Heartless A Shieldmaiden's Voice: A Covenant Keeper Novel Read online

  Some People Have A Hard Time Fitting Into The World...

  All of her life Carole Blank has been a little faster, a little stronger, and a little uncooperative. The voices in her head want her to follow their rules, and although they’re usually right, Carole doesn’t always listen.

  From foster care to a veil hidden in the desert, Carole searches for a place to belong. Her unnatural abilities and penchant for fighting are useful to the government. Unfortunately, her inability to follow orders over the demands of the voices gets her into trouble.

  Enter Lieutenant Colonel Ted White, a man she is inexplicably drawn to. A man who sentences her to the life of an assassin, while denying her the only thing she’s ever wanted—him.

  Follow the journey of a woman born in the wrong world, as she fights for a place to belong, and sacrifices everything for those she loves.

  Sometimes being heartless isn’t a choice, it’s a calling.

  HEARTLESS whisks you through the life of a super-hero-she-goddess-warrior-assassin with a healthy helping of mama bear madness. The main character, Carole Blank, draws the full range of emotions from the reader. I loved, hated, feared, adored, admired, and pitied her, sometimes on the same page. Deep characterization and tight pacing scream throughout this adventure. Fall in love with the strength and beauty of a fractured and deadly woman.

  ~ LaDonna Cole, author of “The Torn” ~

  Kick ass!

  ~ Katie Cross, author of “Miss Mabel’s School for Girls” ~

  S.R. Karfelt’s HEARTLESS brings us all back to what we really want in life—a place to belong. Following Carole Blank through life wrenches the heart, fueling every emotion known to man—laugh, cry…get so angry you swear…you will want to find a character and kill them! HEARTLESS has it all, and S.R. Karfelt has guaranteed that I will never see the world the same. Buckle up, America. You’re in for a wild ride—and this Shieldmaiden is riding shotgun.

  ~ Kelsey Keating, writer, blogger, actress,

  and shieldmaiden for hire ~

  Brace yourselves: Carole Blank’s life is the epitome of mislaid hope and unapologetic misery. The prequel we’ve been waiting for since KAHTAR chases an unprecedented assassin’s journey through every layer of personal hell, accentuated by ardently candid voices in her head offering feedback on Carole’s every thought and action. Get ready for a full-on attack of raw truth that will leave you achingly aware of the cost of loyalty, and the torture of unrequited love. Blunt, gripping, and extraordinary, HEARTLESS follows the sacrifices of one woman on a quest to simply belong.

  ~ Bailey Catherine, editor, blogger,

  and book critic at bellebubs.wordpress.com ~

  Some heroines are content to sit snugly inside the pages of their book, quietly and politely playing out their given roles. Carole Blank is not one of those heroines. Kicking, punching and screaming, she seized my imagination in a sleeper hold and refused to let go, making HEARTLESS a white-knuckle read every bit as unforgettable as its main character.

  ~ Elle K. White, author of “Deep City” ~

  Imagine a life of perpetual turmoil, with an insatiable need for heart-penetrating love. HEARTLESS will transport you through one woman’s private hell to a place of purpose and peace; that is if peace can be spelled C.I.A Covert Ops! If you enjoyed S.R. Karfelt’s KAHTAR, you are going to be over-the-top happy that you picked up HEARTLESS , a novel that will intrigue men and women, alike. The internal dialogue of the characters throughout this story is so rich, so alive, so intense that you will never be bothered by the voices in your own head again. Tragedy and victory, love and hate, murder and the giving of life culminate in a tale that you will remember long after reluctantly setting the book down for the final time.

  ~ W. Franklin Lattimore, author of “Deliver Us

  From Darkness,” Book one of the Otherealm series ~

  HEARTLESS

  Copyright © 2015 S.R. Karfelt

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Votadini Publishing/Horace Tupper Books

  Print Edition ISBN Numbers

  ISBN-13: 978-0989534734

  ISBN-10: 0989534731

  For Gram,

  who showed me what a warrior really looks like.

  PINE HILL HIGH might be the first in the district to have a boy thrown through a second story window—by a girl. Since the school had double-pane windows, it seemed logical the boy-throw might result in death. Deciding murder might be an extreme, Carole considered the aerodynamics of throwing him feet first instead.

  Her target stood 9.4 yards away from Carole with a ruler in his hand, furtively trying to measure the librarian’s bust-size. The clueless librarian sat hunched over a stack of books, stamping them with the return date. Behind her the boy punched his fist into the air, his hand clenched firmly around the six-inch mark. He jogged silently in place with the enthusiasm of a marathon winner, and his friends at a nearby table performed a silent wave.

  He’s definitely going head first, Carole thought. I’ll take my chances.

  “He’s only a child!” the voices inside Carole’s head argued with her. “You will not harm him!” She ignored them. She scooted her chair backwards, grating it loudly over the linoleum. Mrs. Gonzalez glanced up. Behind her the moron now danced in place, tugging his T-shirt out to simulate large pointy breasts. Following Carole’s eyes, the librarian turned her head in time to catch his genius. Date stamp still clenched firmly in her fist, the librarian stood, grabbed the idiot’s ear, and dragged him mercilessly across the floor by that bit of flesh. The boy’s dancing skills came in handy as the big woman hauled him down the stairs.

