Return to Exile: Volume 1 - Brossura

E. J. Patten was born Arizona and grew up with a love of stories, thanks to his parents’ ownership of a video store. He received a BA in Media Arts and an MBA from Brigham Young University, and he lives with his wife and three children on a small hill overlooking a large lake in a Utah town.

THE HUNTER CHRONICLES: RETURN TO EXILE excerpt

Prologue: Shiny Bobbles and All

Phineas T. Pimiscule was not what you’d call an “attractive” man. He wasn’t “desirable” or “appealing.” He didn’t like “things” or do “stuff” or “wash” himself. He was not the kind of guy to “put” “quotation” “marks” around “words” or to say things in an unassuming or assuming way.

He was the kind of guy who wore a monocle.

He had also been known to fraternize with unsavory characters—a necessity of the job, and possibly a result of monocle-wearing. He traveled the world, seeing the worst of it—places with grotesque names like The-Twelve-Levels-of-Hidden-Terror, Devil’s Hill, and Wyoming.

His wasn’t a glamorous life, but it was a necessary one . . . more necessary than anyone realized.

But tonight—on the third night of the Hunter’s Moon—the necessities of such a life had caught up to him. And after all these many long years, Phineas could finally feel his time drawing near, and he almost welcomed it. Almost.

Cradling a crying infant in his arms, he raced along the lonely path that led from his property to the sleepy, unknowing town beyond. Decaying trees towered over him like a big tower towers over smaller, less-big towers.

Dead leaves crunched beneath his feet like sharp teeth on bones, and the moon cast blue-black shadows all around that looked like monstrous figures eating unspeakable living buffets.

His antiquated frock suit coat from him in tatters, ripped by claws, fangs, and worse, and Phineas, mumbling and cursing, did his best to ignore the pain that shot through his body with each jarring step.

At the bottom of a long and lonely hill, Phineas collapsed gratefully against a fallen tree.

“Shhh . . . no more monsters, Sky. Cross my heart,” Phineas promised, bouncing Sky gently in his arms, “You’re safe now. Uncle Phineas is here. No more of that nasty business. Shhh . . .”

Glancing down, Phineas grimaced as he noticed dark blood trickling from a black mark on Sky’s small hand. Phineas sopped at it with a dirty handkerchief, revealing two crescent moons running vertically on Sky’s palm, from his fingers to his wrist, with the moons pressed together at the tips like a giant eye. Another mark, pale and white, sat within that dark eye, smaller, and with horizontal moons.

Phineas pressed his handkerchief against the trickle of blood, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to stop tears—his own tears—from coming.

“I’m so sorry, Sky. I’m so, so sorry. Your mother was right. I couldn’t protect you. And now look what I’ve done.”

Sky quieted as he watched Phineas weep, the infant’s forgiving eyes as big and blue as the ocean. And then, with eager hands, Sky reached for Phineas’s monocle.

“You like that, do you?” said Phineas, using the dirty handkerchief to wipe his eyes and nose before returning the cloth to Sky’s hand. “I suppose you would—shiny bobble and all.”

Phineas pulled the strange monocle from his eye and dangled it in front of Sky, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum.

There was a noise above—the fluttering of wings. Looking up, Phineas spotted dozens of oversize black and white crows landing on the branches around them.

“Piebalds,” said Phineas, narrowing his eyes at the strangely intelligent black-and-white birds, “there’s plenty to eat back at the manor!”

Phineas glared. He’d never cared for the things: Never trust a creature whose brain is smaller than a pea.

“CAW!” cawed the largest of the Piebalds.

“What do you mean you’ve become vegetarians?” Phineas replied suspiciously. “Since when?”

“Neat trick,” said a voice from the shadows.

Phineas spun, a gun slipping into his palm from up his sleeve.

“Hold on, hold on! I’m not armed! Not even a hunter anymore—remember? You booted me out yourself!” The man stepped out of the shadows covered in grime and gore, hands raised. He was unshaven, his skin rough and tanned like toffee left in the sun, and a faint smile played on his lips like a sun waiting to shine—if only there weren’t so many clouds.

“Beau?” said Phineas. He shifted his leg, cringing at the pain. “Your timing is impeccable, as always. Though, next time you attempt to sneak up on me, try not to smell like entrails.”

“Attempt to sneak up on you?” Beau scoffed. “You seemed pretty surprised to me.”

“All for show,” said Phineas. “I like for my former students to have a healthy sense of self-worth.”

“So,” said Beau, taking a few steps closer, “you really are Phineas, then?”

“At your trial three years ago,” said Phineas, holding the gun steady on Beau as the man took another step closer. “I gave you a book, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to recall the title.”

