Puppet Maker Read online

  One circus. Three shifters fighting all odds. And one woman desperate to be real.

  I'm a puppet. My entire life has been at the hands of my puppet master. He is the one who created me, who keeps me bound.

  All I want is freedom and that is exactly what I discover at the circus, training to be a lion tamer.

  Three intoxicatingly powerful shifter men; a lion, a tiger, and a bear. Oh, my. They are each so very, very alive, and they stir something inside me I've never felt before. I'm becoming real. As I get closer to each of these amazing men, as I train and travel with them, I'm snipping my strings.

  But the Puppet Maker will never let me go.

  Puppet Maker

  An Underland Book

  Rebecca Goodwin

  Copyright © 2019 by Rebecca Goodwin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Ravenborn Book Cover Designs

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  Font Name - Corleone and Corleone Due v1.0 (Freeware)

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  Release Date - December 7, 2001

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  1001Fonts Free For Commercial Use License (FFC)

  Preamble

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  1. Copyright

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 1

  My mouth tasted like sandpaper along with metal shavings. Had lightning struck my roots again? I didn’t smell the scent of charged ions in the air.

  Pinpricks spiked up and down my body, making me shiver. A bird cuckooed twelve times in a row. Why make that sound so many times and not a song? Surely, a melody would be better than the same call repeatedly.

  My body prickled again. Scents of burning and shaved wood filled the air.

  “Open your eyes,” a deep voice said.

  I startled. Eyes? Trees didn’t have any. Yet, eyelids flipped open and I gasped.

  A man with slicked back, brown hair stared at me, with a carving tool tucked behind his ear. Scars crisscrossed over the side of his face along with four long, fresh red lines down his neck. I flinched, remembering the sharp knife scraping across me. How it rubbed me raw. How much it hurt.

  He chuckled, the sound callous, like he enjoyed causing pain. I wanted to close my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him again. But I dared not.

  “Let them laugh at me now.” He set his tool near a metal box, out of my reach, and I let out a shaky breath.

  I glanced around, finding myself inside a small home. Its wall and ceiling made of logs. Woodworking tools lined across the floor and table. A bed was crammed along one wall with covers askew, and a table with two chairs. Woodcarvings of every size and shape littered across bookshelves. Some were marionette dolls of various shapes, others were statues of forest animals, one was a gruesome mask with sharp teeth in a snarling pose. Many of the pieces I recognized as being in the forest with me long ago. How did I know that?

  Woodsmoke filled the cabin. I cringed as fire chewed up my dead comrades in the fireplace.

  “Things might be confusing right now. You’ll adjust.” He pulled out a knife, cleaning his nails with the tip and sat on a stool in front of me. “What do you remember?”

  I frowned, biting my lip, hoping he wouldn’t turn the blade onto me. Maybe he’d let me go if I answered his questions. I squirmed on the worktable. “Woods. Forest. Being here in the corner, my friends screaming.”

  “Excellent.” He rubbed his hands together. “All of that was when you were nothing, but a huge log. Do you remember me working on you? Turning you into your form now? Or the woman you were?”

  Woman? No, I had been a Sycamore Tree. I stared down at myself. Legs, arms, even a shaped torso in a light, cream color. Both legs together were thinner than my tree trunk had been. I had no bark, no clothes. I held out my arms, comparing them to his. I was human-sized, not miniature like the ones dotting across his bookshelves.

  How was possible? I sat on his workbench, shavings of wood littered across the top. “I was in torture while you cut me.”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, necessary to make you appear human.”

  “I am a tree.” I straightened my back. “You hacked at me, taking me out of the forest…from my home.”

  “And made you better.” His eyes darkened while a harshness was laced in his voice. “I made you alive.”

  “I was alive before,” my words shook as I spoke them.

  The birds had sung every morning. Each night, the bats flapped around me, brushing the edge of my leaves. I’d weathered storms with strong winds. Watched smaller sprouts grow big and strong like me. All of that had been stripped away. I was bare. My bark removed, more than half my body was gone.

  He slammed his hand on the table, making me and the tools jump. “No more of that now. You were just a tree, like so many others.” He scooted closer, a flush to his cheeks, while I leaned back. “Now you’re something more. Something amazing that no one has ever been able to accomplish before. A miracle.”

  I didn’t feel special. I felt like two halves that didn’t match up entirely. Like huge hunks of me were missing. A fleeting image of being chased through the woods flashed across my mind. I had never run in my life. My roots had always been deep in the dirt.

  “With her, I can have someone to obey my every command and no one can stop me,” he muttered excitedly under his breath as he tossed another log onto the fire. I cringed, bitter acid burning the back of my throat. I looked away, unable to watch the fire gnaw on the fresh piece of wood. A tightness wrapped around my chest. I had to get out of here before he decided I was flawed like the half-finished carving of a child that lay in the hearth.

