Marc D. Joiner And Kianna

He closed his mouth against the ache in his fangs. The scent was not human. It carried no warm pulse, no mortal blood. It was cleaner than that - alive in a way that made every dead part of him reach toward it.

“Kianna,” he whispered.

The name came from nowhere and struck him with the force of memory. Kianna Blanchard. A water nymph goddess. Stolen as a baby by Jean Blanchard, an evil troll whose name stirred a distant rage in Marc’s bones.

He did not know how he knew any of it.

He knew only that Kianna was near, and that someone had taken her.

Marc rose too quickly. The ruin tilted. His shoulder struck a pillar, sending a tremor through the stone. Above him, the broken bell tower groaned.

A blue spark crawled over his knuckles.

“Not now,” he muttered.

The lightning answered.

It came down through the tower in a roaring column. Marc threw up his arm. Electricity burst across his skin, bright enough to show the bones beneath. The force hurled him through a curtain of hanging chains and into a flooded chamber.

Cold water closed over his boots. The impact tore a ragged breath from him, though he had no true need to breathe. The hunger surged anyway, drawn by the living magic in the water.

He smelled Kianna more strongly.

Marc dragged himself up by a cracked statue. Its stone face had been worn smooth, but its hands still cradled an empty basin. Water poured from the basin’s rim and spread across the floor.

A whisper moved through it.

“Marc.”

He froze.

The voice was soft, strained, and unmistakably female. It seemed to come from the water beneath his feet.

He crouched and touched the surface.

A vision flickered in the ripples: dark reeds bending beneath a silver sky, a pale hand pressed against a wall of blue light, and a woman’s eyes wide with fear. Then the image shattered.

Marc’s fingers tightened.

“Kianna, where are you?”

The water trembled.

“Don’t follow the bells.”

A chain snapped overhead.

Marc looked up. The rusted links had begun to glow. Symbols burned along their length, each mark filling with electric blue. The ruin had recognized his power - or the hunger inside him - and was waking to feed on both.

The bell above gave a single sound.

It was not loud. It was worse than loud. The note passed through Marc’s body and shook loose every buried instinct. His fangs dropped. His vision narrowed to the wet pulse of life hidden beyond the walls.

The marsh.

Something moved there. Small animals. Warm blood. Easy prey.

His hand dug into the statue until stone cracked beneath his fingers.

“No.”

The bell rang again.

The hunger tore through his restraint.

Marc staggered toward the nearest exit, not because he wanted to flee Kianna but because he no longer trusted himself to reach her. Every drop of rain carried the marsh’s living scent. Every beat beneath the reeds called to the monster in him.

A figure stepped into the doorway.

For one breath, Marc thought it was Kianna.

She stood slender and still beneath the rain, her hair dark against a pale face. Water streamed from her shoulders. But the shape was only a woven shell of reeds and mud, held upright by a greenish light. Its mouth opened too wide.

Marc raised his hand. Lightning snapped between his fingers.

The thing lunged.

He struck it with a bolt. The blast tore through its chest, but the creature reformed around the light, dragging itself forward with fingers that lengthened into roots.

Marc backed into the flooded chamber. The bell began to ring in rapid succession.

“Move,” he told himself.

The ruin answered with thunder.

He drove both palms into the floor.

Lightning exploded outward in a jagged circle. Stone lifted. Water flashed to steam. The reed creature shrieked as the current burned through its limbs, and Marc ran through the collapsing doorway before the tower could fall on him.

Rain struck his face. Mud swallowed his boots to the ankles. Behind him, the ruins erupted in blue fire, one broken wall after another lighting the marsh.

Marc kept moving.

The storm did not chase him. It seemed to wait inside the ruins, guarding whatever secret had called his name.

He reached a low ridge of stone and bent over, gripping his knees. Hunger still clawed at him, but the worst of it had passed. His fangs withdrew. His hands shook.

Across the marsh, reeds whispered together.

“Marc.”

This time the voice was closer.

He lifted his head. “Kianna?”

A ripple traveled through the black water, moving against the wind. It reached the mud at his feet, curled around his boot, and left behind a shining trail.

Marc followed it with his eyes.

