Leviathan Read online

  Tales of the Were ~ Grizzly Cove

  Trident Trilogy 3

  Leviathan

  by

  Bianca D’Arc

  Copyright © 2022 Bianca D’Arc

  Hawk Publishing, LLC

  New York

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  www.biancadarc.com

  OFFICIAL BIANCA D’ARC NEWSLETTER

  Fully human, non-magical, but Special Forces to the core…

  Deke is the designated heir to an ancient legacy that he doesn’t fully understand. Being non-magical in a family of powerful water elementals hasn’t always been easy, but he loves his brothers and sister and will do anything to help them defeat the leviathan – including risk his own life to find and use a legendary magical artifact.

  A wood nymph with no real idea what she is…

  Magical and mysterious, Cece has lived alone on her mountaintop since she was eighteen and her parents were killed in a wreck. She doesn’t know much about the power that awakened within her, but she takes her role as guardian of her woodland home very seriously. When Deke asks to search her forest for Poseidon’s Trident, she watches from the shadows, fascinated by the most intriguing and ruggedly handsome man she’s ever met.

  Together, they will end the leviathan come hell or very high water…

  Pursued by enemies, they fly to Grizzly Cove, there to join forces with the others who have gathered to try to defeat the leviathan once and for all, including Deke’s entire family. He never expected to fall in love with a woman of power, but Deke knows – if he survives the battle to come – he will never love another. Cece is his fated mate, if a human can have such a thing, and he plans to ask her to marry him once the business of the leviathan is well and truly settled. With that kind of incentive, the leviathan won’t know what hit it.

  DEDICATION

  To my Dad, who has been gone for six months, now. I still miss him every day and think about him with love and respect. He was the best man I have ever known. The most honorable. The most honest. The most loyal…and the most loved.

  Special thanks to my editor, Jess, and my dear friend, Peggy, who both put up with a lot more typos than usual due to “air conditioner interference” (that’s what I’m calling it) with my dictation situation. You guys are awesome to put up with me and my technical silliness!

  Most of all, thanks to all of you who have stuck with me all this time. I’m glad you’re still here to read the payoff as I bring some of these storylines to a satisfying close. There’s more to come! I hope you’ll stick around for even more fun in my worlds. Love you guys!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Dance of the Dryad

  About the Author

  Other Books by Bianca D’Arc

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cecelia discovered her power by accident. Her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was just eighteen, and she was suddenly completely alone. No other family. No real friends because Cecelia’s family had moved to their little cabin in the woods only the month before. But as she grieved, she slowly became aware of the forest around her and the creatures that lived in it.

  She also felt a strange affinity for the trees, themselves. It was as if she could almost hear what the trees were thinking. She could tell when they were happy and, occasionally, when they were scared. Though, not much could scare a tree that had lived for hundreds of years.

  The first time she’d felt that fear coming off the woodland itself had been when a forest fire had been started by an inattentive camper. Cecelia had followed her instincts, not really understanding why or what she thought she could do against something so dangerous. But the trees drove her on. The heat created a wind that sighed through their leaves, urging her on until she found herself at the fire line. There was a scrubland the fire would have to traverse in order to reach the part of the forest she considered her own, because that’s where her house was located. She wasn’t sure what to do, and in her anxiety as she watched the fire draw closer, she reached out and pulled on something she didn’t quite understand.

  It wasn’t anything visible, but when she clenched her fists and tugged, the earth in front of her lifted and turned, smothering the fire in a broad swath. Cecelia gaped. Had she done that? She looked around to see if there was anybody else in this lonely stretch of forest who might have been somehow responsible. There wasn’t. She was alone but for the few animals that hadn’t already run away and the mighty giant trees behind her.

  Daring greatly, she focused on another section of the fire and tried that fist-clenching move again. It worked, but not as well, this time. Perhaps she was thinking too hard. She tried again, just allowing it to happen, as it had happened that first time. She shut her eyes and felt some kind of current running through her. Not like electric, but more like the sluggish flow of water, only it wasn’t wet. It was dry. As dry as dust, but not uncomfortable. She trusted in it to stop the fire.

  She remembered thinking that even if it was somehow bad for her and she would be harmed—possibly even die—from using whatever this was, if she could stop the fire and protect the forest that had sheltered her these past months, she would deem it a good bargain. She had been so alone and sad since her parents had died, with only the trees and the forest creatures to talk to after the lawyers had finished.

