Cold Mark

  The Cold Mark Saga

  Copyright 2015 Scarlett Dawn

  First Edition

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of these publications may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the Author. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher.

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

  Cover Design and Formatting by ShoutLines Design

  Editors:

  Fall - Hot Tree Editing

  Sink - Rare Bird Editing

  Stop, Soar, and Rise - Rogena Mitchell-Jones Manuscript Services

  Proofreading - AmiLynn Hadley

  DEDICATION

  To Taylor,

  Who falls deeply?

  May you always know love.

  What time offers?

  May you always live free.

  When answers come?

  May you always have courage.

  Where beginnings hide?

  May you always find meaning.

  Why you ask?

  May you always perceive truth.

  Marked yours,

  S.D.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  Newsletter

  About the Author

  Preview of Gargoyle

  King Hall

  Preview of Obsidian Liquor

  Wiping damp soil from my eyes, I asked in complete exasperation, "Madam Ki, will you please tell those hooligans to stop tossing the sacred dirt about?"

  Madam Ki's green, intelligent eyes darted to the window. My teacher of many years sighed at seeing her youngest students tearing up her stunning flowerbed and making the dirt sprinkle to the ground in a morbid imitation of falling snowflakes. "It's Lav and Wapol. Again."

  "Indeed," I grumbled, bending to shake my black locks free of soot.

  Madam chuckled quietly, a devious gleam beginning to sparkle in her gaze. "Braita, I think I know the perfect punishment for them this time."

  I'm sure she did.

  Absently, while keeping her gaze on the two louts, she snapped her fingers at the fallen debris now littered about my bare feet. "Clean that up while I tend to them."

  Swiftly, I pivoted to the side as her strong, lithe form brushed past me and out the front door of the one-room schoolhouse. I made not a peep, not about to interrupt her while she had that look in her eyes. When I had been a mere child, I had been on the receiving end of her 'punishments'. I most definitely did not want to cross paths with her scheming mind again. I had learned my lesson and learned it well.

  That did not mean I was going to clean up the mess of dirt and flower petals on her tiling.

  It was Lav and Wapol's fault. They could clean it up.

  Brushing off the last bit of grime from my pristine white sundress, I grabbed my calculations textbook from the cupboard at the back of the intimate room. It was what I had come back inside to grab initially after the church bells had indicated an end of the work and school day. Maneuvering quickly through the wooden school desks, I entered the code I had seen Madam use on the halo-keypad many times and slipped out the back door silently.

  It was time to have a little fun.

  Racing as fast as my feet would carry me, with the sweet smell of home filling my lungs on the salty breeze, I jumped over a moss-covered log and skidded to a stop on the Overcliff. The wind whipped hard on this outcropping of solid rock and sporadic green, silky grass overlooking our village, Plata, and the crystal blue ocean of the Scape. Catching my breath from my mile long run, my lungs heaving in great gulps of clean air, I saw the classmates of my age group, our senior year cluster. Breathlessly, I grinned and lifted my hand in a jaunty wave.

  "Took you long enough, Braita," Jax hollered over the breeze where he, Kiera, and Ola sat at the edge of the cliff. He lifted his surely stolen, alcho-brew, toasting in my direction as I began a fast clip toward them. "You've got dirt all over your face."

  I instantly scowled and wiped at my face more thoroughly. "Lav and Wapol were up to their usual antics." I quickly dumped my textbook on the ground and sat cross-legged next to Ola, turning my face to her. "Did I get it all?"

  "Nope." She lifted a perfectly manicured hand, and with her handkerchief, she brushed at my cheek with more force than I was entirely comfortable with. She was probably doing more harm than good to my skin, but I allowed her to continue. "The spoiled five-year-olds are always a bother when they first enter school from their surrogate's house."

  Kiera snorted softly, crinkling her nose. "They squirted my seat with ketchup yesterday."

  Jax squatted next to me and delicately pulled a twig of thorns out of my hair. "Madam's flowerbed?" When I nodded, he chucked the bit over the edge of the cliff and laughed quietly. "I'm sure they'll straighten up. They all do by the second quarter."

  As one, we nodded. Madam Ki was scary-frightening when she wanted to be.

  Jax sat beside me and silently offered me a drink of his alcho-brew.

  I scrunched my face in revulsion, tilting my head back and shaking it gently. That stuff was disgusting. Jax and Ola seemed to enjoy it, but Kiera was on my side. Nothing about it tasted appealing.

  He shrugged and handed it across to Ola, who took a massive swig before passing it back.

  With the loving wind whipping around us while we sat on the sacred earth, our hair ruffling and catching on the next person's shoulder, none of us said a word. We merely stared out past the Overcliff's edge. Past the small homes of white earth, the intricately carved petite paths where the villagers walked, appearing tiny as ants from our advantageous height, and past the white, crescent moon-shaped sand beach, and even farther than the waves of the Scape.

