Deathless by Scott Prussing Read Free Book Online Page A

maybe stop for a pizza,” Leesa said. “Nothing fancy. What about you? What do you and Andy have going on tonight?”
    “ We’re gonna check out a place over in Meriden. Test out my new fake ID.”
    Cali was eighteen, just like Leesa, but that didn’t stop her from drinking. Andy was twenty-one, so he was legal.
    “ Have fun, but be careful,” Leesa said. She almost never drank, though she’d had a glass of wine with Cali twice. And she’d had a bit of Balin’s homemade mead once, too.
    “ Yes, Mom,” Cali said, grinning. She stamped her feet a couple of times. “It’s freakin’ cold out here. I’m going back inside. Try not to freeze, you two.”
    “ See you later,” Leesa said as Cali turned back toward the dorm’s entrance.
    Leesa snuggled up against Rave’s side, soaking in his warmth. There was no way she would freeze.
    “ Let’s get going,” she said.
     
    Time did strange things whenever Rave carried Leesa in his arms. Their journeys seemed to last forever, a joyous eternity of bliss. But when he put her down, she always felt cheated, as if the trip had barely begun. She did not understand how something could seem endless, yet be all too short at the same time. She bet nothing in her physics class could explain that.
    Rave set her down gently on the rutted dirt road in front of Balin’s ancient cabin—road being a kind description of what was really nothing more than a wide dirt path. Rave’s people preferred it this way, to keep outsiders from wandering into their settlement by accident. No driver in his right mind would try to negotiate the narrow, pitted roadway in any vehicle without off-road capabilities. A stout wooden gate a half mile from the highway kept even these away.
    To the outside world, the Mastons were simply a strange clan—some even called them a cult—who had forsworn the trappings of the modern age. When Leesa first told her friends she had met a Maston, Cali tried to warn her off, recounting stories about strange noises, blue fires and even rumors of human sacrifice. The noises were real—they were called the Moodus Noises, named after the nearby Moodus River. The unexplained underground rumblings and tremors had been occurring in the area for centuries and were a well-known piece of Connecticut lore. They had nothing to do with the Mastons, though. Blue fires were also real, of course, though the volkaanes took care to shield any displays of their magical fire. As for human sacrifices, that was nonsense cooked up by overactive imaginations trying to deal with a group of people they did not understand.
    Leesa had been to Balin’s home several times before with Rave. The small, one-room cabin was the oldest in the Maston settlement, built by Balin himself over three hundred years ago. Constructed from trees hewn from the local woods, the logs were cracked and weathered, and the mud between them was black with age. Two tiny windows winked from the front wall—glass had not been an option when the cabin was built, so deer hide had hung over the openings back then. Glass had been added later. A thin ribbon of smoke curled upward a few feet from a stone chimney before being blown away by the stiff breeze. The whole area was wonderfully quiet.
    Farther up the road, before it curved into the woods, Leesa could see another old cabin and a couple of crude wooden houses. Each home had a small field cleared beside it—more of a garden, really. They were bare and fallow this time of year, but in the spring, the gardens would brim with vegetables and herbs. Across the road, an apple orchard covered a low hillside. The gnarled gray branches were bare of leaves, but she had seen the trees when they were full of delicious fruit. The Mastons were very self-sufficient. Balin even brewed his own homemade mead.
    Rave led Leesa up the short dirt pathway to the cabin door and knocked twice.
    A moment later, the door swung open. Balin stood in the doorway, smiling. The old volkaane was