B00CGOH3US EBOK Page 2

  Jill couldn't tear her eyes away from the beautiful design. Gold swirled with brilliant reds and blues on a dazzling field of green, the colors so vibrant it looked like it was stitched only yesterday. The lady had to be pulling her leg, trying to make a raggedy tapestry seem more valuable than it actually was. It must be a reproduction. There was no way it could really be a thousand years old, but damn if it didn't look like it was.

  She pushed it back toward the saleslady. "It's nice, but not quite what I had in mind."

  "Wait! You need to see this before you go." Clo uncurled the last section until the entire remnant lay flat on the display case. Just as she did so, the morning light filtered into the shop through the front window, chasing away the shadows and illuminating the tapestry in all its brilliant glory.

  "I really don't think…" And then Jill couldn't think at all. She couldn't even speak a coherent word as the diminutive shop lady shoved the tapestry back in front of her.

  A magnificent woven dragon stared back at her.

  Crafted in complex detail and radiant threads, the beast seemed to come to life on the cloth before her. The creature was breathtaking, from the fine rendering of its scale-covered body to its glowing, golden eyes. Spellbound, Jill held her breath, half expecting the monster to spread its wings and fly off the tapestry at any moment.

  "It's g-gorgeous," she gasped, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Feeling the texture of the weave against her fingers, she peered closer. The dragon's rust-colored scales shimmered, giving the illusion of its massive chest moving, expanding then contracting. As impossible as it seemed, it looked like the dragon was breathing.

  Clo smiled and nodded her head with its tight little bun. "The moment I saw you, I knew. It's been sitting on that shelf all these years, waiting just for you, Jill."

  Strange, Jill didn't recall mentioning her name. But before she could comment on it, a whistle blew from somewhere in the back of the shop, startling her from her stupor.

  "Oh, the kettle is ready. I'll be right back. Would you like some tea?" Clo asked, leaving her without a backward glance.

  Before she could tell her no, Jill felt a tug on her blouse. She looked down, horrified to find a thread snagged on a button, unraveling the tapestry, row by row. She slammed her hands on the zigzagging strand to prevent any more damage from being done.

  "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

  "Do you take lemon and sugar in your tea?" Clo called from the back room.

  "No. Yes. Fine."

  Jill tried to shove the threads back into place with desperate fingers, but the weaving was so tight and compact she couldn't get them between the remaining strands. Maybe she should pull out the traveling sewing kit in her purse and try to stitch the thing back together?

  Yeah, right. Like you can even sew a button on straight. How can you possibly think you could restore an ancient tapestry?

  Jill risked a panicked glance toward the back of the shop. I sure hope you have to go all the way to China for that tea, lady.

  She attempted to repair the weaving as best as she could. But as soon as she shoved one thread back into place, other parts of it unraveled before her eyes.

  "Damn it!"

  She started to hyperventilate. Why do these kinds of things always seem to happen to me?

  "Because it was meant to, Jill."

  Clo stepped behind the glass case, startling Jill. She didn't realize she'd spoken aloud. Or had she?

  "What did you say?" Jill asked as she tried to hide the unraveling threads with her hands like a guilty child. Heat radiated under her palms, dizziness flooded her, and the room tilted. The only thing remaining in focus was the dragon, golden-eyed and brilliant as it stared at her from the tapestry. She tried to draw away, but something pulled at her, tugging her in, refusing to let her go. She fought the sensation of toppling forward and falling… falling…

  Her gaze locked with Clo's. Through a blurry haze, the munchkin lady smiled at her.

  "Say hello to the dragon for me."

  CHAPTER 2

  Jill opened her eyes to find a drab, gray sky overhead.

  Why was she outside staring at clouds?

  A head popped into view, peering down at her with wide, wary eyes—a head with matted, unwashed hair and a mouth missing several teeth. It was followed by another and then another, until her vision filled with dirty, weathered strangers.

  A cold shiver rippled through her. She wasn't lying on the wooden planks of the shop, or on the rough cobblestone of the sidewalk, or even on the black pavement of the street, but on hard, damp, earthen ground.

