Kingdom of War (Kingdom Journals Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  More YA Books by Tricia

  About the Author

  Kingdom of War

  Kingdom Journals Volume 4 – Hunter’s Story

  Kingdom of War

  Kingdom Journals Volume 4 – Hunter’s Story

  by Tricia Copeland

  Copyright © 2019 True Bird Publishing LLC

  All rights reserved

  License Notes:

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be copied or re-distributed in any way. Author holds all copyright.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Edited by Tia Silverthorne Bach

  Proofread by Jennifer Oberth

  Interior Formatting by Jo Michaels

  all of Indie Books Gone Wild

  Cover by Daryl A. McCool of d.a.m. Cool Graphics

  Published by True Bird Publishing LLC, Superior, CO

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

  The prophecy states three Children of Light, each born on a high holiday of light—the Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, or Fall Equinox—may come together to break the curse on the witch lines, prohibiting them from keeping permanent residences and condemning their souls to purgatory. The three must find the Lance of Longinus and restore it. I am Hunter and, along with Alena and Camille, am believed to be one of the trinity of beings destined to save the witches from this damnation.

  This is my story.

  March 2018 – Athens, Greece

  I ran through the structure to every exit, testing each one with no luck. Six of us, Alena, Camille, Jude, Chalondra, Orm, and myself, were spelled inside a building of eight rooms crammed with books.

  Alena grabbed my shirt. “What has Jude gotten us into? We’re hostages.”

  “You wanted answers. We have all of them.” Jude’s voice echoed off the high ceilings.

  “Please tell me all this is digital somewhere.” Alena’s breathing rate increased as she paced between the stacks of texts.

  I hated that she struggled with her half-vampire nature. Being trapped fueled her fight-or-flight reaction, and I coaxed her to inhale and exhale with me.

  “You’re going to be okay. With all of us here, we’ll work around the clock. There has to be a spell to help us find the location of the lance without going through all the books.”

  Alena’s phone rang, and she answered the call. Dimitri’s voice sounded through the microphone. “Alena, Princess, are you there?”

  “Yes, what are you talking about? You’re standing right outside the door ten feet from me, Dimitri. I’m looking at you right now.” Placing a hand on one hip, she glared at her vampire guard. “What? You can’t see us or the building? How can this be happening?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Princess. It is what it is. What do you want me to tell Anne? She’s not going to be happy about this.”

  Alena covered the phone and whispered to me. “What do we tell my mother?”

  “The truth. Even as Vampire Chancellor there’s nothing she can do about a magic barrier.”

  “How can this be happening?” Alena tapped the phone to her thigh.

  “Alena,” Dimitri inquired.

  “Tell Mother we’re still searching for clues.” She slipped her phone in her pocket.

  Gathering her hair she twisted it into a bun.

  I fought touching her, knowing it would send her over the edge. “Everything’s going to be okay. More than okay. It’s perfect. Sonia and Thanatos won’t be able to find us. We’re safe. All of this is untouchable.”

  Even with my show of positivity, the days wore on as we searched the texts for clues of how to break the curse. I wanted this. To know who I was, why Alena, Camille, and I had this connection, to embrace my heritage, free my people from centuries of living like gypsies and eternity in purgatory. This was my destiny, right?

  Since the moment I’d seen Alena, some seven months ago, I knew my life would never be the same. Sometimes, I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. I’d been a regular guy, had normal friends, played varsity basketball, and made decent grades. My parents never married, and my dad always creeped me out. My radar on him proved to be spot on. My father, Thanatos, held the position of High Priest of the witch lines. He found a lance prophesied to bring peace to the witch lines. Corrupted by lust for power and desire to control, he and my brother, Theron, tried to end Alena, Camille, and me, to prevent us from breaking the curse. What kind of father would kill his own son?

  Theron used the sword to make my grandmother, Sonia, former High Priestess of the Witches, immortal. Since then they held the sword in a compound guarded by their coven members in Italy. But, even if the sword could be taken, we weren’t sure how to break the curse. Those answers lay within the structure we were sealed inside.

  Over the past few days, every spell we tried failed, and we started scanning pages. I hated not having a plan, so as I read, I theorized options for stealing the sword from Theron. It would be well guarded, but if we used Anne’s vampire army, we might stand a chance against my family and their coven.

  “Hunter. Hunter.” Alena slapped my arm.

  I glanced over the top of the page. “What?”

  “Are you even paying attention? You’re just flipping through the pages.”

  “Yeah, skimming for keywords like we decided.”

  She slammed her hand down on the stack beside me, causing a cloud of dust to rise into the air. “I seriously cannot stand one more day of this. We’ve been here three days, and we’re not even halfway through the texts. Plus, we’re supposed to be doing this together. Everyone just has their head stuck in a book.”