  Carole glanced desperately around, trying to find something—anything else—to distract her from her task. The moron’s friends noticed her and bent studiously over their schoolwork. The part of Carole’s brain that could still sense Mrs. Gonzalez dragging the boy through school hallways below her, could also sense that the boys at the nearby table were afraid of her. Their heart rates had increased, and they weren’t even pretending to each other that they weren’t afraid.

  Am I really that bad? A glance at her bruised knuckles and Carole knew she could be. In her defense she only hurt them to protect herself, and even then the voices punished her for it.

  “You hurt them when you judge them to be dishonorable. You have no right,” the voices chimed in, inevitably reminding her of why she had skipped lunch for the dusty school library.

  A draft of icy air blew across Carole and the sun-bleached hair on her arms stood up. The voices hated air-conditioning and they turned their attention to criticizing it. “Artifice. Unnatural. Poison.” Ignoring them Carole returned her attention to the Encyclopedia Britannica and the section on mental illness.

  The voices in her head went silent. They had nothing to say as Carole tried to diagnose them and that alone seemed ominous. The voices often argued about what books said. They argued what high-school teachers said. They argued every other thought that drifted through her head.

  Carole turned her focus on the page and read. Hallucinations (hearing voices)—check, that one is definitely covered. Delusions (often bizarre or p
ersecutory in nature)—check. Disorganized thinking and speech. Was her thinking disorganized? She’d always thought the same way, how could she know? She didn’t talk enough to know if her speech was disorganized. She skipped to the next symptom. Impairment in social cognition—check. There was no denying even to herself, she was weird squared and to the tenth power. Paranoia. If she had to take the fire escape to exit the library it would take fourteen seconds. If she jumped the staircase and broke the window with the fire extinguisher, she could be outside in seven seconds. Double check—paranoia is definitely covered. Social isolation? Without glancing up, Carole knew she was the only teenage girl sitting by herself. She’d never had a single friend. Social workers surely did not count, not even Marsha.

  Teenage boys were another matter. A good many of them certainly wanted to socialize with her, but she was working on fixing that problem. Sometimes a bloody nose said no much more clearly than words. Today’s four detention slips crinkled in Carole’s back pocket as she returned her attention to the page, mentally checking off social isolation. Her eyes slid to the next symptom. Difficulties with attention. She almost laughed, but a chill prickled over the top of her head. It wasn’t easy to stay focused when the voices in her head interrupted all the time.

  Schizophrenia. I have schizophrenia.

  Not every symptom fit, but according to the manual she had until she was nineteen to achieve par. That gave her a couple years before—what? A complete psychotic break? Should I tell someone?

  Carole shoved to her feet, the chair again scraping loudly. Who would she tell? Marsha? The social worker might believe her, but treatment was drugs and hospitalization. She could bear neither. The voices still hadn’t said a word. Carole slammed the book shut and jammed it back on the shelf.

  So she was mentally ill, but she couldn’t think of one good reason to share that with another soul. It was hard enough being the foster kid, the girl who fought and dressed like a guy, there didn’t seem to be any good or justifiable reason to officially add crazy to that list. Jamming her hands into the holey pockets of her jeans, she headed to class.

  THE BELL RANG and Carole stood with the class, her eyes on her history essay. It had earned a D minus with Stick to the facts! scrawled in red pen. In the crowded hallway she crumpled up the paper and shoved it inside a planter where kids stuffed cigarette butts and hid love notes to each other. The plastic trees wouldn’t mind.

  Carole knew she probably shouldn’t listen to the voices when they said everything different than teachers and books. If she was crazy, she shouldn’t trust the voices. The problem was, when she could verify it, they were always right. She excelled in math and science because of what she learned from the voices. Wondering how that was possible, it occurred to her that even her mental illness wasn’t normal.

  Running a hand down the back of her head over the knots of her thick blonde braid, Carole admitted to herself that she believed the voices even though she hated them. They’d never lied to her, and that was more than she could ever say about people. As if to prove this point, three perfectly normal and popular girls slowed alongside her, shooting critical sidelong glances. Charlie’s Angels’ hairdos and new tops from the mall didn’t make their snide remarks any prettier.

  “Nice top—didn’t you wear that yesterday?”

  “I like your jeans, are they your mom’s?” They giggled and hurried ahead of her, whispering loudly. “She’s such a creep!”

  “I can’t believe you said that about her jeans! She punched Bob Miller in the face yesterday!”

