Maybe You’re The Solution too… MAYBE YOU’RE THE PROBLEM (The Empowered Mindset Series – Book 2) by Jack Williamson

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Calling Crow

Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 26, 2011

An Excerpt from
CALLING CROW

Book One of the Southeast Series

by Paul Clayton

“Furthermore, we command you in the virtue of holy obedience to send to the said firm lands and islands, honest, virtuous, and learned men, such as fear God and are able to instruct the native inhabitants in the Catholic faith and good manners, applying all their possible diligence in this.”

–Alexander Borgia, a Spanish pope indebted to Ferdinand and Isabella for his election, after dividing the earth in half, and granting the undiscovered lands in the western half to the Spanish, the eastern to the Portuguese.

1555, Along what would someday be called the South Carolina coast–

Chapter 1

Theblue sky stretched over and away from the green bean field, seemingly to the ends of the earth. It was a medicine sky, and as Calling Crow worked with two other men, he knew something bad was coming. A small fire crackled around the already-narrowed base of the tree they were felling as they chopped away the brittle, blackened wood with their stone axes. Calling Crow was the tallest of the three, muscled and slender. He paused in his chopping and glanced back at the sky.

The tree was still as big around as a fat old man, and he knew this job would take them most of the day. Sweating, he removed the short mantle of woven bark which covered the upper part of his body. Now, like the other two braves, he wore only a breechclout of deerskin held in place by a leather girdle. His pleasing, oval face was copper colored like a leaf in autumn, and was set off by a full, proud nose. He picked up the axe and chopped powerfully at the tree. The larger of the other two braves, Sun Watcher, knelt and used his axe to heap glowing embers up against the trunk. Birdfoot, a small thin brave, swung at the tree tiredly, breaking off a piece with a clinking sound. His intense face was blackened here and there with soot.

Calling Crow noticed something moving in the distance and put down his axe. With brown eyes the color of a pool of cedar water, he stared at the distant tree line. A solitary figure was approaching, running very fast.

The other two young men turned to Calling Crow as the runner momentarily disappeared behind a sand dune.

“What is it?” asked Sun Watcher.

“A runner is coming,” said Calling Crow. A moment later the figure crested the dune moving so fast they all immediately grabbed their clubs, looking to see if he was being chased. He was not, being instead ina great state of excitement. He tried to shout and lost his footing, tumbling and throwing up a spray of sand. He rolled quickly to his feet as the others ran up to him. It was Calling Crow’s cousin, Runs Like Deer. He coughed as he fought for breath. Calling Crow clapped him on the back. “Cousin, what is it?”

“Hurry,” said Runs Like Deer between gasps, “it is the men from the heavens, come down in their cloudboats!” He turned and staggered back up the dune. Calling Crow, Sun Watcher, and Birdfoot looked at each other for a moment and then hurried back to the tree to get their bows. They followed Runs Like Deer up the dune.

Only a handful of villagers had ever seen the men from the heavens in their beautiful cloudboats. It was said that they roamed the big water in search of newly dead souls to take to the land of the dead.

Calling Crow, Sun Watcher, and Birdfoot gasped for breath as they reached the top of the dune. They found a swarm of little boys looking out to sea. Their shouting pierced the air like gull cries as they jumped and pointed. A somber-faced old man and woman knelt facing the sea as they prayed.

Calling Crow climbed to a higher vantage point and looked out over the water. He could not believe what he saw. Out on the sea at a great distance, two white clouds had detached themselves from the heavens and now sat on the waters. As the warm rays of the sun burned into his face, a chill went through him. There was no doubt that this was a sign, but what did it mean? Calling Crow watched a boy put an arrow to his bow. His arm muscles bulged as he pulled the feathered shaft back to his cheek. Calling Crow frowned at the other boys watching expectantly. They should know by now that even if an arrow could reach the distant cloudboats, it would only pass harmlessly through them, for they were from the spirit world.

The boy released his arrow, and it arced out a good distance before it fell into the sea beyond the rocks. Undaunted, he lay on his back, and using his legs to hold his bow, launched another arrow. It too fell woefully short. Disappointed, the crowd of boys again fixed their attention on the distant cloudboats. A mild seaward breeze started up behind them as Runs Like Deer came over to stand beside Calling Crow. Together they watched the two white shapes in silence.

“I think they’re moving,” said Runs Like Deer.

Calling Crow strained his eyes to watch as the cloudboats closed the distance to the dark point of land that jutted out on the periphery of his vision. What did these omens bode for his people? A huge cloud passed overhead and the sea turned the wintry color of dead leaves. The smell of smoke reached Calling Crow’s nostrils. He turned to see two boys on their haunches, blowing a handful of smoking kindling into flame to call the people from heaven. Calling Crow ran over. “No,” he said angrily as he kicked the flames out. “We must not call them until the Council of Old Men has been consulted.”

The boys glowered at Calling Crow as he waved them away. “Go!”

They walked off and Calling Crow turned and looked back out to sea. The cloudboats had disappeared, but he could not take his eyes off the sea. What were those things? The sight of them caused a great fear and sadness in his heart. He said nothing to the others and after a while they wandered off. He sat in the sand and stared out at the waters. Despite the warmth of the day, he shivered. The sea often had that effect on him, ever since it had taken his father.

Back when he was a boy, Calling Crow’s father had gone out fishing with some other men when a storm suddenly came up. He remembered running to the beach, crying as the wind lashed his face, and lightning lit the angry sky. The next morning the empty canoe had washed up on the beach. His father and the other man had never been found.

Chapter 2

Under a dizzying array of stars, two caravels, the Guadalupe and the Speeding Hound, moved slightly against their anchors in the black swells, like two great seabirds. The ships were from Spain’s island colony of Hispaniola, down in the Caribbean Sea, and were on a, so-far unsuccessful slaving expedition. Carrying sixty-five men, the ships contained two armories filled with dozens of deadly accurate crossbows and, more importantly, thunderous black-smoke and -fire-belching harquebuses. The harquebuses were woefully inaccurate, but were known to terrify the natives into mute paralysis. In addition, each ship carried a small boat lashed down on the upper deck. The bigger of the two ships, the Guadalupe, also carried two horses, and towed a lateen-rigged long boat for landing them.

The commander of the expedition, Francisco Mateo, a criollo landowner and merchant, sat in his cabin in the rear of the Guadalupe, talking with his friend, an older colonist named Diego Vega. Diego, a sad faced man in his mid-fifties, had been a friend of Mateo’s father, having come over on the Galician’s second voyage with him. Now that Mateo’s own father had died, he treasured the old man’s company, as he was the only living link to his family’s past.

Senor Mateo’s tea-brown eyes stared pensively at nothing as he ran his hand through his red hair. He did not like what he had been hearing Diego and other criollos. Before he’d left Santo Domingo, he had hired a contingent of soldiers newly arrived from Spain to help him catch slaves. Now, under the guidance of their two officers, they were complaining and causing trouble, wanting him to turn around and go back to Santo Domingo. Even his crew, loyal criollo and mestizo farmers and ranchers, were beginning to tire of the search.

“You know,” Diego said tiredly, “the cook was lying about being out of ship’s biscuits.”

Senor Mateo’s head jerked upright. “What?”

Diego nodded. “I found three barrels of them hidden under some canvas.”

Mateo said nothing for a moment and Diego went on. “You know, Francisco, I think that the reason you have found no Indians is that God looks unkindly on this venture.”

Mateo remained silent. Diego was married to an Arawak Indian woman. These marriages were now common among the criollos on the island, but to the newly arrived Peninsulars, the idea was repulsive. The Peninsulars considered Indian women to only be useful as whores and servants. Finally Mateo sighed tiredly. “Diego, what we are doing is completely within the limits of the law.”

“Man’s law,” said Diego, almost in a whisper. “I should never have agreed to come along on this. It is wrong. I needed the money so badly that I did not– “

Both men heard faint footsteps out on deck. As Mateo listened to them fade away he made a mental note to deal with the cook in the morning. Another thought came to him. Perhaps they were measuring the latitudes wrong and therefore searching for Indians in the wrong area? That would account for their terrible luck on this trip. Perhaps he should take the latitude with the backstaff himself?

A loud, dull thud reverberated through the wood of the cabin. Mateo looked over at Diego. “See what it is.”

Diego quickly got to his feet. As he went toward the door, the strong smell of lamp oil reached Mateo’s nostrils. Diego opened the door and turned to look upward toward high stern of the ship. A glow spread around him and then golden, liquid fire poured down onto his shoulder. He beat his doublet furiously as his face blossomed with fear.

Mateo ran to him, roughly pulling Diego’s hands away. In the light of the fire, Mateo saw burnt flesh on one hand. He quickly glanced up at the stern. Bright flames half as high as a man moved in the slight breeze. The large oil lamp which had hung above had evidently broken loose from its fixture and crashed down, causing the planks of the bulkhead to catch fire. Mateo pushed Diego into his cabin. He pulled the smoldering fabric of Diego’s doublet off of him and dunked it in a bucket of water. “Are you okay?” he shouted at the older man.

Diego nodded, appearing slightly dazed.

“Go tell the others. Quickly! And then find the barber to take care of that hand.”

Diego hurried off, shouting as he went. Mateo ran back to the door of the cabin and shouted, “Fuego! Fuego! Come quickly!”

He ran back into the cabin and returned with a cape. As quickly as he slapped the flames out they reappeared. Like the fires of hell, small flaming rivulets of lamp oil flowed about his feet as the intense heat scorched him. He beat at the flames until his cape caught fire. Throwing it down, he stomped it out and turned to call again for help. He saw the ship’s cooper standing there, staring incredulously at the flames.

Mateo shouted at him angrily, “We will lose this ship, fool, and you will have to swim back to Hispaniola! Get the others and some buckets! Get that pump on the port side working!”

“Si,” yelled the man as dread realization contorted his face. He ran back toward the center of the ship. “Fuego! Help! Fire! Come quickly!”

Chapter 3

Calling Crow had taken his name four years earlier after praying for, and receiving, his first vision. He had fasted alone on the mountain for three days and seen the Great Spirit. He had appeared like someone on the other side of a skin stretched across an entryway, brushing up against it as they passed. Then a large crow had settled in a nearby tree and called to him, and that noble bird had become his spirit guide.

Now he, Sun Watcher, and Birdfoot emerged from the great forest of slash pine and broad-leafed magnolias, elms, and hickories that bordered on the village of Tumaqua. Each man wore his bow over one arm, and each had a quiver of arrows hanging from their back. They had been sent to scout the forests that bordered the Flathead People’s lands and had seen nothing unusual. They were so called because of that tribe’s custom of binding the heads of their infants to boards. Heading back toward the village, the men walked quickly across a field of clover.

Calling Crow turned to Sun Watcher as they walked. Although Calling Crow was a hands breadth taller than Sun Watcher, Sun Watcher was stronger, being very broad and muscled in the chest. “The Flatheads are nowhere in evidence.”

Sun Watcher smiled. “They are probably afraid to come around.” Sun Watcher’s smile turned to a frown. “Tell me, Calling Crow, did you also see this light Birdfoot speaks of’

“Yes,” said Calling Crow.

Sun Watcher looked straight ahead, his face stony in its seriousness. “Tell me, what was it like?”

Calling Crow remembered the mysterious light. He and others had watched it burn against the black sky over the sea last night. He still wasn’t sure what it portended. Perhaps he should speak to Mennewah the Shaman about it. “It burned like a star fallen onto the waters.”

“Aieyee, I told you so,” Birdfoot said as he tried to keep up with the two bigger braves. Birdfoot’s delicate features and large eyes flashed annoyance at Sun Watcher for doubting him. “It is a sign.”

“No, Grandfather,” said Sun Watcher. He turned and smiled. “It is not.”

Birdfoot was actually younger than the other two, but because of his pensive, questioning ways he was teasingly called Grandfather.

Sun Watcher filledhis chest as they walked, bulging out his muscles. He looked crossly at Birdfoot. “You are too serious, Birdfoot. If it really was a sign, Caldo would have already called a meeting with the Council of Old Men.”

“Perhaps.” Birdfoot rubbed a rivulet of sweat from his brow.

The three men fell silent and Calling Crow thought of the dreams he’d been having. In one of them he’d heard his dead father’s voice as he watched the strange cloudboats sail by. He wondered if it was a sign, and if so, what it portended.

Calling Crow and the other two braves reached the dirt path that led to Tumaqua. Worn smooth by the moccasins of over a hundred men and women, it felt good beneath their feet. They could see the village up ahead. Almost on the edge of the sea, it sat between two large dunes. The village was made up of three dozen rectangular dwellings. Their semicircular roofs were made of bent saplings that had been covered with mats of woven cattails and bark. The dwellings were situated haphazardly around a large circular building with a domed roof, called a chokafa. Built on a mound, the chokafa served as the village’s meetinghouse. Next to the chokafa was a large rectangular field called a chunkey yard in which ball games were played against players from neighboring villages. All these structures were enclosed within a defensive palisade of sturdy upright timbers and sharpened stakes pointing outward.

As the three neared the village, they heard the women wailing. It was the cry that indicated that someone had died! They began running. As they entered the palisade, Calling Crow was saddened and moved by the plaintive harmonies of the women. It was like a storm wind moaning late at night. Who had died? he wondered. Perhaps one of his loved ones?

Death was, of course, not an unusual thing, but as the volume of sound swelled with their every step, Calling Crow knew that it must have been someone of great importance. Never had he heard wailing like this. “Do you think it was Mennewah?” Calling Crow shouted to Birdfoot as they ran along.

“Perhaps,” Birdfoot replied worriedly.

Sun Watcher said nothing.

Mennewah the Shaman was the oldest man in the village, and Calling Crow had dreamed of him twice in the past moon.

They rounded one of the bigger huts and saw that the chunkey yard was full of sitting women, their heads bowed as they wailed. It was the custom for the women to mourn a death in this way.

In front of the firewell, a body lay on a raised pallet of willow poles and skins. Before Calling Crow and the other two braves could get close enough to see who it was, the maiden, Tiamai, ran up to them. Her large eyes were glazed with sadness. “It is our beloved Chief,” she said.

Calling Crow felt as if a knife had punctured his heart. The cloudboats had appeared and now the bravest, noblest man in Tumaqua was dead!

“What happened?” he said.

Tiamai’s eyes were moist. “Our Chief and Cries At Night had been stalking a big buck deer all day. When our Chief shot his arrow into him, another arrow also struck the buck. It belonged to Many Skins Man of the Wolf Clan. Both their arrows seemed to strike the buck at the same time. Our Chief suggested that they should share the kill, but Many Skins Man insisted that his arrow had pierced the buck first, and the kill should be all his. They fought and Many Skins Man killed our Chief.” Tiamai deliberately avoided saying Chief Caldo’s name. To speak the name of the dead was taboo.

Sun Watcher looked skyward and howled in rage. Calling Crow looked into Tiamai’s eyes. “How do you know all this?”

“I talked to Cries At Night after they brought our Chief’s body back to Tumaqua.” She held Calling Crow’s eyes for a moment longer before she ran back to the nearest group of women and sat down.

Calling Crow gripped his bow tightly. Perhaps he would soon use it for killing men. It would be the first time for him. If a death was due to a killing, accidental or otherwise, reparation was required from the guilty party. Failure to provide reparation meant war. As long as anyone from the five villages could remember, reparation had always been made and war averted. There was no reason to believe that this time would be any different.

Once reparation had been made, the Council of Old Men voted on whether or not to accept it. Always it had been offered in good faith and always it had been accepted. If it were not, the young braves of the tribe would prepare to exact revenge.

Chapter 4

After eight days of mourning, Many Skins Man still had not shown up to make reparation, and the village of Tumaqua began making preparations for war. The cloudboats now forgotten, the men shaped stones for arrows and lances while the women scraped the fire hardened tips of stakes and buried them in the dirt around the palisade. Old women cooked all day as old men and boys carried water, arrows, and stones up to the top of the palisade. As the people worked, there was an overwhelming quiet, almost as if a summer storm were gathering. No one spoke more than was needed because nothing could be as it had been before. The people could not truly have peace until the reparation was made or war begun. Finally, on the morning of the ninth day, a runner informed the village that Many Skins Man was to come that day.

Calling Crow thought about these things as he sat in the cool interior of his aunt’s hut. Three Pearls brought him a steaming calabash of corn soup. He sipped the hot sweet liquid hurriedly and noisily, not wanting to insult Three Pearls by leaving it unfinished. He could not take his time with it like he normally would have, and ended up gulping the rest of it down before he got to his feet. His mouth burned from drinking it so fast, but that did not matter. He must go out and watch the reparation.

“Nephew,” Three Pearls called to him, “stay and eat more.”

“I am sorry, Aunt,” he said, pausing in the entryway and turning to her with regret. “I must go.” He rushed out of the hut.

Calling Crow quickly made his way to the square next to the chunkey yard. This was the place where the people came to cure hides, grind maize and grains, or just to gossip. It was here that Many Skins Man would stand before them all to make his reparation.

Reparation or war! Which would it be? The Council of Old Men sat in the center of the yard while most of the villagers milled about behind them, talking and waiting. Calling Crow saw that Caldo’s body had been taken away to the beach where it would be raised up on lodge poles to protect it from small animals. Months from now, when the flesh was gone from the bones, certain bones would be given to the Old Men and the braves as talismans.

Calling Crow pushed through the crowd to where Tiamai knelt in the sand, grinding corn. He watched her as she worked. Wearing only a skirt of woven bark, she pounded the blue and yellow kernels of maize into the hollow of a grinding rock with a wooden mortar, the action moving her small breasts. It was understood that the young people of the village would lie with one another, changing partners from time to time as they discovered themselves and their likes and dislikes, but by the time a brave had been on the earth twenty turnings of the seasons, he was expected to have selected one girl for hiswife. Calling Crow had already selected Tiamai. He knew it and so did she. So did any others who happened to see how they looked at each other. Like most girls, Tiamai was an obedient, hard worker for her mother. Although she was but fifteen, Calling Crow was struck with the noble way she carried herself. She was also beautiful. Her long, dark hair fell to her waist and her black eyes shone like the sea at night. It was this combination of nobility and childlike beauty that had made him love her.

He walked over and stood by her side. She looked up at him and smiled sadly, then went back to her grinding.

From the other side of the dunes, the sea called to Calling Crow as it surged and sighed up and down the wide beach. As he listened to its voice he watched Tiamai’s cinnamon-colored face and remembered the last time he lay with her in the forest.

As if hearing his thought, Tiamai paused in her grinding and looked up at him. With the look they shared, he knew that he would soon make their love known to the whole village.

She raised her hand to brush a sweat dampened strand of hair from her face. “Tell me about the cloudboats. I’ve never seen them.”

“I pray you never will. They appeared and our great Chief died. I knew they were not a good sign.” Tiamai lowered her head at the mention of the tragedy. “I wonder what Many Skins Man will bring,” she said.

“I don’t know, but this death will require many fine gifts.” As he looked down at Tiamai he felt his sadness lighten a little. She always worked this magic on him.

“Soon,” said Tiamai, “when the reparation is accepted and the matter of our Chief’s death settled, the Council of Old Men will pick a new Chief from among the top braves. Then life in the village will be as it was. Perhaps they will pick you.” Tiamai smiled and turned away to her work.

