jump to excerpt for Barbarian | Nemesis | Naughty Nancy  

 in the novella "Barbarian"...

Chapter 1

January 7, 878 A.D.

Chippenham , Wessex

“Nay,” she murmured. Color rapidly drained from her cheeks as she watched the grisly sight unfold. Her breathing grew labored and her heart dropped into her stomach as she saw one of her sire’s men fall to the ground, an imposing Viking’s sword having decapitated him. She felt nigh close to fainting. “Nay,” she whispered again, pulling the heavy cloak tightly around her.

Lady Elen Godeuart was too shocked and horrified to say aught more. Never had she thought to see her family’s mighty stronghold fall to the heathen Northmen, yet it was precisely what was happening.

“Bloody infidels!” Lothar Godeuart swore. His nostrils flared from where he stood upon the parapet with Elen watching the mayhem below unfold. “The king should have known the savages would break their word!”

 Elen turned her worried gaze to her eldest brother. She fought with the ferocious icy-cold wind to keep her long blonde curls from lashing into her face. “I—I thought King Alfred paid the Northmen much Danegeld to leave Wessex and return to Mercia .” Her lips were parched, her throat dry and seemingly cracked. “Lothar, I’m afraid,” she breathed out. “What do we—”

 “Stay here, Elen,” he cut in, reaching for his sword. “I shall return for you the soonest. Do as I say and keep yourself from harm’s way.”

 “Lothar—nay!” Panic engulfed her at the thought of her brother confronting the Viking marauders. Her heart pounded against her chest as she reached for his tunic sleeve and pulled. “I beseech you not to go down there! Already is father lost to us. I could not bear it were you to—”

 “Elen,” Lothar said with gentle insistence, “I must go.” Her eldest brother was an unsmiling, stoic man, mayhap, yet Elen could see his love for her there in his eyes. “I will return to you. I foreswear it.”

 She nodded, her breasts heaving up and down in time with her labored breathing. “May God be with you and mighty Wessex .” Her apprehensive gaze followed Lothar until he was well out of sight.

Elen’s attention returned to the carnage below. When first she had heard tell that the savages had stormed Chippenham last eve, she had known deep within herself that the Godeuart holding would be one of the first attacked. Verily, the keep was built entirely of stone, a rarity in the region and one that underlined the wealth of her family. She had known the Vikings would attack her ancestral holding, yet Elen had never truly believed her beloved home would fall.

It was falling. Rapidly. And, what’s more, there was only but a handful of King Alfred’s men left to defend it.

Never in all of her nineteen years had Elen witnessed a slaughter the likes of which she was seeing this morn. Her elder brother, Lothar, had mayhap been overprotective of her since papa’s death, but then Elen was one of only four Godeuart progeny—and the only daughter—to have survived passed childhood.

Sweet Beatrix had died of fever at the age of two. Gisela had died at birth along with their mother. Verily, out of the nine children Lady Helene Godeuart had carried in her womb, only Elen and three of her brothers had endured. Such was the reality of their world.

After the death of their father, Asser, in a bloody battle with the Vikings a year past, Lothar had been all the more determined to marry his sister off to a warlord with vast holdings who was in favor with the king. He wanted Elen’s protection from a man capable of giving it. Baron William Lenore, Lothar had decided, was to become Elen’s husband.

Another battle had broken out a scant month before her betrothal was to be decreed. The betrothal had never come to pass and William’s whereabouts were presently unknown. She didn’t know if her intended betrothed was dead…or alive and in hiding. She could only wish the marriage alliance had already come to pass that William Lenore might throw his soldiers behind Lothar in the fight to save their stronghold from barbarian hands.

That wasn’t to be. And now, the saints save them all, it looked as though the most heavily fortified stronghold of Chippenham was a stone’s throw from falling.

“Milady!”

Elen whirled around atop the parapet. She closed her eyes briefly and opened them on an expelling of air, grateful to see that her beloved favored slave, Theodrada, was alive and well. Theodrada had been caring for her since she was but a babe, the elder woman now well into her forties.

