The Bond

  Coven Rites: Book One

  Author: D. R. Rosier

  Copyright 2024. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Afterword:

  About the Author

  Other erotic fantasies by D. R. Rosier:

  Non-erotic Fantasy titles:

  Book Description

  Chapter One

  It was an odd experience to wake up in an upright position leaning against a wall, and the odd of that morning was just getting started. The air smelled stale and of sawdust, and very dry. So dry and hot I coughed, and my throat felt rough. I was also clothed, which also wasn’t my tradition while being asleep. The jeans on me felt unusually stiff as I stretched my legs, and the shirt dusty. I coughed at the plume of dust.

  It was also pitch dark, blacker than a demon’s soul, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. Last I remembered was the best night of my life, though the details were all rather fuzzy. Which was odd, I never drank to excess, and I’d never blacked out in my life before. All twenty-four years of it.

  I suppose I should introduce myself. Glen. Glen Franklin. I was a pretty normal guy, at least I thought so at the time. I had short brown hair, blue eyes, and an athletic medium build. One that came from working in the outdoors, construction, houses mostly. I worked and played hard.

  Damn, what was that blonde’s name from last night? She was magic, I’d never met anyone like her before. Exuberant didn’t cover it, she was life personified, and had kept me on my toes.

  So not important, at least not at the moment, back to the story.

  I finally got enough feeling in my legs to take a step forward while pushing away from the wall behind me. I didn’t get very far though. My knee hit something, quickly followed by my face, the arms that I’d tried to throw up to catch me got jammed hard enough that it hurt my wrists.

  I cursed, naturally. A good old-fashioned F-bomb.

  What the hell? It took me a moment of careful movement to determine I was stuck between two walls in a very tight space. How the hell did that happen, when I’d fallen asleep with that blonde in my arms, on a very soft bed.

  I shook my head, and then started to cough again as all the movement had stirred up dust, both from the cement floor and from my body. I knocked on the wall, and determined it was just dry wall. I checked carefully for studs, then punched a hole through the thing and started to rip open the hole larger, using my knee to extend it down. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t all that hard either to make a hole large enough to step high and bend down far enough to slip through.

  I froze in confusion as it was still dark as hell, but there was a slight light running along the floor. Damn, I’d been between two walls at the back of a closet. I opened the door, angry now and my heart was racing. Whoever put me in there must’ve drugged me to get me stay asleep. I rushed out into the room, which was empty.

  I recognized it from last night, that blonde’s room, since we’d gone back to her place. I recognized the paint on the walls, and she’d had a mural of a thunderstorm on one wall. But it was also really wrong. I had mentioned earlier, that waking up standing up was just the start of the oddness of that day.

  There was also a thick layer of dust on the hardwood floors, and the window was broken. Also, no bed, dresser, vanity, or wall mirror. The room had been stripped, and unlived in for what appeared to be years. The broken window was the only light coming into the room as well, the apartment building far too quiet. It felt… dead, abandoned.

  I shook my head, that had to be my imagination.

  I moved over to the window and took a look around. The building across from her apartments had been a decent mid-range hotel, but the front doors were missing now, as was half the sign which was unlit. The windows on the hotel were about half broken as well. I could admit to some sense of fear and unease, it was all crazy. Her place hadn’t been in the ritzy part of town, but it had been in a nice middle-class area.

  Looking closer, I could see the outer walls on the hotel were crumbling and gouged in places, pitted and pock marked all over, as if from great age.

  It looked like the place had been condemned, and there’d been a war, since I went to sleep last night. The street was entirely empty of people when I checked, there were a few burned out and rusted cars, broken glass, and some garbage that looked to have seen better days. Nothing else.

  I was in the damned twilight zone. Denial went through me and took its place next to the fear and confusion, this just couldn’t be real. There was no way. I turned and walked over to the bedroom door and out into the hallway. The floor creaked alarmingly, which was bad because I was on the fourth floor, and I slid up against the wall and held my breath.

  It didn’t collapse, so I inched my way, sliding my ass against the wall all the way to the front door of the apartment. The outside hallway looked even worse, there were holes in the floor, garbage and dust, and it was so very hot and dry. I looked for my cell phone and wallet, but they weren’t in my back pockets.

  The blonde had been all over me, like I’d been the air she needed to breathe. I just couldn’t imagine her drugging me, taking my shit, and sealing me up in the back of her closet. Which had obviously happened. Except. The appearance of aging and the breaking down building just added to that confusion, not to mention the abandoned neighborhood being reclaimed by nature. But that was impossible, it would take hundreds of years for it to get so bad.

  There were no drugs that could put me out that long, plus lack of water and food would’ve killed me in days, never mind old age. It was… shocking. Odd, to say the least. There was a growing surrealness to it all, and it was hard to breathe. I’d never been one to panic, but nothing was making sense and my mind was solidly rejecting this reality.

