Finding Solace (Ancient Origins Book 2) Read online

  Solace groaned. “Do not open any doors until that butt imprint is gone. It’s huge, a flying saucer that’s been stung by a bee and not an EpiPen in sight.”

  “Your ass is perfect.”

  Menace pulled her against his chest. She wiggled her bottom against him. He chuckled again, and she could feel the rumbling sensation.

  “Stop checking out my ass.”

  “All right, but that’s not what you said a while ago. Sleep sweetness. We have a busy day ahead of us.”

  At this moment she was safe. Menace was right. Who knew what tomorrow would bring, but failure wasn’t an option. She hoped the fates were on board with that.

  Chapter Two

  The villagers converged in the meeting hall underground. Doom, their leader, stood on a sturdy wooden table that ran almost the length of the hall to accommodate all when they gathered for a meal. The high domed ceiling was a few feet above his formidable six foot six height, two hundred eighty pounds. Menace wasn’t as large but a close second. Doom favored knee-length deerskin pants, his weapons attached to his belt. Most of the men were dressed in a similar fashion.

  Solace and the other women wore soft deerskins. The hides were warm and water resistant, not altogether waterproof. The soft leather was breathable and stretched to form fit the body. The fine, thin looking articles were deceptive at first glance. The material was strong and the deer was a favorite to hunt. Solace was surprised in this ancient world of dinosaurs the animals did well in herds. Despite Solace and Clarity’s attempts at an upgrade, everyone wore leather booties that formed to the feet after time. The material was from a thicker hide of a mammoth mastodon mix, fur side turned in for warmth, water-resistant, sharp stick and rock proof, all in all sturdy if not stylish. During the winter months, the booty was made higher and stuffed with added fur fibers or grass.

  Inside, the hall quieted immediately and Doom took a deep breath before beginning. The speech was one Solace was used to, a pep talk to soldiers before battle she’d heard her father practice enough, but she could tell others were moved by Doom’s passion. Doom’s chest, built a bit bigger than Menace, was intricately tattooed, more so than Menace. Each mark was a sacrifice, an offering of a human life the hybrids demanded for the safety of Doom’s people in return. Today that would end. There would be no more sacrifices, no more tattoos would magically appear to identify the fallen. It was time to fight for all life. No more would Doom walk unsuspecting humans into the forest jungle and allow the Neandersauri easy pickings.

  “You all know what to do. You all know why we must not fail and we will not fall.” The people cheered. “Remember there is more danger out there than the hybrids. When blood is drawn the meat eaters will come. Strike hard, strike fast, and move on. I have faith in you. We will be victorious. Watch out for the raptors, we all know this time of year is volatile when the hybrids hunt. Their deep sleep makes them ravenous and unpredictable. Normally, they would expect all villagers to remain inside their dwellings. They are in for a surprise. Is everyone armed?” Doom shouted.

  With a roar, swords lifted in affirmation. Solace was positive she could see the pulses throbbing at every neck near her in fear and anticipation. What they were about to do was unprecedented. The hybrids were used to being dominant. Today they would be the ones to die, not the villagers or the humans they’d found. The only ones not fighting were the youngest children except Luke, an eight-year-old boy. Kiki, his fifteen-year-old sister wanted him where she could see him. She knew if he was left alone, he would follow. The boy was prone to mischievous behavior. Nina, thirteen and Em, eight, and four-year-old twins, were hidden in the hibernating room with the others, and a very protesting Flight, a five-year of Solace’s Earth planet, where the room was locked from the inside. There were few other children who were meek and not of Solace’s world. Solace knew those little ones would stay put, theirs was not an arguing nature.

  “Don’t go,” Blue, one of the twins protested. He wrapped little arms around Solace’s neck clinging tight.

  “We will be back soon. I promise you,” she whispered into his ear and she squeezed him to her before letting go. She gazed at Cole, Blue’s twin. His solemn round eyes gazed back woefully. Solace ruffled his hair and cupped his chin. “Keep your brother out of trouble.” Blue was the alpha of the two. Cole nodded.

