The Dark Messiah (The Second Dark Ages Book 1) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Legal

  Social Links

  Series List

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  DEDICATION

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  The Dark Messiah

  The Second Dark Ages 01

  Beta Editor / Readers

  Bree Buras (Aussie Awesomeness)

  Tom Dickerson (The man)

  Sf Forbes (oh yeah!)

  Dorene Johnson (US Navy (Ret) & DD)

  Dorothy Lloyd (Teach you to ask…Teacher!)

  T S (Scott) Paul (Author)

  Diane Velasquez (Chinchilla lady & DD)

  JIT Beta Readers

  Brent Bakken

  Heath Felps

  Michael Horgan

  Thomas Ogden

  Michael Pendergrass

  Melissa Ratcliffe

  Hari Rothsteni

  Keith Seymour

  Warren Wheeler

  If I missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editors

  Stephen Russell

  Kat Lind

  Thank you to the following Special Consultants

  for The Dark Messiah

  Jeff Morris - US Army - Asst Professor Cyber-Warfare, Nuclear Munitions (Active)

  Heath Felps - US Navy CPO (Active)

  The Dark Messiah (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright (c) 2016 Michael T. Anderle

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Version 1.0

  Want more?

  Join the email list here:

  http://kurtherianbooks.com/email-list/

  Join the Facebook Group Here:

  https://www.facebook.com/TheKurtherianGambitBooks/

  The email list is changing to something…New. I don’t have enough details but suffice to say there is so much going on in The Kurtherian Gambit Universe, it needs to go out more often than “when the next book hits.”

  I hope you enjoy this story!

  Michael Anderle - Dec 23, 2016.

  Kurtherian Gambit Series Titles Include:

  First Arc

  Death Becomes Her (01) - Queen Bitch (02) - Love Lost (03) - Bite This (04)

  Never Forsaken (05) - Under My Heel (06) Kneel Or Die (07)

  Second Arc

  We Will Build (08) - It’s Hell To Choose (09) - Release The Dogs of War (10)

  Sued For Peace (11) - We Have Contact (12) - My Ride is a Bitch (13)

  Don’t Cross This Line (14)

  Third Arc (Due 2017)

  Never Submit - Jan 2017 (15) - Never Surrender (16) - Forever Defend (17)

  Might Makes Right (18) - Ahead Full (19) - Capture Death (20)

  Life Goes On (21)

  **New Series**

  The Second Dark Ages

  The Dark Messiah (01)

  The Boris Chronicles

  * With Paul C. Middleton *

  Evacuation

  Retaliation

  Revelation Dec 2016

  Restitution 2017

  Reclaiming Honor

  * With JUSTIN SLOAN *

  Justice Is Calling (01)

  Claimed By Honor (02)

  Jan 2017

  The Etheric Academy

  * With TS PAUL *

  ALPHA CLASS (01) Dec 2016/Jan 2017

  ALPHA CLASS (02) Feb/Mar 2017

  ALPHA CLASS (03) May/June 2017

  Terry Henry “TH” Walton Chronicles

  * With CRAIG MARTELLE *

  The Terry Henry Walton Chronicles

  A Kurtherian Gambit Series

  Book 1 – Nomad Found (Out)

  Book 2 – Nomad Redeemed (Jan 2017)

  Book 3 - Nomad Unleashed (2017)

  Book 4 - Nomad Supreme (2017)

  SHORT STORIES

  Frank Kurns Stories of the Unknownworld 01 (7.5)

  You Don’t Mess with John’s Cousin

  Frank Kurns Stories of the Unknownworld 02 (9.5)

  Bitch’s Night Out

  Frank Kurns Stories of the Unknownworld 03 (13.25)

  BELLATRIX (With Natalie Grey)

  Anthologies

  Glimpse

  Honor in Death

  (Michael’s First Few Days)

  Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy's Edge

  Tabitha’s Vacation

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Etheric Dimension

  The numbness was ever present. The darkness a cocoon of protection for Michael against the pain of remembering.