  On the edge of the table, beside me, sat a pile of books. One had a skull with a snake crawling out of its mouth on the front. I remember when the natives of this area had drunk their enemy’s blood from their skulls. How they revered the land and us trees by only using our fallen branches and giving an offering as repayment for cutting off our limbs. For a moment, the snake seemed to move.

  The man grabbed the books, pushed them into a metal box, locking them away. He turned back to me with an eerie smile that made me think he was going to chop at me
with his ax again. In the corner was a streak of blood and a woman’s arm with a ruby ring on its finger.

  My breaths quickened. My legs itched to flee this nightmare. To jump and run as fast as these new legs could carry me. Only, I was smart enough to know I wouldn’t get far. No, I had to wait, placate him until I had a better opportunity to run. The woman had tried to escape him and he caught her easily. I shivered, remembering her crumpling and him leaning over her.

  “You, my dear, are all mine.” He grasped my chin, forcing my head up. “My puppet made flesh.”

  Chapter 2

  I jerked my chin out of his touch that felt like oil against my skin. If I was human or puppet now, it didn’t matter. All that filled my thoughts was escaping this maniac before he did worse to me. “No one owns a tree.”

  His eyes darkened. “You are my puppet. You do as I say…I am the puppet master.”

  Inside I was quaking, but I lifted my chin, refusing to cower.

  “Such spirit.” He smirked, picking up a glowing whip. “I sensed it when I found you in the forest.”

  The memory of him swinging his heavy ax into my bark stung deeply. Of the woman’s bloody hand that had grazed my trunk just before he brought the edge of the handle onto the back of her skull. She’d slumped down at my base, breathing still, but unmoving. My stomach clenched. A growing desperation to run away as fast and as far as I could pulsed with each beat of my heart. I placed a hand to my chest…I had a heart?

  He cracked the whip, leaving tendrils of smoke hanging in the air, the end of flaming leather struck the table. A burn mark sizzled on the wood of the table beside me. I refused to react, instead, staring up at this monster no matter how much my insides recoiled.

  “This is what happens when you disobey me.” He smirked. “I hate to mark your flesh, but I will if necessary. Ready for your first assignment?”

  “Clean and cook for you?” I spat.

  The whip snagged around my ankle. I screamed. My flesh scorched, blistering.

  He rolled the whip up, the glow dissipating. “Don’t make me do that again. I like you perfect. But now that I know the magic works, I can make another.”

  Two more lives would die: a human and a tree. I didn’t want to be responsible for any more death. I wanted to live. Whatever it took.

  “Lay down on the bed, spread your legs.” He unbuttoned his trousers, but placed the whip across his shoulder. “I will christen you like a new ship going out to sea. Have to ensure that you’re flesh all the way through.”

  I blanched, not moving from the table. My hands digging into the edge of the wood like it could save me from this madman. The stench of burning flesh mingled with wood hit my nostrils. My ankle bore the blackened mark of the whip. It resembled barbed wire with tiny lines tracing up from the dark line.

  “You’re mine, remember that.” He jerked me from the table in an iron grip on my arm, dragging me to the bed.

  “No, please.” I didn’t understand what was happening. A sense of foreboding wrapped around my chest. It felt like a fist was around my new heart, squeezing.

  He pushed me onto the mattress, falling on top of me. My breath puffed out of me. He fiddled with his pants.

  “Don’t, I—”

  His hard member shoved into me and I screamed, beating at his chest. He huffed and puffed, plunging in and out of me. My sex raw, burning.

  “Call me, puppet-master,” he grunted.

  I bit my lip, refusing to answer. Tears streaming down my face. I kept beating at his chest, his face, any part of him I could reach. My nails dug into his flesh. But he didn’t stop. Not until he shuddered, falling all the way onto me. His breath smelled like rotten milk and cigarettes.

  The cuckoo bird sounded one time. One in the morning. The human half of me realized. I’d spent one hour with this woodcarver and already it felt like a lifetime.

  Minutes later, I wiggled free of the puppet makers body. His snores assured me that he was still asleep. Now was my chance to escape. To get out of this nightmare.

  On shaky legs, I crept to the corner where I’d seen the woman’s bloody arm. I took off the ring, placing it on my middle finger. It didn’t feel right to wear it the same way she had. The puppet-maker grumbled a sigh and I froze. My heart hammered in my chest like a woodpecker after tasty insect larvae.