  "She's awake," one woman stated in an accent so heavy Jill barely understood her.

  "Aye, that she is," said another as the group leaned closer.

  "Where did she come from?" one of them asked.

  "From the Devil, I'd say. Out o' nowhere, she came. You saw it happen."

  "Aye. In the blink of an eye, she were here."

  They were definitely speaking English. Of course, it was a form of the language she'd never heard before. That part did have her a bit worried. Had she been in an accident and wrecked her car into a busload of elderly European tourists?

  "Look at her clothes." A man with a long, drooping hat pointed at her. "Dressed like a man, she is."

  "And her hair," a woman exclaimed. "'Tis shorn. What do ye reckon happened her?"

  Jill fingered her shoulder-length hair. She'd never thought of it as short. Sure, it didn't hang down to her waist, but it wasn't a buzz cut either.

  "Mayhap she had the fever?" Several people in the crowd nodded in agreement.

  Fever? What did that have to do with the length of her hair?

  The people talked around her, all the while gawking at her as if she were a piece of roadkill they couldn't identify.

  "Umm, excuse me." Jill pushed up on her elbows, interrupting their guessing game. "Can someone tell me what happened?"

  The mob glanced from one to another, mumbling incoherent words.

  "Let's try this again. Can anyone tell me how I ended up on the ground?"

  "Ye fell," a tall, lanky man offered.

  Jill gritted her teeth. "Thank you for pointing out the obvious."

  "No, that's not right," a woman corrected him. "I'd say she more like dropped."

  "I dropped?"

  "Aye." She smiled a toothless grin. "Toppled from the sky like a bird felled by the huntsman's arrow."

  The others murmured in agreement.

  Jill rubbed the back of her head, not at all surprised to find a knot the size of a goose egg. Wonderful. First, the run-in with the plate-glass window and now this. She was definitely going to need some extra-strength Tylenol before the day was through. She struggled to her feet. She needed to find out where she was, how she got here, and most importantly, how she was going to get away from these odd people as fast as she could. After all, she still had to get to Zoe's birthday party…didn't she?

  Jill glanced at the crowd surrounding her. They looked like reenactors from some cheesy medieval theme park or a Ren Faire. She peered over the disheveled horde to find equally disheveled houses. Smoke wafted down from thatched roofs to cloak the ground where pigs and chickens wandered loose in a muddy street. While Carytown had its share of characters, it didn't have pigs, or peasants, or lopsided hovels. Had she somehow stumbled onto a historical movie set filming in the area?

  "Would somebody mind telling me where I am?"

  "This be the village o' Gosforth."

  "Yeah, that doesn't help me much. Where exactly is Gosforth?"

  The 'peasants' traded wary looks before one man spoke up. "Why in England, of course."

  "England? Yeah, right. Look, I know I'm lost, but I'm not that lost." She shook her head in an effort to clear the muddled conversation and make sense of what was going on. "Anybody happen to know how I got here?"

  "We told ye, lass, ye fell—"

  "Right. From the sky. I know." She huffed out a sigh. "Fine. Does anyb
ody have a cell phone? Since I can't remember where my car is, I need to call somebody to come get me, if I can figure out where the heck I am."

  This brought more puzzled expressions and a few shrugs.

  Jill held one hand to her ear and made a dialing motion with the other. "You know—a telephone? Téléphone? ¿Teléfono?" At their continued perplexed stares, she dropped her hands, ending her ridiculous miming act. "Haven't any of you ever heard of a phone?"

  One of the men pushed closer, shoving his whiskered face mere inches from her own. The raw stench of sweat and filth made her gag.

  "Whoa! Guess not." She took an involuntary step back and muttered under her breath, "since apparently 'soap' doesn't seem to be in your vocabulary either."

  Turning to leave, she noticed a young woman dressed in a flowing white gown. She stood in the bed of a wooden cart, a crown of colorful flowers in her long blonde hair. An eerie recollection pricked Jill's memory.

  The girl looked exactly like the one in the tapestry.