  I made it to the stairs, but the stairwell had collapsed a long time ago. I eyed the banisters, then shook my head. There was no way I was trusting that drywall with my weight. The elevator doors had been open, so I turned around and went back down the hallway, carefully.

  I looked inside, and it was pitch black. I thought I saw the cable, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just my imagination. I pulled off my shirt, grabbed the wall, and swung it out. The shirt hit the cable, and I nodded. I was probably crazy, but what alternative did I have? I wrapped the shirt around both hands, and jumped, grasping the cable. It was rusted, old, but still steel so it held. I started to shimmy down, using the shirt to protect my hands, and the jeans to protect my legs.

  When I got to the bottom, I had to pry open the outer door, but that put me in the lobby and ultimately out into the street.

  Now what? My shirt was torn up and covered with grease, a total loss. Better that than my hands. I had no phone, no keys, my beautiful Mustang was clearly long gone, and I doubted my place was still there. I mean, the signs were all around me now. All the buildings looked abandoned, broken and failing. This either wasn’t my world, or impossible or not it wasn’t the twenty twenties any longer, or I was having a hell of a dream.

  I looked around for any signs of civilization, and it took walking down the block and looking south, even farther away from Chicago, before I saw smoke rising into the sky. Maybe five miles off.

  The shirt got tossed, and I headed that way. I wasn’t sure how civilized what I’d find was, but at least it was a sign of people. I also couldn’t get over the weather, it was far too hot and dry for the Chicago area, I wasn’t more than five miles from the lake. I was in good shape, but the going was difficult after a while. My throat was parched and sore, each breath like sandpaper sliding down into my lungs, and it was getting hotter as the sun rose.

  Which was why the loud sound of thunder shocked me, and I turned my head around to look back north toward Chicago. The clouds were forming fast, and it started to rain quickly. I snorted, crazy, while wishing it would rain on me, here in arid wasteland of abandoned buildings. The storm up north brought no relief down south where I was, and I kept going.

  Maybe I was crazy, but what else could I do? I had to find shelter and water before the day was out, and eventually food. The smoke of a fire was my best bet to find those things, although the rain called to me, I didn’t see any definitive proof of life from the direction of the city.

  I don’t know how long I walked in a deepening daze, one foot in front of the other while I rasped for breath. It was alarming just how fast I was deteriorating. I even laughed at my own jokes, as I excused it since I’d obviously not gotten a drink in centuries.

  So much so that the loud roar took me completely off guard. I jumped and flinched embarrassingly, as I spun around to see a tiger down a side street. A very big tawny tiger with black stripes. The tiger’s tail was swishing, and it was crouched down and glaring at me from above fifty feet away. It also looked r
eally big, but I decided that was my imagination, I’d never seen a real tiger before, in real life I mean. It looked too big, like Sabre tooth tiger big.

  I froze for the longest moment of time. Not out of fear, out of simple dumbfounded shock. It was only when the fear seeped through that shock that I was galvanized into action. I did what any normal man might, when hunted by a tiger while shirtless, with jeans stiffened by great age and sneakers with cracks all over it.

  I ran for my life.

  All discomfort forgotten in the surge of adrenaline. It was also when I noticed just how close the smoke rising up into the sky was. I’d been lost in a daze, and I hadn’t realized I was right on top of the place. No more than two hundred yards, at a guess. There were a large group of shacks ahead in a field. An old crumbling high school sports field, to be precise, although it only had one goal post left and there was a grove of oak trees behind the shacks. Which was odd, to say the least. A quick glance had me guessing at twelve, and nine of those shacks had active fires.

  Which was really odd, given how damned hot it was out.

  Regardless, I only made it about two steps before the tiger let out another roar and leapt after me. I was in shape, despite my current breathing issues, but there was no way I was going to outrun a tiger for two hundred yards, with only a twenty-yard head start.

  There was an old and dilapidated strip mall on the left, and I moved toward it, the Ace hardware had a broken front window. I jumped through the window with the tiger right on my ass who was growling in what sounded like annoyance and disbelief.

  Clearly, I was hallucinating that.

  I didn’t think the big broken window was going to stop the tiger, but my real target was the back door. My panicked mind had the fuzzy idea if I could get through it and into the back alley, and slam the door in the tiger’s face, I might buy enough time to reach the shacks. Hopefully a person with a shotgun lived there.

  The shelves in the store were empty, half of them broken and falling apart, and the other half completely missing. The floor was covered in detritus, old rotted leaves and sticks, and there wasn’t anything to be found in there. No tools, no nothing. The place had been stripped bare of everything a long time ago.

  I laughed in the face of death, as I saw the back door was missing, mostly because I was losing my mind, I wasn’t really that brave. My hope resurged as I saw the manager’s office still had a door. I’d be trapped, but I could figure that out later, the important part was I’d be alive.

  I slid to a stop, grabbed the door handle, which is when the tiger leapt on me and took me down. I must admit to a bit of panic then, my mind filled with sharp claws descending for the kill, my heart seizing up in fear then pounding even faster like a jack rabbit.

