The Lone Guardian-Completed

Bonus Chapter

    Now I know you enjoyed The Lone Guardian so I decided to let you in for a snippet for the second one. I could hardly leave you all like that. So we shall all meet Hoode, now he's from Venus and that's an idea I had bouncing inside my head for a while before I actually wrote The Lone Guardian. So I invite you to read the first chapter of Ice and Gears. It's not scheduled to be written until next year and I still have to flesh out characters also this book happens after the events of the first book, about a hundred years later.

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    I run, my bare feet slapping down hard on the metal walkway which swings side to side thanks to my movement. In my hands is a pilfered,  tattered copy of Sherlock Holmes. Books were rare even damaged ones, this had been in a museum. I had stolen so I could teach myself to read as I had reached my fifteenth year and then after that I had hoped that I could reach the surface. There was a rule when you lived under the waves on Venus once you were educated you could leave. I stopped panting in front of the six foot thick glass of the tunnel. Outside it was dark and murky, odd sea creatures tended to ram against the glass, trying to get in. The fluorescent light flickered and shut off. I was drenched into darkness. My foot slipped on a loose metal plate and I tumbled to the ground, my horns hitting the railing and a shock wave ran through my head.

   "Not funny, Nettle." I growled.

    The light flickered on revealing a bent double Nettle. She was my friend and worker. Almost twenty she worked as a lady of the night. With her copper hair and eyes, she was a vision and a lot men asked after her. I heard she was allowed to go up top. 

     "Aww, did I chip your horns again?" She smirked.

    Her hand reached out to help me up. I accepted it and stood, my hands clutched around the book. Her eyes grew wide aa she stared at it. 

    "You'll get punished if you are found with that. Hoode, you are a trouble maker." She sighed.

     I pouted at her and opened my mouth to retort but I heard footsteps. I quickly hid the book behind my back. A stately, handsome middle aged woman strode out. Nettle stepped back to stand beside me.

   "Nettle, Mr. Hart asks for you. Again. If anymore of that happens, he should propose to you." She grimaced.

   "Yes of course, Madam Redd." 

  Nettle barreled up the corridor. Madam Redd beckoned me to follow her back to my quarters. She left me alone with the weeks supply of food and water. I put the items away before stashing the book in a false wall panel. I sighed and stared into the cracked, glass mirror. I was dusty and dirty. I wasn't all human as I had some alien genes. My skin was dark as was hair but my horns were grey and my eyes were a vivid green with key hole pupils. Well, at least I didn't have hooves. I was named after my father who was long since desceased, Hoode Mercury was my name. I had been born blind in one eye so I wore a tattered eyepatch.