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  Legacy

  The Underground

  Michelle E. Lowe

  Copyright

  Legacy: The Underground Copyright © Michelle E. Lowe 2018

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

  Michelle E. Lowe asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

  All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any copyrighted material is reproduced under the fair use doctrine.

  ISBN-13: 978-1984130150

  ISBN-10: 1984130153

  To my dad.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank those who have helped the Legacy series along on its journey. First, I’d like to thank my daughters, Mia and Kirsten, who keep encouraging me to tell stories, and to my dad, Jim, and Aunt JoAnn for always being there. Special thanks to my husband, Ben Deda, for your support.

  Thanks to Claire Casey, Yvette Bostic, MontiLee Stormer, Michael Arnold, Michael Baker, Jonathan Fesmire, Jonathan Rose, Jessica Ellis, Kelly Evens, Dara Crawley, Mad Wilson, and William Bitner for their assistance and advice. Thanks to Amy Coughlin, Elena Lange, Elisa Jiang, Evan Pitman, Heather Pitman, Oliver Bagley, Ruth Daly, Glenn Ramos, Scott Carol, Kimberley Luce, Jonathan Fesmire, Landry Prichard, TaunjiHurlbut, Erin Mulligan, Amber Heyman, Russell Hinson, John Cook, and Tom and Jennifer Allard for their time and generous support. Thanks to my editor, KH Koehler, for your hard work.

  Although they’re no longer here, I’d like to thank my mother, Janice, and my brother, Jimmy. Miss you both so very much. And a huge thanks and heaps of gratitude to my mentor, Catherine Rudy.

  Legacy

  The Underground

  (Book Three)

  “What I’ve created—it’s unlike anything that has been attempted before. What I’ve been able to accomplish—it will reshape the entire world more so than you can ever imagine.”

  —Javier Saints

  The Demon & the Babe

  Teruel, Spain

  Autumn, 1640

  Thooranu crossed the streets of Teruel with his mistress’s newborn cradled comfortably in his arms. The night air was cool and clear. The streets were vacant, like a newly abandoned city where time had not yet taken its toll on the infrastructure. It made for a nice stroll. If Thooranu wanted, he could simply appear at the doorstep of his destination, but he wanted this time to himself—even if he did have to carry the thing. The child, who had come into the world only a few hours ago, slept peacefully, wrapped in the blanket his Pegaeae nymph mother had kindly given him.

  Although the boy wasn’t technically human, he would be raised as one and live as a human until his death. The nymph had also decided to deliver the child in Spain, which made him a Spaniard, Thooranu supposed. Apparently, motherhood wasn’t part of the bargain she had made with that bastard Trickster, Jack Pack. She had decided to get rid of her child immediately after his birth.

  Temenitis had refused to let her sisters know she was with child. Too ashamed, Thooranu gathered—especially after sensing she was having a boy—so she had decided to give birth secretly. The inn she had chosen was a high-class establishment, well furnished and accommodating toward wealthy high society. Thooranu was there, of course. Her enslaved Cambion demon that she had used her body to buy from the Trickster. He had stood by the bed as she labored to push out this new life. He watched her naked form fondly. Her face twisted in anguish, bright red hair draped over her face, sweat sticking some of it to her smooth skin. Those long, perfect legs, spread open, her back arched, breasts aimed high. The muscles of her arms flexed and strained as they held her up. Thooranu had drunk the sight in with his eyes. Despite the disgusting act of childbearing, his mistress was an intensely beautiful creature. Sometimes, he would get lost in those violet eyes of hers.

  Thooranu understood why Jack Pack had refused offers made by others for his possession just so he could fuck Temenitis. Jack Pack had enslaved Thooranu for a full year, during which time the Trickster searched for anyone willing to pay a high price for a demon. He could have gotten just about anything he wanted, but then came the day Jack Pack met a pretty little Pegaeae nymph while passing through her realm, and his lustful nature had taken over. The Trickster made a deal with the pretty little Pegaeae nymph. She would lay with him in exchange for her very own slave demon.