  The tiger growled right in face, then that paw came down on my head, and blackness descended.

  Soft bed, warm and comfortable. Silky sheets and a comforter greeted me as I rose back to consciousness. I felt relief for one second. A surge of exultation. It was just a dream, a really odd and confusing dream, and I was back in the hot petite blonde bombshell’s bed. A woman that no doubt had been the inspiration for the hot, short, and curvy, blonde cheerleader trope. She was all that and more.

  Her name was… it escaped me again, which bothered me.

  Then my exultation was cut short, as I heard a strange voice.

  “Did you have to hit him so hard, Carline?” her voice was empathetic and a little sweet.

  Another voice, this one annoyed, Carline replied, “He’s nuts, Astra. He was walking right for the shacks, without a care in the world. I’d swear he ran in this direction in the hope of finding safety, from me. Can you imagine?”

  A third voice snickered, “You should’ve just killed him.”

  Astra gasped, “Rue! Don’t be a bitch. He’s a curiosity, out here in the wasteland, no protection.”

  Rue sighed, “Whatever, you know what he is. He’s one of them.”

  Carline said, “He’s also awake, I can smell it, and his breathing is changed.”

  Busted, and thoroughly confused as to what they meant, I opened my eyes and took in the room. I was inside one of the shacks, and there was a fire burning merrily in a fireplace. Thing of it was, the room felt cool, and not dry at all. I was breathing easier, comfortably.

  Which made no sense. It was also odd, so there’s that word again.

  Carline demanded, “What were you thinking? I warned you off, and you just kept going. No, you ran and trespassed.”

  Hearing her voice pretty much told me who all three were. Carline looked about nineteen, with amber eyes, dark golden blonde hair, strong cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her lips were verging on full, and she was quite attractive. Her body was athletic at five foot eight, with a healthy pair of C cups that were challenging the dimensions of the plain long white t-shirt she had on. I was fairly sure that’s all she had on, and the nipple bumps were proof she had no bra on, at least.

  Rue was the bitchy one, and she had a facial expression to match. She looked dismissive and angry, contemptuous even, her eyes narrowed as she waited for the answer to Carline’s question. She was about five foot four. Petite and curvy, with torpedo shaped B cups that fit her body perfectly, and they were well displayed in a tight black leather vest, while down below she had on a pair of tight black shorts, and a pair of black boots. Despite the bitchy look, her face was stunningly beautiful, so much so she was able to pull off the short hair look and make it look hot. She had curly black hair that barely tickled her shoulders, and dark gray eyes, full lips, and severe and high cheekbones. Petite goddess, came to mind as a short description, if an angry one.

  Astra was identifiable by her tentative compassionate smile, as she looked at me encouragingly. She had long and wavy golden-brown hair and milk chocolate eyes. Her face had a delicate and soft adorable beauty, with gentle cheekbones, bowed lips, and a cute nose on a heart shaped face. She was five foot seven, and had a body made for sin, with proud and rounded double D breasts, plenty of cleavage on display in a warm red sundress that hugged her upper body.

  “Why wouldn’t I want to meet such lovely ladies?”

  Astra laughed, Rue put a hand on the knife at her belt while scowling, which I just now noticed being there, and Carline stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Even took a step back.

  I said, “So, I woke up inside a wall. In a crazy new world, where fire makes it cool, and the air is arid and dry. I have no clue why I should be worried.”

  Rue snorted, “Are you expecting us to believe you have no idea we’re a coven?”

  “Coven? Witches?” I laughed, but they all looked pretty serious about it, “You’re all witches?”

  Carline snorted, “I’m a tiger shifter, obviously,” and she kindly left off the you moron part of that sentence, though her tone pretty much gave it away.

  Astra explained kindly, “The fire is fed from the heat, it literally burns the heat out of the air, draining it. It also boils the water in the cauldron, adding humidity to the air.”

  “Well, that explains everything,” I said sarcastically. A fire that consumes heat, instead of generating it. Of course, my brain halted when I looked at the fire again, and that second time I noticed there was nothing burning. I mean, there was no wood, outside of the stand which held the cast iron cauldron over the fire. My brain staged another revolt, and my mouth might’ve been open in shock.

  Rue said, “I’m just going to kill him.”

  Carline sighed, “He’s not lying. He has no idea what’s going on, it’s all over his scent, mistress. In a wall?”

  I nodded, and told them what happened, since I woke up.

  Carline said, “Still the truth.”

  Astra said, “He’s from the before time, that’s why he has no idea what we are. The supernatural were hidden back then.”

  Rue snorted, “He’s one of them, we don’t hide from ourselves.”

  “One of what?”

  Astra bit her lip consideringly, but didn’t answer, “What can you tell me about your parents?”

  I sighed, “If I answer that, will you start answering my questions?”

  Rue suggested acidly, “Or, you can answer them to delay my slitting your throat.”

  Astra hissed, the first angry thing I’d heard from her, “Enough, Rue. He could be useful, if he’s what he seems.”