Calling Crow said nothing. He knew he was a candidate, along with a dozen or so other braves. However, like everyone else in the village, he thought the Old Men would pick Sun Watcher. He was the bravest and strongest in the village. Whenever they gathered in the chunkey yard to play ball against a neighboring village, they would always win because of Sun Watcher’s strength and skills. As a boy, Calling Crow had challenged him many times in wrestling, footraces, and shooting arrows, but try as he could, not once had he been able to best him.

A gull glided overhead, crying out sorrowfully to the people below. Calling Crow looked toward the sea. “The other day,” he said slowly, “as I watched the cloudboats, in spite of my repulsion, I felt they were calling me.”

Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 23, 2011: An Excerpt from BETTER THAN EVER, AGAIN, a novel by Mitch Davies

August 18, 2011March 23, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

The ad said “No Sailing Experience Necessary,” so Ben Beck had the perfect qualifications to join the crew sailing to Tahiti. What could go wrong? Better not answer that until you meet the rest of the crew….

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by Mitch Davies

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Can they sail the southern seas without any mishaps? When Ben finds out what’s really going on, can he save the dream?

Here’s the set-up:

Who hasn’t dreamt of sailing in the South Pacific as the owner of a sleek, gleaming yacht? Ben Beck finds that dream job as a crew member sailing on just such a ship.

With a history of working ‘too good to be true’ opportunities, he still can’t believe his luck. Sailing excursions in Tahiti for a year then sell the yacht and get a nice chunk of the proceeds.

The ad said, “No Sailing Experience Necessary” and he had the qualifications.

His fellow group members include Carl, the millionaire boss, Duane, a hard-to-please captain, Purrette, a serious beauty and Rudy, a potential danger.

After a confusing start of mis-information, Ben isn’t sure of exactly what he’s gotten himself into. How many partners does he have? Where exactly are they going?

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Can they sail the southern seas without any mishaps? When Ben finds out what’s really going on, can he save the dream?

Click here to download Better Than Ever, Again (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

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Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 23, 2011

An Excerpt from

BETTER THAN EVER, AGAIN

a novel by Mitch Davies

Prologue

After a day of filthy work at the marina, Ben Beck stopped at the fish-and-chip shop he’d become addicted to. With a six-pack in one grimy hand and an order of halibut and fries with an extra piece of fish in the other, he was all set for his favorite dinner. He’d frequented the shop almost every night since he discovered it on his way to the run-down motel located within walking distance of his new job. The greasy, fish smell that filled his room made him smile, and told him he was as close to a home as he could get right now.

He turned on the black-and-white television set and popped open a can of beer. On the end of the bed he spread the pile of brochures for a local amusement park-he’d taken them from the stand in the motel lobby-pulled the contents of his meal from the bag, and placed the grey cardboard cartons on the brochures. The first bite of fish burned his mouth, forcing him to juggle the meat lightly on his tongue while huffing, mouth wide open, to remove the heat. His urgent attempt to cool his burning tongue created a loud panting noise that prevented him from hearing the doorknob turn. The sudden change in air temperature caused him to turn toward the open door.

A tall, dark-haired man stood blocking the opening.

Ben forgot about the tongue-burning fish in his mouth and stared at the odd but familiar-looking man. When he realized who stared back at him, he spat the fish out onto the brown, grunge-stained carpet. “Oh shit. Carl?”
Carl stepped into the room as another man rolled around the wall into the room and sidestepped to Carl’s left.

“Duane?” Ben said.

Duane pointed a gun at Ben as Carl slowly reached for the edge of the door and closed it. Both men wore dark, baggy clothing.

“How did you guys find me here?” Ben asked.

“We never lost you, Ben. We just couldn’t approach you until the FBI agents decided to leave.”

“FBI agents?”

“Don’t worry, they’re gone now.” Carl smiled his big white smile, looking more like the happy, confident man Ben remembered. “You took something from me, Ben.”

“I didn’t mean to knock him overboard. I didn’t even know I’d hit him,” Ben said.

“Not Rudy… Fuck him. He can soak in the cold watery hell you sunk him in. That prick was blackmailing me anyway.” The smile still glowed. “Where’s Miss Malloy?”

“That I truly don’t know. I left her outside the airport in Tahiti.”

Carl said, “Duane told me you spent her last night onboard in her cabin. He also told me the two of you got a little greedy. You stole all my money, then you took the little bit Duane and Rudy had stashed as well. Not very nice, Ben. The two of you have really pissed me off.”

“I gave her Rudy’s, Duane’s, and my money. I don’t know anything about your money.”

Carl stepped back and leaned against the door. He tilted his head forward and stared at the floor, working the muscles in his lips. When he finally looked up again he said, “I need them both back, Ben. You got one chance. Tell me now; help me out. You know I’m going to find her anyway, so if you help me, you keep on living.”

“What?” At the sound of a threat Ben began to think about how he was going to get out of the room.

“Normally Rudy would do this sort of thing, but thanks to you he’s not available. And, with the kind of heat you’ve placed on me, none of my other contacts are taking my calls. You’ve forced me to do this myself. Where is she, Ben?” Carl’s voice stayed calm.

“Carl, I don’t…” In mid-sentence Ben swiped backhand at the food that lay in front of him, sending it in the direction of Duane, who was holding the gun. The large fish chunks flew off level with the bed and landed on the floor, but the fries got airborne and shot toward Duane. He stood his ground, letting two or three of them hit him in the chest, but otherwise didn’t react to the attempted distraction.

Ben rolled across the bed away from them and landed on the floor. He listened to see which direction they had moved.

“Get up, you idiot,” Carl said.

Ben looked around for something else to throw but found nothing. Slowly he stood, to see Carl and Duane standing in the same place. He moved nearer the table bolted to the wall next to the bed. His hand shot out and grabbed the phone and he threw it at Duane. The phone’s cord stopped it halfway to the target; the receiver continued on its trajectory, missed its mark and landed with a thud. It scraped along the floor as the outstretched cord drew in its coils.

Carl and Duane stood staring at Ben. “This is ridiculous. Are you done?” Carl said.

“No.” Ben turned his back and sat down on the bed. As soon as his haunches touched the mattress, he grabbed the square, brown glass ashtray, turned and sent it spinning at Duane’s head. Duane saw it coming and turned to his left, but too late. A corner of the ashtray struck the cartilage near the back of his right ear, cutting through it. His own momentum, the impact of the ashtray, and the immediate burning sensation caused him to hit the wall and drop to his knees. Ben followed the ashtray over the bed. As Duane reached up to protect his ear with his empty hand, Ben hit him in the jaw, crashing his head hard into the wall. Duane fell unconscious to the floor. Ben reached for the gun as Carl landed on his back and together they landed on top of Duane. Ignoring Carl’s grasping hands, Ben concentrated on getting a firm grip on the pistol. When he felt his hand close tight around its grip, he tensed his shoulders and neck, then labored to stand under the tall man’s weight. Carl’s fingers dug into Ben’s shoulder; his other arm stretched across Ben’s face, twisting his head back and to the side. Ben pushed back hard toward the wall, slamming Carl into the thermostat box. He heard Carl’s breath jet from his lungs with a deep grunt. He took a quick step away from the wall, braced his leg, and slammed back again. When he heard Carl gasping to refill his lungs, he jabbed back with his elbow and struck him in the soft flesh just below his ribs. Carl slid off his back, landing on his side when he hit the floor. He rolled to look up wild-eyed at Ben, his mouth open but unable to draw in air.

Carl slapped the floor and pulled his knees into his abdomen while making short sucking noises. Ben offered no help.

“You have to believe me, Carl, I don’t know where she is and I don’t know anything about your money. There’s nothing I can help you with.” He opened the door, ran down the metal stairs to the parking lot and turned toward the street.

When he arrived at the sidewalk he stopped and looked both ways. The marina and other places he was familiar with were to the left, so he turned right and ran as fast as he could. When his lungs started to burn, he hid in a dark corner at the side of a building.

He realized he had been running with the gun still in his hand. He tucked it into his pants and bent over to catch his breath, but the gun poked at his stomach. He pulled it out and decided to get rid of it, knowing he would never use it. He fumbled to get the clip out, then went to the back of the building and threw the gun in a trash bin. He removed the bullets from the clip, then threw them and the clip over the fence into an open lot.

He had nowhere to go, so he climbed the fence and rested against the wall. Tall grass and a stack of torn mattresses shielded him from the street. He felt he should keep moving, but he stayed there until morning.

Excerpt From Better Than Ever, Again

In the still dark of the early morning, Ben fussed in the galley, wishing he had more time before he had to meet the clients at the marina. Duane sat in the pilothouse drawing lines on his chart under the light of a small marine lamp. Rudy sat on the deck a few steps away from Duane, leaning against a stanchion while looking out over the dock. He rose up into a squat position when he spotted a ghost moving along the dock, but stayed low behind the hump of the pilothouse so the ghost couldn’t see him. Duane noticed his movement and looked over curiously; when he saw Rudy’s serious stare directed toward the dock, he turned to see what held his attention.

Neither spoke. Rudy had no idea that Duane had joined him in monitoring the barely visible grayish patch that floated silently along the dock. It had wisps and streaks that moved in different directions. Its top seemed still; its middle shifted and rolled seductively. It did not get brighter, but it did get larger, as it came closer to their gangway. It stopped, but remained suspended in the air; then the top half of the phantom disappeared while the bottom began to roll again.

A thought penetrated Duane’s curiosity. He reached forward and turned on the mast light. At the edge of the cone of light cast out around the ship, they saw a woman. She had been walking away from the ship, but when she saw the light she turned back. She wore a dark-colored wind jacket that she left open over a deep red pareo with a white floral pattern. As she walked back to the ship the men recognized the shift and roll of her hips.

“It’s a woman,” Duane said.

“It sure as hell is,” Rudy replied as he stood and walked forward.

Duane left his seat to go forward as well. When he reached the gangway the woman arrived at the dock end and smiled at them before asking, “Is this Ben Beck’s boat?”

Both men heard the question, but stood still, unable to answer in the beam she smiled at them.

“Hello. Is this Ben Beck’s boat?” she asked again.

“Yes,” Rudy said. “Ben is here.”

“Good. I wasn’t sure in the dark. I brought his baguette.”

Maeva started up the gangway as Duane and Rudy bumped into each other on their way down to help her with the bags of bread. They took the bags and turned back. When they got back on deck, they turned to let her go first but found that she hadn’t followed them. They saw her walking away from the ship toward the marina and felt dejected. They watched her disappear into the darkness outside the cone of light. When they could no longer see her, they looked down at the bags they held then turned to take them to Ben in the galley.

Below, they placed the bags on the counter as Ben arranged the refrigerator. He turned and saw the bags.

“Good. Where is she?”

“She left,” Rudy answered.

“She’ll be back; she’s going out with us today.”

“I thought you said the clients were Americans,” Duane commented.

“She’s not the client, she’s going to be the hostess today. I asked her to come.”

“All right,” Rudy said, “She is one spanking, good-looking piece of Tahitian ass.”

“If I hear those kind of words come out of your mouth again, I’ll break your teeth,” Ben said calmly while staring at Rudy. He looked at Duane and said, “Either of you.”

Both men stood frozen by the words and cautioned by the cold tone of Ben’s delivery.

“Take it easy, man. You just had to say to lay off. You don’t need to go threatening anybody’s teeth,” Duane said.

“So Ben got himself a girl. That’s why you’ve been so willing to go ashore to hunt down clients, only it looks like you’ve been hunting down skirts. And it sounds like you got serious about one. Big mistake,” Rudy said, shaking his head.

“Shut up, Rudy,” Ben said in a low rumble of a voice.

“Big mistake.” Rudy began to cluck his tongue. Before he’d made the sound twice, Ben had grabbed him by the front of his shirt near the collar and had twisted the material in his hand so that it cut into Rudy’s neck. He pulled Rudy across the counter so that his heels were off the ground. Rudy tried to balance himself with his arms. Their faces were an inch apart, and Ben held him there so Rudy could only look directly into his eyes.

Duane grabbed Ben’s wrists and pulled down on them so that he had to lower Rudy, whose face began to turn dark red. Ben let go, giving Rudy a flick of his wrist, sending him backward against the galley wall where he remained, rubbing his neck, trying to catch his breath, glaring at Ben.

“What the fuck’s got into you? You don’t go pullin’ off that bullshit with your crew. You do that shit again and you’re outta here, you hear me?” Duane yelled at Ben.

Ben let him finish, then took his eyes away from Rudy, looked at Duane, and said, “You interfere with what I’m doing again and you’ll get the same. Do you hear me?”

“You watch yourself, Ben. He was just trying to be funny. You don’t have to get like that. Rudy, you got things to do on deck.”

Rudy left them in the galley. Ben reorganized the counter and began to set up a tray of bread and cheese while Duane puttered around doing things he didn’t have to do. He opened cupboards to inspect glasses, moved the toaster an inch further into the corner, and lifted the salt and pepper shakers to see that they were full. After a few minutes he went to his cabin and sat. When he heard Ben’s footsteps going up on deck he quickly got up and walked out after him. As he came up the stairs, he saw Ben moving forward; then he glimpsed Rudy’s movement behind him. He turned, causing Rudy to stop. Duane had blocked the progress of his attempt to sneak up on Ben. Rudy held a stanchion loosely in his hand, down low by his leg. Duane slowly shook his head, and saw the violent tension reluctantly ebb from Rudy’s face. He said nothing, but walked over to Rudy and took the stanchion.

Duane turned and looked forward to see if Ben had seen what had gone on, but saw Ben running down the gangway toward the ghost girl who carried another large bag.

They returned to the boat and Ben carried the bag to the aft deck. After he came back to the pilothouse he introduced Maeva to Duane. Ben described the itinerary that Maeva had suggested for the trip to Moorea. Duane liked her plan, and asked her to come and look over the charts so he could see where she intended for them to go.

When they were finished, they went below to get the trays of food and make coffee so the clients’ breakfast would be ready when they arrived. With that done, Ben and Maeva walked back to the marina to meet their guests. They had waited only a few minutes when a shuttle bus from the resort pulled up at the curb. They greeted the tourists, three of them: Greg, Sandra, and their teenage son Doug. Maeva placed a flower lei over each of their heads and led them down the dock to the Aurawind.

Duane and Rudy stood waiting at the top of the gangway as they came aboard. Duane introduced himself as captain of the ship, and introduced his first mate Rudy. He then led them to the breakfast table and indicated that he would be glad to provide them with a tour of the Aurawind once they had dined and were well away from the harbor. Ben poured their first glasses of champagne and orange juice, then left them with Maeva as he helped shove off. The breeze blew down from the mountain and out to sea, so they left their mooring under sail. The brochure had promised a sunrise breakfast looking back at the departing Papeete Harbor. The champagne-enhanced view of the island, the gentle slapping of water against the hull, and the flutter of canvas delivered on the promise.

They sailed south along the coast of the island, then turned north and west to cross the shipping channel toward Moorea. Maeva directed Duane to a point outside the atoll near an opening that would take them to a small, uninhabited island inside the reef. Outside the reef they set anchor. Ben and Maeva disembarked with the visitors in the skiff, taking them through the opening and landing on a small section of beach on one side of a sand spit. Then, each grabbing some of the gear, they marched a short distance through a stand of coconut palms to a long stretch of beach that faced across the water to Moorea and another small island. The stretch of water that lay between the two small islands displayed clusters of floral-shaped blooms of coral smattered about in the shallows.

Ben left Maeva and the tourists to go back and retrieve the baskets that held their lunch.

The three guests stood in awe at the sight of the big green tooth-shaped mountain across the aqua lagoon. They dropped their gear and walked into the water and silently took in the sight, until something in the water caught Doug’s eye. He yelled out and ran along, kicking up a splash and pointing at a school of blue- and yellow-striped fish that first darted away from him, then regrouped and disappeared behind a cluster of coral. He looked back at his parents, who had followed as he chased the fish. Before they reached him, he spotted a lizard streaking along the beach back near the line of trees, and came running out of the water to get a look at the creature, but it made a quick getaway into the brush.

He ran back toward Maeva and asked if they could snorkel.

As they put on their snorkel equipment, Maeva explained a little about what they should expect in the coral field and warned them to be careful near the clusters: The scrapes could be painful and cause skin irritations. In minutes they were in the water swimming against the slight current running between the two islands. The water varied in depth from three to twelve feet. In the shallow section they swam through a coral maze where the coral rose to the surface of the water on both sides of them. Bright red and yellow fish skittered out of their way around the corners of the maze. From time to time the corridors opened up to deep sandy-bottomed pools with large ball-shaped corals sitting on the bottom like a blue-gray pearl in an oyster. When Doug dove to take a closer look, a school of several hundred tiny blue fish swam to meet him and protect their home. Before he knew it, they surrounded him on all sides and he felt the touch of numerous noses against his skin. Up he went in panic; but when he broke the surface he laughed out loud and his parents, who had watched while floating on the surface, smiled when they heard his laugher. After repositioning his snorkel bit, he dove again and again, and each time the cloud of blue came to meet him. He maintained his position as long as he could while the school encompassed him on all sides. They popped him face to face on the glass of his mask so he couldn’t see beyond them. Wiping his hand in front of his face, he attempted to clear them so he could determine how many surrounded him. Though each swipe moved some of the fish away, they soon returned to cover his mask again. In an instant they zipped away from him toward another invader; before they engulfed the new threat, Doug saw his father diving toward the coral. His lungs pulled hard for air so he surfaced, blew out his pipe and watched his father and the fish. When his father resurfaced, they lifted their heads out of the water and laughed again at being surrounded by the brave little fish.

For the next two hours they explored their private coral reef. They spotted fish of many colors darting about their maze. Sea cucumbers lying on the bottom, anemones with their translucent tentacles swaying in the current, flat bottom-dwellers coasting below, and sponges clinging to the sides of the coral formations. They moved toward the main protective reef, and as they swam across a deep basin to its inner wall, they saw the shiny teeth of an eel. They turned quickly and headed back to the beach.

Hunger fatigued the swimmers. Their legs felt heavy as they walked out of the water and up the slight incline of the beach to the picnic Ben and Maeva had spread out for them. They talked nonstop with mouths full, their conversations full of descriptions of the strange things they had seen. Occasionally they asked Maeva about some creature that stood out as more unusual than the others, but most of the discussion took place among the three family members.

They heard a thump in the trees and the family stopped talking and chewing and looked silently toward the palms.

“What was that?” Doug asked.

“Coconut,” Maeva answered. They returned to their meal.

A second coconut fell a few minutes later and they stopped again, but only briefly-and when a third one dropped near the end of their lunch, Doug commented, “Can you imagine walking through the trees and one of those things falls on your head?”

Maeva told him that could never happen. Doug asked why not.

“Because the coconuts have three eyes, and they never fall if they see people or animals below them.”

“Coconuts don’t have eyes.”

“Sure they do. I’ll show you.”

Before they knew what had happened, Maeva jumped up and ran into the trees. They all, including Ben, watched where she had disappeared. Soon she walked out of the brush carrying a large coconut still wrapped in its thick brown husk. She grabbed the machete they had brought along; holding the coconut in her outstretched hand, she hacked away at the husk and very efficiently cleared the entire thick stringy mass from the fruit inside. She used her hand to rub away some of the straggling fibers and then turned the hard shell toward her audience to show them the three dark eyes on the smaller end of the coconut.

“See?”

“Those aren’t real eyes,” Doug said.

“They must be,” she responded smiling, “because they know not to drop on people.”