  She shook herself. It had to be a coincidence. She scrutinized the girl again and reason kicked her brain into gear. These people must be participating in a medieval-themed wedding. That would explain a lot. She blew out a cleansing breath, relieved she'd finally figured out one part of the puzzle. Of course, one would think the rest of the guests would have dressed better for the occasion. At the very least, showered and put on some deodorant. The bride definitely stood out from the mangy crowd, the crisp whiteness of her gown nearly glowing compared to the drab hues of the villager's rags.

  "Obviously you're in the middle of something here." She started backing away. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I'll just be on my way and you can continue with your little ceremony."

  Behind her, the group parted and she nearly made good her escape—until a man standing on the platform next to the young blonde pointed at her. "Are ye wed, girl?"

  The odd question stopped Jill in her tracks. "Pardon me?"

  Someone in the crowd laughed. "Are ye interested in taking a new wife, Hob?"

  "Nay." The man shook his head, his expression serious. "But mayhap a better sacrifice."

  A collective gasp rose around her. As one, they turned from the man to stare at her, looking for all the world like eager children given an unexpected gift.

  "Offer her up in Aldet's stead," the man went on. "Why sacrifice one of our own when we have a stranger in our midst who can take her place? Give her to the beast."

  Sacrifice? Beast? What in heaven's name were these people talking about?

  "She's a bit old for a maid, don't you think?" someone pointed out. "The offering has to be a maiden."

  Jill scowled at the man, temporarily forgetting that she'd rather not be picked to be whatever this 'offering' was. "Who are you calling old? I'm only twenty-nine."

  Horrified looks turned her way. You'd think she'd just told them she was a hundred years old.

  "A score and nine?" gasped the toothless woman.

  "And ye're not wed?" exclaimed another.

  "No." They talked about her single status as if it were some great offense. Up until now, it'd only been a crime in her mother's eyes.

  "Well, there ye have it. A fine sacrifice."

  But there still seemed to be some question as to whether she was good enough or not, and people started arguing amongst themselves.

  "We cannot sacrifice her. The lot has been drawn."

  "Aye, Aldet is the chosen one."

  Ignored, at least for the moment, Jill began to edge away.

  "Besides," another voice shouted, "the offering has to be a maiden from the village."

  "This one's here in the village now, isn't she?"

  "Aye, but she's not from here. Could be a bad omen if we switch the sacrifice."

  "She fell from the bloody sky and landed at our feet on the day of offering. I don't think ye can get a clearer sign than that."

  "We don't know her. She's no blood kin to any of us."

  Jill had almost inched out of the circle of preoccupied peasants when one voice out-shouted the others, bringing her to a halt. "What if the dragon can tell and rejects her?"

  The dragon?

  Oh, for Pete's sake. These people are taking this reenactment stuff a little too—

  Two men grabbed her from behind.

  Jill's mouth went dry. Dear God, what if they weren't reenactors after all? What if this was some kind of weird cult? A cult that makes human sacrifices. Wasn't the National Enquirer full of crazy stories like that? Figures some of it would turn out to be true and here she was, smack dab in the middle of one.

  "Now hold on a second," she managed to choke out. "I don't know what's going on here, but nobody's sacrificing me to anything." She struggled to extract her arms from the grip of the two burly men restraining her, with little effect. "Just let me go and I promise I won't say a word about any of this and you can get back to whatever it is you're doing."

  No one paid her any attention. She locked her knees against the men as they tugged her toward the platform, her heels carving twin ruts in the dirt. Her panicked brain grappled for any possible way out of this rapidly deteriorating situation. Suddenly, a tiny detail popped into her head, a minor technicality from some long ago childhood tale, but perhaps enough to save her.

  "Wait! Don't you have to be a virgin to be sacrificed to a dragon?"

  Silence fell over the crowd and they stood still as statues.

  "You know, if I'm not mistaken, virginity is definitely one of the criteria for being a sacrificial offering."

  The men ceased dragging her forward as several of the villagers gasped.