  Needless to say, she accepted.

  Perhaps, if he behaved himself and pleased his mistress in every way she so desired, she’d release him at the end of the year when the contract expired.

  With a final cry of pain, the babe crowned. Temenitis pushed hard and then pulled the baby from her body like a beast drawing a fish from the river. She held the naked babe away from her while breathing heavily.

  “C-cut it, Thooranu.”

  He gripped the cord connecting mother to child and with his blade, severed it like a blood-filled noodle. Red liquid sprayed from it, but there was already blood and other bodily fluids soaking the bed. In the morning, a horrified hotel servant would get an unpleasant surprise.

  Even with the cord cut, her arms stayed locked in place, holding the child away from her swollen breasts.

  “Wrap him up and discard him out there, among the humans,” she viciously ordered.

  Thooranu did as he was told. He swaddled the newborn and left the hotel.

  To stop the babe’s belly from aching for lack of nourishment, Thooranu brought the infant to the one formerly known as the goddess of fertility. These days, she owned a brothel in Japan. He asked if she could spare some milk. Once the babe had had his fill, he fell fast asleep. The retired goddess had even cleaned the placenta still clinging to his tiny body and cut short the umbilical cord attached to his navel. Thooranu had offered the thing to her, but she merely sent the demon on his way.

  Since he was the slave of a perfect being like Temenitis, he had admired her insatiably even as her belly grew with Jack Pack’s offspring. Having a nymph as a mistress wasn’t so bad. Mostly, he told her stories, though there were a few he hadn’t wanted to share. Still, under her command, he had no choice. One secret tale he told was about the time he’d stolen a book from some very old gods, along with the death masks of three other deceased deities. At the time, young Thooranu was curious about a spell that was said to be designed to capture the Fates using the death masks as binding tools. However, after obtaining the objects, Thooranu grew bored with them and handed the book off to a scribe in Egypt, and then hid the masks away to avoid being caught with them by the gods.

  The babe jerked. Thooranu looked down at the sleeping child. He almost felt sorry for the squishy brat. At least Thooranu’s own human mother had raised him until she died of old age when he was only sixty—the equivalent of two in Cambion years. After her death, his Incubus father took him in.

  The demon passed a music shop where stringed instruments hung upside down behind the storefront display window. He admired a violin.

  Music was the universal language. A song possessed the ability to be understood by people of all different cultures and nationalities. Even ethereal beings couldn’t deny the power that music held. It had existed longer than anyone knew. Songs set people’s emotions loose. It connected them, uplifted their spirits, brought out their tears, even encouraged them to kill.

  With the babe’s inherited bloodlines, learning to play an instrument such as the violin would be easy enough for him. Perhaps it was the human side of T
hooranu, but he had the need to give this tiny, gassy being this gift.

  He reached the Esperanza y Milagros orphanage and knocked vigorously until a nun answered. When she spied the babe, she knew exactly the reason for his late-night visit.

  “Is the child yours?” she asked.

  “Take him,” he said, holding the babe out to her.

  “Children raised by a parent are happier ones,” she noted before her expression turned cross. “Even if they are a bad parent.”

  Her words did nothing to curb his mood, although it helped him understand why so many people simply left their abandoned children on the doorstep rather than wait for the nuns to answer the door.

  “Take the brat or he can stay out here in the cold until he falls ill and dies.”

  She considered him, perhaps to determine just how serious he was. She also seemed to sense something else about Thooranu. He could taste it. As a dedicated servant of the newest deity to have claimed the beliefs of so many—even more so than the ones who had come before—she was sensitive to Thooranu’s demonic side, no matter how human he was allowing himself to appear at the moment. He could tell she was questioning whether what she felt was true, and after a brief debate, dismissed it altogether.

