Unmasked (Rise of the Masks Book 1) Read online

  UNMASKED

  EM Kaplan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Elizabeth Snively

  Copyright © 2014 EM Kaplan

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 1499593945

  ISBN-13: 978-1499593945

  For Jeremy

  MANY THANKS TO

  Amy Bland

  Amy Bush

  Esther Kaplan

  John Kolman

  Elizabeth Snively

  Eric Streem

  Derrick Wise

  Part 1

  Keep

  Chapter 1

  The beast grabbed Mel with a gray-skinned hand and dragged her across the rutted dirt road. He wrenched her away from her wooden carriage, from those who might have saved her, the coarse dirt and stones shredding the soles of her feet. She fought him, scratching the thick arm around her waist and the inhumanly strong fingers clamping her ribs like a vise. His other hand covered her mouth, muffling her screams. Her attacker—no kind of creature she had ever encountered before—lumbered toward the trees where she knew they'd be swallowed up from sight with no chance for rescue.

  She tried to push strength to her arms, to redirect it into her shoulders so she could twist and strike him in his neck or groin, but he had immobilized her body and her mind. She had none of her Mask-trained abilities left. A strange mental cloudiness crippled her, destroying her ability to focus; it rendered her dizzy and nauseated. She was at half of her strength, if that. He crushed her against his dirt-caked side, dragging her off the road into the trees.

  You will not die this way. You will find a way out of this mess. Think.

  She forced herself to calm down. She was a scholar despite her current appearance—the filmy white dress, the matching silk ribbon now torn from her hair, the useless paper-thin shoes that had fallen off. She needed to tamp down the fright, but she was not used to dealing with her emotions. She needed to fight through the foreign haziness of her thoughts and try to observe him, to gather information, and to figure out a solution to this problem.

  The staccato gasps of air she could take through her nose weren’t enough to identify him by scent. She could hardly breathe. She knew he smelled like the worst kind of offal only from the first moments of the attack—his powerful odor had filled her nose in the seconds before he pulled her from the carriage, but now she couldn’t smell anything.

  She focused instead on what little she could see. The hand covering the lower half of her face was larger than a man's. He wasn’t human? His fingers were gray, caked with brown dirt, and locked together, effectively forming a muzzle. She couldn't bite him, though she tried to. One side of her face and an ear were smashed against his chest, so she listened to his breathing. His breathing was uneven and rasping with obstruction, but telling of an enormous capacity under his ribs. He was very large; the entire length of her body traversed his ribs and dangled just a hand or two above the ground. She was a mere doll in his grip, small prey easily overcome.

  She paid attention to his gait, which was uneven, possibly from a deformity or injury. He wore a coarse tunic and breeches made from animal skins and a thick belt that secured a large, wooden-handled tool or weapon, an axe maybe. While the clothes were rough, they seemed expertly made. Under her questing fingertips, the stitching on the band of leather around his wrist was fine and well-done. He lurched unevenly down a slippery incline, jarring her limbs, momentarily knocking the breath out of her.

  She steadied her rapid breathing but could not control the shakiness of her inhalations. Her eyes burned as a fever overtook her, and her head swam. She struggled to rein in her thoughts. Whatever he was, he had rendered her a normal person, just like any other helpless human. Where were her usual abilities? Gone. She felt as if she had been blindfolded, gagged, and then pitched into a whirlwind.

  What kind of creature is he? Think, think, think . . . This is not working. If I could remember any prayers, I would say them now.

  He was not natural, she suddenly thought, her widening eyes barely registering the blur of passing blue-hued leaves—the very same leaves that had been the focus of her study these past months at the Keep. A branch whipped her forehead, and she slammed her lids down trying to retreat into the comfort of darkness. Her mind was battening down from fear, seeking to huddle far inside herself to escape from the horror of her circumstances. She fought against it, forcing herself to sift through the details that she could gather to try to deduce what he was.

  But what if he were a troll? What if he were not from the realm of scientific fact and concrete evidence, but a bad dream drudged up from childhood? Her mother used to tell her to clean her teeth well or the trolls would come down from the mountains and eat her up. Had she scrubbed her teeth this morning?

  This will not be my last thought. If I am going to die, I will die calm and observant. I will die a Mask. But preferably, I will not die at all.

  How far had they run? And how fast? He covered a lot of ground very quickly, maybe half again as much as she would have at a full running pace for her if she had proper shoes. The forest was darker here. Thorns and branches whipped her skin, leaving dotted lines of blood across her face and arms. He was unaffected, like a maddened bull crashing through fence after fence, though he had a far thicker hide than a bull. She might be broken by the time they arrived wherever they were going, and she thought maybe that would be best.

  Go on. Continue. Analyze the situation.

  She forced her mind to categorize the facts and process the information, as she had been trained to do her entire life. He was not a human, but he was a male. Why would a male attack her? She was young and dressed enticingly, virginally, purely. To stay at the Keep, she had to wear their garments instead of her sturdy boots and leather leggings. She looked like a normal, young human woman. The creature wore man’s garments, although larger sized. He was a male, so perhaps he intended to violate her. Her unchecked pulse sped again with a burst of fresh terror. She would try to run at first opportunity. But what if he had captured her for another reason altogether? Her mind sought out other avenues and stumbled on the terrible possibility that he might have taken her to eat her.

