Hooded Read online

  Hooded

  Book One

  A. A. Woods

  Marduk Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 A. A. Woods

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-951803-04-9

  Cover design by: Alrun Maget, Instagram @alrun.art

  Map designed by Oscar Paludi (Exoniensis)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  Map of Ferren

  Prologue: The Woman in Red

  Chapter One: Ghost Eyes

  Chapter Two: Love Lost

  Chapter Three: A Duty to the Order

  Chapter Four: Lethal Questions

  Chapter Five: Hidden Claws

  Chapter Six: Tuleaux

  Chapter Seven: Homesick

  Chapter Eight: Princes and Queens

  Chapter Nine: The Man From the Sky

  Chapter Ten: Trust Fall

  Chapter Eleven: In the Shadow of Trees

  Chapter Twelve: Diversion

  Chapter Thirteen: Beetlespeaker

  Chapter Fourteen: Red Lost, Red Found

  Chapter Fifteen: The Furix

  Chapter Sixteen: Signals and Stories

  Chapter Seventeen: The Hanging City

  Chapter Eighteen: Opportunity

  Chapter Nineteen: What Could Have Been

  Chapter Twenty: Nurkaij Strikes

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Resupply Ship

  Chapter Twenty-Two: A Long Way to Travel

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Goodbyes

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Return to Jemelle

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Into Darkness

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Enemy of My Enemy

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Old Stories

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Red Snow

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: To Die With Honor

  Chapter Thirty: Discovery

  Chapter Thirty-One: A Shared Horizon

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Ocean Eyes

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Sacrifice

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Grand Plans

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Carnage

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Queen of Nothing

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: By Ground and Sky

  Epilogue: Eylon’s Curse

  Glossary of Terms

  Thanks for reading!

  Vagabonds Teaser

  Books By This Author

  Author's Note

  This book has been in production, in some way or another, for almost five years.

  It was one of the first ideas I had as a shiny, fresh-faced writer committing to the craft, eager to join the illustrious ranks of YA authordom. It was the fifth novel I finished, but the first one I really thought was good. Then, when I tore it down and rewrote it from the ground up, it got better. And now, after multiple beta reads, dozens of rejections, endless careful rewrites, and lots of blood, sweat, and tears, here it is, in your hands at last.

  And I couldn’t be more excited.

  If you’ve checked out my other books, you’ll know I like to create both funny, adventurous romps and dark, brooding tales of war and struggle. At the time of writing this introduction, I’ve published one of each type (Vagabonds being the former; The Star Siren the latter). Hooded, however, sits squarely in the middle, refusing to be slotted into either category. It’s at once dark and adventurous; somber and snarky. The world you are about to enter is violent, dangerous, full of rage and pain and human malevolence. But (I hope) it is also exciting, romantic, and, most importantly, fun. In the blurb, I promise myths and monsters.

  I did my absolute best to deliver.

  All this is meant to say that I poured everything I had into making the book in your hands as awesome as possible. I know it won’t be for everyone (nothing ever is), but should you end up enjoying this strange, ferocious, heartfelt voyage of a story, I’d love to hear from you! If you catch the hints of Little Red Riding Hood, love Carlette as much as I do, or appreciate the blend of Revenant-style bleakness and YA excitement, please reach out to me on my website, Facebook, or write a review to share your thoughts. I read everything readers say and will incorporate all of it into future stories to make more of what you enjoy!

  Finally, I’d like to say thank you. Thank you for taking a chance and picking up this book. Thank you for reading this far (and hopefully further). And thank you, always, for getting excited about the weird stuff that comes out of authors’ brains. If not for tolerant readers, we’d definitely all be insane by now.

  You’re the true magic here.

  So, without further ado, here is Hooded…

  Map of Ferren

  Downloadable color version available to subscribers at aawoodsbooks.com.

  Prologue: The Woman in Red

  Ina shivered against the cold stone of the mountain caves, knees aching from where the rebels had dropped her. She shuddered, cringed against the sound of bodies being dragged over rock. As the blindfold cut into the sides of her face, harsh voices chattered in the unintelligible languages of the Ferrenese tribes, words thrown over her like volleys of gunfire. Arguing, commanding, questioning.

  Celebrating.

  Something snagged on Ina’s cape, yanking the coarse fabric tight against her neck. Suddenly, her nostrils filled with the pungent body odor of the Collector she had been assigned to defend, mingled with the crisp, metallic scent of blood. Ina cried out and tried to pull away, but her bound hands and feet slipped on mud and slush. Laughter echoed in the cave, cruel blades of sound cutting through Ina’s courage like swooping raptors.

  “Is the little girl afraid of dead men?” whispered a voice somewhere over her head. It was harsh and strangely hypnotic in its accented Delarese. Ina tried to roll away, but a sharp-nailed hand curled over her face, pressing it into the snow. “But that cannot be, for you leave enough dead men behind you to fill armies. Maybe you are just afraid to meet your gods, little girl, knowing that this island would have been better off if you’d never been born.”

  “That’s fresh, coming from you,” Ina spat.

  The hand disappeared, leaving Ina to squirm away and sputter against the sludge coating the side of her face.