  Devastated and lonelier than she had ever been, she’d become a hermit, of sorts. She made quick trips down the mountain to town, just to get provisions. Otherwise, she lived off the land, making a little garden in her backyard and gathering edible plants from the woods. She knew a lot about herbs and plants, thanks to her mother, who had been a botanist.

  Her father had been a writer who had achieved some success with his books about elves that fought battles against evil in mysterious, imaginary lands. His most popular fantasy series had even been made into a video game. He had been the one who’d wanted to retreat into the seclusion of nature, and his wife had heartily agreed. With the proceeds of his success, he’d bought a large tract of land that had been slated for timber harvesting, saving it in the process. He’d built an eco-friendly home in a hidden grove and moved his family there.

  As long as he’d had a computer connection and solar power, he had been able to continue his work while her mother began her own long-planned scholarly work on the plants of the area. They’d been so happy, and the summer they’d moved here had been one of the best of Cecelia’s life. She’d graduated high school and happily moved with her parents. She had plans to begin college in the fall, but when her parents had been killed, she had cancelled those plans. There had been too much to do to settle the estate, and she had fallen into deep despair. No way could she have embarked on a college career at a time like that.

  No, she had needed to be in the family home. In the place where they had been so happy. Cecelia had needed to be surrounded by the woodlands that had welcomed the small family so beautifully. She felt safe there. She felt protected, in some way that she didn’t fully understand, and she had stayed in her father’s dream home, building a life for herself, as best she could.

  A few years later, Cecelia had received a college degree, but she had done the coursework completely online. She seldom left her mountaintop home. It was lonely up there, but it was also peaceful. The forest healed her sorrow, little by little, though she did miss the normal parts of growing up.

  Cecelia had dated a few boys in high school, but none seriously. She hadn’t really been all that attracted to those boys, and her mother had just said that, perhaps, she was a late bloomer. Her mother hadn’t been worried about it. She had said, with a shrug of her elegant shoulders, that Cecelia would probably meet someone she liked in college.

  But Cecelia hadn’t gone away to college. All those plans had been destroyed, utterly, by a rain-slicked road, an unexpected trip into town, and an out-of-control tractor-trailer. Cecelia had stayed home when her parents decided to do a grocery run late that fateful day. If she hadn’t wanted to fini
sh the chapter in the book she’d been reading, she would’ve been in the car with her parents. In all likelihood, she would have died with them.

  Cecelia still wasn’t sure if that wouldn’t have been better. Living without them these years had been incredibly difficult. Just when her life had been about to start, their lives had ended and derailed all the plans they had made for her future. She still wasn’t really sure what she was supposed to be doing with her life.

  Thankfully, her parents had left her well provided for. The house was hers, free and clear, as were the many acres of land surrounding it. There was plenty of money in the bank, and more coming in all the time from the royalties on her father’s books. She could afford to do many things, including move away from her mountain home, but she had no idea where to go. And leaving here—the one link she had left to her happy past with people who loved her—didn’t feel right.

  Maybe it would, sometime in the future, but it didn’t at the moment. Although, as the years went on, she was more willing to consider change. While change was still scary, in a way, she craved it. Why couldn’t it be like one of her father’s stories, where a handsome prince appeared from out of the blue to sweep her off her feet and change her life for the better?

  Cecelia laughed at the notion. Who was she kidding? She was completely isolated on a mountaintop surrounded by acres of trees on private property. No Prince Charming was coming all the way up here to find her. Yet, she couldn’t really see herself going down into town and finding a suitable gentleman of nobility there, either. Not that she was a snob. She was just carrying a metaphor, perhaps, a little too far.

  If she could find someone to love her, who she could love in return… Well…that was her fondest wish and, perhaps, her greatest fear. For that would change her life forever. It would change it into something unknown, and the unknown frightened her.

  Of course, the weird stuff she could do had also frightened her, when she had first started figuring it out. Halting the progress of the wildfire had been just the beginning. Over the intervening years, Cecelia had learned a lot about how she could influence the earth and growing things. She had startled herself more than once with the kinds of things she could do. She had experimented and tested her limits as best she could over the years and felt as if she had good control over the things she knew about, but every once in a while, when some new problem presented itself, she would feel the power inside her rise to a new level, and a new ability.

  At first, she had wondered if she was going out of her mind. Perhaps, in her grief, her mind had started playing tricks on her. But after stopping the wildfire, she had used the things her mother had taught her about scientific observation to test that ability to turn the earth. Her own findings had astounded her. If it was all some grand delusion, then so be it. After all, she was all alone out here on her mountaintop. If she was delusional, it wasn’t hurting anybody else.

