Shades of Valhalla - Inner Origins Book One (eBook)

Ellis Logan (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
357 Seiten
Earth Lodge (Verlag)
978-1-944396-11-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Magic. Mayhem. One girl to save the world, or end it...
Siri Alvarsson is thrust into an unseen war between the Light and the Dark and a world she never even knew existed. She's having strange visions and the Dark wants to use her as an instrument to win the war. The futures of both humanity and fae depend on Siri. Will she choose the Light or the Dark?
Experience Siri's struggle and triumph while she learns to follow her heart and discovers her true, inner origins.
Ellis Logan's bestselling paranormal fantasy series, Inner Origins, is action-packed with magic and romance. The books combine Celtic and Norse myth with ancient Faerie legend to create an adventure you'll never forget. If you liked Mortal Instruments, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Relentless, or A Court of Thorns and Roses, you'll love Shades of Valhalla.
Suitable for ages 13 to 105.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

There had to be a better way.

I slammed down the box in frustration. I couldn’t imagine lifting one more box up into the apartment’s tiny overhead attic. What would I do when it was time to move again? How would I unload everything quickly?

I definitely needed to look into the whole zen-styling thing. Seriously. How many books and knick-knacks could a girl cart around from town to town? I had way too much stuff.

The problem, I thought as I huffed a curl of hair out of my eyes, was that I was just too sentimental. I needed to cut some ties to the past. Like this box marked “Raggedy Anne and Andy.” Those two sculptures had been made for me by my grandfather when I was a baby, and they were cute, but did I really need to keep them to pass on to my own babies someday? I might not even ever have children. I sighed. I didn’t particularly want kids. But hey, someday I might, and then they should have heirlooms, right? Maybe, yeah. Maybe some smaller heirlooms. Maybe just mom’s sterling baby spoon and sippy cup that I had used, too, as a toddler. I grinned and chucked the box of porcelain figures through the open doorway into the kitchen.

The box crashed, the unmistakable sound of tinkling broken pottery reaching my ears along with a light euphoric feeling. I could definitely get used to this whole Zen thing. There were still ten or twelve more boxes in the living room stacked up by the ladder to the attic, and I was wondering how many of them I could talk myself into throwing away when my mom burst into the room.

“Siri! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, mom, I just decided I’m going to get rid of some of these boxes instead of storing them,” I said, pointing at the dented box lying on its side in the doorway.

“Thank the gods, I thought you fell down the stairs or something! How about instead of throwing them, you start another pile on the porch, alright? We just got here, don’t want the neighbors to think I’m beating you already.”

“Ha! Yeah right, okay, mom.” I trailed after her as she walked into the kitchen to grab the abused box. “Speaking of beating, when do we start?”

For as long as I could remember, my mother and I had fought.

Almost every day, we went through the same dance –Tang Soo Do, Qigong, Aikido, Krav Maga, even a little Capoeira. Hand to hand combat, bo staffs, nun chukkas and the occasional sword. Mom said she started teaching martial arts to me as soon as I could run without holding on to something, which put my earliest days of training back to when I was just over a year old. According to her, we’d started with basic Qigong forms, building my strength and endurance. By the time I was three, she caught me on video doing flying kicks off the sofa.

Training always ended with sweaty hugs, good food, and a huge pitcher of water. There was never any shortage of treats in the house, either – mom believed in eating healthy, but also considered chocolate one of the four basic food groups. The kitchen was always the first room mom unpacked when we moved. Already the butcher block island boasted a large red ceramic bowl filled with peaches, honeycrisp apples and bananas next to several smaller turquoise plates displaying sleeves of organic dark chocolates, fresh brownies from the local market and colorful sugar cookies. The holy trinity.

I set the box down on the counter and opened a couple cabinets, trying to find where she’d put the mugs. Pulling out my favorite vibrant tangerine one with a little chip in the handle, I filled it with water and drank it half down in one go. Mom was a big believer in Fiestaware pottery, and our plates and cups came in every shade of the rainbow. No matter where we were, the bright colors always made us feel at home. They always clashed, so they always matched. Sort of like us. I’d given up a long time ago trying to match every new town we moved to. I was just me, like the mug. Not perfect, but me. If someone preferred blue and didn’t want orange, chipped things in their life, that was cool. Their prerogative. Whatever.

