Dragon's Gap: Set Includes Stories 4-5 Plus Love's Impulse Read online

  Breathing easier once again. Except for the voice in the back of her mind advising her to be careful and that everything was not what it seemed, the night seemed normal.

  Olinda had been listening to that soft voice her whole life. Once when she was around thirteen she had told her mother about it only to have her rage at Olinda for telling lies. When Olinda had tried to talk to her about it, she had refused to discuss it. And had even made Olinda promise she would never ever speak of it again.

  That had been the only time she had seen her mother angry and frightened. Even when she was ill and knew she was going to die, she had not been as scared.

  Needless to say after that time Olinda never talked to anyone or her mother about the voice that guided her life.

  On Tuesday nights Olinda’s shift always finished around ten o’clock. Except for that night an hour after Thea had left, Olinda’s manager told her to go home as they were closing up earlier than normal for some maintenance.

  Her worries over Thea and her family had been pushed to the back of her mind as new worries crowded her thoughts. Olinda knew she could not carry on with working at the restaurant any longer and spent thirty minutes talking to her manager about handing in her notice. She changed out of her uniform into her habitual jeans, shirt and jacket with her well-worn black high tops. Her manager, a fair boss, told Olinda she was sad to see her go as she was a good worker and the customers liked her but understood she had a life beyond their small town.

  Olinda fluffed her long chestnut hair out after being confined all night. It felt good to give her scalp a quick massage. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, sad eyes of honey stared back at her from a face with not a lot of roundness to it. Olinda had always been slim, now she was thin. Grief had robbed her of some of her weight and vitality. But as she felt her mind settle on finally making the decision to return to her old life, a tiny sparkle of relief lit her soft eyes.

  She said her goodbyes to her co-workers and started making plans for the next phase of her life. She would miss Thea but knew it was time to get on with her own life. Her mother would not at all be pleased to know she grieved too long.

  Her apartment was within walking distance from the restaurant so it was only a matter of minutes until she was standing outside her building in the darken night.

  The voice in her mind started advising caution and to be silent! Obeying like she always did Olinda stole quietly up the stairs to the third floor of the building foregoing the old noisy lift and stepping carefully to avoid the squeaky steps. She soon stood on the landing just outside her home listening, and for some unknown reason the voices coming through from her apartment were loud.

  Olinda knew for a fact that the door was reinforced steel which stopped all sound from within leaking out. She and Thea had tested it before they moved in. It was one of the reasons she had taken the apartment and yet she could still hear the conversation taking place behind the door.

  Even now after all this time she still remembered how shocked she had been by what she had heard that night.

  “So Thea you are sure she is a shifter?” A man’s voice asked, probably her brothers, Olinda had thought.

  “No, I’m not sure of anything. What I know is, she is not fully human.”

  Olinda stumbled back and grabbed at the wall behind her, not human? Yes, I am!

  Then she heard the voice in her mind saying. No! Not fully human, escape now, get out, bad people.

  Unable to move Olinda had stood there plastered against the wall as voices reached out to her. Thea had sighed loudly, “Although I cannot detect what animal she is!”

  A woman’s voice asked. “Does it matter as long as we identify her as a shifter, we get paid right?” Then a different man’s voice answered. “Right, we have already sent a sample of her DNA to headquarters and by the time our little party here is finished, around eleven, we should have the results.

  If it comes back as shifter or anything other than human then we drug her and take her tonight. If she is human, Thea your cover is not blown right, either way you have a story ready?”

  “Yep all ready if it’s human we just go on as normal, if she is anything else we take her. I will say her mother’s family came by, and she decided to go with them.” There was the clink of glasses and then Thea said. “After a week I’ll tell our boss she is not coming back, no one will care. After all that is the beautiful thing about waitresses, they come and go regularly, people are used to it.”

  What she heard finally had Olinda fleeing into the night with the clothes she had on and her back pack, she accessed her bank and withdrew everything. It was not much, only a few hundred dollars. Then she just caught the last bus of the night as it was pulling out of town heading south.

  She traveled all night, fear riding her hard, confusion as to what and who she was kept her awake.

  Someone thinking she was a shifter was absurd regardless of what the voice in her mind had said. She was human, her mother would have told her otherwise. These thoughts kept her company for the many days and nights to come.

  It had been many years since the shifters had outed themselves to the world, so no one would care she was a shifter. Olinda was positive her mother, who had sympathized with the shifters who were discriminated against, would never had lied to her.

  Riding the bus that first night she had racked her brains trying to remember what she had heard about the shifters being in some kind of danger. Unfortunately, her life had been consumed with her mother then her grief and she had paid little attention to the wider world around her.

  She had pieced together what the danger to shifters was over the first few days of her escape. If the town she stopped at had a library she would access the net and learn all she could. Unfortunately this lead to her almost being captured so she’d had to stop.

  As days turned into weeks Olinda knew the information she had discovered would not help her. She did not know if she was a shifter or even what kind she could possibly be.