  Hurray for loopholes! Not that her sex life was something to brag about, but she figured just one instance was enough to get her disqualified. She tried not to act too smug in response to their slack-jawed stares. Fine, if they were going to continue with this twisted version of a fairy tale, then she'd make them play by the rules.

  "Ye're not a maid?" someone asked.

  "That's right."

  "So you be a widow, then?" another questioned.

  "Nope. Never been married."

  "And yet ye say ye're not a virgin?"

  "Right again." Jill nodded, quite pleased with herself for that bit of quick thinking.

  "She's lying," a woman shouted from the back of the crowd.

  "Now why would I lie about something like that?" she asked, then immediately wished she'd kept her big mouth shut.

  "To save yer hide, o' course. To spare yerself from being sacrificed to the dragon."

  "Fornication be a dreadful sin, don't ye know," said the massive oaf clamped onto Jill's left arm. He glared at her through narrowed eyes. "We brand whores."

  Jill tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Branding? As in, like a cow?

  "Which is it, lass?" said his companion on her right. "Are you a virgin or a whore?"

  As shocked expressions turned into condemning glares, she began to have second thoughts about the brilliance of her little out-clause. At the moment, the idea of being offered to some non-existent dragon didn't sound quite so bad.

  "Call the midwife," Hob shouted.

  Jill gaped at the man. What would they need a midwife for? Weren't they used by the earth-mother types for having babies?

  "Aye," someone concurred. "Nona will be able to tell if she's been bedded or not."

  Bedded? A sick panic churned in her stomach. She felt like Alice in Wonderland watching the white rabbit go hopping by.

  A little crone of a woman approached Jill and eyed her up and down.

  "Will ye be able to tell if she be speaking the truth?" Hob asked the old hag.

  The hag in question, cheeks smudged with soot but with a gaze as sharp and clear as a crisp autumn sky, nodded. "Aye, I'll be able to tell if she's ever lain with a man or not. Won't take a blink to poke about to see if her maidenhead's been breached."

  She gaped in horror at the old woman. "Now wait just a gosh darn minute. Nobody's poking anythi
ng inside any part of me."

  Those turned out to be Jill's famous last words.

  The men dragged her to the nearest hut and shoved her inside. She tried to dart back out, but several of the village women jerked her into the dim interior as the door slammed shut in her face.

  Jill struggled as the burlier ones pinned her down on a rough-hewn table. She kicked and clawed, but it was no use. There were too many of them. She screamed as they swiftly stripped her of her shoes, slacks and panties. What followed was the most humiliating gynecological exam of her entire life.

  With help from two other women, the midwife pried Jill's legs apart. The crone didn't even wash her filthy hands before she shoved her gnarled fingers inside her. The shock of the brutal intrusion was almost worse than the horrifying reality that this was actually happening to her. Bile rose sharp and bitter in Jill's throat. She'd never been so mortified, nor so scared.

  "She's still a maid." The midwife nodded in satisfaction as she wiped her fingers on the front of her dirty apron.

  Momentarily forgetting the humiliation of the crude examination, anger and shock set in.

  "What? Now who's lying, you old bat?"

  The old woman grinned, revealing blackened, broken teeth. She leaned in close, her gaze telling more than the whispered words she spoke. "Aye, dearie, ye're the one."

  Straightening, the hag barked a single order to the others as she left the hut.

  "Prepare the dragon's bride."

  Her back pressed against the rough wooden stake, Jill jerked at the ropes binding her hands, hoping she could wiggle them free. But as the tender skin of her wrists burned in protest, she conceded escape that way was not going to be possible. Not if she wanted to keep her hands attached to her arms, that is.

  How could this be happening to her?

  "I'm not the crazy one around here!" she shouted. "This is the twenty-first century, people, not the Middle Ages. It's against the law to make human sacrifices and there are No. Such. Things. As. Dragons!"

  Why was she yelling? No one was around to hear her.

  Those people were delusional. But at least for now Jill felt a little safer. Apparently, they weren't going to cut her heart out on an altar, or burn her at the stake, or do something as equally unappealing and life ending. At least she hoped not.