She then held the coconut out in her hand again, and with the back of the knife dealt it a quick snapping blow at its equator. The shell cracked and water leaked out; she broke it open the rest of the way, managing to retain most of the liquid.

“Here, taste the water,” she said as she handed the coconut cup to Doug.

He accepted it with wide eyes and drank all the coconut water greedily.

“Can I have another one?” Doug asked.

“Sure, but you go get it.” Maeva replied.

Ben and Maeva packed up the picnic and Ben took the baskets back to the skiff. When he returned, he spotted Doug, who had forgotten about the coconuts, snorkeling out in the water where he skimmed the surface, watching the action below. Greg, his father, stood in thigh-deep water, keeping an eye on his son while Sandra, his wife, and Maeva sat in the water up to their shoulders and let the mild current wash the warm salty water over their bodies. Ben walked in and joined Greg, who turned and looked at Ben with a smile as he waded out.

“This place is something else,” Greg said.

“Yes, it is. This is the first time I’ve been here. Maeva suggested it.”

“This whole day has been something. We will always remember this vacation to your island. It cost us way too much, but Doug’s getting to that age where he’s not going to want to do much with his parents anymore. If this is going to be our last trip together, it’s going to be the most memorable.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Even this day trip is a little extravagant for us. We’re not the kind of people that would even think of a private sail on a yacht like yours. Doug is having a gas.”

“That’s what we wanted. Now I think I’ll join him; like I said, I’ve never been here either.”

Ben got into his equipment and swam to meet Doug, and the two stayed in the water a long time. When they had almost exhausted themselves, they returned and joined the other three for a final beverage before they had to leave their private island.

Greg stood the whole time and watched them swim, and now lowered himself into the water beside his wife. He had almost settled his weight on the bottom when he felt something wiggle and thump against his butt cheeks. In his haste to stand up again, he didn’t see anything; but when he took a step backwards to get away from whatever it was, he felt the hair on his legs ripping as his legs parted. Sandra shot up out of the water and now stood ten feet away on the beach, looking back, slack-jawed. Forgetting about discovering what he’d sat on, Greg looked at his legs to find that from his middle shin to his ankles a stringy white substance had become glued to his skin and hair. It didn’t sting or burn, so he reached down to pull some of the substance off. As he pulled, he felt the hair ripping from his leg, but when he felt the substance it didn’t stick to his skin. He looked questioningly at Ben, who stood near him equally confused by the substance. Ben shrugged and they both turned toward Maeva, who still sat in the water. Greg held out his hands to show her the material and asked, “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” she said casually.

“Something squirmed under my butt, and then this stuff was hanging all over me.”

“Sounds like a scared fish hit you with his protection,” she said.

“What kind of fish do you think it was?” Ben asked.

“I don’t know, Ben Beck; based on what it hit him with, I’d say a Silly String fish.” She said this with a straight face.

Both men sported questioning looks on their faces.

“You’re not serious?” asked Greg.

“No, not at all.”

“You don’t know what kind of fish it was?” This time it was Ben.

“No clue. If it doesn’t hurt, then I wouldn’t worry about it. But I would be sure to tell everyone back home that it was poisonous and could have sunk inch-long fangs into your leg instead of shooting string, but you managed to avoid its jaw.”

“Is that true?” Greg asked.

“No, not one bit.”

They sat back down in the water with Maeva, and Greg slowly picked at the goo strung throughout his leg hairs. It took Sandra a good ten minutes to build up the nerve to join them. Doug hunted throughout the shallow water, trying to find the fish that had attacked his father.

Reluctantly they left the water and the island, and returned to the ship for the sail back to Papeete. Duane smiled and asked about their snorkeling as they climbed aboard, while Rudy drifted on the fringe of the group.

As soon as Duane had set their course for the sail across the strait, Ben set up the fishing poles and told Doug to watch for the elastics to snap. About halfway across, one of them did, scaring Doug out of a daydream. The whizzing noise of the fast running line froze him in place after he stood. Tongue-tied, he looked about for Ben, who came running up from the galley after hearing the run of the fishing line. Ben spotted Doug and stopped. He pointed to the line and said, “What have you got there?”

This brought Doug out of his state of confusion and he yelled, “Fish!”

Ben pulled the port side pole and moved around the stern, as the fish had gone under the ship to the starboard side. After putting some drag on the line, he called Doug over and handed him the pole, but stayed behind him with his own hands still bearing the majority of the strain. The line came closer to them as the fish dove for deeper water. Ben told Doug to hold steady; when the line stopped running out he told him to lift up on the pole. They did; and when they released, Ben showed Doug how to reel in the slack. They lifted again, and when they released Ben had Doug reel in the line. Repeating the lift and release, they brought the fish close to the surface where it attempted another short-lived run; but it settled down and they landed themselves a nice fifteen-pound tuna.

Ben watched the exhausted teenager flexing his hands, trying to loosen the muscles in his forearms. “Good work. Fresh fish for dinner.”

“I don’t eat fish,” Doug said.

“You’ll eat this one. It’s delicious. Besides, it’s a ritual of the South Pacific. No one else can eat the fish until its captor has tasted it.”

Maeva gave Ben a curious look.

Dinner took longer to prepare than they had planned, so Duane dropped anchor outside the harbor as the sun set. The pink to orange to purple clouds entertained the passengers and crew. And then the city took to light.

Doug tasted the grilled tuna, freeing the others to enjoy their meal. He enjoyed the flavor; enlightened to how good fish can taste, he ate like a teenage boy who had been deprived of calories for at least five hours.

Back at the marina, they packed up all of their belongings and walked out onto the dock. Ben informed Duane that he wouldn’t be back until sometime the next day, and left the Aurawind. They used Maeva’s van to deliver their customers back to their hotel, and then they drove to the compound where they found Rene illuminated by a strong burning fire.

“Dinez-vous votre, Papa?” Maeva asked her father.

“No, I am hungry. Not even bread or cheese in the house,” he said without looking up from the fire.

“I have some tuna. Ben Beck caught it today. Would you like a plate?”

“Oui, merci.”

“Ben Beck, would you like a beer?”

“Oui, merci,” Ben said.

“Vous aimez encore plus de thon aussi bien?”

“Whoa, I only spoke a little French to be polite.”

“Sorry, I just clicked over when you spoke,” she apologized. “Would you like some more tuna?”

“No thanks, just a beer.”

As the flames licked high into the air Ben noticed that the woodpile nearby had been depleted. He walked to the larger pile by the corral and loaded up. He returned, unloaded, and sat down with Rene. When Maeva returned she placed a plate in Rene’s lap. Ben looked at the cubes of red meat and watched, as Rene squeezed lemon juice onto the raw fish then picked up one of the cubes and popped it into his mouth.

He watched as Maeva stepped over to her father, reached down and took a cube of the tuna and put it in her mouth. She closed her eyes and chewed slowly, lovingly. Ben wondered how she could eat any more food, but then realized that she hadn’t eaten any of the grilled tuna back on the ship.

He found himself delighting in the way she seemed so lost in her own enjoyment of the fish, and felt happy when she reached down and took another cube, placed it in her mouth and drifted off to her delicious dream place. Her total enjoyment got the best of him; he stood and made his way to Rene’s side where he asked, “May I?”

“Of course,” Rene said, lifting the plate of gleaming cubes.

He took one and placed it in his mouth, remembering the poke he had eaten in Honolulu.

After Rene had finished his meal they sat silently by the flames. Their chairs were placed across the fire from each other; and as magically as a burning fire can draw the eye, this night the magic could not keep Ben and Maeva from staring at a different fire. They smiled, then looked away; but soon their eyes locked together again. They read each other’s expressions and teased with minute squints and slight lifts of eyebrow, then smiled and looked away again.

Rene spoke. “I feel like sitting by the fire for a great long time tonight.”

Ben noticed a flattening of Maeva’s smile, and realized he too must be frowning.

Rene spoke again, “You two don’t need to keep me company. Go to bed, you look like you’ve both been ready for a long time.”

Maeva looked down and away as heat flushed her face. Ben smiled and said, “We did get up early, I am kind of tired. Good night, Monsieur Argent.” He stood up and left the fire.

Maeva continued to sit and fidget in her chair, but her father only let her do so for a minute or so before saying, “Go on.”

She began to unwrap her pareo as she climbed the steps. She tossed it on the end of her bed and stood naked before the waiting Ben, who placed his hands on her hips and rested his cheek against her soft, smooth stomach. Her floral scent penetrated his mind. He kissed her skin, bent to kiss her navel, lifted to lick and kiss her dark brown nipples. He pulled her down onto the bed. She lay and watched him undress. He lay down beside her and began to touch her skin, moving his hand slowly over her body while she lay with her eyes closed and drifted off to her delicious dream.

… continued …

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Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 21, 2011 – An Excerpt from Ballistic, by Paul Levine

August 18, 2011March 21, 2011 by KND

(Ed. Note: Are you ready for something new? Imagine Paul Levine channeling Tom Clancy, but with a sense of humor and far, far better writing. -S.W.)

By Stephen Windwalker

Missile Silo Storyboard for BALLISTIC

A Nuclear Missile…

A Band of Terrorists…

And Only Two People Who Can Prevent Armageddon.

And so we introduce something completely different from one of our favorite Kindle authors, suspense pro Paul Levine. Paul is providing a generous 7500-word excerpt to his new novel Ballistic this week through our Free Kindle Nation Shorts program, and in case you’re wondering how the creator of the award-winning “Jake Lassiter” series happened onto this fascinating terrain, here’s the backstory directly from Paul:

THE “BALLISTIC” BACKSTORY

By Paul Levine

Und. Facility Storyboard for BALLISTIC

“It’s ‘Die Hard’ in a missile silo.”

That’s what my late friend Stephen J. Cannell, the writer/producer, said in the 1990’s when he read my screenplay for “BALLISTIC.”

The U.S. was just beginning to dismantle its Peacekeeper I.C.B.M.’s under a treaty with Russia. Which is what inspired “Ballistic.” I wondered: What happens to morale and discipline on an Air Force base where nuclear missiles are being removed and destroyed?

Which led to more questions: Just how vulnerable is a missile squadron to terrorist attack? What if one of the terrorists knew all about launch codes and nuclear technology? Could we be brought to the brink of World War III?

To find out, I headed to the 30^th Space Wing at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where I interviewed launch command crews, ran my hands over the nose cone of a re-entry vehicle, and witnessed the test firing of a missile.

I wrote the screenplay, and for about 10 minutes, there was some buzz in Hollywood. A hot young director and big-name producer were attached, but the movie never got made. Now, I’ve written a novel based on the same story, and Kindle Nation readers get the first look.

The setup: a band of religious fanatics take over an Air Force missile silo and possess the expertise to cause a nuclear catastrophe. Will a lowly sergeant and a female psychiatrist be able to stop them?

These days, we maintain Minutemen III missiles, so the issues raised by “Ballistic” are still relevant. Just how secure are those missile bases and launch command capsules? And where is our Sergeant Jack Jericho, willing to risk all to save the world?

Here’s the set-up:

When a doomsday cult captures an Air Force missile base, it’s up to a lowly sergeant and a female psychiatrist to prevent a nuclear holocaust. That’s the set-up of “BALLISTIC,” the new loose-nukes thriller by Edgar nominated Paul Levine.

As Peacekeeper missile squadrons are shut down under a nuclear arms treaty, morale and discipline suffer.

Missile bases are ripe for terrorist attack, and it comes from an unexpected source: home-grown religious commandos who believe that a nuclear Armageddon will bring about heaven on earth as prophesied by the Book of Revelations.

One of the terrorists is intimately familiar with the technology and the launch codes. Only two people can stop the greatest disaster in the history of mankind: Sergeant Jack Jericho, who is haunted by an act of cowardice in his past, and Dr. Susan Burns, a psychiatrist trapped in the launch control capsule during routine tests of the missile crews. To prevent a nuclear holocaust, these two must work together both to defeat the terrorists and to exorcize their own demons.

It all leads to a terrifying conclusion as the command capsule computer announces: “Launch sequence in progress, confidence is high.”

That’s right. It’s time to buckle your seatbelts, because it just might be a thermonuclear night.

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Ballistic

BALLISTIC

by Paul Levine

Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2011-02-24

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A Brand New Free Kindle Nation Short:

An Excerpt from
BALLISTIC

By Paul Levine

Are You Ready for the Apocalypse?

Times Square, New York City-September 1994

The young man who calls himself Zachariah blinks against the neon of a megawatt Manhattan night. Cocks his head and hears dueling symphonies in his brain. A thunderstorm of Wagner on the port side, a cannonade of Tchaikovsky to starboard.
Schizophrenia in stereo.

Zachariah steps off the curb and pulls up the collar of his trench coat. Rain pelts him. Cleanses him, he thinks, as clueless tourists and scummy gutter rats surge by on both sides. Yokels and locals. Sinners all.

Hookers in halter tops, goosebumpy in the wet chill. Gangbangers in leather, pimp-rolling, toe-walking, trash-talking skull crackers. Corn-fed, name-tagged conventioneers, heehawing across the big city, checking out the bars, Singapore slinging watery drinks at nine bucks a throw.

Lifting his face to the rain, eyeglasses steaming, he splashes through a puddle. Stops at a kiosk filled with filthy magazines. The devil’s own diaries. Creamy breasts and pouty lips. Who will save them?

Splashing through a puddle, wagging his finger at Bernie behind the counter, telling him, “All the animals come out at night.”

Bernie looks at the young man through rheumy eyes. “You’re telling me.”

Zachariah sweeps his arm across a panorama of lustful sinners. “Some day a real rain will come and wash this scum off the street.”

“How many times you seen Taxi Driver? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, Zack, it’s making you even weirder, if that’s possible.”

A radiant light amps Zachariah’s mind, a divine glow inspired by the Truth and heavenly doses of mescaline. He reaches into his trench coat and hands Bernie a pamphlet. On the cover, a drawing of an ornate temple exploding, pillars shooting into the air like flaming spears. Zachariah levels his gaze. “Pilgrim, are you ready for the Apocalypse?”

“Hell yes.” Bernie tosses the pamphlet aside. “But to tell the truth, I thought it already happened.”

***

Outside the store, the neon flashes ADULT XXX. Inside, the pot-bellied clerk with the retro sideburns hacks up a wad of phlegm, cursing the weather and his own clogged sinuses. He empties an ashtray, counting the butts, and curses himself for his three-pack a night-shift habit. He switches channels on his seven-inch black-and-white, then looks up to see a clean-cut young man stroll into the shop, trench coat spotted with rain. Wiping raindrops from his wire-rim glasses with his tie, another accountant or salesman copping a cheap thrill.

The clerk glances at the bland, nothing face. Always check them out, watch for a thug with an attitude and a Saturday night special. Trench Coat tries to flip through “Salt and Pepper Studs,” but it’s stapled shut. Peeper doesn’t even know the rules. He loops around a free-standing display of dildos and cockstraps and approaches the counter.

“If you’re looking for the video booths, they’re in the back,” the clerk says.

“My visions need no video,” Zachariah answers.

“So whadaya want, buddy?”

“Salvation for all eternity.”

The clerk shrugs. “Eternity’s expensive. We charge a quarter a minute for video. Fifty cents for live peeps. Ten bucks for the live sex theater.”

“Sodom and Gomorrah are upon us, and you, sir, are the gatekeeper of hell.”

Ah, one of those. The clerk hacks again, then spits into the trash can. For minimum wage and no health plan, why put up with this shit? “Hey, buddy, if you wanna buy…buy. If you wanna look…look. If you wanna preach, haul your ass out to the street corner.”

Zachariah pulls two quarters from a pocket. “I shall buy. But, as it is written in Revelations, ‘I know where you live. It is the place where Satan has his throne.’“

“You got that right, fella. I live in the Bronx.”

***

A whorish red sign with a flashing arrow points to LIVE PEEPS. Hallucinating now, Zachariah feels as if his feet are slogging through a wet slime, the vomit of hell. He enters a dark booth the size of a toilet stall. Latching the door, his senses hypertuned, he inhales the tang of disinfectant barely masking the ocean saltiness of semen.
Through tinny speakers, he hears the Red Hot Chili Peppers urging, “Give it away now!”

He slips the quarters into a slot. A shutter slides up and light streams through a window from the miniature interior stage where a bored stripper bumps and grinds, her backside facing a booth directly across from him. She chews her gum and pastes on a smile of slutty sincerity, smacking the other guy’s window with her mushy ass. Naked except for her red spiked heels, she dances across the stage toward Zachariah.

Come to me, Jezebel. The angels screech her name in his ear.

He steeples his fingers under his chin, studying her. A scar, fibrous and purple, jags across her belly. She is pale under the glare of the lights. Her hair is dyed a coppery red, top and bottom. Shaved into a design down below, what is it? A cross!
Blasphemous bitch. She will pay. They will all pay.

She wiggles and pouts. Then, boom! The music stops, and so does she. Stands there a moment, hip shot, then points to the tray in the window, waiting for her tip. He folds a pamphlet over twice and places it in the tray.

On the other side of the glass, she picks up the pamphlet and unfolds it, her eyes going hard as she read aloud in a Southern twang. “‘Are you ready for the Aypo-ca-lipsee?’ You think I can pay the rent with this shit?”

She looks up, ready to shame a couple of bucks out of him, but he is gone.

Zachariah climbs the stairs to the second floor. Two middle-aged men pass him on their way down, averting their eyes. Confront your sins, heathens!

He hands a ten-dollar bill to a burly Hispanic man with a ponytail and the tattoo of a snake wending across his knuckles, then enters the small theater. Four geezers are spread out, one to a row, hands disappearing into their laps, watching the stage where a naked punk is slipping it to a skinny woman on a soiled mattress.

The woman’s bare, dirty feet are wrapped around the punk’s pimply back as he listlessly pumps away. Neither makes a sound, though the mattress is wheezing, and one of the scuzzbags up front is breathing so hard, he might go into cardiac arrest.

Zachariah heads down several steps and hops onto the stage. The heavy breather in the front row huffs out a “Hey!” The couple untangles, the punk’s pecker hanging forlornly at half-mast. “It ain’t amateur night! Get outta here.”

Zachariah turns to the audience of disgruntled whackers and lets his voice slip into the sing-song of his beloved Brother David. “Babylon, mother of prostitutes, abomination of the earth, hear the Word!”

“Aw, shut up!”

“Chingate!”

“What a meshuggeneh!”

Forgiving the fools who know not what they do. “Behold a pale horse!”

The door bursts open and Snake Knuckles hauls ass toward him.

“And his rider’s name was Death!” Zachariah unbuttons his suit coat and extends his arms. Jesus on the Cross. A battery pack hangs from his belt, and packets of Semtex are taped to his waist.

Snake Knuckles leaps onto the stage but Zachariah sidesteps and calls out, “And Hell followed him!”

He pushes a switch on the battery pack…

***

At his kiosk, Bernie sees the orange flash before he hears the thunderclap. An explosion that spews glass and plaster across the street, barely missing him.
Pedestrians duck and run as the shrapnel rains down, and where there had been a tawdry little porn shop, now there is a gaping crater of flame. A hot wind sucks piles of magazines from Bernie’s counter, tumbling them down the street, plastering them against windshields, and inhaling them into the inferno.

And still no one has answered the question, “Are you ready for the Apocalypse?”

