Evil Abounds: An Alpha Guardians Prequel Read Online Free

all he could see was white. Pure, formless, endless white. He looked down, and he could see himself perfectly well, but all else was insubstantial and blank.
    For a moment, Rhys couldn’t help but think that an arrow had taken him by surprise, hit him in the neck and killed him in an eye’s blink. This endless white, then, was purgatory. He’d wait here until he was sent to hell, the sentence he deserved for ruining his clan, turning his back on his people in his quest for glory and excitement.
    “Rhys.” A woman’s voice, her accent unlike any Rhys had ever heard. Not Scots, Irish, or English. Not even French, which Rhys had heard a few times. Mayhap Italian or German; he’d heard such people had strange ways of speaking. But why would a German be speaking to him in purgatory? Perhaps an Italian, like Dante?
    Turning slowly, Rhys was astonished to find a very wee woman standing a stone’s throw from him. She was so foreign as to puzzle him, her skin so dark from the sun that she was brown as a river rock from head to toe. She wore a strange, formfitting blue gown, her glossy midnight hair braided close to her head. Her feet were bare, and she wore no jewelry or plaid, nor any other mark of her clan. She was not young, despite her dark hair, yet she was not quite old and wizened either. Ageless, in a way that made Rhys aware of her inhumanity.
    “Rhys,” she said again, over-pronouncing his name, so it sounded less guttural, like Reece. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
    “Aye,” he said, watching her with baited breath.
    “I am Mere Marie,” she said slowly.
    “Am I dead, then?” he asked, looking around at the vast whiteness around him once more.
    “Oh,” Mere Marie said, looking surprised. “No, but I’ve a feeling that you’re not far from it, present circumstances considered.”
    Rhys took a few moments to parse her oddly-accented words, then nodded.
    “Aye, I suppose,” he agreed. “My people are in grave danger. I need to get back to them.”
    Mere Marie waved a hand.
    “Worry not, their world out there is… let us say, paused, for the moment. Nothing will happen without you.”
    Rhys merely cocked his head, trying to understand why… how… where he was.
    “I see I’m not making things better,” Mere Marie said, her copper eyes flashing with something akin to amusement. “I am here to save your people, your…”
    “Clan,” Rhys filled in when she hesitated.
    “Yes. I want to make a bargain,” she said.
    Rhys stilled.
    “So you’re the devil, then,” he concluded, shocked by his own lack of surprise. She was fetching, in a manner, and exotic.
    “No!” Mere Marie said, clearly startled. “No, no devil. I work on what you might consider to be the other side of the equation.”
    Rhys puzzled that out.
    “You’re an angel? You work for God?”
    The peculiar woman flinched, then shook her head again.
    “No. But I’m closer to an angel than a devil. Today, at least.”
    Rhys decided to take that statement at face value, turning back to her earlier words.
    “You spoke of a bargain,” he said.
    “Yes. I can save your clan, if you wish. I can destroy Angus MacGregor, make him sorry he ever threatened your people."
    Rhys narrowed his gaze.
    "I'm not sure how you'd do that. The MacGregors are stubborn bastards. Even if you did, my people have nothing to go back to now. The village is burned."
    Mere Marie canted her head, considering. After a moment, she waved her hand to indicate the vast whiteness surrounding them.
    "You have seen that I have power. I can change things, go back before the MacGregors first attacked your clan. If that is your wish."
    Something in her tone made Rhys question her motive.
    "And what of the cost? I gather that your help is not without some reciprocation."
    Mere Marie gave him a calculating look, then nodded.
    "It's true, there is something I want. Your service back in my... land," she said. Rhys could sense that she was choosing her words very carefully.