The Lost Garden (The Lost Garden Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  * * *

  Jess noted that the Fallen who currently circled them were all brandishing machetes. All seemed experienced with the blades, but whether or not they were trained in the art would be a different story.

  Certainly, the blades were used to kill and had probably killed many an innocent victim.

  Suddenly, the circle collapsed and they all seemed to lunge at once. A tall man with slicked-back black hair was the first to her. Her sword clashed with his machete and sparks flew off in many directions. He attacked once and backed off. She immediately turned and parried a mid-level blow from the tall woman, whose blade hit hers with thundering force. Jess’s blade did not move from the collision and she met it with ferocity of her own.

  The woman did not back off and for the moment, she held her ground and countered Jess’s block with a riposte designed to cut off her head. Jess ducked instinctively, feeling the whoosh of air swipe over her head and the faint whistling of the blade as it sliced through the air.

  To her mild chagrin and a credit to Knight’s reflexes, he had turned away from his own fight with a tall man, and tripped Jess’s opponent from behind with a leg sweep. She fell to her back and hit the floor hard. Jess used that moment to avoid another machete coming at her as she stepped to one side. The blade caught the hem of her robe only, slicing it open, as she swung her sword in a big looping arc meant to do one thing only. Disembowel.

  The eyes of her attacker, a tall man with a long ponytail, bulged as he reached down to his mid-section. Jess had a faint image of him holding his own intestines before he slid out of view and she met her next attacker.

  The stench of The Fallen was made fouler by their spilled and tainted blood. She felt as if she were fighting along the sewage-lined streets of Medieval London.

  Which, of course, she had.

  She sensed her own bile threatening to rise. She took a quick glance at Knight, as he was currently staving off an attack by two opponents. He, too, showed that he was looking a little green. He kicked out and connected with the jaw of the smaller of the two attackers.

  Jess turned back to her own fight and saw that she was again facing the tall woman. The woman had removed a particularly worn machete, with nicks and scratches and long gouges here and there. Of what she could see of the leather pommel, it was well-worn, too. Obviously, the weapon had come in handy and Jess doubted the woman had used the thing to hack her way through dense rain forests, or even trim up her trees at home.

  Probably spent her evening sharpening the thing, thought Jess, while most people are at home watching TV.

  Jess did not know the woman, but knew she had obviously been a Cherubim and must have fallen before Jess’s time. By the way she carried herself, Jess knew she had been taught well on how to fight. She allowed herself to grow soft and weak while feasting on the dead.

  Next to Jess, another man collapsed and rolled against her ankles. She looked down and saw blood pumping from a puncture wound through his heart. She kicked him away and held her weapon before her, circling the woman.

  The machete and short sword were about the same length. The former meant to hack and mutilate, while the latter was carefully constructed for combat and weighted perfectly for quick movements.

  Jess knew she had the advantage.

  “You were among the first,” said Jess. “to eat of the Tree of Good and Evil.”

  Her opponent said nothing, yet simply positioned herself in guarded position.

  “You are among the first Fallen,” said Jess. “I can see it and smell it on you. You were among Sulina’s original Fallen.”

  The woman’s unusually flat face scrunched a little in confusion. “I know not what you speak. I have been alive a long time.”

  “Do you even know your name?”

  “I am called Dorina.”

  Which was probably true. Much was taken from the Fallen, sometimes even their memories. “Dorina, you shall finally die and have your troubled soul be put to rest.”

  Jess saw it for a brief moment. A flash of relief in the woman’s eyes. The way her shoulders briefly sagged and the breath escaping from her parted lips. The woman, whether or not she remembered her past or even who she was, was tired. So very tired of prowling the streets at night, looking for the dead, or creating their own dead, but they would never admit it. Jess briefly felt pity for the thing in front of her.

  The moment of weakness was gone and the woman steeled herself for the coming battle. “You are mistaken. I do not die. Ever.”

  “On this night, by my hands, you will.”

  The woman attacked first, hacking down at an angle as if Jess were a hanging ivy vine. It was a sloppy, clumsy movement and Jess met the machete with her sword. The blades rang and a starburst of sparks appeared. Jess’s weapon was almost torn from her grip.

  Clumsy or not, the woman was powerful.

  Jess’s arm still shook from the vibration. The woman knew her strength was great and raised a bushy eyebrow. They circled again. Jess, with her back to the kitchen, tried to keep her vision on the still-mourning Morina, the one person she had no intention of losing track of, or turning her back on. With her head to the side, she caught a brief glance of Knight leaping over his sofa as a long Bowie knife, wielded by a blonde short-haired man, plunged deep into the cushions, shredding the leather.

  That had to hurt. Poor guy.

  Now as their circling brought her into full view of Morina, Jess attacked and lunged. The woman parried the attack easily and riposte. The machete coming in fast and low. Jess parried, while stepping to the side and shielding her body with the edge of her sword, then driving her sword point straight and true for the woman’s heart.

  She would have none of it and turned to the side. She watched the blade slide harmlessly by, inches from her face.

