In Pursuit of Light Read online

  In Pursuit of Light

  Discovering Kia Book 1

  Sarah B Meadows

  Copyright © 2019 by Sarah B Meadows

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by Cover Couture

  www.bookcovercouture.com

  From the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Ann Hammond (AKA Gerry) - The first to read In Pursuit of Light from start to finish, and the first to become what is now known as “The Team”. Your feedback, guidance and honesty has helped shaped not just these books, but me as a writer/author and helped to keep the characters on track.

  Elizabeth - Though you wish to remain anonymous, I know I speak for many when I say your presence within our lives leaves a mark only an angel can make. Your patience is unmeasurable, and your commitment a rarity found amongst people. Thank you for believing in not just the books, but in me, as a person.

  My Editor -

  Amy Jo Schuster - You have enhanced my writing skills to a level that has given me confidence as a writer and author - a gift that will never be forgotten. Here’s to many more early morning and late night editing session to come.

  My Alphas and Betas - Autumn Bryant, Coleen Walton, Jennifer Kress, Kim Smith, Linda Lee and Rebecca Aspell. Thank you for your time, your patience and more than anything, your support.

  To my family and friends who have also stood by me from the beginning - Eunice Bourn-Fernley, David Bourn-Fernley, Daniel Adams, Harmony Bourn and Seonaid Mhor.

  A special thanks also goes to Anna Crosswell, our cover designer, and Darren Birks, our photographer. Thank you for going the extra mile.

  For my Team, who have stood by me from the beginning.

  Contents

  Preface

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Preface

  Rolland

  This place must be at least five hundred years old, its stone walls are crumbling and only four of the windows still have glass panels in them. The smell of dampness riddles the entire building, although this part seems to be in the worst shape. Heavy with moisture, the air clings to my skin like a wet towel. How anyone can stay in a place like this is beyond me, although I’m sad to admit I’ve slept in worse.

  I run my bare fingers along the decrepit walls, feeling the residual energy and emotions that coats them as I allow it all to flow up through my hand. It took a few years to learn how to control this part of my ability, to rein my gift in enough that I could, for the most part, tune people out. For so long, I was constantly being overwhelmed with the emotions of others, either from direct contact with them or from touching places where they had been. Stepping into a room full of humans who have no idea how to form a primary mind barrier was a living nightmare. Having their needs and wants screaming at me was a total mind fuck. Thankfully, my Brothers learned early on how to control their emotions around me and it made everyday life more bearable. Unfortunately, I can never shut it all out entirely and little bits and pieces still filter through if strong enough.

  As my hand continues along the wall, I let the energy of the hostages I’m searching for, the reason I’m in this god-forsaken awful place, guide me to them. Their fear, sorrow and anger seeps through my senses, pulling me along the passage and I find myself taking a steadying breath to calm the bombardment that gets stronger as I draw near.

  Behind me, I can hear Seb taking out two of the so-called guards. More than likely he’s playing with them instead of actually knocking them out swiftly, like he should be. He knows, though, that our window of opportunity to get the innocents out is short, so I’m sure he won’t dally too long. That being said, Matt didn’t plan tonight’s mission as well as he usually does, changing the location on us at the very last moment and pissing Gerry off. All of the boys had to be reorganised and the exit plans revised, but I suppose as long as we find the innocents and get them out safely, nothing else matters.

  My Brothers - Sebastian, Gerry, Matt, Brad, and the elusive Jack, who thinks of himself as our leader - as well as myself, have been combining our hidden “gifts” to rescue and set free innocents for hundreds of years. Since the turn of the last century, our focus has been on intercepting human trafficking institutions and organisations. Matt finds the intel through various sources, then hands the info over to Gerry who sets up the missions with “his boys,” the only people outside of us that he trusts. Brad, Seb and I get told when and where.

  Going in blind like we have tonight is a slight annoyance, but nothing we can’t handle. To be honest, it makes things more entertaining and challenging, much like it was back in England in the early eighteenth century.

  Needing a break from staving off the crushing weight of the emotions around me, I clear my head and let my mind slip back to those times. Jack hadn’t joined us yet and Brad would get Gerry completely wasted trying to help him ease his anxiety. Poor Matt would usually end up drawing the short straw when it came time to wake Gerry at the crack of dawn. Luckily his gift gave him the ability to shield himself from Gerry’s mood swings, especially when Gerry decided to take it out on inanimate objects. Unfortunately, the only thing the rest of us could do to protect our arses was to duck and cover.