  “Hurry home,” Nina said, she took a hand of each twin and Solace watched the door close. In the last few months Solace had come to love these children. She vowed not to fail them, she settled open hands onto the door for a brief moment wanting to stay and protect them, and yet knowing every available sword was needed.

  “They’ll be fine.” Menace placed a hand onto her shoulder and guided her away.

  The bulwarks, massive dire wolf and cave bear mixes, were used to watching the village but Muffin, a female bulwark, was locked in the room with the children and Bubble-gum, who was a Rottweiler, Saint Bernard, standard poodle mix and the children. One troublesome and impish pint sized T-rex, belonging to Luke, nipped tails of the other bulwarks until he was chased off on a squeal of mock terror.

  “Move out,” Doom yelled.

  A sense of peaceful, yet fiery resolve was in the air. Every available man, woman and a few children held swords, knives, and had access to crude homemade bombs. The explosives were hidden in strategic areas highly accessible if you knew where to look. The hybrids would have no clue what they were if they stumbled onto them or how they worked. The Neandersauri would be expecting the human sacrifices to be set free in the wooded jungle where they could be rounded up for slaughter. The beasts had no idea the villagers were armed and deadly, they trained well over the long winter before the long sleep and after. The villagers planned ahead, they were ready. Everyone filed out of different exits from their homes to begin the initial attack. Each site of engagement was littered with alternate escape routes.

  “Stay on my six,” Solace said to Menace.

  “Your six what?”

  “Stay on my ass.”

  “So now it’s okay to keep your ass in sight?”

  “At all times.”

  “Best war ever.”

  The villagers slipped through the trees in no less than pairs. Once the hybrids realized there was no sacrifice, they were the intended victims, the fighting began quickly. To Solace’s left, a bomb blew, and she heard a sharp scream of pain and surprise. The normally cocky hybrids were used to being the dominants, used to being in charge. For many of their hybrid young, this was their first hunt for sacrifices. Instead, the youngsters fled in terror when they had never known fear in their lives. The balloons, condom and paper, carried bombs and a blinding substance. These were struck from their stationary elevated height tied to trees at intervals. They also contained a blue rock, glass-like, that could immobilize a victim with contact to the flesh. The substance was found on the beaches and collected with care. The glass could be shattered to allow small amounts to drop onto a victim. If the victim tried to brush the substance off, his or her hands would be paralyzed.

  Menace was engaged in battle with two hybrids. The sword he held sliced back and forth sending the hybrids to their knees where he dispatched them immediately. Solace lost sight of Clarity, Doom’s female. She caught a glimpse of a raptor pack dragging away the body of a hybrid. The hybrid was a special delicacy for the dinosaur. Normally, the creatures would be eating human remains.

  More screaming followed as man and hybrid, and other animals got caught in the attacks. Solace watched a paper balloon explode carrying a liquid substance created by Clarity, her friend and fellow Earth comrade. Clarity was from Solace’s Earth. Her scientific background was what convinced Doom and his villagers to fight, not only for their lives but for the lives of other humans. They had created swords with substances known to Clarity. As well as other knives and arrow tips able to penetrate the Neandersauri thick hides.

  The hybrid hit by the liquid matter howled as his eyes burned from their sockets. Hybrid upright dinosau
rs stood at least eight feet in height. Rainbow eyes and a triceratops frill ear to ear. Their bodies were bare in areas as well as colorfully feathered and furred in others. The creatures wore a simple wrap around their hips. All the fighting Neandersauri were males. Their broad chests were exaggerated muscles. Solace was aware of them, yet they managed to take her breath away each time she came into contact with one. The grayish frill lit with lively red colors, the patterns snake-like as they pulsed. Their solid bone mass was covered in heavily muscled hard flesh impenetrable with mere spears of stick or wood.

  The hybrid, unable to see having been burned, faltered in agony not knowing where to turn, tripping then stumbling into a tree. Throwing his head back the beast took two long claws and sliced high on his chest. Solace almost vomited when the slits parted to reveal two dark eyes that blinked until growing accustom to the light. The hybrid could see again using the Neanderthal body within the hybrid body.

