Title: Foreign to You
Author: Jeremy Martin
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: February 11, 2019
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 83900
Genre: Fantasy, LGBT, Young adult, fantasy, shifters, hunter, stag, forest, reincarnation
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Synopsis
The harmony between humans and fianna, a
species of shapeshifting deer, begins to wither as racial tensions and deeply
rooted resentment turns violent.
Ruthless hunter Finn Hail and prophesied
liberator Adelaide may be heroes to their own species, but they are enemies to
each other. With war on the horizon, the reluctant pair must team up to find
the most elusive of prey: the god of the Forest.
As enemies press in from all sides, true
intentions begin to show. For Finn to save the boy he cares for most, he might
need to aim his gun at the very god he seeks. And Adelaide, with her festering
hatred for mankind, will have to determine if peace holds true salvation for
her people.
Excerpt
Foreign to You
Jeremy Martin © 2019
All Rights Reserved
It is strange to sit in the Forest with
a rifle, bullets, and the intention to kill. The Forest is meant to be a place
of harmony, where the order of things is meticulous, spontaneous, and
beautiful.
I am a blemish in an otherwise blissful
system.
My only justification for upsetting said
balance is that I am here, with a gun, to silence another disturbance.
“To the right,” Jay whispers, his words
turning into clouds similar to a furnace expelling smoke. His voice is so soft
the branches seem to lean downward greedily, as if the leaves could catch each
of his words like raindrops. With the meek backdrop of the Forest, Jay’s
features are highlighted and prominent. His sturdy jaw, light stubble, and
bright eyes were all a combination of classic handsome.
I, on the other hand, am classically
average. Brown hair, dull eyes, and a nose that’s a little too big.
After waiting in the same spot an unholy
amount of time, my body had sunk deeper in Pa’s musky leather jacket while my
muscles and thoughts had stiffened from neglect. The slightest stirring from
Jay startles me out of my daydreaming and from my cocoon of warmth. Unlike me
in the present moment, Jay’s attention and energy are crisp and alert while his
entire body leans forward in anticipation.
“Do you see him?” Jay murmurs with
thinly veiled anxiety. He scrambles for his rifle with shaky fingers, brings
the scope up to gaze through. I blame the cold, or my own fleeting
concentration, but I cannot see what he does. The only abnormalities I see in
the surrounding Forest are the slabs of meat Jay strung up on the branches like
decorations to attract the ferals.
With a huff of frustration, he angles my
line of sight with his rough fingers, squishing my cheeks, and gripping my
head. Within an instant of the contact of his skin on mine, my mind sharpens.
Allowing my gaze to soften so I can
absorb more of my surroundings, I finally see the tiniest of movements. A flash
of white that doesn’t belong to the never-ending bark. A drifting smudge in the
sea of stillness. Yet, the Forest is so dense the leaves tend to bunch together
like armor, protecting its inhabitants from invaders. Between one blink and the
next, the Forest returns to its previous state. Not a twig out of place.
Nothing exposed.
“Found ya,” Jay says, his voice
trembling. I study his nervous movements. Gloved fingers twitching
individually. Teeth tugging at his bottom lip. Chest barely rising and falling
as he forgets to breathe. For he has the skills of a great hunter, but not the
heart for it. Jay was the boy who once found a rabbit with a broken leg and
attempted to nurse it back to health. He was the same boy that cried for four
days after his father snapped the creature’s neck to put it out of its misery.
I’m not good at vocalizing emotions,
making them into pretty little words, which is a genetic trait from Pa. All I
can tell Jay is, “Stay calm,” and that doesn’t sound like near enough. I wish I
could tell him that we should head back to town, that he deserved much more
than loud rifles and dirt.
But I don’t say those things.
I move past him, my boots squishing in
the mixture of mud and snow. Each step is heavier than it needs to be, and my
impatience starts to hum within my ears with each squish, squish. As I stalk, I
strain to find the distortion of the brown that slipped away.