In the Belly of the Beast

Chugwater Mountain, Wyoming

Deep inside the missile silo, Sergeant Jack Jericho dangles at the end of a rope and pulley, a harness buckled around his waist. Above him, the sky is crystalline blue. He is a shade under six feet, broad of shoulders and shaggy of hair that has not been regulation length since basic training. He has slate-gray eyes and a nose that has been broken twice, once by a slag bucket that slipped its winch in the coal mine and once by a fist that found its mark.

Jericho pulls in rope, hand-over-hand. Closes his eyes and imagines himself scaling a lodgepole pine in a shaded forest. Climbing up the hard, scaly bark, grabbing a sturdy limb overhead. Catching the crisp scent of the high timberland. White aspens, Douglas firs, and a thicket of snowberry and juniper. Bluebells, too, sprouting out of the rocky soil of an upland clearing.

Mind over matter, it works for a moment. What had the doc called it? Creative visualization. “The mind’s eye can see whatever the brain wishes.”

Yeah, and a lot the brain doesn’t wish. Try not thinking of a brick wall. Or of a mine shaft filling with water, men screaming to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Jericho opens his eyes, reaches up and grasps the handle of the exhaust tube cover.
He catches a whiff of the oily slickness of metal and hears the thumpa of the generators far below him in the sump. Damn. Tries to bring back the forest, tries to summon the sound of rippling water in a rocky stream. Thumpa-thumpa. Like the heartbeat of a leviathan.

He looks up. The bluest of skies is still there, visible only because the six-foot thick concrete cap is open. He looks down toward the drainage sump and the polished steel floor of the silo.

Jericho uses his legs to kick away from the silo wall, and the rope spins out of the pulley, giving him slack. He propels himself several yards, extends a soapy brush to a grimy spot on the wall, then begins scrubbing. Sweating now, though it’s a consistent fifty-eight degrees inside Chugwater Mountain. Sweating not from the heat, but the confinement, the sense that the encircling wall is closing in.
In the belly of the beast.

He breathes heavily, wiping his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt just above the three stripes. Again, he unwillingly conjures up the mine. The creak of the timbers, the explosion, the rushing water and the darkness. Then the screams, and finally the silence. The doc knew all about the dreams. Had his own from Vietnam. He was a clinical psychologist, on retainer for the union. Wore a ring in his ear, tied his hair in a ponytail. Some of the older miners called him a pansy, until they got close enough look him in the eyes. Glacial ice. Jericho didn’t want to know what those eyes had seen. He visited the doc in his office, a trailer at a job site, and asked a question.

“Will the dreams go away?”

“Scars fade but never vanish. Create your own dreams, sing your own songs.”
“I can’t go back in the ground. I need to get out of here, go somewhere far away.”
“There is nowhere far away.”

The doc had been right. Sleep came hard. Jericho bedded down with a bottle and a dreamscape of ghosts. Joined the Air Force, re-upped, and re-upped again. Now, two thousand miles from the West Virginia coal mines, he finds simple joys in the outdoors. An eagle soaring over the vast prairie, the haunting lunar landscape of a rocky basin, the startling quickness of a deer bounding through the grasslands.

Jericho finishes scrubbing the acidic residue near the exhaust tube and spins around in his harness. His job is to clean up after a test firing of the LEGG, the launch eject gas generator. Unlike other intercontinental ballistic missiles, the one with the Orwellian name of “Peacekeeper” is cold launched, propelled out of the silo by a burst of compressed gas. The solid fuel of the first stage ignites only after the missile is in the air.

Jericho drops his soapy brush into a pail built into his harness. He bristles when other airmen call him the base janitor, but even Jericho figures he is little more than the clown who follows the elephants with broom and pan. He looks up again at the brilliant sky, imagines himself in waders standing in the shallow water of a cool stream, whipping a fly toward a whirling pool where the big trout lurk. For a moment, he is out of the silo, out of the mine.

He kicks off the wall again, a little too hard, and…clang! He bangs into the nose cone of the missile that is suspended from cables, the Longitudinal Support Assembly in Air Force jargon. The cables are attached to the walls of the hardened silo, and in the event of an enemy’s nuclear strike above ground, the missile will sway, then steady itself, and be ready for launching. In theory. As with so much in the missile program, no one knows what really will happen in the event of thermonuclear war.

Seventy-one feet tall, a little less than eight feet in diameter, the Peacekeeper, or PK, is topped by a nose cone containing ten nuclear warheads. Each warhead is seventeen times more powerful than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima and ushered in the nuclear age. At this precise moment, the seat of Jack Jericho’s olive green coveralls are polishing the nose cone. With a layer of dark rubber covering the missile’s four stages, the PK is sleek, breathtaking and black as death.

Jericho winces as the metallic echo reverberates through the silo.

“Yo, Jack! You turn this place into Chernobyl, the captain’s gonna be steamed.”

Jericho looks up to see Sayers, a senior airman standing at the edge of the elevated gantry one hundred feet above the floor of the silo. Sayers wears camouflage green and loam battle dress and polished combat boots. Compared to Jericho, he looks like an ad for GQ, a muscular African-American all spit and polished. “Captain’s already steamed,” Jericho says.

“No shit, look where he put you. Hey, if I had your detail, you know what I’d do?”

“What?”

“Kill myself,” Sayers laughs.

Then he jumps.

Jericho watches a perfect swan dive off the gantry, Sayers sailing into space, his body arcing down the side of the missile toward the steel floor below. Lower, lower, a millisecond from crushing his skull, then…BOING! A bungee cord catches and springs him back up toward the gantry. He bounces twice on the cord, swinging between the missile and the wall.

“You’re next, my man,” Sayers cackles.

Jericho continues scrubbing the wall. “Only if you put a gun to my head.”

“C’mon Jack. You need some excitement in your life.”

Freudian Flim-Flam

Washington, D.C.

Warren Cabot, the Secretary of the Air Force, spears a slice of rare tenderloin and turns to Christopher Harrington, the California congressman with the telegenic smile and a constituency of Orange County right wingers. Outside the windows, a light rain is falling, peppering the calm waters of the Potomac. A shell glides by, worked by six women wearing Georgetown University t-shirts.

“I’m not admitting weakness, Chris,” the Air Force Secretary says. “I’m recognizing the realities of the new world order. We’re dismantling more than half our missiles under START II. Blowing up the silos and filling them with concrete.”

“I didn’t vote for the damn treaty,” the Congressman says, as if to clear the record.

“Fine, but it’s a done deal, Chris. Question now, what’s the effect on the readiness of the remaining missile crews? That’s why Dr. Burns is with us.”

Secretary Cabot gestures with a fork full of filet mignon in the direction of Dr. Susan Burns, who gives her business smile and nods, then slices her poached salmon. At thirty-four, having earned a Ph.D. in psychology with a thesis on soldiers’ response to stress in warfare and an M.D. in general psychiatry, she will let the two stags bloody each other for a while. She wears her long, dark hair up, and today she omitted the makeup and dressed in the most conservative of her blue suits. Still, she had turned the heads of the brass – their medals clinking, ribbons rustling – when she entered the Joint Chiefs Dining room.

The Congressman gives Dr. Burns a grudging nod and motions toward the uniformed steward for a second Scotch on the rocks. “I just don’t believe in sticking pins and needles in our boys to find out if they’ve ever seen their mommies naked.”

“Boys and girls,” Dr. Burns adds with a pleasant smile. “Women command launch capsules, too.”

“Not if I had anything to say about it,” the Congressman fires back. “No offense, Dr. Burns, but I don’t put much faith in all that Freudian flim-flam.”

Dr. Burns stays quiet, admiring the American eagle on the fine china, arrows in one claw, boughs of peace in the other. No use further antagonizing the man who holds the purse strings on her project to test all soldiers with access to nuclear weapons.

“For the love of mercy, Chris,” the Secretary says, “why are you such a Neanderthal?”

“Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

The Congressman is still a Colonel in the Reserves, but so what? Susan is acquainted with plenty of Marine officers who accept women as equals…or close to it.

“The Corps was fighting the British before the Declaration of Independence was signed,” the Congressman continues. “We’ve made more than three hundred landings on foreign shores.”

Not that the Congressman has landed on any foreign shores himself, Susan Burns knows, unless you counted congressional junkets to Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok. Now what’s he saying?

“We didn’t need women then, and we sure as hell don’t need them now, except for political expediency, and you know I don’t play those games.”

No? What about stirring the pork barrel for a California defense contractor that makes guidance systems for missiles that are being mothballed? Susan Burns could tell from the Air Force Secretary’s look that he was probably thinking the same thing.

“Our women pilots have excellent records,” Secretary Cabot says. “So do the women in support units.”

“If you ask me, we’re just appeasing the left-wing, fem-Nazi contingent.”

“Damn it, Chris! You’ve been in office so long, you’re starting to believe your own flack.
It’s a new world out there, and we’ve got to make use of all the expertise we’ve got.”

“Including lady shrinks, I suppose?”

“I vouch for Dr. Burns, and that ought to be good enough for you.”

Susan Burns stifles a smile. The old Air Force eagle still has some arrows in his quiver.

“Gentlemen,” she says, “this isn’t about me and it isn’t about women. It’s about the readiness of the missile squadrons. The enemies are monotony, boredom, and a sense of futility. Not one missileer in fifty believes he – or she – will ever turn the key. If the President ordered a strike, there’s significant doubt the missileers would fire. They’d get the launch code and think it was a computer malfunction.”

“Even if that’s true,” the Congressman says, “I fail to see how a shrink is going to help.”
“Our preliminary studies show a marked decline in alertness and discipline. We need to construct psychological profiles of the men and women in the launch capsules, compile hard statistical data, then treat the problem.”

The Congressman sips at his Scotch, then to the Secretary and waves his napkin, surrendering. “Okay, Warren. It’s your call, but if 60 Minutes comes calling about this boondoggle, I’ll refer them to you.”

The two men exchange smiles, and Susan Burns finally understands. It had all been a charade. The Congressman never intended to block the project. He merely wanted artillery cover if the news media likened the project to price supports for bull semen or thousand-dollar balpeen hammers. If that happened, Susan Burns could go back to treating bed-wetting teenagers in suburban Virginia. I’ve got a lot to learn about politics, she thinks.

A steward appears and silently slips a silver tray holding a small envelope in front of Secretary Cabot. Opening the envelope, the Secretary examines a note, his brow furrowing. “Isn’t that the damndest?”

“What?” the Congressman asks.

“You remember that break-in at the Denver Armory?”

“Yeah, the Army lost some ordnance.”

“Automatic weapons, ammunition and some obsolete land mines,” the Secretary says, looking around, then lowering his voice. “Plus enough plastiques to make the Beirut bombing look like a fraternity prank.”

“That wasn’t in the reports.”

“No, and neither will this. There was an explosion at a porn shop in New York last night.
Traces of Semtex were found in the rubble. Based on the chemical composition, it’s special Army issue.”

“So why rob an armory to blow up a porn shop?” the Congressman asks.

“Excellent question,” Dr. Susan Burns says, patting her lips with a napkin, “and I’ll bet the answer can be found with a little Freudian flim-flam.”

Hell’s Half Acre

The broad plains north of Rattlesnake Hills are broken by mountains and buttes rising unexpectedly from the flat earth. Wyoming is a land of contrasts. Towering mountains of granite that boiled up from inside the earth over three billion years ago. Flat prairies of wheatgrass and junegrass. Steppes covered with sweetly pungent sagebrush, the scent carried by the strong, continuous winds. On the arid badlands, eroded boulders form exotic sculptures in demonic shapes. Not far to the south, traces of wagon wheels carved into the rocks are still visible on the old Oregon Trail.

Near the south fork of the Powder River, in an area of dry buttes and rocky gullies, is Hell’s Half Acre, a canyon of eroded pink rock, forming pinnacles that could be the frozen flames of Satan himself. Three miles to the west, near a stream, is rolling ranch land. Some is fenced, and cattle graze serenely on the grasslands that are also the home to jackrabbits, cottontails and rattlesnakes. Mule deer and pronghorn antelope feed in the nearby woods.

Over a rise from the grazing cattle, farther from the stream, a man in commando fatigues uses wire cutters to snip through the bottom two strands of a barbed-wire fence. As he spreads the opening with gloved hands, eleven similarly dressed men wriggle through, belly-up, using their rifles to keep the wire from catching on their fatigues. In their wake, clouds of dust rise from the parched earth. In a moment the men are gone, and with the top wires still intact, the fence does not appear to have been breached.

The commandos flatten themselves to the ground and creep ahead through the scrubby brush, holding their M-16A2’s, official U.S. Army issue, in front of them. They move slowly in what marine rifle squads call the “low crawl.” The morning sun is in their faces, which are painted loam and light green to blend in with the surroundings. They wear Kevlar body armor and carry extra magazines of 5.56 mm. ammunition in pouches on their cartridge belts. Their helmets are covered in brown burlap.

As they move higher on the ridge, the brush becomes heavier, and the leader, Gabriel, a rock-jawed man of thirty with squinting blue eyes, cautiously stands and extends both arms away from his body at a forty-five degree angle. At the signal, the men get to their feet and move into wedge formations, a point man with three riflemen behind him. The two side units break away diagonally as Gabriel’s middle wedge moves straight up the ridge. A dozen men in all.

Gabriel raises his right hand, and his unit stops. He reaches down, brushes some leaves away from the ground, exposing a trip wire, then leads his men around a buried land mine. At the top of the ridge, he signals again, and his men halt. Gabriel crawls to a vantage point where he can see into the hollow. Using binoculars, he scans the scrubby landscape. Four hundred meters away, halfway up the slope of the next ridge, is a bunker reinforced with sandbags, mounds of dirt, and logs. Twenty meters behind the bunker is a century-old miner’s cabin of blackened logs, its walls sagging into the ground.

The target.

To get there, his men will have to work their way down the ridge, cross the dry coulee in the hollow, then work their way back up the far ridge, in direct view of the bunker.

Suicide.

Gabriel knows the lesson taught every soldier since Gettysburg: one dug-in infantry man on high ground can stop three equally armed men advancing from low ground. He signals his RTO to crawl forward and uses the radio to call the point men of the other two wedges. “We’ll lay down some hellfire from here. You’ll flank them. Thirty seconds.”
His men take positions at the top of the ridge, stretching out into the prone firing position. Two prop their rifles on bipods. “Ten seconds,” Gabriel says, then counts it down. On his command, they erupt with a blistering barrage, their weapons set on three-round bursts.

But they must have been expected, for the return fire is immediate and overwhelming.
His men flatten, grinding their faces into the ground, and for a moment, their guns are stilled. Gabriel, still standing, winces. He is a man with no fear of death. “Keep it steady!” he shouts, and his men resume firing. Good men, pious men. He prays for them to succeed, to overcome their fears.

Gabriel extends his right arm straight down, then moves it horizontally in the infantryman’s signal to fire faster. His men empty their magazines, clip in new ones and spray the hollow with shells, seldom hitting the bunker or its fortifications. They do, however, kill a lot of rocks.

So different here than on the firing range, Gabriel thinks ruefully, as the return fire zips over their heads. But his troops will learn. The firing slows as the men catch their breaths. Combat drains the adrenaline, exhausts the soldier who hasn’t learned to pace himself. “Keep it up!” he implores them. “Fire.”

At something, at anything, he wants to say. Gabriel is a generation too young to have served in Vietnam, but he has studied its history and knows the woeful inaccuracy of the infantry with the M-16A1. In many fire fights, it took an astonishing one hundred thousand rounds to inflict a single casualty. Lack of fire discipline and malfunctions. He knows that, at this moment, his men are firing wildly, perhaps blindly. He would have liked another month of training.

Gabriel peers into the hollow and a flash of movement catches his eye in the sagebrush. His riflemen see it, too. They turn and fire, finally hitting something. He watches as the brown hide of a large animal, a deer or elk tumbles into the underbrush.

Enough. If the distraction hasn’t worked already, laying down a few hundred more rounds won’t help. “Unit two, go!” he shouts into the radio. To his right, four commandos work their way down the ridge, but oblique fire from the bunker stops them just short of the coulee. They take cover behind dusty rocks in the dry riverbed. Unit two’s leader scans the left flank with his binoculars but cannot see any movement except for a jackrabbit that runs a zig-zag route away from the shooting.

“Unit three, where are you?” Gabriel demands. “Matthew, go now!”

“We’re halfway there. Relax, brother.” The voice is calm and reassuring. Halfway down the ridge, Matthew clicks off the radio as he leads his men through dense underbrush. He is tall with a thick neck and arms cabled with veins, his hands work-hardened. His men move quickly, breaking twigs, kicking over rocks, their movements masked by the blazing gunfire to their right. Speed, not stealth, is their ally now.

As they cross the coulee, the four men slide into the rectangular “echelon left” formation with Matthew at the point. They have flanked the bunker and have a clear shot up the ridge to the miner’s cabin. Moving at double-time now, with rifles at port arms, they break into the clearing twenty meters from the cabin.

Just outside the cabin door, a soldier has his back to them. He is peering down toward the bunker on the far side, his hand resting on an M-9 service pistol in a holster. They storm him, the soldier turning just in time to catch sight of Matthew slashing at his chest with a fixed bayonet. The soldier instinctively leaps backward, and the blade catches in his flak jacket. Matthew pivots and swings the rifle butt in a horizontal arc, belting the soldier across the jaw and toppling him to the ground. Two other commandos stand over him with rifle muzzles pointed to his chest as Matthew and a fourth commando burst through the flimsy cabin door.

They tuck and roll and come up in the firing position. Their rifles are pointed directly at the head of a long-haired, handsome man of thirty who sits at a redwood table reading the Bible. The man, who calls himself Brother David, calmly presses the button on a stopwatch, closes his Bible and looks at Matthew with dark, piercing eyes. “Your best time, to date, my brother. Sliced a minute thirty-five off last week’s maneuver.” His serene smile is that of a king pleased with a loyal subject. “I believe we are ready.”

Matthew takes off his helmet. His long hair is tied into a ponytail. “Perhaps two more weeks would be better.”

“God waits for no man.”

Matthew nods. His leader has spoken. “Thy will be done, Brother David.”

The soldier from outside staggers into the cabin, his chin in his hand. Blood seeps from his mouth as he approaches Matthew. “You broke my jaw,” he whimpers through swollen lips.

Brother David stands and clasps an arm around the wounded man’s shoulder. “That is nothing compared to the pain you will inflict on the army of Satan.”

Graveyard Shift

The sun blinks through the tree tops on a crisp Wyoming morning. Towering blue spruce and Ponderosa pines form an umbrella over the two-lane road. It is September, and the Aspens are turning gold, their round leaves fluttering, whistling their songs in the wind. A red-headed woodpecker beats out a staccato beat against a fir tree, and somewhere in the underbrush, rabbit-like pikas are squeaking their distinctive sounds.

The Air Force Jeep emerges from the forest and begins climbing through the Rattlesnake Hills. Road signs warn of moose crossings. Whitecapped mountains are visible on the horizon.

Senior Airman Sayers is at the wheel of the Jeep, Airman Reynolds next to him. Jack Jericho is sprawled across the back seat, his helmet pulled over his eyes. “Sarge asleep?” Sayers asks.

“Asleep, hungover, dead, or all of the above.” Reynolds runs a hand over his crew-cut. A freckled redhead with a southern accent, he wore his hair in a pony tail before joining the Air Force, and even now, cannot believe the stubbly bristle he finds under his hand.
“Yo, Jack! You awake?” Sayers asks.