  Oh God, I’m going to die.

  She allowed herself a measure of self-pity. She wished she could see her mother one more time. She hadn't seen her father in years. He was away on an assignment, but surely he'd hear of her death and feel loss over what she might have been. Both of her parents had high hopes for her. They wanted her to be a Mask of renowned talent—one who would be celebrated in the lengthy history of Masks. They hoped that she would solve crises, bring peace where there was strife, and gather knowledge where there were gaps in their vast library. Her people had always wanted her to be a noteworthy mediator and a scholar, the two most revered occupations of their kind. They had wanted her to go on to great accomplishments, not to have her flesh ripped from her bones by the teeth of this creature.

  Her neck and spine ached as her adrenaline spent itself. Her captor’s uneven stride caused her head to bang against his chest. Her rapid breaths finally evened out, but now exhaustion threatened to overcome her. Her eyelids drooped as she, at last, let herself retreat and fade into unconsciousness.

  A series of crashes came down through the forest canopy. Three crashes descending, getting closer, growing louder. Then Mel felt, more than heard, a dull thud that jolted through her attacker's body from his head down. Her eyes snapped open. Her captor paused a
nd wobbled on his feet. He stood still for a breath or two, and then fell to his knees. When his grip on her loosened, she jumped away from him. He dropped, stunned, and sprawled on the forest floor. A stone, bigger than a normal man’s head, rolled away from the creature and stopped against a fallen tree. Without bothering to look where the rock had come from, Mel found her footing and pushed off the ground in a dead sprint. As she ran through the underbrush, her breathing cleared a little. Then, her captor's horrible odor flooded back into her nose making her shudder and try to blow the smell out, chuffing like a horse.

  She ran blindly with only the vaguest sense of where the carriage was. The ground cut her feet, and branches caught and tore at the hem of her dress. She breathed deeply. Only sweet, blessed luck had saved her from being pinned under his body when he fell. Red dripped into her eye. Somehow, she had hit her head when he fell, maybe on his weapon. Her bare feet bled, too, leaving a blood trail on the ground and on leaves that brushed her. If the creature had a good sense of smell, he would find her again easily. He'd be back on his feet soon, if his head was as thick as his hide. Without slowing her pace, she focused on her feet, pushing into them, and thickened the soles, bringing the small fissures together so that the bleeding stopped. Putting distance between herself and the creature made it easier for her to concentrate. Maybe her handicap was caused by his hideous odor. A little of the malaise cleared from her head.

  A second later she heard thrashing from the underbrush behind her. Her heart pounded so forcefully she was sure she’d be able to see it beating through the bodice of her dress if she could stop to look. How had the beast caught up with her so quickly? He was moving faster than she was. It had to be him; she could smell him now. As he got within range, she became disoriented and muddled again. It irritated her to the point of anger, something she rarely felt. Emotions, on the whole, were frowned on and to be avoided for her kind.

  At first, she was certain the road was ahead of her to the south. With her acute hearing, she had been able to pick out the cacophony of her friends’ voices as they discovered she was missing from their wooden day carriage. Three hundred paces west a doe had been poised to flee, and from the east came an unusual and intriguing savory spice traveling on the wind, a strange air current bringing it over her head. The very next minute, her senses spun and her eyes blurred. The ground rippled under her feet in a confusion of swirling leaves. Her pace slowed as her vision became foggy, and the headache came hammering back. She hesitated for a second, crouching behind a tree, her dress ruched up around her knees, as she blinked and tried to regain her sense of direction. A breath later, she was tackled from the side and sent sprawling down the slope, rolling, entangled with a new person altogether.

  She gasped for air as she tried to determine whether the new assailant was an evil worse than the first. He was a man, not a creature. He was much broader and taller than she was, yet a human man, without a doubt. He was dressed in brown patterned clothes meant for concealment in the brush, but clearly out of place in this strange blue forest. They rolled to a stop covered in leaves, she on her back, and he lying next to her on his side, his heavily muscled arm draped over her as he scanned the forest for signs of the other creature. The man's chin was above her face, and she realized that the strange savory smell was coming from him.

  Delicious.

  The aroma made her mouth water with something shockingly close to hunger. She blinked and shook her head to clear it. She was truly out of her mind. She had completely lost control of her senses. She was close enough to see the pulse racing under his deeply browned skin. The warm, heady smell of him rose up from his shirt with every gulping breath he took. The weight of his arm across her stomach did peculiar things to the rhythm of her heart. Though she felt safe momentarily, she was far from calm.

  He felt her move and looked down, putting a finger to his mouth. Quiet. His chin shot back up, and she froze as her former captor crashed through the woods close by them, passing them, on to another scent. They stayed frozen until the noise of his footsteps faded in the distance.