  There was no one to get in touch with for help. The shifter hot line needed information, she had none to give. She had approached the police, but that did not go well. The small-town sheriff department did not care about some woman with a crazy story who came from out of town. They had politely asked her to leave. She left.

  Olinda did not know who to trust. She did not even know what or who she was. All she knew was she had run from something she did not understand and had continued to run.

  After three weeks of nearly being caught time and again she realized she was being tracked via the GPS on her phone, she ditched the phone.

  By the end of the first month, she had once more risked some of her precious cash and brought another set of clothes in a second hand shop. She had placed the other sets in a plastic bag in the hopes she would find somewhere to wash them. So far she had four tee shirts and two pairs of jeans, she had two sports bras and had given up on underwear and socks.

  Too scared to linger in the town for too long in case someone would remember her and tell Thea or her brother, if they came asking. She used a bus ticket someone had lost or thrown away and jumped on the bus, riding it to the end of its line.

  The town she arrived at was medium sized; it had a diner, restaurants, two motels and a fairly busy main street lined either side with shops. A town that was finding prosperity from somewhere, maybe the farming that surrounded it.

  Olinda did not care, she stayed in that town trading her cleaning services for a room in the cheap motel. The owner assumed she was on the run from an abusive husband which suited her. She got to shower and wash her clothes, buy some underwear and eat regularly.

  Olinda had been there five days when she eluded capture by seeing the brother of Thea strolling with two men down the street towards the motel.XXXXXX

  She had gone to pick up some groceries when she had spotted them. Rushing back to her room she gathered her clothes and what food she’d stock piled and run.

  Luckily her room
was the last in the row. She had shimmied out the bathroom window and slipped around the side of the motel. She had stood between two shops on the opposite side of the road and watched as the men turned into the motel reception.

  Olinda knew she only had minutes at most until they decided to bribe the man on the desk who would give her up in a heartbeat. Especially as she had rebuffed his advances with a knee to his groin.

  Then they would check her room maybe wait for her to return. Either way she ran to the bus stop and climbed on board the next bus and kept on running.

  Five times she had escaped capture in the first two months from not only Thea’s brother and his wife or whom she assumed was her brother and his wife. There were several rough looking men who she knew hunted her as well.

  And then there was Thea herself. Olinda had been waiting at a bus stop in a small town when Thea had driven by. It was just an unlucky coincidence that Thea had seen her seconds before the bus pulled into the stop. Thea had got out of her car and implored Olinda to stay and talk to her. She had almost persuaded Olinda that she was running from nothing. That she, Thea, was worried for her.

  By then Olinda was so tired of running, of not being home, she had wanted to believe her and almost convinced herself that she had misheard Thea that night.

  Until the voice in her mind reminded her she had not. That Thea wanted to sell her just like they had read about on the Net and in the newspapers. Did Olinda want to go missing like so many shifters and others had?

  Olinda had taken the bus and at the third stop, although Thea had tried to make the bus pullover, Olinda had managed to escape due to pretending to be terrified which truthfully was not so much of an act.

  The bus driver believed her when she told him that the woman and men in the following car were trying to make her marry one of them for a sex slave deal they had going on. Angry, he had called the local sheriff and when the sheriff had stopped Thea’s car, the bus driver had done a bit of fast driving taking a few side streets and back roads when he was sure they were not behind them and the sheriff was still keeping them busy. He had slowed the bus enough for her to slip off and escape into the surrounding forest.

  The driver and passengers had wished her well and had pressed some money into her hand telling her she would need it. She had stepped off that bus with a wave and run into the surrounding hills, found a hollowed out tree and stuffed herself and her bag into it. The money clutched tightly in her hand.

  The kindness of the driver and passengers had almost broken her.

  She had spent the remainder of the night slumped in despair and cried herself to sleep. Sadly it would be the last time she would shed any tears.

  Thankfully Olinda had read many books on survival and about living off the grid. Sadly for her, theory and practice were not the same thing. Unfortunately she learnt that hunting when inexperienced was often times unsuccessful.

  Days of travel later exhausted and needing fluids, that did not come from a stream, she had found her way into another small town. Realizing it was still too early for the inhabitants to be up and about for the day she found a bench at a small park on the outskirts of the town to sit and wait for daybreak.

  Olinda had fallen asleep only to be woken by a man leaning over her. She had fought to free herself from him. Terror lending her strength. It had taken muscle and fear, loads of fear to knock him off of her and on to his back. She had kicked him in the stomach hard and ran.

  Her face, arms and chest bleeding and bruised Olinda had stayed hidden all day and vowed it would not happen again. That same night she had broken into the town’s pawn shop and stolen a gun and knife.

  As Olinda hiked over the hill away from the town, she mentally thanked her protective mother for the defense lessons as a teenager and her gun instructor who had taught her to use not only the gun but a knife.