Elen ran toward the slave. “Praise God Almighty you are well! What goes on below?” She felt desperate to hear that her brothers were alive. Her youngest brother, Arnulf, was deep within Wessex at the king’s court, and therefore hopefully intact. Still, that left Lothar and Louis here in Chippenham, possible death lurking just around every corner. “Well…?”

Theodrada’s breathing was heavy, her blue eyes wide and haunted, as she stopped before her mistress and clutched at either of her arms. “Louis took a sword through the side, milady.” She ignored the horrified gurgling sound erupting from Elen’s throat and continued. “It looks deep, but mayhap the saints will smile on him. I packed the cut with herbs before I came to find you.”

“And Lothar?”

The slave shook her head. “I know naught of Lord Godeuart.”

Elen felt ready to vomit. The temperature was nigh unto freezing atop the parapet due to a rogue January snow that had enveloped the region, yet her heart was pumping so mightily her forehead had broken out with beads of sweat. “Come!” she called out to Theodrada as she loosed from her hold. Grabbing her skirts, she ran from the tower into the keep proper. “We must aid them!”

“We must aid them?” the slave incredulously retorted as she followed on her mistress’s heels. “Milady, we are but women. What are you thinking we can do?”

Elen wasn’t certain, yet she felt sure they could do something. At this point their interference could hardly hurt.

“I know what to do!” she said, coming to a halt and whirling around to face her slave. Finally all the boring talk of battles she’d been subjugated to over the years at countless feasts would serve her, and hopefully Lothar as well. “Gather me together five strong slaves and go to the kitchens the soonest.”

“The kitchens?”

“Do not question me, Theodrada! Do as you are told!”

The slave inclined her head before dashing away. Elen ran as quickly as she could below stairs. Several minutes later, as Elen had known she would, Theodrada entered the kitchens with five of the Godeuarts’ strongest slaves. Theodrada quirked a black eyebrow as she watched her mistress churn a cauldron of boiling hot wax over an open spit.

Elen’s nostrils were flaring as she glanced up. Her outer cloak had long since been removed, yet sweat plastered her modest green gown to her body from the labor of working the heavy spoon back and forth within the bubbling wax. She didn’t care. Elen was tired of the bedamned Vikings, tired of losing men she loved to their greed and pilfering. King Alfred had paid them well to leave Wessex alone. The word-breakers had taken the offered Danegeld and agreed to return to Danish Mercia, a barbarian stronghold. They were liars, unholy savages, the lot of them.

“I need pitch and I need tar,” Elen commanded the slaves without breaking from her task. “Get it and bring it to me anon.”

Thirty minutes later, Elen smiled to herself as she watched the male Celtic slaves pour the wax, tar, and pitch concoction they’d created together into seven large urns, one for each of them. It took every bit of strength, grunting, and groaning Elen had in her to pick up her urn, but she was angry enough—and worried enough about her elder brother Lothar—to do it. “To the high walls!” she beseeched them. “Now!”

The slaves followed quickly, all of them as much in a frenzy as Elen to see their job done. They knew as well as their mistress did that should the keep fall to the Northmen, the Vikings were as likely to slew them all as they were to claim them for slaves of their own. All of their lives could very well depend on victory.

Elen’s green eyes rounded in horror as she glanced down the high wall and saw flaming arrows shooting toward the keep. Her heart beating rapidly, she instructed the slaves to set the urns down upon the wall until she signaled them to spill it upon the enemy below. That done, she frantically searched for Lothar. She didn’t find him.

Nay! she thought, terrified. Lothar—please be alive!

Batting long blonde curls out of her line of vision, Elen got her first good look at the enemy. She stilled.

There were at least thirty of them and they had the keep surrounded on all sides. What’s more, the Viking heathens were as huge and formidable as legend bespoke. They might have sat atop their warhorses, but even in the seated position it was easy to surmise that not a one of them would be below six feet in height—most of them much taller.