  “This one has spirit,” said the woman, her coarse voice harmonizing with shifting stone, padded footsteps.

  She was greeted by the eerie chuckling of a bloodthirsty crowd.

  Ina tried to control her breathing, but somewhere deep within the abandoned mining tunnel, she could hear a ragged, cavernous snarl. Fear twisted her gut, fluttering and wild.

  Please, no, Ina thought desperately as one of the mountain stags whinnied. Anything but that.

  “It is time,” called the woman.

  Silence fell over the cave, broken only by the clatter of hooves and the breathing of enormous beasts.

  Calloused hands grabbed Ina’s shoulders, yanking her to her knees. One jerked her crimson hood back as another held her upright. Cold steel pressed against her spine, a painful, silent threat in case she tried to use her power against them.

  Ina lifted her chin to face whatever horrors these rebels had in store.

  Gentle fingers removed her blindfold, even more terrifying for their incongruous tenderness.

  As the fabric fell away, Ina had to fight the urge to shudder. She was surrounded by enemies—wild faces that glared at her with so much hate it felt like a physical force. Hair braided with leather and fur, tattooed faces p
ainted in blood, surrounded by the rusting iron contraptions of an abandoned mining cave, these rebels looked like the ghosts of a world that had passed them by.

  Behind them, mountain stags tossed their heads and gnashed their fangs, straining to reach the corpses of Ina’s traveling partners. Clumped into one corner were the five Raebus women Ina had been transporting over the Wandering Pass, their red hair wild and pale skin flushed.

  And there, crouching in front of Ina, was the monster herself.

  Ina had heard enough about the Bloody Paws ringleader to recognize the twisted smile and ice-white dreadlocks.

  “You,” Ina snarled, hating the tremor in her voice.

  Yokan cocked her head, dreadlocks shifting to reveal the bleeding paw tattoo on her right cheek.

  “My brothers and sisters say I should kill you. They don’t believe you deserve a second chance, after serving as Delasir’s pet dog. They think you half-breeds are a plague we must wipe from our home.”

  Ina clenched her jaw, shaking all over as she glared into the woman’s eyes. They glinted with the kind of savage energy that Ina had only ever seen in beasts.

  She saw no mercy in their depths.

  “But I disagree,” Yokan continued. “I think that all creatures in this world deserve a second chance.”

  “What about the others?” Ina snarled.

  Yokan only smirked.

  The bodies scattered around the cave pulsed with echoing violence. The Bloody Paws had hit Ina’s convoy with no warning, silent as owls, malignant as a winter storm. The lookout had given them just enough time to assemble before the enormous fanged stags crashed into the Pass, killing their guards right away. Ina had stood before the stolen women, arms thrown wide, but there were too many and they were too vicious and Ina….

  She had failed. In the critical moment when her mind had slipped into the hounds, one of the rebels launched a rock from her sling, knocking Ina senseless.

  Grand Mera would have been ashamed.

  Ina leaned forward, fighting terror as she glared at the Bloody Paw leader.

  “You didn’t offer my companions a second chance,” she said, straining to keep her voice calm.

  “They didn’t deserve one,” Yokan replied, gesturing at the bodies. “Colonists. Merchants. What need do I have for such worms? They are with Hyba now.”

  “What about the others you’ve killed? What about the other hoods who have magic in their blood, just like you!”

  “Not like me, child,” purred the woman, tucking a loose strand of Ina’s hair behind her ear. There was blood caked under Yokan’s nails. Ina fought the urge to retch. “Not like me. They are corrupted, bound by your laws. Tame. Do you think I am tame?”

  Ina curled one lip. “You’re a monster.”

  The woman shook her head.

  “You people. Anything free and beautiful you call ugly. Dangerous. Monster. You don’t even try to understand. But I will give you a chance.”

  Yokan rose to her feet, sinuous and graceful. There was a rustling as the Bloody Paws shifted. Ina’s eyes were drawn to one young woman, short and dark-haired with a smile as malevolent as pain itself. The rebel’s fierce eyes were arresting, the white ring around her pupils standing out in stark relief to her near-black irises.

  Yokan threw her arms out and Ina’s attention snapped back.

  “I am looking for someone, little girl,” Yokan said, her voice settling fog-like over the cave. “Someone important, who was lost to me when I was no older than you are now. My niece, in whose veins runs the blood of Voka, the great wolf-rider.”

  “If they had anything to do with that witch, they’re long dead,” Ina said, her heart skittering against her ribcage as she met Yokan’s eyes. “The king assigns an entire battalion of hoods to hunt down Voka’s descendants.”

  “Oh, I think not. Because you see, my sister was traced to Tuleaux. She made it beyond your walls right before her birthing time. And what do they do with babies ripped from their mother’s arms in that seething pit you call a city?” Yokan lifted the edge of Ina’s crimson hood, running it between her fingers with a leering smile. “They turn them into you.”

  “The baby would still have been killed,” Ina insisted, as if she might talk sense into this wild creature in human skin. “Children with uncertain genealogies are destroyed.”

  A seething mutter whispered around the cave.

