Count On Me Read online

  Count On Me

  Abigail Graham

  Contents

  Foreword

  1. The Flight

  2. Dire Circumstances

  3. The Castle

  4. The Sword

  5. Dark Places

  6. Swords

  7. The Glen

  8. The Tunnels

  9. Beneath

  10. The Harvest

  11. The Fire

  12. The Truth

  13. Siege

  14. The Escape

  15. Torment

  16. The Last Battle

  17. Going Home

  18. Tomorrow

  Afterword

  His Princess

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Thrall

  Author’s Note

  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

  Afterword

  Playlist

  Also by Abigail Graham

  Foreword

  Every few books I like to take an idea and just run with it. This is one of those- a journey into a wild world where love conquers all, and there is a lot to conquer.

  The book you are about to read started life as a sequel to my smash hit book His Princess which hit #3 in the Kindle store in April of 2016. After I started, though, it took on a life on its own. Count On Me is not a sequel or a prequel, so don’t worry, you can read it on its own, but it has numerous connections to my other books. I won’t spoil them here. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. :) I’ve included a couple of companion books with ties to it.

  I usually don’t include dedications in my books but I’m going to dedicate this one to my Mom and Dad. Without them and my weirdly girly tomboy upbringing, this book wouldn’t exist. I owe it to watching General Hospital and reruns of Dark Shadows with my mom while she baked her cakes and Saturday morning cartoons and tales of high adventure with my dad.

  1

  The Flight

  Roxanne

  I just want to sleep. Ever since I left home it’s been like swimming away from a shark. I can never rest and the more tired I become, the more tiring the effort. If I stop, it turns into a simple question—do I sink, or does the shark get me first?

  When the turbulence starts again, I begin to question my sanity.

  I’ve been on this plane for four hours. The engines chug along steadily outside, a dull roar that pummels my ears. Those engines are turboprops—propellers. There are two of them in big pods on either wing of the plane, an old DC-Something-Or-Other of uncertain vintage. The interior reminds me more of an old bus than a proper plane. My seat has been bolted to the floor since the Cold War and the carpeting smells vaguely of cheese. There are no overhead bins, but that’s okay. I’m backpacking across Europe.

  Almost all the way across. I caught a flight from Athens, Greece, to Auschaffenberg, Harkania in a whim.

  Never heard of it, right? That’s the idea.

  I’ve finally found what I’m looking for: a blank grid with a thoroughly confused pushpin bouncing up and down in mute protest, as if angry with me that the map won’t load. There’s no wireless coverage. No email. No texts. No Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. I am officially off the grid.

  Maybe finally I can stop moving. The last six months have been hectic flights from Newark, New Jersey to London to Paris to Munich to Rome to Athens, and now I’m on a plane that looks like it got lost on the way to World War II.

  The only thing louder than the engines is the thunder. I’m used to commercial flights skimming above the clouds. A storm means terror on takeoff or landing, but otherwise it’s something down there when you’re flying, another world. The clouds look like dirty snow, and the stars are above, the thunder muted to nothing.

  Aboard this plane, the storm is sheer terror the whole way. It doesn’t fly high enough to surmount the clouds and every time I look out the round porthole window I see jagged forks of lightning lancing from one thunderhead to another, or down to the earth below like the fist of an enraged god.

  Every time a peal of thunder shakes the plane, the engines cough and sputter and my heart freezes solid for a half second before it beats again. I’m going to leave finger marks in the arms of my battered, ancient seat.

  My name is Roxanne Giulimarco. I was born in Egg Harbor, New Jersey and spent most of my life there except for a few trips with my grandparents—my mother’s family. I remember them well. To this day I wear a gift my grandfather gave me. He made it himself—a mystery ring, he called it, a bulky piece of jewelry that was always too big for my finger.

  It’s not gold or silver. It’s banded wood, polished smooth. The joints in the interlocked rings are so cleverly and carefully made that it feels perfectly smooth to the touch, all one piece. I grip it now, the wood warmed from the heat of my body as it presses into my palm. It rides against my chest on a simple pot metal chain.

  By any measure, it’s worthless, but it’s the best and most precious thing I own. I remember joking about that with him when he gave it to me on my tenth birthday. My precious.

  When you line up the rings just right, a message appears. It’s short and to the point. Not all who wander are lost.

  I sure feel lost right now. I made a resolution. I’m going to toss my phone as soon as I land and I’m not picking up a burner. I have a flyer in my pocket I picked up in Athens. A Christian mission is in Auschaffenberg and they will be heading into the countryside. I haven’t professed any faith in a long time, but that sound like my best bet. I’ll give them an assumed name and just disappear into helping people.

  I should be good for that, at least. When I was little I wanted to be a doctor, but I can’t stomach hurt and sick people. I get too emotional. I sort of bumbled through school with a vague plan to become a veterinarian instead.

