The Hidden Lands- A Carter & Hughes Adventure

By Catherine Rose

Fresh from the Smithsonian Lucy Carter is searching for the mythological city where the Hidden Ones live. Traders have spread tales of an ancient civilization deep in the jungles of Africa where hunting parties vanish never to be seen again. After a soggy exhausting trek it appears she has found what she's searching for only this time she's not in the library and it may cost her everything to see daylight again.

Excerpt-
Certainly no western man had ever seen this place and lived to tell the tale. She had spent two days gathering information when she had landed on the dank coast some months before and not a whisper of what lay beyond the mountain had she heard.
The few explorers who knew anything at all of Africa had never even mentioned an ancient people; not even as a legend. Although at the ramshackle inn during her last night she had an odd encounter. Lucy had made her way onto the dusty porch and was pondering how it could be so nasty given the copious amounts of water everywhere. It seemed to shimmer in the air before her eyes leaving a sticky clinging mess to her clothes come morning. Then a voice beside her remarked “You’d best take care once you pass the foothills. The deeper you go the closer you get to the Ones Who Remain.”
She turned to see a tall thin figure looming over her. Raising an eyebrow she casually said, “Perhaps a whiskey and a tale old man?”
She followed his gaze off towards the river where it vanished into the verdant jungle. “You think,” he whispered “all you have to worry about is a big cat or a gorilla?” Shaking his head he stared into the amber liquid and said, “Oh no there’s far worse than things with fangs in the jungle.”

Warning: Adult material, sexual content, some violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Rose
• Release date: Feb 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311610768

Catherine Rose

Catherine Rose is the pen name for a perverted old lady that likes to write stories inspired by her earlier days which she very much misses. Granted anything involving monsters, aliens, and horror stories are pure fiction...the rest? Not so much..

Book preview

The Hidden Lands-A Carter & Hughes Adventure

Catherine Rose

SmashwordsEdition

Copywrite Catherine Rose 2016

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the retailer and purchase your own copy. Cover art copywrite Catherine Rose. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Please note this is a work of fiction any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters engaged in sexual acts within this work of fiction are stated to be eighteen years of age or older. All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in reviews, newspapers, or other media no part of this book may be reproduced by any means without permission of the publisher. Thank you.

Authors Note: Material may contain words that some may consider taboo, blasphemous, racist, biased and in poor taste. In other words-it may be pretty damn nasty! The fact is that some people are deeply offended by a sneeze so that being said if you are one of those people that gets offended at every little thing and spend your day worrying about how to be politically correct; please go no further. Stop-now! If you read further it is at your discretion.

Access to minors is strictly forbidden! If you believe you might be offended by the material do not read it.

Somewhere in Africa 1925

A GREAT DARK shadow lay across the land, slashing through the red sun as it sank behind the black mountains.

To the woman who toiled up the jungle trail it loomed like a symbol of death and horror. She sensed a menace brooding above squatted down and waiting for her. Watching her and letting her come. She stopped and gazed about but heard nothing. The birds had gone silent. The air was hushed and still; heavy with the cloying scents of poisonous flowers. She looked down and toed the rocky path debating about just giving up for the night. Her heart beat with a terrible wallop and she could taste her fear with every breath. Would she be in time?

No time for doubt. Her path was chosen. Narrowing her eyes she stood her ground and whispered, No-not this time. I am my father’s daughter and I’ll be damned if I don’t find the lost city first. She trudged on towards a bend in the trail and felt something pass over her.

Yet it was only the shadow of the great ledge which reared up in front of her, the first outpost of the grim foothills which were her goal. She halted a moment at its base, staring upward where it rose blackly against the dying sun. She could have sworn that she caught a hint of movement at the top. She stared, raised hand shielding her eyes, but the fading glare dazzled her and she couldn’t be sure. Was it a man who darted to cover? A man or something else?

She shrugged her shoulders and fell to examining the rough trail which led up and vanished into the gloom. At first glance it seemed that only a mountain goat could scale it, but closer investigation showed a number of cleverly placed finger holds drilled into the solid rock. It would be a nasty climb but she had not come nearly seven thousand miles to turn back now. Given the foreboding and the oncoming darkness she decided it was best to secure her gear better. She dropped the large satchel she wore across her chest, and checked the Winchester Model 12 shotgun which she’d snagged from her dads gun cabinet. Her arms were tiring from carrying it in the ready position but given the trail ahead she decided it could be a liability. It was loaded so she tucked into its holding straps on her back. Then with her 1911 A1 Colt sidearm safely in a hip holster she swung her machete and without a backward glance over the darkening trail she had come, she started the long ascent.

Lucy Carter was a tall woman, long-armed and gently muscled, yet every few yards she was forced to halt in her upward climb and rest for a moment. Night fell swiftly and the crag above her became a shadowy blur. She was forced to feel blindly for each handhold. Clinging like an ant to the precipitous face of the cliff she had moments where she was rigid with fear and had to force herself onward.

Below her, the night noises of the tropical jungle called out. Yet it appeared to her that even these sounds were subdued and hushed. She had no time to wonder why. On up she struggled, and now to make her way harder, the cliff bulged outward near its summit. The strain on her nerves and muscles became heartbreaking. She quietly chanted a child’s rhyme to keep her moving. Anything to keep her mind on her purpose. Time and again her handhold would slip and she’d barely escape falling by a hair's breadth. But she fought on and her fingers maintained a death grip on each handhold. Her progress slowed as her muscles protested but she simply grunted with the pain and pushed on. After what seemed an eternity she saw the last ledge blocking out the stars a scant twenty feet above her.

And even as she looked, a vague bulk heaved into view, toppled on the edge and hurtled down toward her with a great rush of air. She flattened herself against the cliff's face but not before she felt a heavy blow against her shoulder. Flesh crawling with terror she swung wildly trying to regain her footing. As she fought to right herself, she heard a reverberating crash among the rocks far below. Whimpering through gritted teeth she swung and scrambled until her balance was restored. She looked up and didn’t see a damn thing. Who —or what—had shoved that boulder over the cliff edge? She was brave, but to a point. The thought of dying with no chance of resistance left an oily looseness in her guts.

Then a wave of fury supplanted her fear and she renewed her climb with reckless speed. The expected second boulder never came and nothing met her sight as she clambered up over the edge. The shrieking war cry died on her lips…she was alone.

She stood upon a sort of narrow plateau which emerged into a very wide open hilly country some half mile to the west. Silence ruled here in absolute sovereignty. No breeze stirred the somber depths below. No footfall rustled amid the stunted bushes which cloaked the plateau. Yet that boulder which had almost bashed her to bits had not fallen by chance. Something or someone had given it a push. Glancing up she couldn’t see much but she could smell something now and again on the wind. A scent that was different but to her untrained nose it could be anything. She wasn’t sure what she feared worse a sneaky human or a big cat. Either one could be deadly.

The tropical darkness fell like a heavy veil through which amber stained stars blinked evilly. The stench of the rotting jungle vegetation floated up to her as tangible as a thick fog. There was an uncomfortable feeling of being watched in the very air. The silence remained unbroken yet she sensed that living things glided before and behind her and on each side. Whether man or beast trailed her she knew not, nor did she care over-much, for she was prepared to fight whatever human or devil who barred her way. Occasionally she halted and glanced challengingly about her. She could only see the shrubs which crouched like