Matilda - The Owners, Volume VII: Hunter's Moon

A little peek at Matilda...

Careful you don't look too long though, for she is a feisty one!


Excerpt from The Owners, Volume VII: Hunter's Moon.

Matilda awoke before the others. Taylor lay beside her, his face partially obscured by the arm he had thrown over his eyes to block out the rising sun. Part of her longed to move his arm and gaze at the face she had known so long and so well but her resolve would not let her do so. She had taken on the role as leader of this hunting party and if it killed her, she would neither ask for his support nor subordinate herself to him. 

She owed it to their people to be strong and more than that, she owed it to the little child, Verity, who might already be dead.

Did I cling to her because I have no children of my own? It was a fair question and one she wasn’t entirely sure she could answer. Would I have felt differently if I had had a brood of my own children, clinging to my shirttails like all the other women? she wondered. Either way, does it really matter? Things were how they were, after all. She rose quietly, moving with a catlike grace, unwilling to wake the others until she was no longer sharing a space with Taylor.

On her feet, she circled the group. Everyone slept deeply and she was surprised into a revelation as she bent to shake them awake, one at a time.

“We could have been attacked and killed in our sleep, slaughtered without us even knowing we were in danger,” she said, once she had their full attention.

Taylor sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Well we weren’t. And I think that’s a little unlikely…”

Matilda didn’t give him time to finish. “Why not? You think that monster is afraid of us? After he snatched a little child right out from under our noses and left without even a scratch? Oh yes, he must be very afraid!” She heard the sarcasm in her own voice but was unable to reign it in.

She saw Taylor’s eyes widen in surprise and she instinctively knew it was not from either her words or her tone of voice but the way the criticism was directed straight at him.

“He was too high too fast for the arrows to reach,” he said simply.

“I know,” she agreed, hoping that he understood her frustration. They had been speaking as if there were only the two of them in the conversation, only the two of them standing there, with nothing and no-one else around for miles. Now she turned so that her words addressed them all, equally.

“From now on, we post a guard. If we do somehow manage to find him, the battle has to be on our terms, at a time and place of our choosing, not his.”

She was right, and they all knew it. Enough had been said, there was no point in pressing the issue. She bent and began to pack up their meagre camp.

If you would like to find out more, then follow the link on the right to find the first volumes in this epic tale

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Latest chapter

Taken from my newest book:-

I neither hold my head up nor down as I walk. Why should I care what anyone thinks of me, when I have no love for myself? But as I reach the school, that huge architectural dream of glass and steel, I hesitate. These gates, this building – all of it – are from another time, another version of me. I force myself to enter the confines of the school. Make my way up the corridor and to my locker. The original key I had is gone, lost in the fire, but someone must have issued me with a new one and given it to Mum, because it was on my bedside table waiting for me.

The key slides easily into the lock as if it was the original but I know it isn’t, and the door springs open. Inside is stuff that was once mine; an old fluffy bear that someone gave me on Valentine’s Day two years ago, a packet of half eaten mints, a hairbrush, pink lip-gloss, an old phone cover and one woollen glove. I stick my bag on the empty shelf, sweep everything else into my hands and take them to the bin. I watch them slide from me to the abandonment of the black plastic receptacle. They are from the time of the old Scarlett and she no longer exists.

I return to the locker, remove my bag and lock it, even though it’s empty. If I leave it open someone might actually put something inside, and then it won’t be the empty vessel it should be. Then it won’t reflect the new me.

I hope you like my little snippets of what I'm currently writing. For a book that I've already brought out with my publishers, see the list to your right. There's also a whole page on reviews.

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