Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Surrender

  Copyright

  Praise for Heather McCollum

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  A word about the author...

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Also available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Surrender

  by

  Heather McCollum

  The Dragonfly Chronicles, Book 4

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

  Surrender

  COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Heather McCollum

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Tamra Westberry

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Faery Rose Edition, 2014

  Print ISBN 978-1-62830-000-0

  Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-001-7

  The Dragonfly Chronicles, Book 4

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for Heather McCollum

  “This series captivated me from the beginning.”

  ~Amazon book review

  ~*~

  “Once you step inside Heather McCollum’s world of THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES, you will fall in love time and time again.”

  ~Amazon book review

  ~*~

  “Heather McCollum is a brilliant writer and I cannot wait to read what she next has in store. 5 HOOTS!”

  ~Nocturne Romance Reads

  ~*~

  “What an absolutely thrilling, chilling rollercoaster ride through time!”

  ~Goodreads review of MASQUERADE: Book Three

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to

  Skye, Braden, and Irena,

  who have been fortunate enough to walk

  in the steps of pharaohs.

  Camel treks to the Sphinx, hot air balloon rides over the Valley of the Kings, crawling through crypts—

  ahh, the adventure!

  Thank you for taking me along in spirit!

  Prologue

  Luxor Egypt

  West Bank of the Nile

  21 February 1852 AD

  Anthony Fitzgerald Whitaker was born in 1815 and now he was going to die, in the dark, without a clue left behind of his whereabouts, a rotting companion to the ransacked mummy staring back at him.

  “Bloody hell.” The dim glow of his lantern splashed across the colorful mosaic walls that would become his own tomb. He covered his mouth with a dingy handkerchief against the 3,000-year-old dust swirling around from the mud slide behind him. The roar of the flood surging from the Nile drowned out the wild thump of his heart. The rains of the previous week had weakened the ceiling of the tunnel he’d been exploring as part of the Egypt Exploration Society’s expedition.

  Stupid, paranoid, rash fool. Anthony berated himself silently so as not to use up more of the stagnant oxygen. He’d come down the unearthed steps at night, alone, in order to be the first to break through the millennia-old rubble from other floods. Almost as bad as the part about dying was the fact that no one would know that he’d found the mummy, whoever he was—a pharaoh without a sarcophagus, filched by tomb raiders no doubt. Poor bastard. Though Anthony wasn’t sure which one of them he was lamenting.

  He scanned the thick stone walls. No way out! Perhaps he could at least leave his name and the date somewhere inside so when Egyptologists unearthed him with the desecrated mummy king, they’d know he, Dr. Anthony F. Whitaker, was the first to actually find him. He laughed a short burst that sounded more like a cough.

  Paper would surely disintegrate with time. He needed to chisel his name into rock. He ignored the throb in his leg that had been hit by a falling boulder. Why worry over a bruised and bloodied leg when death was imminent? He wiped his sleeve across his damp forehead and flashed the lantern light once more behind him. Water trickled in between the rocks; no exit there. If he broke through he’d only drown. Which was better? Now there was a question: suffocation or drowning?

  A hint of a breeze flicked against the sweat of Anthony’s nape setting the hairs along his body in full alert. Light throbbed through the tomb for a split second, blinding him before disappearing so suddenly he wondered if he’d hit his head. He whipped around toward the wrapped remains of the mummy and froze. Behind the forgotten king, large eyes in a small heart-shaped face stared back. He blinked several times but the image of the girl remained. She was small, perhaps the same age as his friend’s daughter, three or four.

  “Who…where?” He couldn’t get his words out. “From where did you come? How are you here?”

  Had she followed him down and hidden? Good God! She gasped when she saw the mummy lying in a state of stiff, decayed glory. “Come.” He beckoned her closer. “He cannot hurt you. Come.” She skirted around the mummy toward his light.

  Golden hair framed pale skin; definitely not native. Her clothes looked…old, historic, ancient really. Her breath fluttered in and out of her chest and huge tears rolled down her cheeks. The child was in a muted panic. He had to calm her before she used up all their air before he could think of a way to get her out. So much for surrendering to the inevitable.

  He touched her fragile shoulders and felt their rapid rise and fall. “All will be—” He was going to say “well” but that was a blatant lie. “I’m going to try to get us out of here. I won’t leave you.” Her gaze leapt from wall to wall and then to the ceiling. Her breathing rushed through parted lips.

  Out of the darkness at the back of the crypt came a screech and a flutter of great wings. The child leapt into his arms and he scuffled them backward, his heels digging into the pebbly dirt. Bloody hell, it was a bird, an owl, a great big owl! Now Anthony panted. “Did…did he come in with you?”