  The guilt building up over the days, weeks, months, years and decades of selfishly resting in the knowledge which pleasured his soul. The time his consciousness flared to life, but his physical body not yet complete.

  She was out there.

  Michael’s connection to her feeding the emotional craving that his heart needed to be filled.

  Until the pain.

  The pain he felt through the connection within the womb of Etheric energy his body was using to repair itself.

  His eyes snapped open to see nothing, clearly. Then, the Grayness, a void, as he turned his head first left, then right, as his eyes adjusted and focused. Finally, he looked down at this body. He frowned, he was naked as the day he was born.

  Worse, he was hairless.

  He slowly stood, feeling the little crystals that had been clinging to his back evaporate. He was, he admitted as he turned, looking in all directions, clueless.

  The shock of pain that had jolted him from his mental stupor was receding into the grayness itself.

  Was the pain real, or had he imagined it? Michael stood in the mist and waved his hand through it. Like a fog on the New England coastline, it swirled in the light. Neither transparent nor solid, it merely created eddies of diffusion. Candy to his eyes.

  He frowned. Like the calories from candy, they didn’t help him one damned bit.

  He turned around and considered what he remembered from the dreams, from the nightmares.

  His eyes drew together into a mask of concentration. Piecing together the remnants of a time before his sleep, his eyes flashed once, twice, then three times red and on their third time they stayed red.

  Now, the fog in front of Michael swirled, the glow from his eyes merging with the area around him, pushing the new color into the gray.

  He turned his head, his mind seeking back to the time, the time when life wasn’t strictly Honor, Responsibility, and Loneliness.

  The time of when his life changed due to the woman. The woman he still felt, in his soul, the connection he shared with her strong here in this … He looked around, this Etheric Dimension. He had been here before.

  With her.

  She had…has, he corrected, black hair and a sharp tongue.

  He smiled, the first time in how long he couldn’t know. Her name would come back to him. He did remember her sarcastic, and occasionally caustic, verbal skills.

  She was a fighter! She was the one... the one who had made him desire to live again, and now a second time she brought him back from being a dead man, living.

  Michael started walking, taking determined steps unerringly towards where he needed to get out of this dimension and return to Earth.

  He had a promise to keep. While he might not remember the details, he was sure he wasn’t going to accomplish his promise in this place.

  No, he needed to step out into the world of the humans again and find her.

  His sense of honor demanded it.

  Michael slowed his walk, feeling the rightness of the location he had come upon as being the entrance he had used so long ago to escape the pain. Now, he needed to figure out how to leave this dimension.

  His eyes flashed brightly a fourth time, a glee written in the shadows that fell on his face.

  Her name was Bethany Anne.

  South of Douglas Mountain, old Colorado (United States Post-Apoc)

  Jeremiah kicked the horse in the shanks, “Ktch ktch, let’s go, Black,” he spoke as he and the horse left the shallow stream and climbed up out of its bed to the rise above.

  It was just twelve feet up.

  It hadn’t been much cover, but it had been enough to hide Jeremiah as
he and Black walked down the stream bed, so it had been enough for him. Better to be proactive, than dodging gunfire from those here in the Fallen Lands.

  Five minutes later, he pulled on the reins and put a hand on the horse's shoulder, “Still, stay still.” He had finally caught on to why Black had been nervous for the last minute.

  He loosened the gun in its holster, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t a shooting discussion. “You know,” he spoke conversationally, throwing his voice out ahead of him, “If you want to talk, let’s talk. It’s damned hot out here.”

  He looked east and could see the eastbound dirigible rising over the remains of old Denver, heading God knows where and taking God knew who out of these Fallen Lands.

  Even a century and a half after the world went to shit, protecting yourself first was the rule of the day. Justice hadn't made its face known again, at least not out here.

