The Stone Queen Read online

  The Stone Queen

  A Faery Born Novel

  L. E. Bross

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Stone Queen © copyright 2018 L.E. Bross

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/Daniela

  This book is dedicated to my boys. You never know until you try!

  Love you guys!

  Chapter 1

  The car lights below crawled along like ants on their way to a midnight picnic.

  I was the giant in my own surreal fairytale, ready to stomp down and squash them with my huge boot. I stretched my arms out and shouted into the night.

  “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum.”

  My foot slipped off the ledge and giddy laughter bubbled from my throat. I barely managed to keep from tumbling over the side. A tiny blip of fear cut through the fog of alcohol in my head.

  I looked over my shoulder and winked at Torin to dispel the thick nothingness that was always present in my gut. Being this close to the edge always made my thoughts heavier.

  Sometimes it took all my will to step back and not forward.

  “Get away from the edge, Mer.”

  Torin's gravel-filled voice washed over my bare arms and I shivered in pleasure. He was the only good thing in my life. Without him...

  “Would you even miss me if I was gone?” I hated the neediness that crept into my voice. I stopped relying on other people a long time ago, but Torin had found a way under the armor I wore. Now I cared, and some days I hated him for it.

  He lit a joint and leaned back against an old rusted roof vent. His black leather jacket pulled tight across his arms as he squinted at me through the smoke. I could feel his gaze moving up and down my body and I loved the thrill it gave me.

  “Hell yeah, I'd miss you.”

  Satisfied for the moment, I jumped. My boots thudded when they hit the roof and I sauntered over to the makeshift table we set up. A board across a couple of milk crates was all we needed. Torin watched me, his eyes half closed. I already knew what he wanted. That look on his face said it all.

  I wasn't sure if I was going to give it to him or not. I'd been in a weird headspace all day and even though we were celebrating, a part of me just wanted to be alone. I leaned down and grabbed the almost empty bottle of bottom shelf whiskey and straightened.

  “To forgetting,” I shouted and tipped the bottle back, guzzling until it was empty. I threw my arms wide and laughter poured from my throat. The bottle clunked at my feet. It didn't matter how I'd gotten to this point anymore. The alcohol kept the shadows away, and that's all I cared about.

  The roof spun in crazy circles around me, whizzing by like some twisted carousel ride, making me lose my balance and stagger sideways. The laugh that burst free was anything but joyful.

  Torin's fingers slid over my shoulder and cupped my breast. Hot lips pressed against my neck and I couldn't help the involuntary shudder of pleasure that rippled through me.

  He always knew the right spots to touch me. I let my head fall back onto his shoulder and looked up. The stars danced above us, brighter than ever before. An orgy of gyrating fireflies that I wanted to reach up and pluck from the air. To put in a glass jar and remember how beautiful they were tonight.

  To tuck away and take out when I needed the reminder that life wasn't all dark shadows and despair. With a loud sigh, I stepped out of his embrace and dropped into a rickety old lawn chair.

  “Not now, I just want to enjoy this.” I waved my hand upwards. I wanted to sit and contemplate my pitiful insignificance.

  “Babe, seriously? I thought we were celebrating?” He stepped behind me and brushed his fingers over the back of my hair. God, it felt good to be touched. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the sensation. He was the only person I let do this. The only person I let close enough to.

  “Maybe later, 'kay?”

  I reached behind me to run the back of my fingers along his rock-hard stomach. He sucked in a breath and pressed my hand lower, to an even harder part of him. My stomach clenched, and my pulse sped up. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to strip him down and let him make me forget about the noise in my head for a while.

  My respite was always temporary.

  Even with the bottle of whiskey sitting in my guts I knew I couldn't escape it. I hated the darkness that was always around the edges. It felt like the shadows watched, waited for me to give up.

  All of a sudden, the weight of the city air settled over me. So thick that breathing felt more like drowning.

  “I just want to be alone for a little while. Later?”

  Torin sighed and brushed his lips over the top of my head. “This was supposed to be your birthday celebration, Mer. You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  I was eighteen today. It seemed like it should be an important milestone, but all it did was remind me that nothing had changed. Another year gone. Time moved faster, speeding toward a giant black void. That scared the hell out of me. Now what danced through my head in a constant chant.

  I tilted my head back, and he slid his lips over mine. When he nipped my bottom lip, I moaned. He smiled against my mouth but pulled away. Sometimes he knew me better than I knew myself.

  “Call me if you change your mind.” He stroked his thumb over my jaw but then stood.

  Emotion filled my chest. I had no idea what real love felt like but if I had to put a name to what he made me feel, I think it would be close to this. I missed him when he wasn't with me, wanted to lose myself in him when he was.