The trail led away from the ruins, winding through flooded reeds toward a stand of dead cypress trees. Droplets clung to the bent grass, each one carrying the same cool, floral scent. Kianna had been there. Recently.

He stepped toward it.

A thin line of red light rose from the mud.

Marc stopped.

The line spread in a circle around the trail. Symbols surfaced beneath the water, carved into stones hidden below the muck. The magic smelled of iron and old earth.

Jean.

The name struck with enough force to make Marc’s vision flare.

A voice came from the cypress trees, deep and roughened by something that was not human.

“Lightning god.”

Marc turned slowly.

Between the trees, two green eyes opened.

The troll did not show himself fully. Only a hunched outline moved behind the rain, broad shoulders and a head crowned with crooked horns. The air thickened around him. Roots pushed through the mud, twisting into a fence between Marc and Kianna’s trail.

“Jean Blanchard,” Marc said.

The troll laughed. “You woke sooner than I expected.”

Marc’s gaze stayed on the guarded trail. “Where is she?”

“You smell her.” Jean’s voice carried amusement, but beneath it lay a sharp caution. “That is all you deserve.”

“Did you steal her?”

The roots tightened. Water rose between them, black and trembling.

“I took what was mine to take.”

“She was a baby.”

“Goddesses do not belong to the people who find them first?”

Marc’s dead body remembered violence before his mind could shape it. Lightning crawled up his arms.

Jean’s eyes narrowed. “There it is. The beast beneath the crown.”

Marc thought of the reed creature. Of Kianna’s frightened face in the water. Of the way his hunger had turned her scent into a command.

Jean wanted him angry. Worse, Jean wanted him careless.

Marc lowered his hands.

The troll’s smile faded.

“I’m not here to kill you,” Marc said. “Not tonight.”

“No.” Jean lifted one clawed hand. The red symbols brightened around the trail. “Tonight, you are here to choose whether you can pass without becoming what she fears.”

The magic struck.

Pain tore through Marc’s chest. He dropped to one knee as red light wound around his ribs, forcing his dead heart to beat. Once. Twice. Each pulse sent a shock through him. His fangs lengthened again.

Beyond the barrier, the wet trail gleamed.

Kianna’s scent filled his mouth.

Jean’s voice slid through the rain. “Feed, lightning god. Tear through the ward. Let her hear what you are.”

Marc’s nails cut into the mud.

He could hear life beneath the reeds: frogs, mice, a marsh bird sleeping in the cypress branches. So much blood. So many easy ways to silence the hunger.

Then Kianna’s voice came through the water, faint but clear.

“Marc, don’t let him choose for you.”

The pain changed.

It did not lessen, but it gave him something to hold.

Marc pressed one palm flat against the mud. Lightning gathered there, not wild this time, but narrow and controlled. He sent it into the red circle.

The ward fought back. Fire raced up his arm. His coat smoked. He smelled his own ruined flesh, yet he held the current steady, threading it beneath the spell instead of breaking it.

Jean snarled.

The roots surged toward Marc’s throat.

Marc twisted aside and caught one. It writhed like a living wrist in his grip. He pulled, and the ground split open with a wet crack. The root recoiled into the circle, dragging part of the red magic with it.

The trail shuddered.

For an instant, the barrier opened.

Marc saw her.

Kianna stood far beyond the reeds, half-hidden by mist. Her dress flowed like water around her bare feet, and silver light shimmered beneath her skin. Her gaze met his across the distance.

Fear lived there.

So did recognition.

She raised one hand, palm outward - not surrender, not invitation. A warning.

Marc stopped himself from crossing the gap.

That small restraint seemed to surprise her.

Jean roared, and the ward slammed shut. The force threw Marc backward. He struck the mud hard enough to crack the stone ridge behind him.

When he looked up, Kianna was gone.

Only the trail remained, winding away beneath the dead trees.

Jean’s shape receded into the storm. “Come closer, Marc. I will show you what happens to gods who mistake hunger for love.”

Marc pushed himself upright. Blood - dark, thick, and almost black - ran from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away and stared at the wet path.

He had found Kianna.

He had also found the cage around her.

The guarded trail pulsed once, as if something beneath the mud had felt his decision waiting.

Marc stepped over the first red symbol.

The ward screamed.

He kept walking.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters in the full book.