Second Heart: Bones of Eden Read online

  Second Heart

  By Zaide Bishop

  In this second installment of the Bones of Eden series, a new enemy threatens a fragile union

  Peace has come to the Elikai and the Varekai, to man and woman, and to the tribe leaders.

  United as one. For now.

  Gone is the hope of a world beyond Eden, but gone too is the threat of war that once divided them. The new world brings the promise of family, and happiness they’ve only dreamed of. But when the force of nature bears down and the safety of the tribes is at risk, alliances shift yet again.

  With food running short in the face of a coming monsoon, the Varekai leader must make a decision. One that could shatter their newfound harmony.

  For those who do survive, desperation could inflame the embers of an old war.

  The Bones of Eden series concludes with Third Wave

  Don’t miss the first in this series, First Fall, available now!

  This book is approximately 63,000 words

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Alissa Davis

  Dear Reader,

  As book lovers, no matter how much we want our favorite stories to go on forever, we know that eventually they will come to an end. The same is sadly true of my monthly letter to you. While I know some of you do look forward to this letter, we’ve decided that we can no longer continue to include it for some practical reasons, which I don’t want to bore you with. So this will be my last letter to you all. But never fear, the good books will continue to come every month and that is what’s most important!

  Still, I get one last chance to tell you all about the amazing books we have in store for you, and I’m going to take full advantage of the opportunity. Are you ready?

  Powerhouse author duo Alexa Riley follows up their bestselling full-length novels Everything for Her and His Alone with a trilogy of spin-off novellas. First up, in Stay Close, a Russian bad boy will do whatever it takes to conquer her headstrong ways and make her his. And don’t miss the next two novellas, releasing later in 2017 and early in 2018, as well as their third full-length novel, Claimed, coming in spring 2018.

  At Noble House, a first-of-its-kind hybrid fetish club that blends real life with the online, three lovers reunite to explore role play and high-tech toys as they battle demons from the past that could threaten their future. Sara Brookes’s Get Off Easy is only the first in her supercharged erotic romance series, Noble House Kink.

  The male/male romance Ethan & Wyatt trilogy by K.A. Mitchell is now available in one volume in mass market print, audio and digital formats. Opposites attract and ignite on campus as optimistic, open-hearted and sometimes clueless Ethan meets Wyatt, who has plenty of reasons for hiding under his hoodie. Together they face a jealous ex, disapproving parents and the most dangerous test of all: real life together off campus.

  Hot in the City author Jules Court is back with her third contemporary romance novella, Tease Me Tonight. Elizabeth Owens spent the last eight years as the responsible and celibate guardian of her little sister, but now Megan’s left the nest, and Elizabeth’s ready to let her wild side out with firefighter Will MacGregor. The only problem is Will wants a connection with Elizabeth that will last longer than one steamy night, and he knows if he gives in too soon to their attraction he’ll lose her. You can also pick up Hot in the City and Enticing the Enemy in digital, wherever Carina ebooks are sold.

  In Betrayed by Blood, the second installment in Beth Dranoff’s romantic urban fantasy Mark of the Moon series, covert agent turned bartender Dana is drawn back to her Agency past by an offer she can’t refuse from a guy she never thought she’d see again. Lured by curiosity, and torn between freedom and restraint, Dana has to decide whether she’s ready to look to the future while leaving the scars of her past behind.

  Romantic suspense author Katie Ruggle, writing as Katie Allen, joins Carina Press with the first of several erotic romance backlist releases leading up to her fall 2017 new erotic romance release. In her Research & Desire series, we’ll publish Erotic Experiments, Natural Selection, Carnal Chemistry and Double Dose in back-to-back months from July through October. Then look for book one of her new series in November 2017.

  Ten years after he rejected her, the Seduction Squad’s newest recruit, Christie Mason, finally has the chance to get her revenge on Theo Ward, but there are some fantasies that are best left in the past and some taboos that should never be explored in Seduction Squad: Tainted by Amanda Stewart.

  Robyn Bachar’s Contingency Plan is the next in her sci-fi romance series, The Galactic Cold War. Privateer pilot Lieutenant Jiang Chen searches for the location of a terrible superweapon, but when the mission threatens to reveal the dangerous secrets of her past, Jiang’s only ally is sexy chief of security Ryder Kalani, who is battling demons of his own. Start with book one, Relaunch Mission, today!

  Fans of TV show The 100 will want to read Zaide Bishop’s Bones of Eden series. Releasing in three volumes in July and August, these continuing stories have it all, from forbidden love to war to a race for survival. First Fall comes out in early July, followed by Second Heart later in July and Third Wave in August.

  That’s all for our dear reader letters, but please follow us on social media—Twitter or Facebook—or sign up for our reader newsletter to be kept informed about all our great reads in the future.

  For one final time, fellow readers and book lovers, here’s wishing you a wonderful life of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  Publisher’s Note

  This is the second part in a three-part series; the story begins in First Fall and continues in Third Wave.