All were heavily muscled, battle scars riddling their bronzed bodies and bejeweled gold bangles delineating the musculature of their biceps. Many of them sported foreign braids plaited against either temple at the sides of the head—some even wore those braids in their beards.

They were the heathens King Alfred had called them. They were the nightmare the church decreed them. They were the pestilence Lothar had sworn to destroy.

Elen’s gaze collided with one of the Northmen’s, a colossal barbarian who stood out from the other giants by virtue of the night-black hair that fell past his shoulders. He wore the same odd dress—naked chest in freezing weather, leather brais, gold bangles clasped unforgivingly about either arm, and two braids plaiting the hair back from his temples. There the similarities ended. Most of the others were fair of hair and eye. This warlord’s hair was darker even than Theodrada the Welsh slave’s, his eyes a chilling, fathomless black.

Elen shivered. The savage looked ruthless…merciless.

He held his sword high into the air and bellowed a war cry that sent a deeper chill coursing down the length of her spine. His men responded to whatever heathen word he’d yelled, and two warriors on horseback came charging toward the front of the circle, a battering ram held between them.

Sweet saints—nay!

Terror quickly evolved into anger. Her jaw clenching, Elen stared challengingly down to the black-haired Viking as her hands seized either side of the urn. His dark gaze narrowed as he wondered at her intentions.

“Now!” Elen called out to the slaves, her eyes never leaving the barbarian’s. Her nostrils flared. “Kill them all!”

She had assumed the savage wouldn’t understand her tongue. She had been wrong.

The giant’s eyes widened as he watched Elen and the Godeuart slaves pick the urns up and prepare to heave them over the high walls. He called out a warning to the others as he backed up his warhorse—bedamn the heathen to the fires of hell anyway!—yet much to Elen’s satisfaction, the warning hadn’t come in time to save them all.

In fact, she thought, her breath shuddering as the feeling of victory surged through her insides to warm her, the Viking’s warning hadn’t saved nigh unto a dozen of them. The two warriors with the battering ram died on contact!

The warlord’s nostrils flared as pandemonium broke out around him. Warriors were screaming, their scalps and backs burning, as boiled wax, tar, and pitch clung to them, the concoction refusing to let go. Three more men died on contact. Seven more threw themselves to the snow-dusted ground and wallowed around in it like yelping pigs, screaming as the brew ate at their flesh.

Elen smiled with a satisfaction that bordered on maniacal hysteria, her gaze straying back to the warlord staring daggers at her. These barbarians had killed her sire, injured her cherished younger brother Louis, and the saints only knew what horrors had befell her beloved elder brother Lothar. To her way of the thinking, the Northmen had this day coming—and then some.

“Die!” Elen spat, tears that refused to fall springing to her eyes. In that moment, all of her fear, all of her rage, and all of her hatred coalesced into a warbled cry and into the earshot of the mammoth giant whose soulless black eyes tracked her every movement. “I pray to the heavens that every last one of you die!”

Time stood still as the Saxon lady and the Viking warlord stared each other down. Both sets of eyes were narrowed, both sets of nostrils flaring, and both jaws clenched. Elen’s heart drummed in her chest...

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in the novella "Nemesis"...

Chapter 1

Cologne, Germany

Present day

Standing at the edge of the river Rhine, Diane Sullivan took a deep breath and stared up at the docked luxury cruise liner before her. She’d never felt more nervous, vulnerable, or downright frightened in all her thirty-one years.

I can’t believe I’m about to do this…

Absently watching seagulls fly overhead, she tucked a stray light brown curl behind one ear and stared at the ship with a surreal expression on her face. The name plastered on the side of the huge riverboat in both the German and English languages said it all: Die Sinnliche Reise. The Carnal Voyage.

Her stomach knotted. What have I done?

She was about to become a paid whore.

Okay, so she didn’t actually have to have sex with the wealthy, pampered men who would be the ship’s passengers when it left the dock tomorrow morning. Sex, if it happened, was her choice. But to Diane’s way of thinking, her function aboard ship was too close to prostitution for peace of mind.

