Fear of Mystics (Saga of Mystics Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

lashes, but bright, blue eyes that held her gaze intensely. This had to be the lady.
    “Are you…?” Peri began.
    “I am Annie Grace,” the woman answered, “Do you have a fantasy?”
    Peri dropped her gaze in a little embarrassment, but reached into jacket pocket and pulled out a small envelope.  “I do.” She said and handed across the envelope.
    Annie pulled something small, but beautiful, out of the envelope.  “Oh, what a wonderful choice.” The butterfly in her hand flapped its wings twice, but remained in her palm.  “Follow me into the hut.”
    They walked into the dark shack and Peri knew her life was about to change.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
                  “Open the gate              .” Andy said, though not particularly loudly.
                  The men on duty swung the gate wide, allowing him to cross back into the safe confines of their little town.  He led his horse by its bridle, walking next to her.  The snow shined bright in the morning sun, reminding him to put on sunglasses to protect against the glare.  The glare was brutal in the spring and early summer. He doubted there would be much more snow in the coming months, but Colorado always had a few snowstorms in June.
                  “General.” One of the guards said in a sort of greeting as Andy passed by.  Andy just nodded his head in response. For a year and a half, the men had called him General Andy Summers, just as Lord Marshall Eric Fine had ordered. Andy was the titular head of the fighting forces of the walled town of Manitou Springs, but he was really just a bandit lord and he knew that. He had once been an enlisted man in the United States Army.  After the Event and the Battle of Carson, he had been made the head of policing at the Compound, before it had burned to the ground through insurrection.  Rather than destroying him, Fine had made him the leader.  Andy did not enjoy this role.
                  Stopping to tie his horse to a hitching post in front of an old restaurant in the center of town, Andy considered the cost.  He had assumed following Fine was the answer in this new world, but instead, he had seen that it was lonely and demoralizing.  They had started with just over two hundred men.  Through sickness, battles, and desertion, they were down to seventy-eight.
                  The Lord Marshall was jogging at this time of the day. Andy knew his routine better than most.  He would be roaming the hills to the west.  The man never stopped his physical training, and continued to be in good shape in his late fifties.  He was in better shape than Andy, and Andy was only thirty. To his surprise, he heard the stomp-stomp of Eric’s feet on the pavement as the older man finished his run early.
                  “I miss my music,” the Lord Marshall said as he came close. “There was nothing better than tunes to accompany a good jog.”
                  Andy nodded his agreement.
                  “How was your scouting trip, General?” Eric asked.
                  “The usual,” Andy offered. “Scarce population, patrols north of the highway by the Council’s people, survivors’ camps and survivors’ markets are popping up.  It seems our bandits are not enough.”
                  Andy Summers did not say all that was on his mind. The Lord Marshall was noted for appreciating other points of view. Their existence, was barely that. They needed to do something new.
                  Eric nodded as he stretched. Almost as a side note, but also almost as if reading Andy’s mind, he added, “We may have to come up with new tactics.”
                  “Yes sir, just what I was thinking.” He couldn’t believe the slip. It had just burst out of his mouth, like he didn’t know to whom he was