“It was probably a raccoon,” I tell Jay,
despite knowing we are meant to be silent. Loud hunters gain no prizes. “I bet
you got caught—”
A snort comes from my right, and as I turn,
I find a beast stationed between two oak trees.
Its massive frame looms before me with
red-rimmed eyes, thick and building black veins, patchy fur, and teeth bared.
My eyes soak up every inch of the deer, my heart hammering in time with his
exhales. From this distance, the beast is nearly magnificent, practically the
size of a horse. His nostrils flare as he paws at the ground, catching all
wayward smells while each muscle twitches and throbs. Unlike his cousins, this
stag does not flee at the sight of a human. Instead, he lowers his brow
defiantly, his antlers posed daggers.
It is an unholy combination of god and
devil.
A loud crack fires off behind me, and
before I can even blink, the bark of the nearest oak shatters into a thousand
shards.
With fear leading it, the stag rears
back onto his hind legs and lashes out with hooves strong enough to break
bones. I attempt to leap backward, but my boots do not leave the mud willingly.
As I fall onto the ground, my rifle skids across the Forest floor. I scramble
for the dagger stored at my hip, but my gloves make the hilt as slick as a
trout. As the stag brings down the weight of its body with an aggravated snort,
I roll to my side so that the hooves bury themselves into muck, not flesh. I
manage to free my knife and drag it across the beast’s torso before I make a
dash for safety.
The buck, alarmed by the sudden pain,
moves his eyes frantically, rolling them around his skull and exposing the
whites. Its scream, a noise rivaling that of a horn being blown, attacks me
even from a distance.
Another gunshot fires off too close,
missing once more. As mud rains down from the misfire, the stag flees, taking
blood and the stench of rot with it deep into the lush green.
Crawling out from the bush I dove into,
I can hear Jay abandoning his usual stealth to reach me. His right boot slips
in the slush as he nears me, causing him to crash down beside me. “Shit, Finn.
Are you okay?” His hand creeps near my knee before stopping inches from it. “I
thought—”
“What even was that?” I snap, pointing
at the crude hole in the ground. Instantly, Jay’s cheeks flare red, his face
hardening defensively. “You were aiming for it, right?” Jay is deadly silent. I
work my jaw, hoping to alleviate the ringing still echoing in my eardrums.
Jay curls his fingers into fists. “Next
time would you rather I let you go? You seemed to be handling it well,” he
bites back with sarcasm.
At the lodge, Jay will find any reason
not to pick up a gun. Instead, he studies the plants, tinkers with complex
traps, and vanishes like a frightened barn cat at the sound of a rifle
exploding. I shouldn’t be surprised he’s an awful shot, considering his lack of
practice.
“Well, I’m alive,” I tell him, wanting
more than anything to be on the move again, and to distance myself from the
anger that quickly rose to the top. “But maybe leave the guns to me?”
After a quick smile, Jay squares his
shoulders and flexes his hands as the facade of a hunter starts to settle back
over him. As the best parts of him get stuffed away. “I’ll find him again,” he
promises, and I have no doubt that he will. It’s often teased that Jay has a
nose more acute than a hound. He carries a rifle for formalities, but his
talents lie within his knowledge of the land. Animal droppings, tracks, and
broken twigs are all parts of Jay’s trade. It’s what makes him valuable to a
band of killers. “We are losing daylight,” he points out. “And we’re
approaching Falling Rock.”
Are we that far out? I think, dazed.
With Jay, time isn’t something I usually keep up on. When we were young, I
would battle fatigue for one more hour with him.
I scratch at my neckline where sweat
starts to bead. “Well, I left you a blood trail, so my portion of help is
exhausted.” I let the edges of my lips rise, and Jay accepts it with a nod.
This is how comrades treat one another.
Right?
Jay rises, body hunched close to the
ground as he follows the red through the bushes.
Once upon a time, back when it became
evident a gun only felt natural in one of our grips, Jay tried teaching me the
art of tracking, taking great pride in his skill. But at that age, when I was
young and full of pride, I pretended it didn’t interest me. Eventually, after
I’d declined his guiding hand enough many times, Jay stopped trying to explain
his methods to me.