  “We don’t have a seer. All the spells didn’t work. Divide and conquer, it’s the best strategy.”

  “How do we even know what we can and can’t do? We haven’t tried to do a spell as a unit. Maybe together our powers are limitless.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the cove of books.

  “Hey, remember, human strength here.”

  She released my arm. “Sorry.”

  Most of the time I forgot or ignored—if I was being honest, more like blocked out—that Alena was half vampire. I should’ve been more grateful. Her blood saved me when Theron tried to kill me. But if stressed or threatened, she could be intense.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To wake up Camille.”

  We climbed the stairs to her room. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to bother Camille. First, my watch read just after two a.m., and second, being seventeen, with little oversight from the aging Chalondra and Orm, Camille and Jude, like Alena and me, had taken liberties with sleeping arrangements.

  I caught her hand a second before it grabbed the knob. “I think we should knock.”

  “Oh, right.” She rapped on the door.

  Within half a minute, Jude cracked it open. “What is it? Did you find something?�
�

  Alena shook her head. “Wake Camille up. Our strategy isn’t working. We’ve got to try something different. Meet us downstairs.”

  “Fine.” Jude shut the door.

  “Should we wake Chalondra and Orm?” I asked as we descended the stairs.

  “No. This is about the trinity. I want to explore just how powerful we are.”

  “Do you think that’s the best idea? I mean what if our magic gets out of control?” I twisted her around, forcing her to face me.

  Alena always knew she was a vampire-witch hybrid. Orm trained her in the use of magic since she could talk. Camille and I discovered our heritage within the last six months. I’d been training every day, growing my powers, but the possibility of us combining our abilities had me nervous. We were all powerful alone. What if the spell got out of hand and the building exploded or one of us got hurt?

  “I think we should at least wake Chalondra,” I insisted.

  “Why? She doesn’t know anything. She never found the other witches of her trinity. Do you want to look through every book in this house?”

  Camille and Jude descended the stairs to us. Camille, like Alena, thought we should try a different approach. Jude preferred my route, but Alena and Camille didn’t count his opinion and decided the vote to be two for and one against. We locked hands, and I focused on an image of a dagger. The familiar hum of magic, like a low buzz running through my nerves, filled my head. At first, I saw images of pages, books, a dagger, Alena’s face, Camille, Jude, Tyler, and then a boy, a teen I didn’t recognize.

  Dropping their hands, I stepped back. “Did you guys see that?”

  “The guy? Dark skin and hair?” Alena asked.

  I nodded.

  “I saw him too.” Camille confirmed. “Maybe another herald?”

  “That would make sense.” Alena pointed out. “We each should have a herald.”

  “I’ve never seen that person in my life.” I looked between Alena and Camille.

  “I’d never met Jude before.” Camille’s eyes cut to Jude, her herald.

  “Let’s keep going.” Alena grabbed our hands.

  As we locked hands, an image of the sword, the one Theron and Thanatos had, appeared. A man wearing a tunic lifted his hand above the blade and seemed to be performing a spell. The sword started to glow red and floated up. A gust hit my face, and I squeezed Alena’s hand. With wind swirling around us, I started to wonder if the house was some type of portal and if we’d be swept into another dimension. I opened one eye and the wind died.

  “Focus.” Alena jostled my hand.

  I shut my lids, and the breeze picked up again. Blinding lights flashed through my brain, and three crosses stood on a hill. Affixed to the wooden crosses were men, bleeding from their hands and feet where they’d been nailed to the wooden structures. The man in the center wore a crown fashioned of thorns, and I realized who he was—Jesus. People milled around the base of the cross, some cheering, some in tears.

  In the vision, the sun traced across the sky as if I were watching a movie in fast forward. The crowds trickled away until just a few people were left at Jesus’ cross. A soldier pulled a dagger from his belt, reached up, and stabbed Jesus in the ribs. Water and then blood gushed from the wound. Longinus, I thought. Longinus pierced the side of Jesus.

  But his dagger wasn’t the same as the one Theron and Thanatos had. Alena and Camille dropped my hands.

  Alena’s eyes met mine and then cut to Camille. “The dagger… It’s not the right one. Theron and Thanatos don’t have the Lance of Longinus.”

  “The one they have looks like the one spelled by the guy in the first scene. Did you see him? The guy in the monk’s tunic?” I offered my palms to Alena and Camille.

  Camille placed her hand on top of mine. “St. Maurice. How did I know that? He seemed more like a warlock than a witch. We should keep going.”

  I laced my fingers in Alena’s. “We have to find out where the correct sword is.”