  “Nuh-uh! Not Bob Miller, are you kidding—”

  Tucking her plain white T-shirt more neatly into her old-fashioned low-rise pants, Carole fell back a few steps and ignored them. Likely they’d be thrilled to be trapped in the locker room with Bob Miller. They were welcome to him, he was the creep. She had nothing in common with teenage girls. She didn’t care about the hottest concert T-shirts, strawberry scented shampoo, or the coolest 80’s pop stars. Carole hung back, waiting for the girls and the rest of the crowd to go up the stairs to the third floor. If she got trapped in the middle of the crowded stairwell and needed to escape, she’d probably hurt someone doing it. In her first high school she’d been in a crowded hall when the fire alarm went off. It had been a drill, but she had dislocated a football player’s shoulder trying to escape. Apparently the quarterback’s dislocated shoulder had affected the season, which was why she was now attending high school far outside of Albuquerque. Was there any place on earth more remote than Roswell, New Mexico?

  For the fourth time that day a senior from the school basketball team moved into her line of vision, a tall blond with puppy dog eyes. He was quickly rising the ranks to stalker of the week. He brushed past Carole, dropping a tightly folded triangle of paper on top of her notebook. It looked like the shaped wad of paper kids played table-top football with.

  The basketball player went only a couple steps before stopping in the middle of the hall, blocking traffic, to stare at her. Carole would have let the paper with her name scrawled on it drop straight to the floor, except the last thing she needed was someone from her grade to get hold of her latest love letter. Safely tucking it into her pocket for imminent disposal, she saw the familiar hopeful look, like she was waving bacon in front of a golden retriever. What is it with some guys? All she ever wanted with them was a worthy opponent in a game, or better yet, a fight. Obviously that wasn’t what this boy had in mind. Boldly he reached for her hand. She yanked it away and glared. The boy put his hand against his chest and sighed, staring at her chest until she hid it with her notebook. And what is that about? She had absolutely nothing there of interest to them, her T-shirt rested against her as flat as this boy’s. Possibly flatter. He licked his lips and swallowed a few times, like the bacon was coming closer, or maybe trying to work up the courage to speak.

  Deep inside Carole had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t her stick-like body he was interested in. She remembered the blissful touch of her mother’s heart. That touch could explain the unnatural attraction she seemed to hold for guys, because it sure wasn’t her looks. Sometimes when she’d snuggled close to Mom and Gran, the touch of their hearts had made it feel like she was floating. Squaring her shoulders, she shoved the memory away. Not feeling the least bit guilty, Carole made a rude gesture right in the boy’s face. He turned away, stumbling blindly down a stairwell while an entire class of seniors shoved up it. His retreat reminded Carole horribly of a whipped dog. The voices did not approve of her actions, and Carole tried to ignore them but they threw the word “Dishonor” at her and it cut.

  The crowd on the upper cinderblock stairwell thinned, and Carole moved towards her class on the third floor. Her right foot just touched the second step when she sensed danger approaching behind. How do I know? The voices continued to rant about honor and integrity and she smiled faintly, it didn’t matter how she knew, if someone wanted a fight they’d come to the right place.

  Carole knew exactly how to defend herself, no thanks to the voices. They dropped the lecture in time to suggest a belated retreat. Hah, she thought. Where is the fun in that? Leaning to the right, Carole kicked her left leg back and knocked Bob Miller down the stairs. Apparently yesterday’s punch had only encouraged him to bring friends this time. Three of his friends converged on her, eyes narrowed and mouths set grimly. One boy raced up the stairs ahead as they tried to box her in. Carole’s smile widened, a thrill spread through her and her body responded: head butt, elbow to the left, right heel smashing back onto a foot, right leg up and a knee into a groin, spin around and a right elbow into a sternum, left fist into a nose. The nose smash felt so right that Carole indulged in some right-left punching for each boy’s nose as a follow up.

  EVEN LATER, WHEN Marsha showed up to talk to the principal, Carole was still pleased with her work. Plopped on a horrible orange plastic chair outside the principal’s office, she listened to Marsha’s polite arguing through the door. Sharp plastic weave b
it through her jeans into her thighs, but Carole felt only satisfaction. They deserved it! Four boys coming after one girl! They’d have hurt her if she hadn’t stopped them. They’d wanted to hurt her. She had sensed their dark intention as well as the fact that they were coming for her, felt it in her heart like poison. The voices didn’t say very much, satisfied with a familiar lecture easily ignored. They didn’t seem to know what to say about a girl who could fight like a warrior. Carole knew what to think, she was good at fighting, very good. Besides that those boys had deserved it.

  Leaning back in her chair, she heard the principal delve into her fighting record. “…third time this school year, and it is only September!”

  Marsha’s reply was difficult to make out, she was using her Let’s-Be-Reasonable honeyed voice, “…kind of a school where four boys attack one girl…throwing them out?”

  “…play the girl card? That kid could bench press all four…”

  Carole crossed one strong leg over the other. She probably could bench press at least two of those boys, her satisfaction increased.

  “...dangerous…who knows what she was exposed to as a…background…foster children….”

  Carole’s satisfaction evaporated. Who knew what she had been exposed to as a child? She remembered Mom and Gran with joy, but she also remembered impossible things like grandmother’s musical rainbows dancing inside her head. Maybe her schizophrenia came from drugs. They had been Hippies, Flower Children of the 60’s. Maybe the voices were the result of a three-year-old exposed to psychedelic drugs. The thought was sobering. How many of her memories could she trust? Her mind drifted back, far into the past.