  Jess used the opportunity to drive her knee hard into the woman’s stomach. The blow hit home. Jess knew her bony knee always came in handy.

  The woman doubled over briefly and Jess finished her off the only way she knew how. The only way she had ever been trained.

  To fight and to kill. To protect Eden at all costs.

  She must protect the Chosen One, although he seemed to be doing well on his own.

  Jess chopped down hard and fast at the back of the woman’s neck. The blade passed through skin and bone, as the thunk of her head hit the floor without her body attached. Jess looked for the next opponent.

  * * *

  Knight was doing his best to preserve his artifacts and furniture. At one point, he risked life and limb to swipe up an ancient Hebrew scroll that he had found in a clay jar in a cave with feet of bat guano on a little hill above the Dead Sea. A parchment that may or may not have been one of the earliest translations of the book of Genesis. A parchment that only he knew about. It was a crime to remove it from Israel. Then again, if he were worried about committing crimes, much of the antiquities in his home would have landed him in jail many times over. Knight never considered his own pursuit of history a crime, and collecting the artifacts only increased his own knowledge. As a respected, although some would say maverick, historian, he felt the artifacts did the world just as much good in his home as they would in a museum or on the dusty shelves of a university.

  At least, that was the justification that allowed him to sleep at night.

  Now, with the hermetically sealed parchment under his arm, he parried his opponent’s thrust. The knife was almost as long as a short sword and the little beast really seemed to have precision-like control over it.

  The parried knife blade stuck into the back of his sofa cushion.

  “Son of bitch.”

  The knife was pulled free, along with some stuffing, which spilled out like the intestines of the dead man on his floor.

  Knight looked up from his disemboweled sofa and saw that Jess had her hands full with the Amazon-sized woman. Actually, they were very near the same size and he would like to wrap things up with these final two to catch a glimpse of the
mother of all catfights. The Fallen were tougher and stronger than he would have guessed. It took all of his skill to not only defeat them, but to stay alive.

  The two remaining Fallen, one a shorter man with a blonde goatee, the other, perhaps Middle Eastern, spread out to his right and left. They were planning to pick him off from a distance, one striking while the other retreated, the way hyenas wear down lions.

  Not that he thought of himself as a lion.

  Well, not really, although the comparison in this case was valid.

  He needed something with range and he saw a Japanese fighting stick lying across the chest of the man he had killed just moments ago.

  He used his sword as a spear and hurled it at the closest Fallen. The short man dodged to the left and smiled. As the spear stuck deeply into the wooden frame of the doorway leading down into his studio, Knight was already moving. He did a neat little back flip that allowed him to snatch the wooden fighting stick on his downward plunge with his hands.

  He came up smoothly, holding the stick.

  He spun and faced the two Fallen.

  In the far distance, he heard sirens. Even though he nearly lived in seclusion on this patch of sand, with one side of his home cut off by a peninsula, someone had managed to call the cops. Perhaps the many gunshots had carried into the Malibu night. Or someone walking the beach had heard the commotion in his house.

  Or, worse, perhaps someone had come across the body the Fallen had feasted on. That is, if they had managed to leave any of it behind.

  His house was littered with corpses. There was absolutely no way to explain any of this. He had to make short work of these last assailants and then he would bolt with Jess.

  Just as he thought her name, he had a glimpse of her raising her sword high and striking down, severing the head of her opponent.

  The others approached him again, heedless of the call of the sirens. They truly did need a leader, for they were helpless on their own.

  The one type of vampire Anne Rice had yet to write about, he mused.

  First, the darker-skinned one flashed forward and Knight moved to cut him off, swinging the wooden stick. Just as the first one attacked, he abruptly backed off. When he did so, the shorter one made his move in a coordinated manner.

  Knight knew the game and knew what he had to do.

  Using the length of the pole, he charged the second man, startling him. As if running with a pole vault, he drove the blunted wooden tip into the man’s forehead and abruptly stopped and swung the pole over his head. The darker-skinned one had been behind him and the sudden appearance of the pole had cracked his temple.

  Both were out cold.

  The sirens were growing louder.

  A flash of movement at his side. Knight raised the fighting stick, turned his head, and saw that it was Jess. She had moved to the first of the unconscious Fallen, the short man with the goatee. She lifted his head and brought down the edge of her sword.

  “Stop!” said Knight.

  The sword edge stopped inches from the man’s throat. Jess blinked and turned to him. Her eyes were a little too wild. She was not the woman of his dreams. She was a warrior and a cold-hearted killer. “What?” she asked.

  “You can’t just kill him like that.”

  “He is a killer, Evan. He preys on humans. He feasts on the dead. He will be commanded to kill you later. He will be commanded to kill me later.”

  “Then let him, or us, die on the battlefield.”

  “You give honor to an animal? You give honor to a creature that would never return it?”

  “I do.”

  “Fine,” she said, and let go of her handful of hair. The man’s head thudded down on the wooden floor. Already a massive bump was appearing between his eyes.