From the back seat, an unintelligible grunt.

“C’mon Jack. Get up.”

“Leave me the hell alone.”

Sayers jerks his thumb in Jericho’s direction. “That’s what two weeks on the captain’s graveyard shift does to a man.”

“Not to mention ten years of hard drinking,” Reynolds adds.

Sayers downshifts as the grade becomes steeper. A stream runs alongside the road, clear water tumbling over rocks as old as the earth itself. Above the bank of the stream, a porcupine gnaws at the trunk of a pine tree. Across the road is a seemingly endless chain-link fence topped by razor wire. “No Trespassing” signs emblazoned with the Air Force insignia dot the fence every several hundred yards.

“Uh-oh,” Sayers says, looking toward the sky and slowing down.

“What is it, Spike?” Reynolds asks.

Sayers’ first name is Timothy, but with his round glasses and narrow face, his buddies back in Brooklyn thought he looked like Spike Lee. Before he joined the Air Force, Sayers sometimes cadged free drinks and impressed aspiring models and actresses by claiming he was scouting the neighborhood for a movie location. He still tries the scam occasionally while on leave, but less successfully. At a bar in Laramie, he discovered, the locals didn’t know Spike Lee from Robert E. Lee.

“Buzzards dead ahead,” Sayers says.

Jericho stirs and sits up, sliding back his helmet, squinting into the morning sun. He’s unshaven and his eyes are puffy. He pulls a warm can of beer from a rucksack, pops the top and puts it to his lips. He gargles noisily, spits into the road, then opens the wrapper on a Twinkie and gobbles it in two bites.

“Disgusting,” Reynolds says. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Back home, I’d have hominy grits, black coffee and molasses bread every morning.”

“Hey Reynolds,” Jericho says, his voice thick from a case of the dry tongue. “If I gotta hear one more time about your momma’s eggs still warm from the chicken’s ass, I’m gonna puke.”

Sayers laughs. “Hell, Jack. You’re liable to puke, anyway.”

“I was just being friendly,” Reynolds says, pouting. “Besides, eggs don’t come out a chicken’s ass.”

Jericho ignores both of them and watches half-a-dozen turkey vultures drift in slow circles overhead. A year of perimeter maintenance duty with these two, and he still marvels at the weirdness of their conversations. Within a few minutes, they start up again.

“Hey Sayers, how many folks are there in Wyoming like you?”

“You mean handsome and manly?”

“I mean black.”

“Not many, man. Three thousand or so, not counting me.”

“That’s why there’s no graffiti.”

“There’s no graffiti ‘cause there’s nothing in this hayseed heaven to put it on ‘cept trees and rocks. Graffiti goes on underpasses and buildings in the projects, and if you got the balls, the po-lice station.”

“Yeah, well it ain’t so bad out here,” Reynolds says. “Even Jericho likes it when he’s sober.”

Now, Sayers stops the Jeep alongside the fence, then shoots a concerned look into the backseat. “More nightmares last night, Jack?”

Jericho’s grunt could be a yes, could be a no.

The buzzards are directly overhead, circling lazily in the wind currents, waiting. Now, the men see what the birds are after. A large elk with a full crown of antlers is caught in the fence, its hide bloodied from the struggle to get free.

“Never told me this Wild Kingdom shit in the recruitment office,” Reynolds complains.
“All I ever heard,” Sayers says, “was that wild blue yonder jive.” He jams on the hand brake, and the three men get out and cautiously approach the elk.

When they are ten feet away, Sayers pulls a .45 from a side holster, but Jericho seizes his wrist. “No need for that, Spike.”

Reynolds lets out a low whistle in Jericho’s direction. “It lives! It talks, it walks, it brushes its teeth with Budweiser.”

Jericho grabs a saw-toothed survival knife from a sheath on his leg. “You two cowboys back off. I’ll handle this.”

Amused, Reynolds slouches against a wooden fence post and lights a cigarette. “Here we go again. Daniel Friggin’ Boone.”

Three feet from the trapped elk, Jericho stops, the frightened animal watching him through eyes the size of half-dollars. “Hoo boy,” Jericho coos. “You are a beauty.”

Blood oozing from its wounds, the animal bucks and stomps, lifting its head until it can no longer see Jericho. With startling quickness, Jericho leaps forward, grasps its antlers, and raises his knife to the elk’s neck.

“Jeez, Jack, we coulda shot him!” Sayers calls out.

But Jericho doesn’t cut the animal. Instead, he swiftly slices away the fence wire, then gently pulls it from the elk’s hide. He reaches into his pocket and brings out a handful of tiny red berries.

“Yo, Jack!” Sayers sounds alarmed. “That ain’t Bambi.”

“Mountain ash,” Jericho says. “For pain and healing.” He crushes the berries in his fist and lets the red syrup flow into the animal’s wound. The elk stiffens but doesn’t bolt, and Jericho gently strokes the tufted hide behind its ear.

“You learn that Tarzan shit back in Stinkhole, West Virginny?” Sayers asks.

“Sinkhole. Asshole.”

The elk, which had been paralyzed with fear, seems to relax as Jericho strokes its back.

“Hey Sayers,” Reynolds calls out. “You know what a West Virginian calls a deer caught in a fence?”

“What, man?”

“His first fuck.”

The two airmen laugh.

“He’s an elk,” Jericho says.

Reynolds shrugs. “Elk, moose, Rotarian, whatever.”

“Yo, Jack,” Sayers says. “How come you didn’t stay home and marry a coal miner’s daughter?”

Jericho steps back, and the elk bounds away, heading for the woods.

“Or your sister?” Reynolds chimes in.

It happens with electric speed.

Jericho whirls, and the knife flies from his hand toward Reynolds’ head. With a solid thwomp, it sticks in the fence post just inches above Reynolds’ crew cut.

Speechless, Reynolds reaches up to feel his scalp as the knife, buried deep in the wood, vibrates like a tuning fork.

“Shit man!” Sayers yells. “You’re crazier than the boys in the ‘hood.”

Jericho walks to the fence post and pulls out the knife. “My sister’s the only family I’ve got left.”

Then he walks away, watching the elk disappear into the woods, admiring its majesty, envying its freedom.

Sayers and Reynolds exchange baffled looks. From their hours of endless banter, they know Jericho is a loner. Until now, he had never said a word about his family or his life before the Air Force. Then the same thought occurs to each of them. They really don’t know Jack Jericho at all.

Baptism of Beer

A few miles from the ranch where Brother David’s warriors of God live and train is the town of Coyote Creek. A tavern, a general store, a gas station, a rod and gun shop, a few dozen weathered wooden houses. Little to do, other than the annual rodeo.

Inside the Old Wrangler Tavern, an elk’s head is mounted on the knotty pine wall above a scarred mahogany bar, the antlers serving as a rack for cowboy hats, hunting caps, and even a jock strap. A bartender with a walrus mustache and an enormous stomach draws beer from a tap whose handle is the plastic form of a naked woman.

Half a dozen ranch hands and loggers stand at the bar, hands wrapped around mugs of beer. They are a scruffy, bearded lot, in soiled jeans and red plaid shirts, a few of the younger guys with bandannas on their heads instead of cowboy hats.

Above the bar, a TV is tuned to CNN where a blond female reporter stands in front of a gutted building breathlessly jabbering into a microphone. “The FBI reports no leads in the latest porn shop bombing. Tuesday’s explosion in New York killed five and injured thirteen. Like the earlier blasts, no group has claimed credit for the attacks.”

The bartender wipes the bar with a wet towel and shakes his head. “Why blow up a jerk-off joint?”

“A political statement,” says one of the bandanna guys. “A protest.”

The bartender barks a laugh. “Protesting pussy? You want a political statement, blow up the I.R.S.”

The others murmur their agreement. “The I.R.S. can listen to your phone calls,” says one of the grizzled men.

“Not only that,” another says. “Every car manufactured after 1979 has a computer chip built in. A bureaucrat in Washington hits a switch, and your engine will stop dead.”

“That why you still drive a ‘78 Chevy pickup, Will?” another guy says, laughing.

“Yeah, and it’s why I keep my thirty-ought-six in the gun rack with five thousand rounds of ammo and provisions for six months under the barn. When the revolution comes, I’ll be ready.”

“Me too,” the bartender says. “I got two dozen kegs of Coors in the shed out back.”

Which sets the others to laughing. Will turns toward a long-haired man standing alone at the end of the bar. The man is lean and muscular and wears a blue chambray shirt and khaki pants. “What about you, fellow? You think there’s going to be a second revolution?”

“A Second Coming,” Brother David says. “The angel poured out his bowl on the sun, which scorched people with fire. They cursed the name of God and refused to repent.”
“What the hell?”

“Revelations, chapter sixteen, verse eight. It is the Word.”

Will studies the man, decides there’s no use going down that road. His ex-wife was a Bible-thumper, used to drive him crazy. “Well, the Word’s making me thirsty.” He motions to the bartender for a refill.

No one moves to join Brother David at the end of the bar. He sips a cup of coffee and resumes watching television. On the screen, an anchorman with gray hair and a somber tone begins to speak, and the screen goes to a videotape of the President shaking hands with several men in the Rose Garden. “At the White House,” the anchorman says, “the President welcomed the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Commission, which today begins a tour of U.S. missile bases scheduled to be shut down under the START II Treaty.”

The bartender tosses his towel in the direction of the sink. “What bullshit! Business ain’t bad enough, they gotta pull out the Air Force.”

“See, I told you so!” Will puts down his freshly poured beer. “First the missiles, then our rifles. The U.N. and the Trilateral Commission are gonna confiscate our guns and give them to the Zulus and the Zionists.”

Brother David walks to a nearby table and sits, joining a younger man who nurses a bottle of beer and a woman who holds a cup of coffee, gone cold. There is an air of peacefulness, of knowing calm, about Brother David, who smiles placidly. “Hello, Billy. Rachel. May the glory of God be with you.”

“Thank you for coming, Brother David,” Billy says. Neatly dressed in jeans and an open-collar shirt, he is a baby-faced, twenty-four year-old with rimless glasses and pale blond hair. “I’ve looked to the Lord for answers, just like you said. But…” Tears form in his eyes. “There aren’t any answers. Not for me, anyway. Kathy said she’d wait for me, and now she’s going to marry my best friend, and…” His voice takes on a pathetic whine. “I’m stuck out here in the woods for another six months. What can I do?”

Rachel leans across the table and gathers Billy’s hands in her own. In her late twenties, she wears no makeup and hides her figure under a shapeless granny dress. “Brother David understands, Billy. He loves you. He’ll take care of you. And so will I.”

Brother David stares hard at Billy, then squeezes his eyes shut, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. When he speaks, his voice is a whisper, “I see a quiet house. In the Midwest, I believe. There is a child, just one, a little boy, but no man there. Still, the house has the feel of a man. In the closet, there is a uniform, as if he might come back.” He pauses a moment, takes several deep breaths, and continues, “There is the sense of loss. Was your father killed in the service?”

Billy’s lower lip trembles. “No, but he was in the Army. He left my mother. And me. He never came back.”

David’s gaze seems to trace an outline around Billy. “Your auric fields are weak. There is purple and gold, and that’s good, but the colors are muddy, not vibrant. You are unsure, misunderstood, still in the process of awakening, and are not appreciated for what you have to offer.”

“Yes,” Billy says excitedly. “Yes, it’s all true, but can you help me?”

Suddenly, Brother David grabs Billy’s beer bottle and slams it on the table. Foam erupts and streams down the long neck. David dips an index finger into the pool of suds that surrounds the bottle. He reaches across the table and draws the sign of the cross on Billy’s forehead, then touches the tip of his finger to Billy’s lips. “Drink of my blood.”

Billy takes Brother David’s finger into his mouth as an infant would his mother’s nipple.
He stares, wide-eyed at the man he considers the Savior. David rewards him with a beatific smile, then withdraws his finger. He grabs Billy’s head, cupping his hands around the base of his skull. “Do you seek everlasting life?”

It isn’t a question so much as a demand. Billy can’t say a word, but he nods against the pressure of David’s hands.

“Good, William, good. Because you, Lieutenant William Riordan of the United States Air Force. You hold the key. And only I can turn it.”

Continued….

* * *

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BALLISTIC

by Paul Levine

Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2011-02-24

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Ballistic

Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 19, 2011: An Excerpt from IMPOSTER (The Protectors Series – Book One) by Karen Fenech

August 18, 2011March 19, 2011 by KND

Long-time Kindle Nation readers will recall the masterful storytelling and gripping beginning of Karen Fenech’s novel Gone, which was featured last year in our Free Kindle Nation Shorts program. Karen’s back with IMPOSTER, the first volume of her new Protectors series, and it’s a treat to let her share a compelling plot and a fascinating approach to building a brand new fast-paced fiction series….

Here’s the set-up:

IMPOSTER: The Protectors Series – Book One

Chemist Dr. Eve Collins, wrongly accused by the CIA of developing and marketing a chemical weapon, learns she has been set up as a scapegoat by someone seeking to hide his own guilt. That “someone” wants her dead. Her life depends on making no mistakes – like trusting the Central Intelligence agent assigned to her case, a man she’s falling in love with.

CIA Operative John Burke doesn’t believe her claim of innocence. When an attempt is made on her life, he believes her accomplice has turned on her. But something doesn’t add up about Eve and her role in this crime she’s accused of. Burke has too many questions, including – has his judgment been compromised by his fierce attraction to her?

It’s a question Burke asks himself again and again but when he learns Eve’s would-be assassin is close, he goes on the run with her. It’s a temporary solution – running will not keep her safe. Burke must find the assassin – or die trying.

Praise for IMPOSTER:

“IMPOSTER is romantic suspense at its best!”

–USA Today Bestselling Author Maureen Child

IMPOSTER:

The Protectors Series – Book One

by Karen Fenech

Kindle Edition

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IMPOSTER

Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 19, 2011

An Excerpt from

IMPOSTER

The Protectors Series – Book One

by Karen Fenech

Chapter One
“Richard! Slow down!”
Heart pounding, Eve took her gaze from the road and cut a glance to the driver, Richard, her business partner.

Richard didn’t respond. The CD player was blaring. Unlikely he could hear her above Van Halen’s scream.
Richard had picked up his new Porsche just yesterday. He’d wanted to see what the car could do, he’d said with a smirk when they started on this road, and hit the gas. Now the road began to slope and the car gained additional speed. Eve’s gaze went to the speedometer and her breath hitched. Ninety and climbing. Outside the passenger window, a view of trees and rock- face streaked by in a blur. Her mouth went dry.

Eve took her gaze from the road and cut a glance to Richard. His focus was trained on the rearview mirror.

It wasn’t the first time in the last few minutes she’d spotted him looking into the rearview. She looked around herself but couldn’t see anything but the trail of dust the Porsche was kicking up in its wake. As she faced front again, again, Richard’s focus lifted to the view behind them.
What was going on?
She reached out to lower the volume on the CD to ask him that question when the car swerved sharply to the right, throwing her toward the passenger door. The seatbelt held firm, preventing what could have been a nasty impact.
She returned her attention to Richard. Tension was now coming off him in waves. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his brow. In his eyes, she saw terror.
Eve looked back. A dark sedan was now visible, moving fast and closing the distance between them.
“Richard, what’s going on? Are we being followed?”
Richard didn’t reply, but the Porsche shot forward with a sudden burst of speed. The sedan fell back but was picking up speed. It should have been no match for the Porsche but it continued to gain ground. Just what kind of engine was under the hood of that plain sedan? No ordinary sedan and Eve’s nerves jumped.

Why were they being followed? Who would want to follow them?

The Porsche skidded. Richard steered into the skid. When the tires gained traction, he floored the gas pedal.

This was insane. If Richard and whoever was following them didn’t slow down-

The road curved like a hair pin. Richard made a sound, but without breaking speed, drove into it. The rear fishtailed. Eve’s breath caught. Richard cried out. Both his face and his grip on the steering wheel went white as he struggled to get the car under control. Eve’s heart hammered. Each wild beat thundered in her ears.
“Richard!”

She turned to him. He was now slumped across the dashboard.

The speedometer read one-hundred-ten. The car raced out of control. Gravel pinged against the car’s underside as the right front tire slid off the narrow strip of asphalt. The edge dropped off in a sheer cliff Eve couldn’t see the bottom of.

Another instant and the car would go over.
Eve stared wide -eyed as the car continued to lose purchase. As the tires continued to slide away from the pavement. Was this how her life would end? In a car crash that would not right the wrong committed five years earlier when she had lived while the most precious thing in her world had died?

Tears filled her eyes. She thought back over the last five years to all of the times she’d wished she could go back to that moment and exchange her life for the one that was taken.

But she couldn’t. She could not change the past. Not then and not now . . .

The tires slid. The cliff loomed. The dark abyss drew closer.

Eve grabbed the steering wheel. Her hands were sweating. She latched on and jerked sharply to the right. The car veered away from the edge.
She shoved Richard toward the driver’s door. He was a small, wiry man, but inert, his body was heavy. She grunted, heaved again, and he struck the driver’s door hard. His blond head lolled against the window. He didn’t protest her rough handling of him, not even a moan. Eve would have welcomed a moan. At the least he was unconscious. At the most . . .

She fought off her fears for Richard. If she didn’t stop the car, his condition would cease to matter – to both of them.
She grappled with her seat belt, releasing the catch, then slid onto the console and swung her leg over Richard’s. She kicked his foot off the accelerator and stomped on the brake. The tires screeched as the car skidded, then went into a spin. The landscape of trees and rock face swirled by, then Eve didn’t know if the car was again at the edge about to go over. She couldn’t determine up or down. She’d lost her bearings.
She maintained her grip on the steering wheel and on the brake, the skin stretched taut over her knuckles, her teeth gritted as she fought to ride out the spin and regain control of the car.

The Porsche rocked to a stop. She was flung forward. Her instinctive grab of the dashboard twisted her wrist but saved her face. Laying her head on her arms, she closed her eyes and gave in to the weakness that had come over her now that the initial adrenaline rush was spent. Her ears were ringing. The car engine was now off and in the silence she could hear herself breathing. Shallow, panting gasps for air that hurt to inhale and exhale. Other than those complaints, she felt fine. Alive.

Richard . . .
She turned to him and shook his shoulder. He didn’t respond. She pressed her fingertips to his neck. Her hands were shaking so badly she wasn’t sure she’d detect any other movement, but she felt a thready pulse.
She’d bought a bottle of water at the last gas station they’d stopped at. It was in the cup holder. She uncapped it and upended it onto Richard’s face. Water flowed down his shaved cheeks.
Eve tapped the back of her hand against his skin. “Richard.”
He didn’t respond. She struck him harder. His cheek reddened. She’d hit him hard enough to mark him, but apparently not enough to rouse him.
“Hang on, Richard,” she murmured.
She turned the key, but the engine didn’t start. Her purse . . . where was her purse? She spotted the little envelope bag on the floor board. She fumbled with the snap and yanked out her cell phone. She had to get help.
Where were they? She glanced around the deserted stretch of road. A meadow lay beyond the two lanes of asphalt. Trees and scraggly bushes grew on the grass, amid patches of white and yellow wildflowers. She and Richard had left Manhattan bound for Rowland, a county in Pennsylvania, about an hour ago. They were chemists and they were on their way to a chemist’s conference in Pittsburgh. Richard had kept to back roads like this one to avoid traffic. Other than the sedan that was no longer in sight, she couldn’t remember the last time they came across another car. None were in sight now. The sun was lowering behind a cluster of oaks. Nightfall was imminent. If this road was rarely traveled in daylight, what was the likelihood of another car coming along at night? With Richard in his present condition, they could not pass the night here. She pushed dark hair back from her face and flipped open the phone.