  “I was mistaken,” she said, raising her arms to accept the babe.

  “This belongs to him,” Thooranu added, holding up the violin case that he had taken from the shop. “It is for this child, and this child alone.”

  She took the case by its handle and studied it.

  “What is it?”

  “A violin. When the time comes, he shall play it. And if he is adopted, his surrogate parents will give the violin to him.”

  Using his ability to manipulate minds, he stared her in the eye, instilling his desire for the boy to have this instrument. It was easy enough.

  “I will make sure nothing happens to the violin, and I will give it only to this child when he is ready to have it.”

  “Splendid,” he said with a tip of his hat. “Good evening, señorita.”

  Glad to have passed the thing onto someone else, he turned to leave when she called to him. “Does the child have a name?”

  He halted and thought on the question. Strangely, a name came to mind. “Joaquin.”

  Thooranu left, never to be seen again by anyone at the orphanage.

  That night, he returned to Temenitis and his hopes for a short-lived imprisonment.

  Chapter One

  November

  Leeds, England,

  Autumn, 1833

  When he heard the gunshot blast, Pierce realized they weren’t alone.

  “I’ll kill every one of you wretched thieves!” a man bellowed from the darkness.

  The house the group had broken into was thought to be vacant—at least, according to Luca Smith, who had supposedly staked out the place. It turned out that the owner of the house was not only there, but also his teenage sons—every one of them armed.

  After a brief shootout in the pitch-blackness, Joaquin grabbed Pierce by the wrist and pulled him along.

  “Get out!” he ordered, pushing him toward the open window they’d come in through.

  Pierce didn’t want to leave without his brother, yet Joaquin nearly shoved him out. When Pierce landed on the lawn outside, he sprang to his feet and helped Joaquin as he clambered out.

  “Let me go!” one of their group shouted from inside.

  “John!” Pierce cried.

  “C’mon,” Joaquin said, again snatching Pierce by the arm and yanking him toward the horses, waiting at the forest’s edge.

  He had no time to decide for himself whether he wanted to return for John or not. Within seconds, he was saddled up on his mount.

  “Go!” Joaquin demanded, smacking Pierce’s horse on its hindquarters.

  The animal charged off into the darkness, and soon, Joaquin rode up alongside him. “Keep going.”

  A tiny bead of light eventually appeared—a single lit lantern hanging in a tree to mark the meeting point. Luca Smith, and his cousin, Giles Summerfield, were already there.

  “Jesus, we were just about done for back there,” Luca said.

  “What the bloody hell?” Pierce spouted off at him. “You fuckin’ told us the house was clear!”

  “It was supposed to be,” Luca returned hotly.

  “S’posed to be?” Pierce seethed, dismounting. “I think you got your bloody days mixed up.” He yanked Luca off his mount and pushed him to the ground. “You nearly got us killed!”

  Pierce wasn’t exaggerating. Luca had a tarnished reputation for misleading the group. This time, it cost Pierce a dear friend.

  Pierce punched him and although Luca got in a few good licks of his own, Pierce’s boosted anger earned him the upper hand. Before Pierce could bash his face into dust, someone hoisted him back.

  “Get off ’im!” Giles yelled, pinning Pierce’s arms under his own.

  With his torso left vulnerable, Pierce reckoned that once Luca got up, he’d either shoot him or jab him with a knife. As Luca staggered to his feet, Pierce threw his head back, slamming the base of his skull against Giles’s face.

  “Ouch!”

  Pierce wiggled out of his grasp, but not before Luca had reached for his gun. Pierce pulled his own weapon.

  “Enough!” Joaquin commanded, jumping into the middle of the two. “Stand down, Luca.”

  Luca relaxed, but not completely until Pierce lowered his gun.

  “We need to go back for John.” Pierce holstered his weapon and rubbed the sore spot behind his head.

  “Most likely dead by now.” Giles touched his forehead.