  The child burrowed her face against his chest, her fragile frame shaking. Was she mute? Her heart pounded through her back as his hand lay across the rough weave of her dress.

  The raptor landed at their feet, its obsidian orbs set in a perfectly feathered face. There was so much wisdom and strength in the bird’s gaze that Anthony wondered momentarily if this was some unknown Egyptian god come to life.

  Events had rapidly descended from tragic to impossible. He must be losing oxygen. Tears soaked his shirt, and he patted her back. “I know,” he whispered. “It looks dire.”

  She pointed at the rock ceiling.

  “I’d like to go up too,” he answered. “But there’s a mountain of sand and stone on top of us.” If he could suck the words back down his idiotic throat he’d do it. Terror pinched and pulled her sweet features into a mask of utter horror and s
he cried out loud. Long sucking sobs. Anthony tried to draw her back to him, but she stood apart, her hands out in front of her slight body.

  The girl stared up at the ceiling where the owl swooped, flapping its immense wings against the brightly colored glyphs of chariots and speared warriors.

  “Out!” The tiny voice flooded the crypt with such power that Anthony swore the walls trembled. Definitely not a mute. The girl panted and then squeezed her eyes shut tight. Her hands lifted in small fists at the ceiling.

  “Out! Out! Out!” she screamed, the voice echoing so fiercely above the rush of water beyond that Anthony flattened palms over his ears. “Out!” The word blasted upward with wind and explosive force. “Out!”

  Anthony hunkered down, his hands cradled over his head as the ceiling of the buried tomb shattered, exploding upward, blasting dirt, rocks, and three-thousand-year old relics into the night sky. He blinked and coughed with the dust.

  “Out,” the girl repeated but the panic had ebbed as she stared at the empty sky above the huge hole. “Out,” she whispered and glanced at Anthony. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out except a startled curse as gravity deserted him. He floated upward with the girl, the owl leading the way into the open night air. When they landed on the dry edge of the flooded river bank, Anthony stared down at the jagged sand marking the hole.

  “Good bloody God,” he swore and knelt down to look into the heart-shaped face. He paused and swallowed. What does one say in the face of such power? Was she a little goddess? A pale-faced pharaoh come to life? He opened his mouth and then closed it. She quivered.

  “Cold,” she whispered.

  A grin broke Anthony’s grime-caked face, and he let out a loose laugh on an exhale. “That, my little queen, I can fix.” He shrugged out of his coat and draped it around her shoulders. She snuggled deep into the folds and walked into his arms that he held ready. The feel of her nuzzling, full of trust, against his chest did strange things to his independent heart. Though she was obviously unrivaled in power, she was still a child in an adult world. If his instincts were working again, he’d bet that she didn’t have parents here to protect her. “My little Cleopatra,” he said. “Petite and beautiful and powerful enough to move armies.”

  “Kailin,” she whispered and peered up at his face with the serious expression of one decades older. “I am Kailin.” Although Anthony understood her words, her lips seemed to form others. Her little fingers clasped a perfectly oval, polished stone of turquoise that hung from a cord around her neck.

  The owl hooted and landed nearby, apparently staying with its queen. Anthony shook his head and hugged the little girl close. “Kailin. A pretty name for a pretty girl. But you’ll always be the mighty Cleo to me.”

  Chapter One

  Whitaker House

  Selby, England

  September 1871

  Kailin Whitaker perched on the crisp white edge of her perfectly made-up cot situated on the balcony overlooking the back gardens. Bruce always did such a lovely job with the sheets.

  She inhaled the last of the summer jasmine wafting from the garden below and tilted the brittle paper, crisscrossed with her father’s quick slashing script, toward the descending sun.

  10 August 1871

  Dearest Cleo,

  The dry heat has made digging during the day nearly impossible. But once underground the coolness of the earth replenishes the body, not to mention the incredible mosaics lining the latest tunnels. If I thought I could bribe or beg you to come see for yourself, I would.

  Kailin laughed out loud but shivered just the same. She’d never set foot underground again. She pulled the knit jacket tighter around her shoulders as the evening breeze ruffled through the bushes below.

  Cleo, I am treading along the footpaths of ancients! The very air smells of spice and history. And I am so close to finding the greatest treasure of all. I would give anything to have you next to me when I finally obtain it. Again, impossible I know, but an old man can hope. Just know that when I hold the treasure I will be thinking of you. I miss you.

  Kailin smiled with a tug of heartache. Good God, she missed her father. She skimmed the rest of his details, her finger stopping on his last words.

  The picture on the glyph describing the orb was a dragonfly and not just any dragonfly mind you, but the same as the one on your arm. Would you perhaps know anything of it?