  For several breaths, I didn’t move. He rolled over onto his back. When his snores resumed, I crept toward the open wardrobe. He’d burned the dress the woman had worn. It had been torn, bloody as he’d hacked up pieces of her to use to make me and bury the useless parts under the cover of the night. He only had her arm left to get rid of. An ache of sorrow splintered across my chest. Pieces of who the woman whose heart beat in my chest, drifted just out of my reach, like a fading dream.

  I clenched my teeth and yanked out one of the man’s shirts. Running naked through the woods wouldn’t be smart, I guessed. I tugged the shirt over my head. It smelled of the puppet maker. I’d rip it to pieces and burn it later when I had a change of clothes.

  A pair of boots lay in the corner. Not wanting to make any noise, I placed them under my arms. I tried the locked metal box to retrieve the book. Maybe it had a spell to turn me back into…a human. Fully. I was a puppet with a human heart and mind, nothing more.

  The box squeaked. His snore stopped mid-stream.

  I didn’t wait to see if he was truly awake or not, I fled. Rocks and sticks scratched at my feet, but I didn’t stop.

  I ran all night until the sun came up. My legs shook so hard from exhaustion that I fell, tripping over a small hole in the ground. I lay there panting. Black spots danced before my eyes. A strange tinkling of music rang nearby.

  “Help,” I called out, not knowing if it was another woodcarver or not.

  Two voices laughed in the distance. Warm and masculine. Neither sounded like the puppet maker.

  “Help,” I forced out louder, and tried to stand. My legs refused to hold up my weight. They wobbled and buckled. I fell on my face, my ear pressed to the ground.

  Footsteps pounded toward me. I felt their vibrations before they rounded the corner and stopped short. One had golden hair with amber eyes, the other was dark with a nose that looked like it had been broken multiple times. Both stared at me like I was a freak of nature. Which I was. I’d no idea what I looked like except I felt human, mostly. The part of my body I could see appeared human. But what of my face? Had the puppet maker finished carving me?

  They closed in, the darker-haired one lifting me into his arms. His jaw set as he carried me out of the forest. There was no compassion or softness in his gaze, just reservation or annoyance. I couldn’t tell which.

  Either I’d done the right thing calling out for aid or I’d just sealed my fate.

  Chapter 3

  A spicy, sweet scent filled my inhale and I jerked awake. I lay on a bed with a striped blanket. Pushing into a sitting position, I snatched the cover over me, my eyes wide, my breaths speeding up.

  "Sleeping Beauty is awake," a deep male voice said.

  Standing at the corner of the bed was the same man I'd seen before with the crooked nose. The light flittering through a small window, showed that his skin was the color of mahogany. Beside him was another man with hair darker than roses and glistening green eyes.

  "Good, I was worried I'd overcook the hot chocolate," another man bent over a small cookstove stirred a pot. He poured the contents into a cup then walked the two steps toward me.

  I backed away, my head hitting the back wall with a clunk.

  "Guess she don't like your cooking, Liam," the crooked nose man laughed.

  "Neither of you do any better. Nor have I heard either of you complain." He straightened, sitting the cup beside the bed on a small table. "It's there when you're ready. Hot though."

  His smile warmed me on the inside, but I'd been fooled before. The puppet maker had seemed to be good too. I sniffed at the air. What was that delicious smell? My stomach growled. Still, I didn't move
toward the cup. Steam curled up from the mug.

  "What is it?" I asked, licking my lips. My hunger starting to gnaw at me with the scents the liquid was giving off.

  "Cocoa,” Liam frowned, glancing at the other two. "It's hot chocolate with a touch of cinnamon. Surely you've had it before."

  I nodded, not meeting his amber gaze. What would these men do if they found out I was a puppet and not a real woman? Would they send me back to the puppet master? I stifled a shiver and moved closer to the cup, keeping note of the three men, ready if any of them jumped me. I'd throw the hot liquid in their face and run like hell.

  Tentatively with shaky hands, I picked up the cup. The heat sank through my fingers and took the chill from me. I went to take a sip when the red-haired man cleared his throat.

  "Might want to blow across it first. Still looks pretty hot to me and we don't want you to burn yourself." He sat down in a chair, crossing one leg over the other.

  I eased out a breath over the mug. The brown liquid sloshed along the sides.

  "Like this." Liam reached out to take the cup and I scurried back across the bed, the mug falling to the floor.

  My breaths froze in my chest. Surely they would beat me for this. Or shove their member in me as the puppet maker had done. My gaze flashed to the small door on the other side of the room.

  I leapt up, my feet tangling in the covers, but I kicked them off. Everything happened so fast. Crooked nose guy grabbed me from behind. I screamed, thrashing. His arms wrapped around me. He held my back to his chest. Hard muscles entrapped me, refusing to let me free. I kicked and squirmed. My arms pinned underneath his massive ones.