighteen. The surviving children fled to the Sanctum for protection, children raising children without the full legacy of their history and knowledge. Two hundred years of solitude have produced a race of semi-immortals fortified with powers and intellect but lacking the mates who will make them whole and allow them to fulfill their covenant with mankind.

BETRAYAL’S SHADOW

The Guardians of Eden Book 1

By K.H. LeMoyne

Published by Digital Crystal Press

GENRE: Paranormal/Urban Fantasy Romance

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BETRAYAL’S SHADOW – The Guardians of Eden Book 1

Copyright 2011 by KH LeMoyne

Published by Digital Crystal Press

Cover Art designed by Robin Ludwig Design

ISBN: 978-1-937080-00-6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

Thank you to the following people.

To my incredible critique partner Linda, because you’ve been there from beginning to end and you never hold back feedback or support. To my very talented cover designer, Robin. To my editors Linda and Jennifer, and my proofreader Cora. To my better half, because you bring patience and sanity to every day when I need it most. (vD)

The Covenant

And humans were cast from the Garden of Eden

To work the lands far from their blessed origins

To survive outside the comfort and glory of God’s original design.

Mankind came to know both good and evil

To suffer under the consequences of free will.

For their salvation, God enacted a covenant with other beings of His creation.

Beings whose convention and purpose would be the release and healing of souls unto mankind.

Beings empowered with select skills to guide humanity from the perils of their own making.

Beings birthed in the far edges of Eden’s Sanctuary.

Though not God’s chosen people, these wardens would be gifted for their service.

Bonded in time with those who would match them in commitment.

Gifted with one mate and rewarded with the sharing of one soul for eternity.

CHAPTER 1

A sonic crack followed by searing fire along Turen’s shoulder blade shattered his resolve. He snagged the leather tail on its next pass, twisted around, and yanked, hard. The seven feet of bullwhip wrenched out of his captor’s hand and snaked across the floor to coil at Turen’s feet.

Wrists manacled, bound by two feet of chain, he still managed a hard strike to Shank’s thick jaw and a swift jab with the whip’s handle to the guard’s stomach. He backed away into a crouch and rolled the whip in his hand, waiting on the next assault.

Two months in this prison hellhole were about to end his two hundred and fifty years of peaceful co-existence with humanity. He’d endured abuse for the sake of his guards’ entertainment. He’d tempered his anger. He’d camouflaged his strength and skills in exchange for access to even the smallest bits of information. Yet he had learned nothing.

No more. With Shank’s attack, he let his anger and festered frustration feed the raw black desire to dish back some pain. As the sweat dripped down Turen’s face and stung at the corners of his eyes, he met Shank’s glare. The shift of the man’s meaty fingers registered as they twitched near his holstered gun.

Shank issued no warning, no order that would alert anyone listening on the intercom of his intent. From the gleam in Shank’s dark eyes, he didn’t intend to allow anyone to stop him from adding Turen’s death as a notch to his ego.

So be it. Turen wasn’t leaving this world alone. He flexed his fingers, circled Shank and edged toward the chamber door, the whip and his nerve his only tools of defense. No internal surge of Guardian power responded to the summons his mind issued. His powers were dead, or at least crippled. The composite alloy of the manacles stemmed the natural flow of his energy, though the chain’s closest link quivered a fraction of an inch at his attempt.

Not enough to count as headway or success.

Shank raised the gun. Turen let loose a strike with the whip and dove for the door. Splinters of rock fragments from the wall by his head shattered over his shoulders. He turned to gauge Shank’s next move as a sizzling wave of current speared above his kidney and echoed through every nerve in his body. The impact vaulted him into the air and slammed him to the stone floor.

“Enough.”

Turen drew in a harsh breath, kept his eyes closed, and listened for the clipped strike of leather boots closing in on his personal hell. A hand fisted in his hair and yanked his head up, but he refused to meet the gaze of his tormentor. While Shank’s attentions were brutal, Rasheer brought a new meaning to the word torture. Unlike the guards who reported to him, Rasheer modified his abuse with each session as if Turen had become his personal test lab for pain.

“Be insolent and see what that buys you.” Calm and contained, Rasheer’s voice resonated with aggression as he turned on Shank. “Secure him and report to the loading docks.”

“He—” Shank’s growl sputtered to a halt at a grating shuffle and the clank of metal on metal.

Turen slid a glance to the door. Thick gray six-foot tentacles supported a clear jellied head, round and flat, the shape of a three-foot wheel of cheese. Saliva dripped from beneath the head; rows of razored teeth ground in the circular maw as lights danced from a computer implant surgically connected to its neural pathways. The hybrid creature slithered back and forth in an overexcited dance.

He looked away. The altered aquatic creature, somehow mutated for land, was lethal. It was impossible to believe that any of his comrades could sink to the creation of such an aberration. However, the creature’s appearance and potential threat had at least blocked Shank’s plans for retaliation.

And Turen’s exit.

Pain ripped across Turen’s shoulders as Shank forced him to his knees and clipped his chains into a hook on the wall behind his back. Despite the violent show of dominance, Turen clenched his teeth, refusing to allow even a glimmer of emotion to cross his face.

Shank’s breath beat hot at his back, but the hybrid creature Rasheer had brought into the room as his personal guard encouraged the six-foot, two hundred and fifty pound bulldog of a man to leave as ordered.

Rasheer squatted before him, gripping in one hand the whip Turen had dropped when he was Tasered. “You cause a lot of trouble here in my master’s cells.”

The comment didn’t require an answer.

A smirk of satisfaction split the long, pale scar that ran from Rasheer’s chin through the corner of his mouth and ended just shy of the right eye socket. Combined with the narrow-set black eyes, Xavier’s Captain of the Guards exhibited a fair depiction of hostile and deadly.

Turen swallowed back the urge to spit in the man’s face. Death wouldn’t achieve his goals. What was a little pain and humiliation compared to freedom for his Guardian race?

“I should leave you to Shank’s influence.” Rasheer said with a humorless laugh.

Influence. Right. Each day four guards escorted him from his cell to Rasheer’s interrogation room, each trip an exercise in survival. Always chained, always outnumbered. His human guards found a bound captive
sporting
. He would shown them sporting. This time Turen had left two guards unconscious, broken ribs on the third and a visible streak of blood on Shank’s chin from the whip strike.

Guardian twenty-five, humans two.

Turen maintained the running count. It kept him sane. He awarded them one point for his capture, another when they rendered him unconscious during the first long trip through the compound’s hallways. No points for them since. He refused to add to his people’s mortality rate.

With a glance over Rasheer’s shoulder, Turen recalculated the odds of escape. A repetitive exercise he used to kill time while in this room. Futile, maybe, but only for now. Once free, he would give his jailers a taste of something worse than the Taser they’d become so fond of.

Rasheer pushed the bottom of his boot into Turen’s shoulder. The motion rocked him against the chain’s pull and wrenched his arms. “You can spend forever in Xavier’s dungeons. You can die here. But first, I’ll extract what you are and what you know.”

Turen gritted his teeth and glared at Rasheer. He would never give this human weasel the time of day, much less divulge information on his people or his reasons for seeking out Xavier. Evidently, Xavier had shared no information with his second in command either.

Not that Rasheer didn’t already have more information than was safe. Several months ago, Turen had agreed to a meeting in an absurd hope to enlist Xavier’s aid.

Rasheer had appeared instead, not Turen’s former leader. In a split-second decision, Turen allowed his own capture, hoping to gain an opportunity. He had pitiful little to show for his sacrifice after months of confinement and abuse.