Viking's Dream: The Varangian Chronicles, #2

Copyright

VIKING’S HEART

Copyright © 2016 Loribelle Hunt

First E-book Published: April 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, organizations, events, or locations is coincidental.

Published by Loribelle Hunt

www.loribellehunt.com

Author’s Note

Welcome to Thor’s Hammer! Viking’s Dream is the second story in The Varangian Chronicles. If you enjoy this story, please join my mailing list or my reader group Delroi Oasis for additional information or to be the first to hear about the next book in The Varangian Chronicles series.

~ Loribelle

Copyright

Author’s Note

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

MORE FROM LORIBELLE HUNT

Viking’s Awakening: The Varangian Chronicle 3 (excerpt)

Prologue

Someone shook her awake. She opened her eyes to see her mother staring at her, an urgent look on her face and a finger pressed to her lips ordering silence.

Wake up, baby, she said so softly Charlie had to read her lips.

Her mom grabbed her hands and tugged until she scrambled out of bed, then retrieved the backpack from underneath it. It was always packed and kept close enough to grab in a hurry.

Get to the tunnel and don’t stop running, Charlie. You know the rendezvous points.

Fear twisted a hard knot in her stomach. For a moment her muscles locked, but she'd been too well trained for this escape scenario to freeze for more than a second. She hurried into the jeans she'd left over the back of a chair, put a jacket on over the t-shirt she slept in, picked up her boots and slung the pack over her shoulder. Instead of leaving the room she entered her large closet.

Stretching to her toes, she pressed a series of nearly invisible notches near the ceiling in what appeared to be a random manner. It wasn’t. A narrow section of the wall, just wide enough to slip through opened. She glanced over her shoulder before stepping through but her mother was already gone. Suddenly she realized how quiet the house was.

Was this another drill? She considered the possibility as she hurried through the narrow passageway. When she reached the end, she wiggled around a tight corner and descended a steep staircase. The house had been in her father's family for generations. She had no idea who'd put in the concealed passages and tunnels, but she knew whoever had come for them didn’t know the secret escape routes. At least not yet.

A shudder wracked her body as she reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to follow the path that would get her out of the house and off the property quickest. She was deep underground now. If there was a fight going on above her there wasn’t much chance she'd hear it. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was another drill. She didn’t believe it, though. Her mother's insistence was too real.

Charlie hesitated at the entrance to the tunnel, straining to hear signs of pursuit. Where was her mother? If it was one of her parent's enemies, she could easily handle them and meet up with Charlie later. But if it was The Tel Group they'd have a telepath. They'd break her mother's mind to find Charlie. Tel was secretive, made up of telepaths and telekinetics mostly. She only knew about them because her parents were both members of the ECF, the Elite Commando Force.

Tel would want her because she had visions, a gift her parents had kept hidden, though a few people had found out by accident. Had one of them betrayed her family? She had the horrible feeling she was never going to see her mother again, and she had no idea where her father was. He'd been gone on assignment for weeks. Though if the threat was real her mom had probably had time to send him a warning.

The ground trembled under her feet and with a nervous glance at the ceiling she stepped over the threshold into the tunnel. This definitely wasn’t a training exercise, wasn’t practice. Her mother had blown the house up. Charlie hoped to god she'd got out first.

She ran for five minutes before stopping long enough to finally pull on her boots when the smooth floor ended abruptly in hard, rough stone that dug into the soles of her feet. After that she didn’t stop until she exited the tunnel in a hidden section of the large forest preserve. She walked another couple of miles to the truck hidden under camouflage and started the first leg of a long journey. She had to get out of Alliance territory. Hopefully, her parents would make it out too.

One

The roar of shuttle engines cut through the still night air as she was finally dozing off. Of course. No point in the aliens being convenient, was there? Charlie rolled out of bed, pulled on her boots, and slid her knives inside. Her apartment building sat inside a smuggler's compound, and her unit looked out over the surrounding wall. When she walked to the window, she wasn’t surprised to see a Delroi war party landing just outside the gate. They couldn’t be sure what kind of welcome they'd receive and would have to be stupid to assume it was friendly. From what she'd discovered, the Delroi were sure as hell not imbeciles.