Dancing, waitressing, giving massages—all with a big, submissive, welcoming smile on her face. And all while she was one hundred percent, no holds barred, birthday suit naked. She wouldn’t even have so much as a g-string in her possession to cover her up for seven days. Nothing. Nada.

Good lord.

When Diane had turned eighteen, she’d left behind the small, rural town she called home and whisked herself off to Los Angeles with one hundred dollars and some change in her pocket. She was going to be a star. Or at least that had been the plan.

Back then, naïve as it sounded today, she had believed she could have it all. She’d spent her days waiting tables and her nights dreaming of the success and fame that Hollywood would bring. Limousines, piles of money, beautiful gowns to wear to her movie debuts…maybe even a star on the Walk of Fame one day.

Life hadn’t worked out like that.

Diane knew she was a talented actress. She harbored self-doubts about many things, all the normal sorts of worries and insecurities women tend to possess, but her acting ability was not amongst them. She was a hell of a great character actress. She knew it, her acting coach knew it, her agent knew it…

Unfortunately, she sighed, nobody else knew it.

Waiting tables all these years had barely covered the rent let alone paid the bills. She’d worked at the trendiest of eateries, but the Hollywood elite weren’t as big on tipping as urban legend allowed. In fact, her healthiest tips tended to come from tourists rather than locals.

Working as an extra on movie sets helped out some, but not much. The casting calls were few and far between and tended to cost her more money in makeup and transportation fees than she earned. She always showed up—it was something to add to the resume if nothing else—but a cash cow it was not.

For thirteen years Diane had waited tables, worked as an extra on television and movie sets, perfected her acting ability with her coach, showed up for every audition imaginable, and waited for her big break.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

The break never came. And now, at the age of thirty-one, Diane was realistic enough to recognize that her ambitions would never be realized. It was one of those things she should have come to terms with years ago, but she just couldn’t stomach letting go.

When she had been a kid, it was the limos, dresses and money that beckoned. And, if she was honest with herself, the belief that fame equaled love. As an adult, it was more to prove to herself and the world at large that her choice to leave small-town USA behind had been the right one. She’d never had a dad; after mom died, it wasn’t like there was anything left for her back home anyway.

Garek Ennis, the bane of her high school existence, had managed to shed his rural roots and make a name for himself in sports. If that jerk could make it, Diane had once believed, then so could she.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Garek Ennis. An asshole and ladies man in high school and, if the tabloids were to be believed, still an asshole and ladies man today.

His success as a quarterback with the New York Pirates wasn’t as shocking as Diane wished it was. After all, he’d been a football hero back home since he’d been a sperm. He was the handsomest, most muscular, most everything back in high school—a true golden boy with jet-black hair, sun-bronzed skin, and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. She’d harbored a huge crush towards him. Too bad he’d also been such a jerk.

Teasing, taunting, pinching at her (in those days) non-existent breasts…Garek had been nice to the “in” girls, but he’d gone out of his way to be a royal pain in the butt to Diane. Not being able to afford the right clothes and living on the wrong side of the tracks had made Ennis-The-Menace’s role as The Great Humiliator all the easier.

Thankfully Garek had been a senior when Diane started high school freshman year. She’d only had to endure the big bully for nine and a half months before he’d left little ole Salem, Ohio behind for college. It was hard to believe she’d ever had a crush on someone who treated her so cruelly, but there it was. She had secretly wanted for Garek to like her. Instead, all she had gotten from him was being the butt-end of his pranks.

There was no point in thinking back on Garek. High school was water under the bridge. Still, it had burned each and every time she’d lost a role to this actress or that only to turn on the TV after the disappointing phone call and see Garek’s unsmiling, cocky face on the screen, a gorgeous bombshell on either arm. It was a reminder that he was and always would be what Diane Sullivan could never become: one of the beautiful people.