  Solace knew about the double skeletal structure. She and Clarity had ripped open the chest of a dead hybrid. She never imagined she would find a full-fleshed creature within, smaller, dense, and humanoid. Heavy bones accommodated the outer structure of the heavy beasts. The inner humanoid creature was hairy, fully formed, a built-in furnace for the Neandersauri to survive in colder temperatures. They were scary as shit. To see the inner beast alive and blinking was mind-numbing. Were they two different entities working as one or was the entire body of the same soul, mind and thoughts?

  Tremors gripped Solace. For a second all action ceased. The villagers had also come to know about the double structure of bones inside the hybrid, and now they knew there was also flesh, at least eyes to see with. Edge, a huge villager, muscular, bald, ran forward and stabbed the beast in a new eye. The strangled scream proved the inner beast was vulnerable. As Edge withdrew his sword the hybrid fell. When another hybrid was burned at the ears, slits along the sides of its body under the arms were made. Solace couldn’t see ears but she knew the hybrid was using the ones from within its body to hear.

  The blast of a balloon hit with Kiki’s arrow into the tall trees and the blue glass substance spattered over a hybrid who flopped to the ground and remained immobile. Solace knew the creature could see, hear and feel everything though its body couldn’t move. Solace gagged when a raptor dragged it away to feast on its body while the hybrid still breathed. The gruesome sight of its entrails being exposed while it lived was horrifying and hard to look away from.

  From behind her, Solace heard a strangled scream and spun to see Menace pull a sword from a hybrid, claws inches from her back. As Solace watched with wide eyes, Menace sliced a clawed hand from the beast. The inside limb, still intact and not severed at the wrist was exposed. Another slice at the elbow and the hand fell; it pulled itself along the earth floor until it settled.

  For years Solace had heard of war; her father was a storyteller. They watched old wars fought in black and white, and her father would make funny noises as if to say ‘nope, not how it happens’. She knew there would be gore but her father neglected to mention how much, the sight, the smell, the taste of fleshy sewage on the tip of her tongue. She was inhaling assault. Solace knew the scent of death, she had sliced into dead poisoned hybrids to make certain they stayed dead, but this was different. Fresh death. The rivers of blood flowed, undammed. There was twice as much coming from two body sources. Fury-filled anger raged, the likes she’d never seen or ever wanted to again. Her breath was torn from her throat then caught to settle like a stone in her chest.

  Chaos gripped Solace’s world. Solace could see Menace battling another hybrid demon. The Neandersauri stood eight feet high on its tall muscular legs. The older mature beast was swinging his huge claws trying to split Menace open. To her left Doom battled another. The villagers had learned well how to wield the swords Clarity made for them. Little Luke, only eight years old was back to back with his older sister Kiki. The smallest ninja of their troop swung his sword slicing the claws off a hybrid. At Luke’s side was his pintsized T-rex friend, Rex. The small dinosaur, not much taller than Luke, lunged at the hybrid’s throat with a large mutt of a dog from Earth dubbed Bubble-gum.

  Solace reeled. Why was she seeing the dog? He should be locked in with the children. Oh my God, the children.

  In the distance, she could make out Kiki’s hyena friend, Bongo, and not far was Muffin, the villager’s malevolent bulwark, the sweetest of the four hybrid bulwark creatures. Men and women from surrounding villages stood—and fell, with Doom’s people. Other different dinosaurs besides raptors snuck in to take advantage of the fallen, hybrid and human. Some of the dinosaurs added their own roars and screams to the anarchy. The beasts came in all shapes and sizes, their DNA meshed with those of other deadlier dinosaurs to create creatures that never roamed Solace’s Earth. War meshed with a gruesome fighting feeding frenzy.

  Solace’s heart skipped a beat while her gaze searched and when some of the younger children from Doom’s village came into view. Earth children, from Solace’s Earth. They were supposed to be staying in the safety of the domed homes with other children not of Solace’s planet. The children were too small to wield real swords. The twins were running holding hands amidst the fight. She spotted Nina with little Em on her heels. She spied Clarity and Menace going after the children, their expressions full of horror. Her heart screamed in terror. Solace knew she needed to get to them. These were more children she couldn’t bear to fail. Children she had grown to love.