  For Meg:

  You stand by me, even when anyone in their right mind would have taken cover.

  Table of Contents

  Part Three: The Dragon War

  Part Four: The Monsoon

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Zaide Bishop

  About the Author

  PART THREE:

  The Dragon War

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter One

  The pup was half grown, all gangly limbs. She moved with the rubberiness of youth, gleefully oblivious to the tree trunks and branches she bumped in passing. She had a mess of lumpy nodules at the base of her spine. Two extra tails, no more than three inches long, fought for space beside a normal one, and her left ear was split and huge, like two ears sewn together.

  Juliet had rescued the horrible little thing when it was only three days old. India, the tribe’s witchdoctor, was going to drop it in a bucket of water before it could grow up and make pups of its own, passing on the deformities to the pack. Juliet had been forced to beg, argue, threaten and plead to convince India the pup should be allowed to live. Of course, then Whiskey wouldn’t let the pup run with the rest of the pack, so Juliet had to take care of it herself. She was determined to train it and make it the best hunting dog the tribe had. By that point, it wasn’t even about the dog anymore. Her sisters were convinced she would fail. India had twice offered to take the pup away and cull it somewhere quietly where Juliet wouldn’t have to watch.
She had said it kindly, as if she would be doing Juliet a favor.

  Whiskey just said if it got in her way, she’d put an arrow through it.

  Even Charlie, the tribe leader, said there was no room for deformed animals. Not in the dog pack and not in livestock. However, she wasn’t forbidding Juliet from keeping it. As long as she fed the pup herself and kept it away from the chickens, Charlie said she could waste as much time on it as she liked.

  Somehow, Juliet had been expecting a grand triumph. She had thought when she began to train it that it would be startlingly brilliant, loyal and cunning. She had imagined her sisters being jealous of her amazing three-tailed, giant-eared dog.

  The pup was both stupid and disobedient. It ran down the beach barking at gulls and almost crashed into a sleeping crocodile basking on the hot sand. When the crocodile hissed and snapped its jaws, the pup had run back to Juliet screaming, tails between its legs.

  Her persistent commands of “fetch” or “sit” or “come” got less reaction than a fart.

  She sat on the beach, watching the pup gallop back and forth on the damp sand at the ocean’s edge. It was hunting tiny white crabs and would yap with delight when it cornered them, slamming them into the sand with its oversized paws until they were stunned, then biting them repeatedly with the fast, hard strikes of a snake. When the shell was crushed and the creature almost dead, the pup would swallow them, shell, claws and all.

  Beyond it, far out on the reef, the horizon was dotted with the huge rust-colored skeletons of shipwrecks. Some of them were the size of islands—massive cargo ships and cruise liners, now void of life, their contents spilled and washed away or moldering somewhere inside. Sometimes there would be a deep, keening scream of metal in the night as one of the ships shifted or collapsed or rolled. Mostly they were dead and silent but for the sad howling of the wind through the rusty hulls.

  Occasionally someone would take a canoe out there and look for salvage. They found the best things diving around the reefs, though India warned them away. She said the rusted metal would give them an illness if it cut them, and she had no way to cure it. Not like before, when the tribe had lived in Eden and the world had been small. They’d had all the medicines they needed then.

  “Pup, come.” Juliet clambered to her feet.

  The pup ignored her, charging up the beach after another crab, then stopping to investigate a dead gull carcass half buried in the sand.

  It was no good. The useless creature was going to make her look like a fool. It would be better if a crocodile took it, though the idea gave Juliet a lump in her throat. The pup may have been useless, but sometimes it looked up at her with big brown eyes, tongue lolling, as if she were its favorite thing in the world. She felt loved then. Appreciated. She would miss that look if it was gone.

  “Pup, come!” she tried again, and this time the dog pricked its deformed ears and galloped toward her. She grinned, momentarily triumphant, but it ran straight past her, tackling a pile of seaweed and running off with a huge wad of sea peas in its mouth.

  She sighed.

  North of the island lay the vast blue-green rise of the mainland. Light glinted off the abandoned city even at this distance. The channel between the mainland and the archipelago was long and deep, and it was only on very clear days that the far shore could be seen clearly. Today Juliet could make out the far mountains and the moldering, crooked toothlike buildings. It was rare, this late in the season. Soon the storms would come and the heat and humidity would make the air too hazy. Juliet had not seen the air so fresh since the middle of winter.

  Inspired, she walked north with greater purpose. Her favorite possession was a collapsible telescope, and she always carried it to help spot game. The pup had scared off anything even close to game all morning, but it couldn’t scare off the view. She might even be able to see Eden, her own birthplace. The birthplace of all people.