  We watched the blessed sun as it began its descent.

  The sky was molten lava of pinks, oranges, and blues, a dance of delight to the eye. There was nary a cloud in the sky, our view clear of any obstruction. We stared at the beauty, which only the sun held as it started to disappear, as far as we could see on the Scape. The crystal blue waters turned to a dark indigo at the edge of our vision.

  It was peace.

  The peace our planet, Joyal, afforded us.

  So close to the moon's strong pull, it was also stunning when the moon would rise over Plata. The shimmer of the silver glow against the Scape, which we would ultimately see if
we sat here long enough, was a vision to treasure.

  This world, our home, had been founded three hundred years ago when Earth had been devastated by pollution and greed, wrecking the planet beyond repair. Joyal was now our peace of mind, our sacred and cherished family, and the reverence my soul adored. More than five centuries ago, the Humans, our people, had sent a first-class arc of diplomats, engineers, and scholars into the far reaches of space, away from Earth, away from destruction. Only a little more than a thousand survived The Travel until they found three planets that were habitable. Some say it had been their penance for shattering such beauty that Earth had once been.

  I just thought it was pathetic. Pathetic that our people had been so blind.

  Now, we lived in the solar system Kline.

  Egyac was the second largest planet that had been habitable.

  Triaz, the largest planet.

  Then there was Joyal, our home. Our family to love.

  Egyac had already been inhabited by the Kireg. They were a deeply psychic alien life form.

  Triaz had already been inhabited by the Mian. They were the aliens to fear, the war societies.

  Joyal was the smallest planet by far, but it had been empty. We had taken it as our own.

  The one thing all three life forms had in common was our need for oxygen. Three different races of aliens brought together by the destruction of our original planets. All three knew the cost of a planet's ruin—a race's annihilation. So the Mian, Kireg, and Humans lived as we needed to.

  Peacefully alone, never intruding on the other.

  It was how it was.

  Kiera asked quietly, "Do you really think our village is how Greece appeared on Earth?"

  I nodded gently, glancing away from the setting sun to our home. "Yes. Madam showed me pictures of Earth. It is the same."

  "A replica," Jax clarified, speaking of how our people had used the technology brought with them to replicate certain cities of Earth.

  I nodded again, agreeing. "Yes. It is a replica."

  "A damn good one," Ola muttered, reaching across me to steal Jax's alcho-brew. "I've seen the pictures, too. Everything is the same."

  "Indeed," I murmured, then hushed them gently. "Shh. The sun is almost gone."

  The words were barely out of my mouth when all four of us went deathly quiet.

  On their own accord, my eyes began to widen as I watched the Scape's shoreline recede from the white sand, pulling further ... and further ... and further out.

  My whisper was the sound nightmares called love. "No ... "

  Just as suddenly, all four of our halo-watches blared with a corrupt alarm.

  We slammed our hands down on our watches, cutting the eerie noise off though we could still hear the echo from the village, everyone's watches warning them ... and then the church bells began singing the song of dread. Clanging over and over again. Not stopping, only getting louder in my ears as scalding tears threatened to spill over my lashes, burning to spill their fill onto my cheeks.

  "Fuck you," Jax screamed, jumping to his feet and hurling his stolen drink far over the cliff to the receding Scape. It was an action of the damned, a furious battle he—we would not win. Joyal was mainly made of the Scape, a planet primarily consisting of water. Because of this, we had many meters to gauge seismic activity, even under the ocean. But the four of us did not need any alarm warning us with our heightened vantage point.

  The ocean was still retreating.

  It was our planet fighting back when we had only given it reverence.

  Ola whispered, "We need to go."

  "Go where?" Keira demanded, shoving to her feet and running her hands through her hair. "We are at the highest point in Plata. This is where," she pointed a finger down at the homes on the cliffside, "they need to come."

  "Kiera's right," I heard myself mumble, my voice ... off ... monotone while my fingers tingled with approaching numbness. "We should stay here. Madam will arrive soon with the other children." They knew this, but it was all I could say. "She'll round them up from the boarding house."

  "My bird is there," Ola croaked, peering over her shoulder to the woods. Toward our rooms at the boarding house. "Maybe I—"

  "Don't even think about it," Jax barked gruffly, bending directly in front her and grabbing her chin so she would look him straight in the eye. "Your pet is not worth your death."

  She swallowed, the sound audible even over the breeze, not pulling away from Jax's brutal, illegal hold on her chin. "Perhaps the tsunami will not be that bad?"

  Jax said nothing, just held her gaze while the water receded deeper and deeper, leaving colorful fish flopping to their death on the wet sand, their bodies glistening in the vanishing pink light.