An instant later she found there was no signal. She hoped that was because she was inside the car. As she was about to go outside and try the phone again, the sedan that had been following them skidded to a halt behind the Porsche.

Both the driver and passenger doors were flung open. Two men charged out.

One man was dark-haired, the other blond. Both wore suits and ties.
Eve wanted to be away from there. She knew nothing about the occupants of that car other than that Richard had been terrified of him. But where to go? She was in the middle of nowhere. The car disabled. Her phone useless. She had no weapon to defend herself and Richard. She’d turned in her service weapon years ago along with her resignation from the LAPD.

To buy a moment to think, she reached out to engage the automatic door locks. Ineffective if these men were armed, but if not, the locked doors would keep them at bay.

Before she could hit the locks, both her door and Richard’s door were thrown open. The dark haired man peered at Richard. The blond man reached for her.

Eve drew back. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but Richard needs help. He needs a doctor.”

The dark-haired man glanced over his shoulder at Eve. His eyes, dark brown and deep-set, narrowed to slits. He pressed his lips together, tight enough that a line formed on either side of his mouth. There was no mistaking his anger, though she could not account for it.
The blond man’s soft, doughy features were grim. Eve’s heart pounded. She looked from one man to the other. “Why are you just standing around?” She was afraid she knew, but blurted out anyway. “We need to get Richard to a doctor. Now.”
“Richard is dead,” the dark- haired man said bluntly.
As he stepped back from the open doorway, back from Richard, she glimpsed her business partner, slumped against the black leather seat. His eyes were glazed. There was no mistaking the vacant look in them now and the gray cast to his skin that indicated recent death.
Eve continued to stare at him. She shook her head, not wanting to believe what she was seeing.
At any moment she expected him to bounce up and burst into movement. But he did not.
Richard . . .
Tears burned her eyes. She pressed her fingers to them. Her hands trembled. She clenched them briefly in an effort to steady them. The need to know how Richard died weighed on her, along with a terrible sadness. She and Richard had been partners for four years and though that relationship had its ups and downs – was presently down – she felt a loss at his passing. Now was not the time for questions, though, or to mourn. She had to keep it together and see him home.
“Let’s get him into our car,” the dark- haired man said.
The men hooked Richard beneath the arms and legs, and removed him from his vehicle. They hauled him across the asphalt to their own car and stuffed him into the trunk. The act galvanized Eve. Richard was dead. Why had they moved him?
Eve left the Porsche and stumbled out onto the asphalt. She was still holding her phone and dropped it onto the pavement as she ran to the sedan.

She reached it and seized the lid just as the dark-haired man was about to slam it. “You can’t move Richard’s body. Drive back to the nearest city and send the police.” What was the name of the last place they drove through? She shook her head in frustration; she couldn’t recall it. She eyed the two men. “There’s a city about a forty minute drive east of here. Since you were on this road, you would have passed it as well. There’s bound to be a police station there.”

The man slammed the trunk and turned to his companion. “You’d better get going. I’ll be in touch.”
“Will do.”
The men acted as if she hadn’t spoken. Eve reached out and seized the dark-haired man’s forearm. Beneath the conservative gray suit was hard muscle. Instead of digging into skin, her nails bent. She bit down hard on her back teeth “Did you hear what I said?”
He met her gaze. “Every word. I’m afraid, however, that we will be removing the body.”
She could see the promise in his eyes, and her anger spiked another notch. “Listen to me–”
“Dr. Collins–”
“You know me?” She searched her memory, but could not recall ever meeting him. He obviously knew her though, and though he had yet to harm her, that fact unsettled her, reminded her that this man and his companion had been following Richard.

Who were these men? Eve’s stomach went as tight as a fist. Her body went cold with apprehension but she knew better than to show it. She crossed her arms and narrowed her gaze on the dark-haired man who appeared to be leading the other man. “I asked you a question.”
“We’ve never met. I’m John Burke.” Burke indicated the man beside him. “This is Michael Lanski. We work for a division of the Central Intelligence Agency.” Burke withdrew a small folder from inside his suit jacket and opened it for her inspection. It was his picture ID. He replaced it, then repeated to Lanski, “Get going.”
Lanski got behind the wheel of the sedan, and Eve’s heart thumped. “Where is he going?” she asked Burke. “Why were you following Richard? What does the CIA want with Richard’s body?”
“We’ll talk on the drive to Rowland,” Burke said. “Let’s go, Dr. Collins.”
Eve narrowed her eyes on Burke. “You know where Richard and I were going?”
Burke gave her a level look. “Oh, yeah. We know a lot of things about you and Richard.”
Eve arched her eyebrows at the cryptic statement. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Before Burke could respond–if he’d intended to–Eve’s attention was drawn by the sedan. Lanski spun the car in a U-turn then, tires squealing, sped down the road. Dust swirled in the air where the car had been an instant earlier, and Richard was gone.
Again, Eve felt tears burn. She forced them back and confronted Burke. “I asked you what the CIA wants with Richard’s body.”
“And I told you we would talk on the way to Rowland,” Burke said.
The sun had lowered and dusk had descended. In the interval between day and night, there was a stillness, a quiet time. In the silence, Eve became aware of the hum of the Porsche’s engine. She’d thought the car was disabled by the accident, but Burke or Lanski had started it. Obviously, Burke intended that they leave there in Richard’s vehicle.
Eve crossed her arms. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Mr. Burke.”
He braced his hands low on his hips. “Are you thinking to wait out here, hoping another car will come along?”
“Oh, no. I am leaving. You’re not. I’m taking the car. You should have gone with Lanski.” Eve’s cheeks warmed. “This isn’t over. If you won’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll get my answers from your office. I will get Richard’s body released. I will find out why the CIA even knows my name.”
Eve moved past him toward the car.
“You aren’t going anywhere without me.”
She glanced back at Burke. He hadn’t moved, but his eyes had hardened and she knew he meant what he said. He outweighed her by at least seventy pounds and topped her by a good eight inches. Did he intend to use physical force to detain her? On the job, she’d taken down men of his size before. Still, he would need a reason to insist that she accompany him; he was an officer of the law, after all, not a thug.
She raised an eyebrow. “If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to place me under arrest.”
Burke reached into a back pocket and held up a pair of handcuffs.
Eve’s lips tensed briefly. “You have to be out of your mind, Burke. I’m a chemist not a criminal.”
“You set the terms, Doctor. We are going to talk. If I have to arrest you to do that, I will.”
“This is ridiculous. You can’t arrest me without cause.”
“Oh, I have cause.” He leaned in close to her, and his voice lowered to a near whisper. “You’ve been named in a terrorist plot, Doctor. The charge for committing an offence against your country is treason.”
*

… continued …

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IMPOSTER:

The Protectors Series – Book One

by Karen Fenech

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IMPOSTER

Thank you for reading this free Kindle Nation feature sponsored by the author.

THE PROTECTORS:

Though they work independently and at times are oceans apart, their ties to each other remain strong. They’re related by blood or bond – this group of men and women in law enforcement, government intelligence, and the military who do what others cannot to serve, defend, and protect.

Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 16, 2011: An Excerpt from ANGEL FIRE, a novel by Valmore Daniels

August 18, 2011March 17, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

Darcy Anderson has an uncontrollable dark power that reacts to deadly threats with lethal fire. This inner blaze is so powerful that it burned down Anderson’s house with her parents inside….

“My name is Darcy Anderson, and I am cursed with a dark power: Whenever my life is in danger, something inside me summons elemental fire to protect me. I cannot control this.

“One night, I was attacked in my home. The fire … it raged out of control. I survived the inferno, but my house burned to the ground – with my parents inside.

“I was at a loss to explain to the courts what happened, and so they sent me to prison for ten years for manslaughter.

“Now I’m out on parole, and all I want is to return to my home town and rebuild my life; but the man who attacked me is back to finish the job he started.

“I can sense the power in me growing. If I can’t control it, it will control me and destroy everything – and everyone – I love.”

So begins Angel Fire, the first novel in Valmore Daniels’ new series, “Fallen Angels.” It is a grand story in conception and execution, told by a talented emerging storyteller.

It’s a treat to be able to share the first 4,000 words with you here through our Free Kindle Nation Shorts program, and it’s equally nice to let you know that — for a limited time in conjunction with the appearance of this excerpt — the author has reduced the price of the entire novel to just 99 cents.

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Angel Fire:

The First Book of Fallen Angels

by Valmore Daniels

4.5 out of 5 stars 6 Reviews

Kindle Price: 99 cents

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Angel Fire: The First Book of Fallen Angels

Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 16, 2011

An Excerpt from

ANGEL FIRE

by Valmore Daniels

Angel Fire

The First Book of Fallen Angels

by Valmore Daniels

Visit the Author at ValmoreDaniels.com

Quia ecce Dominus in igne veniet, et quasi turbo quadrigæ ejus: reddere in indignatione furorem suum, et increpationem suam in flamma ignis.

(For behold the Lord will come with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind, to render his wrath in indignation, and his rebuke with flames of fire.) – Isaiah 66:15

——–

CHAPTER ONE

I woke to a world of fire and ash.

Forcing my eyes open, I willed the fog in my brain to lift. My lungs screamed for air, and I opened my mouth to breathe, but thick smoke clawed at my throat. Gasping with the effort, I somehow managed to get my arms under me and raise my head up off the floor.

Through the curtain of hair in front of my face, my eyes were drawn to the wedding band glowing white hot on the charred carpet, but the roaring fire dragged my attention away at once.

The plaster walls of my basement apartment peeled and melted under the rage of the inferno. Crackling and snapping in protest, the cheap pine coffee table in front of me collapsed. The fabric and cushions of the oversized couch were entirely consumed, leaving nothing more than the crumbling black skeleton of its wooden frame.

Intense heat washed against my skin as fire chewed at the edge of the rug on which I lay; but my first thought was not for my own safety.

“Mom-! Dad-!”

Razor blades tore at my lungs, and I couldn’t utter another sound. A dark blanket of nothingness began to creep over me once again. The thick smoke in the room clouded my vision.

A thundering crash from the other side of the room jarred me back to awareness. Splinters showered across the floor as the head of a red-bladed axe bit through the door. One more blow sundered the door and a bulky form pushed its way inside.

The intruder rushed at me, arms out. Strong fingers reached for my throat. Throwing my arm up for protection I let out a panicked cry.

“Darcy!” The man’s voice was muffled through a plastic mask and ventilator, but I recognized it as Hank Hrzinski’s, the fire chief. “You hurt?” he shouted. “You burned?”

Without waiting for a response, he hoisted me off the floor and onto his shoulders. Doing his best to shield me from falling embers and burning debris, he picked his way back out of the apartment. I faded in and out of consciousness. The smoke burned my lungs, and the jarring motion as the fire chief jostled me about almost made me retch.

Outside, cold air slapped at me. I sucked it in and immediately started to hack up phlegm and ash. Chief Hrzinski shifted me off his back and onto the front lawn as a paramedic rushed at me with an oxygen tank and mask.

Dimly, I was aware of shouting voices and darting silhouettes as a team of firefighters fought the blaze. Spray from half a dozen hoses disappeared into the fire consuming the house.

The roof cracked, and with a roar, fell in on itself.

I struggled to my feet. “Mom!” I screamed. “Dad!”

Someone grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back down.

“Mom!”

—-

“I’m not your mama.”

I sprang out of bed, disoriented. My sheets were a tangled mess around my feet, and my shirt was soaked with sweat.

The remnants of my nightmare faded as I blinked and looked around. The familiar walls of my cell were as gray and unwelcoming as they had been since the first day I arrived at the Arizona Center for Women ten years ago.

Looming over me was the dour face of Jerry Niles, one of the meanest prison guards in our cell block. For years I’d had to endure his crude jokes and clumsy innuendoes.

“But who knows, I could be your daddy,” he added with a twisted leer that made my stomach churn. The memory of my dead parents rushed back and I had to fight to keep my eyes from tearing over.

I pulled the bed sheets up to cover my legs.

“What do you want?” I said. “You’re not supposed to be in here before wakeup.” A quick glance at the window confirmed that dawn had not yet broken.

“Warden said to bring you down to processing early. He wants you out of here before morning chow. Says it’s better for everyone else who’s left behind. Don’t want to remind them there’s a whole other world on the outside.”

“OK, fine.” I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Just give me a minute to get ready.”

“I’ll help you get dressed,” he offered with a sickening smile.

I shuddered at the thought, and felt a wave of anger run through me.

Keep control!

“My eyes can see,” I said under my breath.

I peered closer at me. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. Are you backtalking me?”

I gave a quick shake of my head. “No, sir.”

My response was automatic. Obedience was something they drilled into you early. They told you when to sleep and when to wake up, when to shower and when to eat, and after a while, you surrender to it.

But I was getting out on parole today. I’d have to learn to make decisions for myself, and not jump every time someone barked an order.

I gathered some courage, raised my eyebrows and waved him out of the cell. “Well, are you going to give me some privacy?”

Like the strike of a rattlesnake, Jerry thrust his face in front of mine.

“Don’t push me, Darcy. You’re not out yet, and lots can happen between now and then.”

I clenched my fists, bunching them under the blanket.

My tongue can taste.

Closing my eyes, I sat rigid as a statue, as if ignoring him would make him magically disappear. I continued whispering to myself.

“My mouth can smile.”

“Gibberish,” said Jerry. “Crazy in the head.”

In the bunk above me, my cellmate shifted in her sleep and muttered something.

Glancing up at the noise, Jerry straightened and took a step back. Curling his lips in a grimace of distaste, he barked, “Get dressed. Like I said, Warden wants you out of here today, you little firebug. We all do.”

I opened my eyes when he left the cell. He left the door open, but he remained outside on guard, just out of sight.

“I am in control,” I told myself as I released the bed sheets from a strangle hold.

Blackened streaks marked the cloth where my fingers had grabbed the material.

——–

CHAPTER TWO

I stood at the bus stop outside the front gates of the prison and hugged my arms around my chest.

It almost never rained in southern Arizona, and when it did, it didn’t last very long. Of course, today of all days, the rain came down hard. I had tied my hair back in a ponytail, and whenever I moved my head, the wet strands ran along the bare skin of my neck and sent chills down my spine. My breath puffed out like misty clouds of smoke in the crisp morning air.

I silently prayed for sun as I searched the road with haunted eyes.

A car raced past and hit a puddle. I skipped back, but a torrent of water splashed all over my jeans and sneakers.

“Damn it!” I yelled. I showed the driver my middle finger, and he showed me his before his car turned a corner.

“Jerk!”

Trying to keep warm, I pulled the collar of my jacket tighter around my neck. Looking up at the dark clouds, I silently cursed. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a link between the bad weather and my release from prison. Or maybe I was just crazy and imagining the world was out to punish me.

Just as I spotted a ray of sunshine poking out between the clouds, the screeching brakes of a Greyhound startled me and I let out a yelp. After I put my heart back in my chest, I reached down and grabbed my duffel bag.

A middle-aged driver stepped off the bus as he covered his balding head with a cap.

“You getting on?” he asked, giving me an expectant glance. I nodded and passed him my bag. He opened a side panel and, with a grunt, tossed my bag in.

I took a step toward the door, but the driver cleared his throat.

“Ticket?” he asked.

“Huh? Yeah.”

I fumbled through my pockets in search of the voucher while trying to ignore his impatient look. After a moment, I pulled the ticket out and handed it to him. He waved me on, and I climbed the short flight of steps into the bus . . . and froze.

For the first time in ten years, I found myself facing a group of total strangers. My heart skipped a beat, my lungs seized and nausea washed over me.

I felt everyone’s eyes on me, angry and accusing. Did they know about me? About my past? About my affliction?

“Miss!” It was the driver. He made a shooing motion with his hand and grunted.

I tried to breathe, but anxiety gripped me.

“We’re on a timetable,” he said in a harried voice.

In a way, that helped calm me. It reminded me that even in the big chaotic outside world, everywhere you went and everything you did was by some sort of routine, and I found that very comforting. Inside, every minute of every day is regulated, and you can surrender yourself to it.

Slowly I regained my composure and steeled myself to join the strangers on the bus.

From what I could see, the only two seats still unoccupied were in the last row on either side of the aisle; only one was by a window.

The bus driver closed the door and eased himself into his chair. He touched the accelerator and the bus lurched forward. I grabbed the overhead bar before I fell on my face and, cursing the driver under my breath, picked my way down the aisle.

Two elderly women stared at me with pinched faces. I forced my eyes ahead, but I couldn’t avert my ears. The blue-haired old biddy sitting next to the window tried to keep her voice low, but I heard her anyway.

“I don’t know why they let them on the bus. There should be a rule.”

As I passed by, I set my jaw and pretended not to hear. I told myself not to let it get to me, but then her silver-haired companion clutched her purse tighter in her fat arms.

I barked, “You don’t have to worry about your purse, lady. I wasn’t in for robbery; I was in for manslaughter!”

They both gasped in astonishment, but I could take no pleasure in their reaction. I’d let myself slip, and that was something I had vowed not to do.

I walked past them, and ignored the sudden interest of the passengers who’d overheard me. All the while, I told myself to calm down. There was bound to be more confrontation in the days ahead, and if I couldn’t overlook two old gossips, how was I going to manage to control the rest of my life?

I had a sudden urge to turn around and run back into the comforting arms of the prison. Instead, I reached the seat by the window, sat down, and stared out as the bus pulled off into the strange and frightening world of my new found freedom.

I didn’t let anyone see the tears misting in my eyes. I didn’t let anyone know that, inside, I was just a frightened little girl who wanted nothing more than to have someone take me in their arms and say, “Everything’s going to be all right.” What I wanted and what I would get were two different things.

I’d met a lot of cruel and petty people in my life, and if you showed them even a tiny crack in your armor, they would see your weakness and attack. Hatred, misunderstanding, fear, and intolerance ran rampant in strangers, and if you let it get to you, it would tear you apart.

The passengers on the bus radiated everything from indifference at one end to complete animosity at the other. But I had to be strong. I had to act tough. I had to be as hard as stone.

Like a child afraid of the dark, I told myself over and over again to be brave.

There was much worse ahead of me:

I was going home.

As the bus hurtled down the highway, passing small towns, farms, ranches, decrepit barns and run-down gas stations, my anxiety slowly slipped away.

I absorbed every sight. I drank in the colors and contrasts. I gawked at passengers in cars and minivans. I let my imagination run riot with the notion that all possibilities lay ahead of me. The future was wide open, like the road ahead of us, and I felt giddy with the thoughts of how wonderful my life was going to be.

No doubt my fellow passengers wondered if I had come from a different kind of institution, the way I grinned like an idiot when I saw a herd of horses with their spring foals playing a game of tag in a grassy field.

I didn’t care. Let them think what they wanted; I was free and although I dreaded going home, I was looking forward to starting over and rebuilding my life. Fate had given me a second chance to do things right, and this time I was determined to do just that.

The tiniest wave of uncertainty ran through me as we passed a road sign: Welcome to Middleton, AZ. (pop. 2628)

Starting over was good and all, and my social reintegration counselor at the prison had encouraged me to repair my relationships with my family, rather than relocate to a new town and start over.