  Poor Gerry, he really does suffer badly from anxiety and trust issues. When he first joined Seb, Brad and I in the early 1700s, he seemed fine. But as time went on, he would get anxious every time one of us left to visit a neighbouring village for supplies, or to scout the hills that surrounded the house we had lived in for a decade. When Matt joined us fifty years later, he got even worse. It took him the longest to accept Jack, the last to join our group, though a part of me still questions whether or not he actually has accepted him.

  Thankfully, Brad has a particular way of using his deep voice to calm Gerry, which I’m pretty sure is one of his gifts. Unfortunately, in the past when Brad wasn’t able to calm him down, Gerry would end up either going into a full-blown rage, taking it out on the nearest building, or passing out because his heart couldn’t take the stress. Over the years we’ve managed to find other coping mechanisms for him, though they only seem to work for a short period, especially when he thinks people are keeping information from him or when others are around that he doesn’
t know.

  Setting Gerry off is like waking a grizzly bear from hibernation and this thought has me chuckling softly to myself, as he actually looks like a grizzly bear most days. His thick, dark chestnut hair that curls at the ends when in need of a cut, his emerald green eyes, and light skin all make him an excellent mascot of Irish manliness.

  Brad is the most grounded one of our group, never batting an eyelash at anyone, even Gerry. With his sturdy sizeable frame, warm impenetrable skin and dark features that soften his face, he reminds me of a gentle giant. He’s always level headed and stoic, but this makes it hard to get a reading on how he’s feeling. Matt, however, is the complete opposite. His shorter frame, lighter skin, straight jawline and nose, and shining grey eyes combine to give his face the refined appearance of a granite statue. Not that it reflects his personality, though, as he’s the softest of all of us. He laughs easily and wears his heart openly on his sleeve. Add to that his exceptional ability to gather information on just about everything, and you have a genuine diamond in the rough.

  Feeling a surge of desperation and pain, I shake my head clear of the nostalgia. As I take in my surroundings, I see two doors just ahead of me on the right. The first one is open, and I can easily see that it leads to an empty room while the next one is just a couple of yards further and closed. As I approach the closed door, the fear from what feels like at least a dozen people hits me in the chest like a sledgehammer. But then, just as quickly, it softens… eases… as if it’s being muffled… or shielded.

  Pushing on the door I find that it opens easily, as it’s barely hanging on its hinges, and see steps leading straight down into a passageway that’s only just visible, by a small glow of light coming from below disrupting the otherwise overwhelming darkness. Without hesitation, I quickly make my way down the narrow stone steps.

  When I reach the bottom, I can see that the light source I spotted from above is coming from a single torch hanging on the wall. Thankfully the light is bright enough that I can clearly see a holding cellar just in front of me, filled with over a dozen people huddled together in three separate cells. Grabbing the torch so the people can see my face, and hopefully see I mean them no harm, I make my way over to the first barred steel door. As I near them, intense fear, worry and sorrow gush from them like an overflowing river and it threatens to overwhelm me. Pushing through it, I find that my first reaction is to use my gift to reassure them, but I know that in the short amount of time I have, every second counts. Instead, I use my enhanced strength and begin to effortlessly rip the doors off of their hinges, hoping to free as many of them as possible before our time runs out.

  “Quickly!” I whisper-shout to what looks like the eldest man in the group. “Head up the stairs and turn left along the corridor. You’ll find two of my men waiting there to help get you safely out of here and back to your homes.” Jason and Ryan, two of Gerry’s boys who are highly trained in military combat, wait at the exit. Gerry himself is waiting just inside the cover of the trees out back where he can mask their disappearance.

  With surprising agility, the older man, and two of the women, begin ushering the others out. Most are eager to be free and rush out without too much encouragement, but I notice that a few of them hesitate, looking back behind them to the far-right wall. Wondering what could be more important than escaping, I follow their line of sight and see nothing but a dirty grey wall with shackle hooks along the top and bottom.

  My eyes are about to move back to the people when I sense it - a tugging at my heart and my gut, a feeling of something filling every nook and cranny of my body with the contentment of returning home after many years of being away. There’s a profound sense of ease within my soul and while I don’t remember my homeland, in this moment, I can tell that that feeling of belonging is still deep within me.

  Trying to get my bearings, I look back to the old man and see he’s holding a young boy, maybe about three years old, cradled in his arms and he doesn’t appear to have a scratch on him. A saving grace perhaps that they’ve not endured any physical harm while being here. As my gaze wanders up to the man’s face, I see that he’s staring at the wall, his eyes full of tears and having a look about them that I can’t quite decipher.