  The sirens had stopped outside of the house. Knight could see the flashing lights coming from the distant street. Knight’s property was gated. It would take the police a while to hop the fence and walk his half-mile driveway.

  They both turned to Morina.

  She was standing now over the body of the older man. She was also holding a gun, pointed at Knight’s heart.

  “Now I will kill the Chosen One,” she said. Perhaps a little too insanely, thought Knight. “And be rewarded by Sulina, once she takes over paradise and the Tree of all Life.”

  Jess and Knight both held their swords steady. Each was only a few feet from Morina. Knight knew that one of them, or the other, could take a swipe at Morina, but the other would risk being shot.

  Jess said, “You kill Knight and I will simply bring him back from the dead. You forget I have the oil of life and you cannot kill the both of us. You pull the trigger and one or the other will be upon you, only to use my oil to bring the other back from the grave.”

  Morina seemed to be staring at Jess’s neck, which was where the oil was secured. Morina looked briefly at the body between her feet. She seemed to want to bargain, but she had nothing to bargain with.

  Knight had to admit that the prospect of being shot and then brought back from the dead with the help of the oil was a little unsettling at best.

  “Um, Jess, can we talk about this first?”

  “Not now, Evan.”

  He stared at the gun, pointed unwavering at his chest. “Now is a perfect time to talk about it.”

  She shushed him.

  He didn’t appreciate being shushed when his own death was being talked about. Jess kept her stare level with Morina. “Go ahead and shoot him,” said Jess again. “I have the power to bring him back and you will be dead. It will accomplish nothing.”

  “Jess,” he said. “I really have a problem with the scenario you are painting.”

  She never turned her head. “Do you trust me, Evan?”

  He was surprised by his answer. He didn’t even have to think about it. “I trust you more than anyone in the world.”

  “Good, then shut up.”

  “Point taken.”

  Morina finally cocked her head, aware for the first time of the sirens and the cruisers parked out front. Whatever she was, she wasn’t like the other Fallen, having retained much of her personality and wits.

  Behind them the other two were awakening and sitting up.

  Jess said, “Take your two animals and be gone. The authorities have arrived. I give you this one opportunity to walk out of here alive.”

  Morina thought for a brief second and then pocketed the gun inside her robe. The others were now on their feet, both a little wobbly. “Come,” she said.

  Both looked at the room littered with the dead of their comrades. Knight was disturbed by the fact that the looks on their faces revealed something akin to hunger.

  Dear God, he should have let Jess kill them. What the hell had he done? He had a sneaking suspicion that his foolish little act of chivalry would cost him later.

  “Forget them,” hissed Morina. “We must leave immediately.”

  The other two, like well-disciplined bloodhounds, looked up from their midnight snacks and moved across his living room to the shattered rear sliding glass door, where Morina was waiting for them.

  Morina paused, as she stepped out onto the patio deck, as a crisp wind blew her leather trench coat back like a cape. “We shall meet again, Jessima IL Eve. When we do, do not be surprised if you are the last of your kind. Even now Sulina marches on your Eden and she brings with her a mighty force.”

  “Tell Sulina the Fallen that you have failed. Jessima IL Eve shall return with the Chosen One.”

  With that, Morina left and the two others obediently followed, now attached to their new leader.

  “You know,” said Knight. “Leaving is not such a bad idea.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “I have a truck in the garage; we take it along the beach, ditch it and then get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Ah, an idiomatic reference to Dodge City,” said Jess, smiling. She had blood splatters all over her. In fact, blood was pooling everywhere from the corpses aro
und his living room. He wondered if he would ever get the stench of the Fallen out of his home.

  Or if he would ever return home again.

  “Let me guess,” said Knight. “You’ve been to Dodge City. In its heyday. With saloons, gunfights, card games, and barroom brawls.”

  She smiled, wiping her blade on the chest of the dead and then sheathing her sword. “What can I say?” she said. “Sometimes, even Cherubim need vacations.”

  “C’mon,” said Knight, “Let’s get the hell out of here. You can tell me your Wyatt Earp stories later.”

  “Do you have a passport?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re going to need one where we’re going.”

  End Book One

  To be continued in:

  Keepers of the Lost Garden

  Available now at:

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback

  ~~~~~

  Also available:

  The Hammer of Thor

  A Phoenix Quest Adventure #1

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback

  Also available:

  The Last Crusade

  An Adventure Novel

  by K.T. Tomb

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  A lone messenger—carrying the standard of the German Emperor and wearing the Crusaders’ tunic—rode swiftly toward them, shouting, “Coeur de Lion! Coeur de Lion!”

  “Halt!” King Richard called out and his order was relayed back to the warriors he led. When the messenger pulled up in a cloud of dust, he bowed briefly.

  “Wolfgang! I watched you in the battle at Acre. Speak freely!” Richard said.

  “Your Majesty, I have urgent news from near Jerusalem,” he said in French. “Is that where you travel, to fight Saladin again?”

  Richard nodded. “Yes. This time, we shall finish him off. What is your news?”