Hollywood looked for the latest and greatest—and youngest—fresh faces. Directors weren’t interested in mature women. Never had been, never would be. Her prime had passed. With a heavy heart, she knew it was time to move on. The time had actually been years ago. But like this…?

It’s the only way you can afford for you and Jenna to start over and you damn well know it. Keep your chin up, girl. One week of embarrassment and you can start over fresh in Salem where probably nobody but Carrie remembers you.

Maybe she’d become a receptionist. Or maybe she’d go back to school and become a dental assistant. Who knew. All Diane did know was she was putting her childhood dreams of Hollywood behind her and moving on. She had found love in Jenna, her baby girl—her raison d’etre. She didn’t need fame to complete her as a person anymore.

Diane wanted things to be better for Jenna. Since Jenna’s dad hadn’t been interested in being a parent, Diane was the only thing her daughter had in this world. Because of that, she needed to get a real job with benefits and security. Her baby was already six-years-old. If the last six years were indicative of just how fast life whizzes by, before she knew what hit her, Jenna would be ready for college.

And her daughter would go to college. She’d have all the advantages Diane never did. All Diane had to do was get through one single, if highly humiliating, cruise, and life could begin anew.

She’d make certain Jenna never found out just how low mommy had sunk in order to get them out of LA and back to Ohio. Only Diane’s best friend, Carrie, knew the truth behind this week of sin. Carrie, who was watching Jenna until she returned to the states, would never break a confidence like this.

One week. Seven short days…

The German owners of The Carnal Voyage had paid for her round-trip ticket. They had also paid her ten thousand dollars in cash for her nude duties—that was on top of whatever amount of money she garnered in tips during the cruise. Diane just hoped that drunk, horny men were better tippers than the Hollywood A-list. Otherwise, this week in hell was all for nothing.

Cologne to Antwerp—and then it’s all over…

Resigned, she blew out a breath and made her way toward the riverboat. Only seven days separated Diane and Jenna Sullivan from the commencement of a new life.

Seven short days.

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in the novella "Naughty Nancy" (A Trek Mi Q’an Tale)...

Prologue

Nancy Lombardo bit down on her bottom lip as her eyes warily shifted toward the old woman. The crone had to be a witch, she thought. In a town like Salem, Massachusetts—and on Halloween night no less—she couldn’t be anything but a witch.

Either that or an extremely eccentric-looking homeless person with a penchant for wearing black robes and loud blue eyeshadow while she stood there stirring only God knows what around in a cauldron as she chanted in what sounded to be Latin.

Nancy sighed. She really should have taken that job in Anchorage. The weirdest thing she would have had to worry about encountering in Alaska was getting kidnapped by a lonely mountain man who hadn’t laid eyes on a woman since his inbred wife had passed onto—well, wherever it was inbred wives passed onto.

Nancy’s back went ramrod straight as she continued walking down the dark alley. She refused to be afraid, she sniffed. This was her night, damn it. The night she was going to saunter into her friend Lori’s party and shine like the belle of the ball.

No more wallflower Nancy. No more being the fat girl out. No more watching through the spectacles perched on the end of her nose as men looked past her to the dimwitted idiots standing behind her with the buff bodies and unbuff brains. Tonight she was going to be one of those dimwitted idiots with the buff bodies and the unbuff brains!

Well okay, so she wasn’t exactly dimwitted. And her body wasn’t exactly buff. And, she grimly conceded, she had graduated at the top of her class in law school.

Damn it!

“’Tis naught tae worry aboot,” the old woman croaked out, causing Nancy to lose her train of thought.

“Huh?”

Nancy’s gaze shot toward where the old woman had been stirring her cauldron—the very same black-clad figure who had been standing on the opposite side of the alley, but who had somehow managed to land directly in front of her.

“Goodness,” she breathed out as her hand instinctively flew up to shield her heart, “you scared me.”

The old woman’s weathered face crinkled into what on most people would be considered a smile. On her it looked more like a pasty slit in between a bunch of equally pasty, white wrinkles.