Beau stopped a few feet away. “The book was Twenty Things You Didn’t Know About Women and Wish You Could Forget Now That You Do. It doubled as a wedding gift.”

“Sorry,” said Phineas, lowering the gun. “I didn’t mean to dredge up the past.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Beau. “At least we know we’re both us.”

Phineas snorted. “I knew I was me long before you showed up. . . . Though, come to think of it, I have been suspicious of late.” Phineas dusted his monocle with the dirty handkerchief and returned it to his eye. “So, Malvidia couldn’t be bothered to come herself, then? She’s usually so hands-on when it comes to traitors.”

Phineas pushed himself to his feet with a huff while Sky sat cradled snuggly in his arms, watching the Piebalds.

“I think she knew you wouldn’t kill me, and maybe she thought I could talk some sense into you,” said Beau as they began walking down the path together.

“It’s hardly the time for sense, I should think, since nonsense has been serving us so well,” said Phineas, sounding annoyed, and frustrated, and terribly tired all at once.

“So, you’re really running, then?” asked Beau. “You’re going to let Malvidia take over what’s left of the hunters and just hide from it all? What will the Hunters of Legend think of that?”

“The Hunters of Legend rejected me long ago, and good riddance to bad rubbish, I say,” said Phineas. “Besides, they have their own problems at the moment.”

“Namely you,” said Beau. “I know you want to protect Sky, but do you really know this boy anymore? Can you vouch for him—that he’s really what we think he is? With that black mark on his hand, are you really so sure he won’t become what we all fear?”

The air between them grew silent and heavy. Even the Piebalds stopped their constant cawing.

Finally Phineas spoke, his forehead creased with thoughtful lines.

“Ah, ‘fear’—a funny word, that,” said Phineas. “Did you know you can’t have ‘fear’ without an ‘ear’? Imagine if we used a nose instead of an ear. Do you suppose people would fnose a nose as much as they fear an ear? I don’t suppose I know . . . s.”

Beau almost smiled. “You always knew how to ruin a moment. But just because you’re not afraid doesn’t mean others aren’t. The hunters are the weakest they’ve been in centuries—since the days of Bedlam Falls! What are we supposed to do when the Arkhon’s prison fails like the others? You and Nikola are the only ones who understand how it works, and Nikola’s now insane!”

“There are fail-safes to buy us time if it fails,” said Phineas.

“And those are?” asked Beau.

“Something I’d rather not talk about, lest prying ears overhear,” said Phineas, glancing at the Piebalds flying overhead. “But I’ll be watching. When the time comes, I’ll return more openly. Maybe then I will have enough leverage to ensure Sky’s safety.”

“And if you die before then?” asked Beau.

“I won’t leave you clueless,” said Phineas, smiling.

Beau sighed. Phineas knew Beau hated puzzles, but that just made Phineas smile all the more.

Up above, the Piebalds flapped off into the night, cawing and thinking about what they’d heard. They flew north toward red, blue, and black clouds full of strangely colored lightning and unnatural thunder—toward a terrible storm raging like unholy titans above a sprawling, dreadful manor.

Lightning struck the manor and the grounds around it again and again, illuminating a gargantuan glowing wall several football fields away from the manor itself, and hundreds of dark figures of all shapes and sizes (some human, some less so) locked in a horrifying struggle.

As the Piebalds sailed higher, they noticed countless bodies—so many bodies scattered everywhere.

A funnel cloud of furious lightning and color formed over the manor. Great rushing wind rose up, drawing the Piebalds closer. They banked left, racing to escape the funnel’s pull.

The dark figures below broke, racing for the glowing wall.

Thunder cracked. A gruesome wave of light and darkness exploded out of the manor, crashing through everything.

And then . . .

Nothing more.

Chapter 1

A Trap, Like a Good Story

“A good trap is like a good story: hidden and leading toward one inevitable conclusion,” muttered Sky, checking his vines with a practiced delectation.

He dropped to the ground to get a closer look, his dirty black hair dragging through the dirt.

“Rule number two,” whispered Sky, brushing leaves over the vine, trying to make the pattern look random. “A good trap, like a good story, has to arise naturally from the environment. It has to be seamless. If the prey suspects what’s coming, they’ll bolt.”

Standing but still partially crouched, Sky shimmied behind the closest tree. He peeked out, surveying the forest for signs of life. Traces of fading sunlight slipped through the canopy above, moving across the earth like matadors with threadbare capes teasing and taunting the night onward. And the night—stupid thing that it was—kept taking the bait.

Just like Sky.

His stomach growled at the thought of bait. He’d eat some right now if he had any. The problem was, he’d already eaten it. He pressed his back against the tree, holding his stomach.