Today, Jay is further removed, his words
shorter than usual. The same tension sparking between us with the simplest of
blunders, or the slightest of nods, because this is the first time Jay is
tracking a feral.
The first time I have been tasked with
killing a feral.
This feral is a rarity. The majority of
the ferals stay in the Forest, killing what crosses their paths. Yet, this
particular beast had entered human territory, killing a farmer and his wife
before peeling back into the trees. It makes our mission important. It is more
than just killing.
It is justice.
After a rough mile of trekking over
minor cliffs and rocky outposts, Jay brings me to a halt with a snap of his
wrist. As he shrinks down, I mimic him. Pointing at the snow, he shows me a
large divot in the otherwise perfect layer of white. I don’t need to be a
tracker to know the buck must have slipped on ice, crashing into the remaining
snow and splashing against the fluff like a sponge full of red paint.
I pop two bullets into my rifle, check
the safety, and snap the chambers shut. Slinging the gun onto my back, I notice
that Jay’s eyes barely leave the blood, lost in the color. Doubt is starting to
build upon his shoulders, gnawing at his edges.
“Are you ready?” I ask. He doesn’t know
it, but the same uneasiness lines my stomach.
“We’ve come this far,” he tells me. He
takes a bold step forward, and I can do nothing but follow. Despite the ground
dropping away into a steep slope, it is clear the feral struggled up the side
of the mountain.
Jay begins climbing first, taking
fistfuls of roots and rocks, to propel himself along. As we move, the blood
remains consistent on our right. Before long, Jay crawls over the top of the
outpost, disappearing for a moment before reappearing to hoist me up. Once we
are on even ground, I want to thank him, crack a joke, or anything, but my
words are swallowed up as I look over Jay’s shoulder and across the plateau.
I follow red snow until I find the once
four-legged stag wobbling on two legs, erect for a breath before plummeting
onto his knees. There is blood all over his body, tainting his skin like a
rampant infection. Even from here, I can see his muscles quivering and shaking,
his body burning off the gentle flakes that land on his shoulders.
His frail human shoulders.
Every part of him seems at war as he
spasms and writhes. Despite the fur drifting off his body in decaying clumps,
his antlers still hang from his brow, holding steady in the air with crimson
stains along the tines.
I snap my rifle in front of me.
When the stag turns to me, he tries to
raise his hands. Hands that should be human but are jagged and blackened. A
droplet of blood creeps from his eye and down his cheek and drips onto his bare
leg.
It is clear he is suffering, caught
between two bodies.
I hear him mumbling, but I can’t make
out the individual words. Despite my head screaming, don’t get any closer, you
idiot, I find my boots propelling me forward. As I near the fiend, his voice
breaks like a young boy in puberty. “Begin again,” he raves. “Begin again,
begin again—” he lets out a tangle of screams, his claws tearing into his
cheeks. “Pain, pain, rebirth.”
“Finn,” Jay says, grabbing my shoulder
with his giant hands, startling me from my daze. “It might not be too late. We
might be able to help him.”
“He is sick,” I say. I stare at a point
behind the beast, letting my words flood me with false confidence. “He is just
an animal.” It is Pa logic. Town logic.
“Wait, Finn,” Jay pleads. None of the
other hunters would hesitate to kill the feral, I want to tell him. Not after
the feral’s hands were stained with blood. Blood from Norsewood.
“He’s changing—”
“It’s too late for that,” I tell him
sternly. “He has already done enough damage.”
Jay looks away, squinting into the
distance. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
Killing never feels right, I want to
tell him. But in the seconds I take my eyes off him, the feral lunges at me,
fangs angled at my throat.
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Meet the Author
Jeremy Martin, born and raised in Lancaster County Pennsylvania, considers himself to be a part-time writer and a full-time mess. If he isn’t nose-deep in a book, he’s obsessively playing video games, re-watching The Office for the umpteenth time, or lost in nature. Foreign to You is his debut novel.Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
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