Nancy swallowed a bit nervously as she waited to see what the old woman wanted. She absently adjusted her Xena the Warrior Princess costume, shifting the sword belt to the side. She winced and moved it back. The tip of the sword kept poking through its scabbard and jabbing her in the thigh.

Damn it!

“Can I help you with something?” Nancy asked in clipped tones. Call her a tad on the defensive side, but it was Halloween night and the old woman gave her the creeps. She kept staring into her eyes as if searching for something, but otherwise the mysterious witch remained silent.

A suspended moment passed in eerie quiet as the two women locked eyes. It gave Nancy enough time to let the guilt settle in. She sighed.

“I didn’t mean to yell at you,” she said quietly, her expression apologetic. She smiled. “I guess we all get a little freaked out on a night like this.”

She decided to ignore the fact that the old woman was the reason she was freaked out to begin with.

“’Twill be a long journey,” the old witch murmured. Her palm came up and rested on Nancy’s forehead as she continued to study her face. “But ‘twill be worth the sacrifices when all is said and done. And love shall be yers.”

Nancy’s eyes darted back and forth as the old woman began to chant. She prayed nobody walked by and saw this!

Back in law school Nancy had been taught how to effectively deal with many different types of bizarre situations, but this one had definitely not been covered in any of the college texts. When the old woman’s chanting picked up to a fevered squeal akin to the sound a pig might make when being slaughtered for Sunday dinner, she felt her cheeks redden.

Nope, definitely not covered in the law school texts.

Damn it!

“Are you okay?” Nancy bit out. She tried to politely remove the old crone’s palm from her forehead, but the wrinkled thing wouldn’t budge. She absently wondered if the old woman had been an arm wrestler in her heyday. “Do you need an aspirin or something?” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as the squealing grew shriller. “I think I have a stick of gum tucked away in my scabbard if you—”

Nancy blinked. Her breath caught in the back of her throat.

The old woman was gone.

“Good grief,” she mumbled as her head darted back and forth. “Where did she go?”

After a suspended moment of just standing there with her mouth agape—no doubt looking like the village idiot—she shook her head and sighed. She really should have taken that job in Anchorage.

Regally straightening her back, Nancy dismissed the oddity of the situation from her mind and continued to walk down the dark alley. She could hear music and laughter floating out of a window a ways down, which could only mean she was almost at the old warehouse Lori had renovated for tonight’s Halloween party.

Nancy took a deep breath as she wondered for the fiftieth time since she’d left her apartment an hour ago what everyone would think of her new look. Not the Xena costume itself, but the bodily changes that had gone along with it. During her two-month leave of absence from the law firm, she had used the time to completely transform her image.

Gone was the schoolmarm bun she had always tightly wrapped her hair into and in its place was a sultry mane of light brown cascading hair, which her stylist had thoughtfully added golden highlights to. Gone was the spinsterish pair of oversized spectacles that had always sat suspended on the tip of her nose, replaced by a pair of translucent contact lenses that showed off the rich chocolate brown of her eyes.

And, she thought with much relief, gone were those extra forty pounds of bulk. In their place was a voluptuous form that was beginning to show the first signs of muscle tone from daily exercise and sensible eating. She wasn’t skinny and knew she never would be, in fact she was still somewhat fleshy, but for the first time in years she looked and felt healthy.

The Xena outfit was more than a costume to her, she realized. It was the very symbolism of the new Nancy Lombardo, a Nancy Lombardo who was no longer content to sit on the sidelines as a passive spectator while life passed her by. She was an alpha female now. A warrior woman.

A warrior woman who hadn’t had sex since three presidents ago.

Damn it!

But that pitiful circumstance would change tonight, she reassured herself as she straightened her shoulders and walked determinedly up the back steps that would take her to the renovated warehouse loft above. Times were changing. The wallflower had died. The warrior woman within had awoken. She was a phoenix rising up from the flames of abject grief and despair. She was—

 Bah! Times were changing. Enough said.

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