  “Aye,” Luca agreed. “We ought to clear out.”

  Pierce narrowed his eyes at the pair.

  “There’s a chance he’s being held by the homeowner. We can’t leave him behind to be picked up by the authorities. He’ll be hanged.”

  “Better him than us,” Giles returned.

  “We don’t leave family behind,” Pierce argued.

  “We’re not the bloody Gypsies you grew up with, Landcross,” Luca pointed out. “Each of us needs to look after our own skin.”

  Luca and Pierce had butted heads ever since he and Giles joined up with him and Joaquin. Luca had no seniority and thus, it wasn’t his decision to make.

  “John is my mate, and we’re going back for him. Right, Joaquin?”

  “We can’t!” Giles hollered in a panic. “We’ll be shot dead or captured.”

  “He’s right, Joaquin,” Luca concurred. “Going back is suicide. There’s three of them inside the house, with who knows how many guns.”

  “We’re going.” Pierce grabbed his brother by the arm. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “Don’t do this, Joaquin,” Luca exclaimed. “You’ll endanger us all!”

  Pierce again tugged on Joaquin’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  He found it odd that Joaquin wasn’t doing more to support him. Perhaps he wasn’t too keen on the idea, himself, but even so, the Landcross brothers had always stuck together, no matter what. However, Joaquin had been acting strange ever since they had left Lepe a few weeks ago.

  Pierce yanked hard on Joaquin’s arm, and it was the last thing he did before a fist crashed across his face. The impact sent him to the ground. It happened so fast. His teeth rattled like broken pebbles inside his mouth.

  He glared at Luca, but when he sat up, ready for a fight, Joaquin yelled, “Stay down!”

  Pierce froze in place, utterly gobsmacked by his brother’s command. “Joaquin?”

  Joaquin stood over him with fists clenched. In the low light of the lantern, Pierce noticed something strange about his brother’s eyes. Perhaps it was simply a trick of the firelight, but it seemed like red oil was spilling over them. Luca and Giles stood, gawking, for they were just as astonished by Joaquin’s actions as Pierce was.

  “Joaquin, what are you doing?” Pierce asked.

  He gave no response, only loomed over his brother with m
urder in his oily eyes. Things only got worse when Luca and Giles finally recovered from their shocked stupor, and joined Joaquin at his side like his loyal soldiers.

  “Take care of ’im,” Luca said forebodingly.

  “Steady now, Joaquin,” Pierce said, raising his hand. “It’s me, your brother, remember?”

  Joaquin didn’t seem to recognize him anymore, and Pierce saw it when he unsheathed his knife.

  It was a moment Pierce Landcross would never escape from, not even in dreams. Joaquin snatched the gun from him before Pierce pulled it, and then placed the knife against the soft tissue of his throat before moving it across. The treachery tore at him more than the skin that ripped away. Luca and Giles laughed wickedly like greeters at the entrance of Purgatory. The brother’s bond was severed. Joaquin was no longer there, only a sinister stranger splitting apart his flesh with his dull, jagged blade.

  Who are you?

  * * *

  Pierce shot up, gasping, holding his throat with a hand that trembled uncontrollably. The scar pressed against his fingers. He rose from the blanket he and Taisia were lying upon inside Indigo Peachtree’s attic and slipped out from underneath the other blanket that covered them. Unable to return to sleep, he left the attic and crept barefoot downstairs. The ache in his leg from falling through the floor inside the stone mill, kicked up, forcing him to limp. Despite the pain, his skills as a thief had made him as silent as a cat. He made it through the house without disturbing Indigo in his room, his grandmother in the guest bedroom, or anyone else sound asleep in the small living room.

  He left through the back door. The sight of the tall man standing in the backyard, gazing toward the meadow beyond the brook, stopped Pierce at the doorway.

  “I had this dream a few days ago,” the man said, keeping his back to Pierce. “At least, I think it was a dream. A voice told me to come here.”