  She touched the tender spots on her face and thought she should have taken hand to hand combat lessons more seriously.

  She realized she had been naive to think she would not need either the gun or knife to keep herself safe. Thea and her family were not the only predators in the world. Olinda had learnt from that experience and stayed away from towns as much as possible for the next week or so. It was only hunger and clothes and the wish to sleep in a bed that drove her to venture into the next town.

  She had been in the town only five ours. It was near dawn and she was waiting for sunrise to go find a motel for the day, when she was attacked.

  She had felt someone following her as she tried to slip from the alleyway where she had been waiting and watching the diner from across the road to make sure it was safe to venture into. The most vulnerable place she had learnt was when she was in a shop or diner where she could be trapped with no escape.

  The man had grabbed her by the shoulder spinning her around. She had never been so thankful for the gun and knife as she was that early morning. She had stabbed him in his shoulder and before he could scream she had pressed the gun under his jaw saying. “I will kill you where you stand if you make a sound or move!” His eyes rounded so much, she could see the blood shot whites.

  He had nodded frantically at the deranged looking woman pressing the gun to his jaw. Olinda had leaned a little on the knife sticking from his shoulder, he whimpered then groaned. She could smell the alcohol on his breath and the urine running down his legs.

  She was positive he thought she was going to kill him and unfortunately he was probably right. Olinda knew at that moment she was on the edge of becoming someone she did not know or liked.

  She had grabbed his wallet and taken his money, not much a hundred in bank notes then had pushed him into the alley further.

  Kneed him in the groin dropping him to the ground. He grabbed himself and groaned in pain whether from the knife wound or his groin injury, she did not know and worse she did not care. She retrieved her knife and warned him to not tell anyone.

  Olinda knew she could have shot that man without a thought, instead she did what she did best. She ran!

  After that confrontation she had trekked into the surrounding hillside and made her way to a town she hoped had a bus stop. It had taken three towns before she found one with a bus service.

  She had ridden the bus until it came to the end of its line ending up in a town where she found a cheap motel. After buying some more clothes and taking several showers she had slept for two days.

  Olinda had nowhere to go and no time to be there. She followed the voice in her mind who seemed to be leading her towards something but refused to say what.

  In truth if it had not been for that voice, she would have succumbed long ago to the despair and loneliness that lived with her daily.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  J olted from her musings by the bus going over a bump in the road she was brought back to the here and now. Apparently they were going to a place called Dragon’s Gap. Why?

  Because the bus was going there, she knew why she was going there. That was an easy answer. She had nowhere else to go. Olinda had been on the run for over three months.

  She was tired, dispirited more than usual and hungry, not just for food. She had not been in a town for over two weeks since she had stopped at the last one where she had been almost thrown in jail for vacancy.

  Fearful she then headed back into the countryside and stayed there living off what food she had, stretching it to make it last. Walking, always walking in the direction her voice told her too.

  In what part of the country she was in, she had no idea. Olinda knew she was still in the United States, but she had been in so many towns and crossed so many state lines she was thoroughly lost.

  Three days ago she had found an old disused dirt track that could have at one time been a road. At night she would find somewhere secure to sleep, usually deep in bushes sometimes in hollowed out trees. They helped her keep warm and sheltered from the rain but more than that they kept her safe from predators of all kinds.

  It was becoming colder s
o walking helped ward off the chill of early morning.

  The last person she had seen was four days ago and that was from a distance about the same time her food had run out.

  It was early morning the sun had barely risen and she was once again walking along the unused road. So when the bus had driven up the slight incline and passed her she had thought nothing of it other than to wonder why a bus was out on this dirt track.

  Of course her instinct to run and hide kicked in but experience had made her wait to see what would happen as the bus did not stop when the driver obviously saw her.

  She kept walking, wariness in every step, when she finally made the crest of the hill. Olinda stopped and stared, that same bus was now sitting idling in the middle of the road. Wary of a trap Olinda waited to see what would happen. She reasoned she was far enough away to run if she needed to but her little voice had not given off any warnings. So she waited.

  Finally the doors of the bus opened and a woman with red hair had stepped down and signaled with a wave towards the trees. Suddenly women and children came running from between the trees. The same woman had then turned to Olinda and waved to her. By their own violation her feet had automatically started moving and before she knew it, the woman who seemed to be around twenty with bright red hair had reached out and taken her hand and gently walked with her onto the bus.

  The woman was telling her and the others there that they only had two more stops before they got to Dragon’s Gap. Wherever that was?

  She had sat Olinda down in her own seat at the front of the bus and handed her a hot cup of coffee and a sandwich saying she was safe now and to relax. As if Olinda could do that!

  Olinda had looked at the sandwich and coffee. It took a minute for her brain to realize one hand held food, the other coffee. She wanted to cry at the normality of coffee and a sandwich, sobs lodged in her chest and remained there. Tears still would not come. Olinda was positive she had none left, she had cried them all.