She tucked a compact pistol in a holster and clipped it to the back of her waistband, then pulled on a long sleeved shirt and left her apartment. She knocked on a door a couple down from hers.

You were right, Verity said, stepping aside to let her enter. Didn't waste a lot of time, did they?

We expected that.

Anxiety was a bitch burning in her veins. It was a familiar specter, though it had been years since she'd felt it this deeply. It reminded her of the night so long ago when her life had been ripped away from her. The night she lost her mother. As far as anyone else knew she'd died in the explosion and resulting fire too. It was the end of Charlotte Johnson and the beginning of Charissa Smith.

What do we do now? Verity asked, interrupting her thoughts. Charlie was glad for the distraction.

They'd known something was up a few days ago, when Clark Hall, the leader of the group, suddenly gave Verity permission to visit friends in the city and insisted Charlie go along as her bodyguard. When they'd returned the previous evening, the compound had been in a frenzy, and their friend Jolie Hall was gone. Clark had given his daughter to an alien smuggler to pay off a debt. He may have believed it was that simple, but Charlie was certain he'd been maneuvered into that demand. Unfortunately, she hadn’t had a vision, just the certainty her precognition sometimes gave her.

Her lack of information worried her a little, though. Despite where she'd grown up, Jolie was an innocent and rumors about the Delroi warriors had flown since the invasion. Stories about insatiable sex drives and unbreakable mental bonds. Charlie had chased those tales and come up with nothing but more stories. And suddenly one of her best friends, a woman she'd known since they were teenagers, was gone with one of the invaders? Well, the Varangians were some kind of Delroi off-shoot, but whatever. Same thing really.

Apparently as soon as the space Vikings left, Clark had ordered the entire compound packed up, hoping to be gone before the Delroi, who'd occupied Earth for a couple of years, arrived to take them all into custody. She hadn’t been able to discover what grounds they were using to do it. Till this point the aliens had ignored his illegal activities so she doubted that was it, but it was the first time she'd ever seen the smuggler afraid. She'd be lying if she said she didn’t take a little pleasure in it. He was an ass and a bully. She felt no guilt. Unfortunately, the coward had taken his lieutenants and fled early that morning.

Are we going out? Verity prodded when she didn’t respond.

No. She shook her head. If the men Clark left behind are stupid enough to take on the Delroi they can have at it. As long as we stay here and out of the fight, we'll be safe.

You seem very sure of that, Verity said, twisting her long blond hair into a messy knot and securing it with two sharp sticks.

Verity's apartment was on the front inside corner of the building, giving them a view over the gates and inside the walls, too. They watched as the Delroi moved some kind of battering ram to the reinforced front gate.

I've been gathering as much intel about them as I can since they showed up.

Charlie was fascinated, okay maybe obsessed, by the alien invaders. The Delroi allowed her the fantasy of escape or more to the point, all of them escaping. She could get out of the compound easily enough. Taking Jolie, Verity, and her daughter Marielle was something she'd been working on a long time, however. They needed money, and the means to get out of the region fast so they could disappear into the Alliance before Clark could mobilize to find them. Which would be much more dangerous for her than her friends. Tel had been searching for her for years. They suspected she hadn’t died that long ago night, at least. She lived on Alliance borders here, unlikely to attract unwanted attention, and Tel wouldn’t expect to find her so close. To risk going into the interior, she had to hope her appearance had changed enough she wouldn’t be recognized.

She'd made a few forays to test that theory. Clark didn’t know about her abilities or her real identity so he didn’t bother to confine her to the compound. He needed her fighting skills on runs, and he knew she would always come back for Verity and Jolie. Since she'd already been to places she shouldn’t have, she'd sought out the aliens when she had the chance. She hadn’t met any of their women but the warriors she'd met