Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) Read Free

least fifty pounds. Her sweat-slickened palms slipped on the iron bar, the cracking of bone—all graying—so very very gray.
    All she knew is that she was not giving up. She wasn’t cut that way. She was a survivor. She’d survived worse than one smelly Sift that thought it could stop her.
    There was too much riding on her shoulders. Too much. Way too frigging much. She was the only one left who could stop it. But it was too much.
    She pressed and pressed and pressed until the gray turned to black.

    Chapter Three

    Bekah awakened to the worst smell ever known to the world and gagged, vomiting onto the packed earthen floor. Dead Sift. They smelled bad enough alive, but brain matter seeping into the dirt? There just wasn’t a cesspool equal to the raw stink of that.
    She hurt everywhere, side mostly, but the claw scratches had stiffened up her shoulder overnight considerably. She was a mess. A mess with no help in sight. She’d really counted on the Healers of the Limont Clan to get her back to fighting form.
    She pulled herself up, wincing, and scooted away from the fallen beast and vomit. If only she could get away from its stench as easily.
    Okay, so what now? She took stock of the situation. The village had been abandoned. Partially burned. On purpose or by a random strike of lightning without anyone present to put out the fire? Nature could do as much damage—if not more than man. Just look what nature had created with a Moon Sifter’s dark magic? Sifts sprang into her century like maggots on a rotting corpse.
    So the village had already been abandoned. By the looks of things, three or four years ago, which meant her placement of landing in this century had been way off.
    Of course it had. Why should she begin having good luck now?
    The time rift from the early twenty-first century in Charity Greve’s Seattle apartment had been different. Large and volatile. Not that anyone from 2083 had seen a Sorcerer’s time rift, but it hadn’t been anything like Alexander had described it should be.
    It had been a cyclone, earthquake, and hurricane rolled into one, which didn’t immediately disperse the moment Toren and Charity were sucked up into it.
    The rift had held much longer, even longer than what they’d calculated would be only minutes. Minutes that would give Col Limont the chance to jump in and set things right.
    But he’d missed his opportunity. For what? Love?
    He’d seen Lenore drop in the fire that erupted in Charity’s apartment and he’d gone back for her.
    Not seeing any way around it, Bekah had taken the leap, and, well, here she was. After meeting Col, she’d wondered all along if the task would be left to her. Perhaps it was better this way.
    She saw it in his eyes.
    He was never going to kill his brother.
    It was better this way. She would do what Col couldn’t.
    If she survived that long.
    If she could avoid the remaining Sifts that long. She’d killed one. How many more could there be?
    What she wouldn’t give for her pulsar right now, but since nothing material could come through a time rift, her gun was lost to her.
    She needed weapons, food, clothes, shoes—and medical attention. Wasn’t like there was a drugstore down the street to forage through, so first things first. There had to be a water source near or in the village.
    An hour later, she’d made a thorough search through the remaining cottages and came up empty as far as clothing or weapons, but she did find the village well and a couple of cooking pots, a rock she thought was flint, and even a water skin to carry the water in once she boiled it. She set out to build a fire. She’d boil the fabric scraps from the overturned chest and use them to bind the cuts on her feet until a Healer could do the job properly. She couldn’t risk infection.
    She was exhausted and shaky, her wounds taking their toll from the amount of energy she’d expended and blood she’d lost.
    Building a fire was harder than she’d thought, even with