  “I'll call you,” I promised.

  I heard the crinkling of a bag as he set a brand new bottle of whisky next to me. He really did know what I needed tonight.

  “Happy Birthday, baby. Stay away from the edges for me, okay? I'll see you later.”

  The roof access door clicked shut, and I exhaled in a rush. Loneliness swamped me so suddenly that I had my mouth open to call him back before I realized it. I gritted my teeth until the urge lessened. The new bottle would help me relax. The crack of the seal breaking. The burn as it ran down my throat.

  I eased my legs out in front of me. In the emptiness, my buzz rose back up. I loved the cloud nine feeling that nothing is bad and I'm in control of my life. It's easy to ignore the truth when you're floating inside your own head. To pretend I didn't live in some hellhole tenement building. That my mother wasn't a hooker. That I actually had hope for a future I still couldn't see.

  For those few minutes, I was n
ormal.

  As normal as it got for me.

  Today, on my birthday, I'd been kicked out of the last high school my social worker had talked into giving me a chance. A chance to make something of myself, she'd said.

  Like I had any hope at fucking future.

  I was out of options. Sure I could get my GED but that would mean I'd have to test out and pass. At this point, why bother? My social worker, affectionately named Ms Stick-Up-Her-Ass-Merlin, was going to be pissed.

  It's why I thought about walking away from everything. Go some place where no one knew me, where I could blend in until I faded away. I'd become one less drain on society that Ms. Merlin had to pretend to care about. The deeper my thoughts got, the darker the swirling shadows became.

  I focused on the bottle, on the amber liquid sloshing around inside. I drank until there was no more burn. The only way to really escape the shadows was to close my eyes, so I did. The darkness behind my eyelids was different. It felt familiar, safer than the blackness dancing around me, always just out of sight.

  Would it be this black, this still, when I died?

  I didn't remember walking to the edge of the roof, but when I opened my eyes, I was perched on the ledge looking out over a city that didn't see me. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, blocking out the sounds of traffic.

  The ground seemed so far away and yet, it would only take seconds to reach it. One step. That's all I needed to take and all of this would be over. No more shadows. No more fear. Just nothing.

  I raised my arms from my sides and pushed up onto my toes, reaching toward something I couldn't see. Would it hurt? The split second when my body hit the pavement, would I even know it? If I kept my eyes closed, I wouldn't see it coming.

  That seemed... cowardly somehow. Rude.

  I should keep my eyes wide open when meeting death.

  I gave an exaggerated curtsy to the stars dancing in oblivion above me. The world spun for a few seconds and my breath caught. I felt balanced on the verge of something, almost as if jumping would mean a new beginning. Lights twinkled against the obscured ground and mesmerized me. I had always wanted to fly. The ultimate rush. The ultimate freedom.

  I was eighteen now. An adult. Capable of making my own decisions. I laughed out loud, and the night ate up the sound. Like I hadn't been taking care of myself my entire life.

  I glanced down again, and my stomach tightened. The shadows writhed closer, slithered from the darkest corners of the roof toward where I stood, as if to bear witness to my choice. My hands were clammy. Cold sweat beaded my forehead.

  I just wanted them to go away.

  My entire life had been blackened by their inky fingers. But if I took a step, they would be gone. Forever. They couldn't haunt me if I wasn't alive to see them. Sourness coated my tongue.

  I inched closer to the edge. A sound tickled my mind, distracting me from my morbid thoughts. I figured it was Torin coming back for me and turned, but no one was there. I heard it again, almost like old lady Marsch snapping her sheets out on the fire escape, which made no sense. It was well after midnight. Who hung their laundry in the middle of the night?

  The sound grew louder and seemed to settle right on top of me, drowning out everything but the rhythmic pounding. My knees buckled and I sank down off the ledge, crouching next to the half wall. I covered my ears and slammed my eyes closed.

  That last quarter of the bottle was just hitting me hard.

  Ride it out.

  No big deal.

  The words repeated over and over again in my mind as I sucked air into my lungs. This had happened before. In a few minutes everything would be back to normal.

  Breathe. One, two, three.

  After a few seconds, the sound stopped.

  Silence.

  With my eyes still clenched shut, I uncovered my ears. Aside from the ordinary nighttime drone, everything was normal now. A helicopter maybe? God only knows we hear them enough around here. The sigh of relief brushed past my lips. Over now. Relax. Thankfully this time, the trip had been short.

  I opened my eyes and immediately jammed them shut again. Oh fuck. Not over. This was very bad. Where was Torin? What the hell had been in that shit we smoked tonight? I only had one hit.