  I made myself pat her back, my bones feeling like they were made of stone. "Perhaps."

  With a full moon to watch by, it was not peace that filled me as the same two hooligans who had tossed dirt at me this afternoon clung to my legs. Their bitty fingernails bit into my skin as they screamed their panic loud enough to unnerve the devil. I did nothing to stop them as we stood at the edge of the cliff. Madam Ki and the rest of the school children were here, along with any of the townsfolk who had made it up the steep climb to fill the cliffside and woods.

  No, instead of consoling the children, I tried to contain my own shout of terror as the largest wave I had ever seen advanced like the swelling doom of apocalypse. The water sparkled a death count under the moon's glow, reminiscent of the stars twinkling in the onyx sky while the villagers filled the night air with their own fear. Those still down below, stubborn or not taking the threat seriously, now understood their fatal mistake.

  By the red shimmer of my halo-watch, the tsunami hit Plata at exactly 7:57 PM.

  It was the most horrendous explosion of pain I had ever viewed.

  The villagers racing for their lives through the streets ... taken, the ocean now their coffin.

  The white houses ... taken, the ocean flooding over them like they were the pebbles I stepped on.

  The church with the ringing bells ... taken, the oceans floor its destination.

  Only the rush of water and wind was heard past the cries of the devastated.

  I stood shivering in the night and prayed the blessed sun would be enough to heal our planet.

  Jax and I walked side-by-side into the conference hall. We did not speak to one another. Our thoughts were our own, each of us clutching the letters we had received from the President. After the devastation of the tsunami wiping out our largest city, we had known it would come to this. But if we had needed any verification, the two ominous spacecrafts floating behind the building were our proof.

  Our society had taken precautions when our people had first landed on Joyal. With our planet's lesser size, and the risk of natural disaster such as we'd had last week, our founders had made a deal with the Mian and the Kireg in exchange for our some of our technology. If a worldwide disaster ever plagued Joyal, the Mian and the Kireg would allow a certain number of Humans to be sent to their planets.

  To live there. Amongst them.

  Jax and I knew this. We had known the hush-hush information ever since our testing at the age of ten years old when our results had shown a proficiency in languages, political science, and combat practices. Joyal had no real need for policing their people against crimes. We were peaceful in nature thanks to selective genetics, but certain individuals had been trained should the need ever arise. Jax and I were part of those few. The choice had been ours after we had received our test grades. Our schooling would have led us to a seat in our government. It had continued to be our decision as we had grown older, and we had never changed our course. Even with the possibility of what we were now facing.

  With our need to be a part of the controlling agents of Joyal, our worst fear was now our reality.

  Jax bent, lowering his six-foot, well-built frame to whisper, "Which alien would you rather—"

  "The Kireg," I mumbled, cutting him off. I
t was a no-brainer. "They may have psychic abilities, but at least they have some civility on Egyac."

  Jax straightened, nodding his dark head of curly hair. "Same here."

  My chin trembled the barest bit. "I hope we aren't separated." I glanced up at him as we came to a stop. There were Joyal agents checking letters at the door, and there were a few people ahead of us. "We're a team."

  Jax's exhale was slow, his gray eyes softening, showing his fondness for me. "Braita, we still don't know how many they're taking. We may not even be picked." He lifted his hand and waved it just over the top of my head in a rare show of affection. "But if it is to be, say a small prayer to Mother Joyal that we will remain together."

  Instantly, I nodded. "Already done."

  Jax cracked a smile. "As I have done, too."

  Finished checking our letters, an agent stated, "Females are to sit on the left, males on the right."

  My lips pursed. "Why?"

  He answered honestly, "I don't know, but it's what the President ordered." He glanced between Jax and I. "If you are chosen, stay safe."

  As one, Jax and I moved forward through the doors, saying nothing more. The room was deathly silent when we entered, even though there appeared to be only a few vacant seats remaining. The individuals inside stared forward, watching where the President sat on a chair with his elite colleagues sitting on either side of him. The area where they sat was on a raised platform, so he was in full view of the audience. His own expression was troubled. His brows furrowed as he reviewed the paper he held in his hands. The list of names I was sure. If I were him, ready to name so many to an unknown fate, I would wear the weight on my shoulders, too.

  With one last glance at each other, Jax and I separated. He moved to the right and I to the left.

  There were far more males than females here. I sat on the lone seat remaining in the section I was led to by another agent. From my quick count, there were only one hundred females, and we only took up a tenth of the room. I knew for a fact there were more females than this in the government program, but a fast assessment showed those summoned today were mainly of a younger crowd. As it was, it was difficult for a female to test into the governing program, and many dropped out before the completion of it and chose an option of schooling that was far less grueling on the body and mind. I had never looked down upon anyone for dropping out, and now, I definitely wished I had been one of those individuals.