  The scene morphed into images of Longinus dropping to his knees, the lance falling from his hands, of soldiers trekking across plains and mountains. The sun set and rose, and we were plunged into darkness. Three pieces of the lance floated through the air, and fingers wrote upon parchment. The wind howled, and the building shook around us. I gripped Alena’s and Camille’s hands, praying the roof didn’t fall on us. A vacuum formed in front of me, all the air drawn to the space between us. Books shot into the circle and swooshed out the top, landing with thuds behind me. Then, one hovered before me, its pages blowing open. It dropped to the floor. I wondered if this was the one, the information we needed, but texts continued to swirl around us. Books flew past and out of my view.

  After hundreds, perhaps thousands, more texts passed me, and just when I started to wonder how long I could hold our magical connection, another book fell before my feet. As the chapters swirled around us, I clenched my eyes shut, focusing my energy. A large bang brought me out of my trance, and the room fell silent.

  I opened my eyes, expecting to see books ripped to shreds around us, but the stacks appeared the same as they did before. In front of me, three texts lay open in the center of the circle.

  “I think it worked.” I opened my palms.

  “I told you.” Alena dropped to her knees, inspecting the pages of the book in front of her.

  Squatting down, I slid the book beside me closer. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it to be in English. The pages were worn and soft, and the words archaic but legible. We skimmed the texts. They seemed to be written in journal form, and we decided to each take one and summarize for the others. Since Alena and Jude had photographic memories, they’d read each of them.

  My book started with the story of Longinus, how he came to believe in the Messiah when water poured from the laceration in Jesus’ chest and how the lance came to be revered as holy. Over the next hours, we each read one of the texts and charted the story of the lance. I worked through the pages, trying to memorize any information that might be needed later. Louis IX of France gathered many Christian relics on his crusade to the holy lands, and I learned he gained the point of the lance and enshrined it in the crown of thorns in Sainte Chapelle outside Paris. It was reported to have been moved to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

  “The point of the sword is at the Louvre,” I told them as I skimmed the last of the entries. “Or it was as of 1793. That’s where this ends.”

  “You finished reading that whole book?” Alena’s hands rested on her hips.

  “We only need the punch line.”

  “Good thing two of us have photographic memories.” Jude pulled the book to him.

  “It seems like the handle was enshrined in a pillar in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.” Alena held up her book.

  “I have information on a third piece. That must be why we saw three parts of the lance. The mid-portion should be here.” Camille pointed at a page. “St. Peter’s Cathedral is in Antioch, Turkey.”

  “Wow, we have our work cut out for us.” I reclined against the stack of books behind me.

  “Do either of those books say what St. Maurice’s sword does?” Alena strummed her fingers on the page.

  “We know it made Sonia immortal.” Camille paced. “It seemed like the souls of fallen witches held in purgatory combined or bonded with hers.”

  “If we find the pieces, reunite the Lance of Longinus, and break the curse, then there will be no more witch souls in Sheol for her to take power from. They’ll all be allowed to pass to Heaven, right?” I hoped this theory would hold.

  “Theoretically, I guess, except for the evil ones that should go to Hell?” Alena shrugged.

  “We only have our eighteenth year to get all the pieces and figure this out. Do the texts say anything about how to break the curse?”

  “Mine ends with the last known resting place of the one piece.” Alena slammed her book shut.

  “So, we still don’t know what we’re supposed to do with the
lance.” I stood and paced away.

  “Maybe once we get the pieces together, we’ll find the spell to break the curse.” Camille looked wide-eyed between us.

  “The poem. Recite the poem again, Jude.” I pointed at him.

  “In a land ringed by gods, an ancient city sleeps.

  The Alonso crest adorns a door, holding the Earth’s ancient lore.

  Their beauty surpassing all, a soulless people roam the earth.

  They know not love of God or man, but a forbidden creature holds fate.

  Younger still, an angelic breed, hold the balance of the creed.

  In their midst, children with three shining souls prepare a lance.”

  I swiveled to face the others. “So, we find the pieces and put them together. Keep going.”

  “Once laid out then nevermore, only he may open the door.

  Within the Book that lays the tale, the blade’s true master shall be restored.”

  “So, there is another person after we find the lance? Longinus, right? We thought the door was the door to this house, but what if it’s another door? And the poem only mentions one book, not three.” I circled behind them.

  “But maybe it’s not literal. Jude and I need to read each of the books cover to cover.” Alena took my book from Jude.

  Jude started on the text Camille read. After daybreak, when Chalondra and Orm woke, Camille and I briefed the old witches on our findings. With little to do but wait, I made breakfast and gathered my belongings in hopes that we’d attained the knowledge needed to start the next leg of our quest. I stacked our bags near the front door. Just as I’d finished, Alena shut the text she’d been reading.

  “We’re done. It’s all up here.” She pointed to her temple.

  The front doors flew open, and the rising sun blinded me. Alena grabbed my hand and pulled me to the entrance. I inched my arm over the threshold, testing the barrier.

  “That’s it! We’re free!” Alena jumped outside.