Didn’t his uncle know there were child labor laws to protect kids from this kind of thing? He must have set up a bazillion traps today, and still nothing. He was only eleven, for crying out loud! No, not eleven—twelve, actually. It was his birthday, after all, and an awful one at that. And yet nobody seemed to care. He’d been wandering the woods all day, hungry, alone, and with nothing to look forward to, except for yet another horrible move.

He was getting tired of it. He pulled out his yo-yo and practiced a few tricks: pinwheel, double or nothing, rock the baby. Just as he was slipping into a Ferris wheel, he heard it—

SNAP. “AARGH!”

He flipped his yo-yo into his pocket and raced west toward the sound.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!” He ran into the broad clearing and saw Uncle Phineas hanging by his ankle on the clearing’s edge. “HA! Goulash for you!”

His uncle smiled down at him.

“Yes, yes, well played. I get goulash for your birthday party tonight, and you get leftover pizza. Bully for you. Now, if you wouldn’t mind cutting me down?” said Phineas.

Sky walked toward the tree that served as the linchpin of the trap, laughing. “You mess with the best, you hang like Aunt Tess.”

“That was your great-great-aunt Tess, and she wasn’t hung. She was drawn and quartered,” said Phineas.

“Same dif,” said Sky, searching through the jumble of vines to find the primary link.

“Only in that your bowels void in both situations. Though I assure you one is much messier than the other,” said Phineas.

“Really? Which one?”

“I’ll leave that for your overactive imagination to puzzle out,” said Phineas as he swung back and forth, back and forth.

“That’s the third rule of trap building, right? A trap,” said Sky, trying to imitate his uncle’s not-quite-British I’ve-been-in-America-too-long accent. (Clear throat.) “A trap, like a good story, needs to hint at greater things without revealing them until the prey is snared.”

“Spot on, though your imitation could use some work,” said Phineas.

“You can add vocal coaching to my curriculum right after botany,” said Sky, “since you seem intent on boring me to death.”

Sky found the main vine and started tracing it through the jumble. This was a particularly complex trap that used all the fundamentals of trap building: direct and misdirect, attract and repel, lure and snare—all the things his uncle had taught him over the years.

“Botany could well save your life one day, you know,” said Phineas, “if you’d only read all the books I gave you and not just the ones you like.”

“Pshaw,” said Sky. “If the day ever comes that I need botany, I’ll eat the goulash—a whole pot of it.”

“I don’t think goulash is healthy for a body in the throws of rigor mortis. . . . Actually, I think goulash may cause rigor mortis, but if you promise to eat it, I’ll see to it that you have some in your hour of need,” Phineas replied. “It might make a good side dish to your words.”

“Ha, ha. Eat my words. I get it. It’s a word puzzle, like an acrostic or an anagram, but not as clever,” said Sky sarcastically as he gave up on the vine he’d been working on and started tracing another.

Phineas smiled. “It was very clever of you, Sky, using a triple trolley—or the troll snatcher, as Sir Alexander Drake used to call it before he was brutally murdered.”

“You don’t have to call it the ‘troll snatcher,’ Uncle Phineas; I’m twelve now, all grown up. I know there are no trolls to snatch,” said Sky.

“Which reminds me . . . ,” said Phineas, wiggling around like a prize marlin. A small wrapped box fell from his tattered frock coat. “Happy birthday.”

Sky let go of the vine he’d been playing with and crossed the open space between them to pick up the box.

“Well, go on! Open it!” said Phineas, smiling down at him, his strange monocle fastidiously clinging to his face despite all the laws of physics. He’d worn the monocle for as long as Sky could remember. It was dark, strange and thick, like a jeweler’s monocle, with retractable hooks that fit over the nose and ear.

Sky shook the box.

“But . . . aren’t you going to be at my party tonight?” asked Sky, suddenly worried.

“Of course. I know I haven’t been around as much of late, but I’ve never missed it before, have I?” replied Phineas. Sky felt measurably better. He couldn’t imagine a party without Phineas.

“I’m giving this to you now because this is one gift best given in private,” Phineas supplied, answering Sky’s next question before he could ask it. “Well, go on!”

Grinning, Sky ripped off the wrapping paper and opened the box. Inside he found an antique pocket watch, similar in style to the monocle his Uncle wore, but lighter, sort of grayish.

“Your watch?” said Sky, surprised. He flipped it open, watching as the numerous dials ticked and the moon made its way around the edge like a peddler looking for a place to push his wares. Phineas had tried to show him how to read it once, but he’d never figured it out.

After a moment the dials settled down and the moon took its place in the night, full and heavy—just like the moon overhead. “It’s amazing! Thank you.”

“She’s old, but she keeps good time,” said Phineas. “The great monster hunter Solomon Rose and I once argued over whether or not the moon ran by her or the other way around. You share a birthday w...