Hi All,
Happy Thanksgiving,
I’ll be back working on Blood on the Mountain tomorrow. It’s the fourth, and last? book in the Blood Justice series of contemporary vampire thrillers. After that I’ll be working full time on Windhaven. Post by post.
Please check out Girl at Sea. You’ll like it.
For more about my other books and stories Go Here.
WHAT Ifs–
What if you were a God
and you found out that your wife, a goddess more powerful than you, was having an affair with a mortal, a sorcerer no less. You had to be careful, the god council had already censured you for your unforgiving conduct toward mortals. You decide to go after the sorcerer, but he’s a bit more powerful than you thought. And your wife is suddenly being very nice to you. She suggests you and she go on a vacation together to a little out of the way place of your godly world. You readily agree, but when you get there you begin to think maybe it wasn’t such a good idea….
What If a sort of down and out guy gets out of prison and goes into a bar. There he meets a Femme Fatal 
who has a plan if he’ll go along, money and her. All he has to do is help her kill her husband. Of course he agrees. She arranges for him to get into her house, quite a mansion, at night. He gets in and heads to the study where he finds her dead. Her husband, a judge who got him out so he could kill the wife, has killed her. Now he plans to kill the guy and blame him fore the murder. But the guy is not as dumb as he acts. He gets away. Now what, his only options are run or figure a plan to ruin the judge, and get the money he’s owed.
To start Windhaven at the beginning Go Here
Windhaven 19
Dirty gray cottonball clouds rolled toward them from the West. One didn’t have to be a weatherman to know a storm approached. Already the wind and waves announced the coming tempest.
Noah and Leigh each breathed deep and set about doing what they needed to do. They had to put away their concern about Thomas, Red and Alain and take care of the boat, without it, nobody survived.
The approaching weather allowed no time to climb the mast and set up permanent rigging. Leigh tied a small block to some eighth inch line and threw it over one of the spreaders. Noah retrieved the block and used the small line to pull up a larger line. They repeated the action with the same block over the other spreader, keeping a loop in the middle. To that loop they attached a larger block with heavier line and raised that to the spreaders. With that in place they raised a small storm sail.
Now they had some speed that would enable them to have some control of the boat. Without control, even though they had steering capability, Windhaven would likely be forced sideways to the waves, or broach, or she’d equally likely be knocked down, with the mast horizontal, the top in the water. The boat and crew were much less likely to recover from that.
The end of the race. Period.
In full foul weather gear and a thermal mug of coffee, Leigh took the first watch as the sun set behind them. Wave heights grew quickly – ten, fifteen, twenty feet. As the wind increased the waves became steeper and closer together. The small sail gave Windhaven some speed and maneuverability. Leigh used that to keep stern on to waves doing their best to capsize and sink them all.
Once she got the rhythm of it her mind was free to wander a bit. Harvey captured her thoughts. She could use his warmth and touch as night fell like a door slammed shut.
Leigh met Harvey Roberts at a going away party for Harvey and his team the night before they left for a one month trek to Patagonia. Harvey owned Climek, a hiking-climbing equipment manufacturer. He loved to test his own equipment.
A friend, who was a complete homebody, said Leigh would meet other crazy adventurers there.
Theirs was a classic movie cute meet. Leigh was not listening to a ho-hum story about getting caught in the rain a mile from home. She noticed him across the room, staring out a large window. She knew exactly what he was thinking – Let me out of here. A loud laugh drew his attention. He turned and saw her staring at him.
Their eyes caught. He smiled, amused. She smiled, shrugged – What are you going to do? He cocked his head, sent her a crooked smile. The deal was done.
Or not.
The crowd blocked her view. She had to move clockwise to get around the hall to him. Harvey did the same thing. Neither found the other – Guess they weren’t interested. They wandered to the bar for a forget-about-him-or-her-drink. They ran into each other’s smiles. Okay, maybe they were interested.
The next morning Harvey left on his trek. When he returned, Leigh was on a sailboat halfway across the Atlantic. They did get together, off and on, long enough to get married.
Just the thought of snuggling in bed with him warmed her, despite the cold-ass waves breaking over her. It helped her endure.
Noah did not sleep much. He expected to hear that roar, the sudden cut off of the wind, and the sudden rise of the boat as another monster wave tried to finish what that first one started. An uneasy sleep finally overcame him, but it did nothing to calm his fears.
He was on watch. He heard the growing roar of water mounting into a huge wave. The biggest ever. The stern rose and rose and rose until Windhaven’s bow pointed straight down. Noah cranked the wheel left right left right, hoping to break the waves hold on the boat and pass underneath. The tactic didn’t work and Windhaven fell down the impossible wall of water into an impossibly deep trough.
Tethered to the boat, Noah had seconds to decide whether to unclip his lifeline and live a few minutes longer on the surface or stay attached and allow Windhaven to drag him under and die a slightly quicker death.
Though the boat was vertical he still stood behind the wheel, boots planted to the deck. Windhaven’s bow speared the black water. In slow motion, Noah watched the dark water swallow the seventy-foot boat, dragging him along.
The cold water paralyzed him. He held his breath, attempting to stave off that inevitable icy intrusion down his throat. Looking up, the wave seemed to be frozen in place, waiting for him to drown.
He looked down into the depths. Fish circled, waiting for him. Big fish, ugly fish, hungry fish with needle teeth and a red glint in their eye.
But then a light appeared. A fish? A big, bright fish? A person? A mermaid? Linda, a mermaid? She reached out, took his hand. “Come with me, Noah. I can save you.” Her naked upper body emitted a soft luminescence, her lower scales were a swirl of green, blue and yellow. An angel?
Somehow, he was untethered from Windhaven. He looked down, saw bodies float out of the companionway – Leigh, Red, Thomas, Alain, Larry. Each one extending an arm, an accusing finger.
“Come, Noah. Forget them.”
He turned to her, so good to see her. He couldn’t wait to hold her, feel her warmth again. He glanced up at the surface could he hold his breath long enough get there?
But she didn’t pull him up, she dragged him down. Her beautiful smile had become a needle-toothed grimace, blonde hair now black and tangled, her multicolored tail became a dull black and red and orange.
“Come on, Noah,” she said with a mock cheer. “You drove the boat and crew right down into the water. You deserve to be with them, sinking down down down into the mouths of those deep, dark monsters.” She yanked him close, face to face. “Don’t worry, it will hurt.”
“No,” he screamed. “I tried to save them. I didn’t want to hurt them. I….” Like an icy blade water forced its way down his throat as he sunk toward the waiting monsters.
“No!” Noah thrashed in his bunk, “No, Linda no.”
A wave smacked Windhaven, shaking him awake. His denials died in his throat. His heart thumped in sync with his rapid breathing. His eyes popped open. After a few minutes he settled back and wondered what Linda was doing.
David Burton's What if? And Novel Writing Blog 