  The longer she lived there, though, the more things she discovered she could do. She could make things grow. She could sense the thoughts of the trees in the forest as a whole. She always knew when the more dangerous creatures were around. The trees whispered of the bears and wolves and the occasional mountain lion and always told her where they were and how best to avoid conflict.

  Maybe she really was crazy. Maybe her father’s fantasy books had placed impossible ideas into her mind that had somehow become her own private reality. Maybe a psychiatrist would have a field day trying to figure her out.

  Or maybe it was all true. Maybe everything she thought she could do was real. It certainly seemed that way. She had stopped the wildfire. She had done so much more since then. She had appointed herself the guardian of this part of the forest. She looked after it as, she felt, it looked after her.

  She had even discovered a magical, mystical, hidden gem of a tree. A majestic giant Sequoia. An ancient forest giant that nobody else in the world seemed to know about. It was her tree. Her discovery. Her…friend.

  Hidden on the downslope of her mountain in a grove of other giant redwoods that had somehow escaped the notice of those people whose job it was to notice such things and catalog these protected species for future generations, the Redwood stood tall against the backdrop of a steep cliff in the mountainside. Perhaps that’s why nobody had seen it in all the years people had made lists of these thousand-year-old trees. Or maybe it was magic.

  Considering what she had discovered about her own abilities, Cecelia leaned more towards the magical explanation. For some reason, this special grove remained hidden from the eyes of men. Only she, and the animals in the area, frequented the spot.

  Cecelia would often go there to just lay down in the circle of ancient trees and enjoy the few rays of dappled sunlight that penetrated the heavy canopy. She would look up at the trees—the giant natural skyscrapers built by Mother Nature, Herself—and think about her lost family, the meaning of life, and her own small place in the universe. Sometimes, she would cry, and the dense carpet of the forest floor would soak up her tears and offer comfort while the trees bore witness to the love in her heart that had no place to go now that she was all alone on this plane of existence.

  She had the belief that her parents were out there somewhere, watching over her, but it wasn’t the same. Still, it gave her hope that, someday, they would be reunited in some other realm where they could all be happy again.

  That hidden grove was her special cathedral. It was her place to commune with God, or the Great Spirit, or Mother Nature. Whatever one chose to call the divine, she felt closest to it in that special place. Closest to her own not-fully-understood magical nature. Closest to the earth and trees that were her only friends.

  *

  Deke Morrow approached the log cabin, eager to see the old friends who lived there. Mr. and Mrs. Wulf had been neighbors to the Morrow family when Deke and his younger brothers and sister were children. Mrs. Wulf had babysat for the younger children from time to time, and when it had become apparent that Deke’s half-brothers and sister had special needs of the magical variety, the Wulfs hadn’t batted an eye. As it turned out, the couple were actually werewolves.

  They had been the first shapeshifters Deke had ever met, and they had indulged his curiosity, teaching him all about their kind. Or at least as much as he was permitted to know. Which, it turned out, was a lot. Because even though his family was not the same, they were still highly magical, and the shifters respected his stepfather a great deal.

  The couple had retired to the outskirts of a sleepy mountain village in northern California but stayed in touch with Deke’s father and mother. Deke hadn’t seen the Wulfs in years and was looking forward to renewing his acquaintance with them both.

  The screen door to the cabin opened, and Mr. Wulf came out, looking almost as if he hadn’t aged in those intervening years. Deke was well aware that magical folk aged differently, sometimes, than regular human beings, but it still took him aback somewhat. Millie Wulf was right behind her husband and still had that same motherly smile on her face as she came right up to Deke and hugged him tight.

  For a moment, he was transported back to his childhood. Mr. and Mrs. Wulf had played a large part in his younger years. They’d helped him understand so much about the magical world that he and his mother had joined when his mother had married the admiral.

  “Dear Derek, how are you?” Millie Wulf cupped his cheeks in her hands and looked into his eyes. She was a bit shorter than him now that he was grown up, but he still felt like a cherished child when she treated him like one of her own. It was a surprisingly nice feeling.

  “I’m fine, Mrs. Wulf. You’re looking as lovely as ever.”

  She released him and stood back, her husband coming up beside her. He was still as tall and imposing as always, a few inches taller than Deke.

  “Derek, it’s good to see you, my boy,” Mr. Wulf said with a friendly grin as he held out his hand. Deke took it and was drawn into a back-pounding one-armed hug.

  “Good to see you too, Mr. Wulf. Thanks for being willing to help with this,” Deke said as he drew back from the hug. These people were so great. Deke had always liked the Wulfs, and that hadn’t changed now that he was a grown man.