I wondered what this town would have to offer – matched or mixed sets? Not one to ponder the unknown, I grabbed a brownie and sat down. “So what’s the plan tonight?”

“Well,” my mom answered as she moved the damaged box off the counter and opened the door to put it out on the front porch, “I have to check in with work and find out what time they want me to come in Monday morning. They’re in a really big rush to start planning a new security protocol so they can sign a procurement deal with the NSA. Until the agency is sure their contract will be fully safeguarded, they won’t finalize the contract.”

“Oooh, sounds exciting.” I rolled my eyes. Mom’s work was mostly about numbers and angles. It was her job to determine the soft spots in a facility, where people could sneak in and out, the IT vulnerabilities, how many guards and cameras you needed to cover the weaknesses in the building, what kinds of alarms were best suited to the business, how soon local law enforcement could lend a hand if needed, and what sort of situations warranted a call to the cops. Like I said, totally riveting stuff.

Mom laughed. “Hey, it pays for those brownies you’re eating. So I bet your stomach thinks it’s pretty exciting. Anyhow, after I check in, I figured we could do movie night and pizza. At least it’s Friday, so we’ll have all weekend to buy some new school clothes, relax and finish unpacking before your big day on Monday.”

“Ugh, yay, school. Can’t wait.” I pushed away from the counter and started to head back to my room. We were already a few weeks into the school year and I was pretty sure in a town this small I would be the only new student in my year.

“Yeah, well, before you get too excited, how about you sort your boxes while I’m getting ready. And no more tossing them around! Start a pile with the box on the porch and I’ll take them to a thrift store on the way to work tomorrow.”

“I’m on it!” The idea of ditching some more boxes was still pretty exciting. “And I’ll pick out some movies for tonight, too, I still haven’t unpacked my DVDs.”

“Action Romance!” She yelled as I went back to the living room.

“Pride and Prejudice it is,” I sang out, making her groan.

I hauled out most of the boxes, and went back to pick up the last one. Looking at it, I supposed I should go through it before tossing the whole thing. It had old photos in it, along with my martial arts ribbons from tournaments. I was pretty sure it also had some random mementos, like yearbooks and shells from beach towns we’d stayed in, that I didn’t really care to keep. I carried the box into my room and stuck it in the corner. I’d deal with it later.

I tuned into some psytrance on my Digitally Imported music app, sighed and flopped down on the bed. Another town. Another school. For the most part I didn’t really care about trying to fit in or joining all the little dramas each school had to offer. The last place we’d been, I had made some really great friends the first week I got there, and it had been really, I don’t know, comfortable. Everything had been easy in Tucson. Nice people. Great weather. Awesome places to run and train. I wondered what this town would be like.

We’d moved into a tiny town called Falls Depot in Vermont, near Bennington and Mount Snow. Our apartment was actually part of an old farmhouse that had been split into several homes, and it had a huge empty field behind it that joined some state forest. The company my mom was working for was in Bennington – she had asked the company to put us in Falls Depot so we wouldn’t be too far from the mountains. I was really looking forward to getting some snowboarding in, since I hadn’t had a chance the whole last year while we were in Arizona.

I’d have to get all new gear, there was no way my old boarding clothes would fit since I had grown several inches in the last year. Now, at 17, I came in at a respectable 5’6”. Not too short, not too tall. Big enough to get taken seriously, not so tall that I automatically intimidated other girls. That was good, considering how often we moved. Next year I’d be starting college, so this was the last time I would have to worry about being the new kid in town. There, everyone would be new. I was kind of looking forward to that. It’d be a whole new experience.

I realized I’d probably need a new snowboard, too, and got up to look at my old handbuilt Gnu in the closet. Checking it over, I figured I could probably trade it in for a good deal on a new one. I set to work scraping off the old Daft Punk, Mesita and Quicksilver stickers and fumbled through the box on my desk for my army knife so I could remove the bindings. Those would still work with my feet, at least. I just needed to adjust them up to fit now that I was a size seven.

Sitting on the floor, working off the bindings, I started getting warm. At first I didn’t notice, but then the heat started building, more and more. I stripped off my hoodie and went to work on the last screw. Removing the old, rusted screws was pretty frustrating, but hardly enough to work up a sweat over. I almost felt feverish. I pulled the last screw out and dropped it in a bag with the other screws and binding plates, and secured the bundle to the bindings...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.1.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 1-944396-11-X / 194439611X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-944396-11-4 / 9781944396114