  The underside of his chin had a thin white scar, like one he might have gotten from a tumble as a child. The white line ran through the golden brown stubble across his face. His jaw was broad and angular, and his skin well-weathered from his forehead down his neck inside the collar of his shirt, which gaped open as he leaned over her. Her nose was nearly tucked into the indentation at the base of his neck, and her clearing sense of smell came back in a rush that was full of him, so intense that when she opened her mouth, it came through her lips and onto her tongue, lingering in the back of her throat as if she could swallow it.

  She was a half-breath from pressing her mouth against his skin and licking the hollow in his neck when he lifted his head. As he scanned the woods, he turned his head, and she saw the soft skin behind his ear under his hairline. Tiny flecks of dark forest loam dotted the side of his cheek. From his look, his clothes, and his scent, he was most likely an outdoorsman. What was that scent? After the sensory deprivation the other creature had caused her, she was overwhelmed with the sensation this man caused. She didn't realize she'd taken a large, gasping inhalation until he looked down at her again. His eyes were the color of agamite, the dark green stone ribboned with brown and gold. His hair was light brown with yellow streaks caused by the sun. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old, but she wasn't certain, confused by the laughing lines at the corners of his eyes. And that scent.

  Oh, my God. Now, she offered a prayer.

  She must have made another sound as she stared into his green eyes because they widened slightly. His mouth parted a little and his breath feathered across her face. She blinked slowly, feeling the blood rush around her body, toward her head, her toes, and the part of her that would have readily accepted him at that very moment. She shivered and lost control of herself.

  Violent. There wasn't any other way to describe her reaction. She launched herself at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, twined her fingers in his hair, and pressed her mouth against his. Matching her lips to his. Tasting him. A smothered sound of surprise came from his throat as they rolled onto his back, and she kissed him harder, feeling the stubble of his cheek against hers. Her long hair, bedraggled and undone from its ribbon, made a curtain around their faces as she inhaled his scent, pushing herself into him. She couldn’t get close enough. She wanted to rip his clothes, to feel and see all of him, but she couldn’t let go of him long enough to move her hands elsewhere.

  Oh, the taste of him.

  He pulled back slightly, his lips parted, and she pressed into him, slipping the tip of her tongue into his larger mouth, seeking his warmth and wetness. Her skin grew sensitive. Her thin dress chafed her as she moved against him. Her knees fell to either side of his legs. Uncontrollably, she began to glow.

  Rampant, golden joy. Overwhelming sensation of all kinds, all at once. A release of all that she sought to contain every moment, every day of her adult life. Every fact, every minute detail of data that she stored contained a certain amount of energy. And now it was exploding from her, radiating from her skin, her hair, eyes, lips, from her pores.

  His eyes shot open, and he broke away from her with a fierce push, shoving himself back against a tree. He scrambled to sit up. His hands grasped at the branches alongside him. His boots pushed the leaves between them as he kicked himself backward away from her.

  Stunned at first, her eyes widened. Then she quickly dimmed to her normal color, her gilded shine fading, though her cheeks and mouth were swollen and raw from his beard stubble and the violence of the kiss—her kiss, not his. They were both out of breath, him against a tree, her on her knees, mortification quickly taking over. She hugged her hands to her chest. Her fingers still tingled from the feel of his hair and the skin of his neck. She smelled him all over her face, her skin, and her mouth.

  "What the hell manner of creature are you?" he managed to say, his voice deep and hoarse, his chest heaving. H
is expression was obscured by shadow.

  She looked down at her hands and her muddied, torn dress. Her heart pounded. She couldn't steady herself, never mind even look at him. Her loss of control over her senses was horrifying and now humiliating; he scrambled farther away from her. It was one thing for loss of control to happen to a child, but she was a Mask among outsiders. She was absolutely a danger to the sanctity of her people, the time-honored tradition of anonymity and impartiality. Masks did not entangle themselves with outsiders; they studied them. Masks were not overcome with irrational passions or fits of emotion of any kind. She'd never experienced anything like it, not even when she was a child having a tantrum. Control, study, and control. Those were her constant companions. Not recklessness and . . . and worse, sitting just a few feet from him hardly lessened her desire to go at him again.

  "I'm just a Cillary girl," she mumbled, a shot of panic suddenly going through her. She sprang to her feet, took a last hesitant step backward, and sprinted away through the trees toward the road.

  Chapter 2

  Just one day earlier, Mel had been playing a game of flutterby on the lawn under the leafy blue trees at Cillary Keep, the centuries-old stone turrets standing tall and proud above them. At one time, scribes had lauded the natural phenomenon of the “golden trees at Cillary,” but now the leaves were blue. Azure as water, as the sky, as nightfall—and no one knew why. Across the flutterby net, the tall woman called Rav served up the fly. The small netted ball left Rav's long brown fingers and traveled straight up an arm's length over her head. It hung mid-air for a heartbeat, maybe two, and then began to fall toward the ground. Rav swung her racket and tapped the fly into an arc toward Mel. A small part of Mel's mind patiently watched the fly.