  “I do not understand how it is even possible for anyone to do what she did. She has saved so many lives here and we will always be in her debt. We will not forget,” the man says through a trembling breath. He turns, making his way up the stairs and out through the broken door, heading in the direction of the waiting men.

  Turning back to the wall, that sensation of home hits my soul full force once again. I walk over to the wall, seeing nothing but grey stones. Who is this ‘she’? Maybe a buried body lies behind here. Intuitively, I know that’s not right, and I start moving my hand along the stones.

  As I continue to walk along the wall, the feeling grows deeper and impossibly stronger and, rather than hit a corner as I expected to, I find that the wall continues on and curves around into another opening. Moving the torch in my hand slowly around the alcove, I don’t see anything at first. But as I move deeper into the space, the light catches on the back wall - and the body that hangs limply on it. At first glance, I would believe the person to be dead - if it wasn’t for the tugging at my heart pulling me closer...

  Pulling me home.

  Chapter One

  Rolland

  As I’m drawn closer to the figure, something begins to stir deep within me. I can see that it’s a female hanging from shackles on her wrists - her head is drooped forward, and her long dark hair is matted and dirty, obscuring her face. In all of the years of fighting alongside my brothers, I’ve never seen so much torture inflicted on one body. There’s so much blood covering her tiny frame and every single inch of her pale skin is marked or burned.

  Shaking my head, I realise I’ve been standing here staring for far too long, stunned into shock by the sight that will forever be etched into my memory and seared like a tattoo into the very fabric of my soul.

  Gently that same feeling of belonging steels over me as peace and tranquility flow from her followed quickly by another feeling, one that I cannot fully describe. It starts stirring within me slowly, climbing its way up my back - it feels foreign and I can’t put my finger on it.

  Taking a step closer, I run my fingers along her thin neck seeking a pulse. The instant my fingers touch her delicate skin, possessiveness floods my heart and squeezes it like a vice. Shaking my head to clear what I think are her emotions, I quickly realise that it’s MY emotions I’m feeling. Not wanting to dwell on that odd occurrence, I force myself to focus on the spot where our skin connects and am rewarded with her strong pulse pushing gently back at me. It’s not fast but it’s there. She’s certainly still alive with a heart beating that firmly. How she can still be living after this amount of suffering is a testament to her will to survive.

  No emotions emanate from her, but that feeling of home and peace still pulses out of her like a steady drum that won’t be silenced. Setting the torch down, I take her weight into my left arm and rest her head carefully on my shoulder. With my other hand I start pulling roughly at the chains attached the wall, but they don’t snap as I expected them to. I give another firm yank, but the shiny black chain links don’t bend at all, even under the full force of my extreme strength. What the hell are these chains made of? I don’t have time to be messing with this shit.

  Pulling my sword from its sheath, I take a hard swipe at the chains where they’re attached to the wall and rewarded with nothing but blue sparks as the sword hits the metal. What the ever-loving fuck? Not even a scratch is reflected on the chains.

  “What’s going on, Rolland?” Seb’s distinct voice comes from the entrance of the room. I turn to him taking in his caramel skin that looks even darker in the low light. His ebony hair falls loosely around his jawline, making the stubble around his face seem rougher. His features are a complete contrast to my own lighter ones. Except for our height and build, we look
nothing alike. Vigilant, deep cognac eyes run over the girls’ limp form where it is draped against my shoulder. Does he sense it too? Does he feel the draw and instinct to do anything for this stranger?

  Based on the look on his face he appears to be just as confused as I feel. The need to protect the girl grows stronger, encouraging possessiveness to crawl up my spine, burying itself deep within me.

  Taking another calming breath, I try to quiet the emotions that grab hold of me.

  His eyes find mine and I know he feels it too. No words are spoken between us; there’s no need. Before we could talk telepathically, we spent years working together in silence to sneak up on our enemies, forcing us to learn to communicate without words.

  From a clip on his belt, he detaches his enhanced whip which has been infused with the same unique metal as my sword. Both weapons were given to us by Jack many years ago when ours were no longer useful. Seb strikes the chains, pulling it tight from the wall, yanking as hard as possible to help weaken the chains links. Aiming my sword, I take another swing at the same area. More blue sparks fly but this time the chains break. Most of the links all fall to the stone floor as though they were never fully attached, with only a few still stuck to the cuffs on the girl’s wrists. I watch as the links on the ground glow faintly blue before settling into what look like ordinary black metal rings.