  Yokan’s smile didn’t falter.

  “You underestimate my sister, little girl,” said the rebel leader, hand moving to Ina’s neck where the anchor tattoo marked Ina as property of the king. Ina tried to lean away but Yokan’s fingers pinched into the skin of her shoulder, holding her close.

  Yokan’s eyes were huge, the white ring around her pupils dancing with excitement.

  “She would be about your age. And any descendant of Voka would never be less than a Prederaux,” Yokan said, tugging on Ina’s red hood again.

  “I was born in the Convent,” Ina said, voice breaking. “My father was a merchant from Beraselle. You can see for yourself I’m no Ebonal.”

  Ina tried to wrench her shoulder out of the woman’s claws, but Yokan only tightened her grip and pulled the young woman closer.

  “Prove you are my niece and I will spare your life.”

  “And if I’m not?”

  “Then you are of no use to me.”

  A hum of hysteria was filling Ina’s brain, clouding her thoughts. She tried to reach out with her mind, find a predator to bend to her will. To work the magic of enhabitation. But, with a gesture from Yokan, the steel pressed harder against her neck, making Ina’s stomach roll.

  “You can’t do this! Who do you think you are?” Ina snarled, eyes watering with pain as warm blood trickled down her back. “I am property of the king!”

  The woman peered down at Ina with a ferocious smile, teeth sharp, white hair reflecting the firelight and throwing her face into dark relief.

  “And I am Yokan, blessed by Voka, leader of the Bloody Paws. Under my name, this land will become free once more.” She straightened. “Bring her.”

  Strong hands dragged Ina towards the back of the tunnel. Ina threw out desperate, pleading looks, as if some scrap of hope might be caught against the jagged edges of the cave. But all she found were the hostile expressions of the Bloody Paws and the confused, frightened eyes of the girls she’d been assigned to protect.

  Ina cried out as her bruised knees hit the rusted tracks of a mining car. She wriggled against the rebels’ grasp, but it was no use. Their hands were as strong as Delasir steel.

  As they turned a corner, that savage growling seemed to fill the air, a sound so deep and menacing it might have been the mountain itself speaking to them. It was rippling up from a black pit, a gaping maw in the rear of the cave. Ina stopped struggling, her mind stretching, finding a power so vast and beyond her control that to brush against it felt like holding fire.

  She tried to catch a rock with her bound feet, to stop her inexorable path to the pit’s edge, but she couldn’t. The men yanked her forwards and suddenly she was staring into an abyss, broken by the gleam of white fur.

  Ina couldn’t stop the whimper that slipped through her clenched teeth.

  It was an Amonoux, a Great Wolf, the most fearsome creature of Ferren. Glowering up at them with all seven of its iridescent eyes, the wolf’s white fur bristled as it bared its fangs. It was easily twice the size of a horse, maybe more, and the gray tip of its tail indicated that it was still a juvenile. Thick ropes were wrapped around its neck, caked with dried blood as they kept the beast half-strangled. Kept it from howling for its pack.

  Ina would have felt sympathy if her fear had left any room.

  She’d never seen an Amonoux before. She’d heard stories, of course, and she’d been a child when the pack had flowed down from the mountains, seeking food after a long, hard winter and finding easy prey outside the gates of Tuleaux. But now, seeing one of the giant beasts in person, Ina felt her chest constrict and her
courage flicker like a blown candle. The people of Ferren claimed that each pair of eyes saw a different layer of the world and the seventh, a glittering jewel placed right between the creature’s ears, saw souls. The ultimate source of the Amonoux power. Their true sustenance.

  But, of course, no one had looked through the Great Wolf’s eyes since Voka herself.

  Yokan stepped aside, peering down at the slavering beast like a mother gazing at her child.

  “This is my test,” Yokan said as Ina tried to breathe against the iron bands of terror constricting around her ribs. “Prove that you are the Furix. Stop the wolf.”

  “I can’t,” Ina said, too frightened to keep the pleading out of her voice. “You know I can’t. I’ve never been trained with one, I don’t have a connection!”

  “Make one,” Yokan said.

  “It’s illegal! They would execute me for even thinking of it!”

  “Do you think I care about the backwards laws of your city?”

  “Please,” Ina shrieked as the men pulled her upright, hoisting her into the air so that her numb toes barely brushed the ground. “I’m not a Furix! I’m not that powerful!”

  “Then ask forgiveness, child, for soon you will face Hyba, and she does not forget.”

  Ina screamed and kicked out. Frantically, too desperate to worry about taboo, she tried to enhabit the rebels, to slip into their minds and stop this barbarism. But the knife pricked her spine. Distracted her. She fell against the men’s defenses like water on rock.

  For a moment Ina dangled over nothingness, a chasm filled by the ferocious, vibrating growl of the young wolf. Ina’s breath caught; her frenzied eyes found Yokan’s.

  And then she fell, the air whistling against her cold skin.

  Ina landed hard. Her knees crumpled. Her body fell with a heavy thud. Acidic pain pumped through her veins, aggregating around one shin. A snapped bone. Ina’s breath flew out of her in an agonized rush, as if to abandon a doomed body.