“Running away is merely avoiding the problems in your life,” he told me. “The only way to resolve the issues in your past is to address them in the present.”

That wave of uncertainty turned into a deep-seated feeling of unease. I had some pretty big issues to resolve. For one thing my uncle, Edward, hadn’t spoken more than two words in a row to me in the past ten years.

The bus driver slowed the bus as we approached the dusty parking lot of the Lazy Z Motel-a one-level, sprawling old building set at an angle to the highway.

The bus wheeled into the lot and unexpectedly lurched to a stop at the last moment, throwing me into the back of the seat in front of me. Someone’s knapsack fell off the overhead rack, giving one passenger an unpleasant start; and a half-full can of soda toppled, spilling liquid over a young woman’s sneakers.

After muscling the door release open, the driver, ignoring the grumbling from his passengers, grabbed a clipboard and pen and logged his progress.

“Middleton,” he announced in a disinterested voice as he un-wedged himself from his seat and ambled down the steps.

I was the only one to stand up. Everyone else, it seemed, was moving on to Flagstaff or beyond.

Ignoring the glares from the two old biddies, I made my way up the aisle. As I neared the exit, I took a deep breath. For a short time, the bus had been a safe haven. Now, like a newborn chick leaving the nest for the first time, I had to muster all the bravery I could and make that leap into the wide world to test my wings.

At the top of the stairs, I faltered. There was no safety net, no one to catch me if I fell. If I took one more step, I would be completely on my own.

Behind me, the blue-haired old woman rolled her eyes and let out an impatient cough.

Outside, the driver unceremoniously dropped my duffel bag on the gravel, sending up a small plume of dust.

“Your stop?”

I nodded and took my first real step into freedom; but one single step was all I could bring myself to take.

Drawing in a deep breath, I centered myself. I had to gather my courage and face the present.

“Can you speed it up, lady?” said the driver.

I flashed a weak smile and took another step away from the bus, giving him enough room to maneuver his bulk back inside. The door closed with the sound of permanence. There was no going back.

Long after the bus pulled away, I remained standing at the shoulder of the road, my bag at my feet and my heart in my throat.

* * *

The Lazy Z Motel was exactly as I remembered it, and its familiarity was just enough to get me moving. I hefted my duffel bag and walked into the front office.

Bracing myself for the worst, I was thrown off by the unexpected: there was no one there.

The office, however, was a total disaster. Papers were scattered all over the counter, binders were piled on top of directories and magazines. An old style rotary telephone was smudged with the dirt of a thousand oily fingers, and a musty guestbook was open at a page that had more coffee stains than signatures. Beside an old computer monitor a rack of outdated maps awaited a purchase that would never happen. A buzzing fly circled a bowl of unwrapped candies as if wary of a possible trap.

The office itself was small and cramped, and half of it was dedicated as a customers’ lounge. Two long be

Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 14, 2011: An Excerpt from Spiderwork, a novel by LK Rigel

August 18, 2011March 14, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

“In flagrante apocalypto: When the veil drops between life and oblivion, only love can save them from the abyss.”

To save him, Char must share him with a chalice … one trained to take him to the heights of sexual ecstasy.

Now you can download all three of LK Rigel’s

Paranormal Romance

“Apocalypto” titles for just 99 cents each!

By Stephen Windwalker

Editor, Kindle Nation Daily
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011

What a treat it is to be a participant in the process by which the greatest readers in the world come to discover the work of emerging authors of real distinction like LK Rigel, and in which — if we are lucky — we get to see abd cheer on her continued development!

The first book in Linda’s Apocalypto series, Hero Material,

was nominated recently by The Romance Reviews for Best Debut Book of 2010 and Best Romantic Science Fiction/Fantasy Book of 2010, and the third book, Blue Amber, has been garnering great reviews from readers all over web.

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Spiderwork, A Paranormal Romance Fantasy

Here’s the set-up:

(Apocalypto 2)

by LK Rigel

5 Star Review

Kindle Price: 99 Cents

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Hero Material, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy Romance (Apocalypto 1) by LK Rigel and Anne Frasier (Kindle Edition – Sept. 2, 2010) – Kindle eBook

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Spiderwork, A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2) by LK Rigel (Kindle Edition – Jan. 1, 2011) – Kindle eBook

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Blue Amber (Apocalypto 3, Part 1) by LK Rigel (Kindle Edition – Feb. 15, 2011) – Kindle eBook

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An apocalyptic paranormal romance. The sequel to Hero Material (formerly Space Junque).

Her fate was to hold the world together. His destiny was to tear it apart.

As a child, Durga was chosen by the goddess to save the world from sterility and extinction. Now her eighteenth birthday approaches, and Durga must take her place among the chalices, women blessed by the goddess with fertility to ensure more souls for the universe. Durga’s mission does not include love … but Khai, the scion of Luxor, is unlike any man she’s ever met.

Char Meadowlark once played a role in the goddess’s plans. Now her lover, Jake Ardri, heads an emerging city-state whose enemies covet everything Jake has built. As Jake navigates the uneasy waters of political intrigue, his very existence is threatened. To save him, Char must share him with a chalice … one trained to take him to the heights of sexual ecstasy.

In flagrante apocalypto: When the veil drops between life and oblivion, only love can save them from the abyss.

Reviewer B. Tackitt says: “I was enthralled.”

“After reading Space Junque by Ms. Rigel I have been eagerly awaiting more of the story. Spiderwork delivers! I enjoyed reading about how the new world’s customs, policies, and politics are formed. It’s interesting to be “in,” so to speak, on planet building.

Ms. Rigel did a great job following up with the characters of SJ, and though I understand it is the end of the story for some of them, I am interested in reading someday how the world continues to progress. Especially Durga, I’d love to know how the goddess continues to deal with her.”

Click here to download Spiderwork, A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2) (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

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Spiderwork, A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2)

Spiderwork
A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2)

by LK Rigel

Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2011-01-01

List Price: $0.99

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download Spiderwork, A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2)

Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 14, 2011

An Excerpt from

Spiderwork

by LK Rigel

Raptor and Chalice

Now

Cripes, it was cold this morning. Jake’s settlement in the New Central Pacific Zone was always cold compared to Corcovado. Char moved out of the wind, onto the side path to the citadel’s basement kitchens. Leaning against the wall, she pulled a lumpy snood from her bag.

The crocheted hat, a horrific blend of green, red, and blue hemp, was larger on one side than the other and had no brim. Jordana had made it especially for Char to hide her hair in, never mind the fact that Jordana didn’t know how to crochet.

Char watched the common yard for Jake. He had stopped to pick up weapons from the armory for their trip outside the wall. Another search for Tesla. After eight years, Sky must be dead, but they still searched for the vault and the technology it contained.

And Char had to know. She had to see the body. What if Sky was alive? There were a million what ifs.

What if everybody in the vault had died except Sky, leaving enough food and water for one person to survive? What if, being scientists, they had extended the life support systems? What if a shibbing miracle happened? What else were the gods good for, now that they were back?

Char fingered her half-heart pendant. The other half of the heart might well dangle from a dead body, but until Char saw that body, the what ifs would never go away.

In the common yard, the cagers worked in the open. Crazy cagers. With hand axes, two cagers stripped birch trunks and branches into poles and cross-beams. Wiry but well-muscled, the two bantered with some other cagers who might be women, but they were so angular and lean it was hard to tell. A nice change from Corcovado, where sexuality permeated everything down to the molecules of the rocks.

Right. Who was she kidding? Since she arrived last week, she had had Jake in her bed every night. She couldn’t get enough of him. These last few years, anything would put her in the mood. Watching cagers make boxes put her in the mood.

The women cagers bound the wood into a rectangular box, complete but for a roof. It wasn’t big enough to hold a raptor. In Jake’s design, the cages were meant to keep birds out. The men walked around in this one and aimed imaginary weapons at imaginary raptors while the women laughed and admired their pantomimed prowess.

A few feet away, a lone woman knotted rope into a lattice-like net. The cage’s roof. She was eerily thin, skeletal compared to the cagers. Her bald head was uncovered, but she didn’t seem to mind the cold weather any more than she minded the cagers’ cold indifference. As if she and the net were all that existed.

She was a ghost who’d come in from the wild.

By some counts, roughly one-fifth of the world’s population had survived Samael’s fire, and among the survivors were some ghosts. Because they rarely ate, the ghosts who did escape the fire easily made it through the post-cataclysm famine. Jake had recently discovered that ghosting’s apathy could be fought. The woman making the net was coming back to a communal life one knot at a time. A herculean labor, harder than taking on a raptor with nothing but a longbow.

Cripes! A wagon loaded with produce narrowly missed the ghost woman and headed toward Char. She backed up toward the citadel. It swerved and lurched to a halt, losing the carrots that were piled on the potatoes.

The driver scrambled to the ground, frantic to unhitch the horse. “Don’t you see them?”

Fear rippled through her, and she scanned the clouds in the east. Nothing there, but he could only mean raptors.

The driver dragged the horse by its bridle toward Char. “Get up against the wall!” He checked his anger when he noticed her fine clothes. Then he saw her face, and his eyes widened with full recognition-though her odd cap seemed to befuddle him.

She put a hand to the cap. It was in place, but a strand of hair had escaped. Shib. When people in the world saw her hair they inevitably bombarded her with questions. Have you actually seen the goddess? What is Durga really like? Is it true she can [insert preposterous superpower here]?

And the one Char hated the most: Why didn’t Asherah make you a chalice?

“A blessing, my lady!” The man seemed torn between flattening himself against the wall and prostrating himself at Char’s feet.

Cripes, cripes, cripes. She glanced at the common. The cagers had disappeared. One of the women was just ducking through a perimeter wall door. The ghost woman still sat on the ground working her net, oblivious to the danger.

“Please, my lady. The favor of a blessing. My wife and I are expecting. Could I be so bold as to touch your hair?”

“Be quiet, citizen.”

Shibad. The world had gone from believing in nothing to believing in everything. One touch of “Asherah’s hair” could cure a fever, prevent an Empani from reading your mind, and ensure a healthy bagger. Char had heard of countless other fancies.

The first scream echoed over the common, and the driver forgot about the hair. Eagles. Not the worst-that would be peregrines. At least with eagles, you knew they were coming. The sky was still clear, but Char’s heart about pounded out of her chest with fear.

Every part of her wanted to stay with the driver flat against the wall, but she couldn’t let the ghost woman be taken. She’d seen a raptor feed its young the warm intestines of its still-living prey.

“Do you have a bow?”

The driver was lost to her. His eyes were jammed shut, and he was moving his lips-the kind of prayer Asherah especially despised. At least he tried to save his horse.

Char forced her legs to move. Another scream sent adrenaline coursing through her body and gave her some speed. There was more than one bird, and they were close.

“Char, catch!” Thank Asherah! Jake was in the common. He tossed a crossbow that hit the ground ahead of her, and she scooped it up on the run. It was loaded. Another scream, an angry one. Jake had hit a bird.

Char raised the crossbow and fired. The quarrel would be poisoned. If she could paralyze a leg, it wouldn’t be able to grab.

Years of training with chalices at Corcovado kicked in. She bent down, slipped her arm around the ghost woman’s waist, lifted her off the ground, and kept running for the closest door in the perimeter wall. Now that she was reasonably sure she wasn’t going to die, it was all a bit thrilling.

The tower bells erupted in a furious clang, clang, clang. Char put the woman down and said stay. Jake was halfway up the stairs. She followed him up into the cages bolted to the top of the wall and loaded another quarrel.

An eagle hit by a shot from the cage guard let out an enraged cry and let go of its prey, which landed on slate tiles in the common with a thud and crack of snapping bones.

Aiming through the cage’s net roof, Char sent the quarrel flying. It struck the bird’s throat, and the quick-acting poison did its work on the raptor’s nervous system. Wings spanning some forty feet twisted and jerked in unnatural spasms. The raptor hit the ground outside the perimeter wall.

Jake lifted his weapon over Char’s head, his arms and shoulders hovering over her as he took aim at the other eagle. It was hardly appropriate, but she couldn’t help thinking how sexy he was in his lord-of-the-manor apocapunk brown-black leathers. It took everything she had to keep from reaching up and pressing her palm to his chest.

But then she was always weak for Jake right after they escaped death together.

“Shib.” He checked his aim and lowered the crossbow. The bird had moved out of range, and quarrels weren’t exactly plentiful.

From this vantage the land outside the perimeter wall was in full view. There were the beginnings of a forest to the east and foothills beyond that. Flat wasteland lay to the south. The escaping raptor flew north, past a peninsula that curved westward to shelter the bay. Farther west was the Pacific Ocean.

The guard moved to call the all-clear but stopped when he saw Jake.

“You’re in charge, Gordon,” Jake said. “Be in charge.”

The man squared his shoulders and yelled, “All clear!” His unit repeated all clear along the wall. Two clangs signaled from the bell tower.

“We lost no one,” Gordon said, “and Lady Char took out a raptor.”

“It took both our hits to bring that monster down.”

Gordon nodded, acknowledging the compliment. “The birds are learning to stay away, my lord. Attacks are down by half since the cages were installed.”

“That’s the plan,” Jake said. “Soon I want to walk to the hospital and hydroponics without need for a weapon.”

The cagers dashed through the gate to retrieve the dead eagle. There was no nice word for how raptors tasted, but protein was protein. The kitchen would marinade and spice the meat and dry it into semi-bearable jerky. Char had some of the execrable stuff packed in her bag for today’s outing.

She always brought goodies from Corcovado, and she always meant to eat them. But it was just too tacky to hide treats from people who survived on textured protein and raptor carcasses with the occasional carrot. The strawberries and chocolates and coffee and real beef jerky usually became gifts for the servants within an hour of her arrival.

“Lord Ardri!” In the center of the common the wagon driver stood over the real treasure, the gorgeous black-tailed doe the raptor had dropped. “Will you have this deer cut into steaks for tomorrow’s feast?”

If looks were poison quarrels, the driver would be a dead man. A mason slammed his hammer against a stone, but the driver seemed unaware of the distress he had caused. There was a ban on hunting endangered deer, but this doe was a gift from the gods.

Jake got that twinkle in his eye. “That’s fine of you to care, Hamish.” He walked out of the cage onto the open perimeter wall. “You’ll be attending that feast, I believe?”

“That I will, my lord.” Hamish beamed with pleasure at being recognized and ignored the grumbles all around.

“And as chief of hydroponics, you know all these hard-working people have so graciously given up their share of this week’s crop in order to impress the poobahs coming in for that feast.”

The pleasure left Hamish’s face.

“Haul that animal down to the kitchen,” Jake said. “I want a good venison stew made for all the workers in the common, masons and cagers alike.”

“To Lord Ardri!” One of the cagers cried.

“Rah!” The masons and cagers responded in unison. They broke into laughter at the driver’s tragic expression.

“And Hamish.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“You will personally see that the ghost woman who makes the cage nets eats a cup of the stew. I don’t care if it takes her a day.”

Char wrapped her arms around Jake’s waist and leaned her head against his chest. “No wonder your people love you.”

“It’s my secret to successful lording. People like to eat.” He kissed her forehead and tweaked her cap. “Jordana’s work gets more interesting all the time.” His gaze traveled from her cap to her lips, and then his mouth was on hers, and for a moment the world went away. There was only Jake’s kiss, his arms, his aching murmur of desire, and her body’s responding heat.

“To Lady Char!” The approval of the kiss was answered by a group Rah!

Jake grinned and gave the cagers and masons a thumbs-up. “It’s good to be alive, Meadowlark.”

The sane part of Char’s brain knew that Jake loved her. But a perversity in her couldn’t let go of one small problem. He was having children with someone else. It was kind of driving her crazy, even though it was her own fault.

Char had helped Durga and Magda convince him to do it. Jake could be lord sheriff of the settlement without heirs; but city status required a king, and a king must have two natural born children. It was all about establishing dynastic rule and stability. This was Asherah’s law.

The chalice Faina had already delivered a girl, and she was five months pregnant with a boy. Everything was going according to plan. Char just hadn’t expected to feel so jealous and insecure about it. Jake swore he didn’t compare Char to Faina, but how could he not? Char compared herself to Faina, and always came out wanting.

Beautiful, sweet, fertile Faina. Truly nice Faina, always a pleasure to be with.

“There they are.” Jake nodded toward the gate where a handler held the reins of two horses, saddled and packed for a daytrip. “Let’s get out of here.”

Vain To Deny It

Char and Jake galloped north in silence. Halfway to the peninsula, Char fell back a length to enjoy the view. She liked Jake’s hair longer, the way he wore it now. The brown as yet had no grays.

Cripes. She had done it again. It was probably because of the coronation, it being such a life-changing event, but she’d been thinking about age a lot lately.

She and Jake were both natural born, and they could expect to live to eighty or ninety. Unlike the poor baggers who rarely lived past fifty. Nor was it the hundred and fifty years of youthful good health promised to a chalice, but Char wouldn’t want to live sixty years in a world without Jake.

Still. She was thirty-two, and Jake was thirty-six. She should have married him right after the cataclysm, the first time he asked. Before things got so complicated.

Shibadeh, he looked good. His muscles had always been natural, no enhancements. Good thing too. So many people had lived through the war and the cataclysm and then died from enhancement withdrawal.

Jake was in better shape than ever. Years of physical labor at the settlement had put even more muscles on the man. He was funny and smart, an excellent lord sheriff who worked to better his settlement. He would – he had – risked his life for the people he loved.

It was a bonus that he was gorgeous.

At the top of the rise of land that overlooked the bay, she looked back at the citadel. A grey blimp had tied down in the dirigidock. At the sight of a dark blob in the distant sky she nearly panicked-then realized it must be another airship coming in.

“I want my shades back.” Durga had confiscated the telescoping sunglasses long ago, promising to return them after she had the design copied for reproduction. Char wasn’t holding her breath anymore.

“That’s Zhōngguó in the dirigidock,” Jake said. “I see Ithaca came by sail.” A square-rigged clipper ship had just entered the bay from the south. His face went all misty. “Now, isn’t that pretty.” Maybe he was remembering his time as pilot of the Space Junque. “We should have built a harbor. What will my fellow poobahs think of me?”

“They’ll be impressed, believe me.”

Char should know. She’d been to plenty of shibdung settlements and so-called cities to consult on hydroponics systems. Most lord sheriffs were closer to the Sheriff of Nottingham than to Jake. They drove their people to exhaustion with constant labor and fed them nothing but textured protein and oatmeal. In most of the world, public works like hydroponics and hospitals and even waste disposal came as an afterthought.

In Jake’s settlement hydroponics had come first, and then the hospital, even before the citadel proper. The perimeter wall surrounded it all, enclosing land enough for future streets and parks and housing and schools and shops-every good thing a proper city would want.

Technically, everything within the settlement wall comprised the citadel. But when people said citadel, they really meant the huge administrative structure that was beginning to look like a castle from an old fairy tale. The residential tower even had a turret with a window facing the bay.

“Rapunzel should live in the turret,” Char said. “Or Sleeping Beauty.”

“Durga will like it, don’t you think? She can pretend she’s in a fairy tale fighting off dragons.”

“You forget she’s grown up now.”

“True, she is quite the young woman. And attractive, though I don’t think she knows it.” Jake’s attention was still on the bay. A jollyboat pulled away from the clipper ship and headed for shore. “I’m putting her in the tower for security.”