  Five seconds later, two horses and their riders broke from cover about a hundred feet ahead of him on the trail.

  One of the guys, black hair and a scar across his nose, spit out to the side as he and his partner rode towards Jeremiah.

  “Plenty close,” Jeremiah commented, and the two pulled up ten yards away. “Can I help you?” he asked, eyeing each one of them.

  Scar-nose rested both hands on his pommel as he looked around, the sun beating down on all three of them. He turned back to Jeremiah, “We’ve been told to deliver a message from the Boss, so we are here delivering it.”

  Jeremiah nodded for him to continue. He watched the talking man’s partner, a thin and wiry guy, his eyes darting about the area. He was the one who would possibly fly off the handle and just start shooting.

  “The boss is tired of Sarah Jennifer telling him to take a hike,” Scar-nose continued, “So tell her she’s got one week to reconsider either selling or bedding. Each day she continues to be obstinate?” he shrugged and spit off to the side again. “Well, the price goes down, and the pleasure is decreased. At some point, even gentlemen don’t give a rat’s ass anymore, and the Boss will stop trying to be civil in this god-forsaken uncivilized land.”

  Jeremiah nodded his understanding.

  The two turned, with Scar-nose turning over his shoulder to give a parting shot, “You might mention to the other guys she’s got helping her on her land, those that don’t fire on us? We won’t fire on them.”

  This time, it was Jeremiah’s turn to make a face of disgust and spit off into the weeds.

  Sarah Jennifer had fourteen hands helping her with the land. There were only three others, including himself, he was positive would be willing to shoot back in her defense.

  Jack “the Boss” Childers had thirty-two.

  Even with Sarah Jennifer’s mercenary skills and weapons from her time before, that still left them outgunned at least two to one, and that was the best case.

  “Ktch Ktch,” he called to Black, pulling on the reins to go to their right, “Let’s get home, I’ve got to report back to the Lady.”

  The two started moving off into the shrubs.

  He ducked under a tree limb, “Cause shit just got too damned real,” he murmured.

  The Etheric Dimension

  Stumped.

  Michael was frustrated, his lips compressed into a tiny line cutting across the horizontal plane of a face irritated with itself.

  “How does she do this?” he mumbled, for the hundredth time, if he had mumbled it once.

  Michael had been standing there, for what seemed like forever. He knew he merely needed to take a step and he should be on the other side. He should be… He took another testing step, and dropped out of the grayness into nighttime on the side of a hill, falling through limbs, cracking two in the process as he slipped and tumbled twice head over ass.

  “Gott Verdammt!” he cursed before his legs hit a low-hanging branch twisting him around sadistically, turning him over to land hard. His breath exploded out of his mouth, his eyes open in surprise and pain.

  He was now on the ground, laying on his back, looking up into the branches of a tree above him. Silvery moonlight caressed its branches.

  “Oooouuuch,” he moaned, laying there a moment to collect his thoughts.

  Michael reached towards his back and rolled to his left. His right hand grabbed a small rock and yanked it out from underneath him. He pulled it up in front of him and looked at it in the moonlight. He opened his mouth to say something, but then shook his head and tossed the rock ten feet away to land in the bushes.

  He listened for a second, not hearing or feeling anything dangerous. Twenty feet above him, something silvery and translucent seemed to close slowly.

  The silver expanse, he would later swear, snickered at him when it closed off, and the tree limbs behind it were all he now saw.

  He was losing it. He rolled forward and stood up, brushing pine needles and other dirt and detritus from his body.

  He looked around, snatches of memory of a run coming back. He had a bag, a package. NO! He had a bomb. He had been running to return it to someone who had attacked the…

  Michael turned, looking up the mountain. He had been running away from the base.

  Michael took his first step in the moonlight, up towards the location where there should be a base.

  A base … and answers.

  South of Douglas Mountain, old Colorado (United States Post-Apoc)