  She crouched at the zenith of the rocky outcropping, extending the telescope and peering down the lens. Across the channel, the mainland rose in stark relief. Juliet could see the broken windows on buildings. They were black and empty, still as devoid of life as the first time she had seen them. Beside them, Eden was huge, almost as big as a mountain. A massive white dome, dominating the shoreline beyond the sand. The outside was streaked with moss and grime now, slowly turning gray-brown to match the rest of the city skyline. It was hard to believe that once the mainland had bustled with Varekai and animals. In Eden, the tribe had been shown videos of life before—women in sterile-looking houses, cooking in kitchens powered with electricity. Sleeping in beds larger than the shelters the Varekai now made for themselves. The Varekai of the world before had driven cars powered by electricity. Their food had been grown in vast vats, where meat formed from multiplying clumps of cells fed by a protein slurry. They had no need to farm or hunt, and their clothes came from stores and were made by robots in factories. Juliet had never seen a robot, but she imagined they were like dog-sized monkeys, sitting in fancy houses and weaving the fabrics with nimble fingers.

  When the Varekai had lived in Eden, they had been told that world didn’t exist anymore. That Eden was all that was left. There, they had lived in little huts, not so different from the ones they built themselves now. They had farmed plots of soil and cared for their chickens and a cow. They had learned to make cheeses and would fight over the cream. They had books and learned math and navigation and were told the Elikai were alien and dangerous. Too dangerous to be kept with the Varekai.

  It was only when the world ended and the Varekai escaped Eden that they realized the world-that-was still existed. It was just dead now. All the Varekai were gone, and their fancy electric homes were filthy and forlorn. There was no food in the city, and the predators there were vast and cunning. Perhaps worst of all, the cow had died. Juliet missed cheese more than she missed the teachers in Eden. She would have given her toes to have a cow again.

  From what Juliet could see through the telescope, there was no sign of life at Eden. No shadowy forms, no smoke or signs to show anyone had been there since the Varekai had fled. She sighed softly, her gaze following the shoreline, past the black lump of the car India and the Elikai had been hiding in, past the huge gates that India said had once been a megafauna zoo. Down to where the city seemed to end, taken over by creepers and trees as lush and tropical as the isles. She thought she saw a pack of feral dogs loping along the sand, but just as quickly they were gone, vanishing into the shelter of the trees.

  A wet nose touched her knee, and the pup sidled up beside her. It whined, tail thumping anxiously against the stone, and then began to growl. Its hackles were up, ears swiveling in alarm.

  “What is it?” Juliet lowered the telescope, looking around, across the rocks and down into the green water below them for predators. A crocodile could jump its own body length from the water, and even though she was four feet from the waves, she scuttled backward. The pup didn’t move, claws gripping the rock so close to the edge it was almost sliding off into the water. There was no sign of predators on the shore. All around them were gray and brown stone and shallow rock pools. There were no pythons sliding toward them, no swollen, creeping bodies of octopi, and a crocodile would struggle to clamber across the rocks. She looked to the water again, certain it must be a shark, but a dark shape on the distant shore caught her eye. She peered through the telescope again, looking at the beach in front of Eden.

  Sliding along the sand was a massive monitor lizard. It looked like the black-and-yellow goannas they sometimes saw on the islands. Those were large. Some, with their whiplike tails, could grow to five feet and could cause nasty bites and scratches when cornered. Juliet had seen them feasting on newborn goats, and they would eat just about anything they could fit in their mouths.

  However, the creature on the distant shore was much, much larger than that. It was the size of a bull crocodile. Three, perhaps fou
r meters long. It slid across the sand, leaving a deep track in its wake. Even from this distance, she could see its long forked tongue testing the air. It seemed to be looking right at her, as if it could smell her all the way across the channel. She’d never seen anything like it before and wished one of her sisters was here so she could show them too. No one was going to believe her when she got home.

  A flicker of movement drew her attention further up the mainland beach, and she spotted another lizard—this one a little smaller than the first. Two meters, perhaps. Then she spotted another, by far the largest of the three, making its way down the cracked asphalt road beside Eden. The massive gray monitors were gathering on the beach, milling around restlessly and occasionally snapping at one another.

  The pup’s growl was getting higher and more anxious. It started to bark, and Juliet shushed it, annoyed. A fourth monitor was far up the beach to the east. Further along, was it a fifth, or a dead tree? Juliet was grateful for the channel, as deadly as it was. It was all that stood between the Varekai and predators like these. Without it...

  The first monitor dove into the ocean. It powered out into the current, using its long tail as a rudder. She could see its gray head and the long, streamlined S of its back. It looked almost like a giant snake with only its head and spine above the surface.

  Juliet’s heart caught in her throat as two more lizards took the plunge. The smallest was swept away by the churning water, growing smaller and smaller as it was carried west out into the open ocean, but the others were stronger. They kept coming, unperturbed by the current.

  She had to run back to the village and warn her sisters. The war band had to come together and meet these monsters on the beach before they could slip into the cover of the trees. Predators like these could not be tolerated in the archipelago. There was no room for coexistence.

  The pup barked hysterically. Every hair on its body was standing on end, all of its tails tucked under its belly.