“No one would dare.”

“I mean for privacy. Most of these people are coming only for the chance to see The Chosen One.” It was cute how his cheeks turned a little red. “I’d like to see some man touch her without permission. She could kill a guy with a blow to the trachea.”

“Or Asherah would smite him.”

“There’s always that.” Jake squinted at the airship still in the sky. “I’m guessing that’s Hibernia.”

The second airship had come in as close as the clipper ship and turned to line up for the dirigidock. It was as large as Corcovado’s Monster, but the resemblance stopped there. This one was faster and much better looking, emerald green with polished brass trim and a huge gold harp logo on the side. Char said, “When Durga sees that, she’ll demand a new airship.”

“I’m sure Hibernia has that in mind, since they have the charter on airships. Next to this rig, the Monster is shibdung ugly.”

Char chuckled, remembering the first time Durga saw Sanguibahd’s airship. She called it a big red monster-and not in a good way. Among her friends, the name caught on.

“Shíbā dài!” A thunderous boom cracked overhead. Char’s horse was up on its hind legs before she knew it, and she fought to throw her body weight forward to keep from falling. A black fuel-based jet plane burst out of the eastern sky and over the bay. As Char and Jake calmed their horses, the jet circled the Hibernian airship then headed toward the citadel.

Garrick. Arrogant shibdabs.

Char hadn’t heard the roar of engines in years. The sheer power and speed of the thing made her pulse race. It was vulgar, an insult to her sensibilities. It was blasphemous, as much as she hated that word. No wonder Garrick wanted to get its hands on the orbit runner.

Jake had been right to take the horses today. Thank Asherah he’d had the foresight to hide the runner while the poobahs were in residence. Char and Jake watched the jet until it dipped down behind the citadel. She had no idea what he was thinking.

“I suppose we should go back,” she said.

“It would be the right thing to do.”

“You are the proper person to greet them.” Char’s heart rate slowed to match her sudden bad mood. She and Jake weren’t going to have any time together until this whole thing was over.

“I don’t know.” He had that mischievous glint in his eye. “Hamish is probably already organizing a tour of hydroponics.” Jake took off east toward the new forest, laughing. He called over his shoulder, “Catch me if you can, Meadowlark!”

Char urged her horse on after him into the trees. Young oaks, eucalyptus, and birch were dwarfed by pines that had grown tall abnormally quickly. Under the cover of the branches, Char felt her body relax. She had been subconsciously on the alert for raptors.

They took a turn into an area Char didn’t recognize and had to slow down to pick their way through untraveled undergrowth. The scent of pine was invigorating, and she heard the sound of a waterfall.

“Char, watch it!”

Jake reined in his horse on the verge of going over a cliff, a sheer drop to a canyon that ran northeast forever. A river flowed through the gorge below, fed by a waterfall on the canyon’s other side.

“It’s beautiful.” Char dismounted. On a clear night, this would be a fantastic place to watch meteor showers.

“Let’s eat.” Jake jumped down from his horse and spread a blanket on the ground.

Despite the shade, Char was warm from the ride. And besides, she had prepared for more than lunch. A little bare skin never hurt anything. She tossed her jacket and cap on the corner of the blanket and shook out her hair. She had hardly anything on underneath, a bra and a soft pink camisole. She had only worn the bra because they were riding horses today.

“A drink?” As Jake handed her a bota bag from his pack, his eyes widened with appreciation at her changed look. He took off his own jacket, disclosing broad shoulders and strong arms in a sleeveless forest green hemp shirt. Very nice combined with black leather pants and black boots.

“Lord Ardri.” Char had expected water, but the bag contained wine. “Are you trying to seduce me?” She slowly traced her lips with the tip of the bag, then slipped it into her mouth and drank.

“Milady, you’ve discovered my evil plan.” In two steps, Jake was at her side. He took the bota bag out of her hands and flung it away. “And now I’m going for your precious parts.” He lifted her off the ground. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. Their mouths crashed into each other, as if they’d been waiting forever.

She felt him swell with desire, and she squeezed tighter against him. He groaned and pressed a hand to her breast, fingering the nipple. She was hot and wet, and she had to have him right now. She let go with her legs and slid to the ground, and Jake helped her unfasten his pants. He lifted her camisole over her head and she had her bra off in an instant. Then he was on his knees kissing her breasts.

She ran her fingers through his hair down his neck to his shoulders and moaned with pleasure, pulsing with heat and pressure. She slipped out of her pants and tossed them on the pile of her clothes, then pushed Jake down onto his back and straddled him.

“I’ve been thinking about doing this all morning.”

It took an hour to remember they were hungry for food. Char retrieved the wine and opened the lunch the kitchen had provided. Thank Asherah, no raptor jerky. She pulled out a red apple. “What a treat! How did this escape tomorrow’s dinner?”

“I have an in with the cook.” Jake put his arms behind his head and admired her still-naked body. “But she would only give me one. We’ll have to share.”

She took a bite and tossed the apple to him. Her pants easily slid up over her thighs and hips. With the rest of the world, Char had grown thinner. She was hardly ghostly; and unlike the cager women, she did still have breasts. But she was nothing like Faina.

One of the horses snorted, as if it had read her mind. They were grazing nearby in a small clearing. Jake hadn’t read her mind, but he had read her face. “What happened just now? You were happy, and then the light went out.”

“I was just thinking. This spot is so beautiful. The view and the waterfall and the trees. What if we were wildlings and lived here alone? No settlement, no Corcovado, no poobahs.”

“No Faina.” Jake knew her too well.

“No Faina.” She accepted the last of the apple and sat down. “Don’t get me wrong, Jake. You did the right thing.”

“Then why is Faina in our way?”

When Sanguibahd made the offer of kingship, it had taken some time to convince Jake to accept. He came up with all kinds of reasons why it wasn’t the right time, but none made any sense. He had overseen the settlement’s design and build-out, and he had been truly happy in the work. He wasn’t afraid of the commitment. He relished it. He had often remarked on how it was the first time he had made the world a better place.

He finally told Char it was the children clause that bothered him. Two natural born children which a chalice would provide. It was sweet, really. Jake didn’t want to have children with someone else.

“I love you, Char.” Again, he had asked her to marry him. “I want a family with you, not somebreeder.”

“That’s a harsh word.” Char had taken Durga and Magda’s side. “The chalices serve humanity by Asherah’s command. We have no say in this. And you couldn’t even have baggers with me. The hospital that stored my eggs was destroyed in the fire. We can’t go against the gods’ laws.”

It had been so strange to hear those words coming out of her own mouth. We can’t go against the gods’ laws. Positively medieval.

Garrick, of all things, spurred Jake to action. The city offered to provide one of its scions to do the honors. Jake couldn’t stand the thought of Garrick enjoying and corrupting all he’d built. With that possibility looming and Char taking Sanguibahd’s part, he accepted.

But Char couldn’t marry him, not yet. Not until she was sure. If Jake did fall in love with his chalice, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

“Faina isn’t in our way, Jake. I’m in our way.”

“You once asked me to ignore what happened with you and Mike.”

“That was just a kiss. And it was an accident!”

“As you said. Plus you shoved him out an airlock, so I’ve always been pretty much convinced you didn’t like him all that much.”

“I can’t believe you would bring up Mike.”

“I’m just giving an example of how a person might have an interaction with another person, but it doesn’t mean a person is in love with a person. It doesn’t mean I took any pleasure in it.”

“I can’t believe you would bring up Mike, is all.”

“I can’t very well throw Faina out an airlock.”

“And you’re telling me you had sex with someone as lovely and sweet as Faina and you took no pleasure in it?”

Jake’s face went all screwy. Ha! He couldn’t deny it.

“Bees. Boom.”

What the shib? Both their heads jerked toward the clearing. The horses were undisturbed, still poking around looking for goodies in the undergrowth. Char and Jake remained still for minutes, but she didn’t see anything unusual.

It had definitely been a human voice…hadn’t it? She whispered, “Did you hear that?” Jake put a finger to his lips then pointed.

About thirty feet away behind a clump of birch trees, a ghost was staring at them.

The Beekeeper, The Samaeli

The ghost was a girl, nearly as thin as the birch trunks she stood behind. With her bald head and filthy face, no wonder she’d been so hard to spot. She blended right in.

“Bees,” she said again. “Boom.” The words came out haltingly, and she held her hands up, palms forward, and pushed them toward Char and Jake like she was trying to make them go away.

“Hello,” Jake said.

“Don’t scare her,” Char said.

“Scare her? She’s the one sneaking up on people.”

The ghost pushed her hands at them again, but she didn’t run away when they moved toward her. When they reached the birch trees, she pushed her hands a few more times and mouthed the word boom.

She was older than Char had first thought. Not a girl. A young woman, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. It was hard to tell with ghosts.

She dashed away from them. She had no shoes, but her clothes were in suspiciously good shape. A long-sleeve hemp shirt, far too big on her skeletal frame, and coveralls equally huge. Dirty, but no holes or rips. In a flash she crossed the clearing and disappeared.

“Where did she go?” Char said. The horses both stared at the spot where the woman had vanished into the foliage.

“If we chase her, we’ll lose her,” Jake said. “It took me a week to get the ghost woman who makes the cage nets to come in. After three months, I still don’t know her name.”

The ghost popped back into the clearing. “Bees!” Her expression was a mix of alarm and exasperation. “Boom!” Again with the pushing hands.

“Do you want us to come with you?” Char said.

She tilted her head and crossed her eyes as if to say well, obviously and waited for them. As soon as they caught up to her she was off again through the brush. No one had been here since – well, forever, it seemed. The ground was covered with undergrowth, and the bushes were so thick Char’s arms were soon all scratched up.

“Please don’t let this be poison oak.”

“Great shibbing gods.” Jake stopped dead in his tracks and Char bounced off his back. The ghost had led them to another clearing. Bigger, maybe two acres.

The air was electric with a droning, humming buzz.

“This can’t be.” Char stepped into the clearing, dazed. “They were lost before I was born, wiped out by neonicotinoid insecticides. Everywhere. I mean everywhere in the world. No one has seen them since.”

Honeybees!

The clearing was covered with little mounds of dirt, neat row upon row of them. Atop each mound was a nest-like hive made of mud and twigs and leaves. There had to be thousands of hives.

“It’s a miracle,” Char said. “Where did you … how did you come by these bees?”

“Hair lady.” The ghosts eyes widened and she pointed at Char’s hair.

“It is a miracle, Jake. I think Asherah must have chosen this … this ghost to watch over a miracle.” The gods did work in mysterious ways. This god did, at any rate. “Bees!”

“Bees! Boom!” The ghost pointed at the sky.

Of course. “It’s the plane. Garrick’s shibdung jet. The noise frightened the bees.”

“Not to mention the exhaust,” Jake said. “Who knows how delicate these bees are.”

“Think of it. Pollination. Honey. Beeswax. This has to be Asherah’s doing. She will be delighted.”

“Bees boom no!”

“Bees boom no,” Jake said. “But we can’t ask Garrick to change course going home without an explanation.” He studied the ghost and eyed her semi-decent clothes. “From my limited experience bringing in ghosts, I’d say you’ve been watching us. Maybe you’ve come down to the citadel a time or two. Picked up a few things you needed. You’ve decided we’re safe, or you wouldn’t have let us see you.”

The ghost didn’t deny it. She looked pointedly at Char’s hair. But how could she deny anything if the only words she knew were bees, boom, and no?

“We’re going to help you with your bees,” Jake said, “but first I want you to help me with something.” He crouched down on the ground and looked up at her. Brilliant. Not so intimidating. “Do you remember your name?”

She tilted her head again and assumed a coquettish look that completely clashed with her skeletal frame and dirty face-and her body odor. But it was clear. She remembered her name. Char and Jake waited.

The bees buzzed.

And they waited some more.

“Alice.”

“Alice,” Jake said. The ghost broke out in a smile so big Char wanted to cry. How long had it been since the poor thing heard someone speak her name?

“Fifo died,” Alice said.

“Yes,” Char said. Fifo. Probably a pet or a loved one. “I’m so sorry. My sister died.” It was the first time she’d said it aloud. Her throat constricted and tears welled in her eyes. “Oh!” She couldn’t hold back the tears.

“Sad,” Alice said. “Sad.” She put her arms around Char. Cripes, she smelled awful. Char hugged her back, and they both shook with violent sobs. Jake stood up and put his arms around them.

When they’d cried everything out, Jake said, “Alice, we need to get you and the bees to a safe place. A place with no boom. Out of the rain. Away from raptors.”

Alice nodded. “No boom.”

“No boom,” Jake said. “I want you to come with us back to the citadel. As soon as it’s safe, we’ll take the bees to a place where you can take care of them with no rain, no raptors, and no boom.”

“And you can have a warm bath,” Char said. “With bubbles.”

The skin where Alice would have eyebrows scrunched. Char grimaced at Jake, thinking she’d ruined it with the bath suggestion.

Alice nodded. “Bees no boom. Bath.”

“Outstanding,” Jake said. “Just outstanding.”

He was thrilled that he’d saved a ghost and learned her name. He had no idea that he was about to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. But Char was a hydroponics agronomist, and she knew. Asherah had given them a treasure infinitely more precious than Garrick’s oil or Luxor’s gold.

Jake and Char started back to the horses, but Alice yelled, “Wait!” She ran away down a row of mud hives and disappeared into some trees.

“I guess we wait,” Jake said.

Ten minutes later, Alice was back, carrying a bush that was all sticks covered with hard woody buds. “My goodness,” Char said. “A lilac. A real lilac bush. Alice, you’re amazing!”

Alice smiled. “Flower.”

When they got back to the picnic blanket, Char tore off her camisole. Clouds were building up again, and in the chill breeze she grabbed her jacket and put it on over her bra. She dug up some dirt and packed it around the lilac roots, then wrapped that with her camisole.

Jake put Alice in front of him on his horse, and Char handed her the lilac. “At the citadel you can choose where to plant this.”

Alice was a ghost, no question. In the bath, she barely displaced the water. As if she knew what she had to do to come back, Alice listened and repeated words she seemed to like. Bubbles. Warm. Bees.

Bees. Let’s hope Alice went light on that word until the bees were secure. Char left Alice to her bath.

“I’m not sleeping.” Jake jumped up from the sofa and ran his hands through his hair. “So Alice must be a high-performing ghost. She said more words today than cage net woman said in a month.”

Char walked Jake to the door. “I wonder if having the bees to care for made the difference.”

“It makes all the difference.” Jake touched her cheek. “Caring for someone.” He enveloped her in a bear hug. There were tears in his eyes, and he laughed. “Ah, Meadowlark. Something about Alice and her bees gives me faith in humanity. It’s a strange feeling.”

Char kissed him and pressed against him in the open doorway, wishing he didn’t have to put in an appearance with the early arrivals. She was in the middle of saying something like mm-mm when she realized someone was out there.

A young girl wearing the white shift and brown tunic of a Samaeli priest stood transfixed in the corridor not five feet from Char’s door. Trancelike, she swayed, her eyes closed. She seemed familiar, but Char was confused by the priest garb. Jake rushed to steady her. The girl’s face went white, and she fell backwards against the wall. Her eyes opened.

Char gasped. The girl was a chalice, gone missing from Corcovado months ago. She glanced from Char to Jake with a mix of nausea and triumph. An icy shiver ran down Char’s spine.

“Maribel?” Jake recognized her too.

“It’s Mother Maribel.”

Right. The Samaeli called their female priests mother. What was she, sixteen?

Maribel was one of the original nine chalices Jake had rescued from orbit at the outbreak of the DOG war. She had been a sensitive and tender little girl and highly adept in all the ways of a chalice, especially trance work.

“You look fit, Maribel,” Char said. “We’ve all been so worried about you.” Maribel had always been precocious, the first to master any new technique. She undertook her first gestation at fifteen, against Durga’s wishes, and it went badly. “How is it that you are here?”

“I am advisor to Garrick. As you see, I am under Samael’s protection.”

Char forced her mind past the illogic of a chalice turned any kind of Samaeli, whether priest or mere follower. That was confusing and tragic enough.

But advisor to Garrick?

“How old are you now, sixteen?”

“Seventeen.” It sounded like a lie. “Four years younger than Faina.” If she had batted her eyelashes and said meow, it wouldn’t have been out of place. Maribel’s mean pleasure was downright insufferable and out of proportion to the petty dig.

So much for Jake’s faith in humanity.

… continued …

Want to continue reading? Click on the title below to download the entire novel for just 99 cents!

Spiderwork

A Paranormal Romance Fantasy
(Apocalypto 2)

by LK Rigel

Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2011-01-01

List Price: $0.99

Spiderwork, A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2)

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Thank you for reading this free Kindle Nation feature.

Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 12, 2011: An Excerpt from Qi (Book of the Baba Yaga) by Elizabeth A. Svigar

August 18, 2011March 13, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

This is something you know, if you’ve ever experienced the pleasures of returning to one of your favorite books from childhood:
the best YA novels are often among the best novels, period.

By Stephen Windwalker

My son Danny is 12, on the edge of so many things. Most of them will be wonderful, because he is a wonderful kiddo. A few will be daunting, more perhaps for me than for him.

It’s not so much that there’s anything to fear about the years ahead as that there are so many things I would be so sad to let go of. And here is one: we have a wonderful Friday night ritual of reading aloud together. xBox 360 and all of that kind of thing is out of sight, out of mind, and we share the world of whatever we are reading. Right now it’s The Hunger Chronicles, and during the past couple of years there have been all kinds of things. He’s smart and cool at school, but as we’ve read The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland and Percy Jackson and Lemony Snicket he’s just been Danny, my very good and very imaginative son.

Next up? I’m going to suggest Qi (Book of the Baba Yaga), because I’m enthralled by what Elizabeth Svigar has done here, and I think Danny will be, too.

Think “The Hunger Chronicles meets Percy Jackson“, and then — and I hope I don’t lose anyone here — throw in a little bit of The Firm, because I was reminded of the greatest accomplishment of that first big hit of Grisham’s, which was the way he created, twice in that novel, a totally alluring fictional world and then allowed a sense of doom and danger to overtake that world, both in Memphis and in the Cayman Islands.

But of course Qi (Book of the Baba Yaga) is no legal thriller. It’s just a chance to share Sam’s journey, and a thoroughly engaging, fully imagined, and often very funny “young adult” novel … for all ages.

Click here to begin reading the free excerpt

Here’s the set-up:

Thirteen-year-old uber-archer Samantha is thrilled to qualify for Xenith, the most prestigious – and mysterious – Olympic training facility in the world. Much more than an athletic camp, it’s part fantasyland where living dolls and the Baba Yaga abound. Then there’s Dr. Nine, a master alchemist whose laboratory is very well guarded indeed. But not all that glitters is Olympic gold. When dangerous secrets begin to surface, Samantha must fight her way through Xenith’s sinister underworld to save her friends and family – if she survives herself.

Qi is a fast-paced young adult fantasy that will appeal to fans of strong but conflicted protagonists as well as fans of mythological adventure tales. It draws influence from Slavic mythology, Dante’s Inferno, and contemporary villains and heroes. Recently, it was selected for the second round in Amazon’s breakthrough young adult novel contest, and it continues to receive highly positive reviews from both readers and reviewers. It is currently on sale for 99 cents.

(Book of the Baba Yaga)

by Elizabeth A. Svigar

Kindle Edition

List Price: $0.99