  Kailin’s fingers smoothed over her upper arm where the odd birthmark marked her as even more strange than she already was. Anthony had asked her many questions about her past through the years, his curiosity both annoying and endearing. But she couldn’t remember her life before him. He’d dated her odd dress back almost nine-hundred years and her strange words, when she was without the stone tied around her neck, to the Celts of the western Highlands of Scotland.

  Even now Kailin felt the familiar tug toward what they had deduced was her origin: a circle of ten monoliths soaring in a circle around a deep-rooted granite slab near the sea. Her gaze easily found the most direct route to it. The stone circles of England and Scotland had become her archeological passion over the years. And although Anthony grieved that he couldn’t drag her below ground, he was pleased she’d chosen learning and science to flirting and frivolous hats.

  As the sun burned a thin line along the tops of the far trees, Kailin sipped the warm chocolate drink Bruce, her aging manservant, had pressed into her hands. The dark tang of barely sweetened chocolate swirled heat around her tongue and trailed down her throat into her middle, centering her, relaxing her.

  “Dragonfly…hmm,” she murmured to Tuto, her owl, perched motionless in the birch tree near the wall. The great horned owl turned his head in a fluid twist and pierced the night with a hoot. She smiled at her friend and stood, stretching. “Anthony is trying to lure me to Egypt again.” She sighed. She hated to disappoint her father, but nothing would get her underground again, not even death. She’d had it written that her body was to be entombed above ground or burned like a Celt or Viking. That would surely give the stuffy parlors and salons something to titter about.

  Kailin exhaled and drew the pins from her long hair, letting it relax down around her shoulders. She stepped off the balcony through French doors and into her sanctuary, the only room she longed to be in. Kailin glanced at the vast number of glass windows set into her round walls, all open to circulate the breezes and give the occupant the distinct feeling of being outside.

  Kailin sat down on the end of her large bed in the center of the room and glanced up at the painted mural of the sky. Several real birds roosted along the beams. Anthony had refused to install glass above her in case Kailin shattered it during a tantrum or nightmare, stabbing her underneath. So he’d had a mural commissioned for her to sleep under on rainy nights.

  Kailin rolled her shoulders before willing the tiny buttons down her back to unhitch. The many ties and hooks opened with barely a thought and she stepped out of her gown and petticoat. Yes, Anthony had quickly seen that in order to keep his house in one piece he needed to create a safe haven for his unusual ward. Luckily he’d fallen in love with her as quickly as she had with him. Only his love for dusty mummies could draw him away from his beloved Cleo.

  Kailin bathed with the tepid water piped up to her own en suite water closet and changed into a fresh white sleeping gown. She shook her head at the luxuries around her. After two months in the field, studying the monoliths on the coast of Scotland, her home felt like an overly plush palace.

  Kailin brushed snarls from her hair and studied the night outside her balcony doors. Tuto soared by like a slice of moonlight with a mouse in his talons. Kailin left the walls of her room and stepped into the cooling, unhindered breath of darkness. The stars blinked above in the inky void. She picked out the constellations that she’d memorized growing up. Gemini, the twins; Cassiopeia, the queen; Pegasus, the winged horse; and Perseus, the hunter. She traced their forms into the legendary heroes and monsters. These were her friends, b
esides Tuto.

  Her uncaught thought scattered old rose petals and debris in the garden below before she could completely rein in the tug of self-pity. She curled up on her outdoor bed and unfolded Anthony’s last letter. Hieroglyphs scrawled across the top border. A bird over another shape with a foot. The sign for life and then a serpent over a half circle and line.

  “Life forever,” she murmured and dropped her gaze to Anthony’s smooth handwriting.

  Dearest Cleo,

  I’ve been so blind. The Orb of Life is more powerful than we could imagine and it seems the world around me is after it. I’m beginning to think that it should never be found. Unfortunately I’m pretty close to unearthing it. And I think it’s known. I’m being watched. I’m certain.

  Cleo, you were so young when you found me. Do you remember it at all except for the parts that have plagued your nightmares? The mummy king we found robbed and without name? I believe he was but a guard, protecting his king and the orb. If I can dig my way down to him again, it will lie there. But perhaps I should endeavor to turn in another direction all together.

  I miss your keen decisions, my clever girl, your logical mind over what is right and wrong. I think perhaps I will come home to you soon. My bones are weary of all this intrigue.

  My love always,

  Anthony

  Kailin read the letter three times in the fierce glow of the oil lamp before she realized the flames were blackening the glass globe. She tethered her magic and the fire reduced to normal, but she couldn’t tether her concern. Anthony was in trouble, more trouble than he wrote. For her father was exceedingly relaxed, a happy chap who was rarely ruffled. Giving up when he was so close to finding the biggest treasure of his life?