  I’ve been trying to get lost and it hasn’t worked. I lasted a while in London, a while in Rome, but always had to drop everything and leave before I could get settled in.

  Then it starts. The paranoia. The looking over my shoulder, piling furniture against the doors, wondering if that man on the corner is waiting for a bus or if he’s watching me, ready to call in his lackeys to sweep in and grab me. I have a price on my head.

  I think I’ve finally found someplace out of his reach. I just have to make it to solid ground alive.

  A high girlish scream rips out of my throat when the plane jerks to the side in the wind. It feels like a giant claw grasped the tail and twisted it around, pushing us off course and wrenching us around. The plane groans like a living thing as the pilot twists it around, back on course. The engines sputters, and I press my eyes shut, dig my fingers into the armrests, and start murmuring my Hail Marys, an old habit that comes surging back.

  The young woman next to me looks over. She’s been stealing glances at me the entire flight. Dressed in heavily patched jeans and a threadbare sweatshirt, she hides in the hood and looks around with sharp green eyes. Her skin is ghost pale, her hair a river of blue-black ink.

  I look over at her again then turn back to peer out the window. Rain slashes against the thick glass, and another lightning strike slices the air, the flash fol
lowed too shortly by a hammering thunderclap and a gust of wind that shoves the plane crazily to the side.

  My seatmate is oddly calm. This isn’t a big plane. The seats are rude, almost unpadded things that send every jolt and up right up my tailbone. It doesn’t make me feel any more secure.

  “Do you speak English?” I ask her.

  Her accent is heavy, but she says, “Yes.”

  “Headed to Harkania?”

  She takes a moment to parse that.

  “Yes, and yourself?”

  I nod.

  “You’re American,” she says. It’s a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, I am.”

  She graces me with a secret smile.

  I shrug my shoulders and turn to look out the window again. Bad idea. It’s like every time I look, there’s another lightning strike.

  I turn back to the girl. She’s young, younger than I am. I was about to start my final year of my bachelor’s degree when I fled. I’d put her age at somewhere between a mature sixteen and a young twenty. She looks at me like she expects an answer to her question.

  “I’m going to try to join one of the charity groups,” I say.

  She nods.

  “What about you?”

  “On my way home. I had a little freedom, but I always end up going back.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but leans back in her seat and pulls out a small, beaten-up paperback book from her sweatshirt pocket and starts to read. The text is in German.

  I can speak it passably but reading is difficult. I parse out enough of the words to realize she’s reading a translation of The Hobbit. My grandfather used to call me that. Little Hobbit.

  She glances at me.

  “Good book,” I say.

  “So far,” she agrees.

  “Where are you from? I mean originally.”

  She looks at me with a mixture of annoyance and resignation.

  “It’s not there anymore.”

  “Oh. Okay then.”

  I sit back in the seat. The storm is dying, I think. There are patches of light peeking through the clouds, and far off they simply come to an end, the sun throwing bands across the mountains. The plane took a long, loping curve to follow them, avoiding Kosztylan airspace. The border is in sight, somewhere in those mountains.

  I ease my grip on the armrests and fold my hands in my lap, sit back, and close my eyes.

  The flash opens them. I sit up just in time to see all the lights go out—the runners, the overhead lamps, and instruments in the cockpit. The engines just shut off without even a cough of protest.

  Then the thunder. It’s so loud, my hands jumps to my ears a second too late, and I cry out as a blast of wind and a surge of rain slams the plane. The whole thing tilts, the world rolling crazily to the side. My seatmate drops her book and holds on for dear life.

  I grab my backpack to my chest and resume praying.

  The lights come on, in the cockpit first then all through the cabin. The pilots shout frantically, jamming buttons as they try to get the engines started.

  On my side, the engine pod shudders and the big gasoline motor kicks over with a throaty snarl. The other one remains silent except for little putt-putt noises, dead.

  The remaining engine spins up hard and gives a valiant effort before it explodes. I jerk back into my seat as smoke and flames burst through the metal skin of the engine pod and shred the aluminum, sending slivers and strips of it into space, trailing behind the plane in an oily cloud as the propellers first jam in place and then fly off, one of them tumbling into the side of the plane with a clatter. The pilots are frantic, wrestling with the controls, shouting loudly at each other. A background chorus of prayers caresses my ears.

  It sinks in, and I feel strangely calm. Almost peaceful. We’re going down. I pull my backpack tight to my chest and close my eyes.

  “My name is Saska,” my seatmate says, grabbing my hand.

  “Roxanne,” I blurt out.

  It feels strangely comforting to know her name, and know that she knows mine.

  Down we go. The plane fights valiantly, surrendering its altitude foot by foot, but without the engines we’re not staying aloft. The pilots have enough control to keep the nose up and guide us down, glide in.