  Wrapping my arms around my knees, I pulled them tight against my chest and rocked back and forth, counting to ten. When I dared to look again a scream lodged in my throat like stale dry bread. Fear twined around my insides and squeezed until I couldn't breathe.

  Please someone make it stop.

  I whimpered, but there was no one up here to hear me. Except that…thing.

  Sunken stone gray eyes stared at me solemnly. Roughly carved holes set into a grotesque granite face. Then the stone body shifted.

  It was impossibly alive.

  Huge jaws snapped at the night air, its pointy teeth cracking together so hard the sound vibrated through my body. Brick bit into my back as my feet scrabbled uselessly in the dirt. Run, my mind screamed, but there was nowhere to go. When the thing stepped closer, each step like someone had thrown a boulder down, I moaned in blind terror.

  There was no escape because that thing was in my mind.

  Inches from me, it stopped and went down on one knee, bowed its great head and went completely still. I jumped to my feet, the hard ledge now pressing into the back of my calves.

  As I slowly crept to the right, my senses buzzed like a live wire, ready to explode at the slightest touch. The thing's head snapped up. I froze. My pulse pounded a desperate tempo in my ears. Eye-to-eye now, it was a thousand times more frightening.

  “Princess.”

  The beast's gravelly words scraped across my skin. Before I could stop myself, my head tipped back and I screamed. The beast reached one giant stone claw towards me and I spun away from it, forgetting where I was. My shins hit the brick, but I kept going over. I hovered mid-air for what seemed like an eternity, my arms flailing in useless circles. The beast swiped at me, but it was too late.

  I fell.

  It's not true about seeing your life flash before your eyes right before you die. The only thing I saw was the side of a dirty brick building while the stench of poverty engulfed me in putrid arms.

  Then the beast was there, hovering below me. Waiting for me. Its huge wings beat a steady rhythm against the muffled sounds of a city. It appeared to grin as I spiraled toward it.

  Choice was gone now. I was falling, I was going to die. Regret filled my chest. I wish I'd have told Torin goodbye, but as the ground grew closer, I knew without a doubt that this was the future I'd been so scared of.

  I didn't want to die afraid.

  If this was the end, I wanted to embrace it. Wanted the shadows racing along the building next to me to know they weren't winning.

  And I'd been right about one thing.

  The rush of death was more potent than any drug I'd ever done. I closed my eyes, the smile stretching across my face and threw my arms wide. Torin would find someone else. He was better off without me.

  And finally, I would find my own freedom.

  A tiny whisper of something danced over my face and I absently scratched at my nose. The groan that had built in my throat finally erupted and roused me partially from sleep.

  My eyes slitted open against my wishes and I squinted at the intrusion of light. After several seconds of blindness, I turned my face away and drums exploded in my head. With a groan I closed my eyes and the darkness eased the pounding a little.

  A light breeze lifted the hair off my forehead and blew it across my face again. Bits of the previous night flitted through my mind in random order, and I tried to remember where the hell I even was. A monster, the fall, dying. But I couldn't be dead, because I was here now. Or was I?

  Where exactly was I?

  That bright light was definitely not the pearly gates opening for me. I didn't know too much about God and heaven, but was pretty sure it wasn't the destination for someone like me.

  My eyelids scraped like roug
h sandpaper when I willed them to open fully. Familiar things slowly came into focus. The table, the roof vent. Blue sky overhead.

  Somehow I was still on my roof.

  Which meant that everything from last night was just a hallucination. All of it. The memory of spiraling toward the ground filled my mind and I sat up in panic. The rooftop tilted and twisted and I fell onto my hands and knees just as last night's excess spewed past my lips. I choked and gagged, retched until even my toes hurt. Drinking a whole bottle of whiskey had been a very bad idea.

  I crawled across the roof like one of the feral cats in the alley next door. The harsh light of day always made me feel this way. Somehow darkness would cover up what I'd become, make me forget who I really was, but then a new day would burst over the horizon and like a beacon, light up what a fucking failure I was.

  What the hell was I even doing anymore? Did I just go on like this forever, until I OD'd or actually fell off the roof for real next time?

  I groaned again, in no condition to contemplate the meaning of my life this morning. I'd just had one fucked-up trip last night and needed to put it behind me. And find Torin so I could rip him a new one. He left me up here alone and apparently didn't come back.

  I pushed to my knees and squinted toward the roof access door. So close yet it felt like an entire football field away. I tried to lift my head but the pounding in my temples proved too great, and I dropped it in defeat. To stand took almost too much effort, and I nearly fell back to my knees twice before I finally got my balance.

  Then as I weaved closer, the fog turned to confusion.

  The beast from last night, from my hallucination, looked back at me with stony eyes. I blinked in surprise and waited for something to happen. It sat lifeless, watching me.