  I will not mourn another child.

  The ground shook sending Solace to her knees as well as many other humans and hybrids. The raptors scattered with other dinosaurs. An earthquake to add terror to panic. The earth split with the glimpse of a black void, giving birth to a plane, and Solace sat on her ass mouth agape at the scene. In the ancient jungle of a planet similar to Earth the sight was breathtaking, terrifying. No meteor had ever crashed into this Earth. Hybrid dinosaurs and humans battled for dominance. It was imperative the hybrids didn’t come near the plane, the creatures must never know of space voyage. Solace leapt to her feet, her fists balled as she pumped her legs for all she was worth. The battle raged harder as the hybrids gazed with awe, wanting this flying beast, salivating for the chance to study it. Solace saw the gazes of a few Neandersauri and knew a human stem cell memory they harvested into their systems with the sacrifices was flipped on. The boy, Flight, was screaming and running. It was his father’s plane.

  How can that be?

  The child was adamant, and Solace raced to gather him up with the four-year-old fraternal twins. Cole had a death grip on his brother’s hand. The plane touched down and the door flung wide. Solace’s mind was racing. If this plane came through, it could go back to her Earth. The children were loaded with the injured and fallen teen, sixteen-year-old Nick. Nick the wild feral boy who saved children and loathed Doom with a passion after watching Doom lead his brother to the slaughter when Nick was only six. The boy survived on his own for years. The teen came to help keep his friends stay safe but it was obvious his arms, both long since broken and healed wrong, couldn’t hold a sword.

  Em, the eight year old was next into the plane though she glanced from Nick to Kiki who was fighting alongside her brother.

  “Solace what about the others?” the girl cried out.

  “Nick needs a hospital,” Solace yelled over the plane’s engine.

  Solace’s Earth children knew what a plane was. Em was followed by thirteen-year-old Nina who raced to Nick’s side and glanced worriedly at Solace.

  “You’ll be fine,” Solace shouted. “You can go home.”

  Nina yelled back something, but there was too much confusion and the girl was back too far in the plane. The plane, long and sleek, was a beacon of safety, Solace hoped. Flight was pulled onto his father’s knee. The ground began to shake as the sinkhole started to close. The plane revved. Solace turned away. The children needed to be returned home; she’d done all she could for them. She hated to see them leave
but they would be far safer on her Earth. Nick would finally be able to see a doctor, maybe he would get answers about his parents and if they were alive.

  Anarchy raged. More hybrids were downed as they battled to reach the incredible sight. An object of tremendous value, the hybrids longed for flight and there it was, feet away. Clarity stood not far and held her hand out, she was disheveled, her face a mask of shock. Something had happened to her, Solace could tell. Something terrifying. Solace could see Menace as he raced toward her. In a few short months, he had become everything to her. Lover, friend, protector. Here was home with the man she loved beyond belief. She started to move toward him and smiled. Even with a battle raging everything would be fine as long as they were together.

  Solace screamed when a man grabbed her from behind. He pulled her kicking and screaming into the plane. He looked past her to Clarity’s shocked expression before shaking his head and slamming the door.

  “We’ve no more room.” Solace heard yelled. “We can’t save them all and the sinkhole is closing.”

  “We got what we came for,” was a shouted reply from the pilot.

  Solace screamed for them to stop, she wanted out. They wouldn’t let her near the door. She could see Menace through a window, his face a mask of horror, arm stretched reaching for her, racing for her. He was bellowing he loved her. The plane was only meant to save the children, Solace didn’t need saving. She couldn’t bear to see the little ones swallowed by a hole, but this was a plane. She had to get off.

  “Menace,” Solace screamed.

  “I will find you.” She saw him mouth the words as he dropped to his knees and the plane was airborne. His absolute look of agonized despair crumpled her.

  Solace was tossed into a seat, a belt settled across her hips in haste. She shoved at the large man. He took her fear as shock and pushed her back none too gently.

  “You’ll be fine,” he yelled. “This is a plane, not a human-eating demon.”