  At least until the wing comes off completely. A great metal shearing screech rips through my bones and then it’s just gone, and the world goes crazy, spinning. Saska slams into my side. The forces tear the pack out of my hands, and I can’t tell if the screams are me or her or both or the plane itself. All of them. My stomach rises to my throat, and I cry out an incoherent prayer.

  It’s like the whole world got sucked up through my head and I’m out, in inky blackness. It lasts a half second, but when I wake up, I’m on the ground.

  Open sky above. The rain has cleared, leaving only thin wisps of clouds and the stars peeking through. As I sit up, I realize the plane has broken her back in the landing, crunched in half not five feet ahead of where I sit. The whole thing groans.

  Next to me, Saska stirs, coughing. A thin trickle of dried blood runs down her cheek from her hairline, but she looks around anyway, and undoes her seat belt then mine.

  Sitting up then standing on the crazily leaning decking, I take stock of where we are.

  The top of the plane is gone. I have no idea how that happened, but it’s been peeled from back to front like a giant sardine can. The cockpit is destroyed, the front third of the plane crushed in and folded upward. I choke back a sob.

  I’m not sure anyone else made it.

  We’re on a hill. The plane leans a little to one side, favoring the one without a wing. It’s a short drop to the grassy earth. My backpack hangs on a spike of the torn airframe, swaying gently in the breeze like someone set it there for me.

  I check, taking stock of myself slowly. I flex my toes, lift my feet, and slowly stand. If something was broken, I think I’d know by now. Saska manages to pull herself to her feet, breathing hard.

  Her side is tender. She might have a broken rib, and she hit her head.

  “Did you pass out?”

  “Only for a moment,” she says, touching her scalp.

  She’d be worse off if she had a concussion, I think. I feel like my brain is spinning around in my skull.

  “We need to get out of here,” she says, when the plane groans.

  I agree.

  There’s no choice. I back up a few steps, run, and take a good jump from the gaping wound in the side of the plane, hoping I don’t break my ankle when I land.

  My heels skid in the grass and I go down, wincing as I turn. It wasn’t graceful but it did the job, and I don’t think I’m hurt.

  Stupid. I could have smashed my head on a rock or broken a limb.

  Saska lands gracefully next to me, feet first, before falling onto her palms and pivoting back up. As I stand, I realize I’m well over six inches taller than she is. She brushes herself off and looks around.

  I think we might be in trouble.

  The plane landed on a rolling hill, one of many. As far as I can tell, the whole world is rolling hills. They go on as far as I can see, only rising into the jagged mountains miles away. The plane hit the side of the hill, rose up, and snapped across the crest, the nose crashing into a second rise and smashed to ruins.

  A trail of debris fans out behind us. It looks like the plane lost more pieces as it came down. The tail section is gone, and part of the other wing. It just folded up and broke into pieces in the air.

  I start shaking.

  How the hell are we alive?

  “Stop that,” Saska says sharply.

  I look at her.

  “Put it away. Feel it later. Now we have to find help. Do you have any food? Water?”

  I nod and check my bag. I have a handful of energy bars and two one-liter bottles of water that miraculously survived the crash. It no longer matters if my phone can find the signal, since the screen is shatter
ed to ruin.

  Inventory. I have the clothes I’m wearing, one change, a sweatshirt, two bottles of water, the energy bars, a useless cell phone, a Swiss Army knife, a few phrasebooks, and some other odds and ends, little souvenirs I picked up in my travels.

  Saska snatches my pack and tosses the phone, the knickknacks, and the books.

  “It’s weight we don’t need,” she says. “Wait here.”

  I start to follow her but stop as she climbs back into the plane with surprising grace. A moment later she starts tossing down water bottles and packages of food. A food cart tips over the edge and comes crashing down.

  Soon my bag is stuffed with the rude provisions she found on the plane—water, candy, cookies, snacks. It’ll work. High-energy stuff.

  “Did you find anyone else?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I think we’re the only ones that made it.”

  I look around. “Where the hell do we go?”

  There’s nothing. Just hills. In the distance there are lights, but I can’t tell if they’re from a town or something, or just stars peeking through the trees.

  The mountains run in a curve from south to west, so if I turn so they’re over my left shoulder, I must be facing north.

  An odd feeling washes over me. Like the first rippling feeling of gooseflesh rising on my skin, and a tug in my chest, almost a physical force that draws me a half step forward.

  I start out at a quick clip, taking long strides.

  “Pace yourself,” she says.

  Heading away from the plane, I glance at it a few times. I want to break out into a run, but she’s right. Hopefully I have enough endurance. I ran track in high school and started in college but rolled my ankle and had to quit, but I still run recreationally.

  After an hour or so she says, “Switch.”

  It takes me a minute to realize she means the pack. I shrug out of it and she slips into it, all without stopping, and we keep walking.

  The stars grow brighter, like they’re sucking all the light of the world up into